Published at: 19/06/2024 09:00 PM

(Clarín, November 17, 1961)

• Alberto Rudas Mezones, 16, who was studying high school at the Juan Vicente González Night School, was machine-gunned down by police officers**** on November 15, 1961.
• The next day, a commission from the General Directorate of Police (Digepol) broke into the wake and kidnapped his coffin, which remained missing for 51 years.
• The agents desecrated the body of Rudas Mezones to prevent acts of protest, so they physically and morally harassed his relatives present during the police outrage.
• The remains of Comrade Tico, as they called him, were hidden in a mass grave in the General Cemetery of the South, where he remained hidden until his recognition and exhumation on June 13, 2013 (11 years ago).
• That day in 1961, Rudas Mezones participated in a popular rally in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution because of the rupture of diplomatic relations decreed by Rómulo Betancourt. In the vicinity of Plaza O'Leary, he was cornered and eventually killed by digepoles between the corners of Puerto Escondido and Puente Nuevo.
• After 51 years, his remains were exhumed and later a well-deserved tribute was paid to him as a young martyr, fallen by the excesses of Representative Democracy.
• Comrade Tico was a youth leader of the Communist Party of Venezuela who stood out for his proactive and disciplined nature.
• He was born on January 14, 1945 in Rio Chico, Edo. Miranda, son of Octaviano Rudas and Carmen Benita Mezones de Rudas.

The Context:

• Just 15 days after the murder of Livia Gourverneur, the Betancourt government claimed another innocent victim in the life of Alberto Rudas Mezones.
• At the time of his execution, the Betancourt government preached in four voices its doctrine that it called “The New Democratic Era”. It had as one of its slogans: “The streets do not belong to the people but to the police”. Another was: “Without the victim's body, there is no crime or popular anger.” And the famous one: “Shoot first and find out later”.
• One of the many episodes of abuse was the break-in of the home of the Rudas Mezones family to steal the “body of the crime”, and thus “avoid street disorder”.
• To neutralize the indignation over the death of Comrade Tico and stop the marches called for the rupture of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the government implemented Operation Assault, leaving 8 dead in Caracas, 2 in Barquisimeto and hundreds injured throughout the country.
• The Batister mafias brought by the government that killed Livia Gouverneur, whose burial paralyzed Caracas, were operating openly in Caracas.
• On January 23, 19-year-old Livia Rosa Gutierrez, a pregnant mother of two children, was shot to death during the above-mentioned police operation.
• Betancourt created a special apparatus to sabotage anti-government demonstrations and hunt down political leaders. This terror machine was made up of:
  • The General Directorate of Police (Digepol).
  • Mercenary anti-Castro Cuban groups with police credentials, made up of hundreds of baptister terrorists who were operating in Caracas from seven farms and several hotels, with all expenses paid on account of the State security provisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
  • The Armed Forces Intelligence Service (SIFA).
  • The Rural Armed Bands of Democratic Action.
  • The Urban Armed Bands of Democratic Action.
  • The para-police groups known as “Los Rurales” and “Los Cobras Negras”, who supported or led police actions against students, workers, peasants, union leaders and popular demonstrations.
  • For its part, the Copei Party also provided its paramilitary shock brigades in several episodes within the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), the University of the Andes (ULA) and the University of Zulia (LUZ). Likewise, its militants participated in the lynching of students in San Cristóbal, edo. Tachira. Just to mention a few.
  • In addition, that month of June 1961, SEARS Roebuck de Venezuela, owned by General Robert Elington Wood, a Nazi party financier in the United States (North American League), in coordination with Nelson Rockefeller's conglomerate of companies, and British intelligence services, orchestrated a campaign to economically blow up the newspaper El Nacional, through an advertising boycott aimed at silencing its editorial line and achieving the dismissal of its director Miguel Otero Silva.
  • Betancourt's list of politically murdered and persecuted amounted to 900 dead and 1,500 political prisoners, according to lawyer and journalist José Vicente Rangel.

Mazo News Team