Published at: 13/03/2024 09:00 PM

• On March 31, 1961, Julián Torres, 37, a union leader and member of the PCV, was assassinated by agents of the Barquisimeto Municipal Police and members of the armed gangs of AD.
• Previously, he was subjected to all kinds of harassment and torture. The agents strafed him and left his body on a street next to Plaza Bolívar in that city.
• Nothing better than the words that Argimiro Gabaldón said during the funeral of the union martyr to describe the singular cruelty with which he was murdered:

“Come on, gentlemen, no one has died here, as soon as we are watching Julián Torres, a man of the people, a discontent, one of those who are murdered every day because they think, because they don't accept the mendrugo for good reason, because it burns the paleness of the boys and hurts their souls with misery.

Come on in Gentlemen, no one has died here as soon as we are watching Julián Torres, last night they killed him, all the blows in front of him, three shotgun shots from point-blank range from face to foot.

Who knows how many backlashes, and on the ground the cowards, after dying on top of the pool of blood, kicked him up.

They doubted his death and were vicious because they know that his cause is not killed because it grows with the shed blood and becomes strong with the breath that escapes...”

• Julián Torres left a widow and 14 children, who were solemnly poor, because of the absence of the only breadwinner in that family. A year after his death, CLARÍN reported that his perpetrators were traveling freely through Barquisimeto and the entire region, as if nothing had happened.
• For 40 years (1959-1998) this crime was protected by all the governments of the Fourth Republic. A period in which justice was conspicuously absent for thousands like him.

Mazo News Team