Published at: 25/02/2026 09:00 PM

(Latest News and El Nacional, February 21 and 23, 1989)

• In the midst of a wave of student protests, caused by the announcement of the neoliberal package, Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP) ordered, under the application of strict measures of police repression, the first shipment of eight tons of gold from the vaults of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) to the vaults of the Bank of England.
• Victims of this advance towards the disaster, Metropolitan Police (PM) agents claimed the lives of a student and a worker from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) who were protesting the looting of Venezuelan gold: Carlos Yépez Pérez and Dennis Villasana Montaño.
• The deployment of excessive use of force and police brutality, which blinded the existence of Yépez and Villasana, was the highlight of the massacre, which a few days later was coming and marked the beginning of the end of the Fourth Republic.
• However, indifferent to the student protests, ignoring the alarms set and deaf to the serious warnings given to him by the most lucid conscience in Venezuela in this regard, Carlos Andrés Pérez imposed the IMF's measures with blood and fire, regardless of the high cost in innocent lives, whose number rose to more than 3,000 people killed by state security forces.
• As if nothing had happened, the BCV would then send an additional 23 tons of gold bullion to London and other international markets, as part of shock policies and macroeconomic adjustments, following the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recipe book.
• On that occasion, the president of the BCV and Great Guru of the neoliberal economy, Pedro Tinoco, anticipated that part of that gold would be sold to obtain 100 million dollars.
• Under this neoliberal scheme, the Democratic Action (AD) and Copei governments handed over 31 tons of gold from our international reserves to the Bank of England as collateral for the Leo loans with which the world bank ended up strangling the Venezuelan economy.
• Carlos Yépez worked as a janitor in the laboratory of the Institute of Medicine and was a member of the UCV athletics team.
• Dennis Villasana Montaño was, at the time of his death, the best student at the UCV School of Electrical Engineering.

Mazo News Team