Published at: 25/03/2026 09:00 PM

“I ACTED WITH THE POLICE... YOU GUYS SETTLE WITH THE COURTS” (CAP)

(Clarín, March 18, 1963)

• On March 18, 1963, the leader Manuel Mujica, of the Revolutionary Nationalist Party (PRN), formerly AD-opposition, was assassinated in San Felipe, edo. Yaracuy, by a State Police officer.
• Student Manuel Mujica was shot in the back by a San Felipe Police officer while removing a poster of presidential candidate Raúl Leoni.
• In protest, the Yaracuyan people took to the streets and thousands of people attended the burial of Manuel Mujica.
• During the burial, members of the armed gangs of Democratic Action (AD) attacked other leaders of the PRN and injured the president of the Legislative Assembly of the edo. Yaracuy, Domingo Barrios, and Mrs. Mercedes Quintana, who was seriously wounded by seven bullets that kept her between life and death for several weeks.
• During the second division of AD, internally commanded by the AD-Opposition group, the extreme right or Old Guard sector, under orders of Rómulo Betancourt, turned its armed gangs and police officers against its former party partners.
• The then Minister of Internal Relations, Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP), in a press statement, justified this murder by endorsing the death of anyone who dared to touch the posters, banners and/or posters of AD, stating: “I ACT WITH THE POLICE... YOU SETTLE WITH THE COURTS”.
• In that election year, the Tired Oxen Party, as AD was then colloquially known, unleashed a wave of violence that took the lives of 21 young people, who were killed by the repressive forces of the government, including:
  • Nabor Díaz, killed in the back when a policeman shot him in Cabudare, edo. Lara.
  • Albertina Núñez, 24, was murdered by agents of the Municipal Police of Caracas in El Calvario del Prado de María.
  • Moisés Salvador Meléndez, 20, was shot dead in Los Mecedor, in the Puerta Caracas sector.
  • José López, 22, was shot down by police officers on San Martín Avenue in Caracas.
  • Antonio Henry Rojas, 24, massacred in Lídice.
  • Lucía Vaamonde, 24, died in the Salas Post, after being injured by the police in San Agustín.
  • Ángel Bosque, was shot in El Guarataro.
• In this second division of the so-called People's Party (AD), the cruelty was against the militants of the PRN (formerly AD-Opposition).
• The symbolic white card of AD was left in the hands of the PRN. The entire senior staff of the AD CEN went with the Yaracuyan leader Raúl Ramos Jiménez, the Guiana Manuel Alfredo Rodríguez, Héctor Vargas Acosta, Manuel García Mackle, Manuel Vicente Ledezma, the Cojedeño historian José Carrillo Moreno, attracting the young leader José Vicente Rangel to their ranks and other leftist revolutionaries.
• The PRN, with a popular socialist orientation, had an active life in hiding and despite the persecution to which it was subjected, it won a significant number of seats in both Houses of the National Congress in the 1963 elections.

Mazo News Team