Published at: 09/04/2025 08:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL and LA ESFERA, April 2, 1965)

• On Thursday, April 1, 1965, in the midst of a peaceful rally called to protest against the authoritarian and repressive measures of the government of Raúl Leoni, Miguel Ángel Guerra Leidenz, a journalist and 4th year law student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), was assassinated.
• It was 5:00pm, when more than 8,000 people from the Progressive Anti-Broadbase Front tried to mobilize from Plaza La Concordia to El Silencio, and were repressed by agents of the Municipal Police.
• Camera in hand, Guerra Leidenz, was covering the popular demonstration for the weekly Justicia, of which he was director. A police officer confiscated his camera and then murdered him.
• The Municipal Police and agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL) broke up the demonstration by force of lead, with the result of one death and 22 injured.
• The next day, during the burial, pickets from the Municipal Police and DIGEPOL agents tried to prevent the murdered student from being veiled inside the UCV compound.
• However, the firm attitude of more than 3,000 people who accompanied the coffin, managed to break the police siege and enter the university, 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 worker at the Venezuelan Central Bank, who received several bullet wounds from a Digepol.
• In addition to Rodé, the musician and composer Antonio Lauro and the leaders Manuel Alfredo Rodríguez of the Revolutionary Party for Nationalist Integration (PRIN), José Vicente Rangel of the PRIN, José Herrera Oropeza of the Nationalist Popular Vanguard (VPN), Raúl Ramos Jiménez of the PRIN, Germán Borregales, José Manzo González also of the PRIN, Héctor Mujica of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), Efrén Suzzarini of the PCV and former President of the Republic Wolfgang Larrazabal.
• Senator Larrazbal stated: “The Leoni government is responsible for this massacre... The Broadbase government (AD-URD-Copei) is responsible for the savage attitude taken against a peaceful demonstration and of the People where the police do 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?

Mazo News Team