Vzla: Tear gas and buckshot dispel opposition

"The order is to resist, resist," said one lady close to 70 years of age to a group of friends who replied: "Today or never, Magdalena, you are right, we have to resist." Around eight women were next to the security cordon placed by the CANTV headquarters on Libertador Avenue in Caracas, while the thick of the opposition march walked euphorically towards Plaza Morelos.

Suddenly, the National Guard started to respond to the citizen action with tear gas, with no other stimulus than the arrival of the march on territory that had been permitted by the competent authorities, but was banned territory to the military.

The ladies left at a jog, escaping the effects of the tear gas canisters, that scratched their faces generating an intolerable chaos as people retreated. And yet, they didn't manage altogether to clean up the area, because the people would return to offer resistence, would return with anti-government slogans, would again inflame the patience of the so-called "guards at the service of the regime."

The march, called by the opposition and whose ultimate goal was to reach Plaza Morelos, did not meet its main goal: to get noticed by the foreign ministers and some heads of state from the Group of 15, who were meeting in the Teresa Carreno Theater.