Published at: 09/07/2025 09:00 PM

(LA EXTRA and El NACIONAL, 20-07-1964; ÉLITE, 18-06-1966 and Antorcha, July 14, 1967)

• On July 19, 1964, José Ramón Blanco, 50, and his son José Luis Román Credes, 24, when they were mistaken for guerrilla links, were shot in the head when they were passing through the mayor of El Guapo. They were traveling by car along the Eastern Highway. Both came from Maturín to Caracas when they were killed by agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), who were keeping the towns near Barlovento terrified. The Digepoles were prominent in one of the area's anti-guerrilla subcamps, keeping the towns of Cupira, El Cumbe, Rio Chico and El Guapo hit.
• On January 18, 1966, at 8:30 on the night of January 18, Technical Sergeant Pedro Nolasco Jiménez and his wife, Professor Doris de Jiménez, were shot down by agents who were part of a mobile police station while traveling along the stretch of the San Antonio del Golfo de Cariaco highway in the Edo. Sucre. Not realizing the existence of this military unit posted on the road or hearing the voice out loud, the guards unloaded their machine guns on the vehicle. The army petty officer was instantly killed and his wife seriously injured. Both were returning to Maturín after having visited their families in that town.
• One Sunday in June 1966, the brothers Delfín Enrique and Miguel Ángel Terán returned to Caracas after a day of rest in Cúa, edo. Miranda. It was then that in the immediate vicinity of the sector known as Puente Marín, they received several shots from a mobile checkpoint, causing the death of both of them. The vehicle crashed into a tree.
• On the night of Tuesday, July 12, 1967, Benito Antonio García, a street driver, not realizing the existence of a mobile prosecutor, was shot down by agents of the National Guard (G.N.) . He left a widow and four orphaned children in misery.
• At the beginning of the government of Rómulo Betancourt, in the early morning of December 2, 1960, Natalia Chinaglia was shot dead after she could not hear a loud voice when she was driving in the El Pulpo sector of the Eastern Highway. The medical professional had come to celebrate her birthday.
• In the immediate vicinity of El Tigre, edo. Anzoátegui, during the first administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP), on July 3, 1978, Pedro Ramón Castillo, 36, was killed by soldiers of the Army of a Hunters battalion, when the latter did not respond to the military's warning voice, in a mobile checkpoint located between La Ceiba and Santa Rosa.
• The Escape Law, imposed de facto by Rómulo Betancourt, continued to be applied even more rigorously in the following years, during the governments of Raúl Leoni, Rafael Caldera and CAP.
• For his part, the Minister of Internal Relations, Gonzalo Barrios, faced with several cases of murdered drivers who were driving through mobile checkpoints, stated: “DIGEPOL does run over... Such abuses occur in the most advanced countries.”

Mazo News Team