Published at: 11/12/2024 09:00 PM

(El Nacional December 9, 1972 and Al Margen, No. 21, December 1972)

• Hugo Alzolay, worker, poet, visual artist and chess player, 20, a second-year high school student, was shot between the eyes when a Metropolitan Police (PM) agent shot him 10 meters away.
• This happened while painting murals with slogans calling for the release of political prisoners on the corner of Morena Clara, in the El Manicomio neighborhood of Lídice.
• The official statement from the PM management, without any hesitation, confirmed that the agent shot because he was painting slogans on a wall.
• Hugo was the son of Rosa Alzolay, a nursing professional, a native of Caripe del Guácharo, edo. Monagas, who reported that his son, in addition to being a painter, poet and student, was not carrying out any illegal activity nor did he have a police record to justify the excessive aggression of the PM.
• The night before, on December 7, during a professional baseball game between the eternal rivals Caracas-Magallanes, Hugo, along with other teammates, dared to descend from the stands and walk the playing field of the UCV University Stadium with the slogan “FREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS”. The next night he was murdered.
• Hugo Alexander Alzolay was a chess instructor for children and was responsible for distributing the newspaper Despertar, an information organ of the Revolutionary Organization (OR).
• Manuel Salvador García Rojas, an agronomist, was shot to death in the Onoto-Zaraza Alcabala, while he was traveling inside a van with other people who were on their way to the town of El Chaparro, for proceedings related to the death of a girl.
• When Manuel Salvador protested the military outrage to which he and his family member were subjected, he was the victim of a rifle blast carried out by an Army “hunter”, even though he had already been given the order to continue.

Context:

• These harassment occurred during the first Government of Rafael Caldera, who during his administration carried out the dismantling of the guerrillas through the policy of pacification and appeasement of the student rebellion.
• That morning, Operation Vanguard took place in Caracas, which killed dozens of students and young people from popular neighborhoods shooting first and then finding out.
• Hugo Alexander Alzolay and Manuel Salvador García Rojas were two of those pacified in that two-sided five-year period that continued to resort to the excessive use of police force and student repression as State policy.

Mazo News Team