Night of the Machetes

The Night of the Machetes (La noche de los machetes) was the name given to the massacre that happened on May 8, 1913, in San Fernando de Atabapo, Venezuela, where the assassination of the governor of Amazonas Roberto Pulido, his wife, and children, in addition to the massacre of dozens or even hundreds of people, as well as the assault on the Government House of the Amazonas Federal Territory, by colonel Tomás Funes and his henchmen. This began seven years of the bloody Funes' de facto government in Amazonas.

Background
The government of general Roberto Pulido in Amazonas was corrupt and questioned, since he was the largest shareholder of the Pulido Hermanos merchant house with which he dominated the exploitation and marketing of rubber in the area (of which San Fernando de Atabapo, capital of Amazonas at that time, was quite rich), combining their rubber businesses with State business.

At the beginning of the XX century the border between Venezuela and Colombia was abandoned by the Colombian government. In the area, the use of force to govern prevailed, which favored acts of violence such as the Night of the Machetes and the subsequent Funes mandate.

History
When Pulido increased taxes on rubber businessmen, Funes, a rubber trader from the Amazon area between Venezuela and Brazil, he conspired in retaliation to overthrow him with help of his henchmen, with whom he took by force the Government House of the Amazonas Federal Territory, located in San Fernando de Atabapo.

Among those murdered were family, friends, employees and officials of General Pulido. The number of murders is uncertain: José Alberto Alcalde counted the deaths at 65, José Eustasio Rivera wrote that they exceeded a hundred, while the historian and former governor of Amazonas Bartolomé Tavera-Acosta spoke of 130 in his book Río Negro, ethnographic, historical and geographical review of the Amazonas Territory. Lina Marcela González Gómez documented that there had been more than 400.

Consequences
It was one of the greatest challenges of the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, since Gómez not only had to accept him as a de facto ruler, but also addressed him as a "decent military man" and "particular and loyal soldier", later appointing as governor of Amazonas a candidate proposed by Funes: Pérez Briceño.

Funes, who was known as the Devil of Río Negro,  committed during his government and according to his own records, at least 480 murders, and enslaved indigenous inhabitants of the area, there are records that record the death of some 2,000 indigenous makiritare inhabitants due to their repressive actions.

The de facto government of Tomás Funes in Amazonas lasted seven years until his capture by Emilio Arévalo Cedeño, in which he was subjected to trial, sentenced to death and shot in full view of all the inhabitants.

In popular culture
The writer Rómulo Gallegos mentioned the event in his work Canaima (1935), where it is described as "the night in which the machetes illuminated the Vichada".