Published at: 14/08/2024 09:00 PM

(Correo del Orinoco, August 9, 2011 + PRIMICIA, April 31, 1998)

• On August 9, 1983, Noel Rodríguez, a 27-year-old boy, was transferred to the torture and disappearances center located in the TO4 anti-guerrilla camp in Fort Cocollar, Edo. Sucre.
• Since that day, the Red Flag activist and economics student at the Central University of Venezuela joined the long list of missing persons fueled by the “pacification policy” of the government of Rafael Caldera I.
• On June 29, 1973, Noel, son of Zenaida Mata, was kidnapped by a commission from the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DIM).
• After 40 years, thanks to the tireless search for their mother and the procedural speed established by President Chávez, their remains were found and they were able to receive posthumous homage from their friends and family.
• The remains of the young man, an economics student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), were hidden by state security forces in a niche in the General Cemetery of the South, where they remained hidden under false identification for more than 40 years.
• Thus, the list of political detainees and disappeared persons in post-dictatorship Venezuela surpassed the number recorded during the Marcos Pérez Jiménez regime.
• During the two successive governments of Raúl Leoni and Rafael Caldera I (1964-1974) alone, the number of missing persons was around 1,000.
• These political crimes were denounced by Ángel Raúl Valera in his book “The Dogs of the Pentagon” and by José Vicente Rangel in his article “From Pygmalion to the Distinguished Ledezma”, published in El Nacional on March 13, 1981. The bibliography is extensive.
• Between 1952 and 1957, as a matter of historical verification, 20 documented deaths during the Perezjimenista dictatorship can be quantified.
• Between 1959 and 1999, in eight successive “democratic” governments, more than 11,000 victims of State policies regarding police repression, disappearances, murders, torture and systematic violation of human rights can be documented.
• The analysis of published research also shows that, in these 40 years of Representative Democracy, it is when the figure of the “disappeared” was coined for the first time in history in Latin America. Also released in Venezuela are the Paredón Law (shootings), the Escape Law (shoot first and find out later) and the imprisonment, torture and murder of women.
• There were also reports of political crimes and harassment committed against women and children that had not occurred before under any other government.
• This is without taking into account the fact that after the overthrow of General Isaías Medina Angarita, during the so-called “adeco triennium” (1945-1948), new methods of torture were institutionalized, the electric picana, the ring, the electric jargon, drowning in pocetas, as well as the outlawing of political parties, concentration camps (the hampoducts) and the formation of armed paramilitary AD gangs, with a number of victims not yet reported.

Mazo News Team