Venezuela: the story behind the photo of a protestor celebrating with a soldier at a protest

CARACAS.- The photo went around the world and symbolized the first hours of the
30-A, when a group of National Guards joined the fight for

l & # 39; opposition

after the president in charge,

Juan Guaidó,

will call
an uprising that ultimately failed. The picture showed a woman with a covered mouth who was running to meet a guard, a hand raised, with the intention of hitting them. A tide of tear gas surrounds them.

"They were throwing gasoline at La Carlota airbase [donde estaban los militares leales al chavismo]. A tear gas bomb fell very close to me at my feet. I caught her and I threw her away. There, I realized that it was the first bomb on my return and I started celebrating it with my son, who was by my side. It has given me emotion. Everyone laughed. The guard told me "bad it!" and just when I hit her, they took my picture, "he said.
THE NATION Anais Serrano, from Caracas, 37 years old and mother of Carlos, 21 years old. This story is not understandable without mother and child, without the struggle of one and the love of the other.

The photographer Sergio Vergara had just immortalized for the AP agency more than a mere picture. The guard celebrated the daring of the mother, protected by the gloves worn by young people who face government forces, already known at the 2014 and 2017 protests. The picture also shows how Anais, who works as a director, wears an anti-gas mask.

It was precisely during the 2017 protests that a colleague of the same National Guard launched
a tear bomb directly on the face of Carlos, then 19 years old. This serious trauma resulted in a loss of vision in one of his eyes.

Two days after this battle, Anais and Carlos said
THE NATION his story at the Chacao emergency room, near the stage. The young man has come to extract several pellets that he has distributed through his head, neck and arms. "That day, a friend told us about the protests and my son and I ran to the Altamira distributor, where Leopoldo López, Juan Guaidó and the guards were, and there were still very few people, about 50 people. Leopoldo was in the street, that something good was going on, "recalls the woman while her son was being treated by the medical staff.

"More people came in. We blessed the guards, we thank them, we are very grateful to them, until they start firing at us and our guards react." The madness begins and we Let's go back to Altamira, always in pursuit of my son, "said the Caraqueña, who were also brutally repressed by the police the following day during the May Day demonstrations.

"It was huge, we never heard so many shots, we even saw a lot of bullets, the Bolivarian National Police (GNP) ambushed us and we ran to seek refuge at La Floresta, we We were refugees in the houses, six other people came in. The cops came and knelt on the ground, they put a shotgun on my head, they wanted to rob us, I could hide my bag, the others were deprived of cell phones, butt in the head with the pellets, "she said sadly, convinced that Chavismo was planning to install his" terrorist policy ".

At present, the crackdown after 30-A has already caused five deaths, more than 300 injuries and over 300 detainees. The extreme violence reminded the mother and her son of what happened on May 10, 2017, when other guards ambushed those who protested against the Bolivarian government. Carlos is then protected with swimmer goggles, which saved him from a major tragedy. The tear gas hit him at the eye and sank him, leaving him only one millimeter of brain. "They saved him, but he can not see," his mother said.

Salud Chacao's doctor prescribed antibiotics so that the pellets would not be infected and soon a friend of the family provided them because pharmacies are not available.

In 2017, the amount of operation to save the eye of Carlos rose to millions of dollars at the time, "a lot of money that we do not have. not planes ". "We started to reunite them with family, friends, my bosses, but when we arrived at the clinic, we were surprised: all the expenses were paid, from the surgeons to the woman who cleaned the room. They refused to charge us, they said, "Anais, your son is a hero," he recalls.