Published at: 18/06/2025 09:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL, June 13, 1959)

• On Friday, June 12, 1959, an 18-year-old school teacher was shot to death and two workers were seriously injured at gunshots, when the head of the Bolivar City Garrison ordered the troops to open fire on a demonstration gathered in front of the local court, protesting the unusual acquittal that the Public Prosecutor, César Augusto Shoen, read, granting immediate release to four murderers and tormentors of the extinct Homeland Security.
• The event occurred shortly after five in the afternoon, when Lieutenant Colonel José Antonio Silva Niño, carrying a machine gun, at the head of 40 soldiers, gave the order to shoot at a crowd of more than 3,000 people who prevented the thugs from leaving the court.
• Soldiers opened fire at the protesters' refusal to disperse. As the crowd broke up, the bleeding bodies of Aurelia Pérez Pulido (18 years old), Juan Soto (25 years old) and Antonio Obuena (23 years old) appeared lying on the floor. All were taken to the Central Hospital of Ciudad Bolívar on an emergency basis.
• In that health center, after 11 p.m., teacher Pérez Pulido died from gunshot wounds she received at the demonstration. She was the first woman murdered by the government of Romulo Betancourt.
• Aurelia Pérez Pulido was a renowned leader of the Communist Youth of Venezuela and the impact of her assassination produced immense protests across the country, especially in the working-class and popular areas of San Félix, edo. Bolívar

BACKGROUND:

• Homeland Security (S.N.) was created in 1946, during the first government of Rómulo Betancourt, after the coup d'etat of October 18, 1945 that overthrew the distinguished General Isaías Medina Angarita.
• During the Adeco Triennial (1945-1948), Betancourt's police strategy was to implement advanced methods of torture and political persecution, brought from the United States, never before seen in Venezuela. Among them, the use of the electric pick, drowning by immersion in buckets or pools, confinement and isolation in 2x2 meter “tigritos” and other methods that his new “special apparatus” of repression applied without reservation.
• Coincidentally, during his second administration (1959-1964), while elected president, Betancourt ordered the destruction of the S.N. Archives, which were to be given to the Coche incinerator furnaces.
• In these files, there were inserts, in many sheets and sheets, all the data of those adecos, who, in the supposed hiding, received monthly amounts of money, in exchange for confidential information and delivery from their dear “party companions”.
• Only a few files managed to be saved from the furnaces, which ended up in the homes of senior leaders of Democratic Action and Copei.
• Likewise, he assimilated to his new repressive body, the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), the former thugs of the extinct S.N.

Mazo News Team