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

(EL MUNDO and 2001, November 22, 1991)

• On November 20, 1991, students Darwin Duncan Capote Rondón and José Gregorio Delgado Soteldo, both 17 years old, were killed in Macarao, in addition to reservist José Humberto López Arias, 21, who came to the defense of the injured young people.
• That day Darwin and Gregorio, together with their fellow students, went out to demonstrate, in Caracas, for the defense of the student environment, an acquired right that the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez II denied.
• In that November week, during the protests over the half student passage, five students were killed in other cities of the country:
  • Ricardo Silva (17 years old), died after being hit by a bullet during riots in the vicinity of the University of Carabobo (UC), in Bárbula.
  • Héctor José Guzmán, 25, a student in the 5th semester of Agronomy at UCLA, died after being shot in the chest when a picket from the DISIP and the National Guard fired on the student demonstration at the School of Agronomy in Tarabana, Barquisimeto.
  • Rubén Darío Cárdenas, from the Universidad de los Andes (ULA-Trujillo), who died of a femoral vein wound while fleeing from the police.
  • Jimmy Hernández, a student at the Andrés Bello High School in Caracas, who died while demonstrating against the privatization of free public education carried out by CAP throughout the country.
  • In Los Teques, the 18-year-old Raul Alejandro Contreras Marín, a second-semester student at the Cecilio Acosta University Institute, was shot by police officers while helping several classmates who were trapped in that student compound.
• It was customary for police officers to use “reinforced cartridges”, emptying the contents of plastic pellets to replace them with fillers, spark plugs, nuts and nails.
• In the autopsies carried out by the PTJ, stones and nails were found inserted in the bodies of reserve soldiers and students, causing the deaths under investigation.
• Repressive actions such as these blinded the lives of more than 50 students during the four years that Carlos Andrés Pérez ruled for the second time (1989-1993). His Government cut the budget and student benefits of secondary education to justify its privatization.

Mazo News Team