Published at: 21/05/2025 09:00 PM

(Clarín, May 20, 1962)

• In the best style of the witch hunts, unleashed by the virulent anti-communist Senator Josep McCarthy, Romulo Betancourt, emulating his American idol, ordered the purge of 3,600 middle school teachers to eradicate them from the Ministry of Education's payroll.
• Just as the diposomaniac Josep Mac Carthy was responsible in the United States for ruining the lives of thousands of people he arbitrarily included in his infamous “black list”, the Betancourt retrograde deteriorated working conditions by leaving thousands of teachers dissident to the retarded line of his government unemployed.
• To this end, Professor Humberto Bártoli, head of the Parliamentary Fraction of the Democratic Republican Union (URD), stated: “The statement by the President of the Republic that files are being made for the ERADICATION of public education, for all communist or myrista teachers, is very serious.”
• Betancourt responded to the protests of thousands of teachers, with the expulsion from the ranks of the teachers of thousands of teachers from secondary and higher education chairs, as well as from technical schools, because of their political-party affiliation. For this purpose, a list of batisteros who filled those vacancies was imported. Among them was the former bishop of Havana, Moza Masvidal, to hold a position at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).
• Soon after, on May 23, 1962, within the framework of the same measures of political persecution, he decreed the mass dismissal of 34,000 public employees, leaving thousands of families on the brink of hunger and extreme poverty.

Mazo News Team