Published at: 24/01/2024 09:00 PM

• On January 23, 1966, during the second year of Raúl Leoni's administration, Iván Daza and Alberto Paramaconi Laya were arrested and shot, at the hands of armed AD gangs, in the vicinity of El Tocuyo, Lara state.
• The armed bands of AD, with the support of the government, Digepol and SIFA, were striving to detect and prosecute especially important youth cadres of the Communist Party of Venezuela, whom Rómulo Betancourt had declared war since 1945.
• These, as the armed wing of the government, had the permanent advice of the CIA. To this transnational organized crime agency, they had to report lists and photos of the left-wing leaders who executed and disappeared.
• On that fateful January 23, 1966, Iván and Paramaconi were arrested by La Calavera, near the hamlet of Las Adjuntas, Morán, Lara, where they were going to do political work when they were arrested and shot.
• Among the executioners accused of murdering them are generals Heraclio Anzola and Camilo Vethencourt.
• The newspaper El Impulse de Barquisimeto, dated April 4, 1966, reported that Iván Daza's father was arrested by order of the governor of the state of Lara for requesting that his son's body be handed over to him.
• The same newspaper, in a previous edition, published on 24-02-65: “A military convoy of 800 men left for the guerrilla zone of the state. This is the Long and Definitive Operation.”
• The mountains where Iván Daza operated were surrounded, on all sides, by members of the so-called “hunters”, whose officers were trained by the Rangers at the School of the Americas.
• The purpose was to penetrate the mountains by “combing” them in order to exterminate everything that moved.
• The result of these raids was the massacre of urban populated centers and rural villages, located within the radius of action of the Theaters of Operations, to avoid contact, support and supply between armed groups and the peasantry.
• In addition to the arrests, torture and shooting of those arrested by hunters. In these cases, the presence of U.S. military personnel acting directly was known.
• Thousands of peasant families abandoned their properties and conucos. As displaced victims, they migrated to other states of the country to avoid being massacred by the extermination policies applied by the government of Raúl Leoni.

Mazo News Team