Next Wednesday, February 11, marks 35 years since the murder in Pisagua of two young and exemplary heroes of the social struggle: Alberto Yánez Carvajal and Luis Toro Castillo. Both had been arrested on different dates in Iquique, transferred to the torture center at the Telecommunications regiment, and atrociously flogged.

From there, and in very painful physical condition, they were confined to the Pisagua concentration camp, where they continued their agonizing ordeal, isolated in the so-called catacombs. Despite the constant duress to which both were subjected in Pisagua, they managed to convey to their companions an immense sense of complete dignity regarding the actions of their lives.

Thus arrived the fateful day when the dictatorship staged another judicial farce, and they were subjected to a "military tribunal" from February 9 to 10, 1974—a surreal tribunal known as a war council, composed of Lieutenant Colonels Hans Zippelius Weber, as president, and Luis Solorza Anguita; Major Sergio Parra Valladares; Captains Florencio Tejos Martínez and Carlos Sepúlveda Soto; and Second Lieutenants Luis Barrera Ciocca and Rubén Opazo Castro.

These individuals proceeded to judge 116 political prisoners—including 21 women—in a farce where they accused 68 of them of a delusional "Plan 22," handing down sentences that included various death penalties, relegation, and imprisonment.

With the approval of the notorious criminal Forestier, his other accomplice, Larraín, sealed these convictions with his signature, and with that, the death penalty for these two courageous young men.

Alberto Yánez Carvajal, a 31-year-old from Iquique, had completed his primary studies at the Centenario N° 6 school and continued them at the Instituto Comercial, from which he graduated as a Commercial Agent.

In 1963, he joined the Iquique prison service as an administrative worker and that same year married Lucila Corquez Carvajal, with whom he had two children. Dismissed from the service after the military coup was perpetrated, he was subsequently arrested on January 5, 1974.

Luis Toro Castillo, a 34-year-old from Iquique, was a railway worker employed as a welder in the machine shop; married to Laura Silva, he was arrested on October 1, 1973. Both young men shared a similar passion for sports—soccer—and their great camaraderie and human quality left an indelible mark on their companions.

Certainly, they were great lovers of their families, responsible, concerned, and dedicated to their family group. Both shared the most beautiful dreams of emancipation, freedom, and justice for their people, and while still very young, they had become communist militants.

We know of the behavior of these courageous young men through the revelation made by Father Murillo to Yánez's wife. Indeed, Alberto Yánez confronted the criminals Larraín and Acuña, spitting the indelible epithet of "murderers" in their faces before going to face the firing squad.

In contrast, these criminals, along with the coward Forestier and other murderers in Tarapacá, never had the courage to admit their felonies.

Instead, Yánez and Toro, both fighters and martyrs of the social cause, represent the best of society. Honest workers and possessors of an exemplary life ethic, they generously embraced the cause of building a more just society for all Chileans and succumbed physically without renouncing the path they had chosen.

Today, as always, it is fitting to place in their rightful place the living memory of these men of integrity, who are imperishable examples for our youth. They did not fall in vain—as Yánez explicitly pointed out to his murderers—for they still illuminate, and will continue to do so, the path toward the construction of a truly just, solidary, and democratic society, as these heroes of the people dreamed.

For your example and dignified memory, farewell Yánez and Toro.

by Epifanio Flores

Source: pciquique.blogspot.com February 8, 2009