Paul del Rio

Paul del Rio Canales (born 1943, died April 5, 2015) was a Venezuelan sculptor, painter and revolutionary. Paul del Rio combines modernism, cubism and surrealism to create enigmatic paintings that are usually a social commentary on the harshness of modern urban life for ordinary people, and their longing for a different life. Originally from Spain, his parents were exiled to France after the fall of the republic and then immigrated to Havana, Cuba where he was born. His family moved once more to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela his second year.

It was not as an artist but as a MIR (Spanish: Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria) revolutionary that Paul del Rio first came to public notice with the pseudonym Máximo Canales. In 1963 at the age of 19 as leader of a Venezuelan revolutionary group the Armed Forces of National Liberation (in Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, FALN), he seized the Venezuelan cargo ship Anzoátegui (13/02/1963). The ship evaded both the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy for eleven days before docking safely at Belem coast of Brazil.

Six months later he kidnapped Argentine football player star Alfredo Di Stefano at gunpoint from the Potomac Hotel in Caracas while his team, Real Madrid, were on a pre-season tour of South America (24/08/1963). The kidnapping was codenamed "Julian Grimau", after the Spanish communist Julián Grimau García was executed by firing squad in Spain that April during Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Di Stefano was released unharmed two days later close to the Spanish embassy, without a ransom being paid. The FALN had intended to use the kidnapping to bring international attention on the repressive government of Romulo Betancourt. Di Stefano played in a match against São Paulo F.C. the day after and received a standing ovation in the Olympic Stadium.

...
Wikipedia