They are not on the official calendars of memory, nor are there anthems in their name. Those executed in the first months of the dictatorship in Chile were, in many cases, poor citizens from the popular shantytowns with no political affiliation—one of the main bastions of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular. Their murders have remained in impunity and are only now beginning to be prosecuted.

Once the coup d'état in Chile was carried out, the civilians and military personnel who overthrew Allende focused on consolidating their position and legitimizing themselves in power through repressive measures and policies.

Among these were the closure of the National Congress and the battery of decrees that established a state of siege and a state of internal war, which gave rise to the justification of the “internal enemy” for terror tactics such as detention camps, deaths, the “law of flight” (ley de fuga), torture, raids on homes and neighborhoods, extrajudicial executions, and the forcibly disappeared.

“Unfortunately, despite having filed more than a thousand complaints, there is a tendency to make only 6 to 8 cases visible and cover them, leaving countless cases of peasants, residents, children, and housewives in oblivion,” explains Nicolás Pavez, a lawyer representing the Association of Relatives of Political Executed Persons (AFEP).

The association has brought thousands of cases to court in which not only are the culprits unknown, but the relatives—due to a lack of networks, police intimidation at the time, or simply fear of the dictatorship—did not file reports.

In February 1992, Law 19.123 was enacted, which created the National Corporation for Reparation and Reconciliation, which, among other tasks, created the Rettig Report. In its article 6, the aforementioned law established that “The location of persons, as well as that of the bodies of executed persons and the circumstances of said disappearance or death, constitute an inalienable right of the victims' relatives and of Chilean society.” However, for Alicia Lira, president of the AFEP, there is a wide field of cases that have not been investigated or clarified: those that are not “emblematic.”

Thus, for example, according to a 2012 investigation by Pascale Bonnefoy and John Dinges, starting on September 11, the Santiago morgue, accustomed to receiving an average of fewer than 10 corpses per day, faced collapse: in the first month of the dictatorship alone, 588 bodies arrived, 397 of which had died from gunshot wounds (check interactive map here), many of which occurred due to the repression unleashed in the shantytowns and popular neighborhoods through tactics such as indiscriminate bursts of gunfire against inhabited areas and random arrests and raids.

A death squad in Estación Central

“On public roads, on several occasions, when I went out with him, he would fire shots into the air; he even ordered us to fire in the same way, without justified motives, a situation that could not be answered because he was the officer.

Furthermore, when he went out to patrol, I occasionally remember that he did so with a tennis racket, dressed in institutional clothing, with riding boots,” recounted the accused Enrique Romero Jara, a now-deceased carabineros (police) officer who was known as “Hilton 100,” regarding his direct superior, Lieutenant Oscar Patricio Ibacache Carrasco.

Both are being investigated for the death of several residents of the Los Nogales shantytown in the first months after the coup, charges for which Juan Eliecer Ponce Manivet is also accused. Lieutenant Oscar Patricio Ibacache Carrasco himself attributed his nickname “Crazy Lieutenant” to his “eccentric dress, according to the word used by my friends in the shantytown, because I wore riding boots and breeches.”

The “strange” lieutenant commanded a Carabineros station that, in practice, operated as a death squad for the residents of Estación Central, taking particular cruelty against young residents and workers, most of whom had no known political affiliation or participation.

As early as September 16, 1973, carabineros from the Los Nogales station violently entered the home of three brothers: Hernán Rafael (28), Juan Manuel (25), and Ricardo del Carmen Sepúlveda Bravo (16).

They took them into custody to the corner of Uspallata and Antofagasta streets, where they executed them in view of numerous people from the Los Nogales shantytown. Hernán and Juan Manuel died on the spot. The teenager Ricardo del Carmen was taken to Posta Nº3, where he died.

“It was the Crazy Lieutenant,” carabinero Jaime Reyes Godoy told his co-father-in-law, Eugenia Rodríguez, when she asked who had arrested her husband. One day after the murder of the Sepúlveda Bravo brothers, the Los Nogales Station—also known as the Cabo Tomás Pereira Station—continued with the executions.

Thus, on September 17, 1973, riding in an ambulance from the clinic next to the police unit, the officers entered the family home of Luis Alberto Lobos Cañas (31), a communist militant, the party for which he worked as a driver. On September 18, his lifeless body, bearing two gunshot wounds, was found in the Mapocho River, near the Bulnes bridge.

During those days, the carabineros of the Los Nogales Station also executed, in the same shantytown, Víctor Galvarino Silva López (20), a worker in a shoe store with no political affiliation, who was arrested on September 16, 1973, and thrown into the Zanjón de la Aguada already dead.

That same day, Roberto Enrique Anfrens Fuentes (26) left his house to go to work and never returned. His widow was notified on September 17, 1973, that his corpse was in the Zanjón de la Aguada.

October 1973 arrived with a massacre that shook the already battered population. On the first day of that month, Carabineros from the local station forcibly removed three teenagers from a place where they were playing foosball.

In the presence of neighbors, Miguel Angel Ríos Traslaviña (16), Rogelio Gustavo Ramírez Améstica (18), and Marco Orlando Ríos Bustos (15) were severely beaten in the street. Different witnesses testified before the Rettig Commission that the carabineros forced the children to run, shooting them in the back multiple times.

Miguel’s lifeless body had 18 bullet impacts, while Rogelio’s had 12. Only the youngest of the three, Marcos, managed to run through the Carabineros’ burst of gunfire, reaching the Iquique bridge in Estación Central. There, between the train tracks, he encountered another military patrol that was carrying out a “pincer” movement in the area. They shot him three times.

On October 20, Juan Manuel Pinto Godoy (33) was arrested at a neighbor’s house in the Kennedy shantytown while the curfew was already in effect. Carabineros from the Los Nogales Station raided the house, supposedly in search of two criminals.

Juan Manuel tried to flee by jumping over the fence, but a bullet in the pelvis prevented him from escaping. Once dead, he remained lying in a vacant lot until the carabineros themselves took him to the Legal Medical Service.

That same day, the carabineros from Los Nogales returned to patrol in the ambulance from the clinic next to the station. In the sector known as the 18 de Septiembre Camp, numerous witnesses saw how they arrested José Tomás Beltrán Bizama (25), a worker with no known affiliation; Eduardo Antonio Fonseca Castro (26), a street vendor who was also not a militant; and Hernán Anselmo Cortés Velásquez (26), a worker who, like the other two victims, had no known political or social activity.

The three bodies were abandoned in Lo Errázuriz (Maipú), all dead from a gunshot to the head.

In response to requests for information such as the complete list of personnel by virtue of a complaint filed in 2010 by the Association of Relatives of Political Executed Persons, the Human Resources department of the Carabineros de Chile replied that “it was not possible to locate or find documentation corresponding to the year 1973 in the archives of the 21st Precinct of Estación Central, the unit upon which the Cabo Tomas Pereira Carabineros Station depended at that time, as it was allegedly incinerated.” On April 27, 2016, a request was made to the Court of Appeals to reopen the summary investigation in the case of the Sepúlveda Bravo brothers and Luis Lobos Cañas. The court’s resolution is still pending.

Murdered for going to the corner: The crime of Sonia Norambuena in Santa Adriana

The state of internal war decreed by Pinochet on September 11, 1973, also meant a reorganization of the Armed Forces. Thus, the Internal Security Jurisdictional Area Command (CAJSI) was established, through which macro instructions and guidelines were issued for the fulfillment of the tasks required to maintain the state of exception.

In Santiago, the CAJSI was in charge of General Herman Brady Roche (who died in 2011 after being in a coma for two years, prosecuted for multiple human rights violations) and was divided into different “groups,” among which was the Southern Group, which was based at the “El Bosque” Garrison, in charge of Chilean Air Force (FACh) General Mario Vivero Ávila, a member of the Joint Command.

One day after this military reorganization was implemented, parallel to the military hierarchical order, the inhabitants of the southern zone of Santiago felt its full weight. The accounts of overflights firing bursts from the El Bosque base, massive raids like those in La Bandera and La Legua, and random executions were part of the deployment necessary to maintain the state of internal exception that gave Pinochet the justification, extended to this day, of a war between two equivalent forces.

The Santa Adriana shantytown was no exception.

Different witnesses have testified to the justice system regarding the presence of a patrol of officers dressed in blue combat uniforms—which they attribute to the Chilean Air Force (FACh), well known in the area due to the presence of the El Bosque Air Garrison—at the bridge located at Ochagavía and Callejón Lo Ovalle on September 12, 1973.

From there, shots and bursts of machine-gun fire were fired from a weapon mounted on a tripod. Concerned about the noise of the gunfire, Sonia Isaura Norambuena Cruz (34) went out to look for one of her daughters who was playing in the street.

Sonia was expecting another child, who would join the six she already had with her husband. The economic situation had become especially difficult since, a couple of years earlier, he had suffered a work accident that prevented him from continuing to work.

Accompanied by his father, Francisco Cartes Cartes, Eugenio was playing soccer at the corner of Callejón Ochagavía and Pasaje 25. There, they took shelter with Sonia and his father, waiting for his sister to arrive. “My sister Edith arrived at the place where we were with my mother, at which moment she suddenly fell to the ground, for which we approached with my father, noticing a small scratch on the right side of her abdomen and on her back,” declared Eugenio.

Sonia Norambuena was taken to her house by her children, since Francisco could not lift weight. “My mother could not be taken to the hospital to be treated, since due to the number of gunshots that could be heard in the surroundings, it was impossible to leave the houses,” one of her daughters, Cecilia, pointed out to the justice system.

Due to the state of commotion in the shantytown, Sonia Norambuena could not be waked. Her husband and children built a coffin in the patio and waked her in her own bed for approximately five days. Only then could she be taken to the General Cemetery, where the military stationed at the entrance only allowed her husband to pass.

That same month of September, the military raided the family home as a form of intimidation.

Today, the execution of Sonia Norambuena Cruz is being investigated by the justice system, after both the Undersecretariat of the Interior and its Human Rights program, as well as the AFEP, filed complaints.

The main difficulty has been identifying the FACh personnel who were stationed at the Ochagavía bridge, since the military personnel summoned to testify have denied any non-routine patrolling, shooting, bursts of gunfire, or participation in any crime.

Like a copied script, everyone has indicated that it is the first time they have heard of the case. As for General Mario Vivero Ávila, he has even ruled out in his statements the existence of the Internal Security Jurisdictional Area Command (CAJSI) and the parallel “Anti-Insurgency Company” created by the FACh military in El Bosque, despite the fact that personnel under his command have confirmed its existence.

This company, parallel to the army’s hierarchical order, was allegedly composed of personnel from the School of Specialties, Maintenance Wing, Aeronautical Polytechnic Academy, Supply and Maintenance Wing, and the Academy of the El Bosque Aviation School.

As former military man Oscar Chylk declared in 2011, this group was commanded by the late Lieutenant Leonardo Antonucci and, for the plaintiff lawyers, is one of the main suspects in the execution of Sonia.

On September 6, 1990, citizen Francisco Cartes went to tell his story for the first time before the Rettig Commission. There he pointed out that “as a result of these events, my family has been left in a very bad state; they have not been able to study and we had serious economic difficulties: hunger, frustrations, lack of health.

I ask for justice for my children and not for me. I swore that day before my family that I would never marry any woman until I killed the dog that murdered my wife, and I am here now fulfilling that.” He died a year later without knowing who murdered his wife.

The friends from the Matadero refrigerator plant

On October 30, 1973, Jeremías Jara Valenzuela (21), Pedro Otárola Sepúlveda, and Manuel Gutiérrez Montano, refrigerator workers at the La Granja Slaughterhouse, went to play a “pichanga” (pickup soccer game) before their work shift, which started at 3 in the afternoon.

At 2:30 p.m., they were having a soda at the “Don Ale” soda fountain in the Villa Nueva Paraguay shantytown when a group of carabineros burst into the establishment and took them into custody. Their families were alerted to the arrest by different witnesses.

That was how Digna Valenzuela, Jeremías’s mother, arrived at the San Gregorio shantytown police station. They told her they would be released at night.

Two days later, they returned to ask about the young men. “They surely went to entertain themselves somewhere else,” said the carabineros of the station in charge of Captain Héctor Osses Yáñez and Sergeant Armando Sáez Pérez, showing them the registry book where the young men had supposedly signed.

But, as Manuel Gutiérrez Montano recounted, what happened was something else. In the early hours of the day of their arrest, they were taken from the cells and brought to the El Mariscal ravine, at the 46th stop of Avenida Santa Rosa, where they executed Jeremías Jara and Pedro Otárola and threw their bodies into the current.

Manuel, meanwhile, jumped into the river before they could shoot him and managed to survive. He thus alerted the Jara Valenzuela and Otárola Sepúlveda families, only to then disappear from the shantytown. They never heard from him again. Jeremías Jara’s remains appeared a month later in San Bernardo, where they had been dragged by the current.

According to the Rettig Commission, between October 8 and 30, 1973, in that same place, 16 people appeared dead in similar conditions. Of this group, the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation only managed to identify Jaime Antonio Rivera Aguilar and Eduardo Santos Quinteros Miranda, whom it declared victims of human rights violations.

This does not mean that all are attributable to the La Granja Sub-precinct, located in San Gregorio: the southern zone was also patrolled by the FACh and the Army, in addition to the Carabineros.

However, the carabineros of the La Granja Sub-precinct themselves gave themselves away when they arrived five days after the bodies appeared at the homes of the Jara Valenzuela and Otárola Sepúlveda families.

As Rosa Sepúlveda declared to the Rettig Commission, “apparently it was known that one of the detainees had remained alive.” Rosa was summoned to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, where an officer commented to her that her son’s body was at the Legal Medical Service and that he had been executed “for being a politician.” In 1974, she went to the SML, where they informed her that her son Pedro had been buried in a mass grave at the General Cemetery.

The testimonies of the relatives of Jeremías Jara and Pedro Otárola point to the fact that, at the very least, Sergeant Arnaldo Sáez knew the victims. This is because it was recurrent for the officials of that station to arrive at the La Granja Slaughterhouse refrigerator plant and demand that the workers steal meat from the deposits to give to them.

Sáez, furthermore, was very recognizable for suffering from vitiligo, the reason he was known as “El Manchado” (The Spotted One).

Several versions circulate about the case: first, that “El Manchado” had taken advantage of his status as an agent of the State and the general climate of repression and executions to “collect” from the young men for constant mockery regarding his skin.

Other information provided by carabineros from the La Granja sub-precinct to the justice system points out that Manuel Gutiérrez Montano managed to leave the shantytown because a relative of his was a domestic worker for the General Director of Carabineros, César Mendoza. None of these have been proven.

Accused for different cases, among them the execution of Dante Valentín Olivares Jiménez (36), arrested in September ’73 in La Bandera, Captain Osses has blamed Sergeant Sáez for these events, who died in 1985 of a stroke.

In addition, Captain Osses and officers Aquiles Bustamante Oliva, Fernando Félix Rojas Véliz, Luis Alberto Baeza Sanhueza, and Segundo Baldomero Llanos Amarilis were also prosecuted for the executions of Héctor Queglas Maturana and Luis Morales Muñoz, also in La Granja, also in October 1973.

During those days, Jorge Hernán Espinoza Farías (19) was also murdered, a crime for which Osses Yáñez and Bustamante Oliva are also accused.

According to what Captain Osses Yáñez has declared, he learned of the execution of Jeremías and Pedro from officer Aquiles Bustamante, who had allegedly accompanied Sergeant Arnaldo Sáez in the murders.

Today, the case has finished its investigation stage and the plaintiffs are awaiting indictments. Doña Rosa Sepúlveda was not part of it. In the 80s, she was informed from the General Cemetery that her son Pedro’s remains had been removed. She was never able to see the body or say goodbye to him.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, September 11, 2016

Three retired carabineros accused of kidnappings and homicides at La Granja police station in 1973

The minister in extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases at the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, issued three resolutions against retired members of the Carabineros for their responsibility in a series of crimes committed at the La Granja Sub-precinct in October 1973.

In the first resolution (case file 30-2009 A), the visiting minister issued an indictment against retired officers Héctor Fernando Osses Yáñez and Aquiles Bustamante Oliva, as authors of the crimes of simple kidnapping and qualified homicide of Héctor Andrés Queglas and Luis Eugenio Morales Muñoz; and against Luis Alberto Baeza Sanhueza, Segundo Llanos Amariles, and Julio César Yáñez Illanes, as authors of the crimes of qualified homicide of Héctor Andrés Queglas and Luis Eugenio Morales Muñoz.

These illicit acts were perpetrated on October 4, 1973, in the commune of La Granja.

During the investigation stage, Minister Cifuentes managed to establish the following facts:

“That on October 4, 1973, around 10:00 p.m., in circumstances where Héctor Andrés Queglas Maturana and Luis Eugenio Morales Muñoz were in the home they shared, located in the commune of La Granja, they were detained, without legal right, by Carabineros officials assigned to the La Granja Sub-precinct, which at that time was in charge of Captain Héctor Fernando Osses Yáñez and Lieutenant Aquiles Bustamante Oliva.”

“That, subsequently, Héctor Queglas Maturana and Luis Morales Muñoz were taken to the aforementioned police unit, a place where they were kept locked up, without legal right, until a patrol of carabineros, composed of 2nd Sergeant Armando Sáez Pérez—currently deceased—and carabineros Segundo Baldomero Llanos Amariles, Luis Alberto Baeza Sanhueza, Fernando Rojas Velis—currently deceased—and Julio César Yáñez Illanes, among others, led them to the vicinity of the intersection of Departamental and Santa Rosa avenues, a site where they were executed by means of shots with firearms.”

Prosecutions

In a second resolution (case file 30-2009 C), the magistrate submitted former officers Osses Yáñez and Bustamante Oliva to prosecution as authors of the crime of qualified kidnapping of Juan Fernando Campos Gatica. This illicit act was committed on October 2, 1973.

During the investigative stage, the magistrate established the following sequence of events:

1° That on October 2, 1973, in the afternoon, Juan Fernando Campos Gatica was detained, without legal right, at his home, located at Pasaje 3 Norte N° 0467 in the San Gregorio shantytown of the commune of La Granja, by Carabineros officials assigned to the La Granja Carabineros Sub-precinct, among them, 2nd Sergeant Armando Sáez Pérez, nicknamed “el manchado,” currently deceased.

2° That, immediately thereafter, he was taken to the aforementioned police unit, which, at that time, was in charge of Captain Héctor Fernando Osses Yáñez and Lieutenant Aquiles Bustamante Oliva, a place where he was kept locked up, without legal right.

3° That, instead of being placed at the disposal of the competent court, the detainee was executed in the night hours by means of a gunshot with a firearm, which caused a cervico-facial wound that entered through the left lateral side of the neck, perforated the carotid artery, fractured the 3rd cervical vertebra, and partially severed the spinal cord, exiting through the right malar region.”

Finally (case file 30-2009 D), Minister Marianela Cifuentes resolved to prosecute Héctor Osses Yáñez and Aquiles Bustamante Oliva for their responsibility in the qualified kidnappings of Mario Ángel Candia Acevedo, Luis Humberto Muñoz Aguayo, and Luis Antonio Villarroel Rivera. These illicit acts were perpetrated on October 2, 1973, in the San Gregorio shantytown of the commune of La Granja.

In the case, the following facts were established:

1° That on October 2, 1973, in the afternoon, Mario Ángel Candia Acevedo, Luis Humberto Muñoz Aguayo, and Luis Antonio Villarroel Rivera were detained, without legal right, at the corner of Pasajes 9 Poniente and 5 Norte of the San Gregorio shantytown of the commune of La Granja, by Carabineros officials assigned to the La Granja Carabineros Sub-precinct, among them, 2nd Sergeant Armando Sáez Pérez, nicknamed “el manchado,” currently deceased.

2° That, immediately thereafter, all of them were taken to the aforementioned police unit, which, at that time, was in charge of Captain Héctor Fernando Osses Yáñez and Lieutenant Aquiles Bustamante Oliva, a place where they were kept locked up, without legal right.

3° That, instead of being placed at the disposal of the competent court, the three detainees were executed in the night hours, with Mario Ángel Candia Acevedo dying due to a thoracic wound, the product of the passage of a ballistic projectile that entered through the right scapular region, injured in its trajectory the lower, middle, and upper lobe of the right lung, partially severed the aorta, and exited through the 1st left intercostal space; Luis Humberto Muñoz Aguayo, due to an abdominal wound, the product of the passage of a ballistic projectile that entered through the left iliac fossa, perforated the colon and the right iliac artery, and exited through the right iliac bone; and Luis Antonio Villarroel Rivera, due to three thoracic wounds, the product of the passage of ballistic projectiles that entered through the posterior part of the thorax, perforated both lungs and the aorta, causing a hemothorax and acute anemia.”

Source: elclarin.cl, August 9, 2017