Miguel Arturo Estay Reino (61), alias “El Fanta” and “Samuel,” provided the Atacameño corvo (curved knife) used to slit the throats of José Manuel Parada, Manuel Guerrero, and Santiago Nattino in March 1985.

He kept it hanging in an office at the Carabineros Communications Directorate (Dicomcar) on Calle Dieciocho in the capital. The then-director of Dicomcar, Colonel Luis Fontaine—assassinated in 1990 by the FPMR—had already selected it as the weapon to perpetrate one of the most horrific crimes in the history of Chile.

When he communicated the order to Estay Reyno to assassinate the three communist professionals, Colonel Fontaine pointed to the sinister object and told him, “that is what we are going to use.” Estay Reyno, who was part of the team that took the victims to the road to the international airport, has given several interviews on the subject, but the one included in the book “La Noche de los Corvos,” by the case’s plaintiff lawyers Nelson Caucoto and Héctor Salazar, abounds in little-known details.

The interview was conducted at the Punta Peuco prison, where “El Fanta” is serving a life sentence for this terrorist crime. Indeed, on March 31, 1994, Judge Milton Juica sentenced Estay Reyno to 18 years in prison for the terrorist kidnappings of 6 members of the Association of Educators of Chile (Agech) and the homicides. 15 other Carabineros were also sentenced to various terms.

In 1995, the Supreme Court increased “El Fanta’s” sentence.

IT WAS A CASE OF “HORRORISM”

In this interview, Estay Reyno admitted that the brutal assassination of the communist professionals was a “mistake” and that the manner in which it was committed constituted an act of “horrorism.” What “El Fanta” meant was that it was a terrorist crime, just as it was classified by Judge Milton Juica in his sentencing ruling of March 31, 1994.

After receiving the order from Colonel Fontaine, Estay Reyno, the only civilian employee of the Carabineros involved in the events, stated to him that “I am clear about what the result of this operation will be.

I tell you that it is a mistake; furthermore, I tell you that by doing it that way, we are going to take on the first charge of horrorism. He tells me that there is an order and that we are going to carry it out.” “El Fanta” also stated that the shooting of teacher Leopoldo Muñoz de la Parra, in front of the Colegio Latinoamericano, when he tried to defend Parada and Guerrero, triggered the assassination of the three communist professionals.

After the kidnappings, Dicomcar agents arrived at the Calle Dieciocho barracks convinced that Muñoz de la Parra had died. Regarding the decision to commit a crime of such atrocious characteristics, Estay Reyno indicated that Colonel Fontaine held the thesis of “for every dead Carabinero, a dead communist.” When asked if Fontaine had instructions from the high command to proceed through violent means, “El Fanta” replied, “I believe so, without a doubt.

I say it without any doubt.” In addition to the interview with Estay Reyno, a former militant of the Communist Youth and the Ramona Parra Brigade, the book includes little-known background information on the trial, such as the support General César Mendoza had in the Supreme Court and, above all, the vacuum created by the government toward the Carabineros.

The institution of the crossed carbines had to defend itself alone and fell into the deepest disrepute.

Source: La Nacion, November 11, 2013.

One civilian and 15 Carabineros prosecuted for the three murders. Guilty of the murder of three communist leaders during the military dictatorship, whose throats were slit with a corvo knife to instill fear, four former Carabineros and one civilian informant were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Chilean Supreme Court.

The Criminal Chamber yesterday upheld the sentences imposed in the first instance on the civilian and fifteen other former officers or non-commissioned officers of the armed institution, except in the case of former captain Patricio Zamora, whose life sentence was reduced to 15 years.

Thus ended a trial of more than a decade, the most impressive due to the vileness of the murderers. Sentenced to life were Guillermo González, former colonel of the Carabineros; Miguel Estay Reyno, “El Fanta,” a communist turned collaborator of the secret police; and former non-commissioned officers José Fuentes-Castro, Alejandro Saez Mardones, and Claudio Salazar.

The other defendants were sanctioned with sentences ranging from five years and 41 days of imprisonment.

The five magistrates of the Supreme Court unanimously rejected all appeals for cassation on grounds and form filed by the defense in a trial that pitted the Government against the director of the Carabineros, General Rodolfo Stange, and recently precipitated his resignation.

In March 1985, with Chile under a state of siege, José Manuel Parada, a communist militant, worked as head of the Analysis Department of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad.

His friend Manuel Guerrero was a teacher at the Colegio Latinoamericano, and the third victim, Santiago Nattino, was an advertising executive. The secret police suspected that they were also involved in investigating the structure of the Comando Conjunto, a repressive organization composed of members of the Armed Forces and Public Order.

Once their kidnapping was decided, the three activists were locked in the trunk of a car and driven to an open field on the 31st of that month. Saez murdered Guerrero, Fuentes finished off Nattino, and Claudio Salazar stabbed José Manuel Parada.

Terrified, he could not finish him off. With a stab wound to the abdomen, Parada screamed in pain. A third person got out of the car and slit his throat. Five years later, on May 10, 1990, revenge arrived. In an attack attributed to the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, Colonel Luis Fontaine, the main organizer of the operation, was assassinated in the center of Santiago.

In the conclusions of the first instance, Judge Milton Juica referred to the attacks on barracks and Carabineros personnel recorded in the year of the triple crime, but always highlighting the perverse nature of the methods used in their combat, the alarm and horror caused when the servants of the dictatorship (1973-90) did not respect the minimum principles of humanity.

The ruling on the “Degollados case” was the most anticipated after the seven-year sentence handed down on May 30 against retired General Manuel Contreras, head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) during the years of repressive exaltation.

His medical ruses exasperated the majority of Chileans but did not prevent his entry into the Punta Peuco prison, where he eats hearts of palm, applies himself to reading the thoughts of Pinochet, and serves the sentence imposed with “great tranquility and inner peace,” according to the Archbishop of Santiago.

Meanwhile, the successive application of the 1978 Amnesty Law by the military regime for its own benefit has incensed human rights groups, families, and plaintiff lawyers. Since May, 24 cases involving forcibly disappeared or summarily executed persons have been dismissed.

Source: El País, October 28, 1995

Miguel Estay, El Fanta: The reasons of an executioner

His nickname brings to mind death, brutality, but above all, betrayal. Miguel Estay Reyno, alias “El Fanta,” sentenced to life imprisonment for the Degollados Case, is part of the most painful and delicate area of human rights violations: that of the leftist militants who became persecutors; those who were tortured and ended up torturing.

Here he tries to explain why he did what he did. How does a man come to betray his friends, to be the executioner of his comrades? The question circles in the head of Manuel Guerrero Antequera like a great obsession.

His father, Manuel Guerrero Cevallos, had his throat slit along with José Manuel Parada and Santiago Nattino in 1984. Miguel Estay Reyno, El Fanta, a man who was a friend of the family, a comrade of his father in the Communist Party, participated in the murder.

How could he do it? Estay Reyno is serving a life sentence for that crime and has been in prison for 12 years. Gray hairs appear in his closely cropped hair and the bags under his eyes reveal the passage of time, but he stays in shape through an intense exercise routine and soccer games twice a week with what he calls the “Under-60” of the Punta Peuco prisoners.

He speaks slowly, without grand gestures. And even though he addresses fierce chapters of his life, he remains as rational as when he was part of those chosen by the Communist Party for secret intelligence activity.

This man who seems calm and cerebral collaborated with the Comando Conjunto and Dicomcar, witnessed torture, turned in his comrades, and was one of the last faces Manuel Guerrero the father saw before being murdered. “I have a desire to see him face to face, to look him in the eyes.

I don’t know why I have the idea that in his eyes I can still see some glimmer of what my dad looked at in that moment. I think that if we meet, seeing me as an adult, Manuel Guerrero as well, I will manage to see something in those eyes.

I want him to tell me his extrajudicial truth, his version of the facts. I want to try to understand the ununderstandable,” says Guerrero today. Estay knows that beyond judicial responsibilities, he has a pending moral explanation for his acts. Here he attempts an answer.

My comrades or me

It is December 1975 and Estay has been captured and tortured by the Comando Conjunto. He was turned in by René Basoa, his superior in the Communist Party’s intelligence apparatus. Shortly after, his brother Jaime, his sister-in-law Isabel Stange, and his friend Víctor Vega Riquelme also fall.

They are arrested when they go to a meeting with Estay, which turns out to be a trap. Today his relatives are alive, but Víctor Vega remains forcibly disappeared. For those who were confronting the dictatorship in those years, it is clear that Estay has begun to be part of the chain of betrayals and denunciations; that he even set a trap for his brother.

They put him on a blacklist. Estay says today that he is not guilty of the arrest of his relatives or the death of Vega and shows a ruling by Judge Graciela Gómez that exonerates him from those events.

On the contrary, he claims to have sent his brother a message not to go to any meeting with him. “Why did my brother go to a meeting he should never have gone to? I have no explanation,” he says, remembering the episode.

Then he adds: “My brother’s situation is the trigger for everything that happens with me. It forces me to make a decision under immense duress.” It can be understood that he collaborated to save his brother and sister-in-law.

But over time you began to do it with great conviction. “No one is touched by a magic wand and transforms overnight. It is a process.” Was the choice: my comrades or me? “Yes. And that was the conception with which the security services worked.

I chose, and the truth is that I have paid dearly for my decision. I am not saying it was a good choice. It was only the possible choice, which is very different. And I don’t know if anyone can dare to judge a choice for life so harshly.

If I had made a different decision, today I would be one more forcibly disappeared person. I would not have had the opportunity to have my family, and I would most likely be judged in a completely different way.

But I made a choice.” “Along the way, I started meeting other people, with other ideas, and I started to assume them. The truth is that, like an important part of Chileans, I believed in the stamp that the military government managed to impose, fundamentally in economic terms.

And since I also had a certain degree of specialization in the intelligence area, a relatively natural connection occurred with people from the services, due to the interest they might have in that knowledge.

I must admit that by 1984 or 1985, when I get into this section (Dicomcar), I had a significant degree of affinity with the vision of the military government.” Do those not seem like sufficient reasons to participate in operations? “It is much more complex.

People were dying.” What I mean is that if it were examined today with true justice, in light of international conventions against torture, the elements of pressure that are present in my decision, I could not be judged.

On the other hand, towards the end of 1976, I was already on a PC blacklist. And that established a quite different playing field for me. It meant not only the impossibility of returning to the same thing, but also a personal stance that moves further and further away from the previous one.

But how did you go to the opposite extreme? “I had an ideological formation, a mold with which I moved. That mold, in some way, became a kind of necessity. And in the conditions I was in, it was much easier to change to another model than to reject all models, because that leaves many things in the world without explanation.” Did your brother understand that he and his partner are at the origin of what you did? “He never wanted to understand.

Jaime continues to be a militant in the PC. He is in Mexico; I don’t have much connection with him.” Did you have an opportunity to explain it to him? “Not personally. But now, through a third person, I sent him the ruling, which is quite substantive.” What do you expect to happen? “I have no intention for him to change his stance, but I do want to establish my truth and with a judicial ruling.”

Martyrology

You were turned in by your friend and PC leader, René Basoa. “A person who I regret very much is not alive came to look for me, accompanying my captors. But I could not say that he turned me in voluntarily.

I would be ignoring the effect of torture. On the other hand, my arrest was not the result of one person’s information. There was a summation. One of the things that is still handled with great caution is how much information was provided by those who were forcibly disappeared or those who were tortured and later regained their freedom.

I think many survivors have not been sincere about their own actions. In the Valech Commission, for example, it was evidenced that people who did not provide information are quite scarce. Of course, they cannot be blamed with the same responsibility as someone who does it voluntarily.

But I insist, all the people of my characteristics and my generation who did not establish a form of collaboration are today part of the forcibly disappeared.” How do you live after having turned in many people who were forcibly disappeared? “Painfully.

I have recognized my responsibility in the identification of a number of PC militants. One tries to justify oneself. That is always present. And that leads me back to the substantive question: whether all that justifies the need to be a forcibly disappeared person.

Some were able to make the voluntary choice of martyrdom. But endorsing or backing that seems ethically dubious to me.” You participated later in Dicomcar and in the throat-slitting of Santiago Nattino, José Manuel Parada, and Manuel Guerrero.

You have never asked for forgiveness regarding those murders. “In that, one must be cautious. I have discussed this with Father Fernando Montes, who has had the immense generosity of accompanying me many times.

The key is how we establish the way in which we ask for forgiveness. For some, something between that person and God might be enough. I want you to understand that there is no single way to ask for forgiveness.

For example, I availed myself of the Effective Repentance Law, the way the justice system established to be able to collaborate with the cases, something so deeply felt for the victims’ families. That was highly questioned at the time.

Many saw this as a form of taking advantage. And I guarantee you that if there is anything I can be repentant about, it is having availed myself of that law, because it meant for me, by popular vote of my fellow defendants, 6 years in Colina II and isolation. Assuming the truth—as Carlos Herrera and others have assumed it—means a real problem. It is not easy, I guarantee it.”

Manuel Guerrero

In recent times, Estay Reyno has cultivated an unusual relationship with Nelson Caucoto and Héctor Salazar, two of the plaintiff lawyers in the Degollados Case. Both host the program “Hablando en voz alta” on Radio Tierra, and Estay listens to them and sends them his comments. “It’s not that everyone in Punta Peuco is a fan of Salazar and Caucoto,” says the former agent.

But he acknowledges that that program keeps them up to date on the trials. It was precisely Caucoto and Salazar who informed him that Manuel Guerrero Antequera wanted to meet him. What was your relationship with Manuel Guerrero?

His son says you were at his house and played with him. “I met him in 1969, when I joined the Communist Youth. He had a leadership rank and I was just another militant. I started to have some responsibilities and I saw him daily in various activities, but we never had that degree of closeness.

I don’t remember ever being at his house. I knew his wife perfectly well, but I insist, I don’t think there was a degree of friendship. Yes, of closeness.” Manuel Guerrero the son wants to talk to you. “In August 2006, I received through a third person a request from Manuel Guerrero Antequera to visit me here.

Understanding that it is a very difficult situation for him and for me, I agreed immediately. But the authorization has not been finalized. I have been told that he is still thinking about this alternative.

I have the most absolute willingness to receive him.” Surely he is going to ask you why they killed his father. How does one answer that to a son? “It is immensely difficult to be able to answer something like that.

I hope to be able to answer him something that is as close to the truth as possible and that he can, in some way, understand it. But I have to deliver the answer to him.” The family believes that one reason why Guerrero was murdered is a report he wrote in 1976 where he identifies you as one of the men who tortured him in his first kidnapping. “I have not read the testimony.

I have indeed found a multitude of testimonies of those same characteristics. People who have tried to identify me and that would not correspond with my actions.” How do you justify those murders today in the eyes of society? “It is impossible to be able to justify those types of things today.

Nothing and no one can justify the deaths that occurred.” Are you referring to all the deaths? “Absolutely all the deaths. It is not to hide behind the biggest ones while being the smallest in the class, but I have had 15 years of prison, I have lost absolutely everything, and I think there are many responsibilities that have never been assumed.

Obviously, this did not start on September 11, 1973, nor did it start from the bad mood of some general who that day had the idea of taking power. There were many previous things, an exacerbation of spirits, an over-ideologization everywhere.” You were in the most extreme position of both sides. “Yes.

I am like the character from ‘La Hora 25’: always choosing badly. It is part of the ill-advised decisions I have made all my life. I have been wrong almost always.” What has been the worst? “Undoubtedly, having participated in taking a person’s life. In any condition, it is a very bad thing.”

Twelve years with Romo

He says that in these 15 years he has lost everything. “They have been hard, difficult years. The hardest thing has been the distance from my family.” Was your marital breakdown after the conviction? “Yes, of course.

It is quite clear that it is part of all this.” Who are your close ones here in Punta Peuco? “I have a very great closeness with the Carabinero non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera. I also had a lot of closeness with Osvaldo Romo.

He was my neighbor in the room and I spent a lot of time with him in Colina. In total, we spent 12 years together. On many occasions, it was my turn to warn about his medical emergencies, to assist him because he was highly dependent.” How was your relationship with Romo? “Now, he was an elderly diabetic, hypertensive, with the seven plagues, unable to move or lean on his feet.

He did, however, retain a good long-term memory. And he could even be entertaining. He had many stories, although I cannot verify that all of them were true. On a dozen occasions, I saw him very close to death.

On one occasion, they took him away in agony. I have had a reunion with the Catholic faith; therefore, I believe there were enough judges who judged him, so I was not among them.” Did he leave you all his belongings? “No, the truth is that he lived very poorly in his last years.

There were entire years in which he had no visitors. He lived very affectively.” due to his family's situation in Brazil, where they were undocumented. He received some things through the charity of religious organizations, especially from someone who was always very close to him and remains so: Sister Yolanda.

She loved him dearly. Osvaldo’s grandchildren came from Brazil the Saturday following his death. When I went to greet them, they told me there were many things they were not going to take and that they wanted to leave them to me.

I was grateful. A portion was donated elsewhere, and others were kept by me and others who needed them. What did you feel when you saw his funeral? -We had discussed it several times. He had a very clear concept that his end was approaching.

A couple of years ago, a cardiologist at the Barros Luco hospital gave him a terminal prognosis. From that point on, we discussed the possibility of disposing of his remains and the family being able to cremate him.

He was a pariah of society, and the most physical manifestation is that one had never seen such a funeral -Of such abandonment. I think he expected it. The true funeral was the second one: it was the people who cared about Osvaldo Romo.

His grandchildren, this lady who visited him, a couple of religious figures, no more. In the 12 years I was here, I never met other family members who visited him. Some friends would appear from time to time.

Father Montes mentioned that you attended a university graduation of yours. -Yes, while in Colina, I took a diploma in Behavioral Management techniques from the Universidad Católica del Norte. It lasted several semesters, and the university had the generosity to hold a ceremony for me here at Punta Peuco.

And Father Fernando, whom I love immensely, had the generosity to accompany me. Before that, I had to take the aptitude test (and he shows the certificate: verbal 745, mathematics 679, history and geography 749).

It would have been enough for almost any degree. -Yes. My thesis work was on autism. (He has an autistic son). The PAA and the diploma speak to an attitude toward confinement; what is your daily life like? -One of the things you must avoid is asking yourself what I am going to do today.

I follow more or less the same routine: I get up very early, have breakfast at 5:30, listen to the news—I am quite a fanatic about that. In the afternoon, I dedicate myself to reading. I have a lot of different interests.

We have the intention of organizing a library at Punta Peuco and a literary workshop. The time out of confinement is at 8 in the morning. At that hour, I begin physical activities. I do quite a bit of gymnastics, weights, I run. And now they have authorized us to play some baby soccer matches twice a week. It is the "Under-60" group, more or less.

Other people's guilt

Although he is sentenced to life imprisonment, Estay Reyno is not willing to bear the guilt of others. For this reason, during the last visit to Punta Peuco by the president of the Court of Appeals, Cornelio Villarroel, Estay asked him to study his incrimination in the kidnapping of Reinalda Pereira, who was 3 months pregnant, and Edrás Pinto.

The investigation by Minister Víctor Montiglio in the so-called Conferencia Case brought other responsible parties to light. Estay asks to be de-amnestied and tried. "There is proof of my non-participation in those two cases, with there already being people who have even confessed," he argues.

You are sentenced to life imprisonment; why does it matter to you to prove your innocence in those cases? -Today there is an effort to judicially fix all these situations as close to the truth as possible.

Therefore, it is also important to discriminate between the guilty and the not guilty. I do not see why I should bear facts that do not correspond to me. Do you think that by clarifying those cases they could pardon you? -To be very honest, I do not think there is the political space.

I requested it in 1997, asking for the commutation of the sentence to one of expulsion to Paraguay. It took them 7 years to tell me no. But I do believe that establishing the truth is important. Today there is a mass of accumulated information that did not exist when these trials started, and it was easier to stick with those who created fewer problems.

But thanks to judges with exclusive dedication, a series of characters who were quite protected by the institutions began to appear. It began to seem senseless to the judges that very minor characters had held the responsibilities, commands, and possibilities for action that were attributed to them.

In the Degollados Case, how high up do you define the responsibilities? -I have the conviction that there was intellectual authorship by the superiors, but I do not have the proof. Other people would have to speak, those who did have access to those meetings.

Today, the truth has already been established: that not a leaf moved without the knowledge of the leadership of the institutions. But for a long time, there was a clear intentionality to silence it with counterintelligence teams and departments.

Box 1: Testimony of Manuel Guerrero Antequera in a very perverse and painful way, "El Fanta" is almost a family member. Manuel Guerrero's father was one of the three degollados (throat-slit victims) of 1985, a case for which Miguel Estay Reyno is serving a life sentence.

But the Guerrero family has lived with the ghost of "El Fanta" since 1976, when Manuel Guerrero Cevallos recognized him as his torturer. "El Fanta" is a character who causes me many contradictions. On one hand, he is one of my father's murderers, in some way one of the intellectual authors and also material authors of his throat-slitting.

He was there both at the moment they had him as a forcibly disappeared person in '76 and participated in his torture—recognized by my father—as well as in '85, when he participated in the moment they slit his throat.

But "El Fanta" is also, for me, a former militant of the Communist Youth of Chile, who was a companion and comrade of my father, of José Weibel, of Ricardo Weibel, of a series of young communists of that generation, and therefore this human being awakens a very great anguish in me: what were the conditions and possibilities that made a communist militant, a young Chilean, able to turn from one day to the next not only into someone who spoke under torture, which would be something absolutely normal or human, but also into an informer, into one more murderer.

For me, "El Fanta" is a character who strangely causes me rejection and at the same time a perverse fascination. It is like ominous, evil itself, but it is a familiar face, who was once a friend, who once held me very close when I was a child.

Under that face of normality appears all the evil that we as human beings are also capable of carrying out. I am convinced that both the tortured and the torturers are victims who are in differential positions regarding social and political conditions, regarding a certain way of being of Chilean society, savage, which allowed for the explosion of fascist practice in Chile, of the annihilation of the other.

They are differential victims because some were turned into torturers and others were turned into the objects to be tortured. However, we are talking about people who played soccer together, ate barbecues together, which is the case of "El Fanta." Therefore, for me, "El Fanta" is also a victim, but like every human being, he had the opportunity to say no, to at least bite his tongue and die.

He always had the option, as so many other people did, not to become not only informers, but torturers themselves. Because of that lack of courage, of decision, and his direct responsibility in the crimes, he has to serve the sentences in full.

For many years I have lived with the ghost of "El Fanta," a ghost that has been present since my childhood. After my father survived the torture of the Comando Conjunto and we went into exile, I accompanied him to recovery sessions following the electric shocks they gave him.

I lived his torture very closely through him, and he is a character who was present in my father's stories, oral and also written. He left testimony of this familiar voice that also participated in the torture, who had been a former comrade and who was now part of the fascist hordes, as he used to say. "El Fanta" spoke to him directly, telling him that he knew my mother, Vero, Manolito; he spoke to him about our entire family structure, about details that only someone very trusted could know.

That was one of the moments when my father was completely disarmed, more so than by the physical violence. Therefore, this ghost was always present, and then it reappears in '84 and '85 in the stories of "El Papudo" (Andrés Valenzuela, an agent who defected), which are published and which my father knew.

There, it is known again that "El Fanta" was present in different instances. He is someone who has crossed my life, and I have a desire to see him face to face, now that he is a prisoner. To look him in the eyes because he was one of the last people who saw my father alive.

I don't know why I have the idea that in "El Fanta's" eyes I can still see some glimmer of what my dad looked at in that moment. I think that if we meet, seeing me as an adult, Manuel Guerrero as well, I will manage to see something in those eyes.

I want him to tell me his extrajudicial truth, his version of the facts. I want to try to understand the ununderstandable. Perhaps it doesn't make much sense, but "El Fanta" in some way also constitutes me.

In a very perverse and painful way, he is almost a family member, and it hurts me, "El Fanta" makes me angry. The moment the lawyers presented my request to meet with him, he agreed immediately. "El Fanta" is willing, and I believe he is waiting for me to go see him at Punta Peuco.

I believe there are truths that are not of the judicial realm but of human daily life. They are very material truths, and I believe something can surface in that encounter. I don't know exactly what, but at least to know what happened to him himself, because he had the privilege of being there in the last minutes of my father's life.

Therefore, for me, even being his murderer, he is a close person.

Box 2: "El Wally" and Basoa: the funerals of "El Fanta"

In 1982, fear paralyzed Miguel Estay after the death of his friend René Basoa, with whom he shared duties in the Comando Conjunto and who was a former comrade in the PC. So much so that he did not dare to go to his funeral.

Years later, he reproached himself for his cowardice and decided it would not happen again. For that reason, when in 1989 Roberto Fuentes Morrison, "El Wally," was riddled with bullets at the door of his house—just like Basoa—he came from Paraguay, where he had taken refuge with a false passport provided precisely by the deceased.

He arrived late, but he visited the grave. Both dead men are key in the life of "El Fanta." René Basoa was his superior in the intelligence apparatus of the PC; together they went into hiding, and it was he who handed him over to the Comando Conjunto in December 1975, after being tortured.

Later, both headed the blacklist of communists identified as Pinochet's agents. In 1982, Basoa was murdered, and although for a long time it was thought to be an execution—which triggered Estay's terror—the investigation into the murder of Tucapel Jiménez shed other light.

At that time, Basoa was working with Estay's uncle, the importer of the weapon with which the union leader was killed. The revolver was delivered on consignment to the Armería Italiana, and Basoa played a confusing role with the receipt that proved its origin. "It is on the DINE's account, it's that simple," concludes Estay.

His relationship with Fuentes Morrison arose after his captivity in 1975 in the Comando Conjunto. The FACh agent recruited him as a collaborator until in 1984 he joined the ranks of the Dicomcar. Under his wing, he felt protected. "There were elements of his personality that I found attractive. He had a great capacity for making friends and gave me a lot of confidence," says Estay.

Source: The Clinic, December 4, 2007.

Hertz and the inclusion of "El Fanta" in the Valech Report: For the victims, it has been an offense

The lawyer Carmen Hertz criticized this Wednesday the inclusion of Miguel Estay Reyno, better known as "El Fanta," in the list of the Valech Commission and, conversely, defended that Sergio Galvarino Apablaza does appear in the report.

In conversation with "Una Nueva Mañana" on Radio Cooperativa, the jurist expressed that "I do not know, because they have not been published, the foundations of this qualification of 'El Fanta' as a victim, but I can convey that for the victims of human rights violations, for the organizations, it has been an offense." Hertz maintained that "contrary to what happens with other collaborators who were hostages of the DINA or the CNI, 'El Fanta' was an agent absolutely convinced of the mission to make people disappear or execute them, as is made clear in all the statements he makes." "Secondly, he is a person who is serving a life sentence for the throat-slitting of three professionals, and in particular in the case of 'El Fanta,' he is the material author of the throat-slitting of José Manuel Parada. So, I think there are ethical connotations that have to be considered at the moment of the application of a provision," she added. Regarding Apablaza, whose inclusion was criticized by UDI figures, Hertz commented that "he was a political prisoner, he was undoubtedly tortured, and, furthermore, what determines the status of a victim is having been a victim of state terror." Likewise, she stressed that the former leader of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) "is neither prosecuted nor convicted for the crime of Senator (Jaime) Guzmán," so "his participation in that assassination is extraordinarily debatable."

Source: Radio Cooperativa, September 1, 2011.

"El Fanta" after the Valech Report Within a week, Miguel Estay Reyno, alias "El Fanta," sentenced to life imprisonment for the Degollados Case, will receive his first pension of $135,000 monthly as a victim of torture during the Pinochet regime.

He will also have benefits, such as being able to study a university degree himself, or his children or grandchildren. The inclusion of his name in the Valech Report, delivered at the end of August to President Piñera, caused an earthquake among the relatives of political executions and the disappeared: they do not understand how someone who in the 70s informed on left-wing militants and who in 1985 murdered, together with a command of the Dirección de Comunicaciones de Carabineros (Dicomcar), three of his former comrades from the Communist Party—Manuel Guerrero, José Manuel Parada, and Santiago Nattino—receives that status from the State. The story of Estay Reyno, now 59 years old and detained at Punta Peuco along with several military officers accused of human rights violations, is not only crossed by pain, but also by betrayal. After having been an important communist militant who had become an expert in intelligence in the Soviet Union, in 1975 he was detained and tortured, like many of his former PC comrades, by agents of the Comando Conjunto. But the difference is that shortly after, he was recruited by his own captors to pursue and denounce opponents of the regime. "I am what I am, I carry my backpack with all the stones I must carry," he says from Punta Peuco. Along with Marcia Merino, alias "La Flaca Alejandra," and Luz Arce, both also included in the Valech Report, "El Fanta" is part of one of the most dramatic episodes of the left after the coup: the breakups after harsh torture sessions. In Estay's case, the rupture was not only with the PC but also with his family: his father and mother, a psychiatrist and a housewife, were communists. Also his siblings. Although he did not completely lose contact with his parents, he did with his brother Jaime Estay and his sister-in-law, Isabel Stange: they always suspected that it was he who allowed their arrests and that of his friend Víctor Vega, who is now disappeared. "But it is established that it was not like that, because they received a message not to go to any meeting," the former agent defends himself 35 years later. Precisely because of that history, and especially because of the Degollados Case, is why his inclusion among the 9,795 new victims that the Valech Report has just recognized—he appears with number 2,877—has caused so much controversy. Can a perpetrator also be a victim? "It is probable that my life, with the trajectory I was on and because of the characteristics of my family, would not have suffered major modifications if my detention had not occurred. But the truth is that from the detention until now, it has been an extremely complicated life. Not collaborating or complying with the positions of those who detained you meant the end of your life," says Estay. - But you were not only a victim, you were also a perpetrator. - The Valech Commission is a photograph of what was lived at that time, and I fit in at a certain moment as a victim. I was detained at the end of 1975, when the Comité Pro Paz had ended and the Vicaría de la Solidaridad had not yet been created. It was a time when there was no defense for people who were detained and in which appeals for protection (recursos de amparo) were rejected. I was a prisoner for four months; what could be done? In Estay's case, the rupture was not only with the PC but also with his family: his father and mother, a psychiatrist and a housewife, were communists. Also his siblings.

• In 2003 there was a first Valech Commission. Why didn't you apply then? - The first time I assumed that because of my sentence and because there was a Concertación government, it would be very difficult for them to accept my application. Instead, now there is a ruling that proves I was detained. I was not a prisoner voluntarily, nor did I offer myself to be tortured. In fact, days before my detention, with a group, we were hiding people and trying to make detentions transparent. - But after being tortured, you worked as a civilian for Dicomcar. How did the break occur? - It was a situation of years. It is something that happens in human relationships. Not all the people who militated with me in the party, nor all the people who detained me and with whom I later worked, were good or were bad: there are valuable and less valuable people everywhere. - You are sentenced to life imprisonment. What good does it do you to be accredited as a victim? - That my truth be known. There are people who have maintained in a malicious way that I was an agent who worked before my detention, and this establishes that there is a before and an after. - People who suspected you were a traitor? - Exactly. Many suspicions were managed to weaken my position regarding legal defenses. - Don't you think that by entering the Comando Conjunto and the Dicomcar you gave reasons for those suspicions? - On the contrary, they wanted to label me as the worst of the worst. And it was difficult to understand, especially for the PC, that a person within them could have transformed. - And have you felt like the worst of the worst? - I haven't felt exactly good. Intelligence in the USSR Those who knew "El Fanta" in the 70s, in the middle of the Unidad Popular, when he was still on the left and barely 20 years old, describe him as reckless and cool-headed. "He always carried a pistol and spent a lot of time in hiding, even before the coup," they say. "He was a man whose feelings were never noticed and who was especially concerned that no one knew what he was thinking," they add. Part of those traits he learned in 1971: the PC sent him, along with nine other militants, to an Intelligence course in Moscow. "I was the youngest, I was 19 years old. Those skills I had in intelligence also created a degree of harmony with my captors. Undoubtedly, they valued them," adds Estay, still with a hint of pride. -What did those courses consist of? - The responsible organization was the KGB, specifically the Latin American Department. The subjects: intelligence; operational situation analysis, work with agents and informants, counterintelligence; information security, counter-espionage, and operational work, such as penetration techniques, wiretapping, surveillance, photography, shooting, and self-defense. There were also political subjects, such as the history of the Communist Party of the USSR. In addition, we had practical activities, and depending on the decisions of the leadership in Chile, some of us had individual specialization courses. In my case, work with infiltration agents, selection techniques, recruitment, approach, and handling of agents and informants. Others specialized in infiltration into the Armed Forces and the rest in surveillance, photography, wiretapping, etc. -Do you still feel empathy for intelligence? - Those are matters of the past.

Source: Revista Qué Pasa, September 22, 2011.

History of Miguel Estay Reyno: "El Fanta" before the betrayal

On Sunday, November 9, “Los Archivos del Cardenal 2: Los Casos Reales” [The Cardinal’s Archives 2: The Real Cases] was launched at the Santiago Book Fair, under the imprint of Editorial Catalonia and the Diego Portales University School of Journalism.

This excerpt tells the story of Miguel Estay Reyno, “El Fanta,” and his path before becoming the greatest traitor in the history of the Communist Party (PC). He was a committed, brilliant, and daring militant who boasted that his only youthful love was “the Revolution.” He also came from a demonstrably communist family.

His political trajectory was dizzying. From being a street brigade member, he went on to handle some of the organization’s best-kept secrets in just a few months. The two leaders were surprised. They had learned that the Communist Youth (JJ.CC) cell at the Gabriela Mistral high school in Independencia was turning into a martial arts academy.

At a time when the Communist Party was preparing with everything it had to support Salvador Allende’s presidential campaign for the following year, the decisive 1970, the young people at that institution had abandoned their political work and were training in flying kicks and blocks.

The leaders, members of the Regional Directorate of Secondary Students of the Communist Youth of Santiago, decided to summon the leader of that cell to a meeting at the central office that the “Jota”—as the JJ.CC is called—had at the time on Calle Marcoleta.

The person who arrived was a 17-year-old boy, dressed as a student, fair-skinned and brown-haired, somewhat short but stocky. He was precisely the one who had come up with the shift toward physical combat and who served as an instructor for his peers.

The young man was quiet and barely spoke, except when he defined himself as an enthusiast of martial arts. A few years older than him, the two leaders explained to him in a paternal tone that his interests were legitimate, that young communists needed to defend themselves, especially on the eve of a campaign like the one coming the following year.

But they clarified that the “Jota” resolved its defense needs “organically,” with due discretion, never at the level of a grassroots organization, but always under the charge of a higher authority. For this reason, they made him a proposal: that he join the Ramona Parra Brigade (BRP), whose work had “a lot of adventure” in it, they told him.

The boy accepted, delighted. “During the whole meeting, he never contradicted us,” recalls one of the two leaders who spoke with him. It was the first time this interviewee had encountered Miguel Estay Reyno, who in the ranks of the PC would come to be known as “El Fanta.” The meeting marked a milestone in Estay Reyno’s political life.

From being a simple militant, he went on to perform propaganda tasks and later self-defense duties. Shortly thereafter, he made a leap into the intelligence area, where he became deeply involved with the party’s most sensitive and reserved information.

Thanks to his discipline, low profile, intelligence, and taste for risk, his was a dizzying career. Furthermore, he had the endorsement of trust: he was from a demonstrably communist family. That same ascent would open the door to one of the worst betrayals in the history of the PC.

Two years after the military coup, in 1975, with the party structure in exile or submerged in clandestinity, “El Fanta” was broken by Pinochet’s intelligence services after being betrayed by his superior, René Basoa. Later, both became active repressors. Working as a team, the information that the PC had entrusted to both of them turned into a boomerang that cost the lives of dozens of militants.

A “WELL-EDUCATED” GUY

All the interviewees who knew him in those years remember him as a serious, quiet, and very introverted adolescent. A withdrawal that some attribute in part to the early separation of his parents, both communists—she a psychologist and he a psychiatrist with ties to the party’s intelligentsia.

After the marriage broke up, the mother left the home and the father stayed with the three young children in a spacious apartment on Avenida Santa María, in Providencia, across from the curved bridge over the Mapocho that is now known as “De los candados” [The Padlocks]. “He was a very lonely kid, quiet, good-natured,” says “Lolo,” a “Jota” militant who in adolescence became one of his best friends and who speaks on the condition of anonymity, like almost everyone consulted for this investigation. “Lolo” often visited the family apartment.

He never saw traces of the father. Miguel was always alone with his two siblings: the eldest, Patricia, a university dance student; and Jaime, about three years younger than Miguel, a high school student at the Instituto Nacional.

Another friend from the “Jota” says that the three siblings had a strong veneration for their father, “who was a quiet, distant guy. He gave them plenty of material well-being, but they didn’t have a relationship of trust with him.” The three young people lived their lives without anyone putting much of a brake on them.

The first to begin militating was Patricia, an attractive girl they called “La Gata” [The Cat]. Shortly after, Miguel did, followed by Jaime, whom his older brother always tried to protect, assuming a sort of paternal role.

He did the same with Patricia. Miguel did not appreciate his friends’ jokes about the girl’s beauty. He did not have simple tastes; he liked quality clothing and good food. “Lolo” remembers his friend as always neat and tidy, wearing an elegant blazer.

He almost never drank alcohol. Another former “jotoso” emphasizes his obsession with not gaining weight. To slim down his figure, Miguel Estay dressed in black. “He was very worried about hiding his incipient belly and he had a big butt.

We would tease him about his butt and he would get furious.” He played piano, clarinet, sax, and transverse flute. His father gave him money to buy instruments and to attend classical music concerts. “He was like, well-educated, traditional,” emphasizes a friend from those days. “My mom adored him because he always arrived at my house with something, little cakes, flowers.

She would tell me: ‘He’s not like your other buddies.’”

“FIANCÉ” OF THE REVOLUTION

After accepting the offer from the two “Jota” leaders, Miguel Estay Reyno began working with the Ramona Parra Brigade (BRP), the PC’s street muralist group. The “Jota” was experiencing exponential growth in those days.

Being in its ranks was fashionable; entire groups of friends joined. The BRP was not immune to this boom. Although it had been founded only a year earlier, it already had a growing number of members. Estay Reyno became a regular at the “Jota” headquarters on Marcoleta.

A few weeks in the brigade were enough for him to ascend to a position in the propaganda area. From his new position, he gave the BRP an almost military discipline. “He liked us to march,” recalls a former muralist.

Although he was not a standout student at high school, with his new responsibilities, his studies lost almost all relevance for him. According to a friend, “he lived and died for the ‘Jota’.” He also did not seem to place great value on romantic matters.

He was attractive and caught the attention of women. But he was also shy, and only his closest friends knew of a couple of conquests, always “jotosas.” “I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he would answer: ‘My girlfriend is the Revolution’,” says “Lolo.” “Miguel became obsessed with the position; he was a very dedicated man, which at that time in the Communist Youth was seen as something very positive,” asserts a secondary communist leader from that time.

A member of the PC’s security apparatus asserts that his superiors in the BRP quickly discovered his potential and promoted him. “El Fanta had a short life within the Communist Youth and rose quickly because he was very intelligent,” comments this interviewee.

Furthermore, in the BRP, he had proven to be a man of action. What he liked was providing security, thanks to his daring and mastery of martial arts. “He was a soldier, a gun-head,” summarizes a witness.

The new offer was to join the secondary branch of the “Jota” Self-Defense Front. Once again, he accepted, delighted. His siblings Patricia and Jaime did as well, along with other close associates of his from the BRP.

SEASONED IN THE STREET

The Self-Defense Front was called the “Team.” It had been created by the PC as a shock group to escort rallies and other activities. Not only did the “Jota” have self-defense units, but other organs did as well.

Before Allende’s arrival at La Moneda, street fights with other groups were common, especially with the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). To repel those aggressions, there was the “Team.” Although some of its members could carry small arms, the order was to use them only in extreme cases and in self-defense.

The secondary branch of the “Team,” which Estay joined, had about 60 or 70 students. There was a mystique and strong camaraderie among its members. They felt like the chosen ones. They attended self-defense workshops for 3 or 4 hours a day, three nights a week.

They had to demonstrate their commitment and courage in street skirmishes that sometimes ended in beatings with sticks and chains, a reflection of the growing polarization of those days. Furthermore, they had to avoid commenting on personal matters.

The instruction was to operate with a “chapa” or alias, keeping their identity in reserve. For Miguel Estay, it was the perfect way to reconcile political commitment with his taste for danger. In addition to martial arts and classical music, he liked firearms.

But his greatest attachment was to mystery and science fiction books and movies. He devoured works of these subgenres and at times gave the impression that he felt like one of their characters. His favorite was “Fantômas,” the dark protagonist of a series of detective novels written in the first decades of the 20th century by the Frenchmen Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre.

In its original version, “Fantômas” is portrayed as a sadistic arch-villain, devoid of all loyalty and infinitely skilled at camouflaging himself in different personalities. He chose “Fantômas” as his “chapa,” from which the nickname “Fanta,” by which he would be known, would derive. His brother Jaime also opted for a fanciful alias: “Spectre.”

“I HIT HIM, I HIT HIM!”

He began to get around in his father’s white Volvo. He maintained his very well-groomed personal appearance, but he left his elegant blazer behind and began to wear olive green jackets and steel-toed boots.

The ideal attire for street fighting. It was the “Team” uniform. All its members bought the boots at a shop on Mapocho. Except for “Fanta,” who “had them made at a place where they made shoes by hand, with a higher shaft, and they were very expensive,” details a former member.

Another of his missions was to serve as a bodyguard for “Jota” leaders like the young teacher Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, which gave him access to his family environment. A PC witness from that time points out that, in private, “Fanta” disparaged those party figures who stood out in intelligence and oratory but who had never been in charge of confidential and dangerous tasks. “If, for example, I was a quiet leader who never spoke, but who suddenly appeared leading a secret apparatus that, if you’re not careful, kills you, that earned words from him like ‘how interesting this guy is!’” says this interviewee. Through sheer audacity, he made the respect of his peers grow. “Lolo” remembers a certain time when he and a group from the “Team” were on a bus through the center of the capital. During the trip, one of them provoked a Special Forces carabineer, who boarded the bus to arrest them. The policeman blocked the door. Without hesitation, “Fanta” jumped and knocked him down with a punch. Everyone managed to escape by climbing over the carabineer. The then-communist militant Avelina Cisternas was 17 or 18 years old when she began working in the Ramona Parra Brigade in 1970, the year of the decisive presidential elections between the socialist Salvador Allende, the DC’s Radomiro Tomic, and the right-wing independent Jorge Alessandri. The BRP muralists would go out at night to paint walls in an emblematic brigade truck. From afar, Avelina used to see “Fanta.” Several times there were shootouts with right-wing opponents. The muralists had instructions to hit the ground while “Fanta” and the “Team” repelled the attack. On one of those outings, the truck ran into DC muralists. Insults turned into stone-throwing. Stone-throwing turned into blows. One of the “Jotosos” who was in the truck remembers that “Fanta” got out of another vehicle and, authorized by a superior, fired. “The logical thing was to fire into the air. But what he did was aim at the chest of one of these propagandists. He shot to kill.” According to this witness, when they returned to the “Jota” headquarters on Marcoleta, they learned that the DC muralist had been seriously wounded. “I saw ‘Fanta’ euphoric. He was saying: ‘I hit him, I hit him.’ He felt like a hero.” The incident motivated a strong internal discussion within the “Jota,” in addition to a judicial investigation, which never managed to clarify the facts. PC leaders made their anger known to the Communist Youth leadership. But “Fanta” was not punished, as he argued that he had followed superior instructions. In a time of strong political convulsions, Estay was seen in the PC as a model militant. In order to dedicate himself full-time to the 1970 presidential campaign, he left high school and finished his secondary education through independent exams. A member of the team who refused to leave school remembers that they were reprimanded by a leader, who held “Fanta” up as an example: “He said that he had postponed his personal interests for the cause.” Given his obedience and commitment, it was not difficult for him to become the maximum head of the Regional Directorate of Secondary Students of Santiago (DREMS) between the beginning and middle of 1971. The first thing he did in his new position was to form a self-defense team. “When he arrived at any party organization, shortly after he became the boss,” affirms an interviewee who was his superior.

A COURSE IN THE SOVIET UNION

After Allende’s victory, the self-defense work intensified as political tension began to dominate national life. On the right, the Rolando Matus Command, a shock group of the National Party, and the paramilitary Nationalist Front Patria y Libertad emerged.

Street confrontations with supporters of the Popular Unity government became increasingly common. “If we had to hit someone, we hit them; everything was very cold and hard,” recalls a former member of the “Team.” One day in 1971, “Fanta” sent a message to Avelina Cisternas, the young BRP brigade member who used to see him from afar during his escort duties.

He wanted to meet with her. At the meeting, he told her without preamble that she had been selected to join one of the self-defense groups. She remembers that his style was terse, to the point, very serious.

When she accepted, he asked her to choose a “chapa.” Since Avelina couldn’t think of any, he informed her: “You are going to be called ‘Valentina’.” A tribute to the first Soviet cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova.

Approximately in August of that year, when Avelina and six others selected began their training, “Fanta” disappeared from the map. In a strictly reserved decision, he had been selected by the PC to travel to Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, where he would attend a security course along with a handful of chosen ones.

Starting in 1965, the PC had begun sending carefully chosen militants to these courses to professionalize its security apparatus in the event of an Allende presidential victory. Furthermore, this apparatus became a leadership structure, which in turn was divided into two areas: Intelligence and Security.

The former was in charge of analyzing current information, encrypting its own communications, and infiltrating everything from opposing parties and unions to the armed forces. The latter, Security, was in charge of the integrity of the top leaders, the self-defense groups, and counterintelligence to detect possible infiltrations in their own ranks.

The courses abroad lasted between one and seven months. Other training locations were the German Democratic Republic and Cuba. “Fanta” was 19 years old and was the youngest of the group that left for the Soviet Union.

The course lasted about four months and was held in the small town of Odintsovo, a few kilometers west of Moscow. According to a leader who at the time had security responsibilities in the PC, that course trained in conspiratorial practices such as checking and counter-checking (following and evading surveillance), personal defense, and paramilitary training, among other areas. “People were taught to practice the attitude and personality of someone who has a secret life,” he summarizes. “Fanta” returned to the country in the last months of 1971, all indications being mid-to-late November.

His time in the Soviet Union was very well evaluated by one of the delegation heads. “He did everything well. He was the one who shot the best and fastest, and he learned the use of all the weapons they presented to him,” points out a former member of the PC’s security apparatus.

“SO YOU REMEMBER US”

On December 1st of that same year, the first major street demonstration against Allende occurred. Organized by the right-wing opposition, the “March of the Empty Pots” brought together hundreds of women from middle and upper sectors, who marched banging pots along the Alameda.

They were escorted by pickets from Patria y Libertad and the Rolando Matus Brigade. Next to Cerro Santa Lucía, in front of Calle San Isidro, about thirty members of the “Jota” Self-Defense Front were waiting for the column.

They were led by “Fanta” and had orders to cut off the march, charging toward the south. In their advance, they were supposed to reach San Isidro, where there were supposedly reinforcements. When the march passed in front of them, “we went in to cut it off and we succeeded,” says “Lolo.” “But in the middle of the chaos, we realized that on the other side there was no one.

A whole mass of ‘fachos’ [fascists] came down on us and surrounded us.” Upon realizing that his companions were being overcome by fear, “Lolo” pulled out his weapon and fired into the air. “What are you doing!?” he remembers “Fanta” reprimanding him in the middle of the fight. “I’m saving you and everyone else, you son of a bitch!” “Lolo” and another former “jotoso” remember another episode, which occurred shortly after, during an event at the Paseo Bulnes.

According to “Lolo,” this incident left him with great evidence: how much his companion had changed since he began climbing positions in the party. At the demonstration, the “Jota” self-defense units decided to teach a lesson to a Trotskyist (a communist from a non-pro-Soviet faction) who was handing out pamphlets.

They were going to release him after giving him a few punches, but “Fanta” approached and, before letting him go, said: “So you remember us.” Then he pulled out a switchblade and stabbed him in the stomach.

The victim walked a few steps and fell to the floor before being rescued by some guys who put him in a car and fled. “Lolo” says that everyone was frozen by the scene, in his opinion “a sadistic, irresponsible, and criminal act.” Together with two other companions, they drafted a confidential report to their superiors, denouncing “Fanta.” For reasons he never knew, however, “Fanta” was not sanctioned. “Lolo” was removed from the “Team.” Another leader from those days remembers an almost identical incident during a rally at the Teatro Caupolicán, before Allende’s victory.

In a fight, “Fanta” violently beat a MIR member. Once he had subdued him, he pulled out a switchblade and stabbed him. “He did what the bad guys do in the movies: he wiped the knife on the guy’s clothes, without a muscle in his face moving.” Although his superiors reprimanded him, he was not punished either. “His taste for music shows that he was a guy of high sensitivity.

But in situations of action, that sensitivity was transformed into a cruelty beyond...” control,” notes a former friend, who mentions as an example one of “El Fanta’s” pastimes when he finished his party work: gathering his friends from the “Team” at night to go beat up marijuana users and homosexuals in the Parque Forestal. “Those outings were like volunteer work, because the other part was professional.

And he always hit harder than he needed to.”

DEACTIVATED AND SUBMERGED

Shortly after his return from the Soviet Union, “El Fanta” vanished from self-defense tasks. He had been discreetly incorporated into the PC’s intelligence apparatus, reserved only for the most trusted militants with aptitudes for this area.

He took charge of a secret work team tasked with selecting, training, and infiltrating agents into rival organizations like Patria y Libertad. The network had about 30 infiltrators, all with profiles that made it difficult to suspect them. “We chose fellow students from the Universidad Católica, with a good standard of living, from right-wing families.

That way we could know what they were planning, which were usually attacks on our premises or people,” explains one of the members of that team’s leadership. Like everyone who entered the PC’s intelligence apparatus, “El Fanta” had to publicly deactivate his militancy.

He did not appear at party premises again and left behind his already scarce social life. In case of any inquiry, even from trusted comrades, the order for all recruits was to say that they had grown bored of the party.

His dedication was full-time. He began to receive a salary. Although most of the meetings or “points” took place on the street, the apparatus had houses and apartments at its disposal. One of these properties was in the Lastarria neighborhood and was known as “The Library,” as it had many shelves with books. “El Fanta” kept a small collection of pistols and revolvers there.

Above “El Fanta,” as his superior, was René Basoa, a sociology student at the Universidad de Chile and a member of the PC’s National Commission of Control and Cadres, in charge of infiltration tasks. Basoa was a strange guy.

No one knew about his private life. Furthermore, he was flabby, red-faced, and had a child’s voice. In today’s words, a “little old man,” which contrasted with the martial nature of “El Fanta.” No, Basoa was not a combatant.

He was a political cadre specialized in information management. According to several consulted sources, Basoa was key to “El Fanta” being promoted to the Intelligence area. Everything indicates that “El Fanta” never forgot that. He was the first leader who saw in him conditions that went beyond physical skills.

PHOTOS FOR PATRIA Y LIBERTAD

At the beginning of 1973, the political situation was increasingly volatile. The Allende government had been denouncing the danger of a civil war for months and had summoned the military to the cabinet, while being squeezed by the right-wing opposition and by the demand to “advance without compromising” from the ultra-left and his own collective, the Socialist Party.

Rumors of an imminent right-wing coup d’état were intensifying. Allende himself knew that a conspiracy was underway in the military ranks. The big questions were its extent, who was leading it, and when it would be activated.

The PC’s security apparatus was restructured to face the worst-case scenario. Its commanders cut all visible organic ties with the “Jota” (Communist Youth). The relationship was maintained only with the adult party, through direct contact between the head of the apparatus, who went completely underground, and the secretary general, Luis Corvalán.

In April of that same year, the strike of the El Teniente miners began. Two months later, more than four thousand strikers marched on the capital. They were repressed by the Carabineros. Hundreds of them gathered in a gymnasium at the Universidad Católica de Santiago, protected by militants and commanders of Patria y Libertad.

The PC’s intelligence apparatus gave the order to infiltrate the gymnasium and photograph all the ultra-right-wing leaders. “El Fanta” and “Lolo,” who had also joined the device, were in charge. Equipped with a camera in a bag, they managed to enter without being detected. “We took photos of everyone from Patria y Libertad who was there, armed, of their bosses and top leaders.

I was terrified that they would catch us,” states “Lolo.”

THE FIRST BETRAYAL

In an interview published in the book La noche de los Corvos, by lawyers Nelson Caucoto and Héctor Salazar (2013), “El Fanta” recounts that he experienced the coup of September 11 in his apartment in Providencia, in constant telephone communication with his network.

He details what happened subsequently: “A few days later we had news that [the military] had gone to look for my dad at the hospital, so the decision was made to leave the apartment. My sister went to my mom’s house, my brother and I were renting rooms in safe houses.

My dad went to the houses of friends, he was at the house of some sisters, until he finally took asylum in October 1973. I never saw him again after that.” In that interview, he defines what his family experienced from then on as “a disaster”: a victim of severe depression, his sister Patricia also left the country.

Despite this chaos, he continued to operate. Except for some desertions, his network remained active. In the first months in hiding, the PC structure barely received any blows. It was very different for the PS and the MIR, the first two victims of the repressive apparatuses. “El Fanta” was sheltered for months in the apartment of a communist family on Avenida Carlos Antúnez.

A clandestine leader remembers crossing paths with him near Vicuña Mackenna, in the center. Estay Reyno maintained the same appearance. “We simply looked at each other without saying anything.” Meanwhile, the top heads of the PC’s security apparatus took new measures to try to survive.

The vertical direction was eliminated, with a single leadership, and a collective of three members was constituted. From then on, decisions would be made jointly, but with each commander being responsible for a specific area and connected, in turn, with a different member of the clandestine political commission.

In addition, the people under his command began to be evaluated periodically, trying to measure their commitment and temperance. In the case of René Basoa, in mid-1975 they decided not to give him any more tasks and gradually remove him from the structure.

The guy seemed cowed. “We had the impression that his physical and psychic strength was not hard enough to resist what was coming,” notes one of the heads of the apparatus. “El Fanta” was not. He was seen as a “tough guy.” No one had any doubts about him.

Around those same days, he moved to a safe house at the 19th stop of Vicuña Mackenna, where the family of Mauricio Lagunas Sotomayor, one of the members of his network, lived. According to a later reconstruction of events prepared within the PC, in the second half of 1975, when he was already living with the Lagunas, “El Fanta” was contacted by an old friend from the security apparatus.

It was Víctor Vega Riquelme, a young man who, after the coup, took asylum in an embassy without the party’s permission and left for East Germany. A serious offense, which did not escalate when Vega explained that he had left the country because he was in danger, but that he wanted to return and collaborate with the clandestine work.

Carlos Toro—a PC leader who had been in charge of the intelligence apparatus—considered that Vega should specialize as a radio operator and codebreaker, a task that his comrades in Santiago urgently needed to maintain contact with the leadership in exile.

The specialty was very sophisticated for the time. It included handling cutting-edge technology. Once his training was finished, Vega returned clandestinely to Chile. However, his link to connect with the party structure failed.

For weeks, “Vitoco” looked for a way to reconnect. And he succeeded through Jaime Estay and Isabel Stange, the younger brother and sister-in-law of Miguel Estay Reyno. Thus, he also resumed contact with “El Fanta.” He trusted all of them fully.

Those who worked in the PC’s intelligence apparatus at that time consider it very likely that Vega told Miguel Estay about his new mission. Vega must have been one of the last comrades to see “El Fanta” free.

According to a judicial statement given by the latter in September 1985, on the night of December 22, 1975, several armed civilians burst into the Lagunas’ house on Vicuña Mackenna. Hooded and blindfolded, they took “El Fanta” and Mauricio Lagunas Sotomayor.

They were agents of the Comando Conjunto. The repressive apparatus led by the Air Force had begun its onslaught against the PC, the only UP party that had kept its structures almost unscathed. In his cited 1985 statement, “El Fanta” omitted a very relevant fact: the security agents arrived at the house guided by René Basoa.

His superior had turned him in. As he would say years later, all his security measures were aimed at avoiding a betrayal “from below.” He never thought the betrayal would come from his boss.

A CONCERTED MEETING

“El Fanta” has always said that in his first days of detention he had no intention of collaborating with his captors, even though he was subjected to savage torture. He has also pointed out that at one point he was taken out of his cell and brought to the Lagunas family’s house to seize political material.

According to his version, during that outing, he managed to send the message that no one from the party could meet with him, especially his younger brother, Jaime. Everyone had to be clear that if he requested any meeting, it was because they were forcing him to set a trap.

At the beginning of January 1976, however, Jaime Estay Reyno went to a street meeting point with his older brother. He did so accompanied by his partner, Isabel Stange, and Víctor Vega Riquelme, the radio operator who had arrived from East Germany. “The strange thing is that my brother went to a point with me; that for me is what truly disorients me, because I trusted that he wouldn’t arrive, no one should have arrived,” points out “El Fanta” in the Caucoto and Salazar book.

With his brother detained, he claims, he would have been forced to collaborate to save his life and that of his partner. Thanks to that, Jaime Estay and his wife managed to go into exile. In exchange, says “El Fanta,” he had no other way out but to hand over all the information he had on the PC, drawing up a list of many of the militants he had known, from the Liceo Gabriela Mistral to the security apparatus.

The fate of Víctor Vega Riquelme was different: today he is a forcibly disappeared person. Although “El Fanta” has alleged that he had nothing to do with his murder, his former comrades in the security apparatus do not believe him.

They are convinced that he turned in Vega, as he was aware of his delicate mission as a radio operator and communications encryptor. And that his captors released him for a few hours so that “El Fanta” could arrange the appointment where Vega would be detained.

The inclusion of his brother Jaime and his sister-in-law would have been so that the radio operator would not suspect and would actually attend. “El Fanta” expected a trade: his life for Vega’s. But when they had Vega, there was no trade, because Vega must have told them how important his friend was.

They didn’t let “El Fanta” go; they kept hitting him hard,” points out a former member of the security apparatus. The betrayal was irreversible. After collaborating under torture, he became a convinced repressor, sentencing dozens of his former comrades to death.

To this day, it is impossible to know how many. The former leader of the “Jota,” Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, of whom “El Fanta” had been a bodyguard, was captured by the Comando Conjunto in 1976. Under torture, he recognized “El Fanta’s” voice as one of his interrogators.

Guerrero Ceballos was able to save his life because he had been seriously wounded during his detention, which exposed the kidnapping. Once he went into exile, he sounded the alarm to the entire PC: “El Fanta” had changed sides. From then on, his name became synonymous with maximum betrayal in the PC.

THREE BODIES IN QUILICURA

Almost ten years later, in March 1985, with the country in a state of siege, some peasants found the body of Guerrero Ceballos on a road in Quilicura, who had returned from exile in 1982 to collaborate in the fight against Pinochet.

A few meters away were the corpses of the sociologist José Manuel Parada and the publicist Santiago Nattino, also communists. All three had been throat-slit by members of the Dirección de Comunicaciones de Carabineros (Dicomcar), the intelligence device of the uniformed police.

The judicial investigation into this case managed to establish that Miguel Estay Reyno was part of the murderous commando, in his capacity as a civilian employee attached to the Dicomcar, where he ended up after the dismantling of the Comando Conjunto.

For that triple crime, “El Fanta” is currently serving a life sentence in Punta Peuco. From his cell, however, he managed in 2011 to have the Chilean State—through the Valech II Commission—recognize his status as a victim of torture, for which he receives a monthly pension, among other benefits. “No one is touched by a magic wand and transforms overnight.

It is a process. But if I had made a different decision, today I would be just another forcibly disappeared person,” he said in an interview with Ciper in November 2007. In March 1982, his former boss in the PC, René Basoa, was murdered by Army intelligence agents, everything indicates that it was in the context of an internal struggle with former members of the Comando Conjunto attached to the Air Force.

The father and the two brothers of “El Fanta” rebuilt their lives in Mexico. The betrayal of the eldest son caused a rift in the family. Until mid-2014, they had not seen him again.

LOOKING HIM IN THE EYES

A former member of the security apparatus defines him as “a psychopath.” He points out that he would never have approved his appointment as head of infiltration. “He never became a full-fledged agent because he didn’t have time.

When he shows himself like that, it’s because he is wearing a mask of a super-intelligent man, which got stuck to him since he was a child because he was addicted to superhero magazines.” “The big mistake was having given him delicate tasks without having done a psychological profile, because he was a psychopath,” agrees another former leader.

In his opinion, there were signs that no one wanted to see, such as his extreme coldness and discipline, which led him to never question any order, but also his tortuous relationship with women. As an example, he mentions that years later he found out from a primary source that Estay Reyno had a one-night sexual affair with a militant in the early 70s, which did not work out due to erectile dysfunction. “And he reacted violently against the comrade, he blamed her for everything.” “Lolo,” his old friend from the self-defense groups, has another explanation.

He maintains that what “El Fanta” attempted with the Comando Conjunto was to emulate the plot of one of his favorite spy books, The Red Orchestra, by Gilles Perrault. The text narrates the adventures of Leopold Trepper, a Soviet spy who led a network infiltrated in Nazi Germany.

Under the mask of collaborating with Nazism, Trepper saved comrades. “I think that is what he tried to do in his fantasy: a limited betrayal that in the long run didn’t work for him,” points out “Lolo.” As a clue, he mentions that a relative, also a communist militant and of whom “El Fanta” had been a very good friend, crossed paths with him on the street when he was already an active collaborator of the Comando Conjunto.

He was accompanied by other repressive agents. “El Fanta” saw him and winked at him. He never denounced him.” Between 2006 and 2007, when more than 20 years had passed since the triple throat-slitting of Guerrero, Parada, and Nattino, “El Fanta” began a silent process of approach to meet in his cell with Manuel Guerrero Jr., through a couple of intermediaries.

The young man, a sociologist and university professor, was initially interested in the idea. “I had the image that he looked my dad in the eyes for the last time and my dad looked him in the eyes before dying.

I was interested in rescuing, in the eyes of “El Fanta,” the last look of my dad,” he says. However, Guerrero Jr. declined when “El Fanta” made the soundings public in an interview granted in November 2007 to Ciper.

For him, it was obvious that it was not a sincere gesture of repentance. “I realized that he was operating, that this was information management to obtain prison benefits, that it was not a meeting, but something else.” How is it that someone who knew his family closely became an informer, then an active torturer, and finally ended up participating in the cold-blooded murder of the man he had protected, in one of the most horrendous crimes of the dictatorship?

Manuel Guerrero Jr. attempts an answer: “Theirs was not friendship, but a hierarchical relationship between militants, which for the personality structure of “El Fanta” was probably irritating, given his obsession with power.

More than fraternity between comrades, “El Fanta” felt that he was always there for errands, to provide protection to leaders like my father. When he becomes a torturer, he can finally have control and can say: “I have you there, Manuel, I am the one who has the upper hand now.” During the torture, my dad, being blindfolded, recognized his voice. “El Fanta” told him: “Don’t deny it anymore, Manuel, speak.

We know your dad, Don Manuel, your partner, Vero, and Manolito. Speak, they already know everything.” Indeed, “El Fanta” at that moment exercised total power, but reconverted into a traitor, informer, and torturer.”

Source: CIPER, November 4, 2014.

Who was Miguel Estay Reyno, “El Fanta,” convicted in the Degollados Case

The collaborator of the civic-military dictatorship was sentenced to life imprisonment and had been transferred to a hospital after contracting COVID-19.

Gendarmería confirmed on Saturday the death of Miguel Estay Reyno, known as “El Fanta.” This man was sentenced to life imprisonment for the Degollados Case. According to the statement, the man died at the San José Hospital, with complications associated with COVID-19. “El Fanta” was infected “after receiving a visit that tested positive for COVID-19, on August 10,” the text says.

For that reason, Miguel Estay Reyno had to be transferred from the Punta Peuco prison to the aforementioned health center, where he died.

Who was Miguel Estay Reyno?

The convict died at 68 years of age and was serving a life sentence for the Degollados Case. This case occurred in 1985. There, three militants of the Communist Party died: the sociologist and official of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, José Manuel Parada; the painter Santiago Nattino, and the teacher Manuel Guerrero.

Estay Reyno was a militant in the Communist Youth. However, he betrayed the party, in collaboration with the military dictatorship.

On the other hand, journalist Nancy Guzmán wrote the book “El Fanta: Historia de una traición.” There, she indicates that the later convict abandoned the party without suffering torture.

The most preponderant aggravating factor is that he betrayed his younger brothers. That meant torture and prison for them, despite the fact that El Fanta promised his father he would take care of them.

On the other hand, the death of Miguel Estay Reyno from COVID-19 is the second recorded in less than a week at the Punta Peuco prison. In fact, Gendarmería confirmed this same Friday the death of Jaime García Zamorano, a retired colonel.

Due to the epidemiological situation in the aforementioned prison facility, the prison population of module 1 is isolated as a preventive measure. This is in order to avoid the spread of the virus in the detention center in the midst of the pandemic.

Source: adnradio.cl September 5, 2021

A traitor can do more than a hundred brave men

The landscape of betrayals and loyalties within the Communist Party during the first years of the dictatorship.

By late 1970, the communist security apparatus that operated during the Salvador Allende administration was still in the midst of being organized. At that time, the youth self-defense front was politically directed by Ulises Merino Varas and René Basoa Alarcón, from their positions in the National Commission of Cadres and as members of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth (the Jota).

At the same time, they coordinated the entry of young militants into Military Service and the non-commissioned officer schools of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, all under the supervision of José Weibel Navarrete, deputy general secretary of the Jota.

Beginning in the seventies, these same individuals were responsible for selecting, from among the Communist Youth militants, those who would join the officer schools of the Armed Forces, the Carabineros, and the then-existing Investigative Service.

In 1971—likely in mid-April—José Flores Garrido, a prominent member of the Jota’s self-defense leadership, was designated to travel to the GDR to train in security matters.

Among his schoolmates were Daniel Escobar Cruz, who was seized at La Moneda during the coup and later murdered; Flores Garrido managed to evade repression until August 11, 1976, the date on which he was kidnapped and from which he remains a forcibly disappeared person; Malaquías Delgadillo Navarro, detained and tortured by the Comando Conjunto from October 24, 1975, and who later, after his release, escaped to Canada, where he resides today; Eduardo Valenzuela, a former student at the Universidad de Chile, currently based in Sweden; and David Canales, ("Rolando"), currently in Chile.

Upon his return, Flores Garrido was assigned high-level responsibilities in the Party's security front. From at least November 1975, he was incorporated at the same leadership level as "Santiago" and "Rolando," whom the Directorate ordered to leave the country because they had been identified and were practically cornered.

This trip took place on March 5, 1976, after they had been in hiding and subsequently granted asylum in the Hungarian embassy since the previous December 31.

Due to the betrayal of Carol Fedor Flores Castillo—detained first on June 5, 1974, and then definitively on June 7, 1975—who was a member of the military apparatus in the Southern Regional Committee, most of these structures fell in that area as well as in the Northern and San Miguel regional committees, especially starting in mid-1975.

This also dragged down the national leadership of the military front in September, October, and November of 1975.

From the time of his capture, torture, and prompt delivery of information by Carol Flores in 1974, which allowed for his release, he was harassed by FACH intelligence and threatened with death, both he and his family, until he surrendered completely to their designs, first with simple data and later with the organizational chart of the regional military front and part of the regional leadership and that of some local committees.

A year later, by the date of his second false capture, Carol Flores was already an active salaried collaborator and member of the Comando Conjunto, and thus began his massive and terrifying hunt for communist militants.

FACH Intelligence was the entity best prepared for the repression of leftist organizations. It possessed the highest-level leadership in Chile and wished to cleanse the stain of having had in its ranks throughout the Allende government not only the largest number of progressive young officers, but also of having gathered the largest number of mid-level and senior officers—formally constituted as a group—studying economics and social sciences at universities and research institutes, in the spirit of serving the government and with clearly socialist and constitutionalist tendencies.

Such a group was dismantled starting on September 11 itself, and its members were taken prisoner, tortured, murdered, or expelled into exile.

As spring 1975 approached, the detentions carried out by the Comando Conjunto ceased to be selective and became massive. The members of one of the groups of communist detainees, resulting from a raid on the Jota’s regional committees, were provisionally held together in a detention center and agreed, given that their captors knew much about their party participation, to acknowledge what had been their activity until September 11, 1973.

From then on—they would say—they did not participate in anything and were only united by old friendship.

Finally, under torture, they had to name known leaders and militants. The repressors obtained a good database of militants in the Military Front; also in the Security front.

Obviously, among those identified was an important part of the Party's Military and Security Directorate, fully active in the underground, and also the majority of the comrades who traveled abroad to receive courses of a paramilitary, security, and intelligence nature between the years 1969 and 1972.

From the beginning of this operation, the Comando Conjunto had the objective of identifying and hunting down the members of all the groups that went abroad—USSR, GDR, and Cuba—to train paramilitarily since before the Allende government, groups that comprised hundreds of comrades who left for short periods, of two, three, or more months.

Among them traveled

To Cuba, just as an example, Ulises Merino Varas (detained on February 2, 1976, and disappeared after his time at "Remo Cero," "Bellavista," Las Tranqueras Police Station, and "La Firma") and David Urrutia Galaz (captured on December 22, 1975, and murdered at "Remo Cero"). Both also went at a later date to the Intelligence or Security course in Europe.

They also did so in another group that went to Moscow: Ricardo Ramírez Herrera (made to disappear from Buenos Aires on April 16, 1977, in "Operation Condor"), Carlos Piñero Lucero (murdered by the "Caravan of Death" in Calama in 1973), and Rodolfo Núñez Benavides (made to disappear on May 18, 1976, in the framework of the Calle Conferencia trap).

Subsequently, ten people traveled to Moscow, among whom were Miguel Estay Reyno (later turned traitor, interrogator, and executioner of his own comrades); Víctor Vega Riquelme (later murdered). All the communists who traveled outside the country for advanced training courses between 1965 and 1973 did so with their true identities and legitimate passports.

In a subsequent delegation, they also headed to Moscow: Gastón Oyarzún Martínez, a prominent Chilean mountaineer who regained his freedom thanks to his friendship with Roberto Fuentes Morrison, "El Wally"; Ignacio González Espinoza (murdered at "Remo Cero"); Ricardo Weibel Navarrete (murdered at "Remo Cero"); Juan Quiñones Ibaceta (captured in a trap set for him by "el Fanta"), contemporaneously with a group from the Propaganda front, on July 23, 1976, and made to disappear from "La Firma," among others.

Also leaving to take the same type of course, on a different occasion, was René Basoa Alarcón, "Renato," who became a traitor shortly after being taken prisoner.

Source: interferencia.cl, September 6, 2021

Miguel Estay, El Fanta: The reasons of an executioner

His nickname brings to mind death, brutality, but above all, betrayal. Miguel Estay Reyno, alias "El Fanta," sentenced to life imprisonment for the Degollados Case, is part of the most painful and delicate area of human rights violations: that of the leftist militants who became persecutors; those who were tortured and ended up torturing. Here he tries to explain why he did what he did.

How does a man come to betray his friends, to be the executioner of his comrades? The question circles in the head of Manuel Guerrero Antequera like a great obsession. His father, Manuel Guerrero Cevallos, had his throat slit along with José Manuel Parada and Santiago Nattino in 1984.

Miguel Estay Reyno, El Fanta, a man who was a friend of the family, a comrade of his father in the Communist Party, participated in the murder. How could he do it?

Estay Reyno is serving a life sentence for that crime and has been in prison for 12 years. Gray hairs appear in his closely cropped hair and the bags under his eyes betray the passage of time, but he stays in shape through an intense exercise routine and soccer games twice a week with what he calls the "Sub-60" of the prisoners of Punta Peuco.

He speaks slowly, without grand gestures. And although he addresses ferocious chapters of his life, he remains as rational as when he was part of those chosen by the Communist Party for secret intelligence activity.

This man who seems calm and cerebral collaborated with the Comando Conjunto and Dicomcar, witnessed torture, turned in his comrades, and was one of the last faces Manuel Guerrero senior saw before being murdered.

"I have a desire to see him face to face, to look him in the eyes. I don't know why I have the idea that in his eyes I can still see some glimmer of what my dad looked at in that moment. I think that if we meet, upon seeing me as an adult, Manuel Guerrero too, I will manage to see something in those eyes.

I want him to tell me his extrajudicial truth, his version of the facts. I want to try to understand the ununderstandable," says Guerrero today. (SEE BOX)

Estay knows that beyond judicial responsibilities, he has a pending moral explanation for his acts. Here he attempts an answer.

My comrades or me

It is December 1975 and Estay has been captured and tortured by the Comando Conjunto. He was turned in by René Basoa, his superior in the Communist Party's intelligence apparatus. Shortly after, his brother Jaime, his sister-in-law Isabel Stange, and his friend Víctor Vega Riquelme also fall.

They are detained when they go to a meeting with Estay, which turns out to be a trap. Today his relatives are alive, but Víctor Vega remains disappeared.

For those who in those years were confronting the dictatorship, it is clear that Estay has begun to be part of the chain of denunciations and betrayals; that he has even set a trap for his brother. They put him on a blacklist.

Estay says today that he is not guilty of the detention of his relatives or the death of Vega and shows a ruling by judge Graciela Gómez that exonerates him from those facts. On the contrary, he claims to have sent his brother a message so that they would not go to any meeting with him.

-Why does my brother arrive at an encounter he should never have arrived at...? I don't have any explanation- he says, remembering the episode. Then he adds: "My brother's situation is the trigger for everything that happens with me. It forces me to make a decision under a condition of immense duress."

It can be understood that you collaborated to save your brother and sister-in-law. But over time you started doing it with great conviction.

-No one is touched by a magic wand and transforms overnight. It is a process. But if I had made a different decision, today I would be one more forcibly disappeared person. I would not have had the opportunity to have had my family, to have accompanied many of the people I love during all these years, and most likely I would be judged in a completely different way. But I made a choice.

Was the choice "my comrades or me"?

-Yes. And that was the conception with which the security services worked. I opted, and the truth is that I have paid dearly for my decision. I am not saying it was a good choice. It was only the possible choice, which is very different. And I don't know if anyone can dare to judge so harshly a choice for life...

"If I had made a different decision, today I would be one more forcibly disappeared person. I would not have had the opportunity to have had my family, and most likely I would be judged in a completely different way. But I made a choice."

-Along the way, I started meeting other people, with other ideas, and I started to assume them. The truth is that, like an important part of Chileans, I believed in the stamp that the military government managed to impose, fundamentally in economic terms.

And since I also had a certain degree of specialization in the area of intelligence, a relatively natural link occurred with people from the services, due to the interest they could have in that knowledge. I must admit that by 1984 or 1985, when I get into this section (Dicomcar), I had a significant degree of affinity with the vision of the military government.

Those do not seem like sufficient reasons to participate in operations...

-It is much more complex. People were dying... What I mean is that if today it were examined with true justice, in light of international conventions against torture, the elements of pressure that are present in my decision, I could not be judged.

On the other hand, towards the end of 1976, I was already on a PC blacklist. And that established a quite different playing field for me. It meant not only the impossibility of returning to the same thing, but also a personal stance that moves further and further away from the previous one.

But how did you go to the opposite extreme?

-I had an ideological formation, a mold with which I moved. That mold, in some way, became a kind of necessity. And in the conditions in which I found myself, it was much easier to change to another model than to reject all models, because that leaves many things in the world without explanation.

Did your brother understand that he and his partner are at the origin of what you did?

-He never wanted to understand. Jaime continues to be a militant in the PC. He is in Mexico; I don't have much connection with him.

Did you have the opportunity to explain it to him?

-Not personally. But now, through a third person, I sent him the ruling, which is quite substantive.

What do you expect to happen?

I have no intention for him to change his stance, but I do want to set forth my truth with a judicial ruling.

Martyrology

You were turned in by your friend and PC leader, René Basoa...

-I was sought out, accompanied by my captors, by a person who I very much regret is not alive. But I could not say that he turned me in voluntarily. I would be ignoring the effect of torture... On the other hand, my detention was not the result of one person's information.

There was a summation. One of the things that is still handled with great caution is how much information was provided by those who disappeared or those who were tortured and later regained their freedom.

I think many survivors have not been sincere about their own actions. In the Valech Commission, for example, it was evidenced that the people who did not provide information are rather scarce. Of course, they cannot be blamed with the same responsibility as someone who does it voluntarily.

But I insist, all the people of my characteristics and my generation who did not establish a form of collaboration are today part of the forcibly disappeared.

How do you live after having turned in many people who disappeared?

Painfully... I have recognized my responsibility in the identification of a number of PC militants... One tries to justify oneself. That is always present... And that brings me back to the substantive question: if all that justifies the need to be a forcibly disappeared person...

Some were able to make the voluntary choice of martyrdom... But endorsing or backing that seems ethically dubious to me.

You participated later in Dicomcar and in the throat-slitting of Santiago Nattino, José Manuel Parada, and Manuel Guerrero. You have never asked for forgiveness regarding those murders.

-One must be cautious about that. I have discussed this with Father Fernando Montes, who has had the immense generosity of accompanying me many times. The key is how we establish the way in which we ask for forgiveness.

For some, something between that person and God could be enough. I want you to understand that there is no single way to ask for forgiveness. For example, I availed myself of the Effective Repentance Law, the form that justice established to be able to collaborate with the cases, something so deeply felt for the victims' families.

That was very questioned at the time. Many saw in this a form of taking advantage. And I guarantee you that if I can be repentant of anything, it is of having availed myself of that law, because it meant for me, by popular vote of my fellow cause-mates, 6 years in Colina II and isolation.

Assuming the truth—as Carlos Herrera and others have assumed it—means a real problem. It is not easy, I guarantee it.

Manuel Guerrero

In recent times, Estay Reyno has cultivated an unusual relationship with Nelson Caucoto and Héctor Salazar, two of the plaintiff lawyers in the Degollados Case. Both host the program "Hablando en voz alta" on Radio Tierra, and Estay listens to them and sends them his comments.

"It's not that everyone in Punta Peuco is a fan of Salazar and Caucoto," says the former agent. But he acknowledges that that program keeps them up to date on the trials.

It was precisely Caucoto and Salazar who informed him that Manuel Guerrero Antequera wanted to meet him.

What was your relationship with Manuel Guerrero? His son says that you were at his house and played with him...

-I met him in 1969, when I joined the Communist Youth. He had a leadership rank and I was just another militant. I started to have some responsibilities and I saw him daily in various activities, but we never had that degree of closeness. I don't remember ever having been at his house. I knew his wife perfectly well, but I insist, I don't think there was a degree of friendship. Yes, of closeness.

Manuel Guerrero the son wants to talk to you.

-In August 2006, I received through a third person a request from Manuel Guerrero Antequera to visit me here. Understanding that it is a very difficult situation for him and for me, I agreed immediately. But the authorization has not materialized. I have been told that he is still thinking about this alternative. I have the most absolute willingness to receive him.

Surely he is going to ask you why they killed his father. How does one answer that to a son?

-It is immensely difficult to be able to answer something like that... I hope to be able to answer him something that is as close to the truth as possible and that he can, in some way, understand it. But I have to deliver the answer to him.

The family believes that one reason why Guerrero was murdered is an account he wrote in 1976 in which he identifies you as one of the men who tortured him during his first kidnapping.

-I have not read the testimony. I have indeed found a multitude of testimonies of those same characteristics. People who have pretended to identify me and that would not correspond with my actions.

How do you justify those murders today in the eyes of society?

It is impossible to be able to justify those types of things today... Nothing and no one can justify the deaths that occurred.

Are you referring to all the deaths?

Absolutely all the deaths. It is not about hiding behind the biggest ones while being the smallest in the class, but I have had 15 years of prison, I have lost absolutely everything, and I believe there are many responsibilities that have never been assumed.

Obviously, this did not start on September 11, 1973, nor did it start because of the bad mood of some general who that day had the idea of taking power. There were many previous things, an exacerbation of spirits, an over-ideologization everywhere.

You were in the most extreme position of both sides.

Yes. I am like the character from "The 25th Hour": always choosing poorly. It is part of the ill-advised decisions I have made all my life. I have been wrong almost always.

What has been the worst?

Undoubtedly, having participation in taking the life of a person. In any condition, it is a very bad thing.

Twelve years with Romo

He says that in these 15 years he has lost everything...

-They have been hard, difficult years. The hardest thing has been the distance from my family.

Was your marital breakup after the conviction?

-Yes, of course. It is quite clear that it is part of all this...

Who are your close ones here in Punta Peuco?

-I have a very great closeness with the Carabineros non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera. I also had a lot of closeness with Osvaldo Romo. He was my neighbor in the room and I spent a lot of time with him in Colina. In total, we spent 12 years together. On many occasions, it was my turn to notify of his medical emergencies, to assist him because he was highly dependent.

How was your relationship with Romo?

-Now, he was a diabetic, hypertensive old man, with the seven plagues, incapable of moving or supporting himself on his feet. He did, however, retain a good long-term memory. And he could even be entertaining.

He had many stories, although I cannot verify that all of them were true... On a dozen occasions, I saw him very close to death. On one occasion they took him away in agony. I have had a reunion with the Catholic faith, for that reason I believe there were enough judges who judged him, so I was not among them.

Did he bequeath all his belongings to you?

-No, the truth is that he lived very poorly in his last years. There were entire years in which he did not have any visits. He lived very affected by the situation of his family in Brazil, undocumented.

He received some things from the charity of religious organizations, especially from someone who was always very close and continues to be: Sister Yolanda. She loved him dearly. Osvaldo's grandchildren came from Brazil the Saturday after his death.

When I went to greet them, they expressed to me that there were many things they were not going to take and that they wanted to leave them to me. I thanked them. A part was donated to another place, others were kept by me and others who needed them.

What did you feel when you saw his funeral?

-We had discussed it several times... He had a very clear concept that he was approaching his end. A couple of years ago, a cardiologist at the Barros Luco hospital gave him up for dead. From that, it was discussed about the possibility that his remains could be disposed of and that the family could in turn cremate him.

He was a pariah of society and the most physical manifestation is that there had never been a funeral so...

-Of so much abandonment. I think he expected it. The true funeral was the second one: it was the people to whom Osvaldo Romo mattered. His grandchildren, this lady who visited him, a couple of religious people, no more. In the 12 years I was here, I never met other relatives who visited him. Some friends would suddenly appear...

Father Montes said that he came to a university graduation of yours.

-Yes, while in Colina I took a diploma in Behavioral Management techniques from the Universidad Católica del Norte. It lasted several semesters, and the university had the generosity to hold a ceremony for me here in Punta Peuco.

And Father Fernando, whom I love immensely, had the generosity to accompany me. Before that, I had to take the aptitude test (and he shows the certificate: verbal 745, mathematics 679, history and geography 749).

It would have been enough for almost any career.

-Yes... I did my thesis work on autism... (he has an autistic son).

The PAA and the diploma speak of an attitude towards confinement; what is your daily life like?

-One of the things one must avoid is asking oneself what I am going to do today. I follow more or less the same routine: I get up very early, I have breakfast at 5:30, I listen to the news; I am quite a fanatic about that.

In the afternoon I dedicate myself to reading. I have a lot of different interests. We have the intention of organizing a library in Punta Peuco and a literary workshop. The unlocking is at 8 in the morning. At that time I start physical activities. I do quite a bit of gymnastics, weights, I run. And now they authorized us to play some baby soccer games twice a week. It is the Sub-60 more or less.

Others' guilts

Although he is sentenced to life imprisonment, Estay Reyno is not willing to carry others' guilts. For that reason, during the last visit to Punta Peuco by the president of the Court of Appeals, Cornelio Villarroel, Estay asked him to study his incrimination in the kidnapping of Reinalda Pereira—3 months pregnant—and Edrás Pinto.

The investigation by minister Víctor Montiglio in the so-called Conferencia Case made other responsible parties appear. Estay asks that they de-amnesty him and judge him. "There exists a demonstration of my non-participation in those two cases, there being already people even confessing," he argues.

You are sentenced to life imprisonment; why does it matter to you to prove your innocence in those cases?

-Today there is an effort to fix all these situations judicially as close to the truth as possible. For that reason, it is also important to discriminate between guilty and not guilty. I don't see why I should carry facts that do not correspond to me.

Do you think that by clarifying those cases they could pardon you?

-Being very honest, I don't think there is political space. I requested it in '97, asking for the commutation of the sentence for that of expulsion to Paraguay. It took them 7 years to tell me "no." But I do believe that establishing the truth is important.

Today there is a mass of accumulated information that did not exist when these trials started and it was easier to stick with those who created fewer problems. But thanks to the judges with exclusive dedication, a series of characters who were quite protected by the institutions began to appear.

It began to seem meaningless to the judges that very minor characters had had the responsibilities, commands, and possibilities of action that were attributed to them.

In the Degollados Case, how high up do you delimit the responsibilities?

-I have the conviction that there was intellectual authorship from the superiority, but I don't have the proof. Other people would have to speak, those who did have access to those meetings. Today, the truth has already been established: that not a leaf moved without the knowledge of the leaderships of the institutions.

But for a long time, there was a clear intentionality to silence it with counterintelligence teams and departments.

BOX 1

Testimony of Manuel Guerrero Antequera: "In a very perverse and painful way, the Fanta is almost a family member"

Manuel Guerrero's father was one of the three whose throats were slit in 1985, a case for which Miguel Estay Reyno is serving a life sentence. But the Guerrero family has lived with the ghost of the Fanta since 1976, when Manuel Guerrero Cevallos recognized him as his torturer.

The Fanta is a character who causes me many contradictions. On one hand, he is one of the murderers of my fa...

...in a way, one of the intellectual and also material authors of his throat-slitting. He was present both at the time he was held as a forcibly disappeared person in '76 and participated in his torture—acknowledged by my father—and he also participated in '85 at the moment they slit his throat.

But for me, "El Fanta" is also a former militant of the Communist Youth of Chile, who was a companion and comrade of my father, of José Weibel, of Ricardo Weibel, and of a series of young communists of that generation.

Therefore, this human being awakens a very great anguish in me: what were the conditions and possibilities that caused a communist militant, a young Chilean, to be able to turn overnight not only into someone who spoke under torture, which would be something absolutely normal or human, but also into an informer, into just another murderer.

For me, "El Fanta" is a character who strangely causes me rejection and at the same time a perverse fascination. He is ominous, evil itself, but he is a familiar face, who was once a friend, who once held me very close when I was a child. Beneath that face of normality appears all the evil that we as human beings are also capable of carrying out.

I am convinced that both the tortured and the torturers are victims who are in differential positions regarding social and political conditions, and a certain way of being of Chilean society—savage—which allowed for the explosion of fascist practice in Chile, of the annihilation of the other.

They are differential victims because some were turned into torturers and others were turned into the objects to be tortured. However, we are talking about people who played soccer together, ate barbecues together, which is the case with "El Fanta."

Therefore, for me, "El Fanta" is also a victim, but like every human being, he had the opportunity to say no, to at least bite his tongue and die. He always had the option, as so many other people did, not to become not only informers, but torturers themselves. Because of that lack of courage, of decision, and his direct responsibility in the crimes, he must serve his sentences in full.

For many years I have lived with the ghost of "El Fanta," a ghost that has been present since my childhood. After my father survived the torture of the Comando Conjunto and we went into exile, I accompanied him to recovery sessions following the electric shocks they gave him.

I lived his torture very closely through him, and he is a character who was present in my father's accounts, both oral and written. He left testimony of this familiar voice that also participated in the torture, who had been a former comrade and who was now part of the "fascist hordes," as he used to say. "El Fanta" spoke to him directly, telling him that he knew my mother, Vero, and Manolito; he spoke to him about our entire family structure, about details that only someone very trusted could know.

That was one of the moments when my father was completely disarmed, more so than by the physical violence.

Therefore, this ghost was always present, and then he reappears in '84 and '85 in the accounts of "El Papudo" (Andrés Valenzuela, an agent who defected), which were published and which my father knew. There, it is known again that "El Fanta" was present in different instances.

He is someone who has crossed my life, and I have a desire to see him face-to-face, now that he is imprisoned. To look him in the eyes because he was one of the last people to see my father alive. I don't know why I have the idea that in the eyes of "El Fanta" I can still see some glimmer of what my dad looked at in that moment.

I think that if we meet, seeing me as an adult, and Manuel Guerrero as well, I will manage to see something in those eyes. I want him to tell me his extrajudicial truth, his version of the facts. I want to try to understand the ununderstandable.

Perhaps it doesn't make much sense, but "El Fanta," in a way, also constitutes me. In a very perverse and painful way, he is almost a relative, and it hurts me; "El Fanta" makes me angry.

At the moment when the lawyers proposed my request to meet with him, he agreed immediately. "El Fanta" is willing, and I believe he is waiting for me to go see him at Punta Peuco. I believe there are truths that are not of the judicial realm but of human daily life.

They are very material truths, and I believe something can emerge in that meeting. I don't know exactly what, but at least to know what happened to him, because he had the privilege of being there in the last minutes of my father's life. Therefore, for me, even being his murderer, he is a person who is close.

BOX 2

"El Wally" and Basoa: the funerals of "El Fanta" In 1982, fear paralyzed Miguel Estay after the death of his friend René Basoa, with whom he shared duties in the Comando Conjunto and who was a former comrade in the PC.

So much so that he did not dare to go to his funeral. Years later, he reproached himself for his cowardice and decided it would not happen again. That is why, when in 1989 Roberto Fuentes Morrison, "El Wally," was riddled with bullets at the door of his house—just like Basoa—he came from Paraguay, where he had taken refuge with a fake passport provided precisely by the deceased.

He arrived late, but he visited the grave.

Both dead men are key in the life of "El Fanta." René Basoa was his superior in the PC's intelligence apparatus; together they went into hiding, and it was he who handed him over to the Comando Conjunto in December 1975, after being tortured. Later, both headed the blacklist of communists identified as Pinochet's agents.

In 1982, Basoa was murdered, and although for a long time it was thought to be an execution—which triggered Estay's terror—the investigation into the murder of Tucapel Jiménez shed other light. At that time, Basoa was working with Estay's uncle, the importer of the weapon with which the union leader was killed.

The revolver was delivered on consignment to the Armería Italiana, and Basoa played a confusing role with the receipt that proved its origin. "It's on the DINE's account, it's that simple," concludes Estay.

His relationship with Fuentes Morrison arose after his captivity in 1975 in the Comando Conjunto. The FACh agent recruited him as a collaborator until he joined the ranks of the Dicomcar in 1984. Under his wing, he felt protected. "There were elements of his personality that I found attractive. He had a great capacity for making friends and he gave me a lot of confidence," says Estay.

Source: ciper.cl, January 2, 2017

El Fanta, betrayal and trust This Saturday, the death of the criminal against humanity Miguel Estay Reyno, alias "El Fanta," was reported in the Punta Peuco prison as a consequence of Covid-19. He was the one who participated in the throat-slitting of the communist professionals—the teacher Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, the sociologist José Manuel Parada, and the publicist Santiago Nattino—in the terrifying hours from their kidnappings until the discovery of their bodies, between March 28 and 29, 1985.

His name reopens very deep wounds, both personal and collective, not only for having been one of the perpetrators of the atrocious crimes of the Dictatorship, but for something as painful or more so: "El Fanta" was a traitor.

A communist militant during the Unidad Popular, he later transformed into an agent who turned in his family and his comrades. He maintained that it was under the pressure of torture, but journalistic investigations disprove this. He was, in fact, a friend of Manuel Guerrero and his family, which makes it very difficult to conceive that he ended up being one of his executioners.

The pains of those dark years in the history of Chile remain with us. So many unjustly detained, tortured, persecuted, and exiled people are still part of this community. There are also many who are not here and whose memory remains deep and sensitive for their loved ones.

That wound continues to be part of the Chile of today. But there are other pains, perhaps more subtle and equally profound, that we have not yet been able to assess. It has been said that during the Dictatorship, the social fabric slowly forged over decades in the country was destroyed, until we became more individualistic and self-absorbed.

In this, something, if not much, had to do with the conduct promoted by the Military Junta to persecute its opponents, which was, precisely, betrayal. How can one live if, from one moment to the next, our friends, work colleagues, party comrades, neighbors, and even family members could become those who accused and turned us in?

We empathize and stand in solidarity with what those generations lived through, and we understand very well why it has often been so difficult, when not impossible, to trust human beings again.

In an interview conducted 14 years ago by journalist Francisca Skoknic for CIPER, Miguel Estay Reyno tried to explain his behavior. He described that the attempt by the repressive apparatuses to psychologically break the tortured to transform them into collaborators was recurrent.

That if he had not agreed, he would be one more forcibly disappeared person and would not have had the option to survive and start a family. And that, although it might be difficult to understand, he had opted for life, for his life.

Beyond the empathy or distance one may have for the words of someone who caused so much damage, it is evident, and as the son of the teacher Guerrero, Manuel Guerrero Antequera, has pointed out, that there is no relationship between any type of duress and the conversion into a torturer.

The internal recesses of such a dark character went with his death, and today we can only speculate, while we remain here, in a moment in which trust in the collective seems to be reconstituting itself, after the society that the Dictatorship bequeathed to us.

Source: radiouchile.cl, September 6, 2021

Parole denied for "El Fanta"

The person convicted of crimes against humanity had filed an amparo appeal with the Santiago Court of Appeals.

The Santiago Court of Appeals rejected the amparo appeal filed by Miguel Estay Reyno, known as "El Fanta," an inmate at the Punta Peuco prison, against the Parole Commission of the appellate court that denied him the benefit.

In a unanimous ruling, the Fifth Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Juan Manuel Muñoz, Miguel Vázquez, and the lawyer (i) David Peralta—ruled out any violation of the law in the appealed resolution that denied the benefit to Estay Reyno, who is serving a sentence for crimes against humanity.

"In the case at hand, this constitutional path has been used to attempt to modify the decision adopted by the Parole Commission in October of the current year, when the application was rejected. It happens that the aforementioned Commission has the practical function inherent to the position of those who compose it, and the resolution was reasoned and duly founded," the ruling maintains.

It adds that: "In this sense, the resolution pronounced by the parole commission provides that the applicants—among whom is the appellant—were convicted of crimes against humanity, which have a special regulation, with special attention to the gravity of the crime.

Furthermore, in accordance with what was resolved by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it has indicated that the State must guarantee the investigation and punishment of those responsible for serious crimes against humanity, refraining from resorting to figures such as amnesty or the statute of limitations, as well as measures that intend to prevent criminal prosecution or suppress the effects of the conviction.

In that sense, the Commission considered that this obligation is infringed when administrative benefits are granted to the convicted, leaving the sentences without practical effects."

"Under those circumstances—it continues—when the Commission decides to reject parole, it does so by analyzing national regulations and the treaties ratified and in force with Chile, considering the crime for which the appellant was convicted and the background provided by the Conduct Tribunal, deciding to reject parole (...) it is not verified that there was any arbitrary or illegal act on the part of the respondent that has deprived, disturbed, or threatened the right to personal liberty of the appellant, from the moment that the Commission has acted within the scope of its competence and in a case provided for by law."

Thus, "El Fanta" will continue to be detained, serving his sentence at the Punta Peuco prison.

Source: elmostrador.cl, January 11, 2017

"More than 17,000 days" after being kidnapped by the Comando Conjunto: Finally, there is justice for José Flores Garrido The former agents who were convicted are currently serving other sentences at the Punta Peuco prison for cases of human rights violations.

This week, Minister Marianela Cifuentes, of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, issued a first-instance sentence and convicted four former agents of the Comando Conjunto, members of the Navy, Air Force, and Carabineros, as responsible for the qualified kidnapping of José Edilio Flores Garrido, a university student and leader of the Communist Party, which occurred starting on August 11, 1976.

The magistrate sentenced Air Force Colonel Juan Francisco Saavedra to the penalty of 10 years of presidio mayor in its minimum degree as the author of the qualified kidnapping of the victim, who currently appears as a forcibly disappeared person.

In the same way, Navy Captain Daniel Guimpert Corvalán and Carabineros Colonel Manuel Muñoz Gamboa were sentenced to the penalty of 8 years of presidio mayor in its minimum degree, and Alejandro Saéz Mardones, a second sergeant of the Carabineros, to 6 years of prison, all as authors of qualified kidnapping.

In the case of the former Air Force employee Roberto Flores Cisterna, the minister acquitted him of the crime of qualified kidnapping and illicit association.

The former agents are currently serving sentences at the Punta Peuco prison, involved in other cases of human rights violations.

In this regard, the plaintiff lawyer and legal coordinator of the Caucoto Abogados firm, Francisco Ugás Tapia, pointed out that "as lawyers representing the family that survives Mr. José Edilio Flores Garrido, we celebrate and positively value the sentence of Minister Marianela Cifuentes.

This puts an end to the first instance of the case, convicting 4 subjects for their intervention as authors of the qualified kidnapping of the victim."

"Almost 47 years after the events, national justice acts through this decision, which begins to put an end to that state of impunity that covered those responsible for this crime against humanity," added the professional.

Ugás also maintained that "although we identify some legal aspects that we do not share, which will motivate our challenge, we recognize in this sentence great work by the national judiciary, personified in the minister, insofar as it evidences compliance with the international obligations that impose on the State the duty to investigate and punish these facts and those responsible, and to provide reparations to the victims, as required by international law."

For his part, the victim's brother, Roberto Flores Garrido, expressed that "nearly 47 years have passed since the kidnapping of my brother by the State's security apparatuses under the civil-military dictatorship. 47 years of pain, tragedy. It has been 47 years of constant searching."

"My parents, like many parents in my country, passed away with the heartbreaking pain of not knowing what happened to their son. Nearly 47 years have passed, that is to say, more than 17,000 days that we have tried to live one by one in dignity, preserving the memory.

Perhaps we will never know the absolute truth, perhaps we will never find the body to fulfill the ritual as human as it is to say goodbye to our dead," added Flores.

Finally, the victim's brother stated that "this sentence comes to alleviate in a considerable but not absolute way this injustice. I hope that this ruling contributes to strengthening the 'never again' that we long for and need so much for our homeland. My family and I receive this ruling in peace, without resentment but with memory."

The facts According to the investigation led by Minister Cifuentes, it was established that: 1) That, at the time of the events, August 11, 1976, a group of people, composed of officials of the Air Force, Navy, Carabineros, and civilians, formed a de facto hierarchical organization, called the Comando Conjunto, with the purpose of investigating and repressing the Communist Party of Chile and the Communist Youth. 2) That, in that period, said organization was directed by Air Force Brigadier General Freddy Enríquez Ruiz Bunger, director of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (DIFA); Group Commander (A) Antonio Benedicto Quiroz Reyes, head of the Counterintelligence Department of the DIFA; and Squadron Commander (A) Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, chief officer of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, and integrated by 1st Lieutenant IM Daniel Luis Enríque Guimpert Corvalán, head of the Counterintelligence Department of the Navy Intelligence Service (SIN); Carabineros Lieutenant Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa, of the Counterintelligence Department of the Carabineros of Chile Intelligence Directorate (DICAR); Carabineros official Alejandro Segundo Sáez Mardones; and civilians César Palma Ramírez and Miguel Arturo Estay Reyno, among others. 3) That said organization had an institutional building, located at Calle Juan Antonio Ríos N°6 in the commune of Santiago, and detention centers, among them the facility called "La Firma," located at Calle Dieciocho N°229 in the same commune. 4) That on August 11, 1976, in the afternoon, agents of the aforementioned organization who were moving in a light blue Peugeot 404 model car and a cream-colored Renault car, detained, without legal right, José Edilio Flores Garrido, a militant of the Communist Party, at the intersection of Avenida Club Hípico and Calle Lago Pirihueico. 5) That, subsequently, the victim was transferred to the clandestine detention center located on Calle Dieciocho in the commune of Santiago, called "La Firma," a place that was in charge of Navy 1st Lieutenant Daniel Guimpert Corvalán and Carabineros Lieutenant Manuel Muñoz Gamboa, among others, and in which civilian employees César Luis Palma Ramírez, the former communist militant Miguel Estay Reyno, and Alejandro Saéz Mardones, among others, performed duties.

6) That, to date, the whereabouts of José Edilio Flores Garrido are unknown.

by Opazo Source: elciudadano.cl, April 23, 2022

Supreme Court confirms convictions of 27 former agents of the Comando Conjunto for crimes against five communist militants committed between 1975 and 1976 The Supreme Court rejected the appeals for annulment filed by the defenses of the former agents of the so-called Comando Conjunto against the sentence that convicted 27 of them for their responsibility in the crimes of simple kidnapping and qualified homicide of Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza and Juan René Orellana Catalán; and in the qualified kidnappings of Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete, Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz, and Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González, all militants of the Communist Party. The crimes were perpetrated between October 1975 and June 1976, in the city of Santiago.

The so-called Comando Conjunto was a repressive apparatus created by the dictatorship under the tutelage of the Air Force (FACh) and the participation of agents from the army, navy, carabineros, and fascist civilians, which operated mainly between the years 1975 and 1977, and whose raison d'être was to compete in repressive and criminal tasks with the absolute power held by the DINA under the tutelage of the army and the direction of Pinochet and Contreras.

In a unanimous ruling (case roll 32.012-2022), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Teresa Letelier, and minister Jean Pierre Matus—confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced former FACh officer Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola and former Carabineros officer Manuel Agustín Muñoz Gamboa to penalties of 18 years of prison, plus 13 years and plus 3 years of prison, each.

Former Navy officer Daniel Luis Enrique Guimpert Corvalán was sentenced to 18 years, plus 12 and plus 3 years of prison.

Former Army officers Álvaro Julio Federico Corbalán Castilla and Sergio Antonio Díaz López, and former Navy officer Jorge Aníbal Osses Novoa, were sentenced to 12 years of prison, plus 10 years and one day, plus 400 days of prison each.

Agents Raúl Horacio González Fernández and Alejandro Julio Segundo Sáez Mardones were sentenced to two terms of 10 years and one day of prison, plus 400 days of prison each.

Agents Roberto Alfonso Flores Cisterna and Juan Carlos Hernán Rodrigo Villarreal were sentenced to 10 years and one day, plus 5 years and one day, plus 400 days of prison each.

Fascist civilian Otto Silvio Trujillo Miranda was sentenced to 10 years and one day of prison. Agent Lenin Figueroa Sánchez was sentenced to two terms of 5 years and one day, plus 400 days of prison.

Agents Sergio Daniel Valenzuela Morales and Juan Atilio Aravena Hurtuvia were sentenced to 5 years and one day of prison, plus 5 years, plus 400 days of prison.

Fascist civilians Andrés Pablo Potín Lailhacar, Viviana Lucinda Ugarte Sandoval, Emilio Mahias del Río, and agents Juan Luis Fernando López López, José Evaristo Rojas Alruiz, and Francisco Segundo Illanes Miranda were sentenced to 5 years and one day of prison, plus 400 days of prison.

Ernesto Arturo Lobos Gálvez and Alejandro Jorge Forero Álvarez were sentenced to 5 years and one day of prison, plus 60 days of prison.

Roberto Francisco Serón Cárdenas was sentenced to 5 years and one day of prison. Robinson Alfonso Suazo Jaque, Pedro Ernesto Caamaño Medina, Pedro Juan Zambrano Uribe, and José Hernando Alvarado Alvarado were sentenced to 4 years, plus 60 days of prison each.

The also convicted Antonio Benedicto Quiros Reyes and Miguel Arturo Estay Reyno died in the course of the process.

In the judicial investigation and first-instance ruling, Minister Miguel Vásquez Plaza established that there existed a de facto group that operated clandestinely between the years 1975 and 1976, formed mainly by agents who belonged to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, in addition to Carabineros of Chile, Navy, and Army, with the collaboration of civilians, whose main objective was the repression of the Communist Party Youth, for which they proceeded to detain several of them.

This group, called Comando Conjunto, used various facilities for detentions and torture: Hangar de Cerrillos; Nido 20, a secret detention and torture facility located at Calle Santa Teresa N° 037, paradero 20 of Gran Avenida; Nido 18, a secret facility located at Calle Perú N° 9053, La Florida, Santiago, which was used exclusively for torture; La Prevención or Remo Cero, which were cells located inside the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, all this during the year 1975; La Firma, at the beginning of 1976, when said group moved its operations to the back of the property in charge of the Carabineros of Chile, located at Calle Dieciocho, opposite N° 229, which belonged to the former newspaper Clarín, being called La Firma.

The operational action of the group consisted of detaining people with the modality of kidnapping, keeping them captive in secret facilities, and subjecting them to interrogations and torture, physical and psychological, to obtain information and break their will, achieving the collaboration of some of them, to the point that some were assimilated as operational agents of the group, which provided greater effectiveness in the chain detention of communist militants, who were then made to disappear; of some of them, in the course of the years, part of their remains were found.

On November 7, 1975, at approximately 10:00 PM, Ricardo Manuel Weibel Navarrete was detained at his home on Calle Río Maule in the commune of Recoleta by subjects wearing civilian clothes; he was kept deprived of liberty in the facility called La Prevención or Remo Cero, located inside the Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Colina, the last place he was seen alive, and subsequently, his bones were found on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga, Peldehue.

On October 20, 1975, in the early morning, Luis Desiderio Moraga Cruz was detained at his home on Pasaje Tokio in the Población Juanita Aguirre, commune of Conchalí, Santiago, by subjects wearing civilian clothes; he was kept recluse in the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, inside which was the facility called La Prevención or Remo Cero, this being the last place he was seen alive.

On December 4, 1975, in the early morning, Ignacio Orlando González Espinoza was detained at his home on Calle Soberanía in the commune of Santiago by subjects wearing civilian clothes; he was kept deprived of liberty in the facility called La Prevención or Remo Cero, located inside the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina, the last place he was seen alive, and subsequently, he was executed on the grounds of Fuerte Arteaga, Peldehue, where his bones were found.

On June 8, 1976, in the Estación Central sector, Luis Emilio Gerardo Maturana González met with Juan René Orellana Catalán, both militants of the Communist Youth in hiding due to the political persecution they were subject to, with the purpose of giving party money to Orellana Catalán for himself and so that he, in turn, could give it to other party militants, since Maturana González was in charge of distributing it; at that moment, they were detained by operational agents of the aforementioned Comando Conjunto, keeping them recluse in the facility called La Firma, from where their trail is lost. Subsequently, Orellana Catalán was executed at Cuesta Barriga, where his remains were found.

Source: resumen.cl, April 26, 2024