Published at: 02/04/2025 08:00 PM

(CLARÍN, March 18, 1963)

• During the second division of Democratic Action (AD), internally commanded by the arsist group (AD-ARS), the extreme right wing of the “Old Guard”, under orders from Betancourt, turned its armed gangs and police officers against their former party colleagues.
• Such was the case of the murder of the young artist leader Manuel Mújica, which occurred in San Felipe, Edo. Yaracuy, on March 17, 1963.
• Clarín's note read as follows: “A monstrous crime was committed by the national government..., in the capital of Yaracuyana. The young Manuel Mujica was shot down by a disgusting criminal from the San Felipe Police, because the young man was removing a poster of (AD) Vieja Guardia”.
• Thousands of people attended the burial of Manuel Mujica, youth leader of AD-ARS, who was shot in the back by San Felipe Police officers, when the young man was removing an electoral propaganda poster for candidate Raúl Leoni.
• The then Minister of Internal Relations, Carlos Andrés Pérez, in an official statement, justified this murder, endorsing with his declaration the death of anyone who would dare to touch AD's posters, banners and posters.
• Additionally, members of AD's para-police gangs, on that occasion, also attacked other leaders of the ARS group, including the president of the Legislative Assembly of Yaracuy state, Domingo Barrios. Attack in which Mrs. Mercedes Quintana was seriously injured, who received seven bullets from these gangs that kept her between life and death for several weeks.
• This wave of violence, generated by AD, was rejected by the Yaracuyan people, who demonstrated their indignation by massively attending the burial of the young man killed in the back.
• Manuel Mujica, at the dawn of his adolescence, was one of the many victims of government violence unleashed during the electoral process of 1963.
• In that electoral year and as a result of that second division, AD-Government versus AD-Opposition (ARS), 21 young people were killed by the repressive forces of Betancourt and his police minister, including:
• Nabor Díaz, also killed in the back when a policeman shot him in Cabudare, edo. Lara.
• Albertina Núñez, 24, was murdered by agents of the Municipal Police of Caracas in El Calvario del Prado de María.
• Moisés Salvador Meléndez, 20, was shot dead in Los Mecdores, in the Puerta sector of Caracas.
• José López, 22, was shot down by police on Avenida San Martín in Caracas.
• Antonio Henry Rojas, 24 years old, killed in Lídice.
• Lucía Vaamonde, 24, died in the Salas Post after being injured by police in San Agustín.
• Ángel Bosque, was shot down in El Guarataro.
  • This second division of the so-called People's Party was of such magnitude that it kept AD's white card and took the entire senior staff of the CEN out of its ranks, including the Yaracuyan leader Raúl Ramos Jiménez, the Guayanese Manuel Alfredo Rodríguez, Héctor Vargas Acosta, Manuel García Mackle, Manuel Vicente Ledezma and the historian José Carrillo Moreno, also attracting the young leader José Vicente Rangel and other revolutionaries from other left-wing awnings.
  • Later, AD-ARS formed the Revolutionary Party for Nationalist Integration (PRIN), with a popular socialist orientation, which had an active life in hiding, and won a significant number of seats in the Senate Chamber and Deputies to the National Congress in the 1963 elections.

Mazo News Team