On August 13, 1974, members of the Communist Party in Conchalí were detained: Manuel Antonio CARREÑO NAVARRO, 53, a salesman; his son Iván Sergio CARREÑO AGUILERA, 16, who apparently collaborated in minor tasks within that party; and Andrés Tadeo GALDAMES MUÑOZ.

Along with them, three other people were detained that same day, who regained their freedom after some time. Various testimonies that this Commission has obtained confirm that the three forcibly disappeared persons were held at the DINA facility of Villa Grimaldi, from where all trace of them was lost.

The Commission is convinced that their disappearance was the work of State agents, who thereby violated their human rights.

Source: Rettig Report

The Twentieth Civil Court of Santiago ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $280,000,000 to the children and partner of Andrés Tadeo Galdames (or Galdámez) Muñoz, who was detained in the early hours of August 13, 1974, by agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and last seen alive at the clandestine detention center of Londres 38.

In the ruling (case file 12.795-2019), Judge Gabriela Silva Herrera dismissed the defendant's claim to apply the statute of limitations to the civil action in this case, considering that Galdames Muñoz and his family members were victims of crimes against humanity. "That, in the first place and regarding the allegations made by the defendant party as to the civil action being time-barred, whether because the events occurred in the month of August 1974, or due to the date of the return to democracy, and therefore the deadlines for exercising the civil action have long since passed, a series of factual and legal elements must be kept in mind," the ruling states. The resolution adds: "In the first place, and as has already been pointed out repeatedly in this sentence, we are facing crimes against humanity, as established by the respective conventions and instruments of international human rights law, since these events occurred in a context of exception, a period in which the human rights of people opposing the regime of that time, or for simple purposes of intimidating the civilian population, were seriously, systematically, and massively violated, all of which was committed by State agents or by civilians protected by them." (excerpt)

Source: adprensa.cl 04/22/2021 Date: 04-22-2021

The Twentieth Civil Court of Santiago ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $280,000,000 to the children and partner of a person detained in the early hours of August 13, 1974, by agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and last seen alive at the clandestine detention center of Londres 38.

The Twentieth Civil Court of Santiago ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $280,000,000 to the children and partner of Andrés Tadeo Galdames (or Galdámez) Muñoz, detained in the early hours of August 13, 1974, by agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and last seen alive at the clandestine detention center of Londres 38.

In the ruling (case file 12.795-2019), Judge Gabriela Silva Herrera dismissed the defendant's claim to apply the statute of limitations to the civil action in this case, considering that Galdames Muñoz and his family members were victims of crimes against humanity. "That, in the first place and regarding the allegations made by the defendant party as to the civil action being time-barred, whether because the events occurred in the month of August 1974, or due to the date of the return to democracy, and therefore the deadlines for exercising the civil action have long since passed, a series of factual and legal elements must be kept in mind," the ruling states. The resolution adds: "In the first place, and as has already been pointed out repeatedly in this sentence, we are facing crimes against humanity, as established by the respective conventions and instruments of international human rights law, since these events occurred in a context of exception, a period in which the human rights of people opposing the regime of that time, or for simple purposes of intimidating the civilian population, were seriously, systematically, and massively violated, all of which was committed by State agents or by civilians protected by them." "Considering—it continues—the conclusion of the preceding paragraph, it is appropriate to determine whether these are subject to a statute of limitations or not, keeping in mind that we will start by focusing on the criminal action. Thus, one of the most characteristic elements of crimes against humanity is precisely their non-applicability of statutory limitations, as established, for example, in the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity of November 26, 1968, specifically in its Article I letter b), which states that 'The following crimes shall be imprescriptible, (...) b) Crimes against humanity committed whether in time of war or in time of peace...' and in Article 3 of the Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda of 1994. Although the Convention has not been ratified by our country, the norms and especially the principles contained in the international instrument undoubtedly rise to the category of ius cogens, which does have full application in our domestic law. This has also been established by the jurisprudence of our Most Excellent Supreme Court in recent rulings, such as in case File No. 1424-2013, called 'Tejas Verdes Episode' dated April 1, 2014, in its sixth to fifteenth considerations; case File No. 4300-2014, called 'Nilda Peña Solari Episode' dated September 4, 2014, in its eighth to thirteenth considerations; and case File No. 21.177-2014, called 'Villa Grimaldi Episode', titled 'Ramón Martínez González', dated November 10, 2014, in its fourteenth to eighteenth considerations, just to cite a few." "Consequently, having determined that the criminal action in matters of crimes against humanity is imprescriptible, it is necessary to establish whether in the case at hand the civil action derived from these punishable acts is also imprescriptible or if, on the contrary, the general rules of limitation of the Civil Code must be applied," it adds. "Thus, having it clear that the present civil action derives precisely from acts classified as crimes against humanity which do not prescribe, it would be incoherent to understand that the present indemnification action is subject to limitation rules, as this would be contrary to the principles of International Human Rights Law that establish the permanent obligation of the State to repair the victims of these crimes considered among the most atrocious, as established in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of March 23, 1976, Part III, Article 9, and Resolution 56/83 approved by the United Nations General Assembly, of January 28, 2002, on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts; and keeping in mind especially that both actions are based on the same illicit act. This has been resolved by the Supreme Court in repeated rulings, such as, for example, in the replacement sentence in case File No. 4300-2014, dated September 4, 2014, called 'Nilda Peña Solari Episode' (second consideration), and likewise in case File No. 1424-2013, dated April 1, 2014, called 'Tejas Verdes Episode' (eleventh consideration, second paragraph), in which it is clearly established that the civil action is imprescriptible. To further elaborate, the cited ruling points out: '...Therefore, any differentiation made by the judge, in order to divide both actions and grant them differentiated treatment, is discriminatory and does not allow the legal system to maintain the coherence and unity that is demanded of it...'" The Santiago Court of Appeals has reached the same conclusion, for example in the sentence for case File No. 1476-2014, dated November 4, 2014 (fourteenth consideration), which points out regarding the civil action that, like the criminal action, it "...is imprescriptible because it is based on an illicit conduct of State agents... classifying the crime as one against humanity," the judge cites. Likewise, the presiding judge of the 20th Civil Court of Santiago warns that: "It must also be kept in mind that we are not facing a common action for damages, derived from private contractual or extra-contractual relationships typical of domestic law, but rather we are facing an action that is based on situations of a humanitarian nature and that therefore must be subject to the norms, principles, and international rules that make up ius cogens, typical of International Human Rights Law." Therefore: "To accept the thesis proposed by the defendant on this point would result in a serious infringement of the international obligations that our State has contracted, since it has ratified the Vienna Convention in 1980, which in its Article 27 establishes that a State may not invoke its own domestic law to evade its international obligations, such as—and as has been pointed out—that of reparation, a norm which, moreover, according to our internal legal system, has constitutional rank in accordance with Article 5 of the Political Constitution of the State, so that contradicting the aforementioned norm would even be infringing upon our own legal system," she warns. "The American Convention on Human Rights or 'Pact of San José, Costa Rica,' ratified by Chile and in force, also points out—she delves—that it provides in its Article 63.1 that 'when it decides that there has been a violation of a right or freedom protected by this Convention, the Court shall provide that the injured party be ensured the enjoyment of their right or freedom that was violated. It shall also provide, if appropriate, that the consequences of the measure or situation that has constituted the breach of such rights be remedied and that fair compensation be paid to the injured party,' which translates into a constitutional obligation for the Chilean State to indemnify for the perpetration of crimes against humanity, incorporated into our domestic law by mandate of Article 5 of the political charter, without it being possible to estimate, as the defendant intends, that said instruction for indemnification is directed exclusively to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and not to our courts of justice, an assertion that would imply disregarding constitutional precepts." "Thus, although Articles 2332 and 2515 of the Civil Code also apply in favor of the State, in accordance with what is established in Article 2497 of the same legal body, they are not applicable in this matter, as they are openly contrary to the international Human Rights norms already mentioned, which establish a unitary character for criminal and civil actions arising from crimes against humanity," she reasons. Such being the case, this judge, keeping in mind the norms already referred to and for the foundations exposed above, will reject both the main and the subsidiary allegation regarding declaring any of the statutes of limitations for the civil action that gives rise to these proceedings, expressly declaring for the purposes of this sentence that the civil action arising from a criminal action of an imprescriptible type for crimes against humanity is also imprescriptible," she concludes. Therefore, it is resolved: "That the claim for compensation for moral damages filed on page 1 against the defendant State of Chile IS ACCEPTED, and the latter IS ORDERED to pay in favor of the plaintiffs Ms. Claudia Victoria Galdames Noguera, Ms. Úrsula Andrea Galdames Noguera, Ms. Paula Marina Galdames Noguera, Mr. Ilich Galdámez Muñoz, and Mr. Mario Andrés Galdámez Muñoz, the sum of $40,000,000 (forty million pesos) to each; and for the plaintiff Ms. Claudia Noguera Cepeda, the sum of $80,000,000 (eighty million pesos)."

Source: adprensa.cl 04/22/2021 Date: 04-22-2021

"...to yield in the search for truth and justice would be, in effect, to forget our own... it would be to disappear them once again. Andrés Galdámez was an active militant of the Communist Party of Chile.

At the time of his detention and subsequent disappearance at the hands of a DINA commando (Pinochet's political police), my father, Andrés Tadeo Galdámez Muñoz, was carrying out, like thousands of others, intense work of organization and resistance to the military dictatorship.

He was detained between the night of August 12 and 13, 1974, in the northern sector of Santiago (Conchalí commune). His detention was part of an action planned by the DINA in the sector that led to the repression of several communist militants from the neighborhood.

Of all those illegally arrested that fateful night, there were three comrades who went on to swell the sinister list of the forcibly disappeared of the Pinochet dictatorship. They are Manuel Carreño, 53 years old, his son Iván Carreño, only 16 years old, and my father, Andrés Galdámez, 44 years old.

Despite all the efforts deployed by our families in different Chilean and international judicial instances, in all these very long and painful 39 years, we have not had news of his whereabouts and fate.

This whole situation derives into a Kafkaesque drama that still continues, since, at the time, the representatives of the dictatorship always denied having had any part in the trampling of my father's rights to freedom and life, despite the evidence provided at the time with the backing of the Vicariate of Solidarity.

It is worth noting that the post-dictatorship authorities, despite recognizing the status of Andrés Galdámez as a forcibly disappeared person, since his case is duly documented in the Rettig Report and in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the courts of justice still insist on closing the case (like hundreds of others) because, according to them, there is a lack of evidence (statements from witnesses who might have seen him in detention centers).

We are aware that testimonies have indeed been provided by two comrades who saw him or heard of him in the detention centers of Tres Álamos, Londres 38, and Villa Grimaldi... but even so, according to the Chilean courts of justice, these testimonies are not enough!

Even in the present, this situation of eternal judicial processing affects thousands of relatives of Chilean forcibly disappeared persons, which speaks for itself of the great debt in terms of truth and justice that the Chilean state maintains with society as a whole, in addition to demonstrating in all its sinister facet the lack of political will of the governing parties (Right and Concertación) to solve this situation of injustice that makes the disappearance of our own eternal and painful, with the aggravating factor that it is these same rulers and parties who made every effort to save the murderer Augusto Pinochet in 1998 from a trial in Spain... we would already wish for the same enthusiasm from those same authorities to investigate and apply truth and justice in the thousands of cases of human rights abuses committed against Chileans in dictatorial times. Being rigorous and in light of events, we note that, in Chile, impunity for criminals continues to be imposed in practice, and there is an attempt to erase from history the horrors that were committed and CONTINUE to be committed, since according to international legislation on crimes against humanity, these crimes do not prescribe. It is worth saying at this point that today we feel pain and impotence in the depths of our being when we see how the state apparatuses repress and murder Mapuche community members and union leaders, since with this, our disappeared are being murdered once again... it hurts and discourages us just as much that a part of the political leadership, in its eagerness to achieve positions of power, throws overboard the sacrifice and dreams of our martyrs, an action that will condemn, in practice, both us and society as a whole to an eternal wandering through the labyrinths of impunity and injustice. But, I have to say that, despite all the obstacles that the Concertación governments put and possibly will put, and that the governing Pinochetist right now puts, to achieve definitive truth and justice, we will continue to insist on our struggle... because to yield in the search for truth and justice would be, in effect, to forget our own... it would be to disappear them once again.

NO FORGIVENESS, NO FORGETTING

TRUTH AND JUSTICE

NO TO IMPUNITY

Andrés Galdámez, PRESENT! Ilich Galdámez

Source: imagenesparamemoriar.com 08/11/2013

Andrés Galdámez was an active militant of the Communist Party of Chile.

At the time of his detention and subsequent disappearance at the hands of a DINA commando (Pinochet's political police), my father, Andrés Tadeo Galdámez Muñoz, was carrying out, like thousands of others, intense work of organization and resistance to the military dictatorship.

He was detained between the night of August 12 and 13, 1974, in the northern sector of Santiago (Conchalí commune). His detention was part of an action planned by the DINA in the sector that led to the repression of several communist militants from the neighborhood.

Of all those illegally arrested that fateful night, there were three comrades who went on to swell the sinister list of the forcibly disappeared of the Pinochet dictatorship. They are Manuel Carreño, 53 years old, his son Iván Carreño, only 16 years old, and my father, Andrés Galdámez, 44 years old.

Despite all the efforts deployed by our families in different Chilean and international judicial instances, in all these very long and painful 39 years, we have not had news of his whereabouts and fate.

This whole situation derives into a Kafkaesque drama that still continues, since, at the time, the representatives of the dictatorship always denied having had any part in the trampling of my father's rights to freedom and life, despite the evidence provided at the time with the backing of the Vicariate of Solidarity.

It is worth noting that the post-dictatorship authorities, despite recognizing the status of Andrés Galdámez as a forcibly disappeared person, since his case is duly documented in the Rettig Report and in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the courts of justice still insist on closing the case (like hundreds of others) because, according to them, there is a lack of evidence (statements from witnesses who might have seen him in detention centers).

We are aware that testimonies have indeed been provided by two comrades who saw him or heard of him in the detention centers of Tres Álamos, Londres 38, and Villa Grimaldi... but even so, according to the Chilean courts of justice, these testimonies are not enough!

Even in the present, this situation of eternal judicial processing affects thousands of relatives of Chilean forcibly disappeared persons, which speaks for itself of the great debt in terms of truth and justice that the Chilean state maintains with society as a whole, in addition to demonstrating in all its sinister facet the lack of political will of the governing parties (Right and Concertación) to solve this situation of injustice that makes the disappearance of our own eternal and painful, with the aggravating factor that it is these same rulers and parties who made every effort to save the murderer Augusto Pinochet in 1998 from a trial in Spain... we would already wish for the same enthusiasm from those same authorities to investigate and apply truth and justice in the thousands of cases of human rights abuses committed against Chileans in dictatorial times. Being rigorous and in light of events, we note that, in Chile, impunity for criminals continues to be imposed in practice, and there is an attempt to erase from history the horrors that were committed and CONTINUE to be committed, since according to international legislation on crimes against humanity, these crimes do not prescribe. It is worth saying at this point that today we feel pain and impotence in the depths of our being when we see how the state apparatuses repress and murder Mapuche community members and union leaders, since with this, our disappeared are being murdered once again... it hurts and discourages us just as much that a part of the political leadership, in its eagerness to achieve positions of power, throws overboard the sacrifice and dreams of our martyrs, an action that will condemn, in practice, both us and society as a whole to an eternal wandering through the labyrinths of impunity and injustice. But, I have to say that, despite all the obstacles that the Concertación governments put and possibly will put, and that the governing Pinochetist right now puts, to achieve definitive truth and justice, we will continue to insist on our struggle... because to yield in the search for truth and justice would be, in effect, to forget our own... it would be to disappear them once again. Ilich Galdámez

Source: imagenesparamemoriar.com 08/11/2013 Date: 08-11-2013

Chile Digno: Open letter to the Leadership of the Communist Party of Chile.

NO, NOT IN THE NAME OF OUR FATHER.

by Relatives of Andrés Galdámez Muñoz, prominent PC militant, forcibly disappeared in 1974 by the DINA. January 02, 2023 -The participation of the Communist Party of Chile in the infamous pact recently agreed upon by the corrupt political elite, interested in perpetuating the Pinochetist constitutional order, is nothing more than the consummation of a betrayal announced long before. -Suffice it to recall the servile attitude of the honorable members of the communist bench (with the exception of Camila Vallejo, then young and, to a certain degree, rebellious) when in 2014 they joined the tribute to the sadly famous Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, intellectual author of the current dictatorial constitution, or the explicit support or complicit silence, but always unconditional, to "left-wing" governments, mere administrators on duty of the neoliberal and repressive model. -Such is the case now, when in fact and in word it supports a government that, although it presented itself as a breaker of the Concertación-New Majority decadence, in practice has proven to be more of the same. It is difficult to believe that the thinking heads of the PC lacked the imagination not to realize that a government like the current one was, for the elite of various stripes conspiring that night of November 15, 2019, one of the possible scenarios to crush the social uprising and save the model that guarantees their privileges. -Hidden under a veneer of outdated light progressivism, the new government consequently reaffirms the essential pillars of the neoliberal economic-political model that so affects the majority of the population and especially the workers. With a stroke of a pen, fraudulent "free" trade treaties are approved, the nation's strategic resources and the banking system in the hands of foreign capital will not be recovered, the AFP 2.0 will continue to loot pensions, the sea that calmly bathes us will continue to be the property of a handful of privileged families. -In the political order, instead of expanding mechanisms of popular participation, the aim is to consolidate the institutions of the State, and in particular the current military and police institutions, which, despite being guilty of human rights violations and corroded by corruption, have the full confidence of the president. In that spirit, the Wallmapu will continue to be militarily occupied, the political prisoners of the revolt will continue to be treated as criminals, the repression of popular resistance will be as hard or harder than that which Boric, Vallejo, and Jackson knew when they were students. -In the international arena, the foreign policy of the State aligns clearly and plainly with the hegemonic strategies of the centers of global domination, in particular those of the United States. A sample of this is the position of the Boric government, and of the PC as an ally, regarding the conflict in Ukraine or the overthrow of President Castillo in Peru. -It is evident that the current Communist Party is not even a shadow of that political organization of the working class and the dispossessed of Chile. The revolutionary, anti-oligarchic, and anti-imperialist party of Recabarren, of Corvalán, and of Gladys. Now it is a party of "political operators" who, in their alienated ambition for profit, have thrown overboard the ideals, a heroic history along with its thousands of heroes and martyrs, and the perspective of revolution. The Communist Party of Chile has become part of the problem, which sooner or later the people will know how to solve. -Faced with these facts, we, Ilich Galdámez M. and Mario Galdámez M., as children of the man who was a prominent militant of the Communist Party of Chile and who has been missing since he was kidnapped by DINA agents in 1974, ANDRÉS GALDÁMEZ MUÑOZ, explicitly demand from the PC Leadership that, out of respect for his memory, his dignity, and the ideals for which he offered his life, they do not consider him, neither internally nor publicly, as a member of said organization.

Source: cctt.cl 01/05/2023 Date: 01-05-2023