Carlos Lanz was a university professor passionate about leftist causes, whose name was in the public arena for almost two years after his mysterious disappearance on August 8, 2020.
Despite the uncertainty and the hypotheses that have arisen since 2020, this Wednesday the Attorney General of the Republic, Tarek William Saab, revealed what had happened to Lanz: he was murdered by assassins under the intellectual authorship of his wife, Mayi Cumare, to later be dismembered and devoured by pigs on a farm in Cojedes.
A leftist militant since he was young, Carlos Lanz was born on July 3, 1946 in Upata, in the Piar municipality of Bolívar state.
During his life he was characterized as a supporter of revolutionary ideas and the leftist movement. In fact, he was a former guerrilla and participated in 1976 – when he was thirty years old – in the kidnapping of the American William Frank Niehous, president of the Owens-Illinois company, a manufacturer of glass containers.
Lanz, who studied sociology at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), was imprisoned in 1977 as a suspect in the Niehous kidnapping. However, his stay as a prisoner in the San Carlos barracks in Caracas was not in vain: there he wrote the book “The Niehous case and administrative corruption.”
After leaving prison in 1985, Lanz did not set aside his revolutionary conviction and was characterized by criticizing the repression and the two-party government model of Democratic Action and Copei.
With the coming to power of the Bolivarian revolution led by Hugo Chávez, in 1998, Lanz began to contribute his ideas for the construction of the new political movement that was underway in Venezuela.
This is how he headed the position of coordinator of the educational Constituent Assembly from 1999-2001 and creator of the Todos las Manos a la Siembra program, which raised food production in cities and spaces far from the countryside.
The professor, who is also known for being the founder of the University Pedagogical Movement, held important positions during the Chávez administration. Between 2005 and 2007 Lanz presided over the Aluminum company of Caroní, one of the most important of the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG) of the native state of Bolívar.
Years later he dedicated himself to teaching and training young people in political-ideological matters. After knowing what really happened with Lanz, many people remember him as an influential person in revolutionary causes.
One of them is the Minister for the Communes, Jorge Arreaza, who said that his “guidance and wisdom will always be lights for the struggles and victories of the peoples.”
His son Alex Lanz remembered his father as a hero and stressed that, despite his death, he never gave in to acts of corruption.
Until now, 13 people have been arrested for their involvement in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Professor Carlos Lanz, who only had one demand for those who killed him: not to die on his knees.
“If they are going to kill me, let it be on my feet,” Lanz would have said, according to the confession of Glenn Castellanos, Mayi Cumare’s lover.
For his part, the first vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, expressed his solidarity with the relatives of Professor Carlos Lanz on Wednesday.
«To the true family, our hug, recognition, but also our solidarity with the very serious moments they have experienced. The memory of Carlos Lanz is shining like the sun of this country. No one can stain it, I wish they could ask Carlos Lanz for forgiveness, “said Cabello on his program Con el Mazo Dando
