Published at: 03/06/2026 09:00 PM

The Prosecutor called for 14 centuries of conviction for the rebels

(El Nacional, Latest News and Elite, June 1962)

• Just 29 days after El Carupanazo, on Saturday, June 2, 1962, the civic-military uprising known as “El Porteñazo” broke out.
• According to the most conservative estimates, between Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 June, the number of victims exceeded 400 dead, 700 injured and more than a thousand arrested. Many students and soldiers were shot without trial, according to the order given by Romulo Betancourt.
• Between Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th, 135 people were shot while resisting in the La Alcantarilla sector. In this place, the courage demonstrated by the students of the Miguel Peña High School was outstanding.
• They, in solidarity with the rebellious soldiers, arrested four officers of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), whom they tied to the outskirts of the high school as a shield to prevent the campus from being bombed.
• However, government troops, under the command of General Alfredo Monch Siegert, opened fire in the La Alcantarilla sector with 16 war tanks and, at gunpoint, demolished the Liceo Miguel Peña, regardless of the hundreds of people inside.
• This was a real massacre. Students and soldiers were shot on the spot or shot “in situ” on the floor. All school facilities were bombed.
• At no time did the government accept the surrender of the rebel soldiers and students who had taken refuge there.
• The white flags of peace, which were waved as a sign of surrender, were riddled.
• Inside the Miguel Peña High School, those who survived the bombing were later put to arms.
• All the streets of Puerto Cabello were taken one by one and house by house. The families were violently evicted from their homes and the so-called “ñángaras”, branded as “suspects”, shot inside their homes.
• As a result of this carnage, the photo of Father Luis María Padilla helping a mortally wounded raised officer grabbed all the headlines in the national and international press.
• The so-called “Father's Photo” was manipulated by the government as a propaganda weapon to cover up the true number of victims, trying to hide the atrocities committed against the unarmed civilian population that was shot to death and the wounded soldiers who were executed on the ground.
• To all of these, the Military Prosecutor, appointed to prosecute the insurgents, requested 14 centuries of conviction for Navy Captains Manuel Ponte Rodríguez, Pedro Medina Silva and Víctor Hugo Morales, together with the leaders of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), who rose up in that heroic battle.
• In reality, it was a bloody four-day battle, with the unobjectionable advantage of the government that it had air and ground superiority. F-38 Le Sabre planes bombed the Puerto Cabello Radio station and Fortín Solano, the last stronghold of the uprising, nullifying the firepower of the rebels.
• For his part, Father Padilla, chaplain of the elevations, in the midst of the massacre, continued to work his way through bullets to treat others injured in the street, recommending that they be killed so that they would not be shot dead and thus help save their lives.
• Román Chalbaud, in his masterful film “The Burning of Judas”, makes a staging very adjusted to the reality of the events, in which priest Padilla himself acts giving credit to what happened.
• The author of the “Father's Photo” was photojournalist Héctor Rondón, a native of Bruzual, edo. Hurry up. His risky work was widely awarded the Pulitzer and World Press Photo Prizes.
• In 2005, the Post Office of the Netherlands (Holland) issued a special edition of stamps to commemorate the best photos in history, including that of the photographer from Apurea, Héctor Rondón, when he captured that historic event of June 2, 1962.

Mazo News Team