Published at: 13/05/2026 08:03 PM

(El Universal, June 7, 1967 and El Nacional, March 1, 1969)

• On May 11, 1967, the students Alejandro Tejero Cuenca and Eduardo Navarro Laurens were arrested and subsequently disappeared to this day.
• At the time of the police procedure, both were talking in front of the Broadway Cinema, in Chacaíto, and were later transferred to the anti-guerrilla camp or Theater of Operations No. 3, located in Yumare, edo. Yaracuy.
• When the agents of the Armed Forces Research Service (SIFA) were handcuffing them, a professor from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) named Raven passed by, who knew them as his students and attested to what had happened.
• The next morning, Mother's Day, María Teresa Cuenca de Tejero, being pregnant, went to the White Palace in front of Miraflores, where the SIFA cells operated, to ask about her son's whereabouts. The response she received was the same one received during the Fourth Republic (1958-1998) by many mothers: “There is no one here by that name”.
• He also visited the anti-guerrilla commandos of El Guapo and Yumare, obtaining the same answer as to Alejandro's whereabouts.
• On this pilgrimage to police headquarters and prisons, he also asked about one of his son's captors, Alexis Martínez “Tarzán”, a traitor and whistleblower of the SIFA.
• At that time he was President of the Republic, Raúl Leoni; the Minister of Internal Relations, Gonzalo Barrios; the Minister of Defense was General Florencio Gómez and the Attorney General of the Republic, Antonio José Lozada.
• Two years later, on July 14, 1969, María Teresa Cuenca de Tejero obtained an interview with the Minister of Internal Relations, Lorenzo Fernández, from Copey. She insisted, during the meeting, that her son's captor should be questioned to know the real version of what happened.
• Two days later, on July 16, 1969, Alexis Martínez “Tarzan” was drowned and his death was announced by the press as a “random death”. “Former SIFA agent drowned” (El Universal, pp. 2-22 of July 16, 1970).
• In August 2005, Agustín Arzola Castellanos published his book entitled “Forced Disappearance in Venezuela 1960-1969”, for which he interviewed María Teresa Cuenca de Tejero (16-3-1999, pp. 161-169), who stated that, because of the forced disappearance of her son, she took up the task of drawing up a list of the cases she could learn about that had the same fate in Venezuela. In total, they numbered more than 350, in the government of Raúl Leoni alone.

Mazo News Team