Dr. Gabriel Castillo Cerna, married, one daughter, a psychiatrist and former professor at the School of Psychiatry of the Universidad Católica, left his home at Parcela 12 J on Calle José Zapiola in the commune of La Reina on October 11, 1976, at approximately 11:30 a.m. His whereabouts have remained unknown since that date.

On that day, the doctor left his home on foot, leaving his car behind, and stated that he would return in the evening, according to Luis Bastías, a young man who worked at the victim's home.

Gabriel Castillo had a private practice at Calle Cirujano Guzmán 24, apartment 43, in the commune of Providencia, where he had suspended his activities until October 13. He did not appear at his office on that date, nor did he notify anyone that he would miss the appointments scheduled with his patients for that day.

The victim had suffered from some psychological problems and had developed a strong aversion to the military government, publicly expressing his hatred for the regime, particularly after the assassination in Washington of the former Chancellor of the Salvador Allende government, Orlando Letelier, which occurred in September 1976, whose family he knew for professional reasons.

Despite all the efforts made by family members to locate his whereabouts, Gabriel Castillo Cerna has been forcibly disappeared since October 11, 1976, after leaving his home at midday.

It should be added that the final report of the Rettig Report states that Gabriel Castillo Cerna was a member of the Communist Party and that he had previously been detained by security agencies in 1975. Regarding the detention on October 11, 1976, it states that he was detained on a public street by security agents who took him to an unknown destination.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

His mother reported his disappearance to the Carabineros police station in La Reina, a unit that reported these facts to the 11th Criminal Court of Santiago, where case file 8197-7 was opened for the alleged disappearance of Gabriel Castillo Cerna.

The Ministry of the Interior reported that it had no records of the victim, nor had any order been issued against him. All inquiries made by the investigative police to locate the doctor also yielded no positive results. Interviews with people who knew him did not provide information regarding his possible destination.

On the other hand, his colleague, Dr. Gabriel Silva, with whom he shared a practice, testified to the court that he had been with Castillo a week before his disappearance and could say that his clinical condition was milder and his mood calm, which suggested he was improving.

He added that he in no way exhibited suicidal tendencies. The letters rogatory sent to courts in the regions also yielded no positive results, and the Legal Medical Institute, in response to a court order, reported on March 24, 1977, that after reviewing the index books and records of corpses, he had not been registered at this institute between the indicated date, October 11, 1976, and March 22, 1977.

The Ministry of Health responded to a request in April 1977, reporting that there was no record of Gabriel Castillo's burial in the General Cemetery of Santiago. The authorities of the Metropolitan Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery of Santiago responded in the same manner.

On May 16, 1977, the Department of Immigration and International Police informed the court that there were no travel records between October 1976 and May 12, 1977. The victim was not located in the provinces.

After these proceedings, the judge decided to close the summary and temporarily dismiss the case because the crime had not been proven. This resolution was appealed, but on January 30, 1978, the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the ruling.

On June 23, 1980, a complaint for kidnapping was filed before the Visiting Judge Servando Jordán, appointed by the Santiago Court of Appeals to investigate cases of the disappearance of persons detained by security services.

The complaint was based on evidence gathered in other cases of disappearances of persons who had been detained by the DINA without witnesses, a method used particularly during 1976, with victims whose fate could not be established.

Judge Jordán, after reviewing the proceedings that had been conducted in the 11th Court, decided not to proceed with the complaint.

Psychiatrist Gabriel Castillo Cerna remains in the status of a forcibly disappeared person since security agents detained him on a public street on October 11, 1976.

Source: Corporación

A contribution to the historical memory of our University: U. de Chile inaugurated a memorial remembering the disappeared and executed from the North Campus

A sculpture and a plaque located at the Central SEMDA are a testament to the students, academics, and staff of the health programs who were executed or forcibly disappeared for political reasons during the civil-military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet starting in 1973.

With the presence of family members, friends, representatives of professional associations, authorities, and members of the university community, this Thursday, December 21, the memorial was inaugurated, remembering all the people linked to the University's North Campus who are currently disappeared or were murdered by the dictatorship.

In total, there are twenty-eight people, including students, academics, and staff from the health units who lost their lives due to the actions of State agencies between 1973 and 1990, starting with Salvador Allende himself, who died in the La Moneda Palace during the coup d'état on September 11.

The memorial site consists of a sculpture made by artist Miguel Lecaros, as well as a plaque with the names of the victims, which was made possible thanks to the joint work of the School of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine, the Vice-Rectorate for Student and Community Affairs, the Human Rights and Public Health Days collective, the Center for Mental Health and Human Rights, and the Projects, Memorials, and Institutional Management Area of the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of Justice.

The ceremony, which was hosted by actress Malucha Pinto and featured a performance by singer-songwriter Elizabeth Morris, began with the words that President Michelle Bachelet sent for this occasion. In them, she highlighted the tribute to the victims of our institution:

“I am honored to know that the Universidad de Chile, your House of Studies, your refuge, your home, today honors their memory with this work and, through it, also honors the persistence and courage of their family members, their friends, and their colleagues, because it is thanks to all of them that our executed and disappeared have never died, because they live as an example in the memory of each one of us who recognize in their life stories, testimonies of conviction and tenacity.”

Then, on behalf of the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Lorena Fríes, María Soledad Silva, coordinator of the Projects and Memorials Area, read a greeting in which the memorial was highlighted within the framework of promoting a society in which dialogue and peace prevail: “Projects like these contribute to integrating civil society and new generations, creating awareness about the importance that human rights have for each person and society as a whole.”

Also present at the activity were the Vice-Rector for Student and Community Affairs, Juan Cortés; the Vice-Rector for Research and Development, Flavio Salazar; the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Manuel Kukuljan; the Director of the School of Public Health, Patricia Frenz; the academic coordinator of the Human Rights Chair of the Vice-Rectorate for Extension and Communications, Claudio Nash; and the former directors of the School of Public Health, Giorgio Solimano and Óscar Arteaga, among other authorities and former authorities of our institution.

Rescuing the values of the public, truth, and justice

Rector Ennio Vivaldi spoke at the event, pointing out the need for a cultural change that prevents society from falling back into the abuses committed during the military regime, and he also highlighted everything that was lost along with the people who were victims:

“Each of these people represents the best that Chile had to offer, the transcendent values that our country had, and that we were able to know,” he indicated.

Those values, he noted, can be brought into the present to analyze how, for example, the educational situation is faced:

“Today we can see how distorted a concept as essential as ‘the public’ is in its sense of common good, of something that belongs to all of us and makes us feel in solidarity. It is impressive how those concepts are lost at the same time that the people who were persecuted were lost.”

Finally, on behalf of the victims' families, Jaime Lorca, brother of the disappeared doctor Carlos Lorca Tobar, addressed the public. He highlighted the strength of those close to the victims, as well as the institutions and organizations that welcomed them, so as not to forget what happened and to take up the cause of Human Rights.

“That is how we have managed not to turn the page, and also [achieved] a bit of justice, which is still quite insufficient,” he noted.

“We do not demand truth and justice only because it is important in personal or family terms, but we do so thinking about the future, about the next generations, and about the Chile that we are building day by day, so that these events can never happen again,” concluded Lorca.

Following the speeches, the plaque with the names of those honored in the Memorial was unveiled. Their names are as follows:

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens 11.9.1973 Pablo Ramón Aranda Schmied 17.9.1973 Óscar Eduardo Avello Avello 24.6.1976 Jorge Ávila Pizarro 18.9.1973 Gabriel Castillo Cerna 11.10.1976 Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios 15.7.1975 Héctor Victoriano García García 13.8.1974 Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue 4.8.1976 Eduardo Alberto González Galeno 10.9.1973 Ramiro Carlos Gonzáles Gonzáles 15.9.1973 Claudio Enrique González Núñez 9.12.1974 Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán 4.8.1976 Jorge Mario Jordan Domic 16.10.1973 Georges Klein Pipper 11.9.1973 Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar 25.6.1975 Jorge Eduardo Ortiz Moraga 12.12.1974 Juan Antonio Eduardo Paredes Barrientos 11.9.1973 Egidio Enrique Paris Roa 11.9.1973 Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza 15.12.1976 Héctor Ricardo Pincheira Núñez 11.9.1973 Hernán Sarmiento Sabater 28.7.1974 Renato Alejandro Sepúlveda Guajardo 12.12.1974 Samuel Eduardo Silva Contreras 25.3.1974 Ricardo Cristián Silva Soto 16.6.1987 Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda 7.7.1975 Claudio Rómulo Tognola Ríos 16.9.1973 Álvaro Modesto Vallejos Villagrán 20.5.1974 Absalón del Carmen Wegner Millas 13.12.1973

Source: artes.uchile.cl 21/12/2017

Date: 21-12-2017

The disappearance of Dr. Gabriel Castillo Cerna and the Chilean Psychoanalytic Association (first installment) By Silvana Vetö

Dr. Gabriel Castillo Cerna, a psychiatrist from the Universidad de Chile (UCh), a "graduate" of the Institute of Psychoanalysis of the Chilean Psychoanalytic Association (APCh), and a former professor at the School of Psychology of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC), disappeared on Monday, October 11, 1976, apparently at the hands of agents of the former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), at 43 years of age.

There were no witnesses to his detention nor to his time in any concentration camp. The case was dismissed in 1980, and in 1982 the family requested a "Presumed Death" declaration, after which his death certificate shows the date October 11, 1978, while the place of death remains blank.

In the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation or Rettig Report (1991), Castillo is listed as a militant of the Communist Party. It is also stated that he had been detained in 1975, interrogated, and released (Volume 2, p. 838).

His militancy has not been corroborated; interviews conducted deny it, but the Chilean Communist Party does not keep archives from that era. Regarding his first detention, only the records of the Government's Human Rights Program contain any corroborative mention: it is the testimony of his second wife, who states that he had disappeared for a few days in 1975, returning agitated and with marks of torture on his wrists and ankles.

One of the most problematic aspects of the case is that, apparently, Castillo had presented a serious psychiatric disorder that, according to some, had begun in 1974, while for others, it had only increased by that date.

It is likely that this condition developed in him an extreme religiosity that, among other things, resulted in repeated public appearances in which he called for an uprising against the Pinochet regime, specifically at the former University Parish, where "it was known that agents or 'listeners' of the former DINA attended" (Vicaría de la Solidaridad, page 91).

The family suspected that the motive for his disappearance was linked to the fact that he had been treating the mother of former Chancellor Orlando Letelier for a long time; Letelier was assassinated in Washington D.C. by the DINA on September 21, 1976, only 20 days before the psychiatrist's disappearance.

It seems that the Letelier family shared that suspicion, as Fabiola Letelier, the former Chancellor's sister, was the lawyer for the Castillo family.

In the statements made following his disappearance, we learned that his psychoanalyst was Dr. Carlos Whiting, President of the APCh during a long and tumultuous period (July 1971 to December 1977). In that statement, Whiting asserts having treated him between "March 13, 1957, and January 28, 1972, succeeding in that period in having him recover from the depression crises he suffered (...)" (Vicaría, page 11).

He then states: "In 1975, some strange behaviors began (...) on one occasion the Head of Extension, Ricardo Vergara, did not include him in the courses planned for 1976, since something was wrong (...) in his irrational behavior; this consisted of an exaggerated increase in his religiosity—he was previously an atheist or moderate—and a change in his political approach.

About two months ago, the Board of the Chilean Psychoanalytic Association met to discuss his problem, and two diagnoses were debated: one was schizophrenia, hebephrenic-paranoid form, or psychotic?" (Vicaría, page 11; highlighted in the original).

The APCh Board debated Castillo because he was a "graduate" of their Institute and, furthermore, an active collaborator of the Association. After his university studies and specialization in psychiatry, Castillo worked at the Psychiatric Clinic of the UCh, then directed by Dr.

Ignacio Matte Blanco, where most of the psychoanalysts of the time were trained. At some point between the mid-sixties and before October 1972, he began his training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

His participation in APCh activities was intense between 1974 and 1975. In September 1975, he requested the appointment of a tutor to carry out his entry work for the Association, with which he would have moved to the rank of "member," but this did not materialize. Even at the beginning of 1976, he was actively participating in APCh activities.

In addition to the Rettig Report, Castillo appears on two plaques placed by the Medical College of Chile in the name of the doctors murdered or disappeared during the dictatorship—one at their own offices and another at the Faculty of Medicine of the UCh—as well as in two books sponsored by the Medical College on the same cases.

In contrast to this, the APCh has been notable for its absence. None of the texts written by its members about the history of psychoanalysis mention him, and the idea reigns (or reigned until very recently) that there were no psychoanalysts who were direct victims of political repression—even despite the footnote dedication made by APCh psychoanalyst Dr.

Juan Pablo Jiménez in a 1989 text. Only one investigation linked to psychoanalysis, which unfortunately has not been published, has focused on this case, and it belongs to a psychoanalyst from the Chilean Society of Psychoanalysis (ICHPA), not the APCh.

After June 1976, Castillo disappears from the APCh records. Some timid individual initiatives attempted to find his whereabouts, but at an institutional level, there was only a redoubling of his disappearance. In 1999, 23 years after his disappearance and a decade after the end of the dictatorship, a kind of small commemoration was held, plagued by ambiguities.

Source: http://www.imagoagenda.com

Because we were doctors of the people: doctors murdered during the military dictatorship in Chile

Collaborator: Chile. Commission of Solidarity with Doctors Subject to Repression Editor: Commission of Solidarity with Doctors Subject to Repression, 1993 Provenance of the original: University of Texas Digitized: Apr 15, 2008 Number of pages: 407 pages

Source: booksgoogle.cl no date