Movement wants youth to mark pitched battle of January 12

Santo Domingo.- The Movement La Multitud today called on all Dominican youth to commemorate January 12 as an historical day, when words went with action to defend the Dominican people’s best interests with weapons.

It said January 12 is a day to remember because it was the date in which the revolutionary youngsters Amaury German Aristy, Virgilio Perdomo, Ulises Polanco Cerón and Bienvenido Leal Prandy (La Chuta), known as Los Palmeros, fell in a pitched battle that lasted hours 14kilometers east of the capital on the Las Americas highway, “against the punitive forces of (president) Balaguer’s regime.”

“They fell riddled with bullets in 1972 by the ignominy of the twelve years of (Joaquin) Balaguer, through his generals of gallows and knife. We The Multitude affirm this day as the day of ‘Heroic Resistance’ in the understanding that the sacrifice, courage and firmness demonstrated by Los Palmeros are worthy of admiration,” it said.

“These youngsters should be remembered and remain in the memory of our nation,” said Movement spokesman Johan Balbuena.

“The Commandos linked to the resistance of the Colonel of April, Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deño and his guerrilla project, which would disembark one year later on Caracoles beach, represents the purest youth of the Sixties, seasoned in the fight against the excesses of the Trujillo regime, who were also valuable actors in the events of April 1965, as is the case of Amaury German, leader of Los Palmeros and combatant of the constitutionalist resistance.”

La Multitud says the youth should demand the “right to the popular rebellion” against the dictatorships and the oppressions of the powerful.