Published at: 18/06/2025 09:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL and ALMARGEN, June 1973)

• During the first government of Rafael Caldera (1969-1974), on June 18, 1973, Ángel María Castillo, “Pancho Alegría”, was arrested in Plaza Bolívar de Charallave. An acquaintance of his, Alias Daniel, a whistleblower in the service of Luis Posada Carriles, handed it over.
• When he was captured, he shouted: “I'm Ángel María Castillo, Commander Pancho Alegría, they're taking me prisoner and they're going to kill me”
• On this forced disappearance, the newspaper El Nacional of June 20, 1973, headlined: “POLICE REPORT: 'Pancho Alegría' died in an ambush...”
• Jesús Marrero, who was also detained at the time, testified that Commander Pancho Alegría was martyred in the cells of the sinister General Sectorial Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention (DISIP), without giving away any of his colleagues.
• Luis Posada Carriles, alias Commissioner Basilio and “El Rambo” Henry López Sisco, were personally responsible for applying the most savage torture: wood chips were stuck all over his body, strong electric shocks were applied to his testicles and several times he was made to dig a pit in front of a platoon that pretended to shoot him, to break his morals.
• Posada Carriles and López Sisco, after torturing him for several days without being able to extract any information from him, shot him in the stomach and proceeded to disappear to this day.
• Ángel María Castillo was a rural teacher, born in Siquisique, Urdaneta municipality in the state of Lara. In the 1960s, he joined the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party (PRV), founded by Fabricio Ojeda. In 1970, the government of Rafael Caldera ordered his capture and went underground.
• In a letter addressed to the weekly AL MARGEN, in its March 4, 1971 edition, Commander Pancho Alegría had warned about the case of the murder of peasants in Santa Rosa, edo. Barinas, in which it was demonstrated that it was agents of the DISIP and personnel of a Hunters unit who were responsible for that massacre, pointing out, in turn, that both the press and the official parties of those repressive bodies, in the first versions implicated him as the culprit of these bloody acts.
• Then all this communication hoax was denied, against him, to start the hunt they had set up for him.
• Warning, in turn, that this was an unequivocal sign that they were after his whereabouts to kill him, as in fact happened two years later, when he was arrested in Charallave and transferred to the headquarters of the DISIP in Los Chaguaramos.

Mazo News Team