PETARE, Venezuela (AP) — The two students venture into one of Latin America’s biggest slums for the first time, feeling scared and somewhat awkward. Their mission: to broaden support for their anti-government protest movement in the low-income barrios whose working poor the late President Hugo Chavez championed.

“Our families didn’t want us to come up here,” says Fernando Viscuna, a 21-year-old international commerce major at the Instituto Universitario de Nuevas Profesiones. “But if you want a better country, it’s got to be done.”