Published at: 01/10/2025 09:00 PM

(El Nacional and Al Margen, September-October 1969; Bohemia, 30/11/69; El Anaquense, 27/11/77 and La Noticia de Oriente, 26/7/94)

• On September 26, 1969, Luis Alberto Hernández, a first-year student at the School of Sociology and Anthropology of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), was arrested and disappeared. To this day, his whereabouts are unknown. He was a leader of the Revolutionary Party for Nationalist Integration (PRIN).
• Doña Rosa Emilia Hernández, his mother, spent seven years searching for him at all police headquarters and requesting written information from the Minister of Internal Relations, Lorenzo Fernández. All without an answer. He died without knowing anything about him.
• Luis Hernández, 21, was arrested that day in Aragua de Barcelona, tortured and shot by a Commission of the Armed Forces Intelligence Service (SIFA) and the Technical Judicial Police (PTJ).
• After a parliamentary investigation, the participation of the police officers who tortured and murdered him in the Theater of Operations No. 4, in Cocollar, Sucre state, was demonstrated.
• However, Minister Lorenzo “EFE” Fernández exonerated them of all guilt and denied the government's responsibility.
• The police officers, who were responsible for the arrest and disappearance of the student, under the orders of Minister EFE, continued to carry out their functions with impunity.
• Pacification's specialty was the murder and disappearance of students. Before Luis Hernández, they were victims of the social-Christian government:
  • Omar Bello and José Salazar Rojas, massacred in the corridors of the University of the Andes (ULA) by Army hunters, under the command of Col. Betancourt.
  • High school students Lugo Machado, Alarcón Galíndez and Vladimir Mota, killed by government bullets.
  • On October 29, 1969, the 31-year-old leader Félix Escobar Villanueva was assassinated by the Metropolitan Police (PM), at the entrance of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).
  • Aniceto López Lanz suffered the same fate. He was arrested on October 2, 1969, in the Cancamure hamlet, San Juan de Marcapana municipality of Cúmana, edo. Sucre, and taken to the Cocoyar extermination center. There, inside the so-called “tent of truth”, he was subject to unspeakable torture. To this day, nothing is known about his whereabouts either.
  • This became known thanks to a letter, sent to Deputy J. V. Rangel, signed by several leaders detained in the La Pica Prison. They reported the torture and death to which Luis Hernández and Aniceto López L. were subjected.

Mazo News Team