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

(EL NACIONAL, August 13, 1983)

• On August 8, 1983, Professor Oswaldo Arenas Palencia “Alejandro” and 11 detainees were massacred by DISIP officials inside the cells of the Oriente General Penitentiary, known as Cárcel de la Pica, located in Maturín, Edo. Monagas.
• For this purpose, the newspaper El Nacional, dated August 13, revealed that a military court in Maturín was appointed on that date to investigate the events that occurred in the prison, where Oswaldo Arenas and eleven political prisoners were shot by a command of the DISIP, the DIM and officials of the National Guard.
• Henry López Sisco was on that occasion the General Commissioner of the DISIP who led that police operation, as well as the others such as Cantaura, Yumare and El Amparo.
• Professor Alejandro, in that assault, received a bullet that destroyed his abdomen, causing his death hours later, after suffering a long and painful agony. The death certificate confirmed that his death occurred under these circumstances: “Death caused by the shooting of a high-powered weapon.”
• That day, in the early hours of the morning, the entrance to a seven-meter-long tunnel that was under construction was discovered, in Annex A of the checkpoint.
• In retaliation, the Copeyan government of Herrera Campins ordered a lesson and instruction to be given to the political leaders arrested in La Pica through an assault carried out by the DISIP, the DIM and the GN.
• The result of this joint operation was a bloodbath in which the teacher and teacher trade unionist Oswaldo Arenas was assassinated and shot:
• Italo Figueroa
• Gabriel Moreno
• Marino Alvarado
• Levis Rodriguez
• Efrain Salazar
• Orlando Hernández
• Franklin Gómez
• Some of the victims, due to the seriousness of their injuries, were taken to the Manuel Núñez Tovar Hospital in Maturín.
• In solidarity with those massacred in La Pica, 22 political prisoners from the San Carlos Barracks began a hunger strike on August 11.
• Alejandro was a prominent writer of press articles in the main newspapers of the state of Bolívar, he was the leader of the SUMA Union in Ciudad Guayana and an activist in the revolutionary struggle to which he joined as a Red Flag militant in the early 1970s.
• During the administration of that Copeyan government, the doctrine of “total extermination” imposed from Miraflores in the Cantaura Massacre (October 4, 1982) reigned; as well as instructions to prevent, at all costs, a new mass escape of prisoners like the one that occurred six years earlier.
• The hunger strike at the San Carlos Barracks ended thanks to the intermediation of singer-songwriter Ali Primera, after obtaining medical care for the isolated prisoners in La Pica, the restoration of procedural guarantees, access to family visits and the legal assistance of their lawyers.
• At that time, 80 political prisoners were imprisoned in La Pica, the vast majority of them university professionals, union leaders, peasant leaders and social fighters.
• Alejandro was born in Caracas, where he worked as a school teacher while studying computer science at the UCV. He was one of the 12 children of Juan Arenas and Celia de Arenas. He was imprisoned because of his outstanding participation in supporting the escape from La Pica Prison, where 13 Red Flag comrades escaped on August 14, 1977.

Mazo News Team