Political Affiliation : Chief Press Secretary of the Intendencia of Santiago. Member of the Socialist Party Date of Detention : September 11, 1973

Sergio Contreras, married, father of 8, a journalist, Chief of Press for the Intendencia of Santiago, and a member of the Socialist Party, was detained on September 11, 1973, as the last group of people inside the La Moneda Palace was leaving.

He was taken to the Tacna Regiment, where he remained until September 13, the date on which he was driven away in a military truck to an unknown destination; he remains forcibly disappeared to this day.

Sergio Contreras worked as a journalist for the Intendencia of Santiago and was registered with the professional association. On September 11, he was at La Moneda performing his professional duties.

Mrs. Ana Luisa Isla Aedo, the spouse of the victim, stated in a sworn affidavit before a notary that around eight o'clock in the morning on September 11, 1973, she left her home in the company of Sergio Contreras, saying goodbye shortly thereafter as her spouse headed to the La Moneda Palace.

Around 10:45 a.m., Mrs. Ana Luisa received a phone call at her workplace from Sergio Contreras, who told her he was calling from La Moneda and added, "...they are going to bomb us. We are going to stay with the old man (as he affectionately referred to President Allende), we are not going to abandon him, ... listen to the shots (through the receiver, Mrs.

Ana Luisa heard gunfire and cannon blasts) ... take care of the children." At that precise moment, the phone connection was cut. She never had contact with Sergio Contreras again, and she was left in charge of their eight young children.

On September 11, the La Moneda Presidential Palace, the seat of government, was assaulted by infantry and Army tank units led by General Javier Palacios, who were later joined by Carabineros forces. At 11:00 a.m., the bombing by the Chilean Air Force began, destroying a large part of La Moneda.

The members of the Presidential Guard, better known by the acronym GAP, "Group of Personal Friends" (alluding to an expression used by the President of the Republic himself), and other individuals remained in the Palace until they received the order from President Salvador Allende to leave, which they did through a door on Calle Morandé 80 of the La Moneda Palace.

There, they were held at gunpoint and beaten by the military and ordered to lie on the ground with their hands behind their necks, remaining under constant threat, including being crushed by a tank that moved toward that location.

Two members of the Presidential Guard, Antonio Aguirre Vásquez and Osvaldo Ramos Rivera, were taken prisoner inside La Moneda and were sent to the Public Assistance Emergency Hospital because they were wounded.

A few days later, these two individuals were removed from said medical center by military personnel and have remained in the status of forcibly disappeared ever since. Other members of the GAP who were coming from the presidential residences of El Cañaveral and Tomás Moro did not manage to enter La Moneda and were detained in its vicinity by Carabineros and taken to the Intendencia of Santiago building.

They were, among others, Gonzalo Jorquera Leyton, Williams Osvaldo Ramírez Barría, Carlos Cruz Zavala, and Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who were part of a group of approximately 13 people, some of whom were subsequently executed, while the others remain in the status of forcibly disappeared.

Several other people died during the siege of La Moneda or were executed after being taken prisoner in the vicinity of the compound.

The people detained at La Moneda remained on Calle Morandé until 6:00 p.m. At that hour, these prisoners were taken in two military vehicles to the Tacna Regiment, located about 12 blocks from the La Moneda Palace and under the command of Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda.

Survivors of these events have provided information that allows for the reconstruction of the facts: the prisoners remained in the aforementioned regiment until September 13. While they were detained in that regiment, they were forced to crawl on their knees, lie down with their arms behind their necks, or stand with their arms raised.

For nearly 48 hours, they were forced to remain in painful positions on rough ground or gravel, being trampled by soldiers who ran over them and beat them with the butts of their weapons or inflicted wounds with their bayonets, under the constant surveillance of guards armed with machine guns, who threatened them and asked the officers to execute them immediately.

Subsequently, they remained in an area known as "the boxes" or the old stables, and from there, the prisoners were taken to an office located on the second floor of the Regiment, where they were tortured and interrogated by personnel from the Military Intelligence Service (SIM).

Afterward, they were returned, in poor physical condition, to rejoin the other prisoners and continue in the painful positions assigned to them. Each change of guard began with a beating of the prisoners with rifle butts.

The Intendant of Santiago at that time, Mr. Julio Stuardo, who was at the Intendencia located across from La Moneda, witnessed how Sergio Contreras, after knocking insistently on the door, entered the seat of government.

There are numerous photographic testimonies that show the moment Sergio Contreras was detained at the exit of the Morandé 80 door of La Moneda, which is confirmed by journalist Carlos Jorquera, who was able to witness the detention of these individuals.

These prisoners were a group of 49 people. Of them, it was ordered that the 17 Investigations officials who made up the presidential protection team be released the following day, and some others were separated.

Finally, a group of people remained as prisoners, 21 of whom have been identified: ten advisors to the President of the Republic or government officials, ten members of the Presidential Guard, and one laborer.

The President's advisors were Jaime Barrios Meza, commercial engineer, presidential advisor and General Manager of the Central Bank of Chile; Sergio Contreras, journalist for the Intendencia and journalist; Daniel Escobar Cruz, Chief of Cabinet for the Undersecretary of the Interior; Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Palace Intendant; Claudio Jimeno Grendi, sociologist, presidential advisor; Georges Klein Pipper, doctor, presidential advisor; Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, doctor, presidential advisor and former Director of Investigations; Enrique París Roa, psychiatrist, presidential advisor and member of the Superior Council of the University of Chile; Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez, medical student, presidential advisor; and Arsenio Poupin Oissel, lawyer, General Undersecretary of Government and presidential advisor. The members of the Presidential Guard who have been identified are as follows: Manuel Ramón Castro Zamorano, José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Hernán Moreno Pulgar, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Tapia Martínez, Oscar Valladares Caroca, and Juan Vargas Contreras. In addition, there was the laborer Oscar Luis Avilés Jofré, who had gone to La Moneda in support of the government, given the circumstances. Two journalists, Luis Barrios and Ramiro Sepúlveda, who were in other groups of prisoners, had the opportunity to see Sergio Contreras as a detainee at the Tacna Regiment.

Around 2:00 p.m. on September 13, 1973, the prisoners from La Moneda, with their hands and feet tied, were thrown into a military truck, one on top of the other, and were driven out of the Regiment to an unknown destination.

However, one of those who managed to survive and has contributed to reconstructing these events is Juan Bautista Osses Beltrán, who was taken prisoner to the Tacna Regiment but was incorporated into another group of prisoners, which allowed him to survive after being imprisoned at the Estadio Chile and the Estadio Nacional.

Osses states in his extensive declaration that a group of 13 members of the Presidential Guard accompanied Allende to La Moneda and were detained inside. Subsequently, along with the other prisoners, he was taken to the Tacna Regiment, where they were informed that they would be executed by firing squad at 12:00 midnight, later that the execution would be at 3:00 a.m., and later still, at 6:00 a.m.

Osses has confirmed that among those detained at the Tacna Regiment were Héctor Daniel Urrutia, Daniel Gutiérrez, Enrique Huerta, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio, Julio Moreno, Eduardo Paredes, Enrique París, Georges Klein, Héctor Pincheira, Arsenio Poupin, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, and Oscar Valladares.

The witness was taken out of the Tacna Regiment in the early hours of September 13, 1973, and taken along with other detainees to the Estadio Chile.

Beatriz Celsa Parrau Tejos, who was detained at the Tacna Regiment, has been able to provide some important background information. She was at INDUMETAL, where she was attending to a wounded person in her capacity as a nurse.

At 6:00 p.m. on September 11, this company was occupied by Carabineros, and everyone who was there was detained and taken to a police station and, on the same day, transferred to the Tacna Regiment. There, she learned that those who had been captured at La Moneda were being held, and despite being separated from that group, she had the opportunity to see them when they went to the bathroom or when they were taken for interrogations.

There, she saw several doctors she knew from her professional activities and government leaders. She also observed numerous groups of other prisoners entering or leaving. On September 13, at noon, through the cracks of the shed where about 90 women were locked up, Celsa Parrau was able to see a truck leave the Regiment carrying bundles that looked like human bodies.

When they were taken out of the aforementioned shed at 2:30 p.m., she observed that the prisoners from La Moneda were no longer there.

For his part, the Chief of Investigations at La Moneda, detective Juan Seoane, remained among the La Moneda detainees until after noon on September 13, at which time he was able to witness how the prisoners were taken away in a military truck.

According to the testimonies of the survivors, they heard from the military personnel who participated in the operation that they had been taken to the Peldehue military camps, located in Colina, where they were allegedly executed by firing squad and buried.

A soldier from the Tacna Regiment who was able to witness part of the events reported that the prisoners were tied with wire and thrown into an Army Pegaso truck that was part of a convoy that left the barracks at approximately 2:00 p.m., while all conscripts were ordered to remain in their quarters and not walk through the courtyards.

In the afternoon, the contingent that had been part of the convoy returned, and word spread among the military that the prisoners had been taken to the property that the Tacna Regiment has in the Peldehue military camps in Colina.

There, they were allegedly killed in front of a hole or pit, about five to six meters in diameter and several meters deep, which existed a short distance from the dwelling used by the property's guard personnel.

The prisoners were placed in groups of four at the edge of the pit and shot. Once executed and thrown to the bottom of the pit, grenades were allegedly thrown inside, and the executions continued four by four.

The aforementioned soldier declares that he had to go to the aforementioned property at the end of September 1973 and found the cited pit covered up. There, it was confirmed to him that the executed had been buried in that place and that there were 26 or 27 of them, who, before being murdered, shouted slogans alluding to the Popular Unity government.

However, this massacre of prisoners, who had surrendered and were unarmed and bound, has never been officially acknowledged, nor have the bodies been returned, and the aforementioned individuals, including Sergio Contreras, have remained disappeared since September 13, 1973.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

According to a document dated October 3, 1990, presented to the Fifth Criminal Court of Santiago, the victim's daughter, Nancy Angélica Contreras, stated that numerous administrative actions were taken, but no judicial ones "due to both fear and ignorance."

In the criminal complaint filed in the Twentieth Criminal Court for the crime of qualified homicide of the student Enrique Andrés Ropert Contreras, son of Miria Contreras Bell, secretary to President Allende, who was executed in relation to the events at La Moneda that same September 11, information was requested regarding other people disappeared or executed in those circumstances, including the victim.

Inspector Emeterio Alfaro Palma, Unit Chief of the Preventive Detention Center (CPD), Santiago Sur (Penitentiary), reported in official letter 13.01.01?5437/87 that Contreras had not been registered as entering that unit since December 1983 (sic).

Similar information was provided by the Public Jail, with the additional complexity that the names of Sergio Contreras and Exequiel Contreras González were mixed up, becoming one: Exequiel Contreras Contreras.

Finally, on July 24, 1974, a new official letter from the Gendarmerie of the CPD Sur confirmed that Sergio Contreras Contreras did not enter that facility between January 1973 and January 1984.

Indeed, on October 3, 1990, a complaint for alleged disappearance was filed in the Fifth Criminal Court of Santiago; the document requests that administrative and political authorities be notified to provide information on Sergio Contreras and that witnesses be summoned.

On June 13, 1991, Nancy Contreras filed a criminal complaint for the kidnapping, probable homicide, and eventual illegal burial of her father. This complaint was filed in the Fifth Criminal Court of Santiago, under case number 126465-6, and it was requested, among other actions, that the magazine "QUE PASA?" be notified to submit the photos that appeared in issue No. 1002 of July 1990, which show the detainees on September 11 at the Morandé door of La Moneda.

The case is currently in the summary phase (as of late 1992).

Immediately after his detention and subsequent disappearance, family members made various inquiries, and Contreras's daughter, Nancy Angélica Contreras, traveled from Talcahuano to carry out various administrative actions to learn the fate of her father, visiting the National Executive Secretariat for Detainees, the International Red Cross, and other institutions.

However, all these efforts did not yield any positive results.

Source: Corporation report

Visiting Minister Amanda Valdovinos, in charge of verifying information from the Dialogue Table regarding the location of the remains of some 20 forcibly disappeared persons inside the Justo Arteaga Regiment in Colina, discovered the exact place where the bodies were clandestinely buried after the military coup of September 11, 1973.

An exclusive source confirmed to La Voz that the remains are in a 15-meter-deep pit.

Last January, excavation work on the land—which was donated by the Catholic Church to the Army for war practice before the military coup—focused on a 15-by-13-meter pit, from which more than 400 bone fragments scattered at a depth of nearly three meters have been extracted to date.

However, soil studies carried out by a botanist and by the National Geology and Mining Service (Sernageomin) made it possible to determine that the fragments correspond to the remains left by the removal of the bones at the end of the 1970s.

The specialists' precision is such that it was determined that, due to their location, they were dragged from one of the ends of the excavation site through the use of a backhoe, the characteristics of which (make, model, and ownership) are documented in the case file.

A pit equivalent to six stories

The fragments, which include skulls, phalanges, vertebrae, teeth, and dental arches, come from a pit about five meters in diameter and about 15 meters deep—equivalent to a six-story building—where the bodies were thrown once the detainees were executed by firing squad and dynamited (using grenades) inside.

In the coming days, excavations will focus on that location, and the discovery of a large quantity of bones is not ruled out.

So far, with the collections made, the Legal Medical Service has been able to approximate a dozen people whose remains were at the site. However, with the dental pieces and the background information available in the case, five identities have been confirmed, which will only be made official once the procedures are exhausted.

The relatives of the alleged victims have been periodically informed by Judge Valdovinos. The latest report delivered by the minister to the Supreme Court also confirms errors in the report delivered by the Army to the Dialogue Table, since the location has been identified thanks to testimonies from locals and former uniformed personnel who have voluntarily approached the court.

All the background information gathered by Minister Amanda Valdovinos will be referred to the corresponding criminal or military courts to determine those responsible for the homicides and the illegal burials and exhumations documented in the investigation.

Who are they? According to the Rettig Report, there were 21 detainees from La Moneda who ended tragically in Colina. President Allende's advisors: Eduardo Paredes Barrientos, former director of Investigations; Enrique París Roa, Jaime Barrios Meza, general manager of the Central Bank; Sergio Contreras, Daniel Escobar Cruz, Enrique Huerta Corvalán, Claudio Jimeno Grendi, Dr.

Georges Klein Pipper, Héctor Pincheira Núñez, and Arsenio Poupin Oissel, General Undersecretary of Government. The members of the GAP: José Freire Medina, Daniel Gutiérrez Ayala, Oscar Lagos Ríos, Juan Montiglio Murúa, Julio Moreno Pulgar, Luis Rodríguez Riquelme, Jaime Sotelo Ojeda, Julio Tapia Martínez, Héctor Urrutia Molina, Oscar Valladares Caroca, Juan Vargas Contreras, and Oscar Luis Avilés Jofré.

Source: Primera Linea, April 4, 2002

Date: 04-04-2002

Sergio Contreras: The sacrifice of "Garrafa"

Name Sergio Contreras Place and date of birth Santiago, February 2, 1933 Specialty Radio journalist and PR Place and date of death Detained at La Moneda on September 11, 1973; he was likely murdered in Peldehue on the 13th.

Activities Worked at radios Almirante Latorre (Talcahuano), Simón Bolívar (Concepción), Portales, Agricultura, Corporación, Del Pacífico, and Sargento Candelaria, State Railways, and the Intendencia of Santiago. A socialist, he described himself as an "agitator." Judicial status (1996) Case filed in the Fifth Criminal Court of Santiago, Case No. 126465-6. It is in the summary phase.

On September 11, Sergio Contreras knocked again and again on the doors of Morandé 80 until they allowed him to enter La Moneda, where he wanted to be with President Salvador Allende. An unwavering socialist since his youth, he was not an intellectual but a man of action, who gave his life when he was barely 40 years old.

"Garrafa" Contreras did not have a normal childhood, with a mother to evoke, nor the warmth of bread shared with brothers and cousins in endless play, with "mischief" that ends up being accepted. That reality marked him as an adult and projected him into a whirlwind of experiences.

He gave up bachelorhood early, but never the delights of bohemian life, at a time when thousands of Chileans dreamed of changing the world.

His emotional world

Sergio Contreras was an unwanted child. His mother—a single woman—Susana, gave him to a couple related to his father, a Peruvian named Chacana who never legitimized him. Julio Peñaloza and his wife Felisa, simple people from La Cisterna, old enough to be the boy's grandparents, earned a living with a newspaper kiosk located at Moneda and Morandé.

They always took him to work at 5 in the morning to prevent him from roaming the streets with "bad company." For this reason, he did not have a regular education, a situation that would later prevent his professional licensing. He only obtained authorization to practice journalism.

Claudio Verdugo played with the newsboy since he was 10 years old (1944/45) in Plaza Bulnes. He was part of his "gang" and apparently was not registered in the Civil Registry. His friends called him "El Chacana" because he used his father's surname at the time.

Still a minor, he left for Talcahuano in search of better horizons. He was "handsome," had an excellent tone of voice, poise, and good oratory skills. Very soon, the microphones of Radio Almirante Latorre opened up to him as the host of Las Alegres Tardes de la Juventud.

His widow, Ana Luisa Isla Aedo, met him then as "quite a Santiago gentleman, a radio announcer with an affected voice who thought he was the best." They married and had seven children.

Ana Luisa Isla Aedo

"One day we decided to settle in the capital. I practiced my profession as a kindergarten teacher and he worked in radio, his great passion, along with the Socialist Party and his bohemian friends. Feeding and educating so many children was not easy, and much less so if the father did not contribute.

The money slipped through his fingers. Outside the home, he was very generous in paying for drinks, in helping third parties, or in leading collections for the benefit of this or that comrade. And also in going out—even if it was 2, 3, or 4 in the morning—to any 'land seizure,' because it had to be supported morally and materially."

But before the wedding with Ana Luisa, Contreras had other plans. Arriving in Talcahuano, he lived in a boarding house on Calle San José. Virginia Andrade Navarrete, the daughter of the boarding house owner, was the mother of his eldest daughter, Nancy.

Virginia Andrade Navarrete

"From the start, I didn't like him. I thought that, like a good Santiaguino, he was arrogant. But we went from bad to good, and that's where our daughter was born. It was 1951, we were going to get married, but my mother opposed it. Shortly after, he married Ana Luisa Isla, and a month later I had Nancy."

"I went to the Civil Registry and registered her only with my surname. He sent a package with baby clothes, but my mother didn't receive it. He came to see her, but when he found out about the registration, he was indignant, arguing that they couldn't leave him out because he was the father. He spoke with the authorities, and days later, Nancy was registered with both surnames: Contreras Andrade."

Virginia Andrade always had contact with "Mrs. Susana," the nickname by which Sergio referred to his true mother, who, on the other hand, never got along with his legal daughter-in-law, Ana Luisa Isla.

Virginia Andrade

"Susana was not a bad woman. She didn't marry Sergio's father because her mother made her see that the Peruvian was a party-goer, a womanizer, and an incorrigible bohemian. He played the guitar very well, but from so much staying up late, he got sick in the lungs and died young.

One day I told her that her son always said: 'Mrs. Susana never loved me.' She replied that it wasn't like that, that she gave him up for adoption for work reasons, but that she made sure to clothe him and pay for his studies."

Nancy Angélica del Carmen Contreras Andrade

(daughter of Sergio and Virginia): "Despite being married 'to another,' he still came to see us. He liked to prepare pasta, and whenever he could, he would drop by alone or with friends. He always took me out for walks, although we ended up arguing because he would pay for his friends' drinks and there was nothing left for us, except promises.

On one occasion, I went to see him in Santiago at Radio Del Pacífico, at the portal of the Plaza de Armas. He treated me to a banquet at Chez Henry, and after visiting several businesses, we ended up at one in Plaza Egaña where some soldiers were drinking. He said he didn't like them, but he ended up paying for the beers they consumed together."

"On another occasion, for the '64 presidential elections—he was already living in Santiago—we saw him using a megaphone in Talcahuano from a pickup truck: 'Allende, Allende, Allende, only Allende.' He saw us, got down, took us to a place to treat us, and, as always, made promises to us.

My father was very special. Once he arrived home with someone he had just met. While he was preparing some eggs to show off to his new friend, the stranger stole everything he could get his hands on. Later, with his detective friends, he found the thief and recovered what was stolen."

"At the Intendencia of Santiago, I personally saw how people arrived to ask him for favors. I ask myself: if he was tender and affectionate in personal relationships, why didn't he do the same with me or his other children? He loved me so much that once he 'kidnapped' me from the house to take me to live with my siblings, in the hope that we would all reunite."

During Salvador Allende's government, Sergio Contreras worked as a journalist in public relations for State Railways and at the Intendencia of Santiago. His friends called him "Garrafa" Contreras, but the older ones also knew him as Sergio Fernández, a pseudonym he used in his early years of journalism and in his forays into radio theater at Agricultura, alongside Mireya Latorre, Emilio Gaete, and Soledad de los Reyes, among other famous people.

The widow, Ana Luisa Isla, says that when they were getting married at the Civil Registry in January 1952, she came to find out that his real surname was Contreras. She received an explanation: "It is common to use pseudonyms in the world of journalism."

The widow remembers that and other moments of Sergio with affection. The patina of time erases the superficial; what remains is the profound. "He was intelligent, and without having much culture, he knew how to manage to come out on top.

When the President appointed Pinochet as Commander-in-Chief, he grumbled: 'He has such a face of a traitor that he can't hide it.' He was a socialist at heart and loved Salvador Allende. 'I don't want to die in bed, I want to die fighting,' he always said."

Together with Allende, on the 11th

He succeeded. On September 11, he was no longer living with his wife, but he visited her frequently to check on her and his children. "Ironies of life," recalls Ana Luisa Isla, "I told him to leave the house because he didn't contribute financially.

Besides, I knew he had a lover, a lawyer named Alicia, to whom he turned to solve a problem of one of our children and ended up getting entangled with her, sharing her apartment in the center. Despite being his legal wife, despite being the one who forced him to leave, I acquired the status of the 'mistress.' The day of the coup, he stayed with me.

At first light, I heard news of troop movements; I woke him up, he dressed in a rush, and we left my house at stop 84 of Gran Avenida, Paulina 8726, together. I to my work and he to the center. I never saw him again."

Julio Stuardo, then Intendant of Santiago, witnessed from his office, across from La Moneda, how Sergio Contreras entered the seat of government "after knocking insistently on the door," according to documents from the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Catholic Church. "Around 10:45 a.m., in an urgent call, my husband told me he was at La Moneda: '...they are going to bomb us,' he told me. 'We are going to stay with the Old Man, we are not going to abandon him... listen to the shots (through the receiver I heard gunfire and cannon blasts)... take care of the children.' The communication was cut, and I never had contact with Sergio again. Among the bodies of the fallen at La Moneda identified lately, my husband still does not appear."

The rest of the story has different sources: witnesses, survivors, and, above all, the archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity. With La Moneda assaulted by infantry and Army tanks—under the command of General Javier Palacios—troops later reinforced by Carabineros, the Air Force began the bombing at 11:00 a.m. that destroyed a large part of the palace.

The civilian presidential guard, better known as the GAP, "Group of Personal Friends," according to an expression of the President himself, and other people who remained in the Palace, received the order from Salvador Allende to leave La Moneda through the door at Morandé 80.

In the street, they were held at gunpoint and beaten by the military. They were forced to lie on the ground for a long time, with their hands behind their necks, threatened with being crushed by the tanks.

The detainees remained in that position until 6:00 p.m. In two military vehicles, they were taken to the Tacna Regiment, under the command of Colonel Joaquín Ramírez Pineda. According to survivors, the prisoners remained in the regiment until September 15.

They were always forced to move on their knees and to remain lying face down, with their hands behind their necks or standing with their arms raised. For two days, they remained in painful positions, on rough ground or "gravel," trampled by soldiers who trotted over their bodies and beat them with the butts of their weapons.

They inflicted wounds with bayonets, always threatened by troops armed with machine guns who, intimidatingly, asked the officers for the order to execute them. Transferred to the "boxes" sector, the old stables, they were tortured and interrogated by personnel of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) in an office on the second floor.

Returned to the "boxes" in poor physical condition, they continued in the painful positions. At each change of guard, they received a beating with rifle butts.

Journalists Luis Barría and Ramiro Sepúlveda saw Sergio Contreras at the Tacna. Around 2:00 p.m. on the 15th, the prisoners from La Moneda were thrown into a military truck, tied hand and foot, thrown one on top of the other, and taken to an unknown destination.

Survivors heard that they were being taken to the Peldehue military camps, near Colina, where they would be executed by firing squad and buried.

A witness speaks

A soldier from the Tacna related to the Vicariate that the prisoners, tied with wire, were thrown into an Army truck that left the barracks at approximately 2:00 p.m. The conscripts received orders to remain in their quarters and not to walk through the courtyards.

When the contingent returned, among the recruits, it was rumored that the prisoners were taken to the property that the Tacna Regiment has in the Peldehue military zone. There, they were killed in front of a pit five meters in diameter, prepared a short distance from the guard personnel's dwelling.

According to the soldier's account, the prisoners were executed by firing squad four by four at the edge of the pit, so that the shots would throw them to the bottom. Grenades were thrown at the corpses piling up in the pit, while the executions continued four by four.

The informant returned to the property at the end of September 1975, but the pit was covered. He was told that the 26 or 27 people buried there shouted Popular Unity slogans at the moment of their murder.

Investigating the life, passion, and death of "Garrafa," I spoke about the subject with journalist Ramiro Sepúlveda on two occasions. First, while we were both prisoners at the Estadio Chile on September 15, 1975, and for the second time, in May 1996.

Ramiro Sepúlveda

"In the early hours of September 18, they put me into the regiment's stables, where there were approximately 50 detainees, among other acquaintances, 'Coco' Paredes, Enrique París, Arsenio Poupin, Enrique Huerta, 'Garrafa' Contreras, and a group of detectives from La Moneda later dismissed by Investigations personnel. 'Garrafa' complained that they were hitting him continuously on the back, just like 'Coco' Paredes, whom they singled out.

Lying face down, stiff with cold, we could only stand up to go to the bathroom, but always accompanied by a soldier. On one occasion when they allowed us to trot in place, I asked him in a low voice about Allende.

I received as an answer a gesture of his right hand cutting his throat. Hours later, at midnight from the 12th to the 13th, they took me out with other prisoners to take us to the Estadio Chile."

Vehement and sentimental

When the project for this book arose, I chose my friend Sergio "Garrafa" Contreras because I always loved him, I knew him in depth, I knew of his virtues and weaknesses (who doesn't have them?), and in more than one heated bar argument with third parties, even defending his passion for socialism with blows, I heard him open up, talk to me about his childhood and his projects, call me "brother," and shed big tears that rolled down the roundness of his cheeks.

I knew that, as an adult, he took charge of the newspaper kiosk with his family, out of exhaustion from the beautiful old people who raised him. I also knew how he lost it due to decapitalization, after inviting half the world to the endless nights at El Bodegón.

Sergio had the soul of a child and the heart of a Samaritan, as his daughter Ana Ruby Contreras Isla remembers: "He liked the bohemian life. When he arrived in the early morning, it was common for him to do so without a sweater or jacket, because he had given it to an old man who was cold, or that he would arrive accompanied by a child with a famished face to offer him a glass of milk.

But Sunday was for home; he read El Mercurio, did puzzles, and went to the street market. With me, he was always tender and very affectionate."

Sergio Gutiérrez Patri,

journalist from the University of Chile, is the author of the book Todos morirán (Everyone Will Die), published as a saga in the now-defunct newspaper Fortín Mapocho.

Source: derechos.org 9/11/2001

Date: 09-11-2001