Published at: 29/10/2025 09:00 PM

Isabel Antonio Acosta Rios, Enrique Echenique, Francisco Lozada, José del Carmen Chávez and Trino Travieso

(EL NACIONAL, October 20-31, 1960)

• 65 years ago, following an editorial published in the weekly Izquierda, its authors: Humberto Cuenca and the economics student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), Héctor Pérez Marcano, were arbitrarily arrested and taken to the cells of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), located in the Las Brisas building in Los Chaguaramos.
• This violation of freedom of expression sparked deep indignation and riots across Venezuela, which were brutally suppressed by the government of Rómulo Betancourt.
• During these demonstrations, many were shot by police forces: the boy Alberto Piñate, 3 years old; the student Isabel Antonio Acosta Ríos; Enrique Echenique, 9 years old; Francisco Lozada; José del Carmen Chávez, Juana Carpio and Trino Travieso.
• Namely:
• Juana Carpio, who was shot in the head by an agent of the Municipal Police of Caracas, between the corners of Maderero and Bucare.
• The boy Alberto Piñate, a native of Caracas, a neighbor of the Sierra Maestra, died on the night of Saturday, October 29, 1960 after being shot in the stomach by a rifle.
• Isabel Antonio Acosta Rivas, a young worker and third-year high school student at the Liceo José Gregorio Hernández, was killed by the police in a demonstration near the Municipal Theater.
• Jesús Enrique Echenique, a nine-year-old boy, was killed by police when uniformed officers were shooting containing a peaceful demonstration in Propatria.
• Francisco Lozada, a security guard for the Propatria blocks, was also shot dead in the skull by the same agents who killed the boy Echenique.
• At 12:15 in the morning, in San Agustín del Sur, 26-year-old Alexis Enrique Rivero Muñoz was shot to the forehead.
• José del Carmen Chávez, 26, a native of Trujillo, was shot dead near block 7 on January 23.
• Aníbal Morales Boada, a young member of the Democratic Republican Union (URD), was shot by the police in Santa María de Cariaco on October 24, 1960, and died four days later.
• Ramón Antonio Revilla, a student at Liceo Andrés Bello, was shot down by police on his way to his dorm house.
• In that last week of October 1960, Luisa María Cazorla and Alexis Rivero Muñoz were also murdered by government police forces and armed gangs of the special Democratic Action (AD) apparatus.

Context:

• Until October 1960, no one thought of fighting against the government of Romulo Betancourt. The frustration of January 23, 1958 unraveled the patriotic fibers of those who, for 10 years, risked their lives in hiding to overthrow General Marcos Pérez Jiménez and give way to a democratic system, with ideological breadth and delayed demands.
• On the contrary, the Betancourt government further intensified repression and inequalities. In that October 1960, he ordered his armed gangs to promote a violent confrontation to prevent any kind of peaceful demonstration against his government.
• The armed gangs were joined by the police to suppress popular demonstrations and protests in neighborhoods. Betancourt did something never seen in the annals of state violence, sending army battalions to subdue them.
• This is how on several occasions these battalions, slipping stealthily over the neighborhoods of Caracas, as when an enemy position was taken, the soldiers advanced and suddenly, at the signal of a favorable flare light, they began shooting at anything that showed signs of life.
• Less than a year after winning the elections, without having yet outlawed the left-wing parties (the Communist Party of Venezuela and the Revolutionary Left Movement), in the best style of a ruler marked by arrogance and sectarianism, the right to protest, the right to free association, the right to freedom of thought and expression, and the same sacred right to life were abolished.

Mazo News Team