Published at: 06/03/2024 09:00 PM

• On the night of March 2, 1962, at 7:30pm, the young regional leader of the PCV, Aquiles Bellorín Morgado, was assassinated, 29 years old.
• He was the victim of three bullets fired by agents of the armed gangs of AD, from a black car with AF-1649 plates waiting for him to be ambushed.
• In the vehicle, of the same make and model used by the patrols of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), there were six people armed with pistols and machine guns.
• After shopping for groceries at a bakery near his house, Bellorín Morgado was walking with his friend Morella López, when he was shot four times from the vehicle.
• The first shot hit his leg, the second missed the target, the third hit the back and the last accurate shot hit him in the head.
• The perpetrators fled the crime scene, located in the Plaza de Lídice in La Pastora.
• Morella López was left alone with the body of her friend lying on the sidewalk until she managed to transport him in a taxi to the Salas Emergency Post, where he died.
• Achilles was born in Lídice, on May 12, 1933. He was a member of the Regional Committee of the PCV of La Pastora and stood out as a union leader at the Jesús Yerena Psychiatric Hospital.
• On October 27, 2011, during the Bolivarian Government of Commander Hugo Chávez, the Center for Integral Diagnosis of La Pastora was inaugurated: CDI Aquiles Bellorín, thus honoring the memory of the beloved leader of the community where his struggles were staged.

Context:

• Three years before this murder, Romulo Betancourt had ordered police forces to shoot at thousands of construction workers and unemployed workers protesting in Plaza La Concordia, leaving 4 dead and 19 injured.
• On February 13, 1962, at a rally held in El Silencio, to celebrate the third anniversary of his government, he ratified the macabre instruction ordering the troops to “shoot first and find out later”.
• This death sentence, handed down against thousands of Venezuelans, was given to the police at a time when they had already, for no reason, fired several times at peaceful demonstrations by unarmed workers and students.
• On the same day that Aquiles Bellorín was shot down, the young student Jacinto Ambrosio Arnassus was also murdered by Digepol, in the Prado de María sector.
• On that same date, Iván Barreto and Miguelito Torres were shot in the mountains of El Charal, edo. Lara, by members of the Piar Battalion.
• Behind this repressive wave, Betancourt also gave the order to allow the looting and indebtedness of the country at the hands of foreign transnationals: Standard Oil, owned by Rockefeller, had obtained exorbitant net profits in Venezuela of 22442 million bolivars (5,219 million U$D). Betancourt did not dare to raise taxes on such astronomical dividends.
• During this five-year period 1959-1964, more than half of all Standard Oil's global profits came from Venezuelan oil wells.

Mazo News Team