Published at: 04/12/2024 10:00 PM

(EL GLOBO, October 13, 1996)

• Following instructions from the Pentagon and instructions from the CIA torture manuals, police and military commandos trained at the School of the Americas murdered more than 2,000 detainees in anti-guerrilla camps or Theaters of Operations (TO), during the Raúl Leoni administration (1964-1969).
• Some of them were saved thanks to the timely intervention and tenacious complaint of lawyer José Vicente Rangel, who courageously faced all the threats and persecution to which he was subject, without flourishing in the mission he had proposed.
• The Pentagon Papers, declassified in 1996, revealed nothing new, except that Los Cazadores, the Venezuelan Army's elite jungle group, was created inspired by the North American Green Berets (Green Berets), who murdered Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
• Among the 2,000 victims of that five-year presidential term, many were innocent peasants tortured to exasperation because they were considered “links” or “collaborators” of the guerrillas. 200 peasants were shot during that period between the states of Lara, Portuguesa and Barinas.
• The repression began after the fall of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, under the government of Rómulo Betancourt, and for those who have doubts, they can refer to the book “The Masks of Democracy” by Moises Moleiro.
• It denounces how armed AD gangs attacked unions, high schools, family homes and peasant federations, leaving around 1,000 dead.
• Betancourt's management record is 1,000 murdered by his secret police and paramilitary gangs, 300 killed by military commandos, 1,900 political prisoners and the waste of 30 billion bolivars (9 billion U$D) in debt with Nelson Rockefeller's bank (Manhattan Chase Bank).

Mazo News Team