Venezuelan students are marching barefoot, building crucifixes and planning to burn effigies of President Nicolas Maduro to try and breathe new life into their protest movement over Easter, Reuters reported.
The religious-themed demonstrations are the latest tactics in anti-government protests since early February that have convulsed the South American OPEC nation and led to 41 deaths, according to Reuters.
But enthusiasm among opposition supporters for the street protests appears to be waning, with numbers dropping from previous months and Maduro's position seemingly safe despite his constant references to coup plots against him, Reuters reported.
About 500 demonstrators joined Thursday's enactment of the Christian tradition of the Stations of the Cross, where Jesus was said to have stopped on his way to being crucified, according to Reuters. Each stop symbolized one complaint, with placards reading "devaluation," "censorship" and "insecurity" for example, but police blocked them from completing all 15 stops.
Nearby in the Chacao district of Caracas, about two dozen masked youths briefly took over a bus on Thursday, before battling with police, Reuters witnesses said.
Residents fled during a two-hour standoff between militant protesters throwing petrol bombs and officers responding with tear gas, according to Reuters.
Students also planned mock crucifixions for Good Friday, and to burn puppets of Maduro and the government's powerful No. 2 Diosdado Cabello, in a twist on some Catholics' custom of symbolically burning Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, Reuters reported.
Student activists have effectively broken with Venezuela's moderate opposition leadership, who have begun talks with Maduro and his top officials in order to defuse the crisis, after two rounds of formal talks, mediated by the Vatican's envoy in Caracas and foreign ministers from the South American bloc Unasur, have yielded few concrete results though they have calmed emotions around the country, according to Reuters.
The students, and hardline opposition figures like jailed protest leader Leopoldo Lopez and legislator Maria Corina Machado, oppose the talks unless all opponents are freed, Reuters reported.
Frustrated by successive election losses, the protesters took to the streets from early February demanding solutions to Venezuela's rampant violent crime, soaring inflation, and shortages of basic goods from milk to car batteries, according to Reuters.
Hardliners had hoped for a "Venezuelan Spring" that would oust Maduro, but they failed to bring millions onto the streets as they had wanted, Reuters reported.
