Tension after Venezuela National Guard Takes Over Opposition Police Station By Jeremy Morgan Latin American Herald Tribune staff CARACAS – An air of uneasy tranquillity was said to have descended Thursday on Curiepe, the town in Miranda state where the National Guard forcibly took over a state police station last week, provoking protests by local residents. Reports reaching the capital said that a degree of relative calm reined in Curiepe after renewed disorder in the streets the previous day. But questions abounded as to how long this sudden outbreak of peace might last. The reason for this, apparently, was that the day marked a religious festival. The belief here was that disgruntled folk had declared a truce in their efforts to dislodge the guardsmen from the Miranda state police unit seized by force on Friday last week. That in itself was enough to spark speculation as to what would happen once the supposed truce expired, and whether the stand-off would again lead to renewed street clashes. Questions about whether or not the impasse had been resolved received a rude answer as inhabitants of Curiepe and a nearby township, Tacarigua, took to the streets yet again. What had re-energized them, it was said, was news that the National Guard takeover of the Miranda state police station had been ordered by the town mayor, one Liliana González. But a rival version of events had it that it was local municipal officials in league with the National Guard who kick-started the trouble all over again as dawn rose on Wednesday morning. The officials were said to have turned up at the police station and a local municipal office in Curiepe with the intention of asserting their control over the state police, and to have taken about a hundred guardsmen with them to enforce their will. Similar action was said to have been taken in Tacarigua. Within hours, it was said, makeshift barricades had gone up on street corners in both towns as protesters set fire to car tires in a years-old symbol of public discontent in Venezuela. The National Guard was said to have responded with volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets, injuring several people. Among the wounded, it was said, were at least two old age pensioners. One of them was named as Juana Almeida, an aunt of the former education and sports minister, Aristóbulo Istúriz, a key figure in the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) who lost the election for Caracas Metropolitan Mayor to Antonio Ledezma of the Opposition in November last year. González’s motives and political affiliation remained unclear. Unconfirmed reports claimed that she had ordered both the original takeover of the police station a week ago and Thursday’s action. Her reason for doing so, it was further alleged, was that the police station was built on land belonging to the municipality and she intended to put the building to alternative uses. But what exactly these were to be remained as unclear as many other details of this bizarre incident in the middle of more or less nowhere. Eyes turned to Miranda State Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, who hails from the younger ranks of the Opposition and ousted the PSUV’s Diosdado Cabello – who’s now a powerful government figure as public works and housing minister – at last year’s elections. Capriles Radinski placed the responsibility for what was happening in Curiepe squarely on the shoulders of Interior and Justice Minister Tarek El Assaimi – while at the same time stating that just what was going on and why weren’t at all clear. The governor went on to claim that the National Guard’s action against the state police was all part of a “program” which he claimed had been “orchestrated” at El Assaimi’s ministry. But to what purpose he again admitted he couldn’t say. Amid continuing tension, an additional squadron of National Guard troops was said to have been ordered into Curiepe during the early hours of Thursday morning. Five people were reported to have been arrested during Thursday’s disturbances.