Published at: 25/03/2026 08:00 PM
(The Impulse, March 21, 1965; The Century and WHAT, April 1965)
In January 1965, the farmer Onesimo Mendoza was kidnapped by a police patrol in his conuco, located in Villanueva edo. Lara was forced to enter a wooded area where he was interrogated and tortured by agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL).
Later, Mendoza was sent to the Maracaibo Prison, edo. Zulia, under the charge of being a liaison and collaborator of the guerrillas. He was detained there for several weeks.
On March 20, 1965, 61 years ago, it was transferred to the headquarters of the Mayor's Office in Villanueva, edo. Lara, where he was shot inside a dungeon.
That same day, 19-year-old student Rafael Colmenares, a 4th year high school student at the Eduardo Blanco High School, was killed by a rifle shot fired by a soldier from the anti-guerrilla command, causing his instant death.
When Colmenares crossed a street parallel to the high school where he was studying, he did not hear the loud voice addressed to him by the soldier who, without further words, shot a few meters away at the humanity of the young passerby.
Back then, the edo. Lara was mined by numerous mobile anti-guerrilla units. In all of them, students, workers and peasants were tortured and shot.
If the person was arrested in the city of Barquisimeto, he was first tortured by agents at the headquarters of DIGEPOL, and then he was transferred, shot and disappeared by military personnel in one of the subcamps aimed at the extermination of dissidents to the government of Raúl Leoni.
If he was arrested in the camp, he was directly transferred to these camps to practice the same procedures.
The central anti-guerrilla command, from which all operations were directed, was located in Los Altos de Miraflores, in El Tocuyo, known as the Theater of Operations No. 3 (TO3) of Úrica.
The mobile branches or subcamps operated within a range of action that included:
The Virtues, in the Guárico area.
Las Palmas, in Expensive Low Smoke and Expensive High Smoke.
El Blanquito, in the Sanare National Park.
La Goajirita, near El Tocuyo.
Mazo News Team