Cantaura massacre: Crime executed for puntofixism against 23 young people who were demanding social justice

On October 4, 1982, during the Fourth Republic, one of the most shocking massacres in Venezuelan history was committed, during the administration of Luis Herrera Campins, which ended the lives of 23 young men and women between 16 and 30 years old. This meant the dismantling of the last guerrilla front in the East and was used, together with those of El Amparo and Yumare, as a method of social coercion to keep at bay and exterminate the revolutionary movement.

In the Cantaura Massacre, 17 250-pound bombs were used, which were thrown at the camp, while 1,500 army personnel and the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (Disip) surrounded the area with orders to annihilate members of the Américo Silva Front. According to the testimony of some survivors, the operation was carried out by Henry López Sisco himself, who was also the material author of the Yumare Massacre.

Although the Campins government described the massacre as an “armed encounter”, the exhumations of the bodies proved quite the opposite, since most of the executed victims showed signs of torture and gunshots to the skull on their bodies. That is why the Federation of Human Rights denounced at that time the strange circumstances in which the members of the front died and requested an investigation from the now extinct National Congress and the Attorney General's Office, but despite the effort to get an answer, all the information was kept on file.

However, thanks to the Bolivarian Revolution in 2009, 27 years after the Cantaura Massacre, the Public Prosecutor's Office resumed the case and between 2007-2008 18 bodies had already been exhumed in Caracas, Barcelona, Anaco, Cumaná, La Guaira and Puerto Cabello.

Mazo News Team