Alejandro Velasco

You know, and you could hear it on the loudspeakers.

Like, you know, so-and-so, your parent is here.

Please report to the office to return home.

So-and-so, your parent is here.

Please return to the office.

So-and-so.

And it was like one after the other.

It was like, what is going on?

And then finally, it was my turn.

Like, Alejandro Velasco, your mother is here.

Please come to the office to be picked up.

And she was in a state of panic.

She's like, get in the car now.

And we get in the car and we sort of rush back home.

And what had been happening was a

started as a small protest over a hike in public bus fares but it was part of this much at the time i didn't understand it but part of this much larger structural adjustment package which had been announced by the recently re-elected president who had presided over the oil boom of the 1970s and who was elected largely on the promise of returning to that period of oil boom

but of course, with none of the oil boom and with many of the accumulated debts of that earlier period.

And so he, even though he had denied it during the campaign trail, pacted with the International Monetary Fund to get an influx of cash for Venezuela, but with extremely severe conditions for how that cash was going to be used.

Social services needed to be slashed, public companies needed to be privatized,

and subsidies to things like, for instance, public transportation needed to be cut.