Published at: 28/01/2026 09:00 PM

(El Nacional, El Universal and Advance, January 25 and 26, 1994)

• On Tuesday, January 24, 1994, just 21 days after Rafael Caldera assumed the Presidency of the Republic for the second time and Arnaldo Arocha was governor of the edo. Mirada, the 16-year-old student Yéssica Díaz was murdered by police officers of this entity.
• Yéssica, a prominent student leader at Liceo Francisco de Miranda, was at that moment leading a protest against the rise in traffic and the precarious conditions of the schools, when she was shot in the head from a shotgun loaded with “poisoned” cartridges.
• The impact of the projectile, loaded with nuts, nails and nuts, was embedded in the skull of the young victim, who agonized for more than 24 hours at the Victorino Santaella Hospital until she died the next day.
• The indignation caused by the murder of Yéssica Díaz, in the immediate vicinity of Bolívar Avenue in Los Teques, soon spread across the country, generating protests in Caracas, Maracay, Guarenas, La Victoria, Mérida, Valencia and Trujillo. To add more fuel to the candle, the government chose to militarize those cities where police violence was once again present.
• The excessive use of force and firearms to contain demonstrations was a structural feature of the repressive policy of that presidential term, during which 27 deaths were recorded for the same causes, including:
  • Sergio Rodriguez.
  • Jose Luis Valera.
  • Vincent Antonio Lira.
  • Wilfredo Quiroz.
  • Miguel Lacabana.
• All of this occurred in the midst of an unsustainable crisis of credibility and political turbulence, shrouded in the financial scandal of “El Latinazo”, Larry Tovar Acuña's “Narco Presidential Pardon” granted by Ramón J. Velázquez, the fraudulent bankruptcy of 18 banks and the dismissal and imprisonment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
• Today, the memory of Yéssica Díaz has been converted into a symbol of struggle and resistance in the Altos Mirandinos. The auditorium of the Liceo Francisco de Miranda has been honored with his name and the echo of his premature departure still resounds in the streets, classrooms and corridors of Miranda's educational institutions.

Mazo News Team