Published at: 02/07/2025 09:00 PM

Caracas, June 30, 1962.

Honourable President, Vice President and other members of the Chamber of Deputies, Legislative Palace, Caracas.

Distinguished colleagues:

On the first anniversary of the suspension of Constitutional Guarantees, a group of students from the Central University and I made a promise of extraordinary significance. We were in the General Cemetery of the South, in front of the grave of Alberto Rudas Mezzones - one of the many young people who died in the fight for freedom -, where we raised our hands and voices and swore: that the sacrifice of our martyrs would not be in vain. We swore to continue in his footsteps and to carry out his work, so that the shed blood would blossom into new life for the people.

And since then, we began to prepare for unwavering compliance. With this objective, to redeem the people by honoring the sacrifice of their martyrs, we have worked tirelessly, we have fought tirelessly. Now all I have left is, as a distinguished Latin American thinker said, “to exchange comfort for the stinky miasma of the camp, and the very soft pleasures of the family due to the misfortunes of war, and the warmth of home for the cold of the forest and the silt of the swamp, and life springs and security through nomadic and persecuted and hungry and wounded and sick and naked”.

That is why, fellow Deputies, I come before you to express the decision to leave Parliament - this enclosure that I set foot on by the will of the glorious people of Caracas, today oppressed and humiliated -, to climb the mountains and join the comrades who have already started the fight and with them continue the revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Venezuela, for the future well-being of the people, for the redemption of the humble.

I am aware of what this decision implies, of the risks, dangers and sacrifices that it entails; but no other can be the path of a true revolutionary**. Venezuela** - we all know and feel it - needs a profound change to recover its profile as a sovereign nation, recover the means of wealth now in the hands of foreign capital and turn them into an instrument of collective progress. We need a fundamental change to free the worker from misery, ignorance and exploitation; to make teaching, technology and science available to the people: so that the worker has permanent work and his children protection and protection. Venezuela, finally, needs a profound change so that the democratic rights of the people are not a dead letter in the text of laws; for freedom to exist and justice to prevail; so that the right to education, work, health and welfare are real rights for popular majorities and not privileges for few minorities. But none of this can be achieved in an underdeveloped and dependent country, such as ours, except through revolutionary action that ends with the conquest of Political Power by the people. Otherwise, both the instruments of power and the means of wealth, will remain in the hands of international monopolies and the country's oligarchic castes, with the consequent exploitation of workers, the proliferation of hunger and misery and the permanent abandonment of the people. This situation requires a structural transformation that changes the formalist system of democracy for the effective realization of it: that is, to wipe out everything rotten, everything unjust, everything unworthy in our society and in its place erect a new life of justice and freedom.

At this point in history, when a gale of renewal shakes the world, Venezuelans cannot remain clinging to a political life, without prospects for the future and which keeps the country submerged in economic underdevelopment, in chronic backwardness and the people, bent under the constant weight of misery and ignorance and hunger. Venezuela is a country privileged by nature. The bowels of their land are populated with wealth and mountains of money grow on the surface. But these riches and this money only end up in the pockets of the great sharks of national and international politics, while the people, who own them, are torn between the anguish of owning nothing and the pain of their precarious economic situation. This country, where three million barrels of oil are produced daily and more than twenty million tons of iron every year, where the foreign companies that exploit it report profits that exceed one and a half billion bolivars per year, is experiencing a terrible drama with hundreds of thousands of workers out of work, with hundreds of thousands of landless peasants, with hundreds of thousands of abandoned children without schools, with hundreds of thousands of illiterate people, with legions of indigent people digging through waste in search of food and hundreds of thousands of homeless men and women who crawl crammed into unsanitary ranches, without the slightest social, health or economic protection. This country, which is the richest in all of Latin America, shows before the distressed eyes of its people, a panorama of ills and hardships that delves into the very existence of great contradictions: while some have everything, comforts, luxuries, pleasures and prosperity; others have nothing, and nothing awaits them, except death in complete poverty. While some have millions of bolivars in banks and safes, others lack the most basic resources of human life. While some can send their children to the best schools, others have to resign themselves to seeing their parents grow up in ignorance. While some live like parasites, without working or producing, others find nowhere to place their labor force. While some watch their women give birth in luxurious clinics, others, the most, have to settle for seeing them give birth like animals on their filthy ranches.

This is the drama, the horrible tragedy of our country and our people. Seeking a remedy is the responsibility of progressive Venezuelans, finding a solution is an inalienable duty. But we must not stop at applying the well-known “hot cloths” that only delay the disease, but we must go to its very root to remove, like the good surgeon, the origins of the disease. The Venezuelan people are already tired of promises that cannot be fulfilled and are already disappointed with a democracy that does not arrive, but that in the name of which they are mistreated, persecuted and deceived.

Until now, no political movement has denied these realities; but what is reality and conviction for some is demagoguery and politicking for others. This has been demonstrated, at least, in our eventful history, in our republican process. One thing has been political preaching out of power and quite another, quite another, the action of rulers. And at every step, it is obvious how the people, the hungry, miserable and helpless majorities, have been nothing more than an unhappy ladder whose steps are climbed by ambitious and careeristic. Everything so far has been a deception, a lie, a shameful farce that compromises responsibilities and mocks principles. Democracy has been nothing more than a means for that deception, for that lie, for that shameful farce. Through the insincere preaching of their principles and nobles, the people have been oppressed, harassed and exploited. The democracy defended by those who oppress and steal in their name has served only as a shield for the ignominy, rottenness, corruption and shamelessness of those who serve foreign interests and those who understand democracy as instruments of subaltern appetites. A consequence of this is the role that democratic institutions such as the Parliament are playing in our country, they are the very essence of popular sovereignty.

I know that many of you, fellow Deputies, believe in good faith that what is happening today in our Parliament - the most important power of representative democracy - is the product of the lack of democratic experience that Venezuelans have or simply the results of circumstantial contradictions that can be overcome with a simple change in the governmental train. And that here the enormous national problem could be solved: to conquer the country's independence and create lasting bases for collective well-being, through civic struggle, or in other words, in the peaceful transit of the institutions themselves. In my opinion, those who think so are either honestly wrong, or what is more serious: they hide their own cowardice. Either they fear that the Revolution will wipe them out or they play demagoguery to satisfy selfish ambitions. Either they have failed to understand the nature and character of the reactionary forces that have traditionally imposed oppression, derision and humiliation on the Venezuelan people, or they want to disguise their true intentions.

This people, who offer blood and life for freedom, believed, like many of you, in a peaceful solution to the Venezuelan problem. I myself and with me who intervened in the great movement of the Patriotic Junta, sincerely believed in good faith that with the overthrow of the tyrant and the return to the Fatherland of all his persecuted children, a general, unitary, Venezuelan understanding could be achieved, that would work for the aggrandization of the country, for the dignity of Venezuelans, for the very independence of the Nation. This illusion of naive young people, of politicians without malice, all good faith and good will, collapsed under the weight of selfishness and the ambitions of another.

On “January 23rd”, I confess in the form of creative self-criticism, nothing happened in Venezuela, other than the simple exchange of some men for others at the head of public destinies. Nothing was done to eradicate privileges or injustices. Those who occupied power, with honorable exceptions, of course, did nothing to free us from imperialist conjunctures, from feudal domination, from oligarchic oppression. On the contrary, they served as an instrument for those interests that gravitate negatively on the fainting body of the Fatherland. But, at least, they created a climate of freedom, respect and coexistence among Venezuelans, absent today from national life. Everything else is the product of deeper questions that penetrate the very reason of a political system created by deception and lies. The fact is that it was naive or deluded to think that with the sole overthrow of the tyrant and the return to institutional life, with elected powers, the solution of our problems had been achieved. We believed, in very good faith, I repeat, that temporary differences could be put aside so that we could all sit down and work for the Fatherland, so that the old hatreds, the parochial quarrels would cease and everyone would think more about the country's progress than about their personal interests. We believed that patriotism was above flags and groups. But the first thing that some people did when they returned to the country was to attack the Patriotic Junta, against its founding members, who in the resistance had been able to draw a just political line that culminated in popular victory. But now we are convinced that everything that happened, that the new failure, was nothing more than the result of the great economic and social contradictions that are agitating in our society, that are fighting within a political system such as ours. Nothing else could be expected if nothing had been done but to change the men in the government.

On January 23, there was just this: a change of names. The exploiting oligarchy, the servants of imperialism sought immediate accommodation in the new government. Political power had been left in the hands of the same interests and the instruments of that power were still under the responsibility of the same classes. This is how we have continued, but this cannot continue for long. Already the people of Venezuela, like all the oppressed peoples of the world, have become aware of the causes that originate their ills. And all these peoples have set themselves the historic task of economic and political liberation, to undertake independent development that must crystallize in progress, in well-being, in happiness for the humble. An example of popular victory is already shining in Latin America: The Cuban Revolution. This fact has greatly contributed to clarifying the future panorama of our peoples, to awakening the sleeping masses, to opening the eyes of the deceived and to galvanizing the revolutionary and anti-imperialist consciousness that is embedded in the deepest fiber of our patriotism, of our nationalist sentiment.

Despite objective realities, their own and strange experiences, the Venezuelan people, who always love peace, have wanted to solve their problems through the civic path. And considering all the setbacks, great illusions were made when the balance of forces within the National Congress changed. Our people believed that the opposition's control over the Chamber of Deputies and the Legislative Branch truly opened up new perspectives for eradicating violence and pacifying the country. But those illusions have already suffered strong blows and have definitely fallen apart, in the face of Parliament's defenselessness in the face of an arrogant and arbitrary Executive. Two months ago, this Chamber of Deputies, in the midst of tacit popular joy, approved broadcasting some of its sessions and this resolution has not yet been able to be implemented. It has also been two months since the National Congress, using its constitutional powers and powers, decreed the restoration of guarantees that had been suspended for more than a year; but despite the Decree of the Legislative Power, homes continue to be raided and citizens arrested without crimes. And under the protection of a Perezjimenista decree that the people repealed “January 23rd” prohibits the National Women's Union from performing at the Palacio de los Deportes in Caracas to talk about the devaluation of the bolivar and its impact on the already high cost of living; under the protection of that same decree, the Betancourt government prohibits workers, the revolutionary working classes from celebrating the May 1st, International Labor Day. And as if that weren't enough, the agents of official repression, their armed gangs, attacked defenseless workers who, in defiance of terror, took to the streets to commemorate their day with their dignity. Some dead and many injured - blood of the people - were the result of May 1st all over the country. But these are not isolated facts of transitory arbitrariness, but rather the norm and raison d'être of a government outside the law, which does not respect the Constitution, nor does it respect Congress, nor does it respect anything. In El Tigre, in Punto Fijo, in Valencia, throughout the vast Venezuelan latitude, defenseless workers who express their free will within the trade union movement are being shot. And in front of the High Schools, students of all ages baptize with their promising blood the return “to constitutional normality”. The fact is that the Executive does not respect the decisions of the Congress, but rather its purely formal aspects. But isn't the Legislative Branch the most important, the fundamental power of constitutionality? Isn't the Parliament elected by the people, the very essence of popular sovereignty? All of this is true, but within a political system such as the one we Venezuelans live in, the Legislative Power operates normally when its majority serves the same interests of the Executive Branch and responds to the same composition of the Executive Branch. When the opposite phenomenon occurs, namely, that the opposition controls the Parliament, then the wall of threat, disrespect and outrage rises in front of it. Parliament and its very dignity are trampled upon when the gentlemen's agreement concluded between the President of the Republic and the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Deputies to solve the distressing problem of the hunger strike of political prisoners is flouted. The Parliament is run over when the Minister of Internal Relations denies the National Radio Broadcasting channels - used by the Executive whenever he wants - to broadcast the sessions of the Chamber of Deputies. And pending is the threat of shelving the Draft Regulation of Guarantees approved by the opposition in Deputies, if it does not respond to fascist outbursts, to tyrannical characteristics, to the despotic essence of the Old Guard and COPEI.

So how can we count on the Parliament for the Revolution that our people are planning? Will the Chamber of Deputies or Congress be able to guarantee compliance with progressive and patriotic laws, if it has not been able to broadcast only one of its sessions and has not been able to prevent abuses, harassment and persecution, despite having restored public liberties? Can this Congress guarantee the approval and application of a Law Against Monopolies that plunder our wealth? Will this Congress be able to execute and enforce a comprehensive reform in the economic and social system of the Republic? It has already been demonstrated, ladies and gentlemen, that this is impossible as long as there is no fundamental change in the Venezuelan political system. A careful analysis of this situation, of the impotence in which we are to find a peaceful solution to the national problem; a study of how the government has taken the shortcut of illegality, disrespecting the Constitution and trampling democratic institutions, of how democracy in our country is only a farce, a lie, to cover up oppression, crime and arbitrariness; of seeing how freedom does not exist for the people, nor does justice prevail for the people; to see how journalists are imprisoned to go beyond the validity of freedom of expression; a general consideration of this landscape of corruption, of this environment of persecution, of this life of anguish; an examination of the situation that Parliament leaves us with mockery, media sovereignty, humiliated people, lost dignity and mortgaged wealth, have led me to the conclusion, like many other Venezuelans, that a radical change is needed here, a true transformation that will turn our country into a free, prosperous and dignified nation.

The consequence of this firm conviction, the result of that analysis, is the decision I have taken to fight with weapons in hand, as the people do when they want to conquer freedom, and to seek in revolutionary action the solution of our great problems, and to achieve a new life for the people, different from the precarious existence they have led for a century and a half of an unjust Republic. This decision honors and commits me, and at the same time it satisfies me. The most notable men of humanity have taken the same path at different times and countries. Our Liberators had to make the same decision in the face of a colonized Homeland, in the face of an enslaved people. They, the forgers of our nationality, traced the path for us and we must continue it with equals, sacrifices, with the same risks and the same faith, to tear apart the new chains of foreign domination and guarantee full national independence. This is our decision, this is our path. We go to arms with faith, with joy, like someone who is going to the reunion of our favorite country. We know that the people are with us, the same people who in all memorable times have said they are present before all that is noble, before all that is good, before all that is just.

Our decision to join the students, workers and peasants who wage guerrilla war in Falcón, Portuguesa, Mérida, Zulia, Yaracuy, forced by the brutal repression of the government that threatens those who oppose their designs with death, torture and imprisonment, is due to the firm conviction that the politics of the cliques that exercise power today show no courage to provide solutions to the Venezuelan political crisis through dialogue and the electoral path. All the official machinery has since been placed at the service of the exclusive groups that form the privacy of the current President and without a spirit of service to the Fatherland and the People, such groups have deprived Venezuelans of their most elementary rights and are now preparing the fraud that allows them to perpetuate themselves in power, in the custom of all the despotic governments that the country has suffered.

Expecting that this bloody mockery will undiminish one's dignity is not only cowardice, it is encouraging false illusions whose consequences would be fatal for our democratic development. The governing group has already demonstrated ad nauseam that it knows only the method of violence, the path of illegality. In the face of their arrogance, there is no other attitude to accept the challenge and prepare to combat it with their same methods, so that Venezuelans can, free from the Betancourt Government, free from its hatred and intrigue, its corruption and incapacity, its politics and moral smallness, its sectarianism and evil, give us a truly national government, respectful of democratic law, faithful servant of the people and loyal to national independence and sovereignty.

We make weapons against violence, repression, torture and embezzlement. We take up arms against depravity and treason. We do not do this out of a romantic conception of the struggle or subject to any other decision than our own, only committed to Venezuela. We are not waging war against the Armed Forces, as a whole, in which we know from personal experience and from the joint action we waged in January 1958, officers have been formed whose only ambition is also ours: to be useful to the Fatherland and to serve its greatness and sovereignty. And because the vast majority of classes and soldiers belong to the humble classes, to families without bread, land, or freedom. And if some of their hierarchies have been placed as blind and unconditional personalist instruments of the Romulo Betancourt group, this cannot hide from us that sooner rather than later, civilians and soldiers will meet together for the same fraternal and patriotic purpose. Evidence of this statement is the recent “Carúpano Uprising” and “the heroic action of Puerto Cabello”, where officers with a clean record such as Jesús Molina Villegas, Pedro Medina Silva and Manuel Ponte Rodríguez were able to take a step forward in history, before living in ignominy. There, it was demonstrated that within the Armed Forces there are men who feel La Patria in its exact dimension and who, inspired by the lessons of Bolívar, follow his example of courage, nobility and patriotism and how this Government goes so far as to the bombing of open cities, to genocide, to try to preserve an already unsustainable situation. We must continue the path taken by them so that upon leaving the glorious prison, the officers, classes, soldiers and civilians of the heroic action of Carúpano and Puerto Cabello can live in a New Homeland, like the one we all dreamed of and for which they fought.

We don't make weapons against the Army, we do it against those who serve the foreign monopolies that cause our poverty; we wage war, against the murderers of students, workers, peasants; we wage war against those who steal and trade in the name of a false democracy; we wage war against those who sow hunger, anguish and pain in the Venezuelan family; we wage war against a life of corruption, hatred and intrigue; in short, we wage war so that the dawn of the may freedom and justice shine on the horizon of the Fatherland.

The government wanted this fight to be like this. Neither we nor anyone else can expect that she can make up her mind in the short term. We have undertaken an action aimed at sweeping away injustices, betrayal and corruption in our society, an action that can only succeed if it is forged powerfully in a national movement of popular, civil and military breadth throughout the country, of which we are just a small cog. The fight will be protracted, full of risks and sacrifices. But victory cannot be refused to those who give themselves to that fight, resting their ideals in the people and their sacrifice in a national and democratic cause; those whose only ambition is to serve the scorned Homeland. And if something were missing to justify my attitude, there is the fascist assault on the newspapers “La Tarde” and “Clarín”, unbribable spokespersons of the people, in the destruction of whose machines the government is portrayed head-on. But I am also encouraged by the words spoken in this House by the Deputy for Democratic Action, Dr. Elpidio La Riva Mata, in which he translates the cry of our people, by courageously expressing:

“The government doesn't want guerrillas, but it doesn't want a free press, rallies, demonstrations or the full exercise of public liberties; that's why its armed gangs carry out wild acts such as the one carried out on Saturday in the offices and workshops of “Clarín” and “La Tarde”. The current government is unable to democratically govern the country's destinies. In this regard, the electoral perspective is quite dark. Can opposition sectors optimistically contemplate events like this that liquidate the peaceful avenues of political strife?”

To add later:

“The entire body of the Constitution and all the manifestations of constitutionality are riddled with the acts of this Government...”.

And I am also encouraged by the thought of Senator José Octavio Jiménez, when he says: “I have several children and I prefer to see them die in guerrilla combat, rather than being killed in the streets by the armed gangs of this Government...”.

And I am proud of the statements of comrade José Vicente Rangel, who on behalf of my “Democratic Republican Union” party, I express the voice and sentiment of all his militancy and which I interpret as an inexorable mandate.

But there is still something else that alone would be enough to show the correctness of the path taken. That is, the threat hanging over our House under the pretext of eradicating “extremism”. This deadly blow to democracy is almost consummated and is likely to be carried out in a few days. The maneuvers that are being carried out to carry it out do not matter, the real thing is that their independence and dignity will be riddled by executive arrogance. Either by imprisoning Deputies to change the existing balance of power; or leaving the Legislative Branch without its legal representation as the Delegate Commission; or because of the constant and increasingly aggressive boycott; the truth is that the Executive, in another of its despotic outbursts, will drown and strangle the Chamber of Deputies, now covered with dignity.

The defense of the independent Parliament belongs to everyone and the defense of the Constitution is an inalienable duty. That is why when we make weapons against this government, we do them for the restoration of democratic constitutionality, for the mocked and trampled Chamber of Deputies, for the independence of the public authorities, for democracy and justice.

So, Mr. President, call on the respective alternate because I have come out to fulfill the oath I took before you to defend the Constitution and laws of the country. If I die, it doesn't matter, others will come after us who will pick up our rifle and flag to continue with dignity, which is the ideal and duty of all our people.

Down with the chains!! Death to oppression!! For the Fatherland and for the People!! Long live the Revolution!!!

Mazo News Team