CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Venezuelan riot police fired pepper spray and tear gas to disperse an angry crowd of several thousand anti-government demonstrators trying to make their way to congress on Tuesday in the country’s largest and most violent protests in months.
The demonstrators were trying to accompany opposition lawmakers in a march to the National Assembly for a session where they planned to debate removing Supreme Court magistrates who issued a ruling last week removing the last vestiges of power from the opposition-controlled congress.
But police blocked the opposition’s planned route, forcing protesters to change their plans and congregate outside a public housing unit with the signature of the late Hugo Chavez emblazoned on its facade. Residents from inside the building threw bottles on the demonstrators below while taunting them with loud “Chavez Lives” music and red shirts hung from their windows.
The crowd fled in multiple directions as a small group of youths, many with their faces covered, began launching rocks and throwing themselves against a police line. A water tank and anti-riot vehicles were brought in to control the crowd, which later the reassembled on a nearby highway to shouts of “the streets belong to the people.”
Once there, the activists, some of them draped in Venezuelan flags and carrying signs that read “No More Dictatorship,” advanced toward a giant barricade of riot control vehicles that every few minutes would fire tear gas to push the crowd back.