Hello Steemit! As you might or might not know, the current situation in Venezuela is grim and dangerous politically and economically. I don't enjoy talking about any kind of politics as it seems that it brings the worst of us out, but as a Venezuelan myself it's also my duty to spread the word about what's happening here so it can reach people that don't know and to give an update outside of what the usual media says for the rest that already knows.

Important points:

There are 10 days left for the Constituent Assembly, that means, if the government decides to do those elections and "win" even with the reject they have (estimated to be around 75% of the population in the country) they will have control over everything, they can change our constitution to their will and create new laws that favours them which means an awful goodbye to any kind of democracy.

The protests have bee going on for 111 days (as of today July 20th), since then there has been 93 deaths, most of them protesters killed by the GNB (National Guard), some by the PNB (National Police) and some by the Colectivos (paramilitary groups armed by the government and drug trafficking through the years ).

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As I said, we are already at the 111 days of ongoing protests. Last sunday the opposition did a plebiscite to ask Venezuelans to answer “yes” or “no” to three questions: 1) Do you reject Maduro’s Constituent Assembly? 2) Do you demand that the National Bolivarian Armed Forces stand up to defend the constitution and support the National Assembly? 3) Do you want the National Assembly to renew all public institutions (by appointing new officials), and do you want elections to vote for a national unity government? The results of this were huge, the voting happened not only in Venezuela but any venezuelan abroad got to vote and show their disagreement with the current situation and threw in their grain of sand as a way to help everyone else in the country that are protesting. The results of that vote were 7,186,170 ( 6,492,381 votes were cast in Venezuela, while the remaining 693,789 were cast abroad).

After all this the opposition called an Hora Cero (zero hour) which means a national shutdown, today is the first one which is planned to last 24 hours, people blocking the streets with anything they can, not going to their jobs or just not doing anything "Normal" as a form of protest, basically not letting the "government" rule and creating pressure.

So far the day started with some areas in Caracas with the GNB spreading tear gas and some arrests have ocurred in other parts of the country.

Thats pretty much all I can write before heading out, this site: https://in-venezuela.com/ was made by a redditor from the Venezuelan sub-reddit he keeps the site up to date with news and pictures of the situation with sources if you want to keep track or check it to see how everything goes. Spread the word, let everyone know what's happening. It's appreciated.

Some photographs of the protests:

(Credits to the authors of every picture, none of these are mine)

From the April 19th march

https://steemitimages.com/DQmRokHRw1AfzM46UTeQ3VStTxDU9EmgDNqLj9Evgsd1nYf/Xfn0cJB.jpg

https://steemitimages.com/DQmRzNFb6DWgHWUDBzjkq6JD5bQ9WtTMQCNKNKh3zdJkZ8y/BJ1.PNG

(Taken by Rayner Peña: https://www.instagram.com/raynerpenar/)

![CB1.PNG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUZjDgeU7QQETn9bR8wUJFNSVfjiA6Ti3krG91iWDCEYV/CB1.PNG)

(Taken by Carlos Becerra: https://www.instagram.com/carlosbecerra00/)

![HS1.PNG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZUJyn7WWAZfAMXJdxpAj8JJAmWkDnQbKNDAFovan4xb2/HS1.PNG)

(Taken by Horacio Siciliano: https://www.instagram.com/hsiciliano/)