Published at: 11/03/2026 09:00 PM

(CLARÍN, March 8, 1963)

• On March 5, 1961, Julián Torres, 37, a trade union leader and member of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), was assassinated by agents of the Municipal Police of Barquisimeto, edo. Lara and members of the armed gangs of AD.
• Previously, Torres was subjected to a brutal beating and torture session. Later they strafed him and left his body lying on a street next to Plaza Bolívar in that city.
• At the time of the wake, held on a humble ranch, “Commander Carache” Argimiro Gabaldón was present to describe the singular cruelty with which Julián Torres was murdered, stating the following:

“Come on in, gentlemen, no one has died here, we are barely watching Julián Torres, a man of the people, a discontent, one of those who are murdered every day because they think, because they don't accept the mendrugo for good reason, because it burns the paleness of the boys and hurts their souls with misery.

Come on in Gentlemen, come on, no one has died here, we are barely watching Julián Torres, last night he was killed, all the blows in front of him, three shotguns shot point-blank from the face to the feet.

Who knows how many blows and on the ground, the cowards, after his death, kicked him up on top of the pool of blood.

They doubted his death and were vicious, because they know that his cause is not killed because it grows with the shed blood and becomes strong with the breath that escapes...”.

• Julián Torres left a widow and 14 children, who were solemnly poor, because of the absence of the only breadwinner in that family.
• A year after his death, the newspaper CLARÍN, in March 1963, reported that his perpetrators were traveling freely through Barquisimeto and the entire region, as if nothing had happened, under the protection of the governor of Lara, Eligio Anzola Anzola, founder of AD and minister of Internal Relations during the disastrous Adeco three-year period (1945-1948).
• For 40 years (1959-1998) this crime was ignored by all the governments of the Fourth Republic. A period in which justice was conspicuously absent for thousands of cases like this.

Mazo News Team