Published at: 15/05/2024 09:00 PM

• The murders of the students Lugo Machado, in Maracay and Alarcón González, of the Barquisimeto ETI, in addition to the worker Benjamín de Jesús Terán Ruíz, in El Guarataro, Caracas, at the hands of the police, were a sign of the absence of the rule of law that President Rafael Caldera so much proclaimed.
• José Vicente Rangel (JVR) denounced that fascism in Venezuela did not represent the same characteristics of the classical model that originated it in Italy in 1920. But that Copeyan government could not hide the fact that the deaths of these students and workers were the result of a government that defended the interests of an affluent class cooped and frightened by the clamor of the demands demanded by the less privileged classes.
• JVR continued: “With the mask of defending the democratic system, of the rule of law, any nation can reach fascism. It is enough that a class threatened in its interests clings to them, feels harassed or simply tries to react to its adversary, for a direct policy to be imposed through facts”. The path of facts is always fascism's favorite weapon. That is, it is done and that's it.
• The tendency of the governments of the Fourth Republic, JVR also denounced, was to turn public order into a police expression rather than a democratic expression. Then we see how in 40 years (1958-1998) police repression became more important to preserve the privileges of a few than the right to life of the majority.
• In the same vein, JVR asked: Isn't there in the folds of this concept of public order an exorbitant manifestation of the exercise of power, a degradation of the State's defense?
• Victims of that fascistoid government were devastated by the disproportionate use of police force:

1. Marylin Teresa Names Hurtado: On Friday, May 14, 1971, during the peaceful demonstrations in El Silencio; armed, the PM carried out arbitrary arrests, accompanied by the use of pellets, tear gas bombs, blows, combs and kicks inflicted on workers and students massed there. From apartment No. 8 of the El Silencio Blocks, the young student, Marylin Teresa, watched the protests unfold when she was shot by the Metropolitan Police. The projectile entered the parietal area and left her mortally wounded. Family members took her down to O'Leary Square in a desperate attempt to save her life.
2. During the May Day marches of that year, the young worker Jesús Terán Ruiz was shot to the head by the PM. The inspector of that police force, identified as José Antonio Olivo, arrived at the demonstration with two bodyguards and began shooting left and right at his regulation gun with which he killed the young man.
3. On May 13, 17-year-old Freddy Enrique Ernesto Torres was playing machine in a restaurant at km 13 of the Pan-American Highway when he was shot to the face by a Los Teques Police officer.
4. On the morning of May 14, in La Guaira, high school student Jesús Alberto Martínez Chacín died when a tear gas bomb exploded in his chest. He was a 3rd year student at the José María Vargas High School. Jesús Alberto, his classmates and students from the Maiquetia Industrial School demonstrated on Soublette Avenue.
5. Antonio José Palomo Herrera, 34, a peddler, was intercepted in the early morning of May 12, 1971 by a PM agent, who fired a shot in the face that struck him on the spot. The informal merchant was in a bar on the corner of Bucare, in the parish of San Juan, when the agent killed him without a word.

Mazo News Team