Published at: 30/07/2025 09:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL and 2001, July 26 and 27, 1976)

• Regarding the assassination of Jorge Rodríguez, 34 years old and general secretary of the Socialist League, which occurred in the cells of the General Sectorial Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention (DISIP), the then Minister of Internal Relations, Octavio Lepage, cynically stated that the leader “died a natural death, as a result of a heart attack”.
• Jorge Rodríguez, El Maestro as he was known, was arrested on July 23, 1976 and transferred to the facilities of the DISIP in Los Chaguaramos.
• Two days after his arrest, he was found dead in a cell at that police headquarters. According to the autopsy protocol, his death occurred as a result of internal bleeding, rupture of the liver and other vital organs, as well as severe thoraxic-abdominal contusions.
• All this revealed that he was subjected to several “interrogations”, that is to say to severe torture and savage beatings by agents of the DISIP. In addition, the forensic medical examination reported seven fractured ribs, cigarette burns and strong electric shock marks.
• Direct responsibility for this abominable crime fell on the then Minister of Internal Relations, Octavio Lepage, and the President of the Republic, Carlos Andrés Pérez.
• The material and subordinate authors under the order of Lepage and Pérez were the agents: Guillermo Zambrano, Itamar Ramírez, Braulio Gudiño and Omar Riobueno Tremaria.
• Jorge Antonio Rodríguez was born in the city of Carora, Lara state, on February 16, 1942.
• He began his political life as a student leader in Democratic Action (AD), from which he separated in 1960 to form part of the National Youth Directorate of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).
• The MIR was a political organization that since its inception was practically outlawed and its members sentenced to the torture and forced disappearance chambers of the post-fixist governments.
• He graduated as a rural teacher from the Gervasio Rubio Technical School of Agriculture, in the state of Táchira. He then moved to Caracas to study Economics at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), where he acted in favor of the University Reform Movement, was part of the management of the Federation of University Centers (FCU), and then founded the Socialist League, of which he was its general secretary.

Mazo News Team