Published at: 21/01/2026 09:00 PM

(WHAT's happening in Venezuela, January-June 1965)

• On January 16, 1965, under the government of Raúl Leoni, they were assassinated during an assault carried out by military personnel and agents of the armed groups of Acción Democrática (AD) on the hamlet of El Hato del Edo. Lara, the peasant leaders Rufino Terán and Omar José Mendoza.
• During this massacre, more than 100 peasants were arrested and transferred to the death camp known as the Urica Theater of Operations No. 3 (TO), located in El Tocuyo, edo. Lara.
• The shooting was carried out by agents of the Armed Forces Information and Intelligence Service (SIFA), in the presence of family members and members of the community detained there.
• The acting governor of the state of Lara, the adec Miguel Romero Antoni (1964-1967), was personally responsible for leading the paramilitary herds of AD to track down and murder peasants in those mountainous areas of Los Humocaros.
• Three months earlier, on October 21, 1964, during a speech given to the police and military forces stationed in El Fedo. Lara, President Raúl Leoni ordered: “You have the mission to liquidate communist subversion in the country forever.”
• Faced with this wave of arbitrary arrests, torture and murder of farm workers, the then parliamentarian for the Popular Nationalist Vanguard (VPN) party, José Herrera Oropeza, published a list of 60 peasants who were shot by the government's criminal gangs in the edo. Lara.
• After these complaints, mass shootings continued in that entity, in addition to the list of victims, announced by Herrera Oropeza, the following rural peasants and teachers:
  • Benjamin Montilla.
  • Jose Anastasio Alvarado.
  • Jesus Leon Vasquez.
  • Ramon Moran.
  • Roseliano Colmenares.
  • Isidro Escalona.
  • Dionisio Rodriguez.
  • Matías Colmenares.
• On that same date, the families of the victims, in a letter addressed to the parliamentarian Arturo Uslar Pietri, reported that a contingent of 5,000 military personnel had broken into their hamlets, committing all kinds of abuses and outrages against the defenseless peasant population, practicing methods of torture, raping women, razing villages and looting rural property.
• This para-police and military raid was also denounced by El Nacional, in its edition of June 8, 1965, confirming the death of three peasants who had been arrested by Army personnel.
• The victims were identified as:
  • Timoteo Colina, 43 years old.
  • José de los Santo, 42 years old.
  • Teodosio Arcaya, 17 years old.
• Later, the 62-year-old farmer José Rafael Cortez died as a result of serious injuries received during beatings inflicted on him by Army agents in an anti-guerrilla subcamp, located near Potreritos, Humo Caro Bajo, in the Edo. Lara.

Mazo News Team