Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, married, one child, Civil Engineer, and a Socialist militant, was detained on March 14, 1975, at 1:30 PM, upon entering the property at Cumming 732, Santiago, where a Socialist Party meeting was to be held.

The house had been previously occupied by DINA agents, who detained him in the presence of some of the residents, as it was a boarding house where several families lived.

The meeting was to take place in the room rented by Sara Montes in the aforementioned house. That morning, Clara Rubilar, another Party militant, arrived at the location and left to run some errands at 11:00 AM. A few minutes later, the house was raided by a group of about 15 plainclothes agents who took over the house, detaining all its inhabitants and waiting to arrest anyone who arrived.

Apparently, it was possible to warn everyone who was supposed to attend the meeting at that location in time, except for Ariel Mancilla.

He tried to convince the agents that his identity was different, but one of the agents claimed to know him as a former classmate. Finally, Adolfo Mancilla managed to convince the agents that he had an appointment with another Party leader and left with some of the agents.

A few minutes after leaving, the agents returned to the house and informed Sara Montes that Ariel Mancilla had thrown himself under the wheels of a passing bus and had been injured; they were carrying a bundle wrapped in a green tarp, which they only removed at 4:00 PM.

Sara Montes, who was seriously ill with tuberculosis and had a hepatic cyst, was detained for several days but eventually managed to be admitted to a sanatorium in San José de Maipo. Ariel Mancilla's father received an anonymous phone call on March 24, informing him that his son had been apprehended.

The DINA had been searching for Ariel Mancilla for several months; his house had been raided twice, and on three occasions they had detained his spouse, Ema Fuenzalida Martínez, in an attempt to force Mancilla to turn himself in.

On one of these occasions, Mrs. Mancilla was held for 15 days at a torture center located at Londres 38, in the city of Santiago, and on another occasion, she was held in the basement of the Plaza de la Constitución.

Eliana Carolina Medina Vásquez, a 16-year-old student, remained detained in the basement of the Plaza de la Constitución alongside Ema Martínez in June 1974. In a sworn statement dated August 8, 1990, she maintains: "In that room, I was with Mónica Tellería, Manuel Carpintero, Luis Arenas, Enrique Norambuena, Héctor Gatica, and a lady named Ema, who was the spouse of Ariel Mancilla." She further notes: "I could tell from the interrogations to which the rest of the detainees were subjected that they were looking for Ariel Mancilla, whom they had gone to look for at his house, but had not found; they only had his spouse detained."

Ema Fuenzalida later visited the boarding house at Cumming 732, and some residents gave her details of the detention, informing her that Sara Montes had been taken away in an ambulance. According to testimonies from detainees, Ariel Mancilla was taken, injured, to the torture center known as Villa Grimaldi, located at José Arrieta 8.200 in Peñalolén, La Reina commune, Santiago.

Carena Zoila Pérez Martínez, who was detained from March 5, 1975, until June 14, 1976, and who spent 10 days at Villa Grimaldi, testified in a notarized statement on August 9, 1990: "On one occasion, while going to the bathroom with other detainees, Amelia Negrón handed her jacket to another detainee who was in very poor condition.

Carmen Santis identified him as Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, whose white shirt had bloodstains on it. On that occasion, from the guards' shouting, I learned that Mancilla had fled and that in his attempt, he had thrown himself under the wheels of a bus. It was the only time I was able to see him."

Lautaro Videla Moya, who was detained during the month of March 1975 at Villa Grimaldi, declared: "In my condition as a forcibly disappeared person for the month of March 1975, I was a witness to the arrival at Villa Grimaldi of Ariel Mancilla, a Socialist leader whom I had known for more than five years."

Videla continues: "Indeed, when I met Ariel at Grimaldi, I saw him extremely beaten, limping from one leg due to a wound and hematomas caused by the collision he was a victim of during his detention; I even had the opportunity several times to talk with him for a few minutes when they were moving him between the bathroom and the drawer-like cells we called 'Casas Chile,' and later between the bathroom and the so-called Grimaldi Tower where they moved him afterward.

These contacts were possible because his condition required another prisoner to help him walk."

Videla continues: "On another occasion, and after three days of the prisoners demanding that Ariel be given medical attention for his injuries and wounds, we managed to get one of the doctors in the service of the DINA to show up and treat him."

"After a superficial examination, the doctor decided to 'operate' on our comrade and requested the help of the prisoners to hold Ariel down while he proceeded to cut away dead and infected tissue. I was one of the comrades who helped in the work the doctor performed next to our cells on the floor.

Ariel's leg showed some form of gangrene; however, it was bandaged on the spot and he was sent back to the Tower, only to disappear from it a few days later and until today."

"Among the survivors who sometimes accompanied Ariel on his scarce trips to the bathroom is Gladys Díaz, who was also kept in the Grimaldi Tower and who currently resides in Santiago, Chile."

Fidelia Herrera Herrera, who was detained at Villa Grimaldi for two months starting February 14, 1975, states in a notarized declaration: "I also saw Ariel Mancilla, badly wounded and with a shattered foot.

For 3 consecutive nights, late at night, he was brought in a chair to the room where I was staying alone. They brought him to have his wounds dressed. His head was entirely bandaged; he spoke in a very low voice, and it was noticeable that he was making a considerable effort to be heard, and his entire state inspired tremendous pity.

It was heartbreaking to see a 24-year-old boy, whom I had known, and find him in such a state."

This statement was ratified by Fidelia Herrera before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Gladys Díaz Armijo declared before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in the 33rd session of February 1977, that "Ariel Mancilla was seen around March 20, 1975, in the place called The Tower, which corresponds to Villa Grimaldi, and that subsequently, around April 15 at 2:00 PM, he was taken out of that place of confinement and was never seen again."

DINA agent Luz Arce—who had been a Socialist Party militant and who, after her detention and being subjected to brutal torture, became a DINA collaborator—declared that she remembered Ariel Mancilla's name appearing among the detainees at Villa Grimaldi, although she had not seen him personally.

After Ariel Mancilla's stay at Villa Grimaldi, there is no further information regarding his fate, and he has remained disappeared ever since.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On February 27, 1974, before his detention, a recurso de amparo (writ of habeas corpus) had already been filed with the Santiago Court of Appeals, under No. 1473-74, as Mrs. Ema Martínez de Mancilla had received an anonymous phone call informing her "that your husband has been detained and we have him prisoner, and you will also be detained." The two raids that occurred at Ariel Mancilla's home were also reported.

This appeal was rejected on December 13, 1974, by the Fifth Chamber of said Court, considering that General Sergio Arellano Stark, Chief of the State of Siege Zone of the Santiago Province, had officially informed the Court on November 27, 1974, stating that "no case is being instructed against this person(s) in the II Military Court, nor is he/they detained within the jurisdiction of this State of Siege Headquarters." A similar communication had been issued by General Raúl Benavides, Minister of the Interior.

On March 26, 1975, Adolfo Mancilla Farías, Ariel's father, filed a recurso de amparo on behalf of the affected party, registered under number 408-75, once the detention had already occurred, requesting that a Magistrate visit the property at Cumming 732 to verify the details of the detention and that inquiries be made to the Ministry of the Interior and the DINA.

The Court resolved to request reports from the Ministry of the Interior and the Commander-in-Chief of the Emergency Zone. These authorities denied the detention of the subject of the appeal.

This Court reiterated the requests for information to the Ministry of the Interior and the Chief of the State of Siege Zone.

Both authorities sent the same previous forms denying the detention of the subject of the appeal.

One month after the filing of the appeal, the Court was requested to send inquiries to the DINA, the Chief of the Cuatro Alamos Camp, and the Ministry of the Interior.

On May 30, the Director of National Intelligence, whose name is not mentioned, sent DINA Official Letter (R) 3550/117 and requested that the Court send its inquiries to the National Executive Secretariat of Detainees.

On June 2, 1975, General Julio Polloni Pérez, Military Judge, reported that "the requested persons do not appear as prosecuted," and a list of names was detailed, headed by Ariel Mancilla.

This appeal was rejected by the First Chamber of the Court of Appeals on June 5, 1975, "bearing in mind that from the reports on pages 7, 9, and 12, it appears that Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez is not deprived of liberty"... "the filed recurso de amparo is dismissed...", with the records being sent to the Second Major Crimes Court of Santiago, "to investigate the possible commission of a crime regarding the disappearance of Adolfo Ariel Mancilla R."

On August 3, 1977, a new recurso de amparo was filed on behalf of the affected party and other forcibly disappeared persons, which was registered under number 399-77. This appeal was filed by François Mitterrand and other French figures and was sponsored by Louis Pettitit, President of the Paris Bar Association.

On August 9, the Court of Appeals resolved to inform the Minister of the Interior. General Raúl Benavides Escobar, Minister of the Interior, in confidential Official Letter No. 2850 of August 29, 1977, addressed to the President of the Santiago Court of Appeals regarding this appeal, declared the following: "...I must point out to Your Honor that this Ministry refrains from pronouncing itself in relation to the assertions made by the appellant regarding the subjects of the appeal, considering that these do not reflect reality, which is understandable if one considers that their permanent residence is located in Europe."

Furthermore, the Court requested its Secretary to certify the existence of other recursos de amparo regarding the affected parties.

On September 8, 1977, based on the records of the rejections of previous recursos de amparo "and what was reported on page 10 by the Ministry of the Interior, (that) the recurso de amparo filed by Mr. Louis Pettitit..." on behalf of Mancilla Ramírez Rodolfo, and others, is rejected.

On June 11, 1975, the Second Major Crimes Court of Santiago opened case file 83.561-5 for alleged disappearance, with the records sent by the Santiago Court of Appeals.

This Court resolved to instruct a summary proceeding and sent official letters to the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defense, DINA, SENDET, the Cuatro Alamos Camp, and the Chief of the State of Siege Zone.

Mr. Adolfo Segundo Mancilla Farías, the father of the affected party, was called to testify and provided all the information he had regarding his son's detention, adding that the psychological pressure against his daughter-in-law had ended, "since it would seem they achieved their objective."

The responses from the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defense, and SENDET reiterated that the affected party was neither detained nor prosecuted.

For its part, the General Directorate of Investigations issued report 2.247 on July 1, 1975, in which it informs the Court of the completion of several fruitless investigations and records that Mrs. Berta Soto Alvarez stated: "María Eugenia Montes, a person who also rented a room in this property (Cumming 732), more or less in the month of March of the current year, was taken in an ambulance because she was ill; I do not know to what place."

On July 29, 1975, Ariel Mancilla's mother-in-law, Mrs. María Julia Martínez Leal, requested that Sara Montes, who was detained and admitted to the El Peral Sanatorium, "who was the person detained together with the alleged victim," be interrogated.

On September 16, the Puente Alto Court of Letters was constituted as a Tribunal at the aforementioned Hospital, searching for Sara Montes, and it was certified that "...no person with that name appears registered."

On November 7, 1975, the presiding judge Raquel Campusano Echegaray declared the summary closed and temporarily dismissed case file 83.561-5, in consultation with the Santiago Court of Appeals, considering "That a crime has not been established in the reported facts."

On December 12, 1975, the Court approved the dismissal. Ariel Mancilla's family reported his disappearance to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which included him in its Report and communicated that the records were referred to the Fifth Criminal Court of Santiago under case file 83.561. As of December 1992, the aforementioned case remains in the summary stage.

Ariel Mancilla Ramírez has been disappeared since he was seen detained at the Villa Grimaldi torture center in March and April of 1975.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

A native of Viña del Mar, Ariel Mancilla Ramírez arrived in Santiago to study Civil Construction at the State Technical University (UTE), enrolling in 1967. Some of those who would become his fellow students and later his ideological peers—Luis Navarrete, Octavio Díaz, José Quintana, and Luis Casado—still remember him as an atypical young man with a contagious smile and a detail in his clothing that made him even more special: his pants worn above his ankles, revealing eternal red socks.

Ignoring the jokes, he would explain that this particular look was the detail that defined an authentic rock and roll dancer. In his case, “the best one in the Población Gómez Carreño and its surroundings.”

Although he initially remained on the sidelines of any political or student participation—perhaps due to his own family situation, as his father was a strict non-commissioned officer in the Navy—he soon expressed his interest in joining the organization in which most of his friends were active.

It was upon returning from volunteer work in the summer of 1968 that Ariel approached the young socialists with the intention of joining the organization. Although at first he continued to prefer dancing or imitating Raphael at pension parties rather than participating in meetings, that same year he became actively involved in the election for the Student Center of his program, the only one at the UTE that remained in the hands of the DC, a campaign that culminated in the victory—by only one vote—of the socialist candidate Franklin Ojeda.

Ariel Mancilla Ramírez.

From then on, Ariel would be characterized by a radical adherence to discipline and the fulfillment of party tasks, no matter how particular they might seem. José Quintana recalls an anecdote: “That same year, on July 26, the school cell decided to paint graffiti for the anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.

So that they would last longer, we would do them with tar instead of paint.” On the night of the action, only José and Ariel showed up, recalling that “the kid said we still had to follow through, even if it was just the two of us.

We were at it when some dogs started barking and then a gunshot was heard.” Ariel tried to calm him down: “Don’t worry, comrade, they’re just blanks.” When the second one came, which ricocheted off the same wall, Ariel, throwing down the cans and brushes, said: “The mission is aborted for today… and let’s get the hell out of here because those are real bullets!!”

Around this time, the JS (Socialist Youth) of Civil Construction at the UTE had joined in working territorially in the Third Commune, which encompassed traditional neighborhoods in the communes of Quinta Normal and Santiago.

Luis Navarrete recalls that Ariel was one of the most active in that work, which would allow for the expansion of the political and social influence of the PS (Socialist Party) to the workers of the Fundición Libertad—whose building today houses the facilities of the Universidad ARCIS—and to the high school students of the Liceos Amunátegui, Barros Arana, and 4 de Niñas, among others.

The definitive influence that pushed Ariel toward militancy came from Alberto Galleguillos, an old and committed socialist teacher who directed the Liceo Integral Nº 1, precisely in the Third Commune. It was a ‘sui generis’ educational establishment that during the day provided training for students expelled from other schools, and in the afternoons, it transformed into a true party headquarters where women, workers, and neighbors gathered, in addition to hosting all the activities and meetings of the PS.

Luis Navarrete recalls that it was precisely in that establishment that he and Ariel received their party cards from the hands of an old and beloved militant of the sector, in the framework of an emotional ceremony.

Although Ariel did not stand out for his height—which is why he was known as “Chico Ariel” (Little Ariel)—his friends envied his eyelashes and the particular brightness of his gaze, which—according to Luis Casado—made him very successful among the young women at the university.

During the first weeks of 1971, Ariel and most of his classmates were preparing for the second round of volunteer work with the ONSEV, an entity that the Popular Government had formed to coordinate the execution of these traditional summer operations.

Ariel had not planned to go that year but was helping with the registration of the young people who would depart at the end of that January for various locations in Llanquihue.

José Quintana was one of the leaders in charge and remembers that almost at the close of registration, a student from the evening shift arrived to sign up at the Student Center office. It was Ema Fuenzalida, a very beautiful student who immediately captivated Ariel, to the point that he “not only changed his decision not to go, but also appealed to our friendship to ensure that both of them ended up in the same camp.”

Back in Santiago, the courtship was consolidated. Ema also joined the socialist militancy at the UTE, where she would shine with her own colors. One day, the young couple surprised everyone by announcing that they were getting married.

It was not long before that actually happened: the wedding was a brief ceremony before a Civil Registry official, after which everyone moved to a house on Gran Avenida where they danced until late to the cumbia and tropical records of Quilapayún.

As in a secular and socialist ritual, both the bride and groom and their friends from the UTE discarded formal attire and arrived at the wedding wearing the olive green shirts of the JS.

By then, Ariel was already a great leader, loved and respected by all. In 1970, he served as an “intervenor” for the JS of the UTE, due to a conflict that threatened to distance two sectors of the militancy at that university: the “elenos” and the so-called “red militants,” led by Juan Gutiérrez.

Months later, in the company of Luis Casado, he traveled to spread the UP (Popular Unity) candidacy among the Mapuche communities of the impoverished coastal area of Osorno, alongside a young militant linked to rural work: Sara Montes.

After the triumph of the UP, Ariel collaborated actively in the success of that unprecedented process in the history of the left, which kept the eyes of the world on the country. He attended the XX National Conference of the JS as a delegate for the Third Commune and was elected a member of the Central Committee, later assuming the National Secretariat of Mass Fronts.

Alongside his activities in the leadership of the JS, he became professionally linked to the Department of Studies of the CORVI (Housing Corporation). Together with several of his generation’s peers, he also collaborated in the creation of the Department of Works Execution of the same entity, which sought to circumvent the frequent boycott that some construction companies of the time carried out against the Government.

Neighborhoods such as Jaime Eyzaguirre, Carlos Cortés, Nueva Habana—now Nuevo Amanecer—and El Cortijo Sur, among many others, were built by this unit, which became the main construction company in the country, with a staff of nearly eight thousand workers.

Cheerful and loved by all, he was one of the leaders with the greatest potential to become the new General Secretary of the JS, replacing Carlos Lorca, whose term at the head of that organization was to conclude in 1974.

During the day of the military coup, Ariel went to the Socialist Youth office in Santiago, where, in the company of other leaders, he proceeded to eliminate the records of the militants, in addition to giving instructions to the young people who gathered at that headquarters and at other points in Santiago. Later, the group left for the southern zone of Santiago.

After September 11, 1973, Ariel—using the political name Gabriel—became part of the leadership of the PS in the underground, where he stood out as one of its most committed leaders, in charge of the Logistics Unit of the Central Committee.

His role was to obtain houses and infrastructure (passports, money, contacts with embassies) for the clandestine leaders and for the socialist militants from the regions who, starting in October of that year, began to arrive in the capital fleeing the repression.

He never lost his optimism in front of his comrades. Luis Navarrete, one of his friends from the UTE, was arrested in Arica while trying to cross the border into Peru. After a month under arrest, he returned to Santiago, completely cut off from all party contact.

While waiting for transportation at San Francisco and Alameda, someone stopped next to him and greeted him affectionately: “It was the kid, with his inseparable briefcase in his right hand.” By then, Ariel was already mentioned as one of the mentors of Plan Zeta “and there he was, sought by land, sea, and air, with his smile and his usual look, next to the Church of San Francisco.” Installed in a café, Ariel informed him that the situation was difficult, but that even so “at this moment everything is under control,” a phrase he used to repeat to raise the morale of the militants in moments of defeat and despair.

Navarrete told him about his arrest in Arica and Ariel estimated that he should leave the country: “There he reaffirmed himself once again as the irreducible organic militant that he was, because he told me that he was going to consult my situation with the Central Committee.

Probably the CC at that time was no more than him and six people, but he had to consult it with the regular bodies before making a decision. He cited me for a few days later, in the same place. At the appointed time he arrived with Ema and Mariana, their daughter.

While we were having some drinks, he told me that the Party had authorized my departure from the country. Before leaving, he assigned me a mission: to tell everyone outside what was happening in Chile. We gave each other a hug, he looked at me with his eyes and his usual smile, and gave me the name of the contact for my departure. It was the last time I saw him.”

Francisco Mouat also shared closely with Ariel and knew the details of his capture very well. In September 1974, Ariel told him that he needed to “set up” a house at the beach so that the members of the Central Committee could get some air and rest a little.

Mouat made use of the house that the mother of his cousins (the MOC leaders, Eugenio and Ismael Llona) had in Cartagena, in the vicinity of the old Railway Station. “It was very appropriate: good view, a single entrance, a wonderful view of the terrace of Playa Chica, in short.

With the pretext that I had been kicked out of where I was living, which was true, I asked my aunt for the house at the beach. My wife and my son went to live there, and I traveled on weekends, sometimes with some coworkers, whom I invited to barbecues on the beach, to get the neighbors used to it a bit,” he relates.

In December, Ariel warned him that at any moment he would move some member of the Directorate to the refuge at the beach. “At the end of that month the bell rang, and I saw Ariel, Exequiel Ponce, and Mireya (Rodríguez) coming up the stairs of the house.

They settled in there, Ariel left after about two or three days. The kid Ariel declared his optimism, because progress was being made in conversations and agreements with the DC, mainly through Manuel Bustos.

My wife asked him how he could have such a positive attitude, taking into account that at that moment Ariel did not know where his daughter was, his father was detained on the Esmeralda, and Ema was also imprisoned in some facility of the dictatorship.” Pancho remembers that a silence fell, and that Ariel replied: “As I am and with what I do, I am only just on the way to becoming a man.”

After the two weeks that Ponce spent in Cartagena, it was the turn of Lorca and Lagos Salinas. For the former, another alternative was found, while Lagos preferred not to leave Santiago. Ariel was going to be the last of the members of the Political Commission to rest at the beach, especially after the release of Ema, his partner.

Mouat remembers that a whole operation was carried out to check that she was not being followed by the regime’s intelligence services. Ema traveled to Cartagena first. Ariel, meanwhile, met with Mouat in Santiago to check if the transfer had been carried out without problems.

Mouat remembers that day with special affection: “Ariel slept with me that night, he always did on a sofa, but that night it was occupied. Around three in the morning, I suddenly felt that he was hugging me. The next day, upon waking up, I got up teasing him, telling him that the underground life was affecting him too much. He was killing himself laughing.”

That morning, the two friends agreed to go to the beach on the seven o’clock bus in the evening. Mouat had to go to work, while Ariel had a meeting scheduled with part of the Political Commission and one of his support teams.

At the agreed time, Ariel did not arrive and Mouat decided to leave for Cartagena alone. “I thought Ariel would arrive on the train that arrived at ten at night, but it was not so. The next day he didn’t arrive on any of the first three buses either.

That’s when I got worried, and we decided to take Ema and her daughter out of the boarding house where we had left them for a day and a half. I immediately cleaned the house and hid a copy of the March Document that my wife had been typing under Ariel’s instructions,” he recalls.

“I took the train back to Santiago, and I went to my mother-in-law’s house. The only ones who had my mother-in-law’s phone number were Ariel and Carolina Wiff, who worked with him in the logistics area, and whom I did not know.

My mother-in-law told me that someone named Carolina had called me. That night she communicated again, she told me to forgive her, that we didn’t know each other personally, but that we had friends in common, and she named the aliases of some comrades.

She told me that she needed to see me urgently, that same day. So we agreed to meet at Macul and Grecia. We met and she told me that Ariel had fallen, in a boarding house together with Sara Montes.”

An evangelical pastor from the south of the country, an acquaintance of Sara, had come to see her, and apparently, he had arrived followed by the DINA. According to Carolina, Ariel arrived to look for some money at Sara’s place and was detained.

On the corner, Ricardo Lagos Salinas was even waiting for him, who providentially saved himself from being captured, since he did not want to enter and preferred to stay reading the newspapers at a kiosk on the corner.

Ariel’s detention took place on March 14, 1975, at 1:30 p.m., at the moment of entering a boarding house at Ricardo Cumming Street No. 732, in one of whose rooms—which Sara Montes rented—he was going to meet with one of the teams that worked under his direction.

That morning, Clara Rubilar, another PS militant, had arrived at the place, and she went out to do some shopping at 11:00 a.m. A few minutes later, the house was raided by a group of about 15 plainclothes agents, who installed themselves in the house and set a trap to achieve his capture, which was witnessed by some residents, since it was a boarding house where several families lived.

The agents were already holding Sara, who was seriously ill with tuberculosis and had a liver cyst, and who did not have the opportunity to warn of the DINA’s presence.

Ariel tried to convince the agents that his identity was different, but one of the agents recognized him: they had been classmates in high school. Based on this fact, he tried another maneuver and convinced the officers to accompany him to a point where he would supposedly contact a high-ranking leader of the Central Committee.

Sara Montes remembers that the agent who knew Ariel nodded, but told him that “if it was a trick, he wouldn’t live to tell the tale twice.” Once they arrived at the place of the false contact, he took advantage of a moment of carelessness by his captors to throw himself under the wheels of a bus.

One of the agents shot him, causing a severe wound to one foot. A few minutes after having left, they returned to the boarding house and informed Sara Montes of what had happened: they were carrying a bundle wrapped in a green tarp.

Sara Montes was detained for several days, but finally managed to be admitted to a sanatorium in San José de Maipo.

Already in exile, Sara gave her testimony, released by the Chilean Solidarity Committee in Havana. She said that the agents interrogated and tortured the young man in that same house, which “had been in the hands of the repressive agencies since 11:00 a.m., having been adapted for interrogations and torture.

They even had a radio transmitter for these purposes. In this way, I am an eyewitness to the detention of Ariel Mancilla and his torture in this first stage.”

The DINA had been looking for Ariel for months. His home had been raided on two occasions and on three occasions his partner, Ema Fuenzalida, also a militant of the resistance, had been detained in order to get him to turn himself in.

On one of those occasions, Ema spent 15 days at Londres 38, was subjected to brutal torture, and on another occasion, she was taken to the basement of the Plaza de la Constitución.

María Gabriela Miranda was by then another active militant of the resistance. Although her partner, Enrique Norambuena, had been detained and his fate at the hands of the dictatorship was unknown, she continued to collaborate in the tasks of the socialist leaders in the underground.

While working as an administrative assistant in a law firm, she received a visit from “Mami Julia,” as Ema Fuenzalida’s mother was known. She told her that Ariel had serious doubts regarding the security of the small apartment that a sister of Ema and Mariana, Ariel’s daughter, occupied on Gran Avenida, and to which he frequently arrived after his party activities.

Although the signal of normality they had agreed upon—a towel visibly hung in the bathroom window—was “operational” at the place, Ariel suspected that something strange was happening in that house.

“Mami Julia asked me to go to the house using a cover story as a secretary from a law office, to demand the pending rent payment, justifying my presence in that place. Without thinking for even half a second, I went.

We agreed, through Julia, to meet Ariel in the vicinity of the apartment,” recalls María Gabriela. “I arrived, he was hidden behind a cement staircase, he gave me some instructions, and I headed to the apartment, which was on the second floor, right at the end of the hall.

I knocked twice and when the door opened a guy appeared, who looked everywhere and ordered me to enter. I felt a chill that went through my whole body, but I controlled myself, I had to look like a secretary on a collection errand,” she says.

The few minutes that María Gabriela was there were enough for her to realize the recent raid and the trap that the DINA had set: everything was thrown on the floor, and in the kitchen, two men were holding Ema’s sister, who recognized María Gabriela and maintained the “story” of the judicial collection.

While that was happening, Eliana Medina, a 16-year-old student, remained detained in the basement of the Plaza de la Constitución, together with a group of resistance militants among whom were Ema Fuenzalida, Mónica Tillería, Manuel Carpintero, Luis Arenas, Enrique Norambuena, and Héctor Gatica.

In a sworn statement on August 8, 1990, she stated that: “I could realize from the interrogations to which the rest of the detainees were subjected, that they were looking for Ariel Mancilla, whom they had gone to look for at his house, but had not found. They only had his spouse detained.”

Ema subsequently visited the boarding house at Cumming 732 and some residents gave her details of the detention and informed her that Sara Montes was taken away in an ambulance. According to testimonies from detainees, Ariel Mancilla was taken, wounded, to Villa Grimaldi.

Carena Zoila Pérez, who was detained from March 5, 1975, to June 14, 1976, and who spent 10 days in Villa Grimaldi, in a sworn statement before a notary on August 9, 1990, testified that “on one occasion, on a trip to the bathroom together with other detainees, Amelia Negrón passed her jacket to a detainee who was in very bad condition.

Carmen Santis identified him as Ariel Mancilla. His white shirt had bloodstains. From the guards’ shouts, I found out that Mancilla had fled and that in his attempt he had thrown himself under the wheels of a bus. It was the only time I could see him.”

Fidelia Herrera, a member of the Central Committee of the PS, who was also detained in Villa Grimaldi—after being captured by a DINA team that included Luz Arce—stated in an interview with Radio Berlin International of the GDR the following: “I also saw Ariel Mancilla in Villa Grimaldi.

The impression I had upon seeing him was truly terrible. I had recently had direct contact with comrade Mancilla outside of prison (…) Ariel was being held up by two other comrades; he looked badly wounded, as he had his head bandaged.

Upon looking at him more closely, I saw that he had a bleeding foot, practically destroyed. The guard, when I approached, ordered the detainees to move away. At the moment of doing so, Mancilla raised his head and I was able to see him directly.

The impression was so enormous that I backed up to the wall, because the young man full of energy that I had known was almost dying. The guard, upon seeing my gesture, mistakenly attributed it to my poor state of health and led me back to the cell where I was.”

Lautaro Videla, at that time one of the most important men of the MIR, detained during March 1975 in Villa Grimaldi, declared: “I was a witness to the arrival at Villa Grimaldi of Ariel Mancilla, whom I had known for more than five years.” And he added: “He was extremely beaten, limping from one leg due to a wound and hematomas that had been caused by being run over, of which he was a victim during his detention; I had the opportunity several times to talk for a few minutes with him, when they were moving him between the bathroom and the drawer-shaped cells called by us ‘Casas Chile’ and subsequently between the bathroom and the so-called Tower of Grimaldi, to which they moved him later. These contacts were made possible because his condition required that some prisoner help him walk.”

After several days of demands from the rest of the prisoners for him to be given medical attention, one of the DINA doctors attended to Ariel. According to Videla, “after a superficial examination, he decided to ‘operate’ on the comrade and requested the help of the prisoners to hold him down, while he proceeded to cut away dead and infected tissue.

I was one of the comrades who helped in the work that the doctor was performing next to n our cells and on the floor. Ariel’s leg showed signs of some form of gangrene; however, he was bandaged on the spot and sent back to the Tower, only to disappear from it a few days later, and to this day.” A great little man: Our friend Chico Ariel At the beginning of the 1965 academic year, a large group of socialist comrades began to arrive at the UTE, especially at the Pedagogical Institute, the School of Civil Construction, and the various branches the university maintained in the provinces.

Thus, comrades such as Susana Sánchez, Héctor Torres, Ulises Pérez, Juan Gutiérrez, Gato Mella, Iván Martínez, Betsabé Padín, Luis Casado, Eric Asenjo, Lucho Navarrete, Erica Osorio, Franklin Moncada, Octavio Paz, and many others began to arrive and make contact.

Among them, Chico Ariel also appeared. From that beautiful contingent of young socialists, the figure of Chico Ariel soon began to stand out. A responsible student and a serious, meticulous militant in fulfilling the tasks entrusted to him, a shrewd observer with a genuine desire to learn, I remember his special concern for knowing how to reconcile theory with political practice.

As we shared militancy and student life, I came to know more about his origins in the port city, his relationship with his family, his concerns, and his aspirations. I remember him with Eric and other comrades in the Civil Construction School boarding house, sharing the welcoming simplicity of his room, which was so often a refuge for many who stayed up late or a place to hold our often long political meetings.

I remember him in the marches and activities we carried out at the UTE in the context of the struggle for University Reform, for a larger budget, or for the improvement of our university’s infrastructure.

I remember him at parties and other social gatherings at my house, where Chico Ariel always managed to be part of the group, just like Lucho Navarrete, Luis Casado, and Eric Asenjo—unmissable. I remember his deference toward those who were our elders and his tremendous capacity to moderate our “revolutionary impulses.” Well into the government of Eduardo Frei, given the always painful conditions in which the economy was developing, the country began to experience the symptoms of an acute class struggle.

It was 1968 and 1969, years in which, as young socialists, we did not want to remain on the sidelines: in parallel to our political work in the JS (Socialist Youth), we were present in the factories, in the countryside, and in the neighborhoods of Greater Santiago.

Thus, at the end of the 60s, our tasks multiplied daily: we soon took on leadership roles in the FEUT and in the Civil Construction Student Center; we also went to the countryside to work on the literacy of peasants and the formation of agrarian unions, as well as in support of our candidates for parliament in rural areas: María Elena Carrera and Oscar Naranjo, among others.

Actions were also coordinated in manufacturing and industrial centers in Santiago. In all those activities, tireless, our friend Chico Ariel was always there. In 1971, the JS elected a new leadership, in which several UTE militants were elected.

Two of our own became part of the new Political Commission of the Youth. Chico Ariel was one of them, demonstrating that his political maturation culminated in the recognition of a young talent, capable of contributing experience, ideological knowledge, and authority, based on the legitimacy granted by permanent work with the grassroots comrades.

In that stage, I especially remember Chico Ariel in two events: attending to foreign delegations at the 40th anniversary of the founding of the PS and the emotional meeting that—in the early hours of the morning—Commander Fidel Castro had with the leaders of the JS during his visit to Chile.

On the eve of the coup, I remember Sunday, September 9, when at the Estadio Chile, and before a fiery speech by the General Secretary of the PS, the majority of the Youth Central Committee expressed their concern about the real capacity to defend the Popular Government.

Ariel and several others expressed the urgent need not only to defend the Government but also to prepare ourselves to safeguard the existence and functioning of our organization in the event that the fascist offensive escalated.

On Monday, September 10, after a meeting of the JS Central Committee, a delegation from it, of which Ariel was a part, met with a then-prominent member of the Party’s Political Commission, who assured them that, although the situation was serious, “conditions existed to successfully defend the Popular Government,” and that therefore we, the JS Leadership, had to “be prepared to mobilize militants and sympathizers in the universities, high schools, neighborhoods, and industries of the country.” By that time, knowing the limitations of our party, I remember that Ariel and I commented on our doubts about a real capacity for response from the left in the face of a more than probable coup d’état. A day later our apprehensions would be confirmed, but the idea of militant duty meant that practically the entire Youth Leadership turned to fulfilling the tasks entrusted to them. Chico Ariel also fulfilled his. Once the coup was consummated, in the days that followed, some leaders of the Party and the JS turned to clandestine work, trying to prevent any party documentation from falling into the hands of the coup plotters, inquiring about the whereabouts of some comrades, and contacting relatives of the forcibly disappeared. Ariel was in all those activities, trying to encourage everyone and preventing defeatism and desolation from taking deep root in some. I remember the importance that Ema, his partner, and his daughter Mariana had for him in those days. The latter was very young when her father gave himself body and soul to the struggle for democracy and socialism. Ema had been with Ariel since the times they both studied at the UTE, and she represented the fullness of the feeling of a couple and of revolutionary militancy. On more than one occasion, sharing a modest dinner, or in a pause between one meeting and another, I remember that Ariel expressed to me his feelings as a son, husband, and father, the value of a couple and a family forged in the heat of hope in the construction of a dream and a new society. Testimony of Danilo Aravena, former national leader of the JS.

Source: pschile.cl undated

Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, 24 years old, a civil engineer by profession, married to Ema Martínez, with one child, was a socialist militant and a member of the PS Central Committee in the underground.

He was detained on March 14, 1975, by state agents (DINA) upon arriving at a house on Calle Cummings in Santiago to participate in a PS meeting. The place was a boarding house that had become a “DINA mousetrap.” Adolfo Ariel invented a contact to go out into the street with the agents; once outside, he threw himself under the wheels of a bus.

Shot and wounded, he was taken to the Villa Grimaldi barracks. After atrocious torture, with his leg and foot severely affected, he was operated on by a DINA doctor with the help of other detainees (testimony of Lautaro Videla).

At some point, he had been transferred to the clandestine Santa Lucía clinic. According to another witness (Gladys Díaz), Adolfo Ariel was taken out of Villa Grimaldi around April 15, and his whereabouts have been unknown since then.

Source: http://memoriasantalucia162.cl/

On Monday, the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Juvenal Piña Garrido, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, and Manuel Carevic Cubillos—all agents of the dissolved DINA—to 15 years and one day of effective imprisonment as perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

This was for the kidnapping of 11 members of the Socialist Party Central Committee between March and December 1975: Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Jaime Eugenio López Arellano, Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios, Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda, and Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez. “The active subjects were part of the DINA and the Purén Brigade, within Villa Grimaldi, in such a way that they represented and fulfilled functions within a State policy prevailing at that time, and in that context, they carried out the repression of the different political groups, including members of the Socialist Party’s political committee, resulting in the kidnappings of the victims,” the court ruled. “All of this was inserted into a line of conduct composed of a multiplicity of acts of a similar nature directed against civilians—systematic violations of Human Rights—occurring over a long period against anyone who participated in an ideology different from those who held power at that time,” the judges explained in their ruling. According to the Court, the perpetrators were protected by “a system that at the time allowed, favored, or guaranteed their impunity, all with the aim of hiding, denying, or distorting the reality and nature of the attack,” thus allowing for absolute or relative impunity.

Source: biobio.cl 1/5/2021

Date: 01-05-2021

The judicial ruling that shook the old socialists

This week, Judge Miguel Vásquez sentenced six former members of the DINA for the kidnapping and disappearance in 1975 of 11 members of the PS Central Committee. The visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, sentenced six former members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping of 11 members of the Socialist Party Central Committee, detained on various dates in 1975 in the Metropolitan Region.

In the ruling—case file 47.518—of nearly 240 pages, Judge Vásquez sentenced Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 20 years of effective imprisonment as a co-perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

Meanwhile, former agents Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos must serve 18 years in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified kidnappings of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda, Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios, and Jaime Eugenio López Arellano.

In the case of Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, the judge sentenced him to 16 years of effective imprisonment as a co-perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda, Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios, and Jaime Eugenio López Arellano.

Finally, the repressive agents Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko must serve 15 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio; and Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, 12 years in prison as a co-perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

During the investigation stage, the magistrate interrogated various militants who were detained in 1975 and testified to the presence of their disappeared comrades in the DINA’s secret barracks. Among those who testified are former president Michelle Bachelet; former minister and former president of the TVN board, Ricardo Solari; Raúl Díaz, Gustavo Ruz, Lautaro Videla, Patricio Barra, Fidelia Herrera, and Jaime Lorca Tobar.

Judge Vásquez was very interested in clarifying whether the disappeared leader Jaime López Arellano, a member of the PS clandestine leadership, was a collaborator or agent of the DINA and if he provided information that allowed for the detention of the disappeared members of the PS Central Committee.

He managed to collect a series of facts that suggest as much and that he even continued working for the military dictatorship’s secret police. In the crosshairs from before the 11th Long before the military coup, socialists were in the crosshairs of the Armed Forces’ intelligence apparatuses.

Therefore, from September 11, 1973, the repression against them was swift and implacable. In La Moneda, in various public buildings surrounding it, and in some industries and neighborhoods, socialists tried to resist the uprising with weapons in hand.

Almost all perished in their attempt. In the days and weeks that followed, the persecution was fierce. The 26 prisoners who surrendered at the presidential palace, including 16 members of the GAP, were murdered at the Peldehue military complex, north of Santiago.

Shortly after, Arnoldo Camu, a member of the Central Committee and head of the special operational groups—the military apparatus of the PS—was killed. Then followed the executions under the “law of escape,” the death of at least ten other members of the GAP, and the extermination of regional leaders.

In the so-called “Caravan of Death,” which toured Chile in October under the command of General Sergio Arellano and included several officers who later joined the DINA, 16 local socialist leaders were massacred.

The same occurred in massacres recorded from north to south in localities such as Pisagua, Salamanca, Tejas Verdes, Isla de Maipo, Paine, Mulchén, Laja, and Chiuhio, near Valdivia. Many others were taken to concentration camps or sought asylum in various embassies.

In December 1973, ten members of the Central Committee were imprisoned, and at least 15 other top PS leaders remained as refugees in various diplomatic missions in Santiago. The balance was devastating.

That same month, however, Carlos Altamirano Orrego, the general secretary of the PS, one of the men most wanted by the military, managed to elude the repressive net and fled Chile through a southern mountain pass, appearing publicly shortly after in Cuba.

That escape became a shameful splinter that remained for many years under the skin of the main DINA chiefs. Exequiel Ponce, a burly port worker of peasant origin, who until then had been in charge of the party’s internal front, assumed the clandestine leadership of the socialists in Chile, supported by Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, Víctor Zerega Ponce, Joel Huaiquiñir Benavides, Manuel Carpintero, Ricardo Lagos Salinas, Gustavo Ruz Zañartu, Carlos Lorca, and some other militants, men and women, promoted from the youth leaderships.

The decimated situation of the party was recorded fragmentarily in a letter that Lorca sent to a contact abroad in December 1973. In it, he stated: “...we are slowly recovering, with some inefficiency due to our lack of experience in clandestine work, from a very difficult initial situation, since the repression fundamentally affected the Party.

Four members of the leadership executed (Arnoldo Camú, Eduardo Paredes, Arsenio Poupin, and Luis Norambuena), seven or eight arrested, many of whom must be having a very bad time (Uldaricio Figueroa and Tito Martínez brutally tortured, Clodomiro Almeyda sick and on Isla Dawson), and entire regional leaderships executed.

Despite this, we have managed to rebuild the Central Committee and have taken the first steps to rebuild the party organization and the mass movement.” Lorca fell short. He lacked, like the vast majority of Chileans, sufficient information to weigh the true impact of the repressive onslaught unleashed by the dictatorship.

In March 1974, the internal leadership produced a report titled “In the heat of the struggle against fascism, build the people’s leading force to ensure victory,” better known as the “March Document,” where it proposed the formation of a broad front, from the MIR and the PC to the PDC, to oppose the military regime.

Furthermore, it proposed a restructuring of the party to face the dark times being lived. That document provoked an acute controversy within socialism, which would deepen until its split in 1979. The DINA, meanwhile, concerned with the MIR, occasionally attacked some socialist structures, some of them quite close to the resistance networks led by Miguel Enríquez.

However, when the summer of 1975 ended and after a plenary session of the PS Central Committee had been held in April in Havana, Cuba, and with the MIR almost completely decimated, the heads of the brigades led by Colonel Manuel Contreras began to orient their search and capture efforts toward the new leaderships of Salvador Allende’s party.

Numerous facts gathered from the testimonies of detainees who survived the secret barracks and from the DINA agents themselves, who since the 1990s have had to appear to testify in courts of justice, allow us to presume that the task groups operating from Villa Grimaldi were restructured for the persecution of socialists.

The subsequent arrests included men and women from the Caupolicán and Purén groups, as well as other members and collaborators who were not very active in the previous months. On March 4, 1975, Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, 34 years old, married, three children, former director of the State Railways, residing at Clorinda Wilshaw 743, Ñuñoa, was detained.

He had been arrested for the first time at the end of September 1974 and taken to the José Domingo Cañas facility, where he remained for about ten days, after which he was released. Subsequently, at the end of January 1975, he was again apprehended by DINA agents, including Osvaldo Romo, Basclay Zapata, and Luz Arce Sandoval, being taken to Villa Grimaldi and released hours later.

In the third capture, he was taken back to Villa Grimaldi and subjected to intense torture and interrogation. In that facility, he was seen until the end of the second week of April 1975, after which all trace of him was lost.

The DINA kept his Citroen AK-88 Yagán car, license plate KR-406 from Providencia. During his stay at Villa Grimaldi, he was forced to sign checks from his checking account, which were subsequently cashed by other people.

Ten days later, on March 14, they arrested Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, 26 years old, married, one child, civil engineer, member of the PS Central Committee. They caught him at 1:30 PM, as he entered the property at Cumming 732, where a PS meeting was to be held.

The house had been previously occupied by about 15 DINA agents. Mancilla managed to convince his captors that he had an appointment with another party leader and went out with some of them, taking advantage of the moment to throw himself in front of a bus, resulting in serious injuries.

The DINA had been looking for Ariel Mancilla for several months; his house had been raided twice, and on three occasions they had detained his spouse, Ema Fuenzalida Martínez, to get Mancilla to turn himself in.

On one of those occasions, the woman was detained for 15 days at Londres 38. Mancilla was seen at Grimaldi very beaten, limping from a leg wound. They kept him in the drawer-shaped cells that the prisoners called "Casas Chile" and later transferred him to the “Tower.” Other prisoners had to help him walk.

Source: INTERFERENCIA.CL 12/22/2018

Date: 12-22-2018

DINA agents sentenced for the kidnapping and disappearance of members of the Socialist Party Central Committee in 1975

Six agents of the civil-military dictatorship (1973-1990) are sentenced for their responsibility in the kidnapping and disappearance of eleven members of the Socialist Party Central Committee, kidnapped in 1975, most of whom were held at the Terranova Barracks, the current site of memory, Villa Grimaldi Peace Park.

The judicial investigation addressed the kidnappings and disappearances of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda, Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios, and Jaime Eugenio López Arellano.

The investigation established that the kidnappings of the Socialist Party leaders were carried out between the months of March and December 1975, with most being taken to the Villa Grimaldi detention, torture, and extermination center, from where all trace of them was lost.

The visiting judge, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, sentenced the repressors of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) to prison terms ranging from fifteen to twenty years. The ruling sentenced Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to twenty years of effective imprisonment as a co-perpetrator of the crimes of qualified kidnapping.

Meanwhile, agents Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos must serve 18 years in prison as co-perpetrators of the qualified kidnappings. Another of the sentenced agents is the former Army Brigadier, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who must serve two sentences totaling twenty-seven years in prison for the crime of qualified kidnapping of eight of the eleven disappeared, adding to more than seven hundred years in prison for human rights violations.

In the civil aspect, the ruling accepted the filed claims, ordering the State of Chile to pay compensation of between 80 million and 150 million pesos to the victims’ families.

Source: villagrimaldi.cl 01-10-2019