In mid-1981, General Augusto Pinochet gave the order for the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), under the command of General Arturo Álvarez Scoglia, to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez, president of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF).

Jiménez had emerged as the primary Chilean labor leader and was planning, along with other opposition leaders, a major national strike against the military government.

Álvarez Scoglia created a special group to carry out the mission and designated three officers as members of the execution command. However, the agents showed an evident "lack of commitment" to the assigned task, and the DINE command had to replace them, turning to two officers who had been members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

In 1981, they were attached to the National Information Center (CNI), created in 1977 to succeed the DINA. These were Lieutenant Colonel Maximiliano Ferrer Lima and Captain Carlos Herrera Jiménez, alias "Mauro" or "Bocaccio."

Both officers settled in at the beginning of November at the facilities of the Counter-Espionage Unit, which reported to the Department II of Counterintelligence of the Army Intelligence Corps (CIE), located at Avenida Echeñique 5995, in the commune of La Reina.

That unit was part of the intricate and highly secret structure of the DINE, led by Commander Víctor Pinto Pérez. Ferrer Lima and Herrera Jiménez, along with two teams of agents under their command, then dedicated themselves to preparing every detail of the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez.

They were in the midst of this when the various services of the military dictatorship's intelligence community learned that former President Eduardo Frei Montalva had decided to check into the Santa María clinic to undergo surgery for a bothersome hiatal hernia.

At the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI was certain that the much-feared opposition labor union unity was being achieved rapidly and that its main architect was Tucapel Jiménez. The matter was even more serious because Jiménez was also holding conversations with several of the main political leaders of the opposition, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva.

The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicarage of Labor Pastoral Care along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church. CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a broad national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, moreover, of numerous entities and governments from all over the world.

The Task of the CNI

From its inception, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the labor world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Labor Brigade, which reported directly to the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, commanded by Army Colonel Roberto Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade since 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo ("Felipe Bascur"), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the "Ollagüe" barracks, located on Calle José Domingo Cañas, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez ("Manolo Arriagada"), Héctor Lira ("Julián Reyes"), Nelson Fernández Franco ("Carlos Santander"), and Jorge Ramírez Romero ("Carlos de la Fuente"), respectively.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important success when it managed to recruit Luis Becerra for its tasks, Frei Montalva's driver, a man who was also of absolute trust to the former president.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important success when it managed to recruit Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, a man who was also of absolute trust to the former president and knew the activities and the inner circle of the Christian Democratic leader very closely.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to train pro-government union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

One of the actions with the greatest public repercussion by Galleguillos, who also directed the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement (MRNS), was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting "traitor" and "sell-out" at Tucapel Jiménez.

The next day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He later declared that the order had been given to him by the then-Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was assisted by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man of Radical origin, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Confederation of Private Employees of Chile (Cepch).

Very soon, the CNI refined its methods of tracking, surveillance, wiretapping, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on Calle República.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary to Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located. Under Schmied's direct command were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks.

One of the most secret paid informants that the repressive agency maintained within the leadership circles of the opposition labor movement could only be identified in the first half of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content. Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Leaders such as Tucapel Jiménez, Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, and Manuel Bustos, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed at the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office. A folder was kept for each of them with their personal, work, and family background, as well as their contact networks.

In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed "Omar" recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant at the ANEF, in its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme. The "junior" was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez.

Twice a week, the young man delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where he received a cash payment in exchange. In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias "Gabriel Carrasco González," although everyone called him "Barnabás."

Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI. He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting one of his employees at a business he owned at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to "Manolo" or "Carlos de la Fuente," his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid informants that the repressive agency maintained within the leadership circles of the opposition labor movement could only be identified in the first half of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The Hard Road to Unity

At the end of May 1976, ten important union leaders, nine of them linked to the PDC, who claimed to represent 400 unions and more than 600,000 workers, sent a document to the military government complaining about the new labor legislation that was being imposed and the marginalization of workers from political decisions.

The signatories were Tucapel Jiménez (ANEF), Ernesto Mellado (peasants), Pedro Cifuentes (Iansa), Antonio del Campo (bank employees), Guillermo Santana (Copper Workers Confederation, CTC), Manuel Bustos (textile workers), Ernesto Vogel (Fifch), Federico Mujica (Cepch), Antonio Mimiza (oil workers), and Eduardo Díaz (ComaCh).

From that moment on, they were known as the Group of Ten, and very soon other important union organizations joined them, such as the Plastic Workers Confederation, the Federation of Professionals and Technicians of the National Health Service, and the Federation of Unions of the Banco Español.

At the end of the summer of 1978, former deputy Gladys Marín entered the country clandestinely, followed by Manuel Cantero Prado, both members of the political commission. Two months later, in May, the new Interior Directorate Team (EDI) was constituted, headed by Marín, along with Cantero ("Miguel"), Oscar Riquelme ("El viejo Pablo"), and Nicasio Farías ("Héctor"), who took charge of the Infrastructure Front, entrusted with all logistical work and the search for resources and materials for clandestine tasks. "Mariana," meanwhile, had to assume the delicate management of the party's finances.

One of the main tasks of the EDI was to rebuild the internal structures and, in particular, the labor fabric. To this end, Moisés Labraña, responsible for that sector in the Communist Youth (JJ.CC.), was promoted to the party's labor officer and integrated into the EDI.

Labraña had a determined team in which Héctor Cuevas, Alamiro Guzmán, and José Lecaros, among others, stood out. The PC unionists managed to refine links with the main labor leaders of the Christian Democracy, among whom were Manuel Bustos, of the textile workers; Eduardo Ríos, of the maritime workers; and Ernesto Vogel, of the railway workers; and with other historical figures, such as the octogenarian Clotario Blest.

Left-wing unionism, meanwhile, grouped together in the National Labor Coordinator (CNS), created under the wing of the Center for Labor Studies, dependent on the Cardijn Foundation, which in turn was closely linked to the Catholic Church.

The CNS appeared publicly in 1978, representing, as it maintained, some 400 grassroots unions, mainly industrial, of small and medium-sized mining and the peasantry. Among the members, the Mining Confederation, Fensimet, Fenamex, Fiemec, Ranquil, UOC, Association of Pensioners, Sanitation Workers, the Painting Federation, and the Graphic Union stood out.

There was also the Unitary Workers Front (FUT), a small formation of Christian unionists, led by Carlos Frez, the dismissed president of the Port Workers Union, linked long before to the Young Christian Workers and the Christian Workers' Action Movement.

Thus, more than three thousand workers from these three union references converged on May 1, 1978, toward Plaza Almagro, a few blocks south of La Moneda, to commemorate Labor Day. Carabineros forced them to disperse, but they regrouped a few blocks away, at the San Francisco church, next to the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, where they were again driven away.

By mid-afternoon, pickets of workers were still shouting slogans in various places in downtown Santiago. At nightfall, the balance of the demonstrations indicated nearly 400 detainees, several foreigners and religious among them. The military dictatorship and the pro-government press were forced to acknowledge, for the first time, the dissident street demonstrations.

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties nor the Christian Democracy perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers.

On May 22, relatives of the forcibly disappeared occupied simultaneously the offices of UNICEF and the parishes of Jesús Obrero, on General Velásquez, in the western sector of the capital; La Estampa, in Independencia, a few meters from Plaza Chacabuco, in the northern sector; and Don Bosco, on Gran Avenida, in the southern zone.

They stayed there until June 7, demanding to know the fate of their relatives. Neither the CNI nor the police dared to evict them because the Catholic Church was involved and, furthermore, the demonstration coincided with the arrival in the country of five high-level representatives of the American AFL-CIO and a visit by prosecutor Eugene Propper, who was investigating the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington.

On June 7, two surprise marches were held through the downtown streets of Santiago in solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared. The presence of dissident pamphlets in crowded places became frequent in those days, and graffiti on walls in neighborhoods and on the city's main avenues began to multiply.

In university headquarters, flash rallies emerged, and folk music clubs (peñas) multiplied under the wing of religious venues and some nightclubs. In the working-class neighborhoods, meanwhile, all kinds of community organizations began to be created, and in the factories, slowly, the workers dared to meet to stammer their demands.

In August, at the Chuquicamata division of Codelco, next to the city of Calama, the copper miners decided to go to the cafeterias at lunchtime with their empty "lunchboxes." The prolonged protest movement for labor demands received the name "viandazo."

At the beginning of September, surprised and flustered by the symptoms of labor unrest, the dictatorship decreed a state of siege in the degree of internal commotion. The right of amparo (habeas corpus) before the courts of justice was limited, the arrest and internal exile of persons were authorized, as well as the cancellation of nationality and the prosecution of detainees in military courts.

Almost a month later, on October 20, 1978, the illegality of the main entities that made up the CNS was decreed, union headquarters were raided, assets and bank accounts were confiscated, and numerous leaders were arrested.

At the same time, the renewal of union leaders in the private sector was also decreed, and many businessmen took the opportunity to fire opposition workers who could be elected. In the following weeks, some nine thousand labor leaders were renewed.

Several of the main world union organizations then intervened, and the powerful American AFL-CIO threatened a boycott of Chilean exports starting in early 1979. Alarmed, the military government announced the appointment of a new Minister of Labor, the economist José Piñera, who took office on December 26, committed to normalizing labor relations, and announced the promulgation in mid-79 of a Labor Plan that would put an end to the problems.

Pérez Zujovic, Frei, Jaime Castillo, and Modesto Collados

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties nor the Christian Democracy perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers. In July 1979, the main decrees that imposed the new labor institutional framework were promulgated: union membership ceased to be mandatory, and the formation of several unions in the same company was authorized; collective bargaining became by company and not by productive branch; the dismissal of workers "for company needs" was authorized; the right to strike was restricted to 60 days, with the possibility of replacing workers after that period; and retirement was postponed from 60 to 65 years for men and from 55 to 60 for women, among other measures. Those provisions were devastating; the union movement was extremely weakened, and the fear "of losing the job" was imposed.

In 1980 and 1981, despite the protests of union leaders, Piñera's Labor Plan was consolidated. The Group of Ten was transformed into the Democratic Workers' Union (UDT), although without several Christian Democratic leaders who were marginalized, such as Manuel Bustos, who became the leader of the new National Labor Coordinator (CNS).

The Hour of the Executioners

When the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez was already underway and the military dictatorship learned that Frei Montalva would check in for surgery, an apparently parallel operation was activated to eliminate the former president and cover up the homicide as a series of post-surgical complications. However, Judge Alejandro Madrid could not specify the details of the conspiracy.

He convicted former Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, a former member of the CNI and later of the DINE, and the driver Luis Becerra, but could not clarify from which instance of the military dictatorship the order to assassinate him came.

Lillo Gutiérrez was the agent who controlled Becerra and Genaro Cerda Weber, a DC militant and husband of Hilda Navarro Varas, secretary of that same party. Lillo, transferred in the late 80s to the DINE, participated in the assassination in Uruguay of the chemist Eugenio Berríos, and for that crime, he was sentenced in August 2013 to ten years and one day in prison.

For many years, it was presumed that the chemist Berríos was the one who had inoculated the former president with some poison or other toxic substance while he was in the clinic. In fact, the former director of the Investigative Police (PDI), Nelson Mery, asserted during the trial that Berríos was assassinated to prevent him from talking about the assassination of Frei Montalva.

Judge Madrid also convicted four doctors, one—gastric surgeon Patricio Silva Garín—as the principal author; another—Pedro Valdivia Soto, a former member of the DINA—as an accomplice; and the remaining two—pathologists Helmar Rosenberg Gómez and Sergio González Bombardiere—as cover-ups.

The magistrate also failed to establish whether these doctors conspired among themselves for the crime and/or obeyed orders to commit it.

Human rights lawyers, very close to the PDC, who requested that their names be withheld, told INTERFERENCIA that they considered the more than 800-page ruling very weak and that, in their opinion, both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will have to make strenuous efforts to draft a new and better resolution.

Source: interferencia.cl, December 19, 2019

Minister Alejandro Solís sentenced seven former DINA agents who kidnapped Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby just on the eve of New Year's 1975. The trail of the sociology students is lost after their time at Villa Grimaldi.

A painful chapter of recent history began to close yesterday after the special judge (ministro de fuero) Alejandro Solís issued a sentence for the qualified kidnapping of the two militants of the Socialist Party, Jaime Robotham and Claudio Thauby, detained by repressive agencies on the eve of New Year's 1975.

The magistrate sentenced the former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, to 15 years of effective prison time and imposed the same penalty on the leader of the so-called "Vampire Brigade," Fernando Lauriani, who—according to the account of witnesses—had been cruel with the tortures of Thauby, since he knew him from the Military School, where the young socialist had spent some time before deciding to study Sociology at the University of Chile.

This fact had allegedly bothered Lauriani, who considered him a traitor to the Armed Forces for his socialist ideals, a situation that was captured in statements made to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in 1990.

Likewise, the judge, after investigating this case, found responsibility in the other repressive agents Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Moren Brito, Rolf Wenderoth, and Miguel Krassnoff; all sentenced to 10 years in prison without any benefit. Meanwhile, the former policeman Daniel Cancino, who was assigned to the DINA during those years, was sentenced to 5 years and one day.

The latter was for providing collaboration for the clarification of the facts. The policeman, in one of his statements, acknowledged that he was part of the "Vampire Group" and clarified that Lauriani was in command of the group that detained Robotham and Thauby.

"When Laureani took charge of the group, it seemed to me that he was a person who had no command ability; he had a lower rank than me in equivalence and was stupid, so it bothered me a lot to be under his orders (...) (we called him) 'Pablito.' He was called that as a diminutive because of how stupid he was. He had no preparation. He was a total ignoramus in every aspect," declared Cancino.

Likewise, Minister Solís accepted the compensation claim presented by the families of the victims. Thus, all those convicted must pay $250 million to the Thauby family and the same sum to the Robotham family.

Both young men were walking along Calle Miguel Claro on December 31, 1974, when DINA agents intimidated them with weapons, forcing them to get into a car to then transport them to Villa Grimaldi.

In that place, Robotham was identified during his stay because his head was bleeding due to an allergy that prevented a wound from healing, which he had received from one of the agents when he tried to escape the detention.

Meanwhile, Thauby received such violent torture with electricity that it affected his middle ear and his balance. A bruised face and his inability to stand are the characteristics remembered by former prisoners of Villa Grimaldi who lost track of him in that facility.

Source: La Nación, December 30, 2008

Case No. 2.182-98: "Valparaíso Eight" episode

11) Statements of Luz Arce Sandoval (15 vta., 19, 22, 30, 380, 392, 402, and 1081) regarding having been detained on March 17, 1974, by DINA agents; she was freed on July 10, 1974, but was apprehended again on the 18th of the same month and taken to "Villa Grimaldi," a place where she was tortured in "The Tower," was hung, and went 12 days without eating; they returned her to "Londres 38." With her brother and at the suggestion of Ricardo Lawrence, "in exchange for saving our lives, we wrote a list of socialist comrades... in August 1974...".

On August 30 or 31, they were taken with all the prisoners to "Cuatro Álamos"; on September 12, she was taken to the "José Domingo Cañas" facility, which was closed as a detention center on November 18, 1974, and she was transferred to "Villa Grimaldi." Regarding the operational work of the DINA, she states that, in Santiago, it was in charge of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM) until November 1974, under the charge of Manríquez, who was succeeded by Pedro Espinoza and Marcelo Moren; it operated in the "Rinconada de Maipú" barracks, and its units used the property at "Londres No. 38" as a barracks and clandestine detention center, which on September 12, 1974, was replaced by the "Ollahue" barracks, located at Calle José Domingo Cañas No. 1367. She adds that the BIM grouped the "Caupolicán" and "Purén" units and, since 1976, "Tucapel." "Caupolicán" was an operational unit with the mission of detaining and repressing left-wing political organizations. In August 1974, it was made up of the "Falcon" and "Eagle" groups, with the "Toucan" group added in December; those groups were divided into sections, for example, "Falcon 1" and "Falcon 2"; the "Caupolicán" group between August 1974 and March 1975 was commanded by Moren Brito, who was replaced by Miguel Krassnoff, who at that date was in charge of the "Falcon" group. The main groups, she adds, were "Falcon" and "Eagle," whose mission was the repression of the MIR. At page 4820, she reiterates the above and adds that she never participated in operations outside of Santiago but remembers that her comrade Marcia Merino, a militant of the MIR, participated in an operation that was carried out in Valparaíso in the month of January 1975. She traveled under the command of Marcelo Moren Brito along with Fernando Lauriani and his team. She adds that Lauriani was in charge of the "Vampire" group, integrated by Nibaldo Jiménez and Daniel Cancino, both from the Investigative Police, Ortiz, Vera, and others.

12) Excerpts from the book "Mi Verdad" (My Truth) by Marcia A. Merino Vega (3065 to 3078) regarding her statement: "...In the month of January 1975, Krassnoff, along with Romo, Zapata, and Teresa Osorio, took me to Valparaíso... to the offices of the Navy building...

I don't know what Krassnoff went to do in Valparaíso, but I imagine it was to prepare the detentions that were later carried out of the people of the MIR from that Regional. At the end of January 1975, Lauriani Maturana, commanding a group of agents, among them the 'Los Guatones' team, took me again to Valparaíso and Viña del Mar.

They lodged me in a house near the Maipo Regiment... On that occasion, Lauriani installed a sort of operations center and detention facility inside the Maipo Regiment, in the basements. Many people were detained, around 15, all remained blindfolded and on the floor.

Of them, I remember Fabián Ibarra Córdova, a militant of the MIR, currently disappeared... and Sergio Vessely... It seemed to me that Lauriani took me so that I could organically identify those militants I knew.

I know for a fact that Lauriani installed a torture room there, and I even saw when they were dismantling it. I know that Erick Zott Chuecas, a regional leader of the MIR in the area, was detained there...

Apparently, there were problems or frictions between Lauriani and the Maipo Regiment. Lauriani was a brutal and violent guy, like all DINA agents, but this characteristic was accentuated in him by his need to gain a little prestige before other agents, since in general he was considered an inept person...

I know for a fact, however, that Lauriani's procedure was first to torture, 'grill,' beat, and then, ask... I don't remember having known Carabantes in the MIR, but I do remember a phrase of Moren in Villa Grimaldi, after that trip, in which he shouted, 'The Flaca is going to go on the same plane as Carabantes.' This made me think that Carabantes was in the same situation as me, and regarding the plane, I always thought it was a way of saying that they would kill us.

I don't remember what else happened with the people from Valparaíso, and I ignore how they were transported to Villa Grimaldi, but I do remember Fabián Ibarra in the Villa, whom they forced to work in the photographic laboratory..."

Source: Judiciary, July 30, 2010

Fugitive former DINA agent who must serve sentence for kidnapping remains at large

Daniel Cancino Varas has been unlocatable for 23 days after the sentence was issued that condemns him to spend 15 years in prison for the permanent qualified kidnapping of Carlos Guerrero Gutiérrez in 1974, who was last seen at the Villa Grimaldi detention center in October of that year.

The search for the former DINA agent, Daniel Cancino Varas, continues without positive results. He has remained a fugitive for 23 days, after the justice system summoned him to notify him on January 5 to begin serving his 15-year prison sentence for the permanent qualified kidnapping of Carlos Guerrero Gutiérrez.

The former prefect of the PDI was sentenced by the Supreme Court in October 2014, exactly 40 years after the trail of Guerrero Gutiérrez was lost, starting in October 1974 at the illegal detention center of the DINA, Villa Grimaldi.

Cancino did not appear on the indicated date when he was supposed to appear before the visiting minister Leopoldo Llanos along with former agents Rolf Wenderoth and Fernando Lauriani, to enter the Punta Peuco prison and begin the sentence for this case.

According to Radio Cooperativa, there are doubts regarding why the search for the retired detective has not been effective, after the magistrate opted on January 21 to leave without effect an arrest warrant against him, which was to be executed by the PDI, an institution in which the fugitive has two children, one retired and one active, although the OS-9 of the Carabineros also has the order to search for him.

Source: La Nación, January 28, 2015

Former DINA agent sentenced to 15 years remains a fugitive from justice. He participated in the disappearance of a young student

The former agent of the dictatorship's repressive group, Daniel Cancino, is required to serve a sentence for the permanent kidnapping of philosophy student Carlos Guerrero Gutiérrez; however, he never presented himself to enter the Punta Peuco prison. The fact that he has a daughter on active duty in the PDI (Investigations Police) raises suspicions regarding his continued concealment.

Daniel Cancino Varas, a retired prefect of the PDI, was convicted for the permanent aggravated kidnapping of 20-year-old student Carlos Guerrero Gutiérrez, who was also a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). He was scheduled to report to the Punta Peuco prison on January 5, 2015; however, he never arrived at the detention center and remains missing.

This is a difficult situation for the young man's family, as with the disappearance of the man considered a former DINA agent, it is still not possible to achieve any measure of justice for the kidnapping of the University of Chile student.

This is aggravated by the fact that the fugitive is the father of an active officer and another retired officer of the PDI, which is the institution leading the investigation into Cancino's disappearance.

Although some believe that this relationship has nothing to do with Cancino Varas's current situation, it remains suspicious that he has been missing for a month without any leads on his whereabouts.

Cancino Varas was accused of participating in the kidnapping of Carlos Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez, single, a militant of the MIR, and a History student at the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the University of Chile, who was 20 years old at the time he was detained on December 31, 1974, by State agents.

The young man was seen by numerous witnesses at "Villa Grimaldi." Cancino Varas was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the kidnapping, along with former agents Rolf Wenderoth and Fernando Lauriani.

From the Human Rights Program, the secretary of the body, Francisco Ugaz, stated that they had requested the visiting judge Leopoldo Llanos to expedite the inquiries to locate the fugitive.

"On January 23, the Human Rights Program filed a brief before the judge in charge of executing the sentences of the Supreme Court, noting that since this subject has not been found, he should proceed to issue an arrest warrant to be carried out by the Carabineros," said Ugaz.

Regarding Cancino Varas's situation, the case lawyer Loreto Meza, of the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program, expressed in an interview with Cambio21: "So far everything remains the same, as Cancino is still a fugitive and we have had no news on how that is going."

"It is super frustrating because these are cases that take years, and when they end, it turns out the accused vanish into thin air," the jurist added.

Regarding how Carlos Guerrero Gutiérrez's family has taken this situation, the lawyer said, "I have not been able to communicate with the family to know how they are dealing with the issue, but I imagine it must not be pleasant for them at all; it is regrettable."

Regarding what this means from a judicial standpoint for the fugitive, Meza explained, "He has a travel ban and now an international arrest warrant, which presents a complicated scenario for Cancino Varas."

Regarding whether the PDI's work in searching for the fugitive could be affected by the kinship between Cancino and an active member of the institution, Loreto Meza stated, "He has a daughter in active service and a son who is a retired officer, so the effectiveness of the search procedure is open to doubt."

Mireya García, vice president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), also referred to this situation. In an interview with Cambio21, she said regarding Cancino's disappearance: "I feel that human rights violators, criminals, torturers, and murderers are playing in all the spaces that democracy has left them over all these years to avoid fulfilling their sentences and the law before justice for the crimes committed.

This individual escapes, remains a fugitive, and does not serve his sentence."

Regarding the fact that Cancino's daughter is an active member of the PDI and could be involved in hiding her father, Mireya García stated, "Nothing surprises me about any institution of the Armed Forces and Order, but undoubtedly the PDI has played a very contrary role in helping with investigations related to human rights.

I feel that everything is possible, and in this case, one would have to inquire and investigate what is happening, and the moment this individual is apprehended, the Investigations [PDI] must also answer for this situation, which is not a coincidence."

"Justice and the PDI should investigate if there is participation by his children in this escape, and if there is responsibility, all corresponding measures must be taken; if they are not responsible, there is no reason for them not to remain in the institution," concluded García.

Cambio21 attempted to contact the PDI to ask about this issue, from which they said they would provide a version; however, at the time of this article's publication, there was no response from the institution to our inquiry.

Source: Cambio21, February 6, 2015

International arrest warrant requested for former DINA agent

An international arrest warrant was issued by the visiting judge for Human Rights cases, Leopoldo Llanos, against former DINA agent Daniel Cancino Varas, who has been a fugitive from justice for more than 20 days.

Cancino, sentenced to 15 years in prison for the permanent kidnapping of Carlos Guerrero, which occurred in 1974 at Villa Grimaldi, was supposed to report to the Punta Peuco prison on January 5 to begin serving his sentence, but he did not do so, and his whereabouts have been unknown since then.

For this reason, and given the possibility that the fugitive is planning to leave the country (or may have already done so), Judge Llanos issued an international arrest warrant to the OS-9 Intelligence Department of the Carabineros and Interpol, with the aim of achieving his prompt capture.

Source: Publimetro, January 31, 2015

Santiago Court acquits former detectives of responsibility in 1981 homicide

The Court of Appeals revoked the challenged sentence and decreed the acquittal of Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas and José Antonio Parra Sanhueza, after establishing that the former police officers are exempt from criminal responsibility in a case in which the perpetrator of the crime was acquitted after it was determined that he acted in self-defense.

In a unanimous ruling, the Santiago Court of Appeals acquitted two retired members of the Investigations Police (PDI) of responsibility as accessories to the aggravated homicide of Hernán Correa Ortiz, an illicit act they allegedly perpetrated on December 28, 1981, in the Metropolitan Region.

The Court of Appeals revoked the challenged sentence, issued by visiting judge Mario Carroza, and decreed the acquittal of Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas and José Antonio Parra Sanhueza, after establishing that the former police officers are exempt from criminal responsibility in a case in which the perpetrator of the crime was acquitted after it was determined that he acted in self-defense.

The sentence cites that, as the Supreme Court has pointed out in repeated rulings, ‘given the different modalities of civil and criminal res judicata, the rules of the former are not entirely applicable to the latter.

Indeed, the relevant norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure always reason on the basis of the punishable act and the person of the responsible party; thus, since the latter does not exhibit clear regulation, as it does in civil matters, unanimous doctrine—shared in repeated rulings by this court—maintains that the triple identity proclaimed in Article 177 of the Code of Civil Procedure is not applicable to it, postulating as the only requirements the identity of the punishable facts investigated and the identity of the active subjects of the crime, based on what constitutes the core of the criminal process, namely, the accreditation of the facts that constitute the criminal offense and the determination of the person or persons responsible for it, extremes upon which, consequently, the judgment turns, the repetition of which is prevented by virtue of res judicata.’ (Supreme Court Sentence, December 29, 2016, Roll No. 14.312-2016, Consideration 7th).

The resolution adds that although it is evident that regarding the convicted Cancino and Parra, neither of the two elements of the special configuration that res judicata acquires in criminal matters concurs, since they were not the object of criminal prosecution in that trial, it cannot be ignored that the punishable fact investigated in the aforementioned final case showed that the death of Hernán Correa Ortiz was produced by an act of self-defense by Moreno Cabello, who had reacted to shots fired by the victim.

The ruling then states that, as read in consideration 9th of the sentence of March 22, 1985, which appears on pages 1057 to 1066 of these records, the facts established in the sentence were as follows: ‘The defendant and the victim were running, one in pursuit of the other.

The latter had to, in order to fire the weapon, stop, turn his body backward, fire, and immediately turn back to resume running, being struck at that moment from behind, both in the gluteal region and in the lumbar region, and the impact on the right leg being the product of the ricochet of a bullet that hit one of the drums at the location, while in a running position, and it being on record that bullets ricocheted off the drums.’ Consideration 10th of that ruling continues by stating: ‘that, having established the manner in which the events occurred, the requirements of personal self-defense, which the defendant alleges, are met. There was an illegitimate aggression on the part of the victim against the defendant, by firing the second time against him when he was pursuing him to arrest him. The defendant, in the face of the unjust attack, had the right to repel such aggression with the element he had available at that moment. Another firearm, a submachine gun, which being more powerful and dangerous than the aggressor's revolver, must be considered to have met the rational necessity of the means employed to repel the aggression, since mathematical equality between the elements employed is not necessary, and it is estimated that there was proportionality between them, since both were firearms capable of killing. There was also no sufficient provocation on the part of the defendant toward the victim. The defendant, in pursuing him to arrest him, was only fulfilling a functional obligation, given that he did not comply with the order to halt for identification.’

It adds that in that line of thought, the first question that arises regarding concealment as a form of criminal participation is the requirement—as a starting point—of the knowledge that this participant had of the perpetration of a crime (a felony or a simple offense or the acts executed to carry it out).

And this is so because, as noted, while the perpetrator is prosecuted for his own act, the accessory, on the other hand, is prosecuted for an act of another, the perpetrator's; hence, not only does his punishability depend on that of the perpetrator of that act, but prior and previously, his action will necessarily and directly depend on the illegality of the act of the other in which he participates.

Then, it affirms that this has been pointed out by doctrine by expressing that 'since criminal participation is a way of extending the punishability of an act of another to those who only collaborate with its perpetrator, a necessary degree of accessoriness of his act with the criminal punishment of the perpetrator has been proposed as an objective requirement for the punishment of the participant,' so that, following the general principle of the accessory, accesorium sequitur principale, there could be no punishable concealment of a non-crime.

Next, it points out that this same doctrine, which this Court shares, insists on pointing out that: ‘It is evident that, if the act of another does not even constitute a typical crime, at most there will be an impossible attempt to participate in an unpunished act, a premise that lacks any practical interest.

Then, the question is to decide whether the act of the perpetrator, for the participants to be punishable, must also be punishable for him, that is, if it must be not only typical, but also illegal and culpable.

Among us, the doctrine of so-called limited or medium accessoriness is dominant, according to which, for the punishability of the participant, it is necessary that the perpetrator has executed a typical and at least illegal action, although not necessarily culpable.

Then, if someone kills an aggressor in self-defense, neither the perpetrator of the act is punishable, for being justified, nor the one who provided him with the weapon to defend himself, for the perpetrator—the one who defends himself—being justified, no matter how much the one who participates by providing the weapon has done so only out of hatred for the aggressor and wishing for his death in the depths of his heart.’ (Politoff, Matus and Ramírez, Lessons of Chilean Criminal Law.

General Part, Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 2004, pp. 422-423).

Finally, it concludes that since the acquittal of the perpetrator, Moreno Cabello, was recognized by a final sentence in the facts referring to the homicide of Correa Ortiz, due to the concurrence of the exculpatory circumstance of self-defense, it is not possible for this Court to ignore or alter those facts to now condemn the concealment of a conduct that resulted, in the unmovable procedural reality that has been pointed out, as justified, that is, not contrary to the legal order (illegal) nor attributable to the personal responsibility of the perpetrator (culpable).

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, July 23, 2019

Supreme Court sends 59 former DINA agents to prison for Operation Colombo

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile appear as having been killed abroad.

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court revoked the sentence that had acquitted more than 60 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and convicted them as responsible for the disappearance of 16 left-wing militants, mostly from the MIR, in the process known as Operation Colombo, which in this case was perpetrated between June 17, 1974, and January 6, 1975, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The ruling was issued by ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and Diego Simpertigue, who revoked the sentence issued by the Court of Appeals and sentenced former DINA chiefs and officers César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Miguel Krassnoff, and Raúl Iturriaga Neumann to the penalty of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree as authors of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of the victims.

Similarly, the court sentenced 53 former agents to the effective penalty of 10 years and one day of major imprisonment in its medium degree, as authors of the same crime, who had previously been acquitted by the capital's court of appeals, despite having been convicted in the first instance as accomplices and authors.

Furthermore, this time all must enter prison, with some of them already in prison for other crimes against humanity.

These are former DINA agents Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Andrés Carevic, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Nelson Alberto Paz Bustamante, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera, José Alfonso Ojeda Obando, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Raúl Juan Rodríguez Ponte, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Daniel Alberto Galaz Orellana, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Leoncio Enrique Velásquez Guala, José Enrique Fuentes Torres, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, José Manuel Sarmiento Sotelo, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Enrique Tránsito Gutiérrez Rubilar, Hugo Del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Manuel Rivas Díaz, Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Juan Evangelista Duarte Gallegos, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Leónidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Pedro Ariel Aravena Aravena, Carlos Alfonso Sáez Sanhueza, Juan Carlos Villanueva Alvear, Alfredo Orlando Moya Tejeda, Rafael De Jesús Riveros Frost, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Hernán Patricio Valenzuela Salas, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Osvaldo Pulgar Gallardo, José Avelino Yévenes Vergara, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Werner Zanghellini, Hector Flores Vergara.

Jaime Alfonso Fernández Garrido received a sentence of 5 years and one day of major imprisonment in its minimum degree as author of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Ida Vera Almarza. Meanwhile, Samuel Fuenzalida Devia was sentenced to 541 days for the same crime, but will not serve time in prison.

This is an extensive process that had its first sentence in the first instance in 2017 at the hands of minister Hernán Crisosto Greisse. In the course of the investigation, some agents have died, such as Basclay Zapata, Ciro Torré, Manzo Durán, Ricardo Lawrence, among others.

For Nelson Caucoto, a plaintiff lawyer representing 13 of the 16 victims, this is “a transcendent ruling in Chilean judicial history, since the Supreme Court has restored the sense of justice for crimes of this nature, which had literally remained in an unacceptable situation of impunity.

The highest court has once again rejected the half-prescription and the appeals of the defense of the convicted, and has accepted the appeals of the plaintiffs,” he noted.

Caucoto adds that “it is a modern ruling based on international law and domestic legislation. It is undoubted that justice operates in this case as a healing for so many relatives of victims who still survive, and it is a pity that others did not live to see this end.”

Operation Colombo was a major intelligence operation and a communication setup by the DINA, which attempted to make 119 people kidnapped in Chile by the DINA appear as having been killed abroad, having allegedly perished after clashing with each other.

This process investigated the fate of 16 of those 119 victims. They are Francisco Aedo Carrasco, Jorge Elías Andrónicos Antequera, Juan Carlos Andrónicos Antequera, Jaime Buzio Lorca, Mario Calderón Tapia, Cecilia Castro Salvadores, Rodolfo Espejo Gómez, Agustín Fioraso Chau, Gregorio Gaete Farías, Mauricio Jorquera Encina, Isidro Pizarro Meniconi, Marcos Quiñones Lembach, Sergio Reyes Navarrete, Ida Vera Almarza, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Araya, and Jilberto Urbina Pizarro.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, March 3, 2023

When Chilean trade unionists were watched, followed, and listened to

From its beginnings in 1977, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the trade union world through the Labor Brigade. The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Agustinas Street and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependence of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a Mathematics teacher from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to train pro-government trade union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition trade union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

The directorate of the Secretariat of Guilds had its offices in the Diego Portales building, but most of its officials and collaborators worked nearby, in a three-story house that stood at the corner of the Alameda and Victoria Subercaseaux Street, next to Santa Lucía Hill.

Galleguillos, enthusiastic about his task, recreated the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement (MRNS)—inspired by an old movement of the same name—headquartered in a large house at 180 Vergara Street, in the old Republic neighborhood, southeast of downtown Santiago, and closely linked to the CNI.

Several of the main pro-government trade union leaders gathered there, including René Sotolicchio, president of the National Association of Municipal Employees; Valericio Orrego Salas, president of the Association of Employees of the Ministry of Public Works; Carlos Navarrete, president of the Union No. 1 of Street Fairs of Santiago; and Jaime Tramont Castillo, a trade union leader from Valparaíso.

Galleguillos also summoned Werner Anís Bischosausen, Eugenio Cáceres Contreras, Ramón Callís Arrigorriaga, Iván Catalina Sánchez, Gustavo Cuevas Torrealba, Héctor Larenas Bugueño, Luis Lillo Abarca, Lázaro Maluenda, Claudio Matte, and Pedro Urquieta.

Claudio Matte and Héctor Larenas financed the rental of the headquarters, where the security officers were Hugo Cabezas Freire, a member of the CNI, and Rigoberto Moreno, a former official of the Navy.

The leadership of the movement, headed by Galleguillos, was composed of José Fernández Jorquera, Arturo Marshall de Amesti, Alfredo Urrutia, Fernando Muñoz Parra, and Marcelo Retamal Moreno, who dedicated themselves to planning shock actions, producing propaganda, and programming trade union training courses for the cadres and leaders they summoned to their meetings.

Luis Lillo Abarca was in charge of training, and Héctor Larenas Buqueño was in charge of propaganda and public relations.

Black shirts and Nazi salutes

In another property, located at 8081 Larraín Street, in front of the Tobalaba airfield, or in a vacant lot in Farellones, paramilitary training was carried out for the militants who made up the shock groups.

This task was performed by Fernando Muñoz, Genaro Pozo, and Manuel Hernández. The use of black shirts, the salute with the arm raised in the Nazi style, and the singing of military hymns were mandatory.

Other militants such as Pablo Medina, Jorge Salinas (ex-Patria y Libertad, nicknamed “Bombero Loco”), and Santiago Schesta assumed the preparation of explosives that they installed in previously determined areas, which press releases attributed to left-wing groups.

One of the MRNS actions with public repercussions was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting “traitor” and “sellout” at Tucapel Jiménez.

The next day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He declared later that the order had been given to him by the then Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Broberg, who was seconded by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the Group of Ten. It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Cepch.

Already in 1975, in the glory years of the DINA, opposition trade union leaders were closely watched and their meetings recorded by agents or collaborators infiltrated among them. Marcia Merino, “la flaca Alejandra,” a MIR member who collaborated with the DINA, received from Rolf Wenderoth at the central barracks on Belgrado Street verbatim transcripts of the meetings of the Group of Ten, the National Trade Union Coordinator (CNS), and the Unitary Workers' Front (FUT).

Her task was to analyze the contents and infer probable courses of action for the trade unionists, then returning them to Wenderoth's offices.

After the installation of the CNI in 1977, the replacement for the DINA continued the same method of tracking, surveillance, listening, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on República Street.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary of Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located. Under the direct command of Schmied were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks.

The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content. Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Close surveillance was exercised over the trade union world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Trade Union Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Colonel Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the “Ollagüe” barracks, located on José Domingo Cañas Street, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Agustinas Street and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

Leaders such as Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, Manuel Bustos, and Tucapel Jiménez, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed at the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office. A folder was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, in addition to their contact networks.

In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed “Omar” recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant for the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme. The “junior” was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez.

Twice a week, the boy delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where in exchange he received a cash payment. In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias “Gabriel Carrasco González,” although everyone called him “Barnabás.”

Infiltration of leaderships

Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI. He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, recruiting an employee of his in a business he had at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to “Manolo” or “Carlos de la Fuente,” his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive organization maintained in the leadership circles of opposition trade unionism could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez, the current president of the CUT, to whom the CNI paid 40,000 pesos per month for his reports.

Thus, as the spring of 1981 began, the CNI had the certainty that the much-feared opposition trade union unity was being achieved and that the main architect of it was the president of the public employees, Tucapel Jiménez.

The matter was even more serious because Jiménez also held conversations with some of the main political leaders of the dissidence, including Eduardo Frei Montalva. The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicarage of the Workers' Pastoral along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church.

CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, moreover, of numerous bodies and governments from all over the world.

The information gathered by the CNI reached La Moneda, and in the following weeks, the director of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINE), General Ramsés Arturo Álvarez Sgolia, received the order from General Augusto Pinochet to eliminate Tucapel Jiménez.

by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: interferencia.cl, May 5, 2020