Security forces have arrested more than 300 people during protests and looting over the elimination of Venezuela’s largest currency bill, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday.
The socialist leader pulled the 100 Venezuelan bolivar note this week before new bills were in circulation, creating a national cash shortage on top of the brutal economic crisis overshadowing Venezuelans’ Christmas and New Year holidays.
After two days of unrest over the measure — including one death and dozens of shops ransacked — Maduro on Saturday postponed the measure until Jan. 2.
Photo: Reuters
That helped stem violence, though there were still reports of more looting in southern Ciudad Bolivar on Sunday.
The detainees include leaders and members of the opposition Popular Will and Justice First parties, Maduro said on state TV, accusing them of following US instructions to incite chaos.
“Don’t come and tell me they are political prisoners ... They are the two parties of the gringos in Venezuela,” he added, accusing US President Barack Obama of wanting to engineer a coup against socialism in Venezuela before leaving office.
From Venezuela’s southern jungle and savannah to the Andean highlands in the west, groups of hundreds of protesters have been burning Venezuelan bolivar notes, cursing Maduro and decrying scarcities of food and medicines.
The worst looting was on Friday and Saturday, especially in El Callao and Ciudad Bolivar in the southern state of Bolivar, and police have used teargas to control crowds in some places.
Chinese-run shops have been particularly targeted, witnesses say, and a 14-year-old boy was shot dead in El Callao on Friday.
The governor of Bolivar state said there were 262 arrests there, with looting from food shops to science laboratories. The local business group said 350 businesses had been ransacked in Ciudad Bolivar, including 90 percent of food outlets.
In Santa Elena de Uairen, near the border with Brazil, shopkeepers and inhabitants formed vigilante groups to join police and soldiers after six shops were ransacked on Saturday.
“We’re not lowering our guard, we’re forming protection brigades,” local business group leader Gilmer Poma said.
Food prices were reduced in some establishments in Santa Elena as a way to defuse tensions.
Maduro, a 54-year-old former bus driver and foreign minister who replaced Hugo Chavez in 2013, has seen his popularity plunge during a three-year recession. He justified the currency measure as a way of suffocating mafia on Venezuela’s borders.
However, opponents say it is further evidence of disastrous economic policy in a nation reeling from runaway prices and shortages of basics. They want him to resign.
“The only person guilty of the chaos and violence of recent days is Nicolas Maduro,” the Justice First party said, accusing intelligence agents of taking advantage of the situation to frame opposition leaders with false evidence.
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