(Repeats story first published on May 19 for wider distribution, no change to headline or text)
By Andrew Cawthorne
LOS TEQUES, Venezuela, May 19 (Reuters) - Like many Portuguese immigrants to Venezuela after World War Two, Manuel Fernandes spent a lifetime building a small business: his bread and cake shop in a highland town.
It took just one night for it to fall apart.
The first he knew of the destruction of his beloved "Bread Mansion" store on a main avenue of Los Teques was when looters triggered the alarm, resulting in a warning call to his cellphone at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
Fernandes was stuck at home due to barricades and protests that have become common in seven weeks of anti-government unrest in Venezuela. So he was forced to watch the disaster unfold via live security camera images.
"There were hundreds of people. They smashed the glass counters, the fridges. They took everything - ham, cheese, milk, cornflakes, equipment," the 65-year-old said, as workmen secured the shop on Friday with thick metal plates.
"I've dedicated everything to this. My family depends on it," said the distraught businessman, on a street where most neighboring stores were also ransacked in a frenzy of looting in Los Teques this week.
Unrest and protests against President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government since early April have caused at least 46 deaths plus hundreds of injuries and arrests.
They have also sparked widespread nighttime looting.
When a mob smashed its way into a bakery in El Valle, a working class neighborhood of Caracas, last month, 11 people died, eight of them electrocuted and three shot.
This week, Maduro's government sent 2,000 troops to western Tachira state, where scores of businesses have been emptied.
In Los Teques, an hour's drive into hills outside Caracas, locals spoke of up to half a dozen more deaths in looting and clashes this week between security forces and young protesters from a self-styled 'Resistance' movement.
There has been no official confirmation of those deaths.
Reuters journalists visiting the town on Friday had to negotiate permission from masked youths manning roadblocks and turning back traffic at the main entrances.
Mostly students, the young men said they had put academic work on hold and were determined to stay in the street until Maduro allowed a general election, the main demand of Venezuela's opposition in the current political crisis.
'NOTHING TO LOSE'
"We are from humble families. We have nothing to lose. I don't even have enough for a bus fare or food. That tyrant Maduro has wrecked everything," said Alfredo, 28, who stopped studying to man barricades and says he runs a unit of 23 "resistance" members.