Venezuela opposition Leader Leopoldo Lopez emerged from days of hiding and turned himself over to authorities who had earlier issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the deaths of four people in violent confrontations last week. 

Lopez, the US-educated scion of an aristocratic family, stood on a statue of Latin American independence hero Jose Marti and used a megaphone to speak to his supporters before hopping into the police vehicle.  His Popular Will party says he was expected to appear before a civilian judge Wednesday on charges that include homicide and inciting violence for last week’s deaths. 

His white-shirted followers then marched in Caracas.  But their numbers are far smaller than in mass movements in places such as Brazil, Ukraine, and the Middle East; and there’s little sign yet of Venezuelans joining en masse in the hundreds of thousands seen on the streets a decade ago.  Those earlier crowds backed Hugo Chavez, the predecessor of President Nicolas Maduro, and there’s no sign the military will swing back to the right.

“The armed forces will always be on the side of justice and development of the fatherland,” Defense Minister Carmen Melendez said.  “Every act of violence takes us back to intolerance.”

Thousands of oil workers and Maduro supporters, clad in the red of the ruling Socialist Party, held their own massive demonstration in the capital’s main square, which at times took on a party atmosphere.

“Comrade President Nicolas Maduro can count on the working class,” said oil union leader Wills Rangel.

“The only treatment to the infection that fascism is, here and in the world, is justice,” President Maduro said, adding that, “I called for dialogue with them, and they replied with violence” – referring to a series of meetings he held with business and opposition leaders in December and January.

“If the world wants to see dialogue, here it is, with the masses, with the youth, with women, not with elites,” he said.