Venezuelan authorities have drafted plans to investigate
more than 1,600 cases of human rights crimes committed by the nation’s security
forces during the period known as the Fourth Republic, which lasted from 1958
until 1998.
Venezuela’s Fourth Republic began when the revolutionary
overthrow of the military dictatorship of Marcos Jimenez in 1958 was co-opted
by counter-revolutionary U.S.-backed forces. Thousands of individuals were
tortured, executed or disappeared at the hands of the new political
establishment. Scores of progressive people were forced into hiding.
One example is Fabricio Ojeda, a revolutionary who fought
the repression by building a guerrilla movement that engaged the new regime in
struggle until the 1970s. Ojeda was murdered in the basement of the state’s
intelligence services in 1966.
These investigations by the National Assembly of Venezuela,
entitled the “Law of Remembrance and Against Silence,” are part of an effort to
uncover the history of Venezuelan people and their heritage of struggle.
