Published at: 23/07/2025 09:00 PM

CLARÍN, July 23, 1963)

• During the government of Rómulo Betancourt, while Carlos Andrés Pérez was Minister of Internal Relations, the 25-year-old worker and militant of the Communist Youth, Antonio J. Romero Pérez, was shot down by agents of the Municipal Police of Caracas.
• This occurred on the afternoon of July 20, 1963, in Puente Mohedano, in front of the San Agustín Prefecture, where agents opened fire on the vehicle where Romero Pérez was traveling because he did not listen to the loud voice.
• In the application of the Escape Act and the order to “shoot first and find out later”, the 23-year-old university student, Carlos José Quevedo, was also seriously injured.
• During the burial, the crowd that accompanied the victim and his family members were subject to constant police harassment. Several radio patrols tried to intercept the funeral procession along the entire Ave. Sucre, from Lídice to the entrance of the General Cemetery of the South.
• Arriving at the necropolis, 12 radio patrols and several uniformed buses stormed the funeral procession, taking all those in attendance under arrest. The coffin was thrown at the cemetery doors.
• A few hours later, the students who managed to escape police detention, in clear defiance of the repression unleashed, carried their friend's coffin to carry him to his last place of residence.
• Romero Pérez was an honest trade unionist of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), born in Caracas, in the parish of La Pastora, in 1940. He became a member of the Communist Youth in the City of Carora, Lara state, and participated in the fight to overthrow General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.
• He was the father of four children and had served his Compulsory Military Service at the Parachute School, located at the Boca de Rio Air Base in the state of Aragua.
• He had no police record nor was there an arrest warrant against him, on the contrary, he was building a house for his family group, which only needed to be done and crimped.
• Minister Pérez, to justify the political crime perpetrated and evade criminal responsibility, notified the press that the victim died while fleeing police persecution, which is why they applied the Escape Act.
• Romero Pérez was living at the end of Lozada Street in Lídice, he was a worker in a wallet factory and that afternoon he went out with some friends in a Chevrolet car, license plates CO-62-17.
• This car was attacked by the police patrol, and the officers who were traveling there discharged several machine gun bursts, and the army worker and reservist was killed.

Mazo News Team