Published at: 18/12/2024 09:00 PM

(ALMARGEN and EL NACIONAL, December 3, 1972)

• Francisco Alberto Caricote Agreda and Plinio Trián Rodríguez Acosta, 31 and 37 years old respectively, were, somewhere in Caracas, arrested by the DISIP and were later shot and stitched in a ditch on January 23, near Plaza Cristo Rey.
• The then head of the DISIP, Remberto Uzcátegui, prepared a war report, where the two young men were accused of being robbers of farms.
• The more detailed and arrogant the statements made by Uzcátegui, the less credible they were made, because it was a smokescreen to accelerate the hunt for persecuted politicians belonging to the revolutionary organization Punto Cero.
• The assassination of Francisco Alberto and Plinio Trián was just the beginning of a new round of police forces against students and political activists decreed by the Government of Rafael Caldera I, who later, in 1973, would claim the lives of:
• Honorio Navarro, Commander Colina, was assassinated on March 14, 1973 during an ambush carried out by SIFA agents Carlos Núñez Tenorio and Ramón Vargas, at km 27 of the Pan-American Highway, Los Teques—Tejerías.
• Argelio José Reina, on February 25, 1973, was found dead in an alleged traffic accident, near Maturín, Monagas state. His relatives received his body without eyes, without nails and with traces of torture. His mother demanded the services of a forensic doctor in Maracay, Aragua state, but in the face of police refusal, they transferred the body to Caracas, where it was determined that he had been tortured before dying.
• Herberto Alí Reyes Quiñones, on Tuesday, February 6, 1973, was machine-gunned and disappeared. He was a chemistry student and an employee of the IVIC.
• Ramón Antonio Colón was a PTJ official assassinated on March 20, 1973 by a group of army hunters, belonging to the Cocollar Theater of Operations (TO), in Aragua de Barcelona, Monagas.
• Aureliano Trocelt Calma, on April 20, 1973, was arrested by three DISIP agents in the town of Oonto, edo. Anzoategui. From that location, he was taken to Hato Montañita, where he was hung from a beam, head down, feet and hands tied, butchered and beaten to death. To cover up the crime, the then governor Francisco Arreaza, declared that this peasant, in his sixties, had escaped from an anti-guerrilla camp and that he did not know his whereabouts.
• Rafael Antonio Parra, on May 1, 1973, was shot down while participating in the Workers' Day demonstrations, at the Cerro del Observatorio on January 23, in Caracas.
• Álvaro José Vitoria Gutiérrez, a 16-year-old high school student, was machine-gunned in the city of Valera, Trujillo state, on May 9, 1973, when he was demonstrating in favor of his fellow imprisoned students.
• Margarita Oviedo was a young university student, who was imprisoned in the Los Teques Prison for her participation in political activities. She had recently been released from prison when she was kidnapped and disappeared on April 24, 1973 by SIFA troops.
• Esladia Vásquez was 17 years old, when in the early morning of July 28, 1973, several police officers raided her house in San Carlos, Cojedes state, and machine-gunned her at gunpoint.

Mazo News Team