Desperate Stash fuel bottles and Molotov cocktails. Activists managing a network of shelters. Masked youths roadblocks. Wielding a gun dissidents called general to arms.
Secret meetings emissions guerrilla movement of "resistance" and unworldly amorphous originated in Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro will force power and at the end of 16 years socialist government in the OPEC nation.
Even the most hardcore street barricade firing sporadically with the security forces garbage and skins with stones or occasionally flare a government vehicle, especially in the Andean regions of South nickname "Wild West".
Some admit they try to connect to the soldiers and retirees, hoping a coup against Maduro.
"We want to overthrow the government. There is no other way," said a housewife in her fifties who helps coordinate the resistance supposedly in the center of Valencia, a house of protest last year, which led nationwide to 43 deaths.
They threw stones at police, carried around students and stored materials to Molotov cocktails and pipes as "Miguelito" that are set on the road to make to drill police vehicles.
Disturbed by the failure of these doped protests, she tries to help keep alive the movement by organizing secret meetings and establish contacts with former military.
Supporters recently exposed by local decision and threatened Online Socialist Party, publish photos of her and family members and license plates. "Go for it," wrote one. So she fled from her home in a neighborhood on the hill of the upper middle class in Valencia to take refuge in Caracas instead.
"We're leaving," he said, "but I can not lose hope, How can I close my eyes and do nothing.
" Radical underground mining - supported by activists in Europe and the US - are to overthrow an embarrassment to the traditional opposition leaders hoping the polls Maduro.
They say hard inadvertently help Maduro, allowing you to paint all opponents as extremists and land coup supported by foreign claims against him. Some say that infiltrated the government plays a role in the most extreme activities.
Interviews by Reuters with dozens of people in the protest movement throughout Venezuela involved indicate that their number is relatively small and lacks a clear strategy.
The more serious threats to Maduro do not seem to come from the "resistance" or even the mainstream opposition but rather from growing anger over a deep economic crisis and from factions within the ruling coalition.
Though the top military brass parade their support for Maduro, rumors are rife of dissent and a handful of air force officers were recently arrested for allegedly plotting to bombard the presidential palace and topple him.
Militant opposition activists know they cannot topple Maduro by themselves but hope to keep up pressure and be ready to help detonate a full-blown crisis if public unrest and internal divisions put his government in danger.
"We are housewives, businessmen, students," said a 30-year-old man in the Andean city of Merida who identified himself only as Antonio and spoke to a reporter in a moving car and at the back of an empty bar playing loud music.
He initially supported former socialist leader Hugo Chavez when he became president in 1999 but became disillusioned with his authoritarian style and statist economic policies.
Now, after recently losing his job at a water bottling plant, Antonio helps transport people to clandestine meetings.
Divided among myriad groups, it is hard to put a number on how many Venezuelans belong to the nebulous radical opposition.
Government sources talk disparagingly of a few hundred misguided "criminals" while activists boast of tens of thousands of would-be "liberators". Analysts estimate a few thousand.
The militants view Maduro, Chavez's protege who was elected to power in April 2013 after the late leader succumbed to cancer, as a puppet of Cuba's communist leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, and accuse him of wrecking the economy.
They also show disdain for opposition parties, who have time and again lost elections against Chavez and Maduro.
"The resistance is a product of the opposition's failures," said Antonio.
'Psycho No. 12'
The anger is fueled by economic and social crisis - long supermarket lines, shortages of basics, the highest inflation in the Americas and the world's second highest murder rate.
Maduro's approval ratings have slumped and the opposition has a good chance of winning control of parliament in elections later this year, though members of the "resistance" are convinced officials will use fraud to prevent that happening.
With state security on their tails and making regular arrests, most of the militants who spoke to Reuters hid their identities. Some only meet each other under trees after dark.
One activist in Caracas, who helps people who are on the run, carries a wig and a suitcase of clothes in her car, ready for quick escapes to safe houses. She said she receives so many abusive calls from government supporters that she stores the numbers on her phone in contacts as "Psycho."
"I have a Psycho 1, Psycho 2 ... up to No. 12!" she said.
While using encrypted chat mechanisms, pseudonyms like "The Specialist" or "Kaiser", and sometimes foreign languages to try to avoid detection, they also display naivety by, for example, taking group photos in cafes and posting them on social media.
Arguably the most prominent member, though, makes no attempt to conceal his identity.
At the height of last year's protests, retired army general Angel Vivas, 59, took to the roof of his Caracas home wielding an assault rifle in defiance of an apparent arrest order.
Since then, he has published videos on YouTube urging supporters to take up arms.
"The aim of the resistance is to expel this Castro communist invasion from Venezuelan territory and punish, with all the severity of the law, the traitors in its service," he told Reuters at his large home, sitting in front of a portrait of independence hero Simon Bolivar.
In a cabinet, Vivas keeps models of past Venezuelan presidents. Chavez is upside-down, and Maduro missing.
Why Vivas has not been arrested is a source of conjecture Political analyst Miguel Angel Albujas said it is because the general's call to arms had little impact and he is seen as a laughing stock in official circles.
By contrast, hardline opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has been in prison for more than a year for leading anti-government protests and Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma was jailed in February on charges of conspiring to overthrow Maduro.
"Chavez stopped resistance with his charisma," said Albujas, a university professor. "Maduro doesn't have that, so he resorts to repression ... but only when the threat is real."
Lorent Saleh, 26, is a younger public face of the resistance. He was arrested in September when authorities published videos of him discussing apparent bomb and assassination plots. Despite the damning broadcasts, his mother, Yamile Saleh, says the videos were fabricated.
"The government is trying to scare young people," she said.
Maduro regularly invokes the Saleh case, showing videos, emails and photos to back his claims that U.S.-backed extremists want to stage a coup.
Plotting has been a staple of Venezuelan politics in recent decades. As a young army officer, Chavez led a failed coup in 1992 and a decade later, in power, he survived a short-lived putsch against him.
The "resistance" draws support from Venezuelan emigres and foreign sympathizers, who run web sites, lobby international bodies and offer outside logistics.
Ana Diaz, who left Venezuela in 2004 and lives in Miami, is a prominent supporter, sending sends gas masks, protective gloves and even energy bars to opposition radicals across her home country.
"The kids need protein," she said.
Ulf Erlingsson, a Swede and former aid worker, helped found the Operation Venezuelan Liberty web site four years ago after becoming convinced Venezuela was a nefarious influence.
"This is a criminal regime run by a foreign power, Cuba," he told Reuters. "So there is nothing illegal in fighting them."
Secret meetings emissions guerrilla movement of "resistance" and unworldly amorphous originated in Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro will force power and at the end of 16 years socialist government in the OPEC nation.
 |
| Venezuelan 'Resistance' Movement Struggles to Bruise Maduro |
Some admit they try to connect to the soldiers and retirees, hoping a coup against Maduro.
"We want to overthrow the government. There is no other way," said a housewife in her fifties who helps coordinate the resistance supposedly in the center of Valencia, a house of protest last year, which led nationwide to 43 deaths.
They threw stones at police, carried around students and stored materials to Molotov cocktails and pipes as "Miguelito" that are set on the road to make to drill police vehicles.
Disturbed by the failure of these doped protests, she tries to help keep alive the movement by organizing secret meetings and establish contacts with former military.
Supporters recently exposed by local decision and threatened Online Socialist Party, publish photos of her and family members and license plates. "Go for it," wrote one. So she fled from her home in a neighborhood on the hill of the upper middle class in Valencia to take refuge in Caracas instead.
"We're leaving," he said, "but I can not lose hope, How can I close my eyes and do nothing.
" Radical underground mining - supported by activists in Europe and the US - are to overthrow an embarrassment to the traditional opposition leaders hoping the polls Maduro.
They say hard inadvertently help Maduro, allowing you to paint all opponents as extremists and land coup supported by foreign claims against him. Some say that infiltrated the government plays a role in the most extreme activities.
Interviews by Reuters with dozens of people in the protest movement throughout Venezuela involved indicate that their number is relatively small and lacks a clear strategy.
The more serious threats to Maduro do not seem to come from the "resistance" or even the mainstream opposition but rather from growing anger over a deep economic crisis and from factions within the ruling coalition.
Though the top military brass parade their support for Maduro, rumors are rife of dissent and a handful of air force officers were recently arrested for allegedly plotting to bombard the presidential palace and topple him.
Militant opposition activists know they cannot topple Maduro by themselves but hope to keep up pressure and be ready to help detonate a full-blown crisis if public unrest and internal divisions put his government in danger.
"We are housewives, businessmen, students," said a 30-year-old man in the Andean city of Merida who identified himself only as Antonio and spoke to a reporter in a moving car and at the back of an empty bar playing loud music.
He initially supported former socialist leader Hugo Chavez when he became president in 1999 but became disillusioned with his authoritarian style and statist economic policies.
Now, after recently losing his job at a water bottling plant, Antonio helps transport people to clandestine meetings.
Divided among myriad groups, it is hard to put a number on how many Venezuelans belong to the nebulous radical opposition.
Government sources talk disparagingly of a few hundred misguided "criminals" while activists boast of tens of thousands of would-be "liberators". Analysts estimate a few thousand.
The militants view Maduro, Chavez's protege who was elected to power in April 2013 after the late leader succumbed to cancer, as a puppet of Cuba's communist leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, and accuse him of wrecking the economy.
They also show disdain for opposition parties, who have time and again lost elections against Chavez and Maduro.
"The resistance is a product of the opposition's failures," said Antonio.
'Psycho No. 12'
The anger is fueled by economic and social crisis - long supermarket lines, shortages of basics, the highest inflation in the Americas and the world's second highest murder rate.
Maduro's approval ratings have slumped and the opposition has a good chance of winning control of parliament in elections later this year, though members of the "resistance" are convinced officials will use fraud to prevent that happening.
With state security on their tails and making regular arrests, most of the militants who spoke to Reuters hid their identities. Some only meet each other under trees after dark.
One activist in Caracas, who helps people who are on the run, carries a wig and a suitcase of clothes in her car, ready for quick escapes to safe houses. She said she receives so many abusive calls from government supporters that she stores the numbers on her phone in contacts as "Psycho."
"I have a Psycho 1, Psycho 2 ... up to No. 12!" she said.
While using encrypted chat mechanisms, pseudonyms like "The Specialist" or "Kaiser", and sometimes foreign languages to try to avoid detection, they also display naivety by, for example, taking group photos in cafes and posting them on social media.
Arguably the most prominent member, though, makes no attempt to conceal his identity.
At the height of last year's protests, retired army general Angel Vivas, 59, took to the roof of his Caracas home wielding an assault rifle in defiance of an apparent arrest order.
Since then, he has published videos on YouTube urging supporters to take up arms.
"The aim of the resistance is to expel this Castro communist invasion from Venezuelan territory and punish, with all the severity of the law, the traitors in its service," he told Reuters at his large home, sitting in front of a portrait of independence hero Simon Bolivar.
In a cabinet, Vivas keeps models of past Venezuelan presidents. Chavez is upside-down, and Maduro missing.
Why Vivas has not been arrested is a source of conjecture Political analyst Miguel Angel Albujas said it is because the general's call to arms had little impact and he is seen as a laughing stock in official circles.
By contrast, hardline opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has been in prison for more than a year for leading anti-government protests and Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma was jailed in February on charges of conspiring to overthrow Maduro.
"Chavez stopped resistance with his charisma," said Albujas, a university professor. "Maduro doesn't have that, so he resorts to repression ... but only when the threat is real."
Lorent Saleh, 26, is a younger public face of the resistance. He was arrested in September when authorities published videos of him discussing apparent bomb and assassination plots. Despite the damning broadcasts, his mother, Yamile Saleh, says the videos were fabricated.
"The government is trying to scare young people," she said.
Maduro regularly invokes the Saleh case, showing videos, emails and photos to back his claims that U.S.-backed extremists want to stage a coup.
Plotting has been a staple of Venezuelan politics in recent decades. As a young army officer, Chavez led a failed coup in 1992 and a decade later, in power, he survived a short-lived putsch against him.
The "resistance" draws support from Venezuelan emigres and foreign sympathizers, who run web sites, lobby international bodies and offer outside logistics.
Ana Diaz, who left Venezuela in 2004 and lives in Miami, is a prominent supporter, sending sends gas masks, protective gloves and even energy bars to opposition radicals across her home country.
"The kids need protein," she said.
Ulf Erlingsson, a Swede and former aid worker, helped found the Operation Venezuelan Liberty web site four years ago after becoming convinced Venezuela was a nefarious influence.
"This is a criminal regime run by a foreign power, Cuba," he told Reuters. "So there is nothing illegal in fighting them."
