Tupamaro

“������ they are doing smells to us a lot like dictatorship,” said Edito Hidalgo, a veteran Tupamaro activist who led a protest in the western town of Urachiche in September.

The man driving the rally was an activist named Edito Hidalgo of the Tupamaro party, which is closely allied with Maduro - a stark contrast from typical Venezuelan street agitators who are fiercely anti-government.

Back in Uruguay, Hermida had once questioned Meloni and Banfi – then students of literature and history respectively – after they had taken part in a demonstration back home in support of the leftwing Tupamaro guerrilla movement, to which Banfi belonged.

“The community knows who robs, who sells drugs, who extorts,” said Maria Silva, state leader in Lara of the Revolutionary Tupamaro Movement, a militant organization that backs Maduro and provides local intelligence to authorities.

Luis Parodi was a member of the Tupamaro guerrilla movement that was defeated in 1972.