Published at: 12/11/2025 09:00 PM

(Clarín, November 11, 1963)

• On November 10, 1963, the 35-year-old doctor, Adalberto Barroeta Velasco, was shot to death by members of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), in the middle of the emergency room of the Antonio María Pineda Hospital in Barquisimeto.
• The act of blood occurred when a search of that healthcare center was carried out in search of an injured student leader who was being treated there.
• Dr. Adalberto Barroeta was at that time about to hand over the guard to another colleague, when he picked up the phone to tell the Hospital Director about the search that was taking place.
• Then a police officer, surnamed Rojas, who was asking for the injured student, without a word, drew his standard weapon and fired eight shots in the back in cold blood, while shouting: “Oh! How you make fun of us and don't listen to us.”
• Digepol, without giving importance to the doctor's words begging for his life, proceeded to kick him several times and shot him to the head with his regulation weapon.
• The unspeakable crime committed inside the first health center in Lara state shocked the entire region.
• In an attempt to silence the widespread repudiation of the assassination of Dr. Adalberto Barroeta, the governor declared a State of Siege. Barquisimeto and its surrounding towns were militarized and cordoned off.
• The victim was a native of Boconó, Trujillo state and was domiciled on 20th Avenue, between 12th and 12th Streets, house number 12-64 in Barquisimeto.

Context:

• We go back to the last quarter of 1963, when President Romulo Betancourt, flagrantly violating all constitutional norms, suspended guarantees to order the arrest of all members of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), who daily denounced the atrocities committed by that government. Commissioner Atahualpa Montes was the head of DIGEPOL.
• The injured student who was the subject of this police hunt was Víctor Barráez, general secretary of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in that federal entity and principal deputy to the Legislative Assembly.
• Barráez had been injured and taken to the Antonio María Pineda Hospital in Barquisimeto. There, he was kept isolated in a special ward.
• Víctor Barráez had served as secretary of the Clandestine Organization for Democratic Action (AD) in Lara, serving 2 years in prison in Ciudad Bolívar.
• He was one of the few young revolutionaries reluctant to go into golden exile in New York, Mexico or Havana, thus contravening the orders given by Rómulo Betancourt, who lived comfortably between the Big Apple and Mexico City.
• What followed with the Betancourt government was the most resounding kind of administrative immorality.
• While Betancourt proclaimed, in Campo de Carabobo, the entry into force of the Agrarian Reform Law, at the same time he gave express orders to the Democratic Action (AD) faction in Congress to sabotage it. For forty years, the Agrarian Reform was a dead letter, thus favoring the expansion of large rural capitalists.
• Under Betancourt, illiteracy increased, extreme poverty became entrenched in the belts of misery that border large cities, unemployment became massive, foreign debt tripled and the left-wing youth who reported it rose up to be persecuted and annihilated. There is no choice but to take up arms and climb the mountains.

Mazo News Team