Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday ordered an expansion of civilian militia by nearly one million members as opposition leader Juan Guaido toured western Zulia state, which has been hard hit by electricity blackouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maduro, who calls Guaido a US puppet, said he aimed to\n raise the number of militia members to three million by year-end from \nwhat he said was more than 2 million currently. Maduro has encouraged \nthem to become involved in agricultural production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortages of \nfood and medicine have prompted more than three million Venezuelans to \nemigrate in recent years.Guaido, the leader of the opposition-controlled\n National Assembly who in January invoked Venezuela\u2019s constitution to \nassume an interim presidency, has called on the military to abandon \nMaduro amid a hyperinflationary economic collapse made worse by several \nnationwide blackouts in the past month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith your rifles on your\n shoulders, be ready to defend the fatherland and dig the furrow to \nplant the seeds to produce food for the community, for the people,\u201d \nMaduro, a socialist, told thousands of militia members gathered in the \ncapital Caracas, wearing khaki camouflaged uniforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So far, the \nmilitary top brass has remained loyal to Maduro despite Guaido\u2019s offer \nof amnesty to military members who switch sides. Hundreds of soldiers \nhave sought asylum in neighboring Colombia.While electricity has largely\n been restored in Caracas, Maduro\u2019s administration is rationing power to\n the rest of Venezuela.
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday ordered an expansion of civilian militia by nearly one million members as opposition leader Juan Guaido toured western Zulia state, which has been hard hit by electricity blackouts. Maduro, who calls Guaido a US puppet, said he aimed to raise the number of militia members to three million by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59111,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59109\/revisions\/59111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}