Quotes
I don’t want gold, I don’t want CLAP (the government food aid programme), I want Nicolas (Maduro) to leave,
chanted protesters banging pots I’ll fight for my country’s democracy. They stole the election from us,
an unidentified protester told Reuters My dear Venezuelans, tomorrow we meet; as a family, organized, demonstrating the determination we have to make every vote count and defend the truth,
We have been following all of the acts of violence promoted by the extreme right. I can tell the people of Venezuela that if they have done harm, we are acting,
We want freedom. We want Maduro to go. Maduro, leave!,
Marina Sugey, a 42 year-old resident of a poor area of Caracas called Petare, told AFP He lost the elections, he has no right to be there right now.”
Her father Miguel, 64, agreed, saying We came out because there was fraud,
added David, 40, who did not want to give his surname We closed our businesses to join the protest. We were disappointed. This (result) does not reflect reality. We voted against Nicolas,
21-year-old Carolina Rojas told AFP They are calling the army but... we must protest,
They’re doing this because they don’t agree with what the president Nicolás Maduro Moros is doing,
said the girl, explaining how two of her aunts had fled overseas to Chile to escape the economic meltdown We are longing for change and [Maduro] laughed at us and rubbed it in our faces,
said the 38-year-old street hawker who, like many, was convinced the election had been stolen People are fed up with the same old shit, with the fraud,
fumed one local, Yesica Otaiza, as the cacerolazo pot-banging protest – a South American tradition intended to express political discontent – spread to a neighbouring tower block and along the street Many people thought Corina would win and they can’t understand what happened,
said Ayari Rauseo, a 48-year-old clothes seller as she sat on a concrete bench in Catia and described how Venezuela’s slow-motion collapse had torn her family apart She wants to go to Spain,
Rauseo said, staring despondently into the middle distance So far things are calm but there are rumours about disturbances,
said David Perdomo, a 58-year-old shoemaker, as he sat on a bench on Bulevar de Sabana Grande, a normally teeming shopping district where there was hardly a soul to be seen and most shutters were down They can’t attack us with missiles so they use sanctions,
Pacheco said, hailing Maduro as an everyman president of the poor They made so many promises and they did nothing,
he complained of Maduro’s increasingly repressive administration which has presided over a massive migration crisis that has seen some eight million citizens flee abroad Nicolás is our hope.”
Another informed the few passing motorists We won and everybody knows it,
Machado declared on Sunday after the government-controlled electoral authority announced Maduro had prevailed with 51.21% of the vote compared to González’s 44.2% People are sad and disappointed,
said the 42-year-old nurse describing how Maduro’s claim of victory had come as a shock