Venezuela’s national guard attacks barriers

People in the western Venezuelan city of San Cristóbal, where the current eruption of anti-government unrest began early last month, say national guard troops have attacked and dismantled barricades that protesters had raised at key intersections.

Local TV journalist Beatriz Font and other witnesses say guardsmen fired a lot of tear gas, including at nearby residential buildings, according to The Associated Press. They say the attack began before midnight and continued into early Monday.

Font said the guardsmen broke windows, and several people reported from apartment buildings near the intersections that children and elderly people were being affected by the gas.

The disturbance began a day after hundreds of guardsmen in riot gear and armored vehicles prevented an empty-pots march from reaching Venezuela's Food Ministry on Saturday to protest now-chronic food shortages.

President Nicolás Maduro's government, meanwhile, celebrated an Organization of American States (OAS) declaration supporting its efforts to bring a solution to the country's worst political violence in years, calling it a diplomatic victory. The United States, Canada and Panama were the only nations to oppose the declaration.

"The meddling minority against Venezuela in the OAS, Panama, Canada and the U.S., is defeated in a historic decision that respects our sovereignty," government spokeswoman Delcy Rodriguez tweeted.

Later Saturday, several hundred student protesters trying to block streets with barricades skirmished with tear-gas-firing riot police in Caracas' wealthy Chacao district in what has become a nearly daily ritual.

There were no immediate reports of injuries as motorcycle-mounted riot police, taunted from apartment buildings, chased protesters through darkening streets.

Earlier, more than 5,000 protesters banged pots, blew horns and whistles and carried banners in the capital to decry crippling inflation and shortages of basics, including flour, milk and toilet paper. Similar protests were held in at least five other cities.

All over Venezuela, people spend hours every week queuing up at supermarkets, often before dawn, without even knowing what may arrive.

"There's nothing to buy. You can only buy what the government lets enter the country, because everything is imported. There's no beef. There's no chicken," said Zoraida Carrillo, a 50-year-old marcher in Caracas.

The capital's government-allied mayor had refused the marchers a permit to hold the empty-pots rally, leading opposition leader Henrique Capriles to accuse authorities of trying to criminalize peaceful protests.

"Nicolás is afraid of the empty pots of our people. He mobilizes hundreds of soldiers against empty pots," he said of Maduro, who defeated him by a razor-thin margin in the April presidential election.

Capriles reiterated opposition complaints that the government is sending "functionaries and groups of paramilitaries — which they have armed — to put down protests."

Maduro has faced several weeks of daily student-led protests across the nation that he claims are an attempt by far-right provocateurs to overthrow him. They have been joined by mostly middle-class Venezuelans fed up with inflation, which reached 56 percent last year, and one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Late Friday in Washington, the OAS approved a declaration that rejected violence and called for justice for the 21 people the government says have died since Feb. 12 in street protests. The declaration offered "full support" for a government peace initiative that the opposition has refused to join until dozens of jailed protesters and an opposition leader are freed.

Twenty-nine countries voted in favor of the declaration after 15 hours of debate spread over two days. After Panama sought discussion of the crisis in the body, Venezuela broke off relations and expelled its ambassador and three other diplomats.

The objections from Washington and Panama attached to the declaration were longer than the declaration itself. They argued that it violated OAS rules by taking sides.

"The OAS cannot sanction a dialogue in which much of the opposition has no voice and no faith," according to the U.S. objection. "Only Venezuelans can find the solutions to Venezuela's problems, but the situation in Venezuela today makes it imperative that a trusted third party facilitate the conversation as Venezuelans search for those solutions."

The Associated Press