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Anderson, 38, was assassinated in Urbanización Los Chaguaramos in Caracas, Venezuela, while driving home from the college where he was taking post-graduate classes. He was killed when a C-4 plastic explosive device placed on the frame under the driver's seat on his Toyota SUV was detonated, apparently by remote control. Witnesses say they heard two loud explosions and saw the vehicle, already in flames, crash against the front of a nearby building. Anderson graduated in law from Central University of Venezuela in 1995, specializing later in criminology and environmental law. He worked as a lawyer for several firms, and was a general tax inspector between 1993 and 2000. He was the first official to bring a case for environmental offenses in Caracas. According to El Nacional, Anderson described himself as a radical leftist. Whatever his politics may have been, he was perceived by many as one of the brightest and best of the Attorney-General's team of prosecutors. His murder shocked Venezuelan opinion across the political spectrum.
The contextFollowing the failure of the anti-Chávez coup in April 2002, leaders of the political movements opposed to President Chávez turned to economic means to achieve their political goals. For two months after December 2002 they organized effective, but ultimately failed, work stoppages performed by the staff of the Venezuelan State oil company PdVSA and other businesses. This strike - which Chávez supporters often refer to as a lock-out - caused acute economic problems for the Chávez administration, and deepened the deeply conflictive political situation resulting from the April coup. The Chávez government managed to circumvent their opponents' resort to economic measures. Undeterred, opposition politicians then focused on constitutional efforts to seek the ouster of President Chávez, taking advantage of the 1998 Constitution's provision of a recall mechanism. Widespread international attention focused on the run-up to this recall vote which took place in August 2004. President Chávez won the vote by a substantial majority with 59% of the total. Throughout 2004 a few extremists in the Venezuelan opposition both inside and outside the country called for the use of violence to overthrow the government. In May 2004 Venezuelan security forces caught a group of over one hundred Colombians dressed in military uniforms on a bus in the El Hatillo county of Caracas. They had been based at a farm belonging to Roberto Alonso, a Cuban based in Miami. Allegedly, the group had been training to carry out attacks on government targets. On July 25th 2004, from his exile in Miami, disgraced former President Carlos Andrés Pérez declared "I am working to overthrow Chávez. Violence will allow us to take him out. Chávez must die like a dog." to the Venezuelan daily "El Nacional". Similarly, on October 25th2004, famous Venezuelan TV actor Orlando Urdaneta called on Miami television for the assassination of President Chávez.
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