Published at: 07/05/2025 09:00 PM

(El Nacional, May 2, 1971)

• During the May 1 march in Caracas in 1971, the 22-year-old Benjamín de Jesús Terán Ruiz was murdered by a metropolitan police officer who shot him in the head.
• The perpetrator was an inspector of the Metropolitan Police (PM), identified as José Antonio Olivo, who arrived at the demonstration, accompanied by two other police officers, firing their regulation weapons at a group of demonstrators in the vicinity of El Guarataro.
• From that place, where the peaceful demonstration organized by the Single Central of Workers of Venezuela (CUTV) was gathered, the demonstrators began to march towards San Martín Avenue, where the young worker, Benjamín de Jesús, was shot and killed by the police.
• That same day, state police killed students Lugo Machado, in Maracay and Alarcón González, from the Barquisimeto Industrial Technical School.
• In an analysis at the time, lawyer José Vicente Rangel (JVR), denounced that “fascism in Venezuela does not represent the same characteristics of the classical model that originated it in Italy in 1920. But this Copeyan government, led by Rafael Caldera, cannot hide the fact that the deaths of these students and workers are due to the very nature of a government that defends the interests of an affluent class, cowed and frightened by the clamor of the demands demanded by the less privileged classes.
• The tendency of the governments of the Fourth Republic, JVR denounced, was to turn public order into a police expression, rather than a democratic expression. So, we see how in 40 years (1958-1998), the presence of public forces in the street became more important to preserve the privileges of a few, than the right to life of the majority.
• Later, during that May 1971, victims of State violence fell:
  • Marylin Teresa Names Hurtado: On Friday, May 14, 1971, during the peaceful demonstrations in El Silencio, agents of the PM attacked, blinding the life of this girl, while she watched the protests unfold.
  • On May 13, 17-year-old Freddy Enrique Ernesto Torres, while playing a machine at km 13 of the Pan-American Highway, was murdered by an agent of the Los Teques Police.
  • On the morning of May 14, in La Guaira, high school student Jesús Alberto Martínez Chacín died when a tear gas bomb exploded in his chest.
  • Antonio José Palomo Herrera, 34, a peddler, was intercepted in the early morning of May 12, by a PM agent, who shot him in the face and struck him on the spot.

Mazo News Team