At 2:05 on 3/1, amidst rumbling explosions that shattered the quiet night in Venezuela's capital, AP photojournalist Matias Delacroix was on the streets, capturing the first images of a US military operation.
Among these was an image of 21-year-old Mariana Camargo, wearing a white shirt and jeans, sprinting down the street, her face panicked, with a group of friends behind her.
"A woman driving a large truck sped towards us, slammed on the brakes, and yelled, 'What are you children doing here? Go home immediately, they're bombing!'," Camargo recalled. "Our group had about 9 people, and everyone urged each other, 'Run!'. We ran as fast as we could, taking this route."
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Mariana Camargo runs from the area of explosions on a street in Caracas, Venezuela, on 3/1. *Photo: AP* |
She briefly saw Delacroix standing by the road as he took the photo. The emotion on Camargo's face captivated Delacroix, who just minutes before had been woken by the roar of the US airstrike operation, quickly grabbed his camera and rushed into the street towards the sound of the explosions.
On that very street, under the roar of military aircraft overhead, two individuals crossed paths: one fleeing the sound of bombs, the other rushing straight into danger.
"What struck me was the way she ran, phone in hand, clearly in a state of panic," Delacroix told Camargo when they reviewed the photos together. "I have photos of her friend running behind her, but between the two shots, hers most clearly conveyed the emotion of the situation at the time."
As Camargo's image began to appear widely on the front pages and websites of the world's largest news agencies, depicting a moment that captured the tension across the hemisphere, friends recognized her and flooded their WhatsApp group with messages.
"Am I seeing this right, is that Nana???" a friend asked, posting the photo. Nana is Mariana's nickname.
"It really is Nana!" another friend replied.
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Mariana poses for a photo on 6/1 at the spot where she fled in the early morning of 3/1 in the Altamira neighborhood, eastern Caracas. *Photo: AP* |
The photo became a running joke among her friends, even turning into a meme with the caption "The Americans are coming," making Camargo laugh whenever she scrolled through messages.
"Now I laugh, and I laughed when I first saw the photo. My mother and friends did too. They made all sorts of stickers and memes," she said. "But when I rewatch videos of what happened that day, of the explosions, and hear those sounds again, I still feel scared."
By Hong Hanh (*Based on AFP*)
