After the military coup, the dictatorship established war councils in which it judged supporters and sympathizers of the UP. In Magallanes, minors were also judged, contrary to all international conventions. Of the 13 accused, six were minors, one of them a national basketball team player.

In the image, Rosa María Lizama Barrientos is formally still 15 years old. Her long, straight hair falls over her shoulders. She wears a turtleneck sweater and displays a soft face—in black and white—with a serious and confident look, perhaps due to the good grades that stand out in the class record book of the third-year E class at the Liceo de Niñas in Punta Arenas.

Perhaps because of the merit annotations that speak of her qualities and eloquence in history, Spanish, mathematics, and philosophy, or the daily volunteer work painting, fixing, and cleaning the school, along with other students.

The truth is that that gaze fixed on the lens and the fine rictus of her lips drawing a slight smile of satisfaction would remain engraved in the only photograph that remembers her as an adolescent, months before the military coup.

It may be one of those taken during the campaign to run for student body president. She does not remember, because much of what she could have been was completely erased during the two days that the first war council lasted, November 21 and 22, 1973, in front of a dozen military personnel, lawyers, and other prisoners, in the proceedings held in the Magallanes region.

Meanwhile, the drafting of the sentence, endorsed with the signature of the Mason general, Manuel Torres de la Cruz, was dated November 26. From then on, for Rosa María Lizama and twelve other accused, silence, oblivion, and tremors began.

In the discourse, Lizama was accused of hiding weapons, having military training, and having knowledge of and participation in "Plan Z," an alleged conspiracy by the government of Salvador Allende to kill the generals of the Armed Forces and the opposition. And other artificial motives that appear indicated in the case "Rol Tiempo de Guerra N°4-73" of the V Military Court of Punta Arenas.

Lizama "the dangerous one," they said every time they mentioned her. And she, the youngest and shortest in the trial, kept her legs swinging on the bench without reaching the floor, still in the school uniform she had worn since the day of her arrest.

Rosa María began to tremble while listening to the charges of the prosecuting attorney, Gerardo Álvarez Rodríguez, dressed in an elegant military suit. That day, her entire body fell and shattered like glass on the floor of the chapel adapted into a military tribunal, with a group of uniformed men stationed at the altar table, looking down at the detainees, and on both sides, the prosecuting attorneys were located.

At the other end, the defense lawyers: Laura Soto, Juan Vivar, Carlos Frías Meneses, and Hugo Espinoza Balcázar.

Lizama "the terrorist," Lizama "the dangerous one," they said every time they mentioned her. And she, the youngest and shortest in the trial, kept her legs swinging on the bench without reaching the floor, still in the school uniform she had worn since the day of her arrest, October 26, when the military took her from her own high school, a few weeks after she had turned 16.

For a month, she passed through different torture centers: the Bahía Catalina Air Base, the Ojo Bueno Regiment, the facility at Colón 636, and the Casa del Deportista (which no longer exists, and part of that space is occupied today by the Casino and Hotel Dreams).

And although the trial was without a blindfold, she only clearly remembers Alejandro Olate, 17 years old; Pablo Jeria, 18 years old; and Gladys Pozo, 22 years old, sentenced to twenty, who supported her in the public jail while they served their sentences.

The image of the council is one of the most terrifying of her life. She still has a fresh portrait of the eight men sitting in front of the thirteen accused, in a place surrounded by soldiers ready to shoot.

Filled with dread, with muscles covered in knots that ran through her entire body, she jumped without moving. And she screamed without a voice. And no one, neither the prosecutor nor the witnesses, nor any of the generals, commanders, or soldiers who were in the Pudeto regiment chapel managed to notice, because the tremors and movements were internal.

An uncontrolled, nervous spasm that continued for many years. The emotion was invisible to the spectator who saw her calm and serene countenance, just as she appears in the black and white photo she keeps from her adolescence.

Between 1973 and 1974, there are six war councils that resonate most among the victims of human rights violations by the State in the Magallanes region. And in each one, the prosecutors followed to the letter Article 81 of the Code of Military Justice, which specifies that the councils are conceived for crimes specific to "wartime." Because for some, that is what it was about: a war.

— Rosa María Lizama Barrientos is sentenced to four years of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree for the crimes of military rebellion and the crimes indicated in letters a, b, and d of Article 4 of Law 12.967 on State security —repeated Walter Radic, the Navy prosecutor, days after the sentence was drafted.

The same calm and imperturbable voice that several female prisoners recognize during different torture sessions.

49 years after the first war council took place, today only four human rights violators who participated directly and indirectly in the war councils—Gerardo Álvarez, Guillermo Araneda, Otto Trujillo, and Walter Radic—are being prosecuted.

Rosa María Lizama served part of her sentence in the public adult jail in the city of Punta Arenas. On October 2, 1974, she left the penitentiary and continued signing in at the prisoner patronage office and serving her sentence at home.

It was a time of silence. She remained silent and saw herself as frightened. She did not want them to ask her anything. She could not tell anything. And people saw her in silence, with a calm smile on the outside. Inside, all convulsed, full of tremors, dry mouth, a terrible heat.

"If they asked me, what was I going to say? They tortured me, outraged me, applied electricity to different parts of my body, was I going to talk about that? ... if I was ashamed just thinking about it, much more so to tell it," she recalls.

Because for her, not saying anything was almost convincing herself that nothing happened. She did not want anyone to live through what she went through. And telling it was transferring the experience and suffering to people she loved.

Her parents. Her brother. The friends and relatives who came to her house. In that silence, she was protecting and saving those she loved. And even though no one asked, she began to block out pieces and moments.

"And why didn't they ask?" Rosa María questions herself today, and answers herself: "They didn't dare either; they knew, because they had heard something. Society was already also amnesic and was as much a victim as all of us who suffered the violence," she points out.

The Association of Women Political Prisoners of Magallanes initiated a campaign to transform the house at Colón 636 into a site of memory.

After passing through different torture centers, living through the war council, and being in the public jail, years of much silence and bitten suffering followed. For her, it was not a topic to talk about. "Until one day, it must have been the year 2001, Magda and I talked and said, 'Enough!

We have to talk, the kids are already grown, it is necessary for it to be known.' And we organized ourselves, and we women were the first to file a complaint (2015); then there were only lawsuits (see subtitle below)...

And when they applied the Istanbul Protocol to me, I discovered that I have five years of emotional amnesia. Today, I follow the treatment for major depression to the letter; if I stop taking the pill, I immediately think about death," she says.

National team player

Alejandro Olate Levet, 17 years old, a fourth-year C student specializing in machines and tools at the Escuela Industrial Superior—as the emblematic establishment was known in 1973—was one of the eight chosen from the region to represent the country in the South American basketball championships.

On the day of the trial, he remembers Luis Valencia, 16 years old; Eliecer Valencia, 18; Aldo Mayor, 19; and Lorenzo Oyarzo, 19. All students from the Industrial school.

Each of the accused had defense witnesses, people who overcame their fears and appeared in the Pudeto chapel to give their version. In the trial, the 19 testimonies in favor of the accused were dismissed.

In the posed photo, Alejandro Olate (number 8) is 17 years old, and it was taken a month before he was arrested in 1973 at his home in the Williams neighborhood. He appears next to other players, also national basketball team players.

Olate still has engraved in his mind the defense made by Humberto "Papi" Vera, director of the public school. "You had to be very brave in those days to make the defense he made, in a super arbitrary trial, in front of the military, and in which all the accused had been tortured. Papi Vera was very correct, beloved; he arrived from Chiloé and built up the school," he recalls.

There were also others who endorsed the accusations, and they did not do so in front of the council, but through statements that, as expressed in the sentence for case Rol Tiempo de Guerra Nº4-73, "contextualize and attest that in the last year there was fear or dread in the different circles of the city of being attacked by extremists with paramilitary training." Among those mentioned in the accusatory report appear: "Alejandro Florentino Fernández, Rodolfo Valentín Subiabre, Alfredo Arecheta González, Eugenio González Mimica, José Ruiz Maldonado, Selmiro Salgado Salgado, Jorge Luis Vega Germaín, and Ramón Utz Monsalve."

Each of the accused had defense witnesses. In the trial, the 19 testimonies in favor of the accused were dismissed.

"Before the trial, I went through the Colón house six times. They forced you to sign documents after the torture. It was terrible, because of the electricity they apply to your whole body; your tongue, which is moist, swells so much that it doesn't fit in your mouth," recalls Olate, arrested at his home in the Williams neighborhood on October 26, 1973, after leaving a training session for the school's anniversary.

There, a squad of "intelligence" agents was waiting for him; his father naively told him to turn himself in because there was nothing to fear, he hadn't done anything.

Alejandro Olate Levet, current councilman of Punta Arenas, was sentenced by the war council to 5 years and one day as the author of military rebellion and the crimes indicated in letters a, b, and d of Article 4 of Law Nº12927 on State Security.

Sentenced to death

Luis Alvarado Saravia was 32 years old when he entered the trial. He knew the Pudeto regiment in detail; his father was a military man, and throughout his childhood, he toured the facility. He argues that the war council took place in the chapel, but stripped of all religious ornamentation for the two days the process lasted.

Only the benches, the altar table, and a certain uniformed air that homilies usually have remained. The prosecutor requested the death penalty for him and for Edgardo Avilés Venegas, a 34-year-old technical draftsman at the time of the process.

Alvarado remembers that he entered the trial with a suit he wore at the bank, because he was an executive, and the suit hung off his body; he was 30 kilos lighter after passing through different torture centers and remaining incommunicado in the regiment.

"On the eighth day of torture, I signed everything they gave me to sign. The suffering was so much that I couldn't take it anymore," he says today at 81 years old, and with a full lucidity that he attributes to reading.

Luis Alvarado Saravia was 32 years old when he entered the trial. The prosecutor requested the death penalty for him and for Edgardo Avilés Venegas, a 34-year-old technical draftsman at the time of the process.

"We went to the war council more terrified than a chicken coop pole. The Air Force guys voted for the death penalty, and the third one who voted was an Army major with a law degree; he had arrived a week after the coup from the United States; that guy voted for 541 days, and the rest for life imprisonment... at the end, when we got on the truck, our companions hugged us because we remained alive, and the truth was to smile, because with life you can do everything," he says.

Of the trial, one of the things that impressed him most was seeing Rosa María Lizama. "I was a friend of her father's, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She was a girl, so small, thin; I couldn't believe they had her there, what she was looking at. How terrible what happened," he says.

On October 3, 2016, the Supreme Court annulled the ruling of War Council case 1-1973, a tribunal that had condemned a group of constitutionalist aviators. By issuing that ruling, the highest court complied with what was ordered in the Inter-American Court's sentence: to annul all rulings as a measure of reparation and an act of truth.

The falsehood of the first Magallanes war council is still in effect on paper, and the name of the victims and their innocence remains insulted.

Colón 636

Today, twenty victims of human rights violations in the area make up the Association of Women Political Prisoners of Magallanes 1973-1974. From there, they initiated a campaign, supported by the Council of Culture, Arts, and Heritage, to transform the house at Colón 636 into a site of memory (colon636.cl).

They fight every day to give voice to their silence and recover lost memory. In many cases, these were adolescents who were, for the most part, taken from their classrooms and transferred to different torture centers. Minors who should have arrived at their graduation party and posed next to all their classmates in the end-of-year photo. And they couldn't.

From their pain, they want to defeat the fear that still accompanies them and write a just symphony that gives sisterhood and dignity to the testimonies that official history has tried to erase. A criminal complaint has been underway since 2015; there are hundreds of statements, meanwhile, the criminals die in impunity, and several women have already departed without knowing justice.

One of the cases already has four people prosecuted.

Accused in the first Magallanes war council:

• Rosa María Lizama Barrientos, 16 years old
• Luis Valencia Ferguson, 16 years old
• Alejandro Lorenzo Olate Levet, 17 years old
• Aldo René Mayor Olivos, 18 years old
• Eliecer Segundo Valencia Oyarzo, 18 years old
• Pablo Ramón Jeria Ríos, 18 years old
• Hernán Enrique Biott Vidal, 22 years old
• Gladys Pozo Marchant, 22 years old
• Alfredo Corte Bernal, 26 years old
• Luis Enrique Alvarado Saravia, 32 years old
• Ricardo Hernán Marcelle Ojeda, 33 years old
• Edgardo Avilés Venegas, 34 years old
• Guillermo Sáez Aravena, 40 years old

Source: interferencia.cl, December 3, 2022