Published at: 17/07/2024 09:00 PM

(LA EXTRA, July 3, 1964)

• On the eve of Argimiro Gabaldón's birthday, the government of Raúl Leoni, as a gift, issued a search warrant to his residence in Barquisimeto, edo. Lara, as well as the kidnapping of her two youngest children, Alejandro and Tatiana, together with her sister-in-law.
• That morning, the two children, aged 6 and 8, were transferred to Digepol headquarters and subjected to intense interrogation, threatened that they would no longer see their father.
• The sister-in-law also suffered the same treatment and was detained for several days.
• The home of the evangelical pastor, Baudilio Méndez, was also violated and kidnapped on charges of being a spy for guerrilla fighters. His daughter was held hostage at Digepol headquarters, due to statements made by the pastor himself, who denounced the government's privileged treatment of Catholic bishops.
• All these humiliations were carried out by Digepoles disguised as soldiers, who also raided several houses in El Tocuyo, taking Cheo Rodríguez and Juan Escalona into custody.
• At that time, in Caracas, Professor Félix Ojeada Olaechea was struggling between life and death after being arbitrarily arrested and held in the San Carlos Barracks, where he was denied transfer to the Military Hospital for treatment for a lung condition.

Argimiro Gabaldón's biographical profile:

• He was born on July 15, 1919 in the house of the Hacienda Santo Cristo, owned by his father General José Rafael Gabaldón. With his brother Edgar, a year and a half younger, he began his studies at home with the Marxist-oriented professor Don Arturo Simonet.
• The booklet and the first reading books with which he learned to read and write were the works of José Martí, the Liberator of Cuba.
• He lived very closely the revolutionary tradition of his father, General Gabaldón, a man of one word, whose legend always covered his son with admiration and respect for history.
• With the farm workers, he learned the martial dances of the folklore of Larense, El Tamunangue.
• He was an outstanding athlete: baseball pitcher, boxer, tennis player, swimmer and hiker.
• He also stood out as a painter, sculptor, teacher of literacy, poet, journalist and farmer, identified with rural and peasant life.
• In 1938 he was expelled from Liceo Andrés Bello for organizing and leading a strike movement in support of the Venezuelan Student Federation (FEV).
• In 1939, he obtained his bachelor's degree with the presentation of a thesis entitled: “The Philosophy of Democritus”.
• With Argimiro, the revolutionary tradition of the anti-gomecist guerrilla leaders was linked to the leadership learned in the books of José Martí, Simón Bolívar and Carlos Marx. He was a sharp polemicist speaker, with a pleasure to refute conservative theses with the content of his readings, almost all of which were banned by the Gómez dictatorship.
• During the dictatorship of the Grail. Marcos Pérez Jiménez organized the first agricultural cooperatives in the mountains of the state of Lara. He set up a clandestine printing press in Las Cuibas, where the first PCV newspapers and a clandestine radio station, Radio Liberación, were published.
• In 1959, it hosted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda for five months, with whom he toured several corners of Venezuela. During his stay in Santo Cristo, Neruda wrote some poems, including: “A Song to Bolivar”, “Miranda Dies in the Fog” and “Ode to the Names of Venezuela” **.
• When he decided to go to the guerrillas, Commander Carache had 22 years of communist militancy. Previously, he did an in-depth study of traditional methods of political action, with an emphasis on university youth organizations that were flourishing and giving their lives in the mountains.

Mazo News Team