Political Affiliation: Linked to the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

MIGUEL JOSE TRACANAO PINCHEIRA

ID: No information DOB: 25 years old at the time of his detention Address: Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Marital Status: Single Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Linked to the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

ELISEO MAXIMILIANO TRACANAO PINCHEIRA

ID: No information DOB: 10-22-55, 17 years old at the time of his detention Address: Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Marital Status: Single Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Linked to the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

LUIS ALFREDO RIVERA CATRICHEO

ID: No information DOB: 54 years old at the time of his detention Address: Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Marital Status: Single Occupation: Lumber worker at the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Political Affiliation: No known political affiliation Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

SALVADOR ALAMOS RUBILAR

ID: No information DOB: 45 years old at the time of his detention Address: Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Married, 9 children Occupation: Lumber industrialist Political Affiliation: Socialist Party Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

JOSE HECTOR BORQUEZ LEVICAN

ID: No information DOB: 01-22-31, 42 years old at the time of his detention Address: Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Marital Status: Married, four children Occupation: Lumber worker and administrator at the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Political Affiliation: No known political affiliation Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

ALBERTO SEGUNDO REINANTE RAIPAN

ID: No information DOB: 39 years old at the time of his detention Address: Fundo Trafún, Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Married, 4 children Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

ERNESTO REINANTE RAIPAN

ID: No information DOB: 29 years old at the time of his detention Address: Fundo Trafún, Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Single Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

MODESTO JUAN REINANTE RAIPAN

ID: No information DOB: 18 years old at the time of his detention Address: Fundo Trafún, Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Single Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

LUIS ARMANDO LAGOS TORRES

ID: No information DOB: 50 years old at the time of his detention Address: Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Widower, 9 children Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Socialist Party Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

CARLOS SEGUNDO FIGUEROA ZAPATA

ID: 25.911 of Curacautín DOB: 07-25-26, 47 years old at the time of his detention Address: Fundo Paimún, Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Married, 6 children Occupation: Lumber worker Political Affiliation: Counselor of the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Union representing Fundo Raimún. Socialist Party. Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

MAURICIO SEGUNDO CURIÑANCO REYES

ID: No information DOB: 38 years old at the time of his detention Address: Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Single Occupation: Carpenter Political Affiliation: Socialist Party Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

ISAIAS JOSE FUENTEALBA CALDERON

ID: 25.220 of Villarrica DOB: 04-07-44, 29 years old at the time of his detention Address: Fundo Trafún, Liquiñe Marital Status: Married Occupation: Area Chief, Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex, Fundo Trafún Political Affiliation: Member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.) Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

DANIEL ANTONIO CASTRO LOPEZ

ID: No information DOB: 68 years old at the time of his detention Address: Liquiñe, Valdivia Marital Status: Married, 7 children Occupation: Merchant, correspondent for the newspaper "El Clarín" in Temuco. Political Affiliation: Socialist Party Date of Detention: October 10, 1973

On October 10, 1973, between 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM, the following individuals were detained in the Liquiñe sector, within the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex: Luis Alfredo Rivera Catricheo, lumber worker, no known political affiliation; Eliseo Maximiliano Tracanao Pincheira, lumber worker, linked to the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Miguel José Tracanao Pincheira, lumber worker, linked to the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Alejandro Antonio Tracanao Pincheira, lumber worker, linked to the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Salvador Alamos Rubilar, lumber industrialist, member of the Socialist Party; José Héctor Bórquez Levicán, lumber worker, work supervisor at Fundo Trafún, member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Alberto Segundo Reinante Raipán, lumber worker, member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Ernesto Reinante Raipán, lumber worker, member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement; Modesto Juan Reinante Raipán, lumber worker, member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Luis Armando Lagos Torres, lumber worker, member of the Socialist Party; Carlos Segundo Figueroa Zapata, lumber worker, counselor for Fundo Paimún to the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex Union, member of the Socialist Party; Mauricio Segundo Curiñanco Reyes, carpenter, member of the Socialist Party; Isaías José Fuentealba Calderón, Area Chief at Fundo Trafún, of the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex, member of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (M.C.R.); Daniel Antonio Castro López, merchant, correspondent for the newspaper "El Clarín" in Temuco, member of the Socialist Party.

For its part, the report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation includes the names of the following victims as part of this same repressive situation: Carlos Alberto Cayumán Cayumán; and the 27-year-old teacher from Puerto Fuy, Bernarda Rosalba Vera Contardo, a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).

The detentions were carried out by uniformed personnel who carried a list with the names of the detainees. The apprehending group was composed of military personnel wearing combat uniforms who belonged to the No. 3 Maquehua Helicopter Group of the city of Temuco, of the Chilean Air Force; some Carabineros officers from the Liquiñe station, and civilians from the area.

They moved in private vehicles, a pickup truck from the Agriculture and Livestock Service (S.A.G.), a police vehicle, an ambulance from the Liquiñe station, and also had the support of a FACH helicopter.

The captors acted in several groups, which met at the Coñaripe junction, near all the locations where the detentions were carried out. There, they took the road to Villarrica, and around 2:00 AM on October 11, 1973, at the bridge over the Toltén River, they proceeded to kill them and throw their bodies into the water.

Some of the bodies were found days later by a group of people working on the banks of the Toltén River. The bodies had been placed in sacks with stones so they would not float; despite this, some bodies surfaced. This situation was immediately reported to the Carabineros, who, by order of the officer on duty, proceeded to push the bodies back into the river's current.

Among the testimonies obtained is that of Honorinda Lagos Sepúlveda, spouse of Isaías Fuentealba Calderón, Area Chief of the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex, who states regarding her husband that he left early on the morning of October 10, 1973, after his driver picked him up, and they traveled from Trafún to Liquiñe, about 14 km away.

Upon returning in the afternoon, at a place called Los Canelales, the victim was detained by Carabineros, who left Isaías Fuentealba's briefcase, which contained documentation from the Forestry Complex, with the driver so that he could deliver it to his spouse.

Part of this testimony indicates that the detainees were taken to the Liquiñe Inn, owned by Tulio García, where they were beaten and kept in a cabin. After that, they were taken out tied up and blindfolded, being transported in vehicles.

For its part, the family of Salvador Alamos Rubilar stated that the victim had been detained previously, remaining in that condition from September 18 to 28, 1973, for alleged links to a failed ambush on the Neltume station.

His captors on that occasion were Carabineros; they detained him along with his 17-year-old son, Salvador. Alamos Rubilar was tortured. His arrest on October 10, 1973, was carried out by military personnel in the presence of his daughter, Mirta Alamos, who stated that there were more detainees in the vehicle into which they loaded her father, tied by his hands and feet.

The victim's spouse, Mrs. Elcira Figueroa, immediately began searching for him in various places such as the Logistics Battalion of Valdivia, the Public Jail, the Military Prosecutor's Office of Temuco, etc.

On one occasion, while interviewing the Military Prosecutor, a high-ranking officer who was present intervened, telling her that the operation was carried out by "Black Beret" Commandos from Colina, so the local military authorities had nothing to do with it, adding: "it is better to mourn and grieve for the dead."

All the aforementioned victims, executed outside of any legal process by State agents who violated their right to life and then hid their bodies, preventing their families from giving them a dignified burial, remain in the status of forcibly disappeared.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

There is no knowledge that any judicial proceedings have been carried out.

Eliseo Maximiliano Tracanao Pincheira appears in the report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, and in a sworn statement by his mother, Mrs. Margarita del Carmen Valenzuela González, as Eliseo Maximiliano Tracanao Valenzuela.

This surname had to be corrected, because the young man is actually registered in the Civil Registry by his grandmother with the surnames Tracanao Pincheira.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

The Tracanao Pincheira family represents one of the many typical families of the Liquiñe area, due to their Mapuche origin and their moving from estate to estate in search of work, as well as their work experience in forestry tasks.

Don Maximiliano Tracanao and his wife, surnamed Pincheira, arrived to live at the Trafún estate at the end of the 1960s. There, both he and his sons worked in the lumber industry, a trade they had known since childhood, when they were part of a Mapuche community in the Cautín area.

They had seven children: three boys and four girls, who, like them, were illiterate. The men were named Alejandro Antonio, José Miguel, and Benedicto; the latter formed a couple with Margarita Valenzuela and they had several children.

The first of them, Elíseo Maximiliano, was born before the marriage and was therefore registered as the son of his grandparents, with whom he lived until he was 15 years old.

Elíseo Maximiliano was just 18 years old when he was detained. He had been born on September 22, 1955. Margarita, his mother, describes him as follows: "He was blond, with curly hair. We baptized him only at two years old because until that date no priest had gone to the estate.

He liked to study, he reached the seventh grade. He was cheerful like a child, always singing and playing. Years later he went to Santiago, where he lived with a cousin of my husband. He worked in a factory in Cerrillos, a place where, during the Popular Unity, a Union Unit of many workers had been formed. In the Cerrillos company, they made beams and construction materials."

Benedicto, his father, adds

"He had returned for a visit in September 1973 because the factory had gone into recess and they gave vacations to their workers. Therefore, at the time of the Military Coup, he was at my parents' house, working with my brothers in the mountains."

Two days before his detention, Elíseo visited his mother. She told us about the conversation they had had: "I had dreamed that a lion was eating him: I told him 'that is very bad, son, those are going to be the Carabineros who will take you' and he replied: 'if it is the Carabineros, it doesn't matter. I am going to die fighting for my homeland.'"

Of the two Tracanao brothers, Alejandro Antonio and José Miguel, we obtained little information, as their brother Benedicto becomes emotional when remembering them. Alejandro Antonio was 23 years old, was illiterate, and performed various tasks in the mountains. He had married Gladys Ross on the same estate; his two children were five and three years old when he disappeared.

José Miguel was 28 years old and was single. Margarita Valenzuela remembers him: "He worked logging in the mountains, he was about one meter sixty tall and was sturdy." "Both were quiet. They played the accordion and the guitar.

They were not big drinkers (...) they just liked sports. They participated in tournaments and went out to Neltume, Coñaripe, and Liquiñe." "In politics, they were not very involved, they attended union meetings like everyone else. All three were linked to the MCR (Revolutionary Peasant Movement)."

Source: Unidadmpt.wordpress.com 08/23/2010

In Villarrica, a tribute will be held for all victims of human rights violations

VILLARRICA.— Every month of October for decades, the act of Rescue of Historical Memory and Tribute to all victims of human rights violations, forcibly disappeared and executed, during the civil-military dictatorship, corresponding to the pre-Andean lake sector of Villarrica, Pucón, Curarrehue, Coñaripe, and Liquiñe, who total 38 victims, has been carried out.

This year, this act of remembrance and tribute will be held on Saturday, October 12, at 12:00 PM, on the banks of the Toltén River, next to the existing Memorial that honors their names.

One of the coordinators of the activity, Gustavo Poffald, said, "the entire local community is invited so that with their presence, they join this emotional and necessary ceremony of tribute to the fallen."

Poffald indicated that after the central activity, and as has been traditional, we will meet at the Valentín Letelier School to share and socialize among the attendees. Attendees are also invited to bring a carnation that will be thrown into the Toltén River in tribute to each of the victims.

Source: redinformativa.cl 10/10/2019 Date: 10-10-2019

Labbé and the murder of 15 peasants in Liquiñe at the hands of the "Black Berets"

Neither the current mayor nor any other member of that detachment could be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes against humanity, despite their participation in the operation being recorded. Court and police sources agree that "the pact of silence" they swore to and the "zero collaboration with justice" were two reasons for managing to evade responsibilities.

They acted in clothing without rank distinctions, at night, and with their faces semi-covered, according to witnesses of the detentions, and for the inhabitants of these pre-Andean places, "it was impossible to recognize anyone."

Night falls on a Santiago that still trembles under the bombs of the Hawker Hunters. The men of Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Medina Lois rest at the Telecommunications regiment in Peñalolén. They are the "strategic reserve" of General Augusto Pinochet, installed there during the first days of the Military Coup.

Elite commandos of the Paratrooper School and Special Forces directed by Medina. They are the "Black Berets."

After the first 48 hours of the assault on the government of Salvador Allende, everything is under control. Allende is dead. There is no armed popular resistance. The President's main collaborators are detained. The socialist revolution is already a memory. Smoking. Sorrowful. Tragic.

But a thrust disturbs the security of the victorious insurgents. In the still-dark early hours of September 12, 1973, a group of peasants and young revolutionaries from the south in the pre-Andean region of Valdivia becomes an alarm.

They surround the Neltume police station and demand that the Carabineros hand over weapons and ammunition if they are not willing to fight the coup plotters. Among them is the MIR militant José Liendo Vera. The mythical and feared "Commander Pepe."

The police refuse and open fire. A shootout begins. After a couple of hours, the group acting from the outside disperses. Silence returns. There are no dead or wounded on either side. From then on, the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex becomes one of the main targets of the military.

It is presumed that guerrillas of danger are operating in the area. Pinochet orders their elimination. "Operation Leopard" is born.

To do this, Pinochet creates the "Special Anti-Guerrilla Brigade" with the Black Berets of the Peldehue Paratrooper School and other men prepared for combat. Under the command of General Nilo Floody, between 250 and 300 soldiers are sent to repress the insurgency. One of them is the young officer Cristián Labbé Galilea.

Most are killing machines. Their specialties: mountain military instructor, with courses in paratrooping, commandos, special warfare, assault, guiding, and explosives and ammunition.

Days after the Coup, the brigade begins the trip from Peñalolén aboard military trucks. They carry sufficient light and heavy weapons and ammunition. They are ready for war and to kill guerrillas. "The brigade was created because a guerrilla could exist in the Panguipulli Lumber Complex.

We had to sweep away those pockets, and if clashes occurred, the order was to open fire." It is Labbé who declares before the courts in December 2003 regarding the crimes of 15 peasants from Liquiñe, 150 kilometers east of Valdivia, near the Argentine border. For the first time, Labbé uncovers his well-kept secret: he recognizes that he was indeed part of that operation.

From Brazil, where before September 11, 1973, he took various courses in techniques to become the elite of the elite, Labbé returns to the Paratrooper School to the Directorate of Instruction. That is, he is not just a common Black Beret, but the one who trains them.

During the operation in Liquiñe and other places in the pre-Andean Valdivian region, the current mayor of Providencia depends directly on the top chief of the Black Berets, Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Medina, who on this long journey was the Chief of Staff to General Nilo Floody. "My work depended on the Chief of Staff," Labbé maintains in his judicial statement.

As is known, with that comprehensive preparation, he was later one of the trainers of DINA agents and, in fact, a prominent member of this criminal illicit organization.

"We first arrived in Valdivia, but we didn't know very well what we were going for. We were only told that the objective was to fight a guerrilla," recalls a Black Beret non-commissioned officer who spoke with El Mostrador but preferred to keep his identity secret.

A day later, the non-commissioned officer maintains that they left for the pre-Andean region, to the area of the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex, and arrived in Liquiñe.

"The Black Berets installed themselves in tents in the courtyard of the nuns' school," states Julián García, an industrialist who owns the Liquiñe Hot Springs and the inn, in the judicial investigation. It is the Liquiñe Missionary School.

Another military contingent under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Guerra Jorquera, which arrived earlier from Valdivia, sets up its camp on the large site of the same hot springs, according to Julián García. This man is a recognized anti-communist, according to judicial statements by surviving peasants.

The Complex is born

The Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex extended between the Chihuío Baths in the south and Liquiñe in the north, about 150 kilometers east of Valdivia. It came to have 360,000 hectares. It was made up of 22 large estates.

Starting in the late 1960s, the properties were occupied by members of the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (MCR), an organization controlled by the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). By 1973, more than 3,000 peasants worked there.

Not a few followed "Commander Pepe," leader of the MCR. Along with Liendo Vera, at the end of the sixties, a handful of MIR students arrived in the area to initiate a "land recovery" together with the peasants.

When Allende triumphed in 1970, his government expropriated the 22 estates. Thus, the Panguipulli Forestry and Lumber Complex was officially born as a subsidiary company of the Production Development Corporation (Corfo).

The dream of building their own destiny was fulfilled. The complex and Commander Pepe became the terror of the latifundist right. Therefore, the revenge after the military coup was fierce.

After the Liquiñe station episode on the early morning of September 12, 1973, Commander Pepe, along with his wife, Yolanda Ávila, and the MIR militants Luis Pezo and Pedro Barría, who used a crutch to walk, hid for a few days and went up into the mountains.

But on September 19, they were found and taken to the Valdivia jail. On the night of October 3, 1973, Liendo Vera was executed at the Llancahue military camp. The next day, eleven other MIR members accused of participating in the attack on the Neltume station were murdered.

The crimes were handled by the Caravan of Death of General Sergio Arellano, present in Valdivia in those days. To do this, Arellano signed a sentence from a fake War Council. The man who would later be the second-in-command of the DINA, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, attended that night to witness the death of Liendo Vera.

Accusing the Black Berets

The night of October 10, 1973, can never be forgotten by the inhabitants of Liquiñe. Julián García's inn operated as "headquarters." From there came the list with the 15 peasants who had to be arrested and killed immediately.

According to what was established in the process, Julián García and his son Luis, who wore military uniforms that night, provided the names of those who had to die. The Black Berets began the raid together with Carabineros from the Liquiñe station, led by non-commissioned officer Luis Anguita Castro. They knew the chosen ones well.

According to the police report signed by the sub-prefect of the Valdivia Investigative Police, Benjamín Leal Riquelme, and the sub-commissioner Manuel Castro Contreras, in the detentions of the Complex's peasants, José Miguel and Alejandro Antonio Tracanao Pincheira and their father Eliseo Maximiliano Tracanao Valenzuela, "a Carabineros corporal surnamed Quintana from the Liquiñe station and several Black Beret soldiers" participated.

The owner of the Liquiñe hot springs, Julián García, declared judicially that "the Black Berets carried out the detentions."

The judge of Villarrica in 1973, René García Villegas, maintains in his book "I Am a Witness" that one of the bodies of those riddled with bullets on the Toltén bridge remained hours later in the river "tangled among some rocks, headless."

Elcira Figueroa Arias, wife of Salvador Alamos Rubilar, one of the 15 victims of Liquiñe, declared in the process that, while looking for her husband, "at the Military Prosecutor's Office of Temuco, Captain Ubilla told me that at the date of my husband's disappearance (October 10, 1973), an operation by the Black Beret Command of Colina (Santiago) was in the area, so the local military authorities 'washed their hands of it' and that if my husband fell into their hands, 'it is better to mourn and grieve for the dead.'"

On the Toltén bridge

Tied by their hands and feet, the 15 peasants were taken that night in two pickup trucks in the direction of Villarrica. One of the vehicles was provided by Julián García and driven by his son Luis. The other was provided by the merchant Juan Carmach and driven by the Liquiñe ambulance driver, Sixto Díaz.

On the bridge over the Toltén River, the peasants were taken out, and the "Berets" ordered both drivers to move away. In a few minutes, the detainees formed a macabre human carpet laid out on the bridge.

Red in color, like the blood flowing in torrents from their bodies riddled by repeating rifles with war ammunition. Below, the rushing waters of the river could not drown out the sound of the machine-gun fire. Díaz and García heard it, as they later declared judicially.

After Liquiñe, always in search of guerrillas, the contingent of Black Berets in which Labbé participated headed to other locations that comprised the Lumber Complex. But the non-commissioned officer we spoke with maintains, smiling ironically: "We didn't find any, there was nothing, no guerrillas or anything." The Anti-Guerrilla Brigade remained in the area until the beginning of December 1973.

A couple of days before the night massacre of Liquiñe, in Chihuío, 25 kilometers south of Liquiñe, 17 members of the Complex were also riddled with bullets, all peasants who lived in the area with their families.

One by one, the bodies were thrown into the river. The Liquiñe list was fulfilled. The executioners thought that the multiple perforations in the bodies would allow them to sink and be lost forever downstream to the sea.

The boatmen and the authority

But days later, boatmen in the area who fished discovered some bodies clinging to branches on the bank or stuck between rocks. They notified the Villarrica Carabineros. The secretary of the Villarrica Criminal Court, Osvaldo Wiegand Carrasco, went to the scene with the sub-commissioner of the Villarrica sub-station, Captain Ramón Torrealba Guzmán.

In the process, Secretary Wiegand says he managed to save a couple of bodies. But the boatmen contradict him. They affirm that the order they received from both the secretary and the sub-commissioner was to free the bodies from what was holding them and throw them back into the current so they would disappear.

The boatmen Eliseo Rosas Maldonado and José Carrasco Rodríguez were confronted with Wiegand and Torrealba. They maintained their statements that they were forced by both authorities to release the bodies and return them to the torrent. The same was confirmed by boatmen Guido Mora, Leopoldo Ghisolfo, and Juan Yáñez Cares.

However, in the area where the "Berets" moved under the command of General Floody and Medina Lois, in addition to the 15 from Liquiñe, another 30 peasants from the Lumber Complex were murdered. A couple of days before the night massacre of Liquiñe, in Chihuío, 25 kilometers south of Liquiñe, 17 members of the Complex were also riddled with bullets, all peasants who lived in the area with their families.

Members of the Cazadores regiment of Valdivia also participated in this operation. The raid was supported by Air Force Puma helicopters, which came from the Maquehua Air Base in Temuco.

The secret Some other officers who participated in "Operation Leopard" are: Carlos Parera Silva, Emilio Timmermann Undurraga, Arturo Bosch González, Manuel Pérez Santillán (DINA agent), and Sergio Candia Muñoz.

Why could neither Labbé nor any other member of the Black Berets be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes against humanity? Court and police sources agree that "the pact of silence" they swore to and the "zero collaboration with justice" were two reasons for managing to evade responsibilities.

According to the sources, it is added that, because it was an unknown contingent from Santiago that acted in clothing without rank distinctions, at night, and with their faces semi-covered, as declared by witnesses of the detentions, for the inhabitants of these pre-Andean places, "it was impossible to recognize anyone." The former DINA agent, retired Colonel Cristián Labbé, avoids jail once again while waiting to be re-elected as mayor on October 28.

Source: elclarin.cl 10/23/2013 Date: 10-23-2013

Court confirms major sentence for human rights violations during dictatorship

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed this Friday the 18-year prison sentence against retired Colonel Hugo Alberto Guerra Jorquera for the kidnapping of 11 peasants who were executed in 1973 but whose bodies were never found, judicial sources reported.

The peasants were from the town of Liquiñe and worked in a lumber complex in the area.

The appeals court rejected an appeal filed by Guerra Jorquera to invalidate the sentence imposed by Judge Alejandro Solís in January 2006, which is currently the harshest sentence handed down for human rights violations.

The retired Army colonel was also ordered to pay 250 million pesos (about 480,000 dollars) as compensation, by virtue of a civil lawsuit filed against him by five relatives of the victims.

According to the Rettig Report, which documented human rights violations during the regime of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), the agricultural workers were detained in a joint operation by the Carabineros police of the Liquiñe station, Army personnel, and civilians.

The peasants were taken to the Villarrica bridge, over the Toltén River, where they were executed and their bodies were never found.

Among those executed are the brothers Modesto, Ernesto, and Alberto Reinante Raipán, all three workers and members of the Panguipulli lumber complex union.

The plaintiff lawyer, Nelson Caucoto, celebrated the ruling because, as he said, it confirms the crimes and establishes exemplary punishments against the defendants.

Source: August 03, 2007 El Mostrador Date: 08-03-2007

Individual involved in Liquiñe case prosecuted

The investigating judge, Juan Guzmán Tapia, decided tonight to prosecute Luis Osvaldo García Tapia as the perpetrator of qualified kidnapping for the case of Luis Armando Lagos Torres, 50 years old—a worker at the Panguipulli lumber complex—a socialist militant detained in Curranco in 1973.

Luis Lagos was detained in 1973 along with 15 other people in the south, in the so-called "Caravanita Chica," in the Ninth Region.

The 16 disappeared

Salvador Alamos Rubilar José Héctor Bórquez Livican Daniel Antonio Castro López Carlos Alberto Callumán Callumán Mauricio Segundo Curiñaco Reyes Carlos Figueroa Zapata Isaías José Fuentealba Calderón Luis Armando Lagos Torres Alberto Segundo Reinante Raipán Ernesto Juan Reinante Raipán Modesto Reinante Raipán Luis Rivera Catricheo Alejandro Antonio Tracanao Pincheira José Miguel Tracanao Pincheira Eliseo Maximiliano Tracanao Valenzuela Bernarda Rosalba Vera Contardo

Source: El Mostrador – May 23, 2001 Date: 05-23-2001