Published at: 16/07/2025 09:00 PM

(LATEST NEWS, July 12, 1962 and CLARÍN, August 3, 1962)

• At 9:30 on the night of Wednesday, June 10, 1962, José Rafael Villegas, a 17-year-old mechanical student from the Industrial Technical School (ETI) of Los Chaguaramos, was shot down by agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL).
• This political crime occurred at the end of several student demonstrations, which were dispersed by the Municipal Police on Ave. New Granada, El Cementerio parish toll area, Caracas.
• At the doors of the Dancing Bar Granada, Villegas and two other colleagues, Porfirio José Ramírez and Manuel Gil, were rounded up while distributing political propaganda against the government.
• In those days, Rómulo Betancourt had suspended the Constitutional Guarantees. Therefore, José Rafael Villegas died gunned down for the crime of being a member of the Youth of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). He fell face down with multiple bullet punctures in his chest and back and, as seen on all the press covers, he was completely unarmed.
• His two colleagues, Gil and Ramírez, members of the Youth Front of the Democratic Republican Union (URD), also received bullet wounds from automatic weapons operated by the digepoles stationed around the bar.
• All seriously injured, they were lying on the floor and were admitted to the Car Hospital.
• According to DIGEPOL, the three young men were parked near the Dancing Bar Granada inside a Chevrolet vehicle, model 1960, which received more than 50 projectiles.
• The DIGEPOL radio patrol monitored the young people remotely from the first section of Ave. Real del Cementerio to the Dancing Bar Granada, in front of the El Tejar restaurant, where Villegas was executed.
• Although DIGEPOL reported, in its official report, that José Rafael Villegas, Manuel Gil and Porfirio Ramírez were going to commit “a massive assault” on that nightclub, none of the regular customers who were inside or the witnesses outside the premises attested to this.
• Later, when carrying out a search of the apartment where one of the young men killed lived, located in the blocks of Cotiza, DIGEPOL seized the following weapons:
  • Copies of the extremist Trinchera leaflet.
  • Copies of the underground newspaper Tribuna Popular.
  • Copies of the manifesto of a Popular Patriotic Directory.
  • Some writings containing subversive slogans.
  • Four checkbooks from the Committee for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution.
  • A copy of the Constitution of the Soviet Union.
  • As well as alleged weapons and ammunition that were never presented to the press.
• Manuel Gil and Porfirio Ramírez survived their injuries.
• José Rafael Villegas' sister, Sonia Villegas, was censored by the press, without allowing her to testify, about the reality of the events.

Mazo News Team