Published at: 14/10/2026 07:00 PM

“THE PARAGUAIPOA MASSACRE” Three Dead and Seven Wounded of the Wayuu ethnic group

Caused by the shooting of President Carlos Andrés Pérez's bodyguards

(THE NEW COUNTRY, 13 OCTOBER 1992)

• 34 years ago, on Monday, October 12, 1992, as part of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Discovery of America, Carlos Andrés Pérez's bodyguards (Presidential Guard) carried out a massacre that evoked the genocide begun by the Spanish conquest five centuries earlier, on October 12, 1492.
• Journalists and cameramen who reported, from the scene of the events, denied the government's hypothesis and reported that the vehicle of the murdered Wayuu posed no threat, since it was parked, nor was the driver drunk when members of the Presidential Guard machine-gunned them.
• Regarding this incident, then-President Pérez declared that it had been “a regrettable act of drunkards”.
• The shooting, caused by officials of the Regiment of Honor of the President of the Republic, occurred during the inauguration of the Binational Hospital of Paraguaipoa, located in a border area between the state of Zulia and Colombia.
• The then Minister of Internal Relations, Luis Piñerúa Ordaz, to justify what happened, declared that President Pérez had already left the crime scene, when his escorts machine-gunned the truck, killing the driver and two passengers.
• However, two days later, Pérez himself denied Piñerúa Ordaz's version, stating that he was present at the scene when the massacre occurred.
• He also stated that the massacre was justified because “the driver was also violating land traffic regulations”.
• Several people were also the target of presidential bullets, including a nurse from the newly opened Binational Hospital.
• The “accident”, as Piñerúa Ordaz himself described it, caused three deaths and seven children shot to death.
• The government also tried to censor the media that reported on the murder, with firearms, of a driver and two companions, in addition to the profusion of gunshots that wounded seven other people, including minors.
• However, in a few seconds, the news went around the world, under the version of an alleged attack. Later, the massacre was widely publicized as an unfortunate “accident”.
• El País de España reported: “It was simply an accident caused by a drunk driver out of the joy of the 5th Centenary holiday”.
• From the General Directorate of Human Rights of the Attorney General's Office (FGR), its manager, Father Luis María Olaso s.j., filed the respective complaints, providing sufficient evidence and testimonies.
• However, these were not prosecuted due to pressure exerted by the then Attorney General of the Republic, Ramón Escovar Salóm.
• In the same way, alluding to the misunderstood presidential immunity and to stash the massacre in a limbo of impunity, the government refrained from giving the names of the officials who killed and wounded citizens of Wayuu origin.
• The journalists who gave the scoop had to report what happened as it happened, none of them could understand that the tangle of shooting was due to a drunk driver who violated the stop order without stopping.
• Nor can anyone yet understand that the only remedy to prevent a driver from violating the stop order was to execute him, as a complement to liquidating two of his companions and “de ñapa” shooting multiple shots that would cause injuries to a group of minors.
• In the Paraguaipoa Massacre, the President of the Republic practically authorized and justified the death penalty for the commission of a traffic violation.

Mazo News Team