Published at: 07/08/2024 09:00 PM

(El Nacional, August 3, 1959)

• On August 3, 1959, at 11:00am, one and a half thousand students, construction workers and public employees, who were protesting the elimination of the employment plan, were surprised by a police siege that attacked them in the vicinity of Plaza la Concordia.
• Four people were killed by Federal District police officers, including:
  • Juan Francisco Villegas Pulido (38 years old), a street photographer, who died intoxicated by tear gas.
  • Rafael Simón Montero (30 years old) was shot twice by the police.
  • Rafael Baltazar González, who was shot three times in the chest by a police officer.
• The newly elected president Romulo Betancourt gave instructions to the security forces to repress workers and the unemployed, who came out to demonstrate peacefully for the 10% reduction in salaries and the mass dismissals of public employees.
• Police repression spread to El Silencio, the church of Santa Teresa and the Simon Bolivar Center, with a tragic result of 60 injuries.
• To justify the overflow of police action, the government suspended constitutional guarantees.
• With this measure, the right to freedom of assembly and inviolability of the home was revoked throughout the Metropolitan Area of Caracas, giving the State's repressive bodies carte blanche to shoot at will, make arbitrary arrests and search the home of anyone who proves to be “suspicious”.
• The construction workers belonged to the Extraordinary Works Plan, called the Emergency Plan. Thereafter, constitutional guarantees were constantly suspended for 40 years.

Mazo News Team