Published at: 17/12/2025 09:00 PM

(El Nacional and What's Happening in Venezuela, December 15, 1964)

• 61 years ago, on December 14, 1964, Argimiro Gabaldón was taken to the Health Center in El Tocuyo, edo, with a bullet in the chest. Lara, where she died when doctors tried to save her life in the operating room.
• Days before, a statement from the Government of Raúl Leoni was published in all the media, in which he put a price on his life.
• The referee offered a reward to the person who handed over the body or provided information that would lead to the capture of Commander Carache.
• Only a government as cowardly, as mediocre, as miserable and as low as Leoni's, could exert such anger towards a hero of the gigantic spiritual stature and intellectual stature of Argimiro Gabaldón.
• Leoni was offering Bs 15,000 ($3,500) for the head of someone who feared so much alive. A miserable amount, which would serve to allay the restlessness of a lackey president and calm the murderous nerves of a leader subservient to the empire.
• Leoni's cowardice became evident when, on the eve of Argimiro Gabaldón's birthday, he ordered the kidnapping of his two youngest children, the children Alejandro and Tatiana, aged 6 and 8, in addition to his sister-in-law, on July 3, 1964, carrying out a brutal police raid on his family home in Barquisimeto, edo. Lara.
• Throughout the morning, the two children were arrested at the DIGEPOL headquarters in Barquisimeto and were subjected to intense interrogation and threatened to harm their father. All these humiliations against Tatiana and Alejandro Gabaldón were carried out by agents of Leoni's political police.

Portrait of Commander Carache:

• He was born on July 15, 1919, at Hacienda Santo Cristo, owned by his father General José Rafael Gabaldón. Along with his younger brother, Edgar, he began his studies with the Marxist-oriented professor Arturo Simonet.
• The first books with which he learned to read and write were the works of José Martí, the Apostle of Cuba.
• He lived very closely the revolutionary tradition of his father, General Gabaldón, a man of one word, an example that always served as a reference, admiration and respect.
• With the farm workers, he learned the martial dances of Larense folklore, that fencing of the garrote that is El Tamunangue.
• He was an outstanding athlete, formidable baseball pitcher, excellent boxer, tennis player, good swimmer and hiker.
• He also stood out as a painter, sculptor, teacher of literacy, poet, journalist, and farmer, always working with peasant families.
• In 1938, he was expelled from Liceo Andrés Bello for organizing and leading a strike in support of the Venezuelan Student Federation (FEV).
• In 1939, he obtained his bachelor's degree with the presentation of a thesis entitled: “The Philosophy of Democritus”.
• With Argimiro, the revolutionary tradition of the anti-Gomecist guerrilla leaders was linked to the lessons learned in the books of José Martí, Simón Bolívar and Carlos Marx.
• He was a sharp and intelligent speaker and polemicist who liked to refute conservative theses with the content of his readings, almost all of which were banned by the Gómez dictatorship.
• During the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, he organized the first agricultural cooperatives in the mountains of the state of Lara. He set up a clandestine printing press in Las Cuibas, where the first newspapers of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) were published and a clandestine radio station, Radio Liberación, which broadcast with teams, reporters, screenwriters, storytellers and mobile collaborators.
• In 1959, it hosted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda for five months, with whom he toured several corners of Venezuela. During his stay in Santo Cristo, Neruda wrote several poems, including: “A Song to Bolivar”, “Miranda Dies in the Fog” and “Ode to the Names of Venezuela”.
• When he decided to go to the guerrillas, Commander Carache had 22 years of communist militancy. Previously, he did an in-depth study of traditional methods of political action, with an emphasis on university youth organizations that were flourishing and giving their lives in the mountains.
• “There are enough mountains here” also decreed from eternity by Commander Carache, together with Immortal Commander Hugo Chávez, from the Larense, Barinas and Edo mountains. Portuguese where he learned to fight. Those who have fallen in the field of honor never die.

Mazo News Team