Operation Daktari: 21 years after Uribe's terrorist attempt defeated by the Bolivarian Revolution

Published at: 09/05/2025 09:32 AM

It was 2:30am on Sunday, May 9, 2004, when officials from the extinct Police Intelligence Directorate (DISIP) and the Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) entered the Daktari Estate, located between the municipalities of Miranda Baruta and El Hatillo (near Caracas), to arrest 153 Colombian paramilitaries who were planning to assassinate Commander Hugo Chávez Frías.

After almost a year of investigations, a special actions group located the terrorist conclave that had used the farm, owned by Rodolfo Alonso, brother of actress María Conchita Alonso, as a training ground to carry out the “mission” of assassinating the Head of State, by order of the country's opposition groups.

The paramilitaries planned to carry out the attack on May 12, two days later, the elite group would assassinate Chávez during a dinner with bankers in La Casona, simultaneously storming the Miraflores Palace and a group would break into the weapons depots located in the Regional Command No. 5 of the National Guard and the La Carlota air base. An aviation officer would hijack an aircraft to bomb the government headquarters. That was the model of the assassination plan, fortunately frustrated by the timely and decisive action of the Venezuelan authorities.

It should be noted that in addition to Venezuelan opposition politicians, the government of the former president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, was also aware of this immoral operation. The statements of the former IT director of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), Rafael García, later confirmed this.

After that revelation, the Colombian Foreign Ministry reported that 28 of those captured on the Daktari farm had served in military service in Colombia. Bogotá's silence on the case at that time predisposed relations with Venezuela.

MIPPCI/Mazo News Team