Eduardo Gustavo Aliste González, 19 years old, a student and socialist militant, was arrested on September 24, 1974, at 8:30 p.m., at his home on Calle Maule 350 in Santiago, by DINA agents, among whom was Osvaldo Romo Mena.

The events that culminated in the victim's arrest began on September 23, when at 6:00 p.m., four individuals in civilian clothes arrived at his house and asked for "Guayo," the victim's nickname, and were informed that he was not present.

The person who answered the door, Ms. Eugenia Aliste González, Eduardo's sister, asked for the reason for their visit and their identification, which they refused to provide. The civilians remained waiting at the front door.

After about 15 minutes, the individuals, who were traveling in a red pickup truck with a gray, lead-colored canvas cover, forced Claudio Santiago Venegas Lazzaro—also a socialist militant from the area—out of the vehicle.

He was being held as a detainee and appeared to be in a very deteriorated physical state. They forced him to enter the house and, inside, asked him if that was "Guayo's" home. He nodded, after which he was put back into the truck, which then left the area.

Two of the agents remained at the residence, effectively holding its occupants under arrest. Around 10:00 p.m., the red pickup truck returned, and the two agents left, being replaced by two other individuals, one of whom remained guarding the entrance to the house while the other was stationed nearby inside a car.

Eduardo Gustavo Aliste did not arrive that night, and the agents had to leave the area once the curfew went into effect. However, the following day at 11:00 a.m., the red pickup truck arrived again with the same DINA personnel, two of whom installed themselves inside the property to wait for him.

Two hours earlier, they had appeared at Liceo N°22, where he studied, in order to arrest him. The individuals remained at the residence all day, preventing the occupants from leaving. Fearing that his parents would be arrested, he presented himself at his home at 8:00 p.m. and was taken into custody. That was the last time his family saw him.

His arrest was part of an operation carried out by the DINA in the same sector, arresting a group of people over a two-week period, including, in addition to the victim and Claudio Venegas Lazzaro, Bernardo de Castro López, Mario Carrasco Díaz, and Víctor Olea Alegría.

All of them remain in the status of forcibly disappeared. Another detainee, Juan Carlos González, later appeared held at 3 Alamos, was released, and subsequently traveled abroad.

Although there are no testimonies from witnesses who saw the victim in a detention center, it is possible to presume that after his arrest he was taken to the facility at Irán with Los Plátanos, a site run by the DINA, as the young Venegas Lazzaro was being held captive there as of September 24.

This is confirmed by the testimony of Mr. Agustín Holgado Bloch, a socialist from the same residential sector, who states that he was arrested by the Investigations police on September 12, 1974, and taken to the institution's Central Headquarters, where he encountered other detainees who were militants of his same party, among them Claudio Venegas Lazzaro.

They remained at the Investigations headquarters until September 16, when they were handed over to the DINA and transported in a C-10 pickup truck to a secret facility that he later identified as the house at Irán with Los Plátanos, where there was a trained police dog that the agents called "Volodia." Here, they were interrogated and tortured with the application of electric current.

On September 23, a young man named Juan Luis Tapia arrived at the location as a detainee; he commented that the agents who captured him had Claudio Venegas Lazzaro with them, who was in very poor physical condition (that same day, the 23rd, the agents appeared at Eduardo Aliste's home with Claudio Lazzaro).

The witness adds in his testimony that the entire group of detainees was transferred to 4 Alamos on September 25, except for Juan Luis Tapia, who remained at Irán with Los Plátanos, arriving at 4 Alamos on September 30. Finally, he states that Claudio Venegas, Mario Carrasco, Víctor Olea, and Bernardo de Castro remained at 4 Alamos until mid-October 1974.

His family carried out numerous efforts to determine his whereabouts, but all were fruitless, and they still do not know his fate at the hands of the DINA.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On October 7, 1974, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on his behalf before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 1189-74, which described the circumstances surrounding his arrest. The Court requested reports from the Minister of the Interior and the Chief of the State of Siege Zone, who reported having no information regarding the detainee.

Based on these findings, the Court rejected the appeal on October 26, 1974, and referred the records to the Fourth Criminal Court of Santiago to initiate proceedings regarding the disappearance of the detainee.

On November 4, 1974, the Fourth Court complied with the order of the Santiago Court of Appeals, initiating case 106.335. On December 19 of that year, a complaint for kidnapping was filed before that Court, in which it was requested that Ms.

María Luisa Lazzaro Avalos, mother of Claudio Venegas Lazzaro, and Juan Carlos González, who was being held at 3 Alamos, be summoned to testify. The complaint was accepted for processing and joined to the case.

The investigation order carried out by the Investigations Police (the same unit that arrested Claudio Venegas and handed him over to the DINA) and reported on January 10, 1975, provided no information to the case. In that order, the complainant was interviewed, and a visit was made to 3 Alamos, where he did not appear in the registry of detainees; the same occurred in the SENDET records.

On June 20, 1975, Mr. Augusto Aliste Aliaga, the victim's father, appeared before the Court and ratified the facts that culminated in his son's arrest. That same month, Ms. María Luisa Lazzaro Avalos appeared and stated that she did not know Eduardo Aliste, but that she had learned he had been disappeared, just like her son Claudio Venegas, since September 10, 1974.

On June 16, 1975, the Investigations Police informed the Court that it was not possible to summon Juan Carlos González, as he had traveled to the Republic of Mexico in March of that year.

On October 2, 1975, Judge Roberto Ibarra Godoy temporarily dismissed the case on the grounds that the perpetration of a punishable act had not been proven in the records. This resolution was approved by the Santiago Court of Appeals on November 27, 1975.

There is no record in the case proceedings that the judge reviewed the case file regarding the arrest and subsequent disappearance of Claudio Venegas Lazzaro, whose situation is related to that of the victim, as established in the proceedings.

One of the apprehending agents, Osvaldo Romo Mena, was arrested on November 16, 1992, after being expelled from Brazil to Chile. This agent had been detected in Brazil following a series of investigative steps ordered by the 3rd Criminal Court of Santiago in the case regarding the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau Oyarce.

In that country, he was residing under the name Osvaldo Andrés Henríquez Mena, an identity that had been provided by the DINA when, following judicial summonses for human rights violations, it facilitated his departure from the country. As of December 1992, Romo had testified in several cases involving forcibly disappeared persons, and in six of them, he had been formally charged.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

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

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

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.gobierno.cl 20/4/2023

Date: 04-20-2023

Chile: The Horror of "Venda Sexy"

The Supreme Court sentenced six DINA agents to 15 years in prison for the aggravated kidnapping of Eduardo Gustavo Aliste González, Eugenia del Carmen Martínez Hernández, and Gerardo Ernesto Silva Saldívar, victims who were taken to the secret barracks known as "Venda Sexy" or "La Discotheque," located at Calle Irán 3037, at the corner of Los Plátanos, in the current commune of Macul, between September and December 1974.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and lawyer Jean Pierre Matus—confirmed the sentence of visiting judge Leopoldo Llanos, which convicted Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Manuel Carevic Cubillos, Risiere del Prado Altez España, Hugo Hernández Valle, and Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González as perpetrators of the kidnappings.

Eduardo Aliste, 19, a sympathizer of the Socialist Youth, was arrested on September 24, 1974, and taken to the facility called Venda Sexy, after which there has been no news of his whereabouts. Gerardo Silva Saldívar, 23, a statistics student at the University of Chile and a MIR militant, was captured on December 10, 1974, in the afternoon, by agents traveling in a green pickup truck and taken to Venda Sexy, according to witnesses, where his trail was lost.

María Eugenia Martínez, linked to the MIR, a textile worker at Industria Labán, was kidnapped on October 24, 1974, at her workplace, Irarrázaval 1515, Ñuñoa, in the presence of her coworkers, the industry's personnel manager, Mario Torres, and one of the owners, Patricio Labán.

The following day, her home was raided by a group of armed civilians. She was subsequently seen by various witnesses with clear signs of torture at Venda Sexy and Cuatro Alamos.

SECRET BARRACKS

Venda Sexy, as it was called by the prisoners who managed to survive, was a two-story house built on a site with walls covered in sheet metal. Pickup trucks with canvas covers entered and left during the day under the watchful eye of men in dark glasses.

Two or three individuals always remained at the corner of Irán and Los Plátanos streets, carrying weapons under their clothing. Neighbors heard loud music coming from inside the house every day. The property, located very close to the Quilín roundabout and a few blocks from Avenida Américo Vespucio, belonged to Héctor Muñoz Muñoz, a neighbor who left the country after the military coup and settled in Europe.

His brother, Luis Muñoz, rented the house to Carabineros Lieutenant Miguel Hernández at the beginning of 1974. The officer told him it would be used as a residence for colleagues of his coming to Santiago from the provinces.

In the following months, the lieutenant paid the agreed-upon rent punctually and in cash. The ground floor of the house had a distribution hall and a wide marble staircase leading to the second floor. There was also a sunken dining room, a study, a guest bathroom with a small round window, and a kitchen that opened onto a service patio from which one could access a basement.

Upstairs were three bedrooms and the main bathroom. The floors were parquet.

The music and songs were intended to drown out the sound of the horror taking place inside that DINA barracks. The prisoners were not only tortured but also sexually abused. Many women were raped and subjected to unspeakable humiliations.

The Valech Report states: "Those who were at Venda Sexy reported having been subjected to interrogations and torture that took place in the basement of the property. In this facility, sexual torture was practiced with special emphasis. Sexual humiliations and rapes of men and women were frequent, for which they also used a trained dog."

Countless testimonies indicate that torture was carried out using electric current, cigarette burns, finger and wrist fractures from long periods of hanging, beatings, and other cruel and degrading methods.

Venda Sexy was initially a detention and interrogation barracks for socialist militants and sympathizers, but it was soon designated to interrogate detainees from the student and youth structures of the MIR.

Between February and April 1974, the DINA reorganized its operational teams, especially the so-called Purén group, led by Major Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga. At the beginning of May, Air Force Commander Mario Jahn, then deputy director of the DINA, incorporated Captain Gerardo Urrich, nicknamed "Pantalón Cortito," who had been an aide-de-camp to Colonel Manuel Contreras, into Purén.

Already in Purén were Captains Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos and Ciro Torré, and Lieutenants Ricardo Lawrence and Miguel Hernández. One part of Purén operated at the Ollagüe barracks, at Calle José Domingo Cañas 1367; another at the Telephone Company; and a third at the central barracks on Calle Belgrado.

Initially, Lieutenant Hernández was in charge of the Irán with Los Plátanos facility and was responsible for initiating the arrests and transfers of detainees to and from Villa Grimaldi. A former Purén agent, Carabineros non-commissioned officer Segundo Gangas Godoy, alias "Víctor Hugo," testified before the court that the brigade was composed of five operational groups: Alce, in charge of the union area; Ciervo, Chacal, Puma, and Leopardo.

In total, there were about 50 agents.

The Purén analysts were assigned to Venda Sexy in mid-1974. One of them, Carabineros officer Alejandro Molina Cisternas, was in charge of drafting the files of those who were to occupy positions of trust in the military government, which he delivered to Captain Carevic.

Around that same date, the detectives in charge of routine interrogations arrived, led by Risiere del Prado Altez España, nicknamed "El Conde." On November 2, 1974, Captain Urrich was wounded in a confrontation in the Bilbao sector with Jorge Matte. He was hospitalized for seven months and was replaced in the Purén brigade by Captain Manuel Vásquez Chahuán.

Venda Sexy was also frequented by Osvaldo Andrés Pincetti Gac, whom Colonel Contreras sent starting in 1974 to hypnotize DINA personnel to measure their IQ, which he did with about 800 officials at Villa Grimaldi, Londres 38, José Domingo Cañas, and Venda Sexy.

PS-MIR LINKS

In mid-1974, DINA analysts found numerous links and meeting points between some MIR structures and Socialist Party militants. The commanders decided to concentrate several task groups at the new barracks at Calle Irán with Los Plátanos and gather the PS detainees there.

Dozens of young men and women with that affiliation, many of them apprehended by Investigations agents and then handed over to the DINA, have testified to their presence at that location between August and September, being subjected to barbaric torture and frequent rapes and sexual abuse.

However, in the weeks following the death of the MIR's general secretary, Miguel Enríquez, while the leadership decided to begin vacating the José Domingo Cañas barracks, the offensive against the MIR was redoubled.

On November 19, agents arrived at Calle Joaquín Godoy, in the commune of La Reina, and after a brief wait, captured the Bolivian architect Ida Vera Almarza, 32, the peasant leader Isidro Miguel Angel Pizarro Meniconi, 21, and two other young people. The first two were shot when they attempted a desperate resistance.

On the 20th, they arrested Luis Mahuida Esquivel, 25, an English teacher close to the new head of the MIR's Military Political Group One (GPM1). Two days later, on the 22nd, around four in the morning, five men jumped the fence of a house in San Miguel and violently entered a bedroom, from which they took Luis Genaro González Mella, 25, a student at the UTE.

Hours later, they arrested Antonio Patricio Soto Cerna, 32, a carpenter and member of the MIR's Central Force, in the La Bandera neighborhood.

At Venda Sexy, meanwhile, new detainees were piling up, torture was multiplying, and agents were obtaining new names of contacts, liaisons, and meeting points in various parts of the city. The members of the Purén brigade accumulated photographs obtained from the Civil Registry and the archives of the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile, where many of those sought had studied or were still studying.

On the morning of November 27, DINA men stationed themselves in the vicinity of the corner of Independencia and Olivos streets, a few meters from the Mapocho River, in downtown Santiago. Information obtained under torture indicated that the head of the MIR's GPM1, which comprised the vast area of San Miguel, La Granja, the San Joaquín Industrial Belt, San Bernardo, and Puente Alto, would arrive there.

At 7:45 a.m. sharp, Félix Santiago de la Jara Goyeneche ("Diego Parra"), 24, a former student at the Pedagogical Institute, appeared and was quickly subdued.

The onslaught continued on December 9 with the arrest of Marta Silvia Adela Neira Muñoz, 29, a bilingual secretary and former employee of the magazine Ramona, at the defunct state publishing house Quimantú, and a liaison for César Arturo Negrete Peña ("René"), her partner.

The woman was captured in the vicinity of Bascuñan and San Alfonso streets, very close to the Central Station. A few hours later, agents arrived at their home in the Torres de San Borja, opposite the then-seat of the military government, where they arrested Arturo Negrete Peña, 25, a commercial engineer and second-in-command of the GPM1.

In the following days, Marta Neira was repeatedly raped by dogs at Venda Sexy, a brutal odyssey that was testified to months later by Laura Ramsay, the daughter of a diplomat who was detained at that DINA barracks and whose account was published by the American magazine Time.

THE CHRISTMAS OF '74

That same day, Mario Fernando Peña Solari ("Bruja" or "Boris"), 21, an architecture student at the University of Chile and head of the MIR's GPM5, was apprehended when he went to meet with Cristián Mayol, a MIR leader who was being held at Villa Grimaldi, where he was subjected to constant torture.

Almost at the same time, several of Peña Solari's liaisons also fell into the hands of the DINA, members of the Medicine Resistance Network, based at the faculty located next to the José Joaquín Aguirre Hospital, in the commune of Independencia.

Following the fall of Mario Peña, the arrest of his sister, Nilda Patricia Peña Solari, 23, a biology student at the University of Chile and in charge of the clandestine publication El Rebelde, who lived in an apartment on Calle Valentín Letelier, a few meters from La Moneda, occurred on the 10th.

The young Peña Solari could not bear to witness his sister being tortured and provided some meeting points and accompanied DINA agents to carry out the arrests. On the 12th, Jorge Ortiz Moraga, 20, a medical student at the University of Chile in charge of the GPM5's military tasks; Carlos Terán de la Jara, 25, a draftsman; and Renato Sepúlveda Guajardo, 21, a medical student at the University of Chile, fell.

On the 13th, Jorge Antonio Herrera Cofré, 18, a high school student, was arrested; on the 14th, Ramón Labrador Urrutia, 24, a merchant; on the 17th, Luis Dagoberto San Martín Vergara, 22, an agronomy student at the University of Chile.

The latter was held in very poor conditions, tortured beyond words, with his fingers and wrists broken, unable to stand, and also suffering from a heart attack. The last time he was seen, he was being taken to a DINA clinic on December 18 or 19, 1974.

The cycle of terror closed on December 20 with the arrest of María Joui Petersen, 19, an economics student at the University of Chile, and Francisco Rosas Contador, 22, a photographer.

All of those mentioned above, who were at Venda Sexy, remain disappeared to this day.

Punto Final

Source: lahaine.org, 01/21/2018

Date: 01-21-2018

Supreme Court Sentences Former DINA Agents for Aggravated Kidnappings at "Venda Sexy"

They must serve sentences of 15 years and one day in prison for the aggravated kidnappings of María Eugenia Martínez, Eduardo Aliste González, and Gerardo Silva Saldívar, perpetrated between September and October 1974. The victims were detained and taken to the detention and torture center located on Calle Irán in the commune of Ñuñoa.

The Supreme Court sentenced five former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) to 15 years and one day in prison for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Eduardo Gustavo Aliste González, Eugenia del Carmen Martínez Hernández, and Gerardo Ernesto Silva Saldívar, victims who were taken to the clandestine center known as "Venda Sexy" or La Discotheque, located at Calle Irán N° 3037 in the commune of Ñuñoa.

The crimes were perpetrated between September and December 1974.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and acting lawyer Jean Pierre Matus—confirmed the challenged sentence that convicted Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Manuel Carevic Cubillos, Risiere del Prado Altez España, and Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle as perpetrators of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping.

In the civil aspect, it was ratified that the State of Chile must pay compensation of 350 million pesos to the victims' families.

During the investigation stage, visiting judge Leopoldo Llanos managed to establish that "the facility called 'Venda Sexy' or 'La Discotheque,' located at Calle Irán N° 3037 at the corner of Los Plátanos, commune of Ñuñoa, was used by the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) as a secret detention and torture center, which operated from mid-1974 until 1975.

This facility was a two-story house with a basement where torture sessions were also carried out. Many detainees remained in this place, who were kept blindfolded, with men and women separated in different rooms."

"The operational agents carried out interrogations under torture, for which they used methods such as the 'grill,' which were applications of electric current to different parts of the body while lying on a metal cot.

In addition, a common practice as a method of torture in this facility was sexual humiliation. This facility was characterized by continuously playing strident music at a high volume, which became more intense at the time of carrying out the torture and humiliation sessions of the detainees," he added.

Eduardo Aliste González was arrested by DINA agents on September 24, 1974; Gerardo Silva Saldívar, 23, was apprehended on December 10, 1974. Both were taken to that place, after which there was no news of their whereabouts.

The same occurred with the textile worker María Eugenia Martínez Hernández, linked to the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), who was arrested on October 24, 1974, at her workplace, located at Irarrázaval 1515, in the presence of her coworkers, the industry's personnel manager, Mario Torres, and one of the owners, Patricio Labán.

The following day, her home was raided by a group of armed civilians, without showing any warrant and without providing information regarding her arrest. She was subsequently seen by various witnesses with clear signs of torture in the clandestine detention centers of Venda Sexy and Cuatro Álamos.

The last news regarding her whereabouts is from mid-November 1974, the date on which she was taken from the house on Calle Irán.

Source: elmostrador.cl, December 13, 2017

Date: 12-13-2017

The 307 Children and 10 Pregnant Women Murdered by the Pinochet Dictatorship in Chile (Excerpt)

The regime was not only characterized by corruption, media setups, and imposing the current constitution and its socio-political model by force, but it also acted with extreme violence and intolerance, regardless of whether its victims were pregnant women, children, or even infants who are listed as forcibly disappeared.

There are 307 young people and children, from 6 months old to adolescents, as well as 10 pregnant women 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.

The Rettig Commission estimated the number of dead and/or disappeared at 2,279, but a third working group, the Commission for Reparation and Justice, added a new list of 899 crimes, which raised the final figure of victims in the country to 3,197, and it is also estimated that 40,280 people were murdered, disappeared, and tortured.

There is, however, no unanimity on the definitive figure of victims of the regime that took power by force on September 11, only to later establish the current Constitution in force in the country through a fraudulent plebiscite, without international observers or electoral registries, which is currently being changed after the mobilizations throughout Chile due to the consequences of the model established by Pinochet and sustained by the political class leading the country: social inequality, corruption of the political, business, and military elites, and the lack of guaranteed access to health, education, and social security, among many other factors.

The Rettig Report, of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (1991), pointed to 307 cases of minors under 20 years of age executed or disappeared by agents of the Pinochet dictatorship, among whom are children from six months old to adolescents.

The report presented 75 cases of forcibly disappeared children, of which 26 cases of children murdered by the military during the dictatorship are recognized. Likewise, in 2002, CODEPU reported the history of 10 pregnant women who were forcibly disappeared.

Several of those responsible for these crimes and their accomplices remain unpunished or are accessing pardons and prison benefits, in addition to the "pacts of silence" that several uniformed officers established at the time, so as not to acknowledge their crimes. (Excerpt)

Source: diarioantofagasta.cl 09/11/21