Published at: 08/04/2026 09:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL, April 1 and 2, 1972)

• Between Friday 24 and Friday 31 March of Holy Week 1972, 21 people drowned and 55 lost their lives in road traffic accidents.
• Between Good Friday and the subsequent Glory Sunday, 41 people entered the same statistics for mortality due to immersion and road accidents.
• For a total of 97 vacationers who were unable to return safely to their homes during that Major Week.
• Moreover, in that same week of vacation, the very young 21-year-old television model, Tatiana Hainal Hartman, was murdered, a victim of police raids, during a PM operation carried out in Chacaíto, near the Country Club of Caracas, when she was riding a motorcycle like a grill and her driver did not obey the loud voice of a “cage” of the Metropolitan Police (PM). He was shot in the back, a victim of the premise “Shoot first and find out later”.
• Such were the levels of road insecurity, the lack of forecasts for bathers and the police excesses committed during the holy holidays and weekends of the Fourth Republic.
• What happened in those seven days in 1972 was the usual press headline that mourned Venezuela during those four decades, where government forecasting mechanisms to prevent tragedies were conspicuous by their absence and police brutality was very well organized.

Mazo News Team