Published at: 23/04/2025 08:00 PM

(LATEST NEWS, June 18, 1966)

• On April 22, 1966, during the Government of Raúl Leoni, Víctor Eduvigis Tirado, was kidnapped by agents of the General Directorate of Police (DIGEPOL), a young member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and an administration student at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).
• The arbitrary arrest occurred when Víctor Tirado was leaving his work in the offices of Banco Obrero in Maracay, edo. Aragua, where he was last seen by his co-workers.
• From there, he was transferred to the Digepol cells, where he was tortured and killed, then thrown to the bottom of the La Mariposa dam, but it floated.
• Days later, on April 26, the body that was found floating was secretly buried by Digepol in the General Cemetery of the South, without allowing his relatives access to the act of burial.
• Two months later, his father, Jesús Tirado Medina, before the Attorney General's Office, obtained authorization to carry out the exhumation and forensic analysis of the remains of the murdered young man.
• However, although the bones analyzed showed severe signs of torture and multiple injuries, it was not that of Víctor Tirado, but of a much older person. That's why he's still missing.

Context:

• Raúl Leoni inaugurated the practice of disappearances, the persecution and capture of members of the newly founded Revolutionary Party of Venezuela (PRV) and the MIR. That year, more than 300 leaders disappeared.
• Víctor Tirado had previously been kidnapped by Digepol, on September 18, 1964. On that occasion, thanks to the complaint made by his political leader, José Enrique Mierez, Oswaldo Tineo and other colleagues from the MIR, he was released along with Eduardo Petit. Both were beaten up in the basements of the above-mentioned police force.
• Tirado was born in Caripito, Edo. Monagas; he was a member of AD, until the revolutionary youth of that party founded the MIR.
• As a student at the Liceo Monagas de Caripito, he met “Che” Mierez, president of the Student Center, with whom he actively participated in the clandestine fight against the bipartisan dictatorship of AD and Copei.
• His brother, Manuel Tirado, and his cousins Oswaldo and Luis Tineo Gamboa, were also victims of intense police persecution. The latter, Luis Tineo, was arrested and disappeared in 1965 in the area of Ipure, north of Monagas.
• Due to the betrayal of some traitors, 325 left-wing leaders were killed in 1966, including: “El Loco” Fabricio Aristiguieta, Luis Vera Betancourt, Félix Farías Salcedo and Emilio Michenaux.
• The young fighters were taken to the San Carlos Barracks: Astrid Fischer, Gladis Alonso, Guillermina Torrealba, Tibare Guevara, Carmen Castillo and Nelly Pérez.
• On the methods applied by the government of Raúl Leoni against left-wing youth, Epifanía Sánchez, better known as La Negra Aurora, recounted the moments of torture she experienced in 1966: “At about 2 in the morning they took us out for the National Guard Command, in El Paraíso... There we had eight days wearing leather and simulated shooting. My first tooth was knocked out with a glove. They tortured the boys they wanted... After they beat me they would give me an injection and then they would ask me: Do you want to pee? — and I would go out to the bathroom and when I went there I would only see the shadows of the boys. They, the tormentors, what they wanted was for me to fall where the boys were to be demoralized.

They didn't give us anything or water or anything, as after eight days a cousin who was a National Guard arrived and told my mother to be notified. We had nine days in prison, so they came asking me: What was José Vicente Rangel mine? — I don't know him — and they say well there he is and he says that if he doesn't see you, he won't leave...

... The next day they took me to San Carlos. When we arrived at the barracks, I knew that Fabricio Ojeda had been arrested in La Guaira and that same night Anayansi Jiménez, Fabricio's partner, arrived and the next day Fabricio woke up dead and that he had hanged himself. He had been killed there in The White Palace. (Source: The Armed Insurrection in Venezuela, author Pedro Pablo Linares, p. 314).

Mazo News Team