Published at: 03/04/2024 09:00 PM

• On Thursday, April 1, 1965, at the time of the governmental coalition called “Broad Base” (AD+Copei+URD), and in the midst of a peaceful rally called to demonstrate against the repressive measures of the government of Raúl Leoni, the social communicator (UCV) and student of the 4th year of law (UCV), Miguel Ángel Guerra Leidenz (26 years old), was assassinated.
• It was 5:00pm, when more than 8,000 people and progressive anti-anchabase fronts tried to mobilize from Plaza La Concordia to El Silencio, when they were brutally repressed by agents of Digepol and the Municipal Police.
• Camera in hand, Guerra Leidenz was covering the popular demonstration for the weekly Justicia, of which he was director. That's when a police officer confiscated it and then murdered him.
• The Municipal Police and Digepol broke up the demonstration by force of tear gas bombs and shots at the march, resulting in one murder and more than 22 injured.
• On the day of the burial, pickets from the Municipal Police and Digepol tried to prevent his body from being veiled in the UCV. However, the firm attitude of more than 3,000 people who accompanied the coffin managed to break the police siege and enter the university campus to pay homage to him in the Plaza del Rectorado.
• Along the way, 55 students were arrested and 15 others were injured, including Carmelina Rodé, a BCV worker, who was shot several times by a Digepol.
• In addition to Carmelina, leaders Rafael Serfaty, Antonio Lauro (musician and composer), Manuel Alfredo Rodríguez of the Revolutionary Party for Nationalist Integration (PRIN), José Vicente Rangel (PRIN), José Herrera Oropeza of Popular Nationalist Vanguard (VPN), Raúl Ramos Jiménez (PRIN), Germán Borregales, José Manzo González (PRIN), Héctor Mujica (PCV), Efrén Suzzarini (PCV), and former President of the Republic Wolfgang Larrazabal, were also injured.
• Senator and Vice Admiral, Wolfgang Larrazbal, stated: “The Leoni government is responsible for this massacre... The Broadbase government is responsible for the savage attitude taken against a peaceful and People's demonstration where the police did not even respect the jurisdiction of the attacked parliamentarians... Could it be that the Broadbase wants the People and the parties that oppose it to arm themselves to respond to it?”

Context:

Raúl Leoni, to cover up the dozens of deaths that occurred during the fraudulent electoral elections that led him to Miraflores, created a broad-based government, a new variant of the Punto Fijo Pact. During this Broadbase alliance, the following occurred:

• The bombing of rural areas in the mountains of Lara, Portuguesa and Falcón, resulting in hundreds of people being shot and peasant families displaced from their cultivated areas.
• The illegal landing in Maiquetía of several shipments of machine guns, rifles, pistols and ammunition destined for armed gangs in AD.
• The vicious practice of the “vote-killing act” had been implemented and to reduce the popular force that flooded the streets and rejected the results, police forces repressed, raided homes and arrested thousands of detainees without a prior court order; for this reason, they overwhelmed, with more than 1,500 political prisoners, the prisons and concentration camps recently inaugurated by Rómulo Betancourt.
• To silence these complaints, the Gag Law was enacted, under which the newspapers of Cadena Capriles were closed and the printing presses of El Nacional, Clarín, La Hora and La Esfera were robbed.
• On April 9, Digepol raided without a warrant the building where the newspapers operated: El Mundo, La Esfera and Última Noticias; it searched all the offices and arrested Miguel Ángel Capriles, Eloy Porras and Víctor Simone. All identified by the government as engaged in conspiratorial acts. The Hour, The Republic and The Truth were also closed. In the same way, El Regional de Valencia disappeared.

Mazo News Team