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Venezuela: Who are the Colectivos?

Government opponents fear the armed groups more than police, but for Maduro, the colectivos are likened to ‘angels of socialism’.
Caracas, Venezuela – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido arrived at a rally of several hundred waiting supporters last month in San Bernardino, a middle-class Caracas neighbourhood.
The stage where Guaido was set to speak was at the bottom of a long narrow street, where men, women and children had gathered.
Not long after Guaido arrived, tear gas engulfed the area, thrown by masked and heavily armed civilians on motorcycles.
From the stage, an organiser appealed to the crowd to crouch down, stay calm and not run, especially given the large number of elderly people and children there.
As soon as the gas dissipated, Guaido got on the stage just as more motorcycled men began firing live rounds, presumably to frighten off the opposition leader. He refused to budge. On this occasion, no one was killed or injured.
Venezuelans call these irregular armed gangs colectivos or collectives, while the UN Human Rights Commission describes them as para-police, or paramilitary forces loyal to President Nicolas Maduro.

These people raped women, children, robbed, killed, tortured, and were never made accountable for their actions, on the contrary, as long as they were loyal to the regime, they were paid, given motorcycles, guns, etc. They were thugs who terrorized the general public. That is what trump wants, Venezuela was the blueprint of what they want to do here.

Read more here: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/5/9/venezuela-who-are-the-colectivos