Published at: 06/03/2024 09:00 PM

• On February 20, 1977, Vicente Contreras and Juan Zabala were massacred in the Las Pavas hamlet of Bolívar state.
• At the time of their assassination, they were holding a meeting of the Red Flag Trino Barrios Political-Military District (BR) in Ciudad Guayana, specifically on the San Félix-El Pao road.
• Both were surprised and ambushed by members of the Army and the DISIP, as a result of a report, in the same area where Commander Américo Silva was killed.
• The statements made in the editorial office of this weekly by their families reveal that there was a savage cruelty against these two people who were politically persecuted at a time when Carlos Andrés Pérez was Minister of Internal Relations Octavio Lepage.
• On the bodies of the young revolutionaries, marks of cigarette burns, loose jaws, loose teeth and generalized bruises were found as a result of the unforgiving beatings to which they were subjected.
• All the bullet punctures on the bodies show that it was a head-on shooting, with a target in the heart.
• The death certificate for both victims was drawn up after they were buried without the proper authorization of their relatives. The bodies of those executed were practically shot and stitched together.
• They were surreptitiously buried late at night after being buried, without prior notification to the surviving victims.
• Vicente Contreras Duque was born in 1942, in Seboruco, a mountain town in the state of Táchira. He was the son of an oil worker and was called El Gocho.
• He carried out excellent political-organizational work from San Juan de Los Morros, Guárico state.
• When the MIR split, it joined the Red Flag (BR) with Carlos Betancourt, Américo Silva and Gabriel Puerta, joining the ranks of the Antonio José de Sucre Guerrilla Front (FGAJS).
• In 1971, during a mission, he was shot, arrested and tortured. Later he was held in the prison of the San Carlos Barracks, in Caracas.
On January 18, 1975, Vicente Contreras participated in the glorious escape from the mentioned compound, together with 22 comrades.

CONTEXT:

• On February 26, 1976, the American businessman and CIA agent, William Frank Niehous (1931-2013), was kidnapped by revolutionary groups.
• As a result of this kidnapping, the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez ordered the persecution of progressive sectors and actors in Venezuelan democratic life.
• This was the longest kidnapping in our history, lasting three years and four months.
• To meet the pressures of the North American government and the pretensions of the Creole oligarchy during that time, the government, after long and prolonged torture, also murdered: Jorge Rodríguez (father), Tito González Heredia and Javier Divasson.
• The list of detainees, incommunicado and tortured is long: Alba Bolívar, Nora de Oropeza, David Nieves, Iván Padilla, Francisco Cedeño, Ricardo Mulatero, Germán Blanco, José Luís Velásquez, Isaac Bolívar, Luis Aché, Fernando Tóvar, Orlando Delgado, Ildenfonso Oropeza, Alexis and Edgar Toledo, Carlos Lanz, Noel Cedeño, Luís Alberto Solorzano, etc.

Mazo News Team