CARACAS – Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Police allowed the opposition march on Saturday to continue through west Caracas on its way to the seat of the Episcopal Conference in order to honor the mortal victims of anti-government protests over the past three weeks.
Nonetheless, some other protesters who tried to catch up with the march by hiking down Caracas’s main east-west expressway were repelled wih tear gas and had to find another route.
That act of repression was the only one that occurred Saturday and there are no reports of anyone injured.
This is the first time in recent weeks that the opposition has managed to go forward with a demonstration from the east of the Venezuelan capital to the downtown area since the wave of protests against the Nicolas Maduro government began.
The demonstration by thousands of opposition members, dubbed the March of Silence, was initially halted by a unit of the Bolivarian National Police, as has normally occurred.
The officers told the protest leaders they had to stay out of the Libertador municipality of Caracas in order to avoid the kind of outbreaks of violence that have occurred on previous occasions.
Soon afterwards, however, the authorities allowed the opposition march to carry on by an alternative route that would take them just as well to the Episcopal Conference in Libertador, the only Caracas municipality with a Chavista government.
“We’re going to take you along the safest route and once we’re there, you people can carry out any activities you want,” a police official told the protesters.
Opposition lawmaker Juan Andres Mejias told reporters that the demonstration might well “face repression farther on,” but that they would continue on their way “firmly, peacefully but intelligently.”