United Socialist Party of Venezuela Activist Assassinated in Tachira State

Caracas, March 18, 2010 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Jorge Enrique Medina Delgado, a member of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), was assassinated in the city of San Antonio del Tachira, in the opposition controlled state of Tachira yesterday.

Delgado, a 51 year-old, school teacher, was a local leader of the PSUV and active member of the El Palotal community council.

News of Delgado’s assassination was announced by Ramon Maldonado, the chief of investigations of the Scientific Criminal and Forensic Police (CICPC) in Tachira. 

Maldonado said the incident occurred “when the victim was travelling in a brown Ford Maverick vehicle, near the municipal cemetery of San Antonio del Tachira in the Bolívar Municipality, where he was intercepted by two people on a motorcycle, who fired several shots.” Police are carrying out further investigations.

Delgado’s wife “was also wounded by two bullets, and was transferred to a hospital in the area, where she was treated and underwent surgery and is now out of danger,” Maldonado said.

Alexander Ramírez, a local councillor in Uribante municipality, and member of the PSUV’s political bureau said Delgado is the third PSUV activist to be assassinated in Tachira in the past six weeks.

The two other PSUV members assassinated were Enyelber Berrios, municipal education coordinator in Fernández Feo municipality and Cirilo Rubio, head of the local transport office in the same municipality.

Ramírez accused the opposition governor of Tachira, César Pérez Vivas, of being behind the escalating violence against PSUV members in the state.

Colombian paramilitary groups financed by Pérez Vivas are infiltrating the local security forces and generating fear in the border state, Ramírez said.

These paramilitary groups are exhorting local traders and street vendors, forcing them to pay a vacuna, or “vaccine” protection money and “many of them are infiltrators in Tachira state police, where they collect all the information and work with intelligence groups,” Ramírez alleged.

“The state is in total chaos and as a result we have suffered three casualties of our municipal leaders, events that occur after announcements made by the governor.” he continued.

“We hold the fascist Governor Cesar Perez Vivas, responsible” for the violence, Ramirez declared.