Published at: 17/12/2025 09:00 PM

(What's happening in Venezuela, March 1966)

• About six months after the arbitrary arrest, without a court order, of the leaders César Burguillos and Donato Carmona, the weekly What's Happening in Venezuela? , asked:
  • What happened to the communist leaders César Burguillos and Donato Carmona? The question remained up in the air and even today, six decades later, it remains unanswered.
  • The truth is that some time later it became known that on December 11, 1965, 60 years ago, both were tortured and shot while being held in the death camp of Cachipo, edo. Monagas, known as the Theater of Anti-Guerrilla Operations No. 4 (TO4).
• They were removed from Cachipo by a commission led by Lieutenant Ildemaro Sarmiento, accompanied by the agent of the Armed Forces Intelligence and Information Service (SIFA), Roberto Valdés, alias Velutini. They ordered Carmona and Burguillos to dig their own graves, to which they categorically refused. They were shot at a place near Caño Cruz, in Monagas.

Context:

• In the time of Raúl Leoni, the forced disappearance of political leaders was a tool of terror and uncertainty. Erasing all traces and preventing investigations was perpetuated during the 40 years of Representative Democracy.
• As of today, during the revolutionary governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, investigations have been reopened within the framework of the imprescriptibility of crimes against humanity committed between 1958 and 1999 against more than 13,000 students, peasants, trade union leaders and left-wing politicians. Of these, nearly 3,000 cases have not yet been clarified.

Mazo News Team