Venezuela quells soldiers’ revolt; court blasts congress
Venezuela CARACAS, VENEZUELA— plunged deeper into turmoil on Monday as security forces put down a predawn uprising by national guardsmen that triggered violent street protests and the Supreme Court outlawed the opposition-controlled congress’ defiant new leadership.
The mutiny triggered protests in a poor neighborhood just a few miles from Venezuela’s presidential palace. It was dispersed with tear gas as residents set fire to a barricade of trash and chanted demands that President Nicolas Maduro leave power.
The military said in a statement said that it had recovered all the weapons and captured those involved in what it described as “treasonous” acts motivated by “obscure interests tied to the far right.”
It said at around 2:50 a.m., a small group of guardsmen took captive a captain in charge of a police station in western Caracas and then moved across the capital in two military trucks to the poor neighborhood of Petare, where they stole a cache of weapons from another outpost. They were caught a few hours later at a national guard outpost 2 miles from the Miraflores presidential palace.
A few hours earlier, a group of heavily armed national guardsmen published a series of videos on social media saying they won’t recognize Maduro’s government, which has come under increasing domestic and international pressure over a newly begun second term that the opposition-controlled congress and many nations consider illegitimate.
In one of the videos, a man identifying himself as 3rd Sgt. Alexander Bandres Figueroa, addressing the “people of Venezuela,” urges his compatriots to take to the streets to show support for their rebellion.
“You asked to take to the streets to defend the constitution, well here we are,” he said in a video shot at night in which several heavily armed men and a national guard truck can be seen in the background.
“You wanted us to light the fuse, so we did. We need your support,” he added.
At daybreak in the adjacent neighborhood of Cotiza, a group of shirtless young men, some with their faces covered, built a barricade across the street with a burning car, heavy sewer grates and a large chunk of concrete.
An angry group of women shouted that they have lived for too long without running water.
“Freedom! Freedom!” they chanted. “Maduro has to go!”
“We must defend our homeland,” Maria Fernanda Rodriguez, a 36-year-old manicurist, told The Associated Press, her eyes welling from the tear gas.