Published at: 20/11/2024 10:00 PM

“ARMY WILL CRUSH PAWS”

(LATEST NEWS, EL NACIONAL, and CLARÍN, November 13-30, 1961)

• 8 dead and 4 injured in Barquisimeto, 2 dead and 9 injured in Caracas, and 3 dead in Maracaibo, was the result of instructions given by Rómulo Betancourt after the rupture of relations with Cuba. The decree of repression expressed in one of his many lapidary orders: “ARMY WILL CRUSH BOCHINCHEROS”.
• Alberto Rudas Mezones, 16, was rounded up and strafed by digepoles near Plaza O'leary on 15-11-61. In the middle of the wake, his coffin was kidnapped by government agents to prevent popular protests. Finally, 51 years later, in June 2013, he was located and exhumed from a mass grave in the General Cemetery of the South.
• At midnight on 12-11-61, during the police action called Operation Assault, against demonstrators in the 23 de Enero housing estate, the 19-year-old pregnant girl, Livia Gutiérrez, was shot and killed by a rifle, who left two little orphans.
• In Caracas, 18-year-old Roosevelt José Urdaneta, a student at the Industrial Technical School, was murdered by police officers on 30-11-61.
• In Barquisimeto, on 18-11-61, the death toll rose to five as a result of police repression. The victims were: 12-year-old high school student Alirio Méndez; 22-year-old student Francisco José Rodríguez; 32-year-old taxi driver Luis Francisco Gómez; worker Aristides Terán and 17-year-old elevator operator Amadeo Humberto Giffoni.
• In Maracaibo, on 16-11-61, Gilberto Mora Muñoz, leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and president of the Legislative Assembly of Edo, was shot to death. Zulia.
• By that date, the Federation of University Centres reported that the Betancourt government's repressive policies were responsible for 96 victims killed by police forces, 970 injured and 1,630 political prisoners.
• The agents of Betancurism, who acted as repressive arms of “Representative Democracy” were: the armed gangs of AD, the gangs of Batister exiles brought by the government from Miami and the officials of the General Directorate of Police (Digepol).

Mazo News Team