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

(EL NACIONAL and LA ESFERA, April 2, 1965)

• On Thursday, April 1, 1965, at the time of the governmental coalition known as the “Broad Base” (AD+Copei+URD), in the midst of a peaceful rally called to demonstrate against the authoritarian and repressive measures of the government of Raúl Leoni, 26, was murdered by the police the Social Communicator and 4th year law student Miguel Ángel Guerra Leidenz.
• It was 5:00pm, when more than 8,000 people, belonging to the Progressive Anti-Broadbase Front, tried to mobilize from Plaza La Concordia to El Silencio; along the way they were brutally repressed by agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL) and the Municipal Police.
• Camera in hand, Guerra Leidenz was covering the popular demonstration for the weekly Justicia, of which he was director. That's when a police officer seized the camera and then shot him to death.
• Police officers broke up the demonstration by force of tear gas and lead, resulting in one death and more than 22 injured.
• On the day of the burial of Guerra Leidenz, pickets from the Municipal Police and DIGEPOL tried to prevent his body from being veiled at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). However, the firm attitude of more than 3,000 people who accompanied him managed to break the police siege and enter the university campus to pay homage to him in the Plaza del Rectorado.
• Along the way, 55 students were arrested and 15 others were injured, including Carmelina Rodé, a worker at the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), who received several bullet wounds from a digepol.
• In addition to Rodé, the leaders were also injured:
  • Rafael Serfaty
  • Antonio Lauro, musician and composer.
  • Manuel Alfredo Rodríguez, of the Revolutionary Party for Nationalist Integration (PRIN).
  • Jose Vicente Rangel (PRIN)
  • José Herrera Oropeza, of the Nationalist Popular Vanguard (VPN)
  • Raul Ramos Jimenez (PRIN)
  • Germán Borregales, of the Nationalist Action Movement (MAN)
  • Jose Manzo Gonzalez (PRIN)
  • Héctor Mujica, of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV)
  • Efrén Suzzarini (PCV)
  • The former President of the Republic, Wolfgang Larrazábal
• Senator and Vice Admiral Larrazábal stated:
  • “The Leoni government is responsible for this massacre... The Ancha Base government is responsible for the savage attitude taken against a peaceful demonstration and for the town where the police did not even respect the jurisdiction of the attacked parliamentarians...
  • Could it be that the Broadbase wants the people and the parties that oppose it to arm themselves to respond to it?

Context:

Raúl Leoni, to give evidence of legality to the electoral traps that led him to Miraflores and to silence the deaths that occurred in those elections, created a broad-based government, a new variant of the Punto Fijo Pact. During this Broadbase alliance, the following occurred:

• The bombing of rural areas in the mountains of Lara and Falcón, resulting in the death and execution of hundreds of peasant families displaced from their cultivated areas.
• The illegal landing in Maiquetía of several shipments of machine guns, rifles, pistols and ammunition destined for the armed gangs of Democratic Action (AD).
• A law was enacted to silence freedom of expression (Gag Law) under which the newspapers of Cadena Capriles were closed and the printing presses of El Nacional, Clarín, La Hora and La Esfera were robbed.
• A few days later, on April 9, DIGEPOL raided, without a court order, the building where the newspapers operated: El Mundo, La Esfera and Latest News, arresting Miguel Ángel Capriles, Eloy Porras and Víctor Simone. All identified by the government as engaged in conspiratorial acts.
• The newspapers La Hora, La República and La Verdad were also shut down. In the same way, the Valencia Regional disappeared.
• From Miraflores, instructions were issued to the police forces to relentlessly repress homes and take thousands of detainees without a prior court order, thus filling up, with more than 1,500 political prisoners, the cells and concentration camps inaugurated by Rómulo Betancourt.

Mazo News Team