Published at: 03/12/2025 09:00 PM

(El Nacional, El Globo and Latest News, November 28-30, 1992)

• On November 27 and 28, 1992, more than 200 inmates were massacred at the Catia Retén, in a stampede provoked by prison authorities.
• The prison director announced to the inmates that “the government had fallen” and they opened the doors of the checkpoint so that the unwary inmates could flee to the streets. That's where the massacre began.
• The then governor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, was aware of the current simulation.
• According to the files heard in various national and international bodies (Inter-American Court of Human Rights), for crimes against humanity, Ledezma, as Governor of the Federal District, was co-responsible for what happened.
• Given the overcrowding, the prisoners did not hesitate to run away. At the time of this massacre, the Catia Retén held 3,618 inmates. Five times its installed capacity (630)
• Within a few hours, the Bello Monte Morgue was crammed with 115 victims of the alleged “prison riot”. The vans had to carry another number equal to the morgues of La Guaira, Los Teques and Guarenas.
• The survivors said that the prison doors were opened to stimulate a collective escape and then send law enforcement to open fire.
• The families of the victims reported that, in the midst of the tension in the city, the director of the Catia Judicial Detention, Eloy Mora, on instructions from the Governor of Caracas, ordered the guards to open the prison cells so that the inmates could leave peacefully. Therefore, there was no attempt to escape.
• At that moment, the same director of the prison, accompanied by members of the Metropolitan Police and the National Police, opened fire, blinding the lives of more than 200 prisoners.
• The Ministry of Justice admitted the deaths of 63 inmates. Governor Ledezma himself recognized more than 100 and the national press, based on morgue reports, estimated the number of victims at around 200.
• The statements, about this appalling carnage, offered by its intellectual author, are those of a communicational faker and customary criminal.
• Antonio Ledezma thus justified the bloody acts: “... There is no doubt that what was intended was to create chaos in Caracas and for more than 3,000 inmates to take to the streets, and that had to be controlled at the cost of many lives” (Diario El País, December 01, 1992). A confession on the part...

Other Ledezma crimes:

• José Gregorio Romero Uzcátegui “Flecha”: On July 2, 1992, inside the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), he was murdered by agents of the Metropolitan Police (PM), he was a third-year high school student.
• Verónica Tessari: She suffered a concussion and 15 stitches due to a tear gas bomb thrown by the PM that hit her head. His condition worsened because tear gas managed to penetrate the interior of the cranial structure. At the time, journalist Tessari said: “Finally, after almost five months in a clinic, with seven surgeries carried out on March 19 at the UCV, due to the police repression against the media. Venezuela continues to experience the same repression. I'm not afraid, I'm going back to the street, I need one more intervention, but I know that no one or any of my colleagues can do it with me, so soon we'll see each other on the street, working, reporting, to give information to all of you.”
• Journalist Tessari never managed to recover, she suffered months of agony and, after 7 surgeries, she died the night of Friday, January 15. No PM official was charged nor was anyone charged with this crime.
• Belinda Álvarez: On April 4, 1991, the 19-year-old student, president of the Center for Students of Social Work, was murdered outside the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Those responsible for this death were members of the PM acting under Ledezma's orders.

Older adults and kidney patients:

• On the morning of February 3, 1992, elderly and kidney patients were demanding medical assistance and the payment of pensions in front of the Miraflores Palace.
• Poli-Ledezma beat them and imprisoned them. The newly imported whale premiered with them. Some kidney patients died as a result of the impact of the wave of repression and due to lack of timely medical care.
• A few hours later, the Bolivarian insurrection of 4F broke out.

Summary deportations of Colombian and Haitian migrants:

• Journalist Víctor Majano also reported that “this short period of government was characterized by executive deportations of Colombian and Haitian citizens, who were arrested in the streets and expelled from the country within hours. Obviously they couldn't make administrative, much less judicial, opposition to the measure.” In the case of Haitians, they were arrested on the street and in houses where family groups resided and were taken to the Libertador Air Base in Aragua.
• There they were boarded in military transport planes and sent, barely wearing the clothes they were wearing, to the Caribbean nation. In the Haitian community, stories abound of children who were left alone in their homes while their parents were forced to fly to the country from which they had fled poverty and military repression.

Vagos y Malefantes Act:

• Ledezma used this legal fossil (almost textual plagiarism of a similar law by the dictator Francisco Franco) to banish hundreds of students and detainees in popular demonstrations. They were sent to the Penitentiary Colony of El Dorado, a kind of “Devil's Island”, where, in many cases, they were unable to survive malaria, dengue fever and prison abuse.

Mazo News Team