A protest in Barquisimeto, Lara state, left one student injured with a gunshot wound to an undisclosed area of his body, and several others were injured during a demonstration against a planned increase in public transportation fares. The student, 17 year old Wilson Torbay, is currently in hospital receiving treatment for the wound.
According to witnesses, the demonstration remained peaceful for most of the day, but starting at around 5:30 PM local time, “explosions were heard in the area, and neighbours denounced the presence of colectivos in the area, surrounding and attacking the [Fermin Toro University] campus”.
The main building of the Universidad Fermin Toro campus appears to be at least partially engulfed in flames at this time. Here are some pictures of the fire, along with others from Barquisimeto today:
There were also confrontations between students and security forces in the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, Guayana campus. There, five students were injured, along with a security guard and the commander of the National Guard Detachment 88, who was hit by a rock on the mouth. The students were demanding the release of fellow student Xavier Beckles, who was detained last Wednesday during a demonstration.
During demonstrations in Tachira today, ten students were detained and twenty were injured. According to demonstrators, Tachira state police opened fire on them with rubber bullets and tear gas during a protest demanding the release of students detained in Tachira during the past three months of protests. During the confrontation, a PDVSA truck was torched.
The demonstrations in Tachira also involved protesters throwing what looks like school desks out of the windows of a school:
In Naguanagua, Carabobo state, disturbances started at approximately 6:30 AM this morning. At the end of the day, seven people had been injured and 18 detained.
In Altamira, a group of protesters blocked the Luis Roche Avenue, and when the National Guard showed up to disperse them, they set fire to one of their trucks. Pictures of the event, via La Patilla:
And some other pictures from Altamira, from Twitter:
A survey released by the polling firm Datanalisis found that eight out of ten Venezuelans believe that Venezuela currently finds itself in in a bad situation, and nearly 60% do not approve of the job President Nicolas Maduro is doing. Venezuelans ranked the biggest problems they face to be scarcity (32.5%) and insecurity (23.5%). Considering the fact that there have been 4,680 violent deaths in the country in the first three months of the year, this statistic speaks quite a bit regarding the severity of the scarcity crisis.
Finally, El Universal – a major Venezuelan newspaper – today declared an “emergency due to lack of paper”. For reasons that remain unclear, the newspaper has not been given dollars it had been cleared to receive in order to buy paper on which to print. According to the newspaper, a shipment of paper has been sitting in storage in the port of La Guaira since January while the bureaucratic hurdles regarding the dollars are cleared. El Universal claims that it only has enough paper to print on to last it two more weeks.
In Venezuela 