VENEZUELAN socialists marched for peace yesterday after opposition violence left three dead and late president Hugo Chavez’s childhood home torched.

Communities Minister Aristobulo Isturiz, a senior United Socialist Party (PSUV) member, called for a “great mobilisation for peace, for life” in the capital Caracas at the weekly party meeting on Monday.

On his Sundays with Maduro TV programme, President Nicolas Maduro urged Venezuelans to join “the great march for peace, the great march for love” in opposition to recent violence surrounding US-backed bids to oust the regime.

The march was also in support of the government’s National Constituent Assembly initiative, a bid to find a way out of the crisis that the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) coalition has rejected.

The commission heading the process said that at least 600,000 citizens had been consulted so far, with 236 municipal councils and 22 of 23 state legislative councils debating it.

The Public Ministry ordered investigations after three men died during riots in the western city of Barinas during the latest Mud attempt to paralyse the country.

Alfredo Carrizales was found during a demonstration in the city’s Andres Eloy Blanco district with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was taken to the Luis Razetti Hospital but declared dead on arrival.

Elvis Adonis Montilla was found on the outskirts of the Palma de Oro district, also with a gunshot wound to the chest.

And 19-year-old Yorman Bervecia was shot dead at a protest in the Los Pozones area, where three others were injured.

The latest deaths brought the toll from nearly two months of rioting to 56, according to broadcaster Telesur’s count.

Local MP Pedro Luis Castillo said rioters in Barinas also torched several government buildings, including the regional office of the national Electoral Council, and Chavez’s childhood home.

US neoliberal business forum Council of the Americas vice-president Eric Farnsworth gloated: “It is pretty symbolic that the citizens are venting their frustrations on the author of the Bolivarian revolution.”

But Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said the expressions of hatred, fascism and intolerance were not typical of Venezuela and bore the “imperial label.”

In southern Bolivar state 51 public transport buses were torched at a depot, and the murky “Venezuela Resistance” was touting a call for a general strike on Monday on social media.