Published at: 24/04/2024 09:00 PM

• On April 22, 1966, during the government of Raúl Leoni, Víctor Eduvigis Tirado, was kidnapped by Digepol agents, the young member of the MIR and a student of administration at the UCV.
• The kidnapping occurred while Víctor was leaving his job at Banco Obrero (INAVI) in Maracay, edo. Aragua, where he was last seen by his co-workers.
• From there, he was transferred to the Digepol cells where he was tortured and killed.
• Days later, on April 26, his body was found floating in the La Mariposa dam and buried in the General Cemetery of the South, without allowing access to his relatives.
• His father, Jesús Tirado Mérida, requested authorization from the Attorney General's Office to carry out the exhumation and forensic analysis of the remains of the murdered young man.
• The bone analyzed showed severe signs of torture and multiple injuries, but it belonged to a person older than Víctor. That's why he's still missing.

Context:

• In that government of Raúl Leoni, the practice of disappearances began, and the wave of repression against members of the newly founded PRV as well as those of the MIR and PCV extended to more than 300 leaders.
• Víctor Tirado had previously been kidnapped by Digepol, on September 18, 1964. Thanks to the timely complaint made by his political leader, José Enrique “El Che” Mierez, Oswaldo Tineo, and other colleagues from the MIR, he was released along with Eduardo Petit. Both were severely beaten in the Digepol basements.
• Víctor was born in Caripito, Edo. Monagas. He was a member of AD until the revolutionary youth of that party founded the MIR. While a student at the Liceo Monagas de Caripito, he met Che Mierez, president of the Student Center, with whom he actively participated in the clandestine fight against the bipartisan dictatorship of the Punto Fijo Pact.
• His brother, Manuel Tirado, and cousins Oswaldo and Luis Tineo Gamboa, were also subject to intense police persecution. The latter, Luis Tineo, was arbitrarily arrested, murdered and disappeared in 1965, in the Ipure area north of Monagas.
• Due to the betrayal of some whistleblowers, in 1966, 325 left-wing leaders were killed, including: Fabricio Aristiguieta, El Loco Fabricio; Luis Vera Betancourt, Félix Farías Salcedo and Emilio Michenaux.
• The young fighters were taken to the San Carlos Barracks: Astrid Fischer, Gladis Alonso, Guillermina Torrealba, Tibare Guevara, Carmen Castillo and Nelly Pérez.
• On the methods applied by the government of Raúl Leoni against left-wing youth, Epifanía Sánchez, better known as La Negra Aurora, recounted the moments of torture she experienced in that year of 1966: “At two in the morning they took us out for the National Guard Command in 
El Paraíso... There we had eight days wearing leather and simulated shootings. My first tooth was knocked out with a glove. They tortured the boys they wanted... After they beat me they would give me an injection and then they would ask me: Do you want to pee? — and I would go out to the bathroom and when I went there I would only see the shadows of the boys. They, the tormentors, what they wanted was for me to fall where the boys were to be demoralized.
• They didn't give us anything, neither water nor anything, as after eight days a cousin who was a National Guard arrived and told my mother to be notified. We had nine days in prison so they came asking me: what was José Vicente Rangel mine? — I don't know him — and they say well there he is and he says that if he doesn't see you, he won't leave...
• ... The next day they took me to San Carlos. When we arrived at the barracks, I knew that Fabricio Ojeda had been arrested in La Guaira and that same night Anayansi Jiménez, Fabricio's partner, arrived and the next day Fabricio woke up dead and that he had hanged himself. He had been killed there in The White Palace. (Source: The Armed Insurrection in Venezuela, author Pedro Pablo Linares, p. 314)”.

Mazo News Team