During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, the US Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators.

Caracas, officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas. Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern part of the country, within the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2,200-meter-high (7,200-foot) mountain range, Cerro El Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains. The Metropolitan Region of Caracas has an estimated population of almost 5 million inhabitants.

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he represented California in both houses of the United States Congress before serving as the 36th vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

On May 13, 1958, US vice president Richard Nixon's motorcade was attacked by a mob in Caracas, Venezuela, during Nixon's goodwill tour of South America. The event was described at the time as the "most violent attack ever perpetrated on a high American official while on foreign soil." Close to being killed while a couple of his aides were injured in the melee, Nixon ended up unharmed and his entourage managed to reach the U.S. embassy. The visit took place only months after the overthrow in January of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who in 1954 had been awarded the Legion of Merit and was later granted asylum by the United States, and the incident was allegedly orchestrated by the Communist Party of Venezuela. U.S. Navy Admiral Arleigh Burke mobilized fleet and Marine units to the region, compelling the Venezuelan government to provide full protection to Nixon for the remainder of the trip.