***** Esilda Ramírez wanted to be a housewife until Wilfredo Jesús went missing: he was the fourth of five brothers, a policeman, who was never seen again after June 1, 2004. That is when Esilda decided she wanted to be a lawyer. She wanted to become a lawyer so she could take the police officers to court. She means Wilfredo‘s partners, who presumably killed him and made him disappear. She started studying Law at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, Saturdays in the morning, six hours per day. Her mother encourages her: “Justice will be done when you graduate”, she says to her daughter. And in order to be ready when that happens, the surviving brother, Jose Martin, signed up three years ago to be a guard at the Santa Ana penitentiary: because those who killed Wilfredo, he says, are going to end up in prison some day. And that day, he will be there, waiting for them. Wilfredo Jesús Ramírez Oberto was 28 years old, had a wife and two children, 11 and 9 months old, when, suddenly, he went missing. By June 1, 2004, he had served eight years in the Police Armed Forces of the state of Falcon. His rank was officer and was part of the Antidrug Group of Command number 2 in Punto Fijo. The last news his family heard about him was that in the night of May 31, before he went missing, he was on duty at the command post in house No. E-23 in the sector of Los Semerucos in Punto Fijo. The following morning, he should have come home with food and medicines for his son, who was sick. But he never made it. “We suppose that Wilfredo went missing sometime that night between May 31 and June 1”, says Esilda. At around 6:00 p.m. that day, his wife Nigsa Martínez spoke with him and asked him whether he would return the next day. He said yes. “Don‘t be late, the boy is ill”, she said to him. And when she tried to call him later, at around 9:00 p.m., it went straight to voicemail. June 1 was a Tuesday. Tuesdays are not days to go out and party in Punto Fijo, not even to play dominoes with friends. But just in case, Nigsa
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preferred to wait until Thursday to tell her family that Wilfredo had not returned to the house where they lived together in the sector of Cruz Verde in the city of Coro. Then, they all waited a little more time, and on Monday, June 7, 2004, they informed Wilfredo‘s boss about the situation, which was just like reporting it to the police. “We went to the Coro Police Department to report the case to the general commander. Five days had passed since Wilfredo had gone missing and the commander told us that he had not heard about the case until that day. He said that he would devote himself to search for him and he asked us not to talk to the press, until he had control of the situation”, recalls Esilda. Wilfredo Jesús Ramírez did not have any enemies and he did not owe money to anybody. He had not received any threats either, according to her sister. The most serious injury he had sustained was a hit in the head with a gun, by a demonstrator in the middle of a protest that, as a police officer, he was ordered to control. His commanding officer did believe, however, that the “Punto Fijo’s mafia” had reasons to kidnap him, because by those days his command had carried out some raids and, according to him, some officers had been threatened. While that was a bit suspicious, Esilda Ramírez and her family thought that the Falcon Police wanted to find out what had happened to Wilfredo. ** Wilfredo Ramírez left home at 17, to serve military duty voluntarily. And when he returned, he had decided he wanted to become a police officer. Because it was easy money, he used to say. Because he got his paycheck on time. And because he had benefits–bonuses, vacations, life insurance—that he could not get in any other job. But lately, shortly before going missing, he no longer wanted to be a police officer; that wanted to retire because things within the Falcon Police were getting “fishy”, said Wilfredo to his sister without going into further detail. Everything that can be trafficked in Venezuela goes through the Paraguaná peninsula, in the north of Falcon. The whiskey coming from the Netherlands Antilles and the food going in the opposite direction.
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