Published at: 20/03/2024 09:00 PM

• Richard López Plaz, a 21-year-old agronomy student at UCV-Maracay, was murdered by the police during a student demonstration outside the Pedagogical Institute in the capital of Aragüeña against the neoliberal policies of the current government.
• Young students Alicia Carrero and Anabel Franco were also injured.
• López Plaz was in intensive care for two days as a result of a metra that lodged in his brain, shot by the state police's sub-inspector, César Mogollón Hernández.
• This was a common practice in the Fourth Republic. The police forces, when it came to suppressing student demonstrations, exchanged plastic pellets for sticks, nuts or spark plugs, with lethal effects on their victims.

CONTEXT:

• Those were the days of the second government of Rafael Caldera. During his election campaign, he released his Letter of Intent to the Venezuelan People to guarantee his commitment to the popular classes.
• However, after taking power, this proposal went down in history as a misleading electoral offer. As soon as he arrived in Miraflores, he immediately signed the Letter of Intent with the IMF, and its president, Michel Camdessus, made an appearance in Caracas.
• During his administration, through the Tripartite Commission, headed by Teodoro Petkof, the retroactive nature of social benefits was eliminated, leaving millions of workers without any guarantee of job stability if they ceased their functions.
• Likewise, the steel industry, SIDOR, was privatized, VIASA was sold off and profitable companies in the hotel sector, cement plants, sugar mills, banks, racetracks and cable cars were sold at the price of a lean chicken, always with PDVSA in their sights.

Mazo News Team