Rory Carroll

Almost a pensioner now, he was in town for a brief visit to catch up with old buddies and maybe see some sights, just like any other tourist from the United States. Over breakfast at his hotel his hosts filled him in on their news, which was not especially good, and afterwards he strolled through the war monument at Plaza de la Paz.

To reach the heart of Venezuela’s agrarian revolution you drive west of Caracas towards the Andes, deep into tropical countryside where it is always hot, and stop at the end of a dirt track where a sign reads Mixta Aracal. As far as the eye can see rolls a patchwork of fields, maize, bananas, black beans, tomatoes, dotted with some stooping figures in red T-shirts, and some tractors from China and Iran.

Rising up from Port Elizabeth, the monument will stand 30-storeys tall, facing the sea and dwarfing the Statue of Liberty, to give the world a new carved colossus — that of former president Nelson Mandela.

They were cleaning the blood off Via Canalone on Monday in front of a silent crowd. Detectives collected shell casings and broken glass and a police photographer took close-ups of chips in the asphalt. It was a question of angles, said an investigator.