Published at: 29/01/2025 09:00 PM

(VEA Journal, 22-05-2004)

• On January 23, 1966, during the Government of Raúl Leoni, Iván Daza and Alberto Paramaconi Laya were arrested and shot, at the hands of armed AD gangs and “hunting” military personnel, in the vicinity of Sanare, edo. Lara.
• The governor of Edo. Lara, Miguel Ángel Romero Antoni, personally led the hunt for peasants and “cimarrones”, with the support of their gangs, agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL) and officials of the Armed Forces Intelligence Service (SIFA).
• The special apparatus of government repression had the on-site advice of instructors from the CIA and the Pentagon.
• On January 23, 1966, Daza and Laya were on their way from Las Adjuntas via Sanare to do political work when they were arrested, tortured and shot.
• Among the executioners accused of killing them were generals Heraclio Anzola and Camilo Vethencourt.

Context:

• As part of the Long and Final Extermination Operation, the newspaper El Impulse de Barquisimeto announced the training courses offered by the U.S. government to military personnel, armed bands and police officers stationed at the headquarters of the Theater of Operations No. 3 in El Tocuyo.
• The same newspaper El Impulse, in a previous edition of 24-02-65, announced: “A military convoy of 800 men left for the guerrilla zone of the state. This is the Long and Definitive Operation.
• “El Impulse”, on April 4, 1966, reported that Iván Daza's father was arrested by order of the governor, when he requested that the body of his son be handed over, whom he learned had been tortured and shot three months earlier.
• By that date, all the mountains where Iván Daza commanded were surrounded on all sides by so-called “hunters”, whose officers had been trained by the Rangers at the School of the Americas.
• The purpose was to go into the mountains “combing” them, in order to exterminate everything that moved, we had to shoot first and find out later.
• The result of these raids was the devastation of rural hamlets and villages, located within the radius of action of the Theater of Operations No. 3 (T.O. No. 3), to cut off shelter and sources of supply between guerrilla groups and peasants.
• Previously, El Nacional, in its edition of August 9, 1965, denounced “The El Guache Massacre”, which also occurred in Sanare, Sabana Redonda hamlet, in which four peasants were shot by army “hunters”. The victims were: Juan Antonio Devides, Bernardo Soto, Juan Soto and Cipriano Yépez.
• With regard to the arrests, torture and shooting of peasants, it was announced that U.S. military personnel directed these massacres.
• Thousands of peasant families were forced to abandon their homes and conucos. As displaced victims, they fled to other states, to avoid being the object of the policy of shootings and disappearances inaugurated by Raúl Leoni.

Mazo News Team