Published at: 23/04/2025 08:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL, April 15, 1972)

• On April 14, 1972, Henry Vásquez Millán, 20, was beaten and killed inside a patrol of the Metropolitan Police of Caracas (PM), by agents of that repressive State body. This occurred during the first administration of Rafael Caldera,
• That day, Vásquez Millán, a Chemical Engineering student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), was arrested and forcibly mounted in a patrol car while walking around Plaza Las Tres Gracias.
• Inside, he was attacked by police officers, who gave him a savage beating, with the butts of their weapons. He died of suffocation while being transferred to the police command in Cotiza. From there, he was taken to the José María Vargas Hospital, where he was admitted without vital signs.
• This patrol was full of students, arbitrarily arrested, who witnessed and witnessed the mistreatment to which Vásquez Millán was subjected.
• The official government bulletin presented the implausible version that the young man died after “falling off a wall and being passed over by a crowd of students”.
• This version was denied by the forensic medical report that determined his death as a result of the beating he received, and due to mechanical asphyxiation when squeezed by the neck.
• The cynicism of the Caldera government caused thousands of students to take to the streets to protest this cowardly crime.
• In response, they only obtained more persecution, more injured students, more impunity from the authorities and more deaths, according to the malpractice and the manuals of political repression that characterized the governments of the Fourth Republic (1958-1998).
• Henry Vásquez Millán was born on February 9, 1952 in San Felipe, edo. Yaracuy; son of Vestalia Sequera and Santiago Rodríguez; studied elementary school at the Padre Delgado School and high school at the Liceo Arístides Rojas. In 1970, he entered the School of Chemical Engineering at the UCV.
• Following the search of the UCV, ordered by Caldera on October 31, 1969, violence and suffocating siege broke out against the university, as well as ongoing persecution and repression against teachers, students and workers.
• This police plan, called Operation Kangaroo, aimed to persecute and eliminate student leaders, generating chaos and anxiety within the UCV.
• Police officers were constantly shooting tear gas bombs and pellets at classrooms, an issue that affected the continuity of the academic year. Students and professors were under constant surveillance in the context of the transgression of the university campus, violating the autonomy of this house of studies.

Mazo News Team