Published at: 24/07/2024 09:00 PM

(ALMARGEN, July 1972)

• During the first five years of Copey's democracy (1969-1974), the statistics of deaths, tortured and disappeared at the hands of the State's repressive bodies did not fall. On the contrary, the case studies showed that the numbers were on the rise. The candidate Rafael Caldera came to power offering a “change”, which turned out to be pure shooting.
• For his part, the national leader of Copei, Luis Herrera Campins, to justify the murders, torture, arbitrary arrests and police cruelty against left-wing youth, declared: “Students like to be oppressed, they would feel disappointed if the government did not listen to them.”
• The victims were:
• The first was Luis Alberto Hernández, a sociology student captured in Aragua de Barcelona on 26-06-69, tortured and murdered by a SIFA commission, before arriving at the Cocollar Theater of Operations (TO).
• Then came the case of Omar Bello and Salazar Rojas, students at the Universidad de los Andes (ULA), who were massacred by members of the Hunters corps in the university's own corridors.
• It continued that same year with the murders of two ULA students, Rosas Piña and Quiroz Serrano. They were rounded up by police and national guards against the precipices of the Chama, pushing them into the ravine to die.
• Three high school students, school-age children, Lugo Machado, Alarcón Galindez and Vladimir Mota. Their voices, ready to protest, were muted by a government that only had bullets as its answer.
• In July 1970, a student was a victim of armed Copei gangs in Mérida. On that occasion, Los Araguatos, the neofascist wing of the Copeyana Youth, made their way to the ULA headquarters, where they murdered first-year dental student José Uribe.
• On July 20, 1970, the peasant Ascensión Higuera Miranda was arrested, tortured and shot by a platoon of Hunters, after being charged with the alleged crime of collaborating with the guerrillas in the Sierra de Falcón.
• The sanctification of torture was also a seal of the Copeyan governments. For five consecutive days, Lieutenant® José Ramón Briceño was subjected, along with five other detainees, to “brutal treatment only conceived by subhuman minds”. They were tried to charge them with the commission of 12 robberies, planting bombs, the murder of 3 police officers and the double agent, informant of the guerrillas, Luis Márquez García (William). All of these false accusations were widely distorted in a report approved by the Senate House Standing Committee on Domestic Policy.
• A missing**: Jesús Méndez Becerra, ** was kidnapped in Barquisimeto, in August of ****1971, because he was an MIR activist.
• On July 4, 1970, **the peasant leaders Rafael Urquiola and Benito Torres were assassinated in the edo. Barinas by a command from the DISIP.
• The MIR militants, José Enrique Mierez, Nery Carrillo, Díaz Zárraga, Pablo Ochoa and José Zabala, were kidnapped and taken to Sabaneta prison. In the rigged judicial procedure, they were charged with all kinds of crimes, with some police officers serving as sole witnesses and failing to meet all the deadlines for the investigation.
• To prevent people from knowing what was going on, all copies of the magazines AL MARGEN and Reventón were confiscated for several weeks. Its publishers were put behind bars.
• Between June and July 1970, commandos of Hunters, DISIP and armed Copeyan gangs kidnapped, tortured and murdered:
• Rufino Urquiola and Benito Torres in Santa Rosa, edo. Barinas.
• Armando Henríquez, José Domingo Coronado, Alexis Castro and Pedro Medina in the Sierra de Falcón.
• Asdrúbal Leonel Ortuño in Los Teques.

Mazo News Team