Daniel Eliseo Rodríguez Lazo, 15 years old, a militant of the Communist Youth, was detained on September 25, 1973, at approximately 16:00 hours, by a Carabineros patrol traveling in a police van at the intersection of Avenida Einstein and Las Torres in the commune of Conchalí, Santiago.

They subsequently took him to an unknown location, and no further news of the minor was received from that moment on.

Daniel Rodríguez left his home to run errands for his mother on September 25, 1973, at approximately 16:00 hours. His mother warned him to return soon because there was a curfew starting at 20:00 hours.

Shortly before that time, his cousin, Carmela Vargas Lazo, arrived at the victim's house to report that she had witnessed the detention of Daniel Rodríguez.

Carmela Vargas Lazo, the victim's cousin, witnessed a Carabineros van coming down Avenida Einstein toward Las Torres; it stopped in front of Daniel Rodríguez and shouted orders for the young man to stop.

A Carabineros officer got out of the van and apparently asked the young man to show his documents. Since he did not have any, as he was still a child and had not yet obtained them—though he was tall and appeared older—he was ordered to climb into the back of the van, and the vehicle headed down Calle Einstein toward the interior of the Conchalí commune.

The victim's mother went to the Recoleta Sub-police station, where they refused to listen to her. The mother and siblings then began multiple efforts to locate the minor's whereabouts.

Days later, two of the victim's siblings, Angela and Roberto Mauricio, went to the Instituto Médico Legal to search for their brother's remains among the corpses. In that facility, there were corpses everywhere, and some were in an advanced state of decomposition.

Angela could not bear this situation and went outside. There, she saw that corpses were being loaded onto a truck and observed, from a distance of a couple of meters, that they were transporting the corpse of her brother Daniel on a type of tray; he was unclothed.

The loaders did not authorize her to approach and indicated that those corpses were being taken to the Cemetery crematorium and that she should make inquiries there. Subsequently, both siblings went to that location, but they were informed there that the corpses had already been cremated.

Since the date of his detention by Carabineros, the minor Daniel Eliseo Rodríguez Lazo remains forcibly disappeared, and although it is probable that he was executed, there is no acknowledgment of the fact by the perpetrators, nor has an official death certificate been issued, which is why the minor remains in the status of a forcibly disappeared person.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

For many years, the family did not take judicial action out of fear and also to avoid revealing the aforementioned facts to the victim's mother, who also had to suffer the death of another of her children, a victim of depression, shortly after the forced disappearance of Daniel Eliseo.

Immediately after the detention, the relatives searched for him at the local police station and at other police stations, hospitals, clinics, children's homes, and the Instituto Médico Legal, without obtaining results that would allow the situation to be clarified.

On August 14, 1991, the minor's mother filed a complaint with the courts for the crime of aggravated kidnapping and arbitrary detention committed against the child Daniel Eliseo Rodríguez Lazo by Carabineros personnel.

The document describes the circumstances of the detention and the testimony of Carmela Vargas Lazo, who witnessed the detention, and that of his sister Angela, who saw his corpse, requesting that they be called to testify, as well as ordering an investigation and issuing official requests to the Civil Registry and the Instituto Médico Legal.

At the end of 1992, the case, which was being processed in the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago under file No. 4693-2, was in the summary stage, with pending proceedings.

The anthropometric data of Daniel Eliseo Rodríguez Lazo were attached to case 4449-AF of the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago, regarding the crime of illegal burial in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of unidentified persons who died between September and December 1973.

The investigating judge of the case ordered the excavation of 108 graves in September 1991. From there, 125 bodies were exhumed and sent to the Instituto Médico Legal. Currently (late 1992), the forensic identification reports are pending.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad

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 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 Culture, Memory, and Human Rights Unit, and the Human Rights Chair of the University of Chile.

The publication, based mainly 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 in a comprehensive and careful manner each of the lives and stories of the victims.

During the research, the archive of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions was accessed, 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 20/4/2023 Date: 04-20-2023

SML delivers remains of new victim of the Patio 29 case to relatives

His identification was possible thanks to anthropological analyses carried out by a multidisciplinary team from the SML and subsequent DNA cross-referencing carried out at the University of North Texas laboratory.

This Saturday, the Legal Medical Service (SML) delivered the remains of Daniel Eliseo Rodríguez Lazo to his relatives, a victim of the military regime who appears in the investigation of the Patio 29 case of the General Cemetery.

His identification was possible thanks to anthropological analyses carried out by a multidisciplinary team from the SML and subsequent DNA cross-referencing carried out at the University of North Texas laboratory.

Daniel Rodríguez was a militant of the Communist Youth. He was 15 years old when he was detained by a Carabineros patrol at the intersection of Avenida Einstein and Las Torres, in the commune of Conchalí, on the afternoon of September 25, 1973. Since then, his whereabouts were unknown.

Today's delivery is in addition to the one carried out yesterday by the forensic agency, where the mortal remains of José Luis Astudillo Celedón, a 16-year-old student detained on October 17, 1973, at Avenida Callejón Lo Ovalle and Pasaje 16 in the Santa Adriana neighborhood by personnel from the Fourth Carabineros Precinct, were returned to their families.

Both families were notified of the respective identifications in July of this year by investigating judge Alejandro Solís and the national director of the SML, Dr. Patricio Bustos.

Source: elmostrador.cl, October 15, 2011 Date: 10-15-2011

Judge completes delivery of one-third of misidentified Patio 29 victims to relatives

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, five families were notified about the certainty of their relatives' remains. There are still 81 people left to be identified.

SANTIAGO.— More than five years after the errors in the identification of the bone remains of Patio 29 were discovered, the judge in charge, Alejandro Solís, completed the delivery of one-third of the bodies to their relatives.

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the magistrate, together with the director of the Legal Medical Service (SML) Patricio Bustos, delivered five new victims, bringing the total to 45 confirmed cases. These are the remains of DANIEL ELISEO RODRIGUEZ LAZO, José Luis Astudillo Celedón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Miguel Ángel Núñez Valenzuela, and Enrique Carvallo Lira.

According to the confirmation made by the SML, the genetic analyses were carried out by the North Texas Laboratory, by forensic geneticist Lourdes Prieto and forensic doctor Francisco Etxeverría. In total, 124 remains were detected, leaving 81 victims yet to be identified.

Source: emol.com 07/27/2011 Date: 07-27-2011