Published at: 07/10/2026 07:04 PM

(Diario 2001, Panorama, El Mundo and El Nacional, from October 6 to 10, 1982)

• What happened in Cantaura, at dawn on Monday, October 4, 1982 at 5:45am, is the story of incredible betrayals and betrayals along with the mass murder committed by the government of Luis Herrera Campins that killed 55 people, including 23 young members of the Red Flag (BR), who were summoned to the outskirts of Cantaura, in Campo Mata , to discuss, among other things, the possibility of laying down arms and joining the policy of social-Christian pacification.
• The then Minister of Internal Relations, Luciano Valero, specified that it was a matter of “cleaning... until the mountains of the east of the country were cleaned of elevations”. For this purpose, the entire south of the state of Anzoátegui was militarized.
• Soon after, on October 6, he emphasized Operation Extermination in these terms: “... There is still fighting, and we are doing our job of cleaning up because there may be guerrilla fighters who managed to get out of the ring of the hunters and the security forces. The operation will continue until the entire area has been cleaned...”.
• In the execution of this brutal State crime, the following members of the Américo Silva Guerrilla Front (FAS), aged between 16 and 29, were exterminated:
  • Sister Fanny Alonso “Patricia”.
  • Roberto Rincon Cabrera “Catire”.
  • Nelson Pacín Collazo.
  • José Márquez Velásquez
  • Empress Guzman Cordero.
  • Diego Alfonzo Carrasquel.
  • Beatriz del Carmen Jimenez.
  • María Luisa Estévez “Natacha”.
  • Carlos Alberto Zambrano Look.
  • Carmen Rosa Garcia “Rossi”.
  • Eusebio Ricardo Martel Daza.
  • Eumenides Isidora Gutierrez Rojas.
  • Jorge Becerra.
  • Jose Miguel Nunez.
  • Mauricio Tejada “Plaza”.
  • Luis José Gómez “Pomponio”
  • Julio César Farías “Miguel”.
  • Antonio Maria Echegarrieta.
  • Ruben Alfredo Castro Batista.
  • Baudilio Herrera Veracierta.
  • Isidro Zerpa Hill.
  • Carlos Anzola Hernandez.
  • Ildemaro Lorenzo Morillo
• The assault on the camp was initiated by two OV-10 Bronco planes, two Canberra fighters and helicopters of the Venezuelan Air Force (FAV). Subsequently, hundreds of members of the Army and the General Sectorial Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention (DISIP) came into action, under the orders of Henry López Sisco.
• The victims' faces were disfigured by the multiple gunshots and backlashes they received. According to eyewitnesses and forensic experts, they were kneeled, receiving multiple hits from machine gun bursts.
• Media Smokescreen. Although the then Minister of Defense, Major General Vicente Luis Narváez Churión and the Minister of Internal Relations wanted to distort the facts, declaring that it was a confrontation against a heavily armed side, everything was refuted by the asymmetry and disproportionality in the correlation of forces concurrent to the crime scene.
• The numerical superiority of more than 500 uniformed government personnel, compared to 17 boys and 6 heroes, precariously armed, exposed to the public light the disproportionate use of force and the clear intention to exterminate left-wing militants who had been summoned to a Regional Plenary of the Red Flag (BR) to discuss the future of the organization.
• It was Henry López Sisco who, after surrendering the members of BR, killed them with gunshots kneeling at the foot of some trees.
• Canberra fighter bombers dropped 27 50-pound bombs at the camp, while OV-10 Broncos and UH-1H artillery helicopters strafed it.
• On the third day of Operation Extermination, 55 dead had entered the morgues of Cantaura, El Tigre and Anaco. As a result of information provided by reporters in 2001, it became known that not only were the guerrilla fighters attacked, but that indigenous and peasant communities in the area were attacked by state security forces. Three farms near the area were bombed with a high death and injury toll.
• It was described as a massacre because apart from the surprise attack of warplanes, to sweep 17 men and six women, more than 400 Army Hunters and 100 DISIP agents were deployed on the ground.
• Urns for adults and some white urns for children were transferred to the Hospital de El Tigre Dr. Felipe Guevara Rojas, which, according to the graphics, shows that the massacre had minors among its victims.
• For three days, the combined forces “combed” a vast sector of the southern Edo region. Anzoátegui, focusing the homicidal action on the site known as “Los Changurriales del Morocchio Evans”, an agreed place for the partisan rally.
• A nearby indigenous village, known as “La Cariña”, was severely bombed by aircraft and several casualties were recorded among its inhabitants.
• The 2001 envoys, Ediccio Balestrini and Hilario Mújica, confirmed that the number of dead people rose to more than 50, including six women, three of them pregnant.
• “TWO GUERRILLAS BETRAYED THE CAMP.” This is the title of El Nacional on October 8, 1982, stating that “by a report of two guerrilla fighters (the Rabanales brothers) it was possible to discover the Red Flag camp near Cantaura. Two whistleblowers flew over the area in a private helicopter, where three State security agents were riding.”
• Both whistleblowers infiltrated the camp following instructions from Gabriel Puerta Aponte, who, coincidentally, that day was transferred to the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital in Caracas.

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS:

• At the Red Flag National Tactical Command (CTN) meeting, held weeks earlier, Gabriel Puerta Aponte was told about the inconvenience of incorporating the Rabanales brothers into the Américo Silva Front.
• Ignoring this decision, Puerta Aponte planted them in those guerrilla columns where they acted as infiltrators of the DISIP.
• Nolberto and Alirio Rabanales arrived days earlier at the meeting site, on orders from Puerta Aponte. While there, there were many complaints about the constant “going out” of the brothers in question, who were constantly absent from the camp. One day before the massacre, they disappeared without asking Commander Rincón for authorization.
• On several occasions, the peasants alerted the guerrilla leaders about the movements of Army and DISIP troops in the vicinity of the camp. However, “El Catire” Roberto Rincón, commander of the Américo Silva Front, had orders from Puerta Aponte not to mobilize. He thus ignored those recommendations and kept the Américo Silva Front immobilized for weeks.
• On May 8, 1986, four years later, the Rabanales brothers were the same ones who gave all the data and location about the meeting of a group of students in the state of Yaracuy and led the DISIP to the execution of the Yumare Massacre, personally led by López Sisco.

Public Letter from the parent or victim:

Five years later, Miguel Ángel Zambrano Ochoa, father of Carlos Alberto Zambrano Mira, a young Chilean national murdered in Cantaura, published a letter addressed to President Jaime Lusinchi, which reads as follows:

Last October 4th marked the fifth anniversary of the well-known “feat” of the “Government of the Poor Social Cristiano Copei” , chaired by Dr. Luis Herrera Campíns.

On that fateful and cold morning of October 4, 1982 (...) a criminal act of great proportions was consummated that, for most people, can never be forgotten.

It was a shameful and outrageous event, making news on all 5 continents and calling into question the Constitutional Precept that refers to the right to life and they also mocked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Four Air Force planes began the action with an indiscriminate bombing of the site where a few idealistic boys were gathered.

They were preparing to savor the aroma of coffee while the thick shadow of death stretched its envelope over the eastern floor, taking up positions of assault in a terrible siege of extermination.

Simultaneously, ground forces of the Hunters Battalion, under the command of General José Murga Cabrices, aided by commandos of the Disip, PTJ and others, had an enormous ambush encirclement with the sole purpose of finishing off those who managed to escape the sinister bombardment.

The result of the treacherous, unusual and unjust criminal act is well known: 23 young Venezuelans killed. There were no wounded captured, there were no detainees.

When the bodies were handed over to their families and the exhumation and recognition were carried out, it was possible to determine that at least 14 of them had gunshots in the back of the head or behind the ear. One of the bodies that had a horrible shot in the back of the head was that of my son, CARLOS ALBERTO ZAMBRANO MIRA, whose body was delivered on October 12 at 5 in the afternoon, after a Dante scene that recalls the criminal hordes of the Hitler era.

The suspects responsible for this horrible and repugnable massacre are well known: Former President Luis Herrera Campíns, former ministers Dr. Luciano Valero, General Vicente Narváez Churión and Dr. Remberto Uzcátegui*.

All of them bear the main responsibility for this fact, perpetrated in flagrant violation of all the International Treaties provided for that kind of confrontation. However, the most serious aspect of the criminal incident is the violation of Article 58 of the National Constitution.

The government presided over by Dr. Luis Herrera Campíns, for the five years, worked hard and tried to convince the world that in our country there was a rule of law, a regime of citizen guarantees, a democratic system that respects human rights, but it was demonstrated by the Cantaura Massacre that the democratic fiction we live in is only a smokescreen behind which a an unjust, oppressive, repressive regime of domination by a small minority over the broad social layers that make up the Venezuelan people.

What did the Attorney General's Office do in the face of this criminal act? Axiomatically nothing. The Attorney General's Office must ensure the observance of the Constitution, laws, Human Rights and Constitutional Guarantees of all citizens throughout the national territory.

The former Attorney General of the Republic (Dr. Pedro Mantellini González) declared the Cantaura case closed, and once the proceedings were carried out at the site of the event, he concludes: “The event was an act of war and therefore there is no reason to continue the investigation...”.

• This open letter from an outraged father, calling for justice, asking for an exhaustive and impartial investigation, like that of all the fathers and mothers of those killed in Cantaura, fell into the complicit silence of a president who spent five years in office sponsoring even more political crime and corruption.
• It took 23 years for President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, in the program Aló Presidente No. 236 broadcast on October 9, 2005, to call on all public authorities, urging the National Assembly, the Supreme Court of Justice and the Attorney General's Office to order the reopening of the investigations, getting to the bottom of the case, determining the responsibilities and doing justice: “The then president (Luis Herrera) and the Chief of the Disip (political police) would have to be called to testify... the authorities knew where the group was going to meet several days before and surrounded it with Army hunters... Once on site, it was ordered that the Canberra bombers dropped bombs and, after that action, the Disip commandos entered to finish off those who were unharmed or injured...”, reported President Chávez, in that Sunday speech.

Mazo News Team