Published at: 24/09/2025 09:00 PM

(LA EXTRA, September 24 and November 10, 1964)

• On September 18, 1964, Rafael A. Urdaneta, an 18-year-old student, was passing through the town of Aroa, edo. Yaracuy, when he was arrested by agents of the General Police Directorate (DIGEPOL) and transferred to the Theater of Operations No. 5, located in Yumare, where he was savagely tortured.
• To top it off, he was exposed to the public in Plaza de Aroa, where he was savagely beaten by a crowd of Democratic Action (AD) militants, until he was finally killed with machetes.
• His father and brothers, shortly after Urdaneta was lynched, came to that town to claim his body, which was not handed over to them.
• Days before, on October 15, 1964, Rafael Urdaneta traveled to San Felipe, edo. Yaracuy, on a mission of the Communist Youth of Venezuela (JCV).
• It was the parliamentary block of the Popular Democratic Front, in the voice of its leader Jorge Dáger, and José Vicente Rangel, for the Nationalist Revolutionary Party (PRN), who put the government of Raúl Leoni and his Minister of Internal Relations, Gonzalo Barrios, in the dock.
• Dáger and Rangel were responsible for gathering all the evidence accumulated by various political sectors about the horrendous lynching committed by the executioners of the General Police Directorate (DIGEPOL) of San Felipe and an angry crowd of Democratic Action (AD) militants, who finally killed the young student.
• This criminal act, carried out on orders from the heights of power, was exposed to public opinion thanks to the complaints of both deputies, who from their respective seats presented a detailed report on the murder of the young leader of the JCV.
• Without a doubt, the crime of the student Urdaneta was one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in the history of State crimes in Venezuela.
• Throughout their administration, Leoni and Gonzalo Barrios kept a shameful silence, the silence of those who know guilty.
• Rafael A. Urdaneta studied high school at the Delgado Chalbaud High School in El Valle Parish, from where he carried out an intense work of political activism in the Cemetery and Car.
• On the occasion of the numerous arrests to which he was subject and the persecution of DIGEPOL, he decided to open operations in other cities, taking advantage of his capacity to organize cadres in rural areas, settling, before his last arrest, in the Morán District of Lara state.
• A brother of the deceased was arrested and the house of the murdered young leader remained under permanent police siege for several months.

Mazo News Team