Published at: 08/01/2025 09:00 PM

She was admitted dead to the Maturín Joven Hospital accused of being linked to guerrilla activity: she showed signs of beatings and torture

(EL NACIONAL and RUPTURA, January 06, 1974)

• The murder and disappearance of Miriam Barreto Merchán, an 18-year-old peasant girl, occurred on January 3, 1974, when a commission from the Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) moved to the Bejucales hamlet, near Jusepín, edo. Monagas, with the purpose of stopping her, together with other alleged guerrilla collaborators.
• From there, they were transferred to the Theater of Operations No. 4 (TO-4), located in the Potrerito Operations Command, Caicara municipality, Cedeño del Edo district. Monagas, where she was subjected to intense interrogation.
• After hours of physical abuse, outrage and torture, he died. Now dead, the agents took her out of the anti-guerrilla camp and abandoned her in the middle of a road near the hamlet where she was arrested, to simulate a roll-up.
• When the neighbors and acquaintances proceeded to rescue her, to give her a wake, the TO-4 agents kidnapped her body and handed it over to a commission of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ), an auxiliary justice body that proceeded to file a false report stating that, “as a result of nerves”, the 18-year-old girl “died of a heart attack while being questioned”.
• Later, she was buried in an unknown place in the Jusepín cemetery, where she remains missing to this day.
• Miriam Barreto Merchán is one of the thousands of women and men who were subjected to forced disappearance in Venezuela.
• The savage torture and rape to which she was subjected were witnessed by those peasants who were arrested next to her, who were able to hear the peasant woman's screams for long hours, until the torture room was silent.
• To deepen the repression unleashed against that rural area, the Social Christian government of Rafael Caldera, decreed a state of siege in Bejucales, to quell the protests they were demanding for the atrocities committed.
• This occurred in the context of the suspension of constitutional guarantees that protected the right to life, the right to the inviolability of the home, to be assisted by lawyers they trusted, to be tried by natural judges, the right to assembly and to peacefully hold street protests.
• Family members and residents of that town were subject to intimidating warnings to refrain from reporting to the press and to prevent them from going to the justice system.
• Recently, the Juan Chacón Lanza Foundation, in honoring the young peasant woman, Miriam Barreto, took steps to locate her remains.
• On November 3, 2015, the Attorney General's Office launched, before the Supreme Court of Justice, a constitutional review of the case for the purpose of exhuming the alleged remains of the victim in Jusepín, which proved unsuccessful.
• Miriam Barreto Merchán was born in 1955, in the town of Bejucales, near Jusepín, in the municipality of Cedeño del Edo. Monagas.
• He left behind two orphaned children, Arquimides José (2 years old) and Elizabeth Coromoto (8 months old), who at the time of their mother's arrest were abandoned and locked up in the humble ranch where they lived, until the neighbors managed to rescue them.

Mazo News Team