Published at: 09/10/2024 08:42 PM

(El Nacional, Clarín and Última Noticias, October 7 and 8, 1963)

• “MY GOVERNMENT WILL NOT GIVE OR ASK FOR BARRACKS” (Latest News, October 8, 1963), with these words, in the best fascist style, Romulo Betancourt justified the repressive onslaught that left 10 people dead, plus 400 arrested and hundreds injured.
• Under his orders, the Caracas areas of Asylum, San Agustín Pro Patria, Pedro Camejo and Petare were assaulted and militarily cordoned off.
• After being declared a military zone, in Lomas de Urdaneta, the 9-year-old girl, Marisela Durán, was hit by a police bullet while she was sleeping, which instantly blinded her life.
• After being shot by police, 19-year-old student Jesús Romero Meléndez, a resident of 138 Sucre Avenue, was admitted to the Peripheral Hospital of Catia without vital signs. He was a URD youth leader.
• The construction worker, Juan Zambrano, received a machine gun blast in his stomach that kept him dying for several days until his death on October 5, 1963.
• In Petare, 19-year-old student Raúl Villanueva Pasarello died as a result of shots fired at him by several police officers from a patrol car when he didn't listen to his voice out loud. His classmate, Luis Antonio Martell, was arrested and disappeared during the shooting (Clarín, October 5, 1963).
• In Pedro Camejo, Mrs. María Luisa Pérez de Romero was devastated when several projectiles fired from a police patrol destroyed her face and chest, causing her instant death (El Nacional, October 7, 1963).
• In Maracay, the young student Enrique Matos, 19, was murdered on the night of Friday, October 4, 1963, when military personnel shot at a vehicle that disobeyed a loud voice (El Nacional, October 5, 1963).
• In Lídice, on the night of October 6, 1963, there were three dead, 10 gunshot wounded, one missing and more than a thousand arrested, when the city of Caracas was subject to police raids and military operations to quell widespread riots (Última Noticias, October 7, 1963).
• That first week of October 1963, Enrique Matos and Roberto García Urbano, both 19 years old, were also murdered.

Context:

• The first week of October 1963, when his government ended, Rómulo Betancourt decided to close his administration, giving a coup d'etat to the Constitution of 1961.
• He ordered the lifting of parliamentary immunity of constitutionally elected deputies and senators by universal, direct and secret ballot. Everyone went to the Digepol cells, to the San Carlos Barracks or to their concentration camps.
• Political persecution intensified against hundreds of comrades from his own party who disapproved of his sectarian, arrogant and anti-democratic nature.
• Members of the AD Youth, peasant and trade union leaders did not escape this wave of terror. All were the subject of the Betancurista hunt.
• Soon after, during the first week of November 1963, the repression continued. They were victims of the police pack:
• Rodolfo Osal, student.
• Agustín Sevilla, 16 year old student.
• Adalberto Barroeta, 35 years old, doctor.
• Carlos Humberto Barreto, 16 years old, student.
• Hugo José Cortés Ocanto, 19 years old, student.
• José María Rivas Martínez, 19 years old, student.

Mazo News Team