A recap on the Venezuela Situation
Part 2: the slackening of the protest

The day has not brought much more than yesterday. Surely some sort of negotiation somewhere is taking place. Meanwhile streets sort of quieted down. Barricades still exist and might be open for a while, closed again, depending on the mood of the people. As I was walking past the San Luis barricade, there was Orlando Urdaneta, one of the opposition radical leaders trying to stimulate a toughening of the barricade and other nonsense. Indeed, barricades might have been a good idea on Monday and Tuesday but today why the final verdict is played behind closed doors, they tend to divide neighborhoods. A lot of people in Venezuela, chavistas or not, just do not want to get bothered more than a day or two. At the San Luis barricade I was told of a woman that made a fuss this morning because they did not want let drive to her hair dresser appointment. Mr. Urdaneta words actually seemed rather out of touch with reality as protest for its own sake will not go anywhere unless the Coordinadora Democratica (CD) decides to organize them for a purposeful goal.

The neighborhood is actually starting to be flooded with garbage and it is smelly. Chavismo will do nothing to come and clean it up, very happy to see the middle class lock itself up in its own ghetto. And our Baruta town hall is too busy trying to protect itself from an illegal take over from the armed forces using as an excuse the "capture" of the mayor's armed body guards. Imagine that, the mayor's body guards had actually weapons!

I felt sorry for all these people that actually thought they were accomplishing something when my intuition was telling me that the CD did not approve of it anymore while some loose cannons like Mr. Urdaneta were strirring the shit, even showing off by reading messages from its T-motion system as if he were a big organizer (few people can afford T-motion, the message system preferred by opposition leaders for its security).

However the casual observer should not be fooled by this sudden lull. The anger of the people is palpable, their outrage at being cheated from their effort is painful. A bigger explosion is just around the corner. If you doubt it, observing the litter of the Caurimare street will make you think otherwise.

Since some roads had reopened, I did go to Caurimare to check out the area. Three pictures.

The first one is from the bridge that the Nazi-onal Guard worked hard last night to keep in their hands. Notice the amounts of stones that litter the floor. All of these stones carried and thrown there against beetle clad Guards. I took the picture with the zoom from inside the car. Notice the small tank still left parked. Notice the Guard on the right chatting with some passer by. On the other side there were about six of them pretending to check all cars and looking very sure of themselves, very arrogant. I preferred not to be seen taking the picture.



This picture is the cliff over which stands the hospital that was gassed. Look at the pitiful red cross flags. You can observe that landing a tear gas bomb inside a window high up in the hospital was more than just a mere accident. After all it is a private hospital, even though it would take injured Nazi-onal Guards and treat them equally well in case of emergency.



The last one is the roof of the hospital with yet another flag. I found taking that particular picture a very moving moment.