The Carabineros who killed the 15 peasants were released due to the amnesty law. "Los Archivos del Cardenal" recalls that horrific episode. As a result of the first episode of the TVN series "Los archivos del Cardenal," Cambio21 sought to memorialize and remember this difficult moment in our country's recent history.

On October 7, 1973, 15 men were detained under various circumstances in Isla de Maipo, an agricultural sector south of Santiago. They remained forcibly disappeared until November 30, 1978, when their bodies were found in the ovens of a lime mine located in Lonquén, a few kilometers from where the peasants lived.

That same day in November, the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, then under the direction of priest Cristián Precht, created a commission tasked with verifying statements made by an elderly man who claimed to have found numerous human remains in the abandoned mine in that locality.

Thus, that day, this commission set off for Lonquén, composed of Enrique Alvear, auxiliary bishop of Santiago; Vicar Precht and Javier Egaña, Executive Secretary of the Vicaría; the Vicaría's chief lawyer, Alejandro González; lawyer Máximo Pacheco; the director of Qué Pasa magazine, Jaime Martínez; and the deputy director of Hoy magazine, Abraham Santibáñez.

The ovens, located inside the El Triunfador agricultural cooperative, about 14 kilometers from the city of Talagante, were two old nine-meter-high chimneys previously used for the preparation of lime. The commission returned to Santiago and the following day, December 1, filed a formal complaint with the Supreme Court.

The president of the court, Israel Bórquez, instructed the criminal judge of Talagante, Juana Godoy, to confirm the discovery and investigate the case. Godoy summoned personnel from the Investigations police, and before they arrived at the site, she set off for Lonquén with a group from the Vicaría led by priest Gonzalo Aguirre, which also included photographer Luis Navarro.

The Vicaría, meanwhile, had hired a construction company to begin excavations, and within three days the painful work was finished and the remains of the fifteen bodies had been removed from their burial site.

This discovery, which shook public opinion, marked a painful milestone for the relatives of the hundreds of forcibly disappeared, victims of the military regime: it confirmed the terrible suspicion that their relatives were definitively dead.

Only 517 bone fragments of the 15 victims were saved from disappearing forever and were identified following anthropological and odontological analyses by a group of international experts. The Spanish expert Francisco Echeverría stated that the remains that were separated and examined correspond to the 15 victims found in 1978, and it was established that the cause of death was a violent homicide.

For years, the relatives were convinced that their loved ones, although they had suffered beatings at the Isla de Maipo police station, were ultimately riddled with bullets before being thrown into the Lonquén lime ovens. This was ruled out after the expert reports; there are no bullet impact injuries, but rather blunt force traumatic injuries. Death, therefore, was caused by beatings.

The bodies of the following were found in these lime ovens: Sergio Maureira Lillo, 46 years old. Rodolfo Antonio Maureira Muñoz, 22 years old. Sergio Miguel Maureira Muñoz, 27 years old. Segundo Armando Maureira Muñoz, 24 years old.

José Manuel Maureira Muñoz, 26 years old. Óscar Hernández Flores. Carlos Hernández Flores, 39 years old. Nelson Hernández Flores, 32 years old. Enrique Astudillo Álvarez, 51 years old. Omar Astudillo Rojas, 20 years old. Ramón Astudillo Rojas, 27 years old. Miguel Brant Bustamante, 17 years old. Iván Ordóñez Lamas, 17 years old. José Manuel Herrera Villegas, 17 years old. Manuel Navarro.

The discovery of the bodies of the 15 peasants at the end of 1978, all members of practically the same families, was clearly an alert for Pinochet, who determined, with an encrypted message decrypted by each regiment, the so-called "Operation Television Set Removal" (Operación Retiro de Televisores), as the Army itself internally called it.

The order was clear: exhume the bodies of murdered prisoners and throw them into the sea. How would they do it? With helicopters from the Army Aviation Command and the Chilean Air Force, which collaborated, for example, in the case of the 26 bodies in Calama, victims of the Caravan of Death.

The identified murderers

At the beginning of April 1979, the visiting minister Adolfo Bañados declared himself incompetent, and the proceedings for this case passed to the military justice system. On July 2, the military prosecutor issued an indictment against Captain Lautaro Castro Mendoza and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, Jacinto Torres González, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, and Justo Romo Peralta as authors of the deaths of the 15 Lonquén victims.

However, on August 16, the Amnesty Law was applied to them; they were released, and the case was dismissed. This resolution was confirmed by the Martial Court on October 22, 1979.

The late but necessary tribute to the victims

37 years passed since the events occurred, 32 years after their remains were discovered, but finally, a funeral and tribute were held for the victims of the Lonquén ovens. Thus, on Friday, March 26, 2010, the 15 urns were handed over by the Legal Medical Service and transported to the Recoleta Franciscana church, where the victims' bodies were initially going to be mourned on a distant September 14, 1979.

They were then transported to Isla de Maipo. There, they received a tribute before being buried in a memorial at the local cemetery. On Sunday, March 28, 2010, the fifteen peasants from Isla de Maipo were able to receive a tribute from the community and their families, holding a funeral that took 37 years to arrive.

The first episode of the series "Los archivos del Cardenal" recalled that raw episode, where relatives could confirm that their loved ones had indeed been murdered and had not "left the country," as official channels used to say.

A witness's account

Cambio21 contacted the president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), Lorena Pizarro, who, regarding the broadcast of the first episode of "Los archivos," said: "I think it is a series that Chile needed.

Although it is fiction based on real events, it recounts the horror of what it means to live under a dictatorship. Notice that it was only the first episode; I watched it with my family, and it was a huge shock for my daughters, and that happened to many other people, and to say 'this is how it was' and not be able to convince oneself of how tremendous, brutal, and painful it is to live under a dictatorship," she commented.

The president continues her account by saying, "How necessary it would have been for these things to be said in Chile just after the dictatorship ended; how necessary so that it is understood why we, despite the years, continue to demand truth and justice.

It is precisely so that what is recounted there never happens again," she emphasized. Pizarro also remembers how she lived through that time: "For one, it is very strong because one lived through all of that.

I remembered that I was a very young girl when the Lonquén incident happened, and when the episode ends, when they tell them that they will not hand over our relatives, that was a moment of immense pain.

It was a situation that I remember, being a girl, was incomprehensible. I had had my father disappeared for a little over a year, and it was a brutal thing because it was accepting that they had murdered them, which is what happened to us, the relatives of the forcibly disappeared, upon learning about Lonquén, but also because I began to realize that they didn't even have the humanity to give us their remains so we could bury them," she mentioned.

Finally, the leader says, "We hope that the coming episodes, although they are a fictional story, are based on real events, in an absolutely real historical context. I truly hope that this makes Chile reflect that here, reconciliation is not dictated by decree, but that in this country we must heal ourselves, and for that, there must be truth, justice, and memory, which is a great contribution that this series makes to the country," concluded Pizarro.

Source: Cambio21, July 22, 2011

Until now, it was believed that the first forcibly disappeared persons found had been riddled with bullets by Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo police station before being thrown into the Lonquén ovens.

But international experts confirmed to the relatives that the cause of death—according to the traces on the remains of the 15 peasants—was due to blunt force traumatic injuries. There has not been an event in Isla de Maipo as horrific as the murder of the 15 peasants at the hands of Carabineros from the police station that existed in the commune in 1973.

Today, the pain that has remained in the victims' families for almost 35 years becomes more intense after learning another great detail of the story: they were not murdered with gunfire, but were simply beaten to death, only to be thrown later into the lime ovens in Lonquén.

Only 517 bone fragments of the 15 victims were saved from disappearing forever and were identified following anthropological and odontological analyses by a group of international experts summoned by the Government.

It was the Spanish expert Francisco Echeverría who carried out the detailed follow-up of all the forensic analysis of these remains, as part of an Executive program to repair the identification errors of the remains found in the early nineties in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago.

Echeverría met with the relatives of the 15 victims and, through tears, told them of the discovery that made the Lonquén episode even more dramatic. "With complete certainty, I can affirm today that the remains we have separated and examined correspond to the 15 victims who were found in 1978, and it was established that the cause of death corresponds to a violent homicide.

There are no bullet impact injuries; they are blunt force traumatic injuries. Death was caused by beatings." According to the expert, the old report from the Legal Medical Service did not establish this fundamental fact.

Until now, the relatives were convinced that their loved ones, although they had suffered beatings at the Isla de Maipo police station, were ultimately riddled with bullets before being thrown into the Lonquén lime ovens.

The bodies of Sergio Maureira Lillo and his four sons, Rodolfo Antonio, Sergio Miguel, Segundo Armando, and José Manuel; Óscar Hernández Flores and his brothers Carlos and Nelson; Enrique Astudillo Álvarez and his two sons, Omar and Ramón; and the young men Miguel Brant, Iván Ordóñez, José Herrera, and Manuel Navarro, aged between 17 and 51, were found in these lime ovens.

The discovery was made through the confession of a peasant to a priest. The ovens were two old nine-meter-high chimneys used in their time for the preparation of lime, which were located inside the El Triunfador agricultural cooperative, about 14 kilometers from the city of Talagante.

The official version to justify the Lonquén crime was that once detained at the Isla de Maipo police station, one of the peasants confessed that there were hidden weapons in some ovens at the abandoned Lonquén mine.

That alone was enough for them to transport the prisoners, who, according to the same explanation, attacked the police, resulting in everyone dying in an armed confrontation. Curiously, no Carabinero was injured.

At the beginning of April 1979, the visiting minister Adolfo Bañados declared himself incompetent, and the proceedings for this case passed to the military justice system. On July 2, the military prosecutor issued an indictment against Captain Lautaro Castro Mendoza and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, Jacinto Torres González, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, and Justo Romo Peralta as authors of the deaths of the 15 Lonquén victims.

However, on August 16, the Amnesty Law was applied to them; they were released, and the case was dismissed. This resolution was confirmed by the Martial Court on October 22, 1979. The forensic analysis of the bone remains continues, so the inauguration of a memorial on October 4 at the Parish Cemetery of Isla de Maipo to remember the 15 peasants will only be a symbolic act.

Television Set Removal

The discovery of the bodies of the 15 peasants at the end of 1978 was an alert for Pinochet, who determined, with an encrypted message decrypted by each regiment, the so-called "Operation Television Set Removal," as the Army itself internally called it.

The order was clear: exhume the bodies of murdered prisoners and throw them into the sea. The means? Helicopters from the Army Aviation Command and the Chilean Air Force, which collaborated, for example, in the case of the 26 bodies in Calama, victims of the Caravan of Death.

In various proceedings, there are statements from non-commissioned officers, now retired, who acknowledge having had in their hands the cryptogram sent from the Army General Command ordering them to report clandestine graves to "clean them up." The discovery of the Lonquén victims put an end to the concealment of the truth about the forcibly disappeared, which had been a permanent policy of the dictatorship. "This has been etched into us.

The relatives do not sleep thinking about what they suffered at the hands of their executioners. For me, it has been very strong to know this recently. We talk about it at home, and it has been even more painful.

It reopens our wounds and adds more suffering to what we have already carried for 35 years. At least now we will be able to give them a dignified burial, but this will be etched into us for the rest of our lives," Corina Maureira told LND through tears.

For Isla de Maipo councilman Emilio Astudillo, what was revealed "surprised us bitterly after knowing how people who wore the Carabinero uniform could be so cruel to our relatives and brutally beat them to death.

That is more shocking. It hurts the soul and the heart more to know how they were really murdered." Councilman Astudillo was 16 years old in '73. He had to assume the responsibility of becoming the head of the household and taking care of his mother and younger siblings after being left without his father and his other older brothers, Ramón and Omar.

In addition, he had to endure the burden of searching for them for five years in concentration camps with the hope of finding them alive. "Only those who live it can realize the psychological damage it causes in a person and their family. Only with the discovery of the victims in the Lonquén ovens in '78 did we have some peace and closure, because we knew it was them."

The memorial The relatives of the Lonquén victims say they have wanted to build a memorial to deposit the remains of their loved ones that have already been identified in the country; but so that what happened with the remains of Patio 29 does not happen to them—the bodies were wrongly handed over to their relatives—both they and the Government opted for samples of the victims' bodies to be sent to a laboratory in Texas, where within a year the results will certify if they are their relatives, murdered and thrown into the Lonquén ovens, subsequently exhumed from the mass grave in Isla de Maipo and transported to the Legal Medical Service in Santiago. In 2006, the relatives achieved the exhumation and hoped that after two years they could have the remains of their relatives to bury them. But reality has placed them in another scenario, and they will still have to wait another year. For this reason, they decided to inaugurate the memorial anyway on October 4, an act that will be attended by Government authorities and human rights organizations. "We must not forget that the Lonquén victims were the first discovery of forcibly disappeared persons in the country, when the dictatorship denied that they existed. Even at the United Nations, the legal existence of our relatives was unknown. The former ambassador to the UN in those years, Sergio Diez, said that our companions had no legal existence or had gone abroad of their own free will. So, the Lonquén discovery marked a before and after regarding the forcibly disappeared in Chile," maintains Emilio Astudillo. The memorial will, however, contain 17 graves, because the relatives agreed to include the names of Juan de Dios Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo, killed in September '73 at the Naltagua bridge by the same police from the Isla de Maipo station. Nelson Caucoto, plaintiff lawyer: "We will ask for reparations from the State." Margarita Herreros was the first minister in charge of the case after its reopening when the complaint by Isla de Maipo councilman Emilio Astudillo was filed. However, she was there for a short time, as she was appointed as a member of the Supreme Court. Since then, the case has passed through the hands of several ministers. Some did not even manage to read the entire file. Today, the process is in the hands of Minister Marta Hantke at the San Miguel Court of Appeals, and without further proceedings, it is awaiting the conclusion of the identification stage with the results of the samples sent to Texas. For the lawyer of the victims' families, Nelson Caucoto, "the most important thing of all is that the definitive dismissal that existed in the case was reversed, which has allowed progress in the stage of accurate identification of the remains. Once that concludes and they are handed over to their relatives, we will give an impetus to the criminal process and take the corresponding actions to summon those involved in the homicides to testify. In due course, we will also ask for reparations from the Chilean State." Lautaro Castro Mendoza, the lieutenant in charge of the Isla de Maipo Carabinero station in October '73, was notified three weeks ago of a first-instance sentence in another process for the crime of Juan de Dios Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo, two social leaders from Isla de Maipo detained in September '73. Castro was sentenced to 20 years in prison, 10 for each victim.

Source: La Nación, September 28, 2008

San Miguel Court orders the prosecution of seven Carabineros for homicide in the Lonquén ovens

The ministers of the Court of Appeals, Claudio Pavez, María Teresa Díaz, and Marta Hantke, determined that the acts are imprescriptible and exempt from amnesty, as by their “nature, modality, and circumstance… they must be interpreted as crimes against humanity.” The resolution affects Captain (R) Lautaro Castro and Carabineros Juan Villegas, Félix Sagredo, Manuel Muñoz, Jacinto Torres, David Coliqueo, José Belmar, and Justo Romo, all in their capacity as perpetrators of the murder of 15 people that occurred on October 7, 1973, and whose remains were found in November 1978.

The San Miguel Court of Appeals ordered the prosecution of seven former Carabineros for the homicide of 15 people in the “Lonquén Ovens” case. The decision of the appellate court affects Captain (R) Lautaro Castro Mendoza and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, Jacinto Torres González, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, and Justo Romo Peralta, all in their capacity as perpetrators of the crime of the death of the fifteen people detained on October 7, 1973.

The resolution included the vote of the three ministers of the Fourth Chamber: Claudio Pavez, María Teresa Díaz, and Marta Hantke. “That from the study of the records gathered in this process, it appears that the nature, modality, and circumstance of the facts must be interpreted as crimes against humanity, and under such conditions, and given the current state of the investigation, it is not appropriate to apply prescription, amnesty, or partial prescription, given that, as stated, these are acts that fall within the international consideration designated as crimes against humanity,” notes the document published by The Clinic Online. In this way, the ministers revoked the decision adopted by their colleague Héctor Solís, who had rejected the request to prosecute the former police officers with a brief “no ha lugar” (denied), a request formulated by lawyers Nelson Caucoto and Francisco Ugas of the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of the Interior. The victims—between 17 and 51 years old—according to the information contained in the Rettig Report, were Sergio Maureira Lillo and his four sons, Rodolfo Antonio, Sergio Miguel, Segundo Armando, and José Manuel; Oscar Hernández Flores and his brothers Carlos and Nelson; Enrique Astudillo Alvarez and his two sons Omar and Ramón; and the four young men Miguel Brant, Iván Ordóñez, José Herrera, and Manuel Navarro. According to the judicial process—which was at one time substantiated by former minister Adolfo Bañados—the last time they were seen alive was at the Isla de Maipo Carabineros station, directed by Castro Mendoza. Bañados declared himself incompetent and transferred the investigation to the Military Justice system, which in 1979 prosecuted the former uniformed officers and applied the Amnesty Law to them. Dark inspiration The history of the Lonquén case, the same one that inspired one of the chapters of the TVN series “Los Archivos del Cardenal,” began on November 30, 1978, when the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, in those years headed by Cristián Precht, gathered a group of people to verify the information of a local resident who claimed to have found skeletal remains in abandoned lime mines in the Talagante area. That same day, Precht himself, the auxiliary bishop of Santiago Enrique Alvear, Javier Egaña, then executive secretary of the Vicaría, along with lawyers Alejandro González and Máximo Pacheco, and journalists Jaime Martínez (director of Qué Pasa) and the deputy director of Hoy, Abraham Santibáñez, went to the site. Upon returning to Santiago, the members of the group filed a complaint with the Supreme Court. Its president, Israel Bórquez, designated the criminal judge of Talagante, Juana Godoy, to verify the information. The magistrate decided to work with the PDI, but did not wait for the officers to arrive and left for the site along with priest Gonzalo Aguirre and photographer Luis Navarro. The Vicaría, according to the Memoriaviva website, hired a construction company to remove the earth. Three days passed, and the macabre scene was visible to all. “Pieces of yellowish skulls, with traces of scalp; loose, black hair; torn clothes in which one recognizes blue jeans, a man’s sweater,” is how Santibáñez himself captured the image in an article published in the book La Memoria Prohibida. Due to the gravity of the facts, the Plenary of the Supreme Court decided to appoint, on December 6, 1978, the minister of the capital’s appellate court, Adolfo Bañados Cuadra, to investigate. Four months later, Bañados decided to declare himself incompetent and passed the records to the military justice system, not without establishing that the victims had died from bullet impacts attributable to the local Carabineros. Ironies of life, the then-judge Godoy serves today as the head of the Civil Secretariat of the Santiago Court of Appeals, and undoubtedly many do not know that she was the first member of the Judiciary who found the victims—who until that moment—appeared as forcibly disappeared. And Bañados, in 1994, would be the one in charge of sentencing Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza, head and deputy head of the DINA, to 7 and 6 years respectively, as intellectual authors of the homicide of former Chancellor Orlando Letelier, which occurred in Washington in 1976.

Source: The Clinic, August 19, 2011

11 former Carabineros prosecuted for human rights violations in 1973

Minister Héctor Solís prosecuted 11 former Carabineros who in October 1973 participated in the execution of 17 peasants in Lonquén and 2 people in the commune of San Ramón. Those prosecuted were placed in preventive detention at the “Centro Transitorio de Detención Sucre” of the Carabineros de Chile.

The visiting minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Héctor Solís, issued indictments in two human rights violation cases he is investigating, which involve retired Carabineros personnel. In the investigation of the so-called “Lonquén Episode,” and in compliance with the ruling of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, the minister prosecuted Lautaro Eugenio Castro Mendoza, Juan José Villegas Navarro, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, and Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta.

The prosecution is for their responsibility as perpetrators of the crime of qualified homicide against Enrique René Astudillo Álvarez, Omar Enrique Astudillo Rojas, Ramón Osvaldo Astudillo Rojas, Miguel Ángel Arturo Brant Bustamante, Carlos Segundo Hernández Flores, Nelson Hernández Flores, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, Sergio Adrián Maureira Lillo, José Manuel, Rodolfo Antonio, Segundo Armando, and Sergio Miguel Maureira Muñoz, and Iván Gerardo Ordóñez Lama; and for the crime of kidnapping against Oscar Nibaldo Hernández Flores and Manuel Jesús Navarro Salinas, perpetrated on October 7, 1973.

Minister Solís provided the identities of 13 of the 15 victims investigated in this case; while the remains of the 2 victims not yet identified are undergoing DNA studies at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, United States.

EXECUTION IN SAN RAMÓN In the investigation into the homicides of Héctor Queglas Maturana and Luis Morales Muñoz, perpetrated on October 4, 1973, in the commune of San Ramón, the following were indicted: Héctor Fernando Osses Yáñez, Aquiles Bustamante Oliva, Fernando Félix Rojas Véliz, Luis Alberto Baeza Sanhueza, and Segundo Baldomero Llanos Amarilis.

According to the case records, it is established that on the night of October 4, 1973, personnel from the San Gregorio Sub-station detained Héctor Queglas Maturana and Luis Morales Muñoz at a residence located on La Granja street in the commune of San Ramón.

Both were taken to the police unit, where they were registered as detainees in the respective books. However, hours later, they were taken from the place, executed, and their remains abandoned at the intersection of Santa Rosa and Departamental Avenues. All those prosecuted were placed in preventive detention at the “Centro Transitorio de Detención Sucre” of the Carabineros de Chile.

Source: La Nación, September 1, 2011

“Lonquén Ovens” case: Supreme Court confirms conviction of Carabineros

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that convicted six retired Carabineros for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping and simple kidnapping committed against fifteen people in the town of Isla de Maipo during the civil-military dictatorship in 1973, whose remains were found in 1978 inside the Lonquén Ovens. “Pieces of yellowish skulls, with traces of scalp; loose, black hair; torn clothes in which one recognizes blue jeans and a man’s sweater.” This was the description by the deputy director of Revista Hoy, Abraham Santibáñez, after the discovery of the bodies of fifteen peasants detained, tortured, and murdered by Carabineros during the civil-military dictatorship in 1978. In 1973, a Carabineros patrol detained 15 men between 17 and 51 years old who were taken to the Isla de Maipo station, the place where they were last seen alive. After this, the police officers took them with their hands tied, and they were thrown into the lime mine ovens in Lonquén. The statements made by an elderly man who claimed to have found human skeletal remains in the abandoned mines gave rise to a commission tasked with going to Lonquén that same day to verify those claims. Its members were Enrique Alvear, auxiliary bishop of Santiago; Vicar Cristián Precht; Javier Egaña, executive secretary of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad; Alejandro González, chief lawyer of the same institution; Máximo Pacheco, lawyer; the director of the magazine Qué Pasa, Jaime Martínez; and the deputy director of the magazine Hoy, Abraham Santibáñez. The highest officials of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, together with Máximo Pacheco and Bishop Alvear, went to the Supreme Court to file the complaint and request an investigation. On December 6, 1978, the Plenary of the Supreme Court designated the Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Adolfo Bañados Cuadra, as Extraordinary Visiting Minister in charge of continuing the Lonquén investigation. Information from the dictatorship’s agencies indicated that those detainees had been taken to the National Stadium. This was also affirmed by Captain Lautaro Castro, who at the time of the detention was the head of the Isla de Maipo station, and his subordinates. In April 1979, the visiting minister declared himself incompetent and the case passed to the military justice system; however, the investigation had determined that the victims did not die during a confrontation and that Captain Lautaro’s version was “intrinsically implausible.” “In none of the 15 skeletal remains studied by the Legal Medical Institute were signs of perforations, fractures, or other types of traces found that could be related to firearm projectiles impacting a living organism, so the death of the fifteen people must be attributed to other causes,” the resolution of Minister Bañados stated. The military prosecutor issued an indictment against Captain Lautaro Castro Mendoza and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, Jacinto Torres González, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, and Justo Romo Peralta as perpetrators of the death of the 15 Lonquén victims. However, the following month—on August 16—the Amnesty Law was applied to them, so they were released and the case was dismissed. This resolution was confirmed by the Court Martial on October 22 of the same year. According to information from the Museum of Memory, once the investigation was finished, the relatives asked for the bodies of the victims to be handed over for burial, but although Military Prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar ordered the remains to be handed over, they were taken out of the Legal Medical Institute that night in a hidden manner and buried in a mass grave in the so-called “Television Set Removal” operation. On February 18, 2010, the acting visiting minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Héctor Solís, announced the identification of 13 of the 15 bodies whose remains were found in 1978, finally allowing the burial to take place, with the remains being removed from the Legal Medical Service on March 26. On March 27, a public wake was held in the Civic Courtyard of the Isla de Maipo Municipality, and on Sunday the 28th, the solemn burial of the victims took place in the Isla de Maipo Parish Cemetery. Convicted Carabineros This afternoon, the Supreme Court convicted six retired Carabineros for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping and simple kidnapping committed against fifteen people from the town of Isla de Maipo. In a split decision, the Second Chamber of the highest court rejected an appeal for cassation and confirmed the sentence of Minister Marianela Cifuentes, which sentenced David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro to 15 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of qualified kidnapping. Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was sentenced to 11 terms of 60 days in prison as the perpetrator of simple kidnapping. Lorena Pizarro, president of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, said that “it is so brutal that, for multiple murders, entire families destroyed, after so many years of impunity, they receive a sentence of this type, especially when today they are senior citizens and lived their whole lives with impunity. We have to face the fact that the sentences are not exemplary of the magnitude of the crime. It is good that it was confirmed, but it should have been more than that, without a doubt.” “In general, the judiciary has been quite benevolent with the criminals responsible for crimes against humanity; most of the convictions never involve civilians, since the dictatorship was civil-military. Here there were clear responsibilities of those who occupied positions in ministries and public services. The judiciary has settled for sentences that are sometimes even ridiculous, which allow criminals to go free. So the delay in the investigations, the low sentences, and the fact that the truth is not a subject we know, occurs in the immense cases that are investigated in Chilean courts. One feels that this justice, to the extent possible, dictated and decreed in the first government of the transition until today, is a reality in the judiciary,” Lorena Pizarro elaborated. For his part, lawyer Nelson Caucoto said that “with the resolution of the justice system, we are satisfied, because we have finished a case that dates back to 1973, which had an interval until 2005 and was dismissed by the military justice system. We managed to extract it from the military justice system and take it to the ordinary one. I don’t know if there is anyone who thought that in the Lonquén case the subjects would be convicted, when they had been definitively dismissed by the application of the amnesty. From that point of view, it is an important achievement; the main achievement was to recognize the victims and hand them over to their relatives, because the remains were thrown into a mass grave and it was necessary to start with the identification process, which was finally achieved for the peace of mind of the families.” “The sentences in other circumstances could have been several life imprisonments, but a fifteen-year sentence for these people is significant nonetheless. With this, a long investigative process is concluded, and that must be valued,” the lawyer concluded. In the civil aspect, the sentence ordering the State to pay a total compensation of $2,050,000,000 to the victims’ relatives was confirmed.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, June 19, 2018

Lonquén: The Carabineros massacre of 15 peasants

On October 7, 1973, at 9:45 PM, a group of eleven peasants from the town of Isla de Maipo was detained by Carabineros officials. The police officers did not carry arrest or search warrants for the homes of those people.

Numerous witnesses saw how they were beaten and loaded into a white pickup truck owned by the owner of the Fundo Naguayán—where the houses of the three families were located—tied up, and laid face down on the floor of the vehicle.

These were the agricultural workers: Enrique Astudillo Álvarez (51 years old), Omar Astudillo Rojas (20), Ramón Astudillo Rojas (27), Carlos Hernández Flores (39), Nelson Hernández Flores (32), Oscar Hernández Flores (30), Sergio Maureira Lillo (46), José Maureira Muñoz (26), Rodolfo Maureira Muñoz (22), Segundo Maureira Muñoz (24), and Sergio Maureira Muñoz (27).

The Carabineros officials stood on their backs. They paraded through the streets of the town to intimidate the entire population. Finally, they were taken to the station. The same fate befell four young men who had been detained that same day in the town square: Miguel Brant Bustamante (22 years old), Manuel Navarro Salinas (20), Iván Ordóñez Lama (17), and José Herrera Villegas (17).

The relatives were deceived by government authorities. They were informed that the detainees had been taken to the National Stadium in the capital. The relatives filed a writ of amparo in 1974. When the local authorities were questioned by the courts, they merely stated that “all had been transferred on October 8, 1973, to the National Stadium.” Which was completely false.

The SENDET (National Service for Detainees) indicated contradictorily that it “did not have, nor had it ever had, information about them.” Sergio Diez—today a senator for Renovación Nacional—and at that time a delegate of the Augusto Pinochet Ugarte dictatorship to the OAS, lied in 1975 before the whole world, saying that: “these people had no legal existence,” while other “Lonquén detainees had been admitted to the Legal Medical Institute in October 1973.” On November 29, 1978, an informant gave the Catholic Church the exact location where the ill-fated remains of the peasants and young men were: some lime ovens in the town of Lonquén, 14 kilometers from the town of Talagante. The Vicar of the Solidarity, Cristián Precht, and the Bishop of Santiago, Enrique Alvear, decided to verify the information by going to the site along with journalists—Jaime Martínez (Qué Pasa) and Abraham Santibáñez (Revista Hoy)—and lawyers Máximo Pacheco (PDC) and Alejandro González. The press reported: “In an old stone construction, about twelve meters high, attached to the slope of a hill, inside which there are two silos of two and a half meters, were the corpses (…) In the other, covered with stones from above and with an exit in its lower part, also walled up, there were human remains, a skull, torn clothes (…)”. It was a precise and painful blow to the conscience of thousands of Chileans. A wound open to this day, unspeakable. An image of pain and human misery, of horror without limit and brutality that the history of humanity will remember forever. Pinochet and his lackeys could do nothing to hide the horrendous crime. The bishop informed Israel Bórquez, president of the Supreme Court and collaborator of the regime, who sent the records to the Talagante Court. Judge Juana Godoy was designated to initiate the investigation. In December 1978, the remains were sent to the Legal Medical Institute. The Plenary of the Supreme Court designated Judge Adolfo Bañados as the Visiting Minister, who ordered autopsies and ballistic examinations and gathered the cases in which the disappearance of people or presumed misfortune had been reported. He interrogated the relatives of the “disappeared” peasants. The police officers involved: Lautaro Castro Mendoza—head of the Isla de Maipo station—and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, Jacinto Torres González, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, and Justo Romo Peralta, gave the version before the courts that they had “taken the detainees, of high danger, to the Lonquén ovens, with the object of unearthing the weaponry they had hidden, and that later—at the site—they had suffered an armed attack by unknown persons, with the peasants being killed by the gunfire. Fearing reprisals, they had decided to hide the bodies in the abandoned ovens.” In April 1979, Minister Bañados had to declare himself incompetent due to the prevailing legislation that grants immunity to uniformed officers and hands over criminal cases in which they are involved to the Military Justice system. He did establish—before leaving the case—the responsibility of these police officers in the events. His resolution says: “The version (…) to try to explain the death of their prisoners, not only contradicts the merit of the case in multiple aspects and details, in particular, of course, regarding the number of victims, but is intrinsically implausible (…) in none of the remains were signs of perforations, fractures, or other types of traces found that could be related to firearm projectiles impacting a living organism, so the death of the fifteen people must be attributed to other causes.” The case then passed into the hands of the “Second Military Court,” which charged the Carabineros officials as “perpetrators of the crime of unnecessary violence causing death.” After a short procedure, the case was definitively dismissed by means of the Amnesty Law dictated by Pinochet, legislation to which the eight Carabineros had requested to be subject. Subsequently, the “Court Martial” confirmed that resolution. The murderer Lautaro Castro was promoted to the rank of Captain. One year after the bodies of the peasants and young men were found, the remains were handed over to their relatives. The bodies were transported by officials of the Legal Medical Institute to Isla de Maipo and buried immediately—except for Sergio Maureira Lillo—to avoid the presence of their relatives, depositing them in a mass grave. The relatives, aggrieved once again by the military authorities, filed a complaint with the Court Martial—which was obliged to accept it—against military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar Sweet, for “fault and abuse committed by not complying with the order to hand over the corpses.” He was given a written censure. In January 1980, the Supreme Court decided to leave it without effect, considering that the prosecutor “did not incur in any fault. It was the judges themselves who imposed it on him who indicated the procedure he used.” A complaint was filed again with the justice system for the death of the Isla de Maipo peasants. This case was handled by visiting minister Héctor Solís, who could not continue with his investigation. The minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes, continued the investigation, finalizing it on September 12, 2016, when she issued a first-instance sentence. The minister convicted the 7 Carabineros who detained the fifteen peasants; the former Carabineros were convicted for the crime of qualified kidnapping: Lautaro Castro Mendoza, head of the patrol, to a sentence of 20 years in prison for his responsibility as a perpetrator. David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro were sentenced to 15 years in prison. Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was sentenced to 900 days in prison. The case went to the second instance, the San Miguel Court of Appeals, on May 16, 2017, which confirmed the sentence. On June 16, 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that convicted 6 former Carabineros, given that the head of the Carabineros, Lautaro Castro, passed away before the conviction. On February 18, 2010, the acting visiting minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Héctor Solís, announced the identification of 13 of the 15 bodies whose remains were found in 1978, finally allowing the burial to take place, with the remains being removed from the Legal Medical Service on March 26. On March 27, a public wake was held in the Civic Courtyard of the Isla de Maipo Municipality, and on Sunday the 28th, the solemn burial of the victims took place in the Isla de Maipo Parish Cemetery. The Lonquén Ovens were demolished to erase all traces and footprints of memory, to impose oblivion definitively.

Source: prensaopal.cl, October 7, 2020