Domingo Clemente Cubillos Guajardo, 19 years old, a worker, was detained on January 18, 1974, around midnight, on a public street along with two other young men: Sergio Gutiérrez Seguel, 18 years old, and Ramón Ortiz Orellana, 16 years old.

The three young men were returning to their respective homes after attending a birthday party; on the way, they had an altercation with two individuals who turned out to be plainclothes Carabineros. The youths ran away and sought refuge in a tenement (cité) they knew, located on Calle Gálvez at the 1200 block, while being pursued by the Carabineros.

At this location, Domingo and his two friends hid in a crawl space that connected to an adjacent bakery, located at Calle San Diego 1255.

Meanwhile, the Carabineros telephoned the Fourth Precinct, located in that sector, from a neighbor's house to report the events and request reinforcements. They then entered the aforementioned bakery, explaining that some criminals had hidden there. Gunshots were heard, and then the three young men were taken from the place in a Carabineros van that had arrived to assist in the operation.

From that moment on, Domingo Cubillos, Sergio Gutiérrez, and Ramón Ortiz have remained forcibly disappeared.

The victim's mother went to various precincts, hospitals, emergency clinics, prisons, the Legal Medical Institute, and SENDET requesting information about her son's whereabouts without achieving positive results. She also went to several regiments, as the young man was considered a draft evader for not having presented himself to fulfill his military service, an effort that also proved fruitless.

It should be noted that in 1977, on two occasions, Domingo's family received a "visit" at their home from individuals who claimed to be Investigaciones (investigative police) officials, without showing any document identifying them as such, who asked about the victim; as they stated in one of the interviews, they were investigating the veracity of the reports of disappearances presented to the Government.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On January 29, 1974, a report of alleged disappearance for Domingo Cubillos, Ramón Ortiz, and Sergio Gutiérrez, case file 98.068 3, was filed before the 5th Criminal Court of Santiago, a report that was entered through a police report submitted by the Carabineros.

The mothers of the three youths ratified the report before the Court, further noting that their children had no political activities and that on the day of their detention, they were coming from a party and appeared to be intoxicated.

The Court issued an official letter to the Fourth Precinct requesting information regarding the detention of the youths, to which the Commissar, Carabineros Major Héctor Rozas Montecinos, responded by stating that there was no record of the detention or presence of the minors in that unit.

On the other hand, the National Executive Secretary of SENDET, Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa, reported that there was no record of the detention of Sergio Gutiérrez and Domingo Cubillos; however, the detention of Ramón Ortiz O. was recorded between January 7 and 9, 1974, the day he was released by the Investigative Service.

Two witnesses to the events appeared before the Court; one of them stated that he recognized the three youths as he saw them often in the tenement and that they were indeed being pursued by two civilians, who later identified themselves as Carabineros. He added that a military patrol also arrived at the scene in a jeep, which presumably also participated in the detention operation.

The other witness, an employee of the bakery, confirmed the fact that the uniformed officers entered the premises in search of the youths, but he did not witness the detention because he was not allowed to leave the room where he was.

On May 16, 1974, the summary proceedings were declared closed and the case was temporarily dismissed because, according to the Judge, there was insufficient evidence to accuse a specific person as the author, accomplice, or accessory to the reported crime.

On July 17, the Court of Appeals approved the dismissal without considering the report of the Prosecutor, who stated that "the investigation has provided more than sufficient evidence that should have guided the Judge's decision to declare himself incompetent and refer the case to the Military Justice system."

In the respective resolution, the Court replaced the grounds for the aforementioned dismissal with the finding that the crime was not sufficiently proven.

On March 29, 1974, the Committee for Cooperation for Peace in Chile filed a mass recurso de amparo (habeas corpus), case file 289-74, before the Santiago Court of Appeals, in favor of 131 people who were missing as of that date and whose information had been verified by that organization. Among those protected were the three youths detained on January 18.

On November 28, the Court declared it inadmissible, a resolution that was approved by the Supreme Court on January 31, 1975. In the resolution, the Court ordered the appointment of a Minister in Extraordinary Visit, which fell to Minister Enrique Zurita Camps, who on February 24, 1975, initiated proceedings under case file No. 106.657, of the First Criminal Court of Santiago.

On September 25, 1975, without having delved into any of the cases of the forcibly disappeared, the summary was closed because it was "impossible to advance further in the investigation." On September 29 of the same year, the Minister in Visit issued a ruling declaring himself incompetent in 13 of the 131 cases, due to the evident participation of military or Carabineros forces in the investigated events.

On the other hand, 22 people were found to be at liberty and not disappeared.

In the remaining cases, he issued a temporary dismissal, as the existence of any criminal act in their disappearances was not fully justified. Among the latter are the youths Domingo Cubillos, Ramón Ortiz, and Sergio Gutiérrez. As of May 10, 1976, the Santiago Court of Appeals approved said resolution.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

In the summer of 1974, terror continued to prevail in the country. Four months after the military coup, group executions, detentions, and disappearances of people continued; imprisonment, public and clandestine detention and torture centers remained full; thousands went into exile or sought refuge in embassies in Santiago.

Specifically, on January 18, events occurred such as the execution of 6 political and social leaders in the city of Quillota by members of the Cavalry School of the same city. The executed were Víctor Fuenzalida, 35 years old, PC leader; Manuel Hurtado, 35 years old, PS leader; Osvaldo Manzano, 32 years old, President of the Rayon Said Union and MIR militant; Julio Loo, 27 years old, textile worker and communist militant; Ángel Díaz, 41-year-old neighborhood leader and textile worker; Hugo Aranda, 30 years old, single, peasant and neighborhood leader.

The previous day, in the same city of Quillota, socialist militants Pablo Gac Espinoza, former mayor of Quillota, and Rubén Cabezas Pares, lawyer and prosecutor for the CORA of Quillota, were detained and forcibly disappeared by agents of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM).

That same January 18, 1974, but in Santiago, a group of youths returning from a birthday party in downtown Santiago were surprised by two Carabineros who requested reinforcements. On Calle San Diego, at the 1255 block, Ramón Ortiz Orellana, 16 years old and a student at Industrial School No. 3; Sergio Enrique Gutiérrez Seguel, 18 years old, a worker; and Domingo Cubillos Guajardo, a 19-year-old shoe worker, were detained in an operation that included military personnel, Carabineros, and armed civilians.

All were loaded into a police vehicle and remain forcibly disappeared to this day.

Source: resumen.cl, January 18, 2024

Date: 01-18-2024

The book "Breaking the silence of children and adolescents who were political executions during the civil-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, incorporates testimonies, photographs, letters, and other documents that families and friends provided or wrote specifically to be published.

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 way each of the lives and stories of the victims.

During the investigation, 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.gobierno.cl 04/20/2023

Date: 04-20-2023

Santiago Court condemns the State to pay compensation to the siblings of a person forcibly disappeared in 1974

In a unanimous ruling, the Eighth Chamber of the appellate court condemned the State to pay total compensation of $120,000,000 to the siblings of Domingo Clemente Cubillos Guajardo, a 19-year-old worker who was detained along with two other adolescents by Carabineros personnel in the city center on January 18, 1974, the date from which his trail was lost.

The Santiago Court of Appeals condemned the State to pay total compensation of $120,000,000 (one hundred and twenty million pesos) to the siblings of Domingo Clemente Cubillos Guajardo, a 19-year-old worker who was detained along with two other adolescents by Carabineros personnel in the city center on January 18, 1974, the date from which his trail was lost.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 7.555-2020), the Eighth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Rafael Andrade, Enrique Durán, and lawyer (i) María Angélica Benavides—revoked the challenged sentence, issued by the 28th Civil Court of Santiago, after establishing the non-prescriptibility of civil action in crimes against human rights and, therefore, the State's obligation to repair the victims of a crime against humanity.

"That, from the facts under analysis, which occurred in January 1974, responsibilities are derived that, according to International Law, must be duly compensated and repaired. Because of this, numerous criminal cases have been substantiated before national courts that have ended in convictions for those involved in the events that, according to International Law, constitute crimes against humanity and are therefore non-prescriptible," the ruling states.

The resolution adds that: "The international conventional norm that is binding, without contrary opinion, in accordance with Article 5 of the Constitution, to classify as non-prescriptible the patrimonial actions derived from criminal acts categorized as crimes against humanity, is the American Convention on Human Rights, through the jurisprudential interpretation of the Inter-American Court, which is mandatory for Chile, in the cases it has ruled against it on these matters.

Chile has an obligation to comply with those sentences in the specific case submitted to the knowledge of the Inter-American Court in accordance with Article 68.1 of the Convention:

'1. The States Parties to the Convention undertake to comply with the judgment of the Court in any case to which they are parties.' In accordance with the principle of good faith, as a norm and obligation to comply with treaties, stated in Article 26, 'Pacta sunt servanda.' Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties and must be performed by them in good faith.

Thus, the State of Chile is obliged to comply with a sentence in the specific case in which it has been issued."

"In addition to the above," it continues, "in all those matters on the same subject that are presented in the internal order and respond to the same nature in facts and applicable law. Therefore, there is a duty to respect the interpretation of the Inter-American Court, contained in the sentences issued against the State of Chile, that is applicable to other cases of the same nature.

And this is the case at hand, the civil compensation derived from a criminal act whose nature is that of a crime against humanity. The Court has issued a sentence against Chile on this topic, in the case of Órdenes Guerra and others Vs. Chile, Judgment of November 29, 2018."

"In paragraphs 89 and following of the aforementioned judgment, the Inter-American Court understands that the civil action derived from crimes against humanity is not prescriptible, and, '(...) that this has been recognized by the State itself.

Indeed, the State shares the criterion that claims for reparation for flagrant violations of human rights are not subject to prescription and that it cannot excuse itself on the mere passage of time (the basis of prescription), in order not to fulfill its international obligations to investigate, punish, and repair the serious human rights violations that occurred during the period 1973-1990, which includes its compensatory aspect.

In this sense, it pointed out that national jurisprudence has gradually integrated international human rights law into the national legal system, so that subsequent legal modifications and the integration of international treaties in its rulings have permeated the jurisprudence of the country's superior court, which has recognized the admissibility of civil judicial actions of the type referred to.

Part of this transition is explained by the incorporation, in the second paragraph of Article 5 of the Political Constitution of the Republic, of an express norm that integrates into the legal system the international human rights treaties ratified by Chile, a modification that has allowed the courts of justice to give sustained application to this regulation' (Paragraph 92 of the Inter-American Court's judgment in the case of Órdenes Guerra vs.

Chile)," the ruling cites.

Therefore, it is resolved: That the appealed sentence, dated May 12, 2020, issued by the 28th Civil Court of this city, by which the claim was rejected, is revoked, and in its place, it is declared that it is accepted, setting the amount of compensation at the sum of $30,000,000 (thirty million pesos) for the plaintiffs Marta María, Nelly Lindorfa del Carmen, Ricardo Antonio Eugenio, and María Angélica, all Cubillos Guajardo, with adjustments and interest in the manner indicated in the Fourteenth Finding of this sentence; without costs, as it is considered that the defendant had plausible reasons to litigate."

Source: pjud.cl 04/20/2021

Date: 04-20-2021

Young people and children killed or disappeared, victims of Pinochet's military dictatorship

There are 307 registered young people and children (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1991), 20 years old and under, who died or disappeared due to actions carried out by State agents during the dictatorship of the military junta led by Augusto Pinochet, between September 11, 1973, and March 11, 1990. [...] Many of them were exactly the same age as Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas when he was an army second lieutenant and when, in October 1973, in the framework of the infamous Caravan of Death case, he took 14 political prisoners out of the Antofagasta jail and drove them toward the pampa, tied up and blindfolded, where he lined them up to be massacred. Charged for his responsibility in these crimes, this month of March he must provide statements before Judge Víctor Montiglio. Faced with these accusations and the formal demand of some deputies, on February 4, Santelices Cuevas resigned from his responsibility as general of the Santiago Military Garrison and made public a statement in which he evokes the facts he is accused of, hiding behind having been a minor at the time (he was 20 years old) and pointing out that he "had not received or executed any illegal order." Below is a list of minors, as Santelices Cuevas was in '73, but who were victims of the "legal orders" and the faithful executors of these orders. Many of those responsible for these crimes and their accomplices remain unpunished and occupy high commands in the armed forces today with the approval of Chilean governments. From the painful reading of the names of these 307 young people and children, a single word emerges like a cry: Justice!

Source: rebelion.org 03/07/2008

Date: 03-07-2008