On January 10, 1977, José Luis APPEL DE LA CRUZ was kidnapped by a group of armed civilians on a public street in the city of Cipolletti, Neuquén Province, Argentina, before the eyes of his spouse, Carmen Angélica DELARD CABEZAS, and their daughter.

Carmen Delard disappeared at the police station in that city while filing a report regarding her spouse's disappearance. On January 17, one week later, her sister Gloria Ximena DELARD CABEZAS was detained at her home in Buenos Aires along with her spouse, Roberto CRISTI MELERO, and their two children.

Gloria Delard was pregnant with her third child. The patrol of Federal Police agents transported them to the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), the facility from which they disappeared. The two sisters, Carmen and Gloria Delard, and their husbands were students and members of the MIR at the Universidad de Concepción.

Persecuted in Chile after September 11, 1973, they accepted an offer from a family friend, a former Army colonel, to help them cross the Chile-Argentina border, settling in Neuquén and Buenos Aires, respectively.

Following the detention, the children of both couples were found by their grandparents in different orphanages. Regarding the third child, only unconfirmed reports were obtained concerning his birth in captivity, and Gloria Delard's parents were unable to locate him.

The Commission has reached the conviction that both couples were victims of forced disappearance, in violation of their human rights, within the framework of the aforementioned situation, but there is insufficient evidence to affirm the participation of agents of the State of Chile in these events.

Source: (Rettig Report)

Courts in La Plata, General Roca, and CABA are passing the Carmen Delard Cabezas and José Appel de la Cruz case back and forth to one another. The relatives of two Chilean militants are demanding the right to the Truth: what happened to them and where are their bodies.

The Buenos Aires justice system ruled that it is not responsible for "determining their whereabouts." The justice system has spent nearly a year and a half delaying the decision on which court should hear a habeas corpus petition filed by the relatives of two Chilean citizens, militants of the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) in their country and the PRT-ERP (Workers' Revolutionary Party – People's Revolutionary Army) in Argentina, who disappeared during the last dictatorship.

They want to know what happened to them and where they are. "The claim revolves around identifying the whereabouts of the alleged victims, knowing the location of their remains, receiving them, and burying them according to their beliefs, closing the mourning process they have undergone for decades." As reported by Tiempo Argentino, on May 30, 2013, Eduardo Delard Cabezas filed a habeas corpus petition before Federal Court No. 1 of La Plata for his sister, Carmen Angélica, and her partner, José Luis Appel de la Cruz.

Since then, the file has bounced from court to court, from one point of the country to another, without anyone deciding to initiate the investigation. Appel de la Cruz and Delard Cabezas had been married since 1973 and lived in Cipolletti, Río Negro.

They had studied medicine at the Universidad Austral de Valdivia, Chile, and emigrated after the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. "On December 10, 1976, they were traveling in a Citroën vehicle along with their daughter, Victoria (who was four and a half months old), through the city of Cipolletti.

At that moment, when José Luis got out of the vehicle to make a purchase, he was surrounded by several security agents dressed in civilian clothes, who kidnapped him; his whereabouts remain unknown to this date," the judicial file recalls.

His wife left the baby in the care of relatives and reported the incident at a police station. "To this date, she remains disappeared," the document explains. "An eventual conviction of those criminally responsible for the forced disappearances of persons does not encompass or guarantee the right to the truth that assists the direct and indirect victims of the events, that is: to know what happened," the habeas corpus specifies.

The federal court of La Plata declared itself incompetent because the events occurred outside its jurisdiction. Thus, it sent the file "for consultation" to the Federal Chamber of La Plata. This, in turn, referred it to the Federal Chamber of General Roca, Río Negro, which for its part sent it to Federal Court No. 2 of Neuquén.

That court also did not accept jurisdiction because it understood that the event that harmed the Chilean couple was already being addressed in a trial taking place in the Federal Capital. It then sent the file to Oral Federal Tribunal No. 1 of the City of Buenos Aires.

When this tribunal received the file, it determined that "the purpose of the proceedings carried out before this Tribunal consists of determining individual criminal responsibility—or the absence thereof—in relation to the alleged perpetrators of the facts arising from the requirements to elevate the case to trial," which effectively includes the cases of Appel de la Cruz and Delard Cabezas.

But "it is not the object of the present process to identify the destination and whereabouts of José Luis Appel de la Cruz and Carmen Angélica Delard Cabezas, as it does not constitute a prerequisite for achieving the goals of the trial." Last Tuesday, it rejected the jurisdiction to investigate what happened to the Chilean couple.

But it also opined that "it would not be Federal Court No. 2 of Neuquén that is competent to carry out the amparo action, but rather the Federal Chamber of Appeals of General Roca," which had previously already divested itself of the case.

Thus, a year and a half after initiating an action that in normal terms should be resolved quickly, the file seems headed to the court that is the "common superior" to all those that refused to take charge of the case, that is, the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, where it will arrive at a time that is absolutely impossible to predict.

Source: http://www.infonews.com September 08, 2014

Date: 08-09-2014

International Day of the Disappeared: 9 Ayseninos remain missing

On the International Day of the Disappeared, various Human Rights groups recalled that there are still 1,192 Chilean men and women who remain missing, among them 9 Ayseninos who were imprisoned during the Pinochet Civil-Military Dictatorship.

Forced disappearance is the deprivation of liberty of one or more persons, in any form, committed by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization or support of the State, followed by the lack of information or the refusal to acknowledge said deprivation of liberty or to inform about the whereabouts of the person, thereby preventing the exercise of legal remedies and relevant procedural guarantees.

María Vera Vera, president of the Coyhaique Human Rights Group, stated that not only is there a debt of the Chilean State in fulfilling its international obligations of truth and justice, but also that the military and civilians who were authors and accomplices of human rights violations in the country maintain a "pact of silence" and do not provide information on where the forcibly disappeared are.

The leader recalled that in our region there are still 9 people, including her father Juan Vera Oyarzún, who remain disappeared. Some are from localities such as Herminio Soto Gatica, sub-delegate of Tortel at that time, or José Orlando Vilugrón, executed in Cisnes and thrown into the sea.

There are also victims of Operation Condor such as José Rosendo Pérez Ríos, Juan Vera, Néstor Castillo Sepúlveda, and Humberto Cordano López, all with families who hope to know the truth and find justice in these cases of victims of the dictatorship.

The list of the forcibly disappeared from the Aysén Region continues with Flavio Arquímedes Oyarzún Soto and Luis Alejandro Largo Vera, both born in Puerto Aysén and detained in Santiago, and José Luis Appel de la Cruz, a native of the Huichas Islands, detained in 1977 in Argentina.

The International Day of the Disappeared is an achievement of the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared, supported by the United Nations, which is why in our country every August 30, the thousands of victims of forced disappearance in Chile are remembered.

Source: El patagón domingo noticias, August 30, 2020

Date: 30-08-2020

UdeC 100 years: Meet the list of students and graduates of the Universidad de Concepción who fell during the dictatorship

The Universidad de Concepción (UdeC) begins to celebrate its first centenary, 100 years of history and direct connection with the city and the country. A history that had active participation in the social reality of Chile, where the strong participation and political militancy of its students peaked in the 60s and 70s, and which under the dictatorship translated into strong repression, torture, and death.

The "U de Conce" was the alma mater of men and women who gave their lives to build a more just society, or in the resistance to the military-business dictatorship that plagued the Chilean people. The names of a large part of these people (54 of the 71 in total) are present on the memorial next to the Los Patos lagoon; others, like Caupolicán Inostroza, are remembered with a plaque in the Humanities parking lot, the place where he was murdered by Carabineros in March of '84.

However, it is necessary to acknowledge all of them, students and graduates, who are also part of the history of the University and of Chile. Universidad de Concepción Memorial

See the full list below

Name | Age | Degree | Status | Date | Location | Affiliation --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- Álvarez Castillo, Fernando | 40 | | MPT | 08-11-73 | Concepción | PC Angulo Matamala, Rolando Gastón | 26 | Social Worker | ME | 19-04-74 | Chillán | MIR Appel de la Cruz, José Luis | 28 | Student | DD | 10-01-77 | Argentina | MIR Araneda Contreras, Vladimir Daniel | 33 | Teacher | ME | 22-10-73 | Concepción | PC Araya Palominos, Jaime Franklin Wladimir | 26 | | ME | 23-09-73 | Los Ángeles | MIR Barra García, Luis Alberto | 44 | Physician | ME | 28-11-86 | Santiago | MIR Bascuñán Mourgues, Carlos Dewet | 28 | Journalism | ME | 16-09-73 | Chañaral | Bordaz Paz, José Francisco | 31 | Mechanical Engineer | ME | 07-12-74 | Santiago | MIR Bruce Catalán, Alan Roberto | 24 | Student | DD | 13-02-75 | Santiago | MIR Cabrera Balarritz, Elizabeth del Carmen | 23 | Social Worker | ME | 15-09-73 | Antofagasta | MIR Campos Carrillo, Felipe Porfirio | 23 | Kinesiology (Ecuadorian) | ME | 20-09-73 | Concepción | Calfulén Quintriqeo, Silvia | 22 | Pedagogy | MA | 09-09-88 | Concepción | FPMR Carrasco Tapia, José Humberto | 43 | Journalist | ME | 08-09-86 | Santiago | MIR Carrasco Vásquez, José Hernán | 28 | | ME | 01-12-75 | Santiago | MIR Carreño González, Enrique Ángel | 20 | Agronomy student | DD | 20-09-73 | Parral | MIR Catalán Febrero, Miguel Ángel | 24 | | ME | 09-10-73 | Concepción | MIR Cid Urrutia, Washington | 24 | Mathematics Pedagogy | DD | 08-12-74 | Santiago | MIR Contreras Maluje, Carlos Humberto | 29 | Pharmaceutical Chemist | DD | 03-11-76 | Santiago | PC Cornejo Fernández, Luis Ángel Ariel | 23 | Topography student | DD | 18-09-73 | Los Ángeles | JJCC Crisóstomo Salgado, Eduardo Segundo | 24 | | DD | 01-10-73 | Chillán | MIR Cristi Melero, Roberto | 26 | Student | DD | 17-01-77 | Argentina | MIR Chaer Vázquez, Roberto Salomón | 21 | | DD | 06-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Delard Cabezas, Carmen Angélica | 23 | Student | DD | 10-01-77 | Argentina | MIR Delard Cabezas, Gloria Ximena | 22 | Student | DD | 17-01-77 | Argentina | MIR Dockendorff Navarrete, Muriel | 23 | Student | DD | 06-08-74 | Santiago | MIR Eltit Spielman, Jaime Emilio | 28 | | DD | 13-09-73 | Temuco | MIR Enríquez Espinosa, Edgardo | 34 | Civil Engineer | DD | 10-04-76 | Argentina | MIR Enríquez Espinosa, Miguel Humberto | 30 | Physician | MC | 05-10-74 | Santiago | MIR Espinoza Parra, Juan Elías | 35 | | ME | 29-12-83 | Santiago | MIR Felmer Klenner, José Luis | 20 | | ME | 19-10-73 | Puerto Montt | MIR Fernández Zapata, Carlos Julio | 26 | | DD | 10-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Flores Durán, Sergio Gabriel | 29 | Anthropology | ME | 11-12-81 | Santiago | MIR Fuentes Alarcón, Jorge Isaac | 28 | Sociologist | DD | 17-05-75 | Paraguay | MIR Gangotena Vallejos, Alfredo | 22 | Sociology (Ecuadorian) | ME | 25-09-73 | Lirquén | Gómez Iturra, Juan Carlos Roberto | 27 | Journalist | ME | 21-06-79 | Santiago | MIR González Fernández, Héctor Genaro | 27 | | DD | 06-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Grez Aburto, Jorge Arturo | 29 | | DD | 23-05-74 | Santiago | MIR Herrera Riveros, Nelson Adrián | 30 | | ME | 23-08-84 | Concepción | MIR Hillerns Larrañaga, Arturo Enrique | 29 | Surgeon | DD | 15-09-73 | Temuco | MIR Ibarra Córdova, Fabián Enrique | 26 | Accountant | DD | 17-01-75 | Valparaíso | MIR Inostroza Lamas, Caupolicán Humberto | 26 | Engineering student | ME | 27-03-84 | Concepción | Jaccard Siegler, Alexis Vladimir | 25 | | DD | 17-05-77 | Argentina | MIR Jara Castro, José Hipólito Segundo | 29 | Pharmaceutical Chemist | DD | 14-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Krauss Iturra, Víctor Fernando | 24 | | MF | 04-10-73 | Valdivia | MIR Lagos Marín, Ogán Esteban | 20 | | ME | 28-04-74 | Chillán | MIR Lagos Marín, Sergio Humberto | 26 | Sociologist | DD | 07-02-75 | Santiago | MIR Leal Sanhueza, Heriberto del Carmen | 24 | Engineering | DD | 20-07-76 | Argentina | MIR Mella Flores, Alejandro Robinson | 19 | Sociology | DD | 19-09-73 | Linares | Miranda Lobos, Eduardo Francisco | 27 | Topographer | DD | 07-10-74 | Santiago | MIR Montecinos San Martín, Marcos Hernán | 25 | | ME | 03-09-75 | Concepción | MIR Negrete Peña, César Arturo Emiliano | 25 | Commercial Engineer | DD | 09-12-74 | Santiago | MIR Neira Salas, Máximo Segundo | 34 | Economics | ME | 11-10-73 | Concepción | MIR Otto Morales, Germán | 28 | Sociology | ME | 19-09-73 | Concepción | MIR Peñailillo Parra, Ana María Luisa | 36 | Sociologist | MA | 28-04-86 | Valparaíso | MIR Perelman Ide, Juan Carlos | 31 | Chemical Engineer | DD | 20-02-75 | Santiago | MIR Pérez Molina, Sergio Alfredo | 30 | Engineer | DD | 21-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Pincheira Llanos, Luis Pantaleón | 34 | Sociologist | ME | 10-11-81 | Santiago | MIR Randolph Segovia, José Rodolfo Rigoberto | 24 | Engineering student | ME | 26-05-85 | Concepción | Riffo Ramos, Sergio Alejandro | 23 | | DD | 29-11-74 | Santiago | MIR Ríos Pacheco, Sonia del Tránsito | 30 | Chemistry Pedagogy | DD | 17-01-75 | Valparaíso | MIR Rioseco Espinoza, Carlos Ramón | 26 | | DD | 18-01-75 | Valparaíso | MIR Rodríguez Cárcamo, Héctor Roberto | 25 | | DD | 19-09-73 | Concepción | MIR Ruz Zañartu, Ricardo Delfín | 34 | Primary Teacher | ME | 27-11-79 | Santiago | MIR Salinas Argomedo, Ariel Martín | 26 | University Student | DD | 25-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Sobarzo Nuñez, Héctor Patricio | 31 | Teacher | ME | 02-07-84 | Santiago | MIR Torres Villalba, Jimmy Freddy | 19 | Engineering (Ecuadorian) | ME | 20-09-73 | Concepción | Van Schouwen Vasey, Bautista | 30 | Surgeon | DD | 13-12-73 | Santiago | Velásquez Molina, Héctor Fernando | 37 | Teacher | MPT | 08-11-73 | Concepción | PR Villalobos Díaz, Manuel Jesús | 22 | | DD | 17-09-74 | Santiago | MIR Villavela Araujo, Arturo | 38 | Chemical Engineer | ME | 07-09-83 | Santiago | MIR Zuñiga Tapia, Héctor Cayetano | 27 | | DD | 16-09-74 | Santiago | MIR *Information provided by the Bautista Van Schouwen Vassey Mutual of Concepción

Source: resumen.cl 22/3/2019

Date: 22-03-2019

Second Edition of “Aysén: Deaths in Dictatorship, Stories of Absence and Memory” Launched.

The story of José Luis Appel de la Cruz, a native of Caleta Andrade, who in his youth, after entering medical school at the Universidad Austral and joining the MIR, ended up being detained and subsequently disappeared in 1977 in Argentina along with his wife Carmen Delard, is the new case of one of the victims of the Civil-Military Dictatorship added to the Second Edition of the book Aysén: Deaths in Dictatorship, Stories of Absence and Memory, a publication by the Coyhaique Human Rights Group presented in Puerto Aysén.

At the event held at the Pedro Aguirre Cerda Neighborhood Council, social and political leaders, relatives and friends of the victims, and neighbors present were able to learn the details of this new publication from the project coordinator, sociologist and member of the Coyhaique Human Rights Group, Ariel Elgueta, and Verónica Venegas, in charge of the research team.

Ariel Elgueta highlighted that the decision was made to launch this new edition in Puerto Aysén to pay tribute to the people who were murdered there. "Neighbors were killed here who had no connection to the political sphere.

They were ordinary, everyday neighbors who walked the streets every day; intolerance in its highest degree." For her part, Verónica Venegas detailed that "when we started talking to the relatives, we were searching for the story of the person who had been a victim, but you start to encounter the stories of the victims' families, of the environments, of the communities that also live through these episodes of violence, where there is still so much impunity." Ninón Neira, President of the Human Rights Group, along with thanking the work developed by the research team and the exclusive dedication of the Minister of the Court of Appeals of Coyhaique, Luis Sepúlveda Coronado, in Human Rights cases, as well as the work developed by the Human Rights team of the Investigative Police, called for the stories described, despite their pain, to "leave the deepest feeling to continue searching for the truth and to take due awareness of the value of dialogue and agreements to build a more solidary and just Chile." Also present at the activity were Oscar del Solar, Regional Director of Culture, and María Soledad Silva, National Coordinator of the Projects and Memorials Area of the Undersecretariat of Human Rights, who valued the contribution of this publication to the historical memory of our region. It should be mentioned that the Second Edition of “Aysén: Deaths in Dictatorship, Stories of Absence and Memory,” a project of the Coyhaique Human Rights Group, was supported by the Undersecretariat of Human Rights and the Aysén Council of Arts and Culture, and was published by LOM Ediciones, which will distribute it nationwide.

Source: Ventisqueros, December 4, 2017

Date: 04-12-2017

Two Chilean women travel to Buenos Aires to testify in the Operation Condor trial

"Our presence at the trial has the purpose of reclaiming our fallen, of validating their lives and convictions. They were men and women of profound and laudable ideals and not terrorists as the dictators portrayed them," said Odette Magnet before traveling to the trans-Andean capital.

In "search of Justice," two Chilean women traveled to Buenos Aires this Monday to testify before Oral Criminal Tribunal No. 1 of the Argentine capital, in the trial for relatives disappeared within the framework of Operation Condor.

They are Odette Magnet Ferrero and Laura Elgueta Díaz, sisters of María Cecilia Magnet Ferrero and Luis Elgueta Díaz, kidnapped in July 1976 in Buenos Aires, where they lived, by Argentine military personnel and disappeared ever since.

María Cecilia Magnet and Luis Elgueta are on a list of 23 Chileans disappeared in Argentina, opponents of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship who sought refuge in the neighboring country before the military coup of March 24, 1976, which overthrew the government of President María Estela Martínez de Perón.

María Cecilia Magnet was kidnapped along with her Argentine husband, Guillermo Tamburini, from their home on July 16, 1976, while Luis Elgueta was detained on the 27th of the same month along with his Argentine partner, Clara Haydée Fernández, and her sister, Cecilia Fernández.

Operation Condor, as has been established, was a coordination between the secret police forces of the South American military dictatorships to exterminate opponents. In the trial opened in Buenos Aires, led by prosecutor Pablo Ouviña, relatives of 106 disappeared persons of different nationalities are represented, 23 of them Chilean, with a total of 450 witnesses, according to Chilean human rights organizations. "Our presence at the trial has the purpose of reclaiming our fallen, of validating their lives and convictions.

They were men and women of profound and laudable ideals and not terrorists as the dictators portrayed them," Odette Magnet told Efe before traveling to Buenos Aires. "It is about insisting on the duty to embrace memory, rescue them from oblivion, and immerse oneself in the pain, if necessary," she added. "Despite the time that has passed, we will not rest in our effort to reach the truth and justice (...).

When this is understood as an ethical obligation of an entire country, only then will we be able to aspire to a society reconciled with its history and its past," she concluded. At the same time, Laura Elgueta said that her presence at the trial "expresses the will to honor the memory, the name, the convictions, and the lives of our disappeared." "These are painful and difficult times; no one is ready to testify about the death of our brothers and sisters, but these types of gestures contribute to advancing the search for justice and truth," she added. "No one guarantees us victory, but this has been our struggle during all these years and we will not rest in our effort," she noted. The Tribunal is composed of judges Adrián Grunberg, Oscar Amirante, and Pablo Laufer, and the Chileans represented in the trial are Edgardo Enríquez Espinoza, Luis Elgueta Díaz, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, Luis Muñoz Velásquez, Juan Hernández Zaspe, Alexei Jaccard Siegler, and José de la Maza Asquet. Also Miguel Orellana Castro, Cristina Carreño Araya, Ángel Athanasiu Jara, Pablo Athanasiu Laschan, Frida Laschan Mellado, Carlos Rojas Campos, Carmen Delard Cabezas, Gloria Delard Cabezas, José Appel de la Cruz, Luis Zaragoza Olivares, Luis Espinoza González, Oscar Urra Ferrarese, Susana Ossola, Rafael Ferrada, Oscar Oyarzún Manso, and Cecilia Magnet Ferrero. Eighteen are the military personnel and former agents charged: Eduardo Samuel de Lío, Eugenio Guañabens Perello, Bernardo José Menéndez, Jorge Olivera Rovere, Santiago Omar Riveros, Carlos Horacio Tragant, Antonio Vañek, Carlos Humberto Caggiano, Humberto José Román, Felipe Jorge Alespeiti, Manuel Juan Cordero, Federico Antonio Minicucci, Néstor Horacio Falcón, José Julio Mazzeo, Horacio de Verda, Rodolfo Emilio Feroglio, Luis Sadi Pepa, Reynaldo Benito Bignone, Enrique Braulio Olea, Juan Avelino Rodríguez, and Mario Alberto Gómez. Operation or Plan Condor, as has been established, arose from a meeting held in Santiago between November 25 and 28, 1975, convened by the then-colonel Manuel Contreras, head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Augusto Pinochet's secret police. In the secret "Closing Act" of the meeting, it is established "very fast or immediate contact when an individual(s) is expelled from the country, or a suspect travels, to alert the Intelligence Services." It also points out that "the present organization will be called 'CONDOR', approved unanimously, in accordance with the motion presented by the Delegation of Uruguay in homage to the host country." The "Act" was signed by: for Argentina, Captain Jorge Casas; for Bolivia, Army Major Carlos Mena; for Uruguay, Army Colonel José A. Pons; for Paraguay, Army Colonel Benito Guanes Serrano; and for Chile, Colonel Manuel Contreras. The latter is currently in prison, sentenced to more than 300 years in jail in dozens of trials for human rights violations.

Source: Elmostrador, March 24, 2014

Date: 24-03-2014