Published at: 15/01/2025 09:00 PM

Romulo Betancourt announced: “The Scammers Will Be Ruthlessly Swept Away”

(EL NACIONAL, January 12, 1960)

• On January 11, 1960, Samuel Sánchez Álvarez, a worker of Spanish origin, was shot to the temple by an agent of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), in front of the Boyacá Theater, on Lecuna Avenue in Caracas.
• Following the protests over the mass dismissal of workers, decreed by the National Executive, the government, in turn, ordered the demonstrators to be “ruthlessly swept away”.
• That day, in a plenary assembly, construction workers gathered at the Trade Union House in El Paraíso to protest the unexpected cancellation of the Emergency Plan that left thousands of parents without the means to cover the daily needs of their homes.
• Under these terms, thousands of construction workers and public administration workers who were subject to the mass dismissal measure enacted by Romulo Betancourt, were left at the mercy of unemployment.
• From the Trade Union House, protests flooded the streets demanding the resumption of the works of the previous government, which were forever paralyzed.
• In the immediate vicinity of the union headquarters, they were seriously injured by joint forces of Digepol and the National Guard:
  • Carlos Bravo (17 years old).
  • Simon Mata (16 years old).
  • Jesús A. Urbáez (23 years old).
  • Efraín Pérez (17 years old).
  • Hrubry Vojtec (46 years old).
  • Humberto Sosa S. (18 years old).
  • José Isabel Navas (27 years old).
  • Ricardo E. Medina (36 years old).
  • Pedro M. Marrero (18 years old).
  • Luis Alberto Ríos (18 years old).
  • Francisco J. Zambrano (17 years old).
• Three of them died a few days after being shot.
• The next day, 150 of the thousands of arrested demonstrators were sent from La Carlota to the Guayanese jungles under forced labor. Thus, the “hampoduct” to the Mobile Colonies of El Dorado was inaugurated.
• In less than 24 hours, workers, students and public employees went to the first large concentration camp in the Fourth Republic.
• This violated all the procedural guarantees of the right to defense, presumption of innocence, right to family visits, right to be tried impartially by a natural judge and the appointment of lawyers to hear the cases of the detainees.
• From Miraflores, government censorship ordered the smokescreen spread by some print, radio and television media, which did not hesitate to pejoratively adjective the demonstrators, calling them criminals, coup plotters and/or social misfits.
• All this, in an attempt to obscure the death of the worker Samuel Sánchez Álvarez, the seriously injured who died a short time later and the retaliation established as official government policy, through concentration camps.

Mazo News Team