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An Intimate Look at the Street Violence That Sparked the 2002 Coup against Hugo Chávez
It didn't register that the noise was gunfire. Inside that maelstrom of sound and motion, Mike Merhi assumed it was only the reverberations of firecrackers set off by the other protestors.
The march was only a few blocks from the presidential palace of Miraflores, but the way remaining was barred by hundreds of the president's loyal supporters - hard-core chavistas. They were barraging Mike and his fellow marchers with a hail of rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails. In between the opposing factions was an open space of about 40 meters, a no-man's-land of debris and plumes of spiraling tear gas. The chavistas and the opposition surged back and forth against each other while the police tried desperately to keep the two groups apart with tear gas and water cannons.
Mike was standing on the curb of the Pedrera intersection - with his eighteen-year-old son Jesús and his friend Gustavo Tovar - when a photographer crumpled to the ground. The man had been trotting along, a telephoto lens cupped in one hand, and then he abruptly fell forward as if performing a somersault. As people rushed over to help, Mike watched the man's forehead bloom into a bloody smudge. He must have been hit in the head with a rock, Mike thought.
He heard loud cracks in the air rising above the din - he thought it was the police firing their perdigones - shotguns with plastic shot - at the chavistas. A tall woman in a yellow T-shirt collapsed in a shock of cropped blond hair. It looked as if she had been hit with a rock, too. Up the street he saw another man stumble, and now, very loud, he heard the doom, doom, doom. Almost as one, he, Jesús, and Gustavo realized what was happening: bullets. They ran for cover.
It was Thursday afternoon, April 11, 2002, the third day of a nation-wide strike that had paralyzed Venezuela, and Mike was standing in the midst of the largest civic protest in the history of the country. Around him were Venezuelans of every color, make, and model. There were parents who had pulled their children from grade school,...