Published at: 28/05/2025 09:00 PM

(THE EXTRA, May 25 + El Carabobeño, May 23, 1964)

• On May 24, 1964, the Investigating and Juvenile Judge of the Judicial District of Edo. Táchira issued an arrest ballot against the Copeyan leader José Ramón Contreras, for being the material author of the shooting that blinded the life of the 18-year-old student, David Martínez Escobar.
• However, the Catholic Journal, a newspaper of the extreme right in San Cristóbal, attributed the crime to left-wing youth, demonizing, once again, students attached to the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).
• El Carabobeño, in an article written by Fabián Palma, entitled “Another Dead Student”, uncovered the media pot of the Catholic Journal, clarifying that the real material author of the murder, who used the firearm against the university student David Martínez, was not a “communist or myrista”, but a Copei militant, assimilated to the gangs of Democratic Action (AD).
• Other AD militants were arrested for causing gunshot wounds to students Humberto Antonio Orellana and Manuel Concepción.
• The death of the engineering student at the Universidad de los Andes (ULA), David Martínez, occurred at 11:00am on May 08, in the vicinity of the Simon Bolivar High School, in front of the house of the Copei Christian Social Party.
• Later, another young man, César Contreras, 14, a student at the Simón Bolívar High School in San Cristóbal, died on May 13 of that year, as a result of shots fired by the AD and Copei gangs, without being reviewed by the Catholic Diary.
• For several days, the Catholic Journal and others with national circulation, spread misleading species about these murders, which were totally denied.
• The smokescreen was short-lived, as the court in the case determined the truth of what happened.
• Despite the clarification of the case, the newspapers that used their battery of lies to protect the murderers of AD and Copei did not retract this case or any other similar case.

Mazo News Team