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

(The Armed Struggle in Venezuela, author: Pedro Pablo Linares; Victims of Representative Democracy, author: Raúl Zurita Daza)

• Without a grave and without a headstone, like the more than 3,000 who disappeared from the Fourth Republic, the remains of Leonel Petit Vásquez and Higinio Ortiz, who were murdered by the State security forces on March 5, 1967, still remain.
• That day, 59 years ago, Leonel and Higinio were arrested, tortured, shot and to date disappeared during a military operation carried out in Quebrada de Oonto, near Hato La Baranda, in the national wagon that drives from San Carlos, edo. Fuck you, Acarigua, that's it. Portuguese.
• Leonel Petit Vásquez's mother, Mrs. Inés Vásquez de Petit, had been searching for her other son, Mario Petit Vásquez, who disappeared under similar circumstances on March 23, 1962. Mrs. Inés died of old age after going through all the offices and jails she could for years without getting an answer about the whereabouts of her two children.
• The same fate befell Leonel's first cousins, José Agustín Petit Colina and Amado Antonio Petit Colina, who were shot and disappeared by the government; the first by agents of the Armed Forces Intelligence and Information Service (SIFA), in 1967, and the second, on May 16, 1962, in the Yumare Anti-Guerrilla Camp, edo. Yaracuy.
• The mother of José Agustín and Amado Antonio, Mrs. Sixta Colina de Petit, did not give up her efforts to find her children, having in her hands written confirmation from the then Attorney General of the Republic that they had been arrested by SIFA. Many years later, Mrs. Sixta died, without obtaining an answer from the current governments regarding the final fate of her descendants.
• But even after the 1960s, the Petit Vásquez and Petit Colina families continued to be fiercely persecuted by the pacification policy of President Rafael Caldera and the subsequent Adeco Copeyan governments.
• On June 29, 1973, Esladia Vásquez, a 17-year-old pregnant girl, was brutally tortured and killed with a kick in the belly and a bullet in the mouth, inside her home, by agents of the Directorate of Prevention and Intelligence Services (DISIP), in San Carlos edo. Cojedes.
• In total, almost all the children of the courageous Petit and Petit Colina family were tortured, murdered and disappeared, by the bipartisan Adeco Copeyan dictatorships, in that democratic farce between 1959 and 1998; men and women who raised the flags for equality and social justice:
  • Carmen Petit
  • Rosa Petit
  • Dilcia Rojas de Petit
  • Mario Petit Vásquez
  • Leonel Petit
  • Demetrio Petit
  • Saúl Corona Petit
  • According to Vásquez Petit
  • Amado Antonio Petit Colina
  • Dimas Antonio Petit Vasquez
  • Leonel Petit Vasquez
  • José Agustín Petit Colina
  • Esladia Vásquez

Mazo News Team