Luis Hernán San Martín Cares, single, a worker at the "Hogar de Cristo" Prefabricated Housing Factory in Chillán, was detained at his workplace on October 4, 1973, at approximately 11:00 hours, by military personnel and Carabineros who were traveling in a green ARO brand Jeep.

The uniformed men carried a list with the names of people they asked for at the factory. These were Luis Muñoz Vásquez, Ernesto Salazar, and the victim himself. Upon identifying them, they forced them to take off their overalls, beat them, and separated them from the rest of the group of workers.

They then loaded them into the vehicle and told those present that they were taking them to the Chillán Regiment. In reality, they were taken to the Ñuble Highway Police Station (Tenencia de Carreteras Ñuble), as they were seen there the following day by Aída Parra, the wife of José Acuña Yáñez, a worker from the same factory who had been detained on October 4, 1973, at 21:00 hours at his home.

The victim's mother, Filomena Cares, upon learning of what had happened, immediately went to the military facility, where she was told that her son had been transferred to Quilmo (an Army field camp), but that he would be brought back in the afternoon.

This situation lasted for a week until the military informed her that the victim had been taken to the jail, where they claimed to have no knowledge of Luis San Martín being there. In order to find her son, she visited every place of possible detention in the area without positive results.

That same day, two other workers from the same factory were detained at their homes: José Padilla Villouta and Ernesto Torres Guzmán. In total, there were six detainees, who remain forcibly disappeared to this day.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On January 31, 1979, a Writ of Amparo (Habeas Corpus) was filed on behalf of the victim before the Chillán Court of Appeals, registered under No. 105.461. Various police agencies in the city were consulted, and they reported having no records of the victim's detention. Among them was the Ñuble Prefecture of the Carabineros.

On February 9 of the same year, the Court rejected the writ because the detention of the subject could not be proven, ordering that the presiding Criminal Judge be notified to initiate a summary proceeding for alleged disappearance.

On February 13, 1979, a summary proceeding for alleged disappearance was initiated in the 1st Criminal Court of Chillán under case file No. 45.648.

Among the responses to the Judge's official inquiries was one from the Acting Minister of the Interior, Enrique Montero Marx, who reported on February 21, 1979, that there were no records regarding the victim in that Ministry's files.

On March 29, 1979, the Chillán Court of Appeals, meeting in an extraordinary plenary session, agreed to appoint magistrate Boris Acharán Blau as a Visiting Judge (Ministro en Visita) to investigate the cases of persons listed as disappeared.

On March 30, upon taking up the case, the Minister sent official inquiries to the Chillán Carabineros, the Chillán Public Jail, and the No. 9 "Chillán" Regiment, among other agencies, receiving the same response in all cases: that there were no records regarding the detention and status of the victim.

He used this information as the basis for closing the summary proceeding and temporarily dismissing the case on June 16, 1979, as the magistrate stated that the existence of a crime could not be proven.

On June 7, 1979, the Chillán Court of Appeals confirmed the ruling. On October 9, 1979, the file was returned to the original court, the 1st Criminal Court of Chillán.

Source: (Corporation Report)

Testimonies, photographs, letters, and other documents that families and friends provided or wrote specifically for publication are incorporated into the book "Breaking the Silence of Children and Adolescents Who Were Victims of Political Executions During the Civic-Military Dictatorship 1973-1990," which was produced by the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) with the support of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, through the Unit of Culture, Memory, and Human Rights, and the Human Rights Chair of the University of Chile.

The publication, based primarily on the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (1991) and the Report of the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (1996), seeks to reconstruct each of the lives and stories of the victims in a comprehensive and careful manner.

During the research, access was granted to the archive of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions, where documents that families have preserved over the years are kept. Illustrations by Álvaro Gómez were also included.

The creation process was a complex challenge that involved combining delicacy, respect, and methodological rigor to state a painful and inescapable truth in this work.

Source: cultura.gob.cl 14/9/2023