Government forces quickly took control of the town and over two days pounded the remaining rebels, that had taken cover in the Solano Castle, into submission. Rondon shot the government soldier crawling his way up Navy chaplain Luis Padilla’s robe as Padilla looks in the direction of the rebel sniper fire. The truth is, I don’t know how I took those pictures, lying on the ground. The photographer Hector Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture: “I found myself in solid lead for forty-five minutes … I was flattened against the wall while bullets were flying when the priest appeared. Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clinging to the priest’s cassock, as bullets chewed up the concrete around them.
Navy chaplain Luis Padilla gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela.
