Published at: 04/06/2025 08:00 PM

(The National and Elite, June 1972)

• The El Paraíso massacre occurred during the first Government of Rafael Caldera (1969-1974), when Luis Posada Carriles was Chief of Operations of the General Sectorial Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP).
• On June 2, 1972, Rafael Bottini Marín and Ramón Álvarez, who had previously been transferred to the DISIP and tortured there, were shot down.
• Almost dead, they were sedated and taken to Avenida Páez in front of the house of the recently kidnapped industrialist Carlos Domínguez “The King of Tin”.
• In that place, half asleep, they were shot down inside a Hillman car by agents of the DISIP.
• Then they planted weapons and spread the version, according to which they had been killed when they were going to collect the ransom from industrialist Domínguez.
• Several newspapers reported that they were about to rob a bank, others that they were criminals with criminal records. Meanwhile, Latest News branded them urban guerrilla fighters.
• Journalist Emma Grand, winner of the National Journalism Award, said: “Next to the car, which resulted in bullet wounds in the hood, windscreen, suitcase, right rear window and rear window, was standing Commissioner Camilo Cusati, smiling with his machine gun still smoking, observing inside the vehicle the bodies of two dead men bathed in blood.”
• For his part, reporter Freddy Balzán stated that “the police, who were in El Paraíso, knew that Rafael Bottini and Ramón Álvarez were on their way, threatened by an official in the back seat, as soon as they parked the car, the agent got out and immediately started shooting at him from everywhere.”
• The Government of Caldera presented the crime as a “confrontation”, an unsustainable version, since all the bullet wounds were from the outside and most serious, the first photographs taken by photojournalists indicate that they were unarmed. They wanted to cover up the gigantic error, declaring that they were “criminals” who were going to rob the Consolidated Bank. Who is going to rob a bank, with all the blocks full of police and reporters, who were covering the news of the kidnapping of The Tin King?
• Rafael Bottini Marín was born in Güiria, Edo. Sucre, in 1942. He studied at the Industrial Technical School of Los Chaguaramos, where his communist militancy began. Later, he stood out as a cadre trainer for the organization Punto Cero, which is why the repressive bodies of the State were looking for him to annihilate him.
• Ramón Álvarez was a worker, a native of Cumarebo, Edo. Falcón, was closely linked to the revolutionary struggle of the 60s and 70s. He was a member of the Petit family, whose nine members were disappeared and murdered during the Fourth Republic.
• Both in the La Victoria Massacre and in the Páez Avenue Massacre in El Paraíso, the members of Punto Cero were the object of the betrayal of the whistleblower Omar Debona.

Mazo News Team