"Posada killed my father"
• Rosalba Alvarez García tells how the body of her father, Ramón Antonio Alvarez, was discovered on June 2, 1972, in Washington Park in Caracas • A few days before he had been detained by Luis Posada Carriles, the sinister "Captain Basilio" from the DISIP

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma International—

"POSADA killed my father," confirmed Rosalba Alvarez García, recalling how the body of her father, Ramón Antonio Alvarez, was discovered on June 2, 1972 in Washington Park in Caracas, just a few days after having been detained by Luis Posada Carriles, the sinister "Captain Basilio" of the Venezuelan political police.

"It’s 33 years ago now," says the 35-year-old lawyer, a Cuban woman with a Venezuelan father. "I never knew my father…They killed him when I was just two and a half years old. I never had the privilege of him singing me to sleep…He did it…yes, he did it… but I can’t remember it."

Posada Carriles was a DIGEPOL advisor and then Chief of Operations of that same repressive body which was subsequently transformed into DISIP from 1967 until 1974. Linked to the CIA since 1960 and trained in techniques of torture and repression, he was sent to Venezuela by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

"Only Posada knows the exact circumstances of my father’s death, as he led the operation to eliminate him," recalled Rosalba. "Posada was the one who directed it…They assigned him the case."

"In the book Los Caminos del Guerrero (The Ways of the Warrior) which has been attributed to Posada Carriles, he specifies that he was assigned to this case. There, he created a film-like montage, a journalistic piece containing police evidence. He explains what occurred, the way in which he solved the case because he was trained for that, he was trained to hunt, to kill.

"YOU CAN SEE HIS BLOODSTAINED FINGERS!"

"My father’s body appeared in Washington Park, in a car, together with that of another comrade, Rafael Botini Marín. The photos of the bodies were published in all the dailies at the time.

"They didn’t want to hand the bodies over to the families," explains Rosalba. But the family, thanks to many protests and demands, managed to reverse the decision of the judicial authorities. "They had no other choice."

"They had to give his body to my family and they were able to see…When my grandmother received the body, she could see it was mutilated."

The body showed clear signs of mutilation and torture.

"They were obvious. And the story that Posada tells in his book has nothing to do with the photos that he himself took. In the photos that were published in the press, you can even see his bloodstained fingers!"

"MY FATHER WAS A REVOLUTIONARY"

Ramón Antonio Alvarez was born on November 25, 1943 in the state of Falcón in northeastern Venezuela. "From an early age, my father knew about poverty, exploitation and discrimination against the indigenous population and all the matters against which he spent his political career fighting.

"When he was 13 years old, he went to Caracas, where my grandmother Carmen Guadalupe (whom everyone knew as La Doña) lived and he got involved around all these problems that he was experiencing, in all those movements, always standing out as an able, objective and intelligent person. This is what people have told me.

"My father was a revolutionary, a fighter, a man of principles and what he wanted was to make things better for his people. He was linked to all the just causes of that time, such a troubled time to live in."

Luis Posada Carriles confesses to his participation in the abuse and maltreatment suffered by those invited to the DISIP cellar in his book, published in Miami in 1994: "The police - whose main strength lay with their informers – detained, overcame and interrogated them using the toughest methods of persuasion," he cynically wrote, adding: "And I fiercely pursued them, very fiercely; many, many people were killed."

POSADA’S VICTIMS GET TOGETHER

Jesús Marrero, a Venezuelan economist, who was personally a victim and witness to these atrocities, recently announced that he was going to form a committee for the victims of Posada. Rosalba has already been contacted by the group.

Marrero explained to the press how he was kidnapped by Posada during the months of June and July 1973: "They tortured with electric shocks almost every night. They put us inside a metallic tank and beat us in order to stun us. They tied us to metal beds with no mattresses and pushed sticks into our ears, almost breaking us completely."

Meanwhile, Régulo Calzadilla, a former official with the Venezuela political police (DISIP) and author of the book Verdades Emergentes (Emerging Truths, Cuartel San Carlos), confirmed that during his time with the repressive body, where he occupied a high-ranking position, Posada "killed in cold blood with a smile on his face."

He revealed that he knows that guerrilla Rafael Botini Marín, the comrade-in-arms of Ramón Antonio Alvarez, was assassinated on Posada’s orders.

The Venezuelan government is demanding the extradition of Posada, currently detained in El Paso, Texas by the US Department for Homeland Security.

"HIS MISSION WAS TO ACHIEVE A BETTER WORLD"

Rosalba’s father was a commander in Punto Cero, a Venezuelan revolutionary organization. "His mission was to achieve a better world," affirms Rosalba.

"The memorial made by the people there to remember my father was destroyed some years ago because they wanted to erase the memory of the Venezuelan people, but generations of Venezuelans have to know who their heroes are and they cannot allow the distortion of their honor and dignity," recalled Roasalba.

"My grandmother had health problems which meant that I had to travel to Venezuela again where I made the most of the visit by initiating an investigation. I managed to obtain some documents and photos that had been published in the press."

Rosalba’s mother, Rosa García Artilde, died in 2000. During the final moments of her life, she reminded her daughter that she had to clarify the circumstances of her father’s death and demand that justice be done.