Published at: 08/04/2026 09:00 PM

(Algem, El Nacional, Ruptura, April 1972)

• On April 1, 1972, the guerrilla commander Américo Silva, 42, was assassinated by State Security Agencies, near the El Pao highway in San Félix, Bolivar state.
• In January 1970, after the division of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), Silva founded, together with a group of militants, the Red Flag Party (BR), in which he was active until the day he fell in combat.
• He co-founded the Ezequiel Zamora Guerrilla Front (FGEZ) in Cerro el Bachiller, Miranda state and, later, of the Antonio José de Sucre Guerrilla Front (FGAJS), which operated in the states of Monagas, Anzoátegui, Sucre and in the eastern plains of Venezuela.
• Son of Alberto Tirado and Marcolina Silva, he studied elementary school at the Escuela Cacique Aguasay, in Aragua de Maturín, edo. Monagas, where he was born on March 16, 1933.
• From a very young age, he began his first ties as a revolutionary militant with Simón Sáez Mérida, Joaquín Blanco, Víctor Soto Rojas, “El Chema” Saher and Trino Barrios.
• He formed a family with Argelia Velázquez, his life partner and clandestine struggles, from whose union Hildemar Antonio, Italo Américo and Víctor Ricardo “Mao” were born.
• He ventured into the fight against the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, from the ranks of the Youth of Democratic Action (AD), in San Félix and Ciudad Piar, Bolívar state.
• He worked at the Orinoco Iron Mining Company as a railroad conductor, from where he accompanied the working class in their struggles to rescue the organization of the trade union movement.
• He also excelled in defending peasant families, victims of eviction from their land by the National Guard (GN), which carried out dispossession for the benefit of transnational corporations.
• After the division of AD, in 1960, he participated in the founding of the MIR.
• He traveled to Cuba with other internationalists to carry out training and training tasks.
• He returned to Venezuela on May 8, 1967, in what was known as “The Machurucuto Landing”.

Mazo News Team