In this testimony reproduced by Fortín Mapocho, civilians and military personnel are mentioned, many of them subjected to trial and others simply condemned by their conscience. We hope that the actions of both have left a deep mark on the Chileans who lived through these acts of barbarism during those years and who, at the time, refused to accept that these events were occurring in Chile.

For the new generations, who were born in the years following the coup and who were not aware of what was happening in their country, this account will serve to alert them to the lengths to which human beings are capable of going to preserve and expand their privileges.

The constitutionalist General Carlos Prats warned his peers that they would be making a grave mistake if they intervened and took the path of a coup. He added that for many years, Chilean society would point its critical finger at them and reproach them for that decision.

Verbatim, and continuing with his critical opinion, he stated: 'It would have to be [the intervention] implacably repressive. To do so, the Armed Forces would have to transform themselves into a specialized and refined police force, and it would mean turning the people into Tupamaros.

The week after the applause for the dictator, politicians from the most opposing sides would be united, shouting 'gorillas' at us and demanding elections. This is not a country of sheep. The workers represent a social power.

They are organized. In this country, there is vertical dignity. In this country, political leaders effectively move the masses. Not us; we military men do not entertain the idea of replacing civil power, nor is it our mission' [Revista Ercilla No. 1950, Week of November 29 to December 5, 1972.

Journalistic interview with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Carlos Prats. Reproduced in Héctor Vega, 'Crítica de la Unidad Popular'. Edit. Fontamara. Barcelona. Spain. 1975, pp. 121, 122] General Prats was right when he said that the workers would not be deceived.

He was tragically mistaken when he assessed the role of the political leaders. Many of them were committed to the coup, and some leaders, today of the Concertación, not only sought the fall of the Unidad Popular government from their parliamentary seats but also knocked on the doors of the barracks.

Let us not speak of those who are members of the Alianza and who today profess to be democrats, direct disciples of Pinochetism. In short, both groups constitute a generation that has never believed in democracy, and even less so in workers taking their destiny into their own hands and seeking the paths of an authentic and participatory democracy.

TESTIMONY

On September 11, 1973, I was working as a laborer at the COMPAÑÍA MANUFACTURERA DE PAPELES Y CARTONES IN THE TOWN OF LAJA [500 km south of Santiago]. A monopoly belonging to the Alessandri family. A family with a recognized political trajectory of defending the interests of the bourgeoisie, crushing the people, and actively participating in the 1973 military coup.

In the days leading up to the military coup, the company, the right-wing groups [Patria y Libertad and the National Party, Christian Democracy], and the police were already making the repression felt by workers and peasants, and even more so by their leaders, with verbal and physical threats.

The Carabineros patrolled the factory and its surroundings, terrorizing the workers. These were the symptoms of the horrors we would later witness on September 11, 1973, when Pinochet and a group of murderous generals decided to put an end to the government that represented the interests of the dispossessed masses who, until then, had been cruelly exploited by the bourgeoisie, of which the Alessandri family is a worthy exponent.

Here it is necessary to highlight that General WASHINGTON CARRASCO was in charge of the III Army Division based in the city of Concepción. Therefore, the events I will describe below are his responsibility, as well as that of his superiors, General Pinochet and his murderous clique.

On Tuesday, September 11, 1973, I was working at the factory when we observed, along with my coworkers, that the police and heavily armed far-right paramilitary groups, led by

CARLOS FERRER GOMEZ

[Superintendent of the CMPC company], were patrolling the company premises. At 4:00 PM that same day, at the end of the shift, a platoon of Carabineros awaited us at the factory exit, accompanied by the far-right paramilitary groups led by

PEDRO JARPA

, a trusted man of the PAPELERA, who, with a list in his hands, denounced the comrades who had most strongly defended the interests of the working class. As a result of this infamous denunciation, 22 comrades were arrested, and immediately, in the presence of all the factory workers [400], we were savagely beaten in this act of police brutality.

Two recognized criminals stood out in this action: Lieutenant ALBERTO FERNANDEZ MITCHEL and Sergeant

PEDRO RODRIGUEZ CEBALLOS

. Before being taken to the police station in vehicles provided by the Papelera, Lieutenant Fernandez Mitchel Salgado addressed the workers, saying that I would be murdered as soon as I arrived at the police station and that it would be the last time they would see me.

Once at the police station, we were brutally beaten and threatened with death. Then, in a semi-conscious state due to the beatings, I was violently thrown into a small cell in solitary confinement. Not satisfied with my condition, they threw a tear gas canister into the cell; as a result, I completely lost consciousness.

At 7:00 PM, by order of Lieutenant FERNANDEZ MITCHEL, two comrades took me out of the cell, and I was taken to the guard room, where the rest of my fellow detainees were, and we were savagely beaten again. While this was happening, I was able to see the teacher and member of the Socialist Party

RUBEN CAMPOS LOPEZ

—who is one of the martyrs of LAJA and SAN ROSENDO. The active participation of the LAJA Papelera in these barbaric acts was once again made evident when one of the directors [personnel manager],

HUMBERTO GARRIDO

, placed a company bus at the disposal of Lieutenant FERNANDEZ MITCHEL SALGADO, as well as ropes to tie us up. In this bus, I was transferred to the Los Angeles prison [a city near LAJA]. It should be noted that this same bus was used to transport the 19 people murdered by Carabineros with the complicity of civilians.

When I was taken by Carabineros along with the rest of my comrades to the Los Angeles prison, and as we entered the Salto de Laja bridge, Lieutenant MITCHEL SALGADO and Sergeant PEDRO RODRIGUEZ CEBALLOS ordered the driver to stop in the middle of the bridge.

I was taken by force to the door, my hands tied and held by the neck; he began to push me with the clear intention of throwing me off the bridge into the precipice, all this accompanied by insults and threats.

Not content with this, he ordered me to kneel at his feet. When we arrived at the Los Angeles prison, Lieutenant MITCHEL indicated to the captain in charge of the prison that I was dangerous, an extremist belonging to the MIR, and that I should be held in solitary confinement until further notice, as a pistol and plans to assault the LAJA police station had been found in my house—a completely false claim.

The prison was full of peasants and workers from the different fields and factories of the province. I remained imprisoned there until December 1973, constantly receiving mistreatment in prison. At the end of September, we received our first visit. It was the parish priest of LAJA, FELIX ELCHER, who informed us of the death of the 19 comrades from LAJA and SAN ROSENDO. Lieutenant

WALTER KRUG RIVERA

, head of the Los Angeles prison camp, was another of the criminals of the Pinochet regime who constantly visited the prison looking for comrades to transfer to the regiment, where they were tortured, murdered, and forcibly disappeared.

It was this individual who confirmed the death of the 19 comrades, as he amused himself by dumping and destroying the food that their families brought them, believing them to be detained. The truth was that they had murdered them.

He was a sadistic criminal who insulted and beat the detainees whenever he felt like it. In the month of December 1973, I was transferred along with 10 comrades from the LAJA case to the concentration camp at the Los Angeles regiment by express order of Captain

GUSTAVO MARZZAL

[head of the SIM], who was also the supreme head of the prison camp. We were told that this measure was for us to be released. Of the 11 comrades, only I remained detained in solitary confinement by order of the MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE [SIM]; the others were released.

On the afternoon of December 11, 1973, I was transferred to the SIM, to the interrogation rooms, which in reality were an intimidation and attrition room annexed to a second torture room. The interrogations were in charge of

DOMINGO BASCUÑAN

,

PATRICIO ABARZUA

[el PATO],

MARIO PACHECO

,

RENÈ PAREDES

, and the pediatrician,

GREGORIO BURGOS

[DINA]. All of them belonged to the SIM. The torture room resembled a clinic, with syringes, a generator, a metal cot, and a wooden cabinet that looked like a soccer goal, where I was hung by my feet and hands facing the floor; there was also music to drown out the screams of pain.

The floor of the room was made of wood and was splattered with the blood of the prisoners who had been tortured. It was striking that there were photos of Miguel Enríquez and Salvador Allende. There, I was beaten while facing the photos.

When they grew tired of the beatings and I was spitting blood from my mouth and nose, they threw me to the floor, where they kicked me all over my body. I lasted between 3 and 4 hours in that room. The beatings were followed by electric shocks and cigarette burns.

Not content with that, one of the torturers hung from my back while they suspended me from the horizontal bar of the "goal." The consequences can be imagined, as to this day I suffer from severe back pain.

After the torture, I was transported like a sack by two soldiers to a secret room [motel] for solitary confinement of the SIM, where 24 other comrades were in terrible health due to the excess of torture.

The psychological consequences of this treatment still linger in my mind. The motel was far from the prison camp, and the conditions in which we lived there were inhumane. We did not see the light of day.

There was no other way to relieve ourselves than in a grease bucket that we emptied every three days at night. There was never medical attention for those who came from torture. The guards stole the food that the families brought.

Worse than everything, we were subjected to returning to torture whenever it pleased the torturers. As a result, I began to have symptoms of epilepsy; I could not walk, I could not put on my shoes, nor could I even sit down or bend my back; my comrades fed me by hand.

We became infested with fleas and lice because we could not wash ourselves. One day, the INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS arrived at the concentration camp. The camp administration hid us. However, after 3 months, thanks to the action of the Archbishopric of Los Angeles and the INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS, the detainees [were released].

After some time, and by order of the SIM, I was transferred again to the torture center to be interrogated regarding the LAJA case. Under promises of immediate freedom and departure from the country, they tried to get me to sign a statement regarding the death of the 19 comrades murdered on a Papelera estate.

With my refusal, I returned to the regime of beatings and solitary confinement. When I was in the concentration camp, I had to witness a cowardly murder. A peasant lost his mind due to the beatings and the life we were leading; for this reason, one day he took a very small piece of wood and hit a soldier on his helmet with it.

Lieutenant Walter Krug Rivera, a recognized torturer and murderer, saw this and ordered all the prisoners who were nearby to turn around so as not to see, and he ordered us to go to our cells. Then he took out his pistol and emptied it into the poor, demented peasant.

The INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS found out about this cowardly murder, as they were shown the place of death where the bloodstains were still stamped on the cement. In mid-1974, I was transferred to the public prison of Los Angeles, as I had to go to trial for the LAJA case.

After a few days, I was visited by the SIM, who offered me immediate freedom, provided I signed a false statement, which I again refused. As a result of my refusal, I was again placed in solitary confinement in very poor health.

At the end of 1974, I was brought before a WAR COUNCIL FOR THE LAJA CASE, along with 8 comrades, where, as no charges were proven against me, I was released on parole with a sentence of 345 days, as it was always maintained that the case remained open; that is, I remained for 1 year and 3 months in prison and the Los Angeles concentration camp.

Source: fortinmapocho.cl July 9, 2007

38 years after the crimes, the Carabineros speak and go free

Unpublished confessions link CMPC to the massacre of 19 workers in Laja

It was a hunt. In September 1973, the Carabineros of the Laja Station apprehended 14 workers from the Paper Mill and the Railways, two high school students, and two teachers, whom they took to the Fundo San Juan, where they executed and clandestinely buried them.

All the police officers had been drinking heavily of pisco sent to them by the CMPC, which also provided vehicles for the death caravan led by the farmer Peter Wilkens. Despite the desperate search by their families, the pact of silence regarding what happened that night was maintained until August of last year.

“Since it was sand, it wasn't difficult to dig. We made a trench 2 to 3 meters long by 1.5 meters deep. Then we took the 19 detainees out of the vehicles. We made some kneel in front of the trench; we left the others standing.

They were in front of us, with their backs to us. I remember very well when the Carabinero Gabriel González argued strongly with Nelson Casanova, because the latter did not want to shoot. It was so intense that I stepped in and told González that if he did anything to Casanova, I would shoot him with the Sig rifle I had in my hand.

The tension was that high. We were all very agitated, but still, when the officer gave the order, we proceeded to shoot. We all shot, and when I say all, I include Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell.

We shot them in the back. Some fell directly into the pit. Others, already dead, we had to push so they would fall, or we grabbed them and threw them into the pit. They ended up one on top of the other.

Then we covered them with the same sand and some branches and headed toward Laja. When we arrived at the Station, we continued drinking the pisco and the beverages the lieutenant had brought from the CMPC paper mill’s clubhouse.

Only then did those who remained on guard duty know what had happened. Fernández gave the order to remain silent. After that, everything continued as if nothing had happened.”

1st Corporal (ret.) Samuel Vidal Riquelme was the first to break the pact. For 38 years, he kept the secret of what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973, to the 19 workers whom he and his colleagues from the Laja Station had apprehended in that town and San Rosendo over the previous five days, only to lock them in a small dungeon, torture them, and then, that night, execute them clandestinely in a forest near the Perales Bridge, at the Fundo San Juan.

The first time Vidal spoke about what happened that night was in 1979, when the Archbishopric of Concepción filed a complaint against the Carabineros of the Station, and the then-visiting minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, José Martínez Gaensly, interviewed him.

But that time, he said the same thing as his 15 colleagues from the Laja Station: that the prisoners had been taken to the Los Ángeles Regiment. Martínez asked the military personnel of that regiment about the 19 workers, but they claimed they had never entered there.

He then spoke with the Carabineros again. Although they changed their version, they all said the same thing: that they had put them on a bus provided by the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) and that on the way to Los Ángeles, they had handed them over to a “ghost patrol” of military personnel. That they had lost track of them since then.

Martínez’s inquiries were useful for something: it was discovered that the bodies were in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parish Cemetery. They had been taken there in October 1973, without anyone knowing, after they were removed from the hole where they had been buried following a farmer’s report to the Yumbel Carabineros that his dogs were gnawing on human remains.

The report with the complaint reached the local High-Value Court, but Judge Corina Mera ordered it to be kept in the safe. It was never investigated.

Without knowing how the bodies had reached the cemetery or who had executed them, the remains were identified and handed over to their families, who had searched for them relentlessly for six years. In March 1980, Martínez declared himself incompetent and referred the records to the Ad Hoc Military Prosecutor’s Office of Concepción.

Within three months, the case was dismissed, and at the end of 1981, the Supreme Court ratified the dismissal. That was the extent of the justice served.

27 years later, the Association of Families of Political Executions (AFEP) and the Law 19.123 Continuation Program of the Ministry of the Interior requested the reopening of the case from the Concepción Court of Appeals.

After reviewing the records, Minister Carlos Aldana set aside the resolution that had definitively dismissed the accused Carabineros and the ratification of that ruling by the Supreme Court. Thus, the summary and the investigation were reopened under case file 27-2010.

CIPER had access to the statements and documents of that investigation. Among them is the confession of Corporal Samuel Vidal on June 14, 2011, before the Investigative Police (PDI). Since then, details began to emerge one by one regarding the fate of the 19 workers whom he and his colleagues murdered in the back in the early hours of September 18, 1973.

This is how the capture operations, the execution in an open field, and the support and financing provided for their extermination by an important local businessman and, especially, the local CMPC—a company chaired at that time by former President Jorge Alessandri and whose main shareholder was businessman Eliodoro Matte Ossa—became known.

The oath that the Carabineros of the Laja Station took in November 1973 at the Perales Bridge, when their officer in charge, Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell, was being reassigned to Antofagasta, had been broken: “That if anyone opened their mouth, they had to be taken out by their own companions.”

15/9/73: HUNT IN SAN ROSENDO

Railway machinist Luis Alberto Araneda went at noon to the San Rosendo Engine House to see if he was on the “schedule.” It was what he did every day when he was not scheduled to travel the previous day.

When he arrived, he saw through his thick black-rimmed glasses the paper indicating the itinerary of the trains that would depart that day. He looked for his name, but it did not appear among those scheduled to travel that Saturday, September 15, 1973. Then he began the walk back to his home in the Quinta Ferroviaria neighborhood.

-Go back to work, the Carabineros are looking for you, for you and Juan Acuña –his neighbor Eusebio Suárez told him, worried, when he saw him arrive.

But Luis Alberto did not listen to him. He replied that his machine was at the workshop, so he had nothing to do there that day. Besides, if they were looking for him, he had no reason to worry. The day before, he had arrived from a trip to the south, and as soon as he learned that the Carabineros required militants and union leaders to present themselves, Luis Alberto went to the San Rosendo Station.

There, they asked for his details. On a piece of paper, they wrote his name, his RUT, that he was 43 years old, that he was a militant of the Socialist Party (PS), that he presided over the Supply and Price Board (JAP), and that he was a union leader of the Santiago Watt Federation of State Railways.

Afterward, they told him he could leave. Luis Alberto returned home and did not think about it anymore, not even when Eusebio told him the next day on the street that they were looking for him, that just a few minutes earlier a police patrol from Laja had asked about him and that he had told them where he lived.

When he was about to reach his home, his wife saw him coming through the window in his striped gray jacket, brown pants, black shoes, and glasses of the same color. She also saw how six or seven Carabineros with helmets blocked his path, raised their rifles, and pointed them at him just as he was about to open the gate.

Luis Alberto froze. She did not think twice and ran out, screaming at the police to at least let her say goodbye. Luis Alberto, who already had his hands tied behind his back, told her to take the money and his watch out of his pocket. She did. Then she saw them take him away. It was shortly before 16:00 hours. The hunt in San Rosendo had just begun.

Since the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández came from Laja and did not know who they were supposed to detain, Carabinero Sergio Castillo Basaul, from the San Rosendo station, served as their guide.

There was no formal list or arrest warrants: the order that came from the Los Ángeles Police Station was to detain all the leaders of the Popular Unity (UP). If Castillo, who knew them, said that any of the neighbors should be detained, they were immediately pointed at, tied up, and taken away.

Juan Antonio Acuña, 33 years old, three children, also a machinist and leader of the Railway union, was the next on the list. They went to look for him at his house an hour later, when he was about to sit down to have tea with his family.

The same patrol that had arrived on foot from Laja broke in by force and took him out at gunpoint. Then it was the turn of the employee of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), Dagoberto Garfias, 23 years old.

He was followed by Mario Jara (21), who was at home with his mother and grandmother; Raúl Urra (23), who was also at his home; and the director of School 45 of San Rosendo, Óscar Sanhueza (23).

They were all taken to the San Rosendo Plaza, where another detainee was waiting for them: Jorge Zorrilla, a 25-year-old mining worker who worked in Argentina and was spending his vacation in Chile. He, like Luis Alberto Araneda, presented himself voluntarily to the Carabineros.

They immediately apprehended him, and when the others arrived, the patrol tied them up and took them on foot across the pedestrian bridge that connected San Rosendo with Laja. On the other side, a bus was waiting for them, one of the many courtesies of the CMPC to the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell, the officer in charge of the Laja Station. Once on the bus, they took them away.

11/9/73: THE FIRST ORDERS

Although he was the first to be detained, Lieutenant (ret.) Fernández Michell was the last of the members of the Laja Station to testify before the Court. On August 16 of last year, he was arrested in Iquique, where he worked as an instructor at a driving school. And when the next day he broke the pact of silence that he himself proposed after the execution, he started from the beginning:

“I was at my residence provided by the CMPC when I received the news of the Military Coup. I had arrived at the Laja Station in mid-1973 as a substitute sub-lieutenant, and since there was no officer, I became the chief.

I was 22 years old. By September 11, I was the police authority, and as soon as I learned of the Coup, while waiting for orders, I called for the mobilization of all Carabineros. That was coordinated by Sub-officer Major Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, who were next in command under me.”

“That same morning, I received the order from the Los Ángeles Headquarters to detain all government authorities, sub-delegates, and the mayor. The action was carried out without problems, and after detaining them in our unit, they were transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment in buses provided by the Paper Mill, because I already had too many people in the barracks.

Days later, my superior in Los Ángeles, Commissioner Aroldo Solari Sanhueza, ordered me to begin detaining all the activists in the commune. Since the CMPC had a chemical plant, the activists could take it over and act against us.

That was the information that reached me from military intelligence. One of those days, Army Colonel Alfredo Rehern Pulido arrived to reiterate the order. I ordered Sub-officers Garcés and Rodríguez to proceed with the personnel to carry out that task, because they knew those people better.”

Since Salvador Allende assumed the presidency in 1970, the CMPC was on the list of companies that the government intended to expropriate. For that reason, on the same day of the Coup, a patrol commanded by Fernández Michell went to the plant that the Paper Mill had—and still has—in Laja.

It was 16:00 hours when the nearly 300 employees leaving their shift encountered Fernández, Garcés, Rodríguez, and other members of the Station. They made them form lines. The patrol had in their hands a list that the plant superintendent, Carlos Ferrer, and the personnel chief, Humberto Garrido, had prepared: those were the “activists.”

Those who appeared on the list were separated and taken, beaten and at gunpoint, to the adjacent building, where the company’s clinic operated. There, they beat them again. Afterward, they put them into CMPC vehicles and took them to the barracks.

All of them were later transferred, in the same bus from the Matte Group company, to Los Ángeles. Among them was Eduardo Cuevas, a maintenance mechanic at the Paper Mill and a MIR militant who voluntarily joined the reconstruction of the scene carried out by Minister Aldana on August 18 of last year.

Before they took him away, Fernández grabbed him and showed him to his coworkers still formed in the line: “Look at him for the last time!” he shouted at them.

After a little more than a year and three months in detention and torture centers, and after passing through a War Council, Eduardo Cuevas was seen again. A “luck” that those who were hunted in the following days did not have.

13 and 14/9/73: THE FALL OF THE STUDENT AND THE WORKERS

The first thing the patrol led that day by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos did was to go to the Train Station. On the platform, Manuel Becerra was saying goodbye to his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and his cousin.

It was 8:00, and in just a few minutes, the train that would take him back to Curacautín, where he was studying secondary education at the Industrial School, would depart. He was about to board when the Carabineros grabbed him.

Amidst the screams of his relatives, Manuel Becerra was dragged out of the station, put into the jeep that the CMPC had granted them for their mobilization, and taken to the Laja Station. It was September 13, 1973. Manuel was 18 years old.

In a matter of minutes, they notified his father, who worked at the Transportes Cóndor offices. As soon as he found out, he asked his boss to speak with the Carabineros and arrange for his release. He went to the Station and spoke with the guard on duty, but they told him that they had already registered his detention in the corresponding books.

Later, they would tell his father that they had detained him because “he was a militant with the Miristas.” Manuel had already been detained before, during the campaign for the 1973 parliamentary elections, for painting MIR slogans in Laja along with other friends. The young man remained detained.

The next on the list was Luis Armando Ulloa, 41 years old, married, five children, a militant of the Communist Party (PC) and a lumber worker at the Barraca Burgos in Laja, where they went to look for him.

It was 8:30. Since his eldest son worked with him, the first thing his colleagues did was notify him as soon as he arrived, because just when they took him, he was not there. He ran to his house and notified his mother, who was still convalescing from her last childbirth. They could not do anything to get him out either.

That afternoon, the Carabineros returned to the CMPC. As soon as he stepped outside the plant, Juan de Dios Villarroel was kidnapped by Rodríguez’s patrol. He was 34 years old, had four children, and the misfortune of working at a company that drew up a blacklist with the names of its own employees.

On that same list were his coworkers Jack Gutiérrez, a MAPU militant; Heraldo Muñoz, from the PS; and Federico Riquelme. They were all taken to the Station, where the fruit and vegetable merchant and municipal councilor, Alfonso Macaya, who arrived voluntarily after hearing on a local radio station that they were looking for him, joined them.

They let him go the next day, but on September 15, they went to look for him again at his in-laws’ house. He never returned.

On September 14, Rodríguez went out to the streets again in the CMPC jeep. He did not have to go far, because he found the two men who joined the group of political detainees that day leaving their work at the paper mill. One was Wilson Muñoz. The other was Fernando Grandón, who at 34 years old already had eight children.

16 and 17/9/73: THE SMALL STATION

Most likely, the Laja Station never had as many visitors as it did during those days. By the night of September 15, 1973, in the dungeon of that building at Las Viñas No. 104, which Fernández remembers as “two large temporary shacks to which some additions had been made,” there were 17 people detained: to the seven they brought from San Rosendo and the nine they kidnapped in Laja, the director of the CMPC Industrial Union, Jorge Lamana, who presented himself at the Station voluntarily, had been added that afternoon.

Since the detentions began, their parents, siblings, and children went to visit them with the authorization of the officer in charge of the facility. Fernando Grandón’s wife arrived the same day he was detained to see him for the first time.

When she saw him, she noticed he was scared, but without injuries. Luis Armando Ulloa’s eldest daughter also went to see him, and when she found him in the middle of the group, she realized that his hair had been cut in jagged tufts.

But the worst part was suffered by those from San Rosendo. All of them had bruises, scratches, and dog bites. Jorge Zorrilla, the miner detained during his vacation, told one of the detainees’ relatives that they had also been made to sit on the pica.

On September 16, the cell received the...

the last two members of the group. Juan Carlos Jara, 17, was seized by Pedro Rodríguez’s patrol while he was fighting with other young people in the street. Rubén Campos, director of the Escuela Consolidada de Laja, was taken from his home and went straight to the dungeon.

Until September 17, visits to the prisoners continued. In the mornings, almost all the relatives would arrive with freshly made breakfast and clean clothes. Later, they would bring them lunch, and in the evening, dinner.

They were also visited by the parish priest of Laja, Father Félix Eicher, who had naively accompanied some of those who turned themselves in voluntarily to the Tenencia (police station) so that they could “settle their problems.” And every time they went, they tried to convince the carabineros to release them.

The prisoners told them to stay calm, that they would be out of there soon. On the eve of the national holidays, Lieutenant Fernández Michell received an order.

“I was having dinner in the dining room when Sub-officer Garcés told me that Major Solari, the commissioner of Los Ángeles, was on the phone. He was very upset with me because I had sent many people to the regiment without asking him.

I had done it because of a space issue. I was scared that he was angry, because I had gotten married without my superiors' permission and was expecting my first daughter, so I had to do whatever he told me, otherwise I risked another sanction.

He asked me how many detainees I had in the unit. I told him there were 19 people. He gave me the order to ‘eliminate them.’ He told me that if I didn’t do it, I would have to face the consequences. Then he hung up. I immediately called Garcés and Rodríguez and told them to get the personnel ready.”

9/18/73: MASSACRE IN THE FOREST

The men who followed Fernández in the chain of command made a few calls and in just minutes obtained ropes, wire, shovels, vehicles, and even a remote place where they could carry out the massacre. They had carbines and rifles for all the officers of the Tenencia. They also had the alcohol provided by the CMPC. The plan to kill the 19 was already underway.

“When they called us to the barracks, the curfew had already begun. Upon arriving, they gathered us in a room we used as a dining hall and ordered us to drink a large amount of pisco. Almost all the members of the Laja Tenencia were there, from Lieutenant Fernández Michell on down.

Those who didn’t arrive at the barracks would join us later. After drinking, Lieutenant Fernández told us to take the 19 detainees out of the Tenencia dungeons. We tied their hands behind their backs with hemp and hay-bale wire, took them outside, and loaded them onto the CMPC bus.

I had to guard the inside of the bus. That is why I was holding my Sig rifle in my hands. We took the highway toward Los Ángeles. Leading the caravan in a jeep were Fernández, Garcés, and Peter Wilkens, a German farmer from the area.”

Until Corporal Samuel Vidal testified in June 2011, Wilkens’s name never appeared in the investigation. After him, Fernández and several carabineros confirmed his participation in that night’s massacre.

Before that, it was not known that Garcés had called him, that he had accompanied Fernández in the CMPC jeep leading the caravan, or that after the Puente Perales, following a curve on the road between Laja and Los Ángeles, it was he who told him to turn right and stop 300 meters further on, in a clearing next to a pine forest.

Since only the carabineros who were there that night and had sworn silence knew that Wilkens had been there, no one connected the event when, in 1985, a 19-year-old named Arturo Arriagada, with no criminal record, entered his estate in Laja, killed his butler, entered his room, and shot him with a shotgun.

Later, he loaded the bodies into his van and buried them on the side of the road, very close to where they had buried the detainees from Laja and San Rosendo that night.

According to a report published by Contacto when the death penalty was about to be abolished in Chile in 2001, Arriagada was sentenced to life imprisonment and by then, due to his good behavior, had been incorporated into the Center for Education and Work (CET) in Concepción.

For his criminal act, the justice system did work. Wilkens, on the other hand, died without anyone questioning him for having been an accomplice and for having guided and observed as a group of police officers executed 19 workers by firing squad in the early hours of September 18, 1973, at the Fundo San Juan. A night that Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Pedro Parra remembers very well:

“There were no military personnel or DINA agents; there were only us from the Tenencia, except for the three who stayed on guard duty. When we stopped, the truck was very close to some bushes. The night was clear and there was a moon, but the vehicle lights were used anyway.

With the fight between Gabriel González and Nelson Casanova, I finally grasped the weight of what was happening. Everything was already decided. Lieutenant Fernández Michell said nothing; he was just one more of the group.

The detainees were in front of us with their hands tied. I had a Mauser carbine. When Fernández gave the order, we all aimed at the detainees who had been assigned to us. None of them complained or said anything. Then they gave the order to fire. We all did it.”

9/18/73: AFTER THE MASSACRE

The bodies remained underground. The group of carabineros got into the vehicles and returned to the Laja barracks. Everyone remembers that it was a strange moment, that no one dared to say anything. When they arrived, they drank what was left of the pisco they had consumed before leaving.

And right there, they agreed that no one would say anything, that if anyone spoke, they would suffer the same fate as those they had just murdered.

On the morning of that day, Gloria Urra got up early, prepared breakfast, and as in previous days, went to the Tenencia to see her brother Raúl. She hoped to find all the detainees and their relatives, sit with them, and share the food.

But the dungeon was empty. Now that they were cleaning it, it looked much larger. Hilda Bravo, the wife of fruit merchant Alfonso Macaya, had not been allowed to see him when he was locked up two days earlier, so that morning she hoped to find her husband.

But they told her the same thing they told the mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the 19 workers who had been there until the night before: that they had been transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

The relatives grouped together and set off to look for them. They did not find them at the Los Ángeles Regiment. They went through the jail, the IANSA gymnasium; nothing. Later, some went to Concepción and asked at the Regional Stadium, at Isla Quiriquina, in Talcahuano; their names did not appear on the lists of prisoners.

Days passed and the desperate search was repeated over and over in Chillán, in Linares. It was like that for weeks, for years. Many spent their savings traveling through different cities in the country, searching and asking without answers. They went through Temuco until they reached Santiago. Everything was useless: the 19 had vanished.

Two days after the massacre, Father Félix Eicher accompanied the CMPC worker, Luis Sáez, to Los Ángeles, according to his statement before Judge Carlos Aldana, “so that those in Laja wouldn’t do anything to him.” In the previous days, they had raided his house twice looking for him, but had not found him. “Just as Macaya turned himself in, tell your husband to do the same,” Sergeant Rodríguez had allegedly told his wife.

The priest convinced him to turn himself in on September 20, 1973. That same day he was detained. Six years later, when they found the other 19 in the Yumbel cemetery—where they had been taken clandestinely by Fernández and his men—the remains of Luis Sáez appeared at the Fundo San Juan.

THE TRIAL OF THE LAJA FIRING SQUAD

Although 38 years had passed, many of the carabineros who worked at the Laja Tenencia in September 1973 tried in 2011 to maintain their oath of silence regarding what happened in the early hours of September 18 of that year.

Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Gabriel González, for example, assured the PDI that he knew nothing about the 19 forcibly disappeared and that he only participated in some arrests. He said nothing about his fight with Nelson Casanova that early morning just before shooting them in the back.

And Casanova himself, who according to testimonies resisted firing, declared: “At that time there was a very good relationship with the CMPC workers, so I had no knowledge that employees of said company had been detained.”

It was the testimonies of those who did decide to confess that allowed the visiting judge Carlos Aldana to issue an arrest warrant in August 2011 for the 14 officers still alive who participated in the arrests and the execution of the workers murdered at the Fundo San Juan.

After that, everyone began to talk. On the 18th of that month, Aldana conducted a reconstruction of the scene with all the detainees regarding the chain of events that ended the lives of the 19 workers.

It was a key, dramatic day. After that, there were no more doubts: after four days, the judge indicted nine of the carabineros for homicide and one for cover-up. Three others, those who stayed on guard duty that night, were dismissed. Despite the brutality of the crimes, today they are all free.

The following is the list of all the carabineros involved and what happened to them:

1.- Alberto Juan Fernández Michell: Lieutenant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the officer in charge of the Laja Tenencia and the person responsible for executing the orders that came from Los Ángeles. He ordered and participated in the arrests and the execution at the Fundo San Juan.

He was called to retire from the institution in 1979, citing “lack of vocation.” He was indicted as the perpetrator of homicide. When everyone else obtained provisional release, he remained detained for being the responsible officer. His defense appealed and he was released after paying a bail of $300,000.

2.- Evaristo Garcés Rubilar: He was a Sub-officer of Carabineros and second in command at the Laja Tenencia, which is why he played a key role in the organization of the arrests and the massacre of the 19 at the Fundo San Juan.

He obtained the place for the clandestine execution and contacted the German farmer Peter Wilkens. He died on December 25, 1987, at age 60, from a stroke caused by diabetes.

3.- Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos: Sergeant of Carabineros. He was in charge of several of the arrests and had a leading role in managing the execution. He was married and some time after what happened that night, he became part of the DINA. He died on December 22, 2002, at the Dipreca Hospital from metastatic gastric cancer that caused multi-organ failure. He was 64 years old.

4.- Lisandro Alberto Martínez García: Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) of Carabineros. Although he initially declared that he had not participated in the massacre because at that time he worked in the barracks' records office, he ended up accepting his participation: “We all carried rifles and we fired,” he said.

He was indicted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional bail of $300,000.

5.- Luis Antonio León Godoy: Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) of Carabineros. At first, he said that it had been the military who passed through the Tenencia and took the 19 detainees. Later he changed his version: “When my sub-officer Garcés gave the order, we all had to fire,” he noted. He was indicted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional bail after paying $300,000.

6.- José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza: Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. In his statements, he assured that he had not participated and that he was not there on the night of the massacre. But in the reconstruction of the scene, he admitted to having been there.

His role was to be in the CMPC jeep the whole time, illuminating what was happening in front of him. He saw everything, but he did not pull the trigger. He was indicted for cover-up of homicide and after paying a bail of $100,000, he obtained his provisional release.

7.- Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike: Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) of Carabineros. He was one of the first to provide a statement and recognize what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973. That night he joined the caravan when they were already about to arrive at the Fundo San Juan. He was indicted for homicide and obtained his provisional release after paying a bail of $300,000.

8.- Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade: Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) of Carabineros. He also recognized his participation since September 11, 1973. “They were difficult days, we slept little,” he said. He is one of those indicted for homicide and after paying the $300,000 bail, he was released on provisional release.

9.- Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras: Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) of Carabineros. As soon as they interrogated him, he recounted in detail what happened that night. He was also indicted for homicide and has been on provisional release since he paid his $300,000 bail.

10.- Gabriel Washington González Salazar: Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the man who fought before firing, although when it was his turn to testify, he said it had been the military. Later he recognized his participation. He was indicted for homicide and today he is free.

11.- Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme: Corporal 1st Class (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the first to break the pact of silence. His testimony was key to clarifying what happened to the 19 workers in Laja. He was indicted for homicide and also obtained his release after paying the $300,000 bail.

12.- Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila: He belonged to the Carabineros for 30 years. In his first statement, he only said that after September 11, the Laja Tenencia moved to CMPC facilities. Later he added that he was there that night and that he fired when ordered to, but that he did not fire at the bodies. He is one of those indicted for homicide and today enjoys provisional release.

13.- Nelson Casanova Salgado: Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) of Carabineros. He had said that he had never participated in an operation to detain CMPC workers, but his participation was proven. Also indicted for homicide, today he is free after paying the bail.

14.- Luis Muñoz Cuevas: Corporal 1st Class (ret.) of Carabineros. Since he stayed on guard duty at the barracks that night, Judge Aldana dismissed him from the investigation.

15.- Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete: Sub-officer (ret.) of Carabineros. His mission that night was to stop traffic in the hospital area so the caravan could pass. Later he returned to the Tenencia and stayed there all night. He is one of the three carabineros dismissed.

16.- Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme: Sub-officer (ret.) of Carabineros. He also stayed on guard duty at the Laja Tenencia that night, so he was dismissed.

17.- Sergio Castillo Basaul: Sub-officer of Carabineros. Although he did not participate in the execution, he had an active role in guiding the arrests in San Rosendo, since he worked in that town and knew its inhabitants. He died on September 16, 2005, from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, esophageal varices, and Laennec's cirrhosis, which is caused by alcoholism.

LUIS SÁEZ: THE 20TH VICTIM EXECUTED

The first time the carabineros of the Laja Tenencia went to look for Luis Sáez Espinoza (37 years old) at his home in the Población Mario Medina, it was September 11, 1973, at 10:00. In addition to being an employee at the CMPC, Sáez was a union leader and a member of the MAPU.

For that reason, as soon as he learned of the Coup, he went into hiding. Since he was not there when the carabineros arrived, they raided his house in front of his wife, Rosa Ibaca, and his children. Three hours later, the patrol under the command of Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos returned in the jeep that the Matte Group company had provided them, with helmets and long weapons.

They raided his home again, but this time they took Rosa. Pointing their rifles at her, they took her to some neighbors, and since no one knew where Luis was, they left her there. The next day the scene was repeated.

On September 14, Sergeant Rodríguez arrived again to look for Luis and for the third time, he did not find him. That was the day he gave his wife the message: that he should turn himself in as Alfonso Macaya had done the day before.

Minutes later, some social workers from the company arrived to see how the family was doing and promised to speak with Lieutenant Fernández Michell so they would not raid that house again. The children were traumatized.

Six days later, the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, went to speak with the woman. He told her he knew where Luis was and that he wanted to speak with her. The priest took her in his truck. When they met, she told him he had to turn himself in.

Luis was afraid; he knew his life was in danger, that only two days earlier the group of 19 detainees had disappeared without a trace. So that nothing would happen to him, the priest convinced him to go to Los Ángeles and not to the Laja Tenencia.

He accepted. That same day, September 20, 1973, shortly before the curfew, they went in the priest’s truck to the Los Ángeles Prefecture. Luis got out of the vehicle, presented himself, and remained detained there. Father Eicher was a witness.

The next day, the same priest notified Sergeant Rodríguez that Luis had already turned himself in.

Rosa went to leave him clothes and food at the Red Cross office, but they returned everything because Luis was not in any detention center. His wife searched for him for years with the help of the priest and the bishop of Los Ángeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, but nothing. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis.

The search extended until 1979, when the investigation led by visiting judge José Martínez led to the whereabouts of those executed in Laja and San

Rosendo, but not to their perpetrators. While the others had been taken to the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, Luis’s remains appeared clandestinely buried in the same place where the massacre took place, at the Fundo San Juan, next to a CMPC pine forest.

He had a bullet hole and was tied with wire. In the documents accessed by CIPER, Police Report No. 988 of March 15, 2011, is mentioned. According to that document, his direct relatives were asked, but they stated that his remains were never delivered to them, which is why Luis Sáez Espinoza remains a forcibly disappeared person.

Source: Ciperchile.cl, January 13, 2012

New president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal hid information about the Laja Massacre

In 1978, the now Supreme Court minister, Rosa Egnem, admitted that she hid key information about the Laja massacre: the political execution of 19 people, perpetrated by civilians and Carabineros. At the time, she worked at a court in Yumbel, and despite this episode, she continued to rise until reaching the highest court.

Now, she will add a new distinction: on January 31, she will assume the presidency of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal. In that position, she will have to oversee the constitutional plebiscite. On January 7, a conviction was handed down for the Laja crimes, 46 years later.

Only Carabineros were sentenced, and nothing was said about the role of the executives of the CMPC Laja Plant, an emblematic company of the Matte Group. One week after the coup d'état, in the early hours of September 18, 1973, 19 men—workers from the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), railway workers, teachers, and two students—were murdered and surreptitiously buried on a private field in Laja, in the Biobío Region.

For more than 40 years, there was impunity for their perpetrators and whispers about what happened to the victims. A silence that reveals the collusion that existed to hide crimes against humanity between private enterprise, politicians, police, and, certainly, different branches of the Chilean justice system.

The protection for the murderers and their accomplices reached a milestone just one month after what became known as the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre. In October 1973, a local farmer found the mutilated bodies of some of the victims and reported it to the justice system.

But his complaint was hidden in a safe and under lock and key by the lawyer Rosa Egnem, then secretary to judge Corina Mera of the Yumbel Court of Greater Quantities. Rosa Egnem is today a minister of the Supreme Court.

Her act of omission and manipulation of judicial records meant that the widows and children of all those murdered continued for six years searching for their loved ones. In contrast, Egnem, who confessed to her crime in 1978 without receiving any sanction from the Concepción Court of Appeals, went on to become a judge and continued to ascend in her judicial career.

Despite her record, on January 31, Minister Rosa Egnem will assume the presidency of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal, which must oversee the decisive plebiscite on a new Constitution on April 26. The conviction for the Laja and San Rosendo crimes was just handed down this January 7 by the minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana.

Only Carabineros were convicted. Not a word about the leading role that the executives of the Laja Plant of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), owned by the Matte Group, had in the qualified homicides.

Just as in the recent multi-million dollar toilet paper collusion fraud organized by the CMPC, its owners will not pay with prison time. The only one who was questioned by the justice system was businessman Roberto Izquierdo Menéndez, who in September 1973 was manager of the CMPC, owner of Forestal Mininco, which in turn owned the Fundo San Juan where the bodies of the 19 executed prisoners were illegally buried.

Roberto Izquierdo Menéndez had to acknowledge that he did have knowledge of the Laja and San Rosendo massacre, although today he remembers nothing. He is currently a councilor for Sofofa and one of the most powerful businessmen in the country.

And his power makes itself felt. From the presidency of Alimar, and despite having been investigated for the illegal payments to politics he made through the southern fishing association (ASIPES) to which he belongs, and after it was confirmed in court and by CIPER that the Fisheries Law voted on by Congress was tailored to the fishing companies and their illegal payments, in January of last year he launched a scathing attack against the government.

Regarding the new Fisheries Law that must replace the one obtained through bribes, Izquierdo Menéndez accused "expropriation" and reiterated: "Obviously yes. If the authority changes the conditions, they have to compensate us because they are acquired rights." Izquierdo Menéndez knows about impunity.

Two of his brothers, Diego and Julio Izquierdo Menéndez, participated in the assassination of General René Schneider in October 1970, executed by an extreme right-wing group to prevent Salvador Allende from assuming the presidency. They were never prosecuted: despite all the judicial evidence demonstrating their participation, they enjoyed the impunity provided to them by the military regime.

THE COLLUSION RULING

Forty-six years had to pass for the relatives of the victims of Laja and San Rosendo to obtain some justice. On January 7, the extraordinary visiting minister Carlos Aldana, of the Concepción Court of Appeals, sentenced nine retired Carabineros for their responsibility in 19 crimes of qualified homicide.

Only one of them, former Carabinero officer Alberto Juan Fernández Michell, received a life sentence as the perpetrator of the qualified homicides of: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya. The story that Minister Aldana began to unravel in 2010, when the reopening of the case that had been dismissed was ordered, began to be written in the early hours of September 11, 1973, when Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell ordered the 16 Carabineros of the Laja Precinct under his command to report to the barracks. That same day, he received an order from Los Ángeles: to detain all officials and political authorities of the Unidad Popular government. Why were there a group of workers from the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) plant, owned then and now by the Matte Group, among the detainees? Because its executives and the main farmers in the area were the ones who ordered the Carabineros on which people to detain and even murder, according to lists that were drawn up on September 11 itself or prepared in advance. A similar situation was repeated in other regions of the country. A part of the sequence of the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre was reported by CIPER on January 13, 2012, just one year after the trial was reopened due to new evidence provided by the Association of Relatives of Political Executions of the Biobío Region. Without their action, this crime, like so many others, would remain in impunity. And now it is completed with the recent ruling by Minister Aldana.

9/15/73: HUNT IN SAN ROSENDO

Railway machinist Luis Alberto Araneda went to the San Rosendo Engine House at noon to see if he was on the "schedule." It was what he did every day when he was not scheduled to travel the previous day.

When he arrived, he saw through his thick-rimmed black glasses the paper indicating the itinerary of the trains that would leave that Saturday, September 15, 1973. He looked for his name, and since it did not appear among those who had to travel, he returned to his home in the Quinta Ferroviaria neighborhood. "Go back to work, the Carabineros are looking for you, for you and Juan Acuña," his neighbor Eusebio Suárez told him, worried, when he saw him arrive.

But Luis Alberto replied that his machine was in the workshop, that he had nothing to do there. And that, if they were looking for him, he had no reason to worry: the day before he had arrived from a trip to the south and as soon as he knew that the Carabineros required militants and union leaders to present themselves, Luis Alberto went to the San Rosendo station.

There they asked for his details. On a piece of paper, they wrote his name, his RUT, that he was 43 years old, that he was a militant of the Socialist Party (PS), that he presided over the Supply and Price Board (JAP), and that he was a union leader of the Santiago Watt Federation of State Railways.

Afterward, they told him he could leave. Luis Alberto returned home and did not think about it again, not even when the next day Eusebio told him in the street that just a few minutes earlier a police patrol from Laja had asked about him and that he had told them where he lived.

When he was about to reach his home, his wife saw him coming through the window in his striped gray jacket, brown pants, black shoes, and glasses of the same color. She also saw how six or seven Carabineros with helmets blocked his path and pointed their rifles at him just as he was about to open the gate.

Luis Alberto froze. She did not think twice and went out screaming at the police to let her, at least, say goodbye. Luis Alberto, who already had his hands tied behind his back, told her to take the money and his watch from his pocket.

She did it and watched as they took him away. It was shortly before 4:00 PM. The hunt in San Rosendo had just begun. Since the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Alberto Fernández came from Laja and did not know who they were supposed to detain, Carabinero Sergio Castillo Basaul, from the San Rosendo station, served as their guide.

If Castillo said that one of the neighbors should be detained, they immediately pointed at him, tied him up, and took him away. Juan Antonio Acuña, 33 years old, three children, also a machinist and railway leader, was the next on the list.

They took him out at gunpoint from his house, just as he was about to sit down to have tea with his family. Then it was the turn of the CMPC employee, Dagoberto Garfias, 23 years old. He was followed by Mario Jara (21), who was at home with his mother and grandmother; Raúl Urra (23), who was also at his home; and the director of School 45 of San Rosendo, Óscar Sanhueza (23).

They were all taken to the San Rosendo Plaza, where another detainee was waiting for them: Jorge Zorrilla, a 25-year-old mine worker who worked in Argentina and was spending his vacation in Chile. He, like Luis Alberto Araneda, presented himself voluntarily to the Carabineros.

They immediately arrested him, and when the others arrived, the patrol tied them up and took them on foot across the pedestrian bridge that connected San Rosendo with Laja. On the other side, a minibus was waiting for them, one of the many courtesies of the CMPC to the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell, the officer in charge of the Laja Precinct.

They put them on the bus and took them away.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAPER MILL

Since Salvador Allende assumed the presidency in 1970, the company that held the monopoly on paper production in Chile, the CMPC, was on the list of more than one hundred companies that the government intended to nationalize.

The battle to prevent its expropriation involved all business associations and the right wing of the country, and marked a milestone. Its board of directors was headed by former president Jorge Alessandri and its main shareholder Eliodoro Matte Ossa (in 1976 he was succeeded by his son, Eliodoro Matte Larraín), who received such powerful support that it allowed the Matte Group to retain the company.

Because of the importance the CMPC had for the coup plotters, on September 11 itself, a patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell arrived at the Paper Mill plant in Laja. It was 4:00 PM when the nearly 300 employees leaving their shift encountered Fernández, the two non-commissioned officers who seconded him—Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos—and other Carabineros from the Laja Precinct.

They made them form lines. The patrol had a list that the plant superintendent Carlos Ferrer and the personnel chief Humberto Garrido had prepared: the "activists." Those who appeared on the payroll were separated and taken, beaten and at gunpoint, to the adjacent building, where the company clinic operated.

There they were beaten again before being loaded into CMPC vehicles and transported to the station and to Los Ángeles. In the group was Eduardo Cuevas, a maintenance mechanic at the Paper Mill and a MIR militant.

Before they took him away, Lieutenant Fernández grabbed him and showed him to his coworkers still formed in the line: "Look at him for the last time!" he shouted at them. That is how Cuevas himself remembered it in the reconstruction of the scene ordered by Minister Aldana on August 18, 2011.

After more than a year and three months in detention and torture centers, and after going through a War Council, Eduardo Cuevas returned to life. Those who were hunted in the following days would follow a very different path.

9/13 and 9/14/73: THE FALL OF THE STUDENT AND THE WORKERS The first thing the patrol headed that day by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos did was go to the Train Station. On the platform, Manuel Becerra was saying goodbye to his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and his cousin.

It was 8:00 AM and in just minutes the train would leave that would take him back to Curacautín, where he was studying secondary education at the Industrial School. He was about to board when the Carabineros grabbed him.

Amidst the screams of his relatives, Manuel Becerra was taken out of the station by blows, they put him in the jeep that the CMPC executives had given them to get around, and they took him to the Laja Precinct.

It was September 13, 1973. Manuel was 18 years old. In a matter of minutes, they notified his father, who worked at Transportes Cóndor. He asked his boss to speak with the Carabineros and arrange for his son's release, and then he went to the Precinct himself.

There he spoke with the guard on duty. They told him that they had already registered his detention in the corresponding books. Later they would tell him that his son had been detained because he "was a militant with the Miristas." Manuel had already been detained during the 1973 parliamentary election campaign for painting MIR slogans in Laja with some friends.

The next on the list was Luis Armando Ulloa, 41 years old, married, five children, a militant of the Communist Party (PC) and a lumber worker at the Barraca Burgos in Laja, where they went to look for him.

It was 8:30 AM. Since his eldest son worked with him, the first thing his coworkers did was notify him, because just when they took him away he was not there. He ran to his house and notified his mother, still recovering from her last childbirth.

They could not do anything to get him out of the station either. That afternoon, the Carabineros returned to the CMPC. As soon as Juan de Dios Villarroel set foot outside the plant, he was kidnapped by Rodríguez's patrol.

He was 34 years old, had four children, and the misfortune of working for a company that drew up a blacklist with the names of its own employees. On that same list were his coworkers Jack Gutiérrez, a MAPU militant; Heraldo Muñoz, from the PS; and Federico Riquelme.

They were all taken to the Laja Precinct, where the fruit and vegetable merchant and municipal councilor, Alfonso Macaya, joined them, having arrived voluntarily after hearing on a local radio station that they were looking for him.

They let him go the next day, but on September 15 they arrived again to detain him, this time at his in-laws' house. He never returned. On September 14, Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos went out again to the streets in the CMPC jeep.

He did not have to go far, because at the exit of the paper mill, just as they were leaving their workday, he detained the two men he was looking for: Wilson Muñoz and Fernando Grandón, who at 34 years old already had eight children.

9/16 and 9/17/73: THE SMALL PRECINCT It is very likely that the Laja Precinct had never been as visited as it was in those days. Parents, wives, siblings, and children of the detainees arrived to see them with the authorization of the officer in charge.

Fernando Grandón's wife arrived the same day he was detained to see him for the first time. She saw him scared, but without injuries. Luis Armando Ulloa's eldest daughter also went to see him and realized that they had cut his hair in jagged chunks.

But the worst part was taken by those from San Rosendo: they all had bruises, scratches, and dog bites. Jorge Zorrilla, the miner detained while on vacation, told one of the detainees' relatives that they had also been made to sit on the pica (a torture device).

By the night of September 15, 1973, in the dungeon of that makeshift construction at Las Viñas No. 104, there were 17 people detained: to the seven they brought from San Rosendo and the nine they kidnapped in Laja, the director of the CMPC Industrial Union, Jorge Lamana, who presented himself voluntarily, was added that afternoon.

On September 16, the last two members of the group arrived at the cell. Juan Carlos Jara (17 years old) was grabbed by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez's patrol when he was fighting with other youths in the street.

Rubén Campos, director of the Consolidada School of Laja, was taken from his house. Until September 17, visits to the prisoners continued. In the mornings, almost all the relatives arrived with breakfast and clean clothes.

Later they brought them lunch and at night dinner. They were also visited by the parish priest of Laja, the priest Félix Eicher, who naively accompanied some of those who presented themselves voluntarily to the Precinct so that they could "fix their problems." And every time he went, he told the prisoners to be calm, that they would soon get out of there.

On the night of the eve of the national holidays, Lieutenant Fernández Michell received an order. Thirty-eight years later, he would confess to a court part of what happened that night: "I was having dinner in the dining room when non-commissioned officer Garcés told me that Major Solari, the commissioner of Los Ángeles, was on the phone.

He was very upset with me because I had sent many people to the regiment without asking him. I had done it because of a space issue. It scared me that he was angry, because I had gotten married without permission from my superiors and was expecting my first daughter, so I had to do whatever he told me, otherwise I risked another sanction.

He asked me how many detainees I had in the unit. I told him 19 people. He gave me the order to 'eliminate them.' He told me that if I didn't do it, I would have to face the consequences. Then he hung up. I immediately called Garcés and Rodríguez and told them to get the personnel ready."

9/18/73: SLAUGHTER IN THE FOREST

The two police officers who followed Fernández in the chain of command made some calls and in just minutes obtained ropes, wires, shovels, vehicles, and even a remote place where to carry out the massacre.

They had carbines and rifles for all the Precinct officials. Also alcohol. Everything was provided by the CMPC. The plan to murder the 19 was already underway. It would be one of the Carabineros who participated in the massacre and who kept silent for 38 years who would be the first to break the oath of silence made on September 18, 1973.

Samuel Vidal gathered his courage

"When they called us to the barracks, the curfew had already begun. Upon arriving, they gathered us in a room we used as a dining room and ordered us to drink pisco in abundant quantities. Almost all the members of the Laja Precinct were there, from Lieutenant Fernández Michell downwards.

Those who did not arrive at the barracks would join us later. After drinking, Lieutenant Fernández told us to take the 19 detainees out of the Precinct dungeons. We tied their hands behind their backs with hemp and hay bale wire, took them outside, and loaded them onto the CMPC bus.

I had to guard the inside of the bus. That's why I carried my Sig rifle in my hands. We took the highway toward Los Ángeles. At the front of the caravan went Fernández, Garcés, and Peter Wilkens, a German farmer from the area, in a jeep." Until Corporal Samuel Vidal testified in June 2011, Wilkens' name never appeared in the investigation.

Later, former Lieutenant Fernández and several Carabineros ratified his participation in the slaughter that night. That was how the truth was known: that non-commissioned officer Evaristo Garcés Rubilar called him, that Wilkens accompanied Fernández in the CMPC jeep that led the caravan, and that, after the Perales bridge, after a curve in the road that connects Laja and Los Ángeles, it was Peter Wilkens who told him to turn right and to stop 300 meters further on, in a clearing next to a pine forest.

In 1985, Arturo Arriagada, a 19-year-old youth with no criminal record, entered Peter Wilkens' farm in Laja and killed his butler. Then he entered Wilkens' room and shot him with a shotgun. Afterward, he loaded the bodies into his van and buried them on the side of the road, very close to where, twelve years earlier, they buried the prisoners of Laja and San Rosendo.

Since only the Carabineros who were there that night and swore silence knew that Wilkens had been there, no one connected the events. According to a report by Contacto, when the death penalty was about to be abolished in Chile in 2001, Arriagada was sentenced to life imprisonment and by then, due to his good behavior, had been incorporated into the Concepción Center for Education and Work (CET).

For his criminal act, the justice system did work. Wilkens, on the other hand, died without being questioned for having been an accomplice and for having guided and observed how a group of police officers executed 19 workers in the early hours of September 18, 1973, at the Fundo San Juan.

A night that 1st Corporal (ret.) Samuel Vidal Riquelme remembered very well on June 14, 2011, when he was the first to break the pact of silence: "Since it was sand, it wasn't difficult to dig. We made a trench 2 to 3 meters long by 1.5 deep.

Then we took the 19 detainees out of the vehicles. We made some kneel in front of the trench; we left the others standing. They were in front of us, with their backs to us. I remember very well when Carabinero Gabriel González argued strongly with Nelson Casanova, because the latter did not want to shoot.

It was so much that I intervened and told González that if he did anything to Casanova, I would shoot him with the Sig rifle I had in my hand. The tension was so high. We were all very agitated, but still, when the officer gave the order, we fired.

We all fired, including Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell. We shot them in the back." After Vidal, 2nd Sergeant (ret.) Pedro Parra also decided to remember and speak: "There were no military personnel or DINA agents; it was just us from the Precinct, except for the three who stayed on guard.

When we stopped, the truck was very close to some bushes. The night was clear and there was a moon, but the vehicle lights were used anyway. With the fight between Gabriel González and Nelson Casanova, I finally realized the weight of what was happening.

Everything was already decided. Lieutenant Fernández Michell didn't say anything; he was just one more of the group. The detainees were in front of us with their hands tied. I had a Mauser carbine. When Fernández gave the order, we all aimed at the detainees who had been assigned to us.

None of them complained or said anything. They gave the order to fire. We all did it." Corporal Samuel Vidal continued remembering: "Some fell directly into the pit. Others, already dead, we had to push so they would fall, or we grabbed them and threw them into the pit.

They were one on top of the other. Then we covered them with the same sand and some branches and headed toward Laja. When we arrived at the Precinct, we continued drinking the pisco and the drinks that the..."

had brought from the CMPC paper mill canteen. Only then did those who remained on guard duty learn what had happened. Fernández gave the order to remain silent. Afterward, everything continued as if nothing had occurred.” Days later, Carabineros officers returned to the area to cover the bodies with lime, the same type used at the CMPC plant, which had reportedly been provided to the police by officials from the company itself.

This was established by Judge Carlos Aldana in his ruling.

18/9/73: AFTER THE MASSACRE

On the morning of that September 18, Gloria Urra got up early, prepared breakfast, and went to the Laja Police Station (Tenencia) to see her brother, Raúl. But the cell was empty. Now that it was being cleaned, it looked much larger.

Hilda Bravo, the wife of fruit merchant Alfonso Macaya, had not been allowed to see him when he was locked up two days earlier, so that morning she hoped to finally embrace her husband. But they told her the same thing they told the mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the 19 workers who had been there until the previous night: they had been transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

The relatives grouped together and set off to find them. They did not find them at the Los Ángeles Regiment. They went through the jail and the IANSA gymnasium; nothing. Later, some went to Concepción and inquired at the Regional Stadium, on Isla Quiriquina, and in Talcahuano; their names did not appear on the prisoner lists.

Days passed, and the desperate search was repeated again and again in Chillán and Linares. It was like that for weeks, for years. Many spent their savings traveling to different cities in the country, searching and asking. They did not get a single answer. They went through Temuco until they reached Santiago. Everything was useless: the 19 had vanished.

THE COMPLICIT ROLE OF ROSA EGNEM

The relatives of the 19 forcibly disappeared prisoners knew nothing of what happened in October 1973, a month after the massacre. When a local farmer notified the Yumbel Carabineros, 20 kilometers from Laja, that his dogs had found human remains, the conspiracy of silence had other actors here.

The report was sent to Judge Corina Mera, of the Yumbel Court of Letters. But since the judge was on medical leave, it was received by the court secretary: the lawyer Rosa Egnem, who in 1979 was accused by the victims' relatives of having kept the report on the illegal burial in the court's safe and even later of having erased it, altering judicial records.

But the ones who were indeed informed of the farmer's discovery were their victimizers. Because the truth is that, in that same month of October and in complete secrecy, Lieutenant Fernández secretly exhumed the bodies and ordered them buried in the Yumbel Parish Cemetery.

It was in that year, 1979, that the circle of protection for those involved in the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre was deployed once again.

Because the pressure from the relatives of the 19, with the support of the Archbishopric of Concepción, which in 1979 filed a criminal complaint against the Carabineros of the Laja Police Station, opened a door.

The Court of Appeals of Concepción appointed José Martínez Gaensly as a visiting judge. It would be the first time that Corporal Samuel Vidal would be compelled to remember what happened on the night of September 18, 1973.

Vidal declared the same thing as his 15 companions from the Laja Police Station: the prisoners had been taken to the Los Ángeles Regiment. Judge Martínez asked the military personnel of that regiment about the 19 workers.

They assured him they had never entered there. Then, Judge Martínez did something unusual for the terror that reigned at the time: he questioned the Laja Carabineros again. Although they added details, they all said the same thing: they had been put on a bus provided by the CMPC, and on the way to Los Ángeles, they were handed over to a “military patrol.”

The investigation by Judge José Martínez opened a second door: it became known that the bodies were in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parish Cemetery. That they had been taken there in October 1973, without anyone knowing, when they were removed from the hole where they had been buried after a farmer reported to the Yumbel Carabineros that his dogs were gnawing on human remains.

The report with the complaint reached the local Court of Letters, where the court secretary, the lawyer Rosa Egnem, hid it in the safe. It was never investigated.

Without any branch of the justice system assuming how the 19 bodies had reached the cemetery or who had executed them, in 1979 the remains were identified and handed over to their relatives, who had searched for them relentlessly for six years.

A new victim would be added to the 19 prisoners: the CMPC worker, Luis Sáez, whose trail had been lost on September 20 and whose remains appeared at the San Juan Estate, the very place where the 19 from Laja and San Rosendo had been illegally buried.

And that was all, because in March 1980, Martínez declared himself incompetent and referred the case files to the Ad Hoc Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción. Within three months, the case was dismissed, and at the end of 1981, the Supreme Court ratified the dismissal. That was as far as the action of justice went for the 19 murdered in Laja and San Rosendo.

Rosa Egnem was appointed judge and continued her path to the top of the judiciary without obstacles; the Carabineros from the Police Station continued their lives without anyone questioning them again.

Roberto Izquierdo Menéndez continued doing business and being a respectable businessman. None of them ever believed that the truth would resurface 27 years after the massacre, thanks to the persistence of the victims' families.

In 2010, the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) and the Program for the Continuation of Law 19.123, of the Ministry of the Interior, requested the Court of Appeals of Concepción to reopen the case.

It was then that Judge Carlos Aldana annulled the resolution that had definitively dismissed the Carabineros and the ratification of that ruling by the Supreme Court. Thus, the summary and investigation were reopened (Case File 27-2010).

The time had come to unravel several mysteries.

OTHER MURDERS

Although he was the first to be arrested, Lieutenant (ret.) Fernández Michell was the last of the members of the Laja Police Station to testify. On August 16, 2011, he was arrested in Iquique, where he worked as an instructor at a driving school. And when he broke the pact of silence the following day, he started from the beginning:

“I was at my residence—which was provided to me by the CMPC—when I received the news of the Military Coup. I had arrived at the Laja Police Station in mid-1973 as an acting sub-lieutenant, and since there was no officer, I remained in charge.

I was 22 years old. By September 11, I was the police authority, and as soon as I learned of the Coup, while waiting for orders, I called for the mobilization of all Carabineros. This was coordinated by Sub-Officer Major Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, who were next in command under me.”

“That same morning, I received the order from the Los Ángeles headquarters to arrest all government authorities, sub-delegates, and the mayor. The action was carried out without problems, and after detaining them at our unit, they were transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment in buses provided by the Paper Mill, because I already had many people at the station.

Days later, my superior in Los Ángeles, Commissioner Aroldo Solari Sanhueza, ordered me to begin arresting all the activists in the commune. Since the CMPC had a chemical plant, the activists could take it over and act against us.”

“That was the information that reached me from military intelligence. One of those days, Army Colonel Alfredo Rerhern Pulido arrived to reiterate the order. I ordered Sub-Officers Garcés and Rodríguez to proceed with the personnel to carry out that task, because they knew those people better.”

Colonel Rerhern left a lethal mark in those months in the area, always linked to other murders of leaders of important companies: he participated in the kidnapping and homicide of 23 employees and workers of the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants of Endesa, in Los Ángeles.

All of them were executed between late 1973 and early 1974. The remains of some of them were found at the La Mona estate, which after the Coup d'État was purchased by Forestal Mininco of the CMPC of the Matte Group. The sentence for this case was signed by visiting judge Jorge Zepeda in November 2010.

It was in those same days of Judge Zepeda's sentence that Carlos Aldana reopened the trial for the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre. By then, of the 17 Carabineros who made up the Laja Police Station in September 1973, three had passed away and another three would have to be dismissed as they did not participate in the executions, having remained on guard duty at the station.

It remained to be determined the role played by the other 11 police officers.

But there were other involvements in the 19 qualified homicides that had remained in the shadows. Especially that of the CMPC executives and the role played by Judge Rosa Egnem. Was the accusation made by the victims' relatives about the concealment of the police report on the illegal exhumation false? Because if it were true, how had she not been sanctioned?

The relatives of the executed knew they had not lied. But another four years would have to pass for the official truth to emerge, when in September 2015 Judge Carlos Aldana asked for her statement in relation to her testimony before Judge José Martínez.

By then, Rosa Egnem was already a Supreme Court justice: she was appointed in 2006, during the government of Michelle Bachelet. In her 1978 statement, it reads:

«Miss Mera (Corina Mera, presiding judge of the Yumbel Court of Greater Amount in September 1973) returned to her duties and the first thing I did was hand her the report..., but she told me ‘just leave it in the safe and don't take it out of there.’ But in the meantime, I had entered that report, without consulting her, into the entry log, and when she ordered me to keep it stored, I told her I had entered it...

She said to me, ‘what will happen when they ask (from the Court of Appeals of Concepción) for an account of the status of the case?’ I got scared and erased it from the entry log..., but I also remember that later I went back and placed the same entry in the same place where I had erased it..., because I regretted having erased it before...».

When Milton Juica, then a Supreme Court justice, was consulted about these events, he stated:

-Regarding Judge Corina Mera of Yumbel, a disciplinary sanction was applied to her for these events. And to the secretary of that time, the current justice Rosa Egnem, in a first instance, a sanction was also applied, which the Supreme Court rendered ineffective, and she did not receive disciplinary sanctions, as the judge who was responsible for that court (in 1973) did.

Indeed, the sanction against Rosa Egnem was issued by the Court of Appeals of Concepción in 1978, which was reviewed and revoked by the Supreme Court that same year.

When Judge Juica spoke about this delicate matter in 2015, he took the opportunity to pay tribute to Judge José Martínez Gaensly, of the Court of Concepción, who tried to advance the truth of the 19 qualified homicides:

«I have incidental knowledge, because I do not know the case. But regarding that terrible event in which 19 people were executed by firing squad, an investigation was carried out by a judge of the Court of Appeals of Concepción who had the virtue of recovering the bodies, performing all the corresponding forensic examinations, and made significant progress in this matter until the case ended up being absorbed by the military justice system, dismissed, and amnestied».

On December 16, Justice Rosa del Carmen Egnem Salgado was appointed president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal, a position she will assume on January 31. It was as if she had prepared for this important role.

And this is because at the end of February 2018, it was she herself who asked to change from the Third Chamber (which sees constitutional matters) to the First Chamber, to replace Justice Patricio Valdés, who was also the president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal and retired.

Rosa Egnem has the support of the new president of the Supreme Court, Guillermo Silva, to whom the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre and the impunity of the crimes against humanity in that region are not unknown.

Silva served as secretary of the First Court of Letters of Los Ángeles at the time and in August 1974 assumed the role of judge of Mulchén, where the murders were even more brutal than in Laja. In 1980, he was appointed judge of the 2nd Civil Court of Concepción and it fell to him to oversee the case regarding the death by self-immolation of Sebastián Acevedo Becerra.

A death that would make history, but not because of the role played by the current president of the Supreme Court.

THE TRIAL OF THE LAJA FIRING SQUAD

38 years had passed, and many of the Carabineros who served at the Laja Police Station in September 1973 tried in 2011 to maintain their oath of silence regarding what happened in the early hours of September 18 of that year.

It was the testimonies of those who did decide to confess that allowed Judge Carlos Aldana, in August 2011, to order the arrest of the 14 officers still alive who participated in the detentions and the execution of the workers murdered at the San Juan Estate.

Afterward, everyone spoke. On August 18, 2011, Aldana conducted the reconstruction of the scene with all the detainees regarding the chain of events that ended the lives of the 19 workers. It was a key, dramatic day.

Afterward, the judge prosecuted nine of the Carabineros for homicide and one for concealment. Three others, those who remained on guard duty that night, were dismissed. Despite the crudeness of the crimes, until January 7, the day Aldana issued the sentences, everyone was free.

1.- Lieutenant (ret.) Alberto Juan Fernández Michell: Officer in charge of the Laja Police Station and responsible for executing the orders that came from Los Ángeles. He ordered and participated in the detentions and the execution at the San Juan Estate.

He was called to retire from the institution in 1979 for “lack of vocation.” He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide and sentenced to prison. His defense appealed, and he was released after paying a bail of $300,000. On January 7, he was sentenced by Aldana to life imprisonment.

2.- Sub-Officer Evaristo Garcés Rubilar: Second in command at the Laja Police Station. He played a key role in organizing the detentions and the slaughter of the 19 at the San Juan Estate. He secured the location for the clandestine execution and contacted the German farmer Peter Wilkens. He died on December 25, 1987, at age 60, from a stroke resulting from diabetes.

3.- Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos: He was in charge of several of the detentions and had a leading role in managing the execution. Shortly after the massacre, he joined the DINA. He died on December 22, 2002, at the Dipreca Hospital from metastatic gastric cancer that caused multi-organ failure. He was 64 years old.

4.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Lisandro Alberto Martínez García: He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional liberty with a bail of $300,000.

5.- Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Luis Antonio León Godoy: “When my sub-officer Garcés gave the order, we all had to shoot,” he confessed. Prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide, he was released on provisional liberty after paying a bail of $300,000.

6.- Sergeant (ret.) José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza: In the reconstruction of the scene, he confessed to his participation, being in the CMPC jeep the whole time, illuminating what was happening. He saw everything, but did not pull the trigger.

Prosecuted for concealment of homicide, he obtained his liberty after paying a bail of $100,000. On January 7, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, as an accessory.

7.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike: One of the first to acknowledge what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973. He joined the caravan when they were already arriving at the San Juan Estate. Prosecuted for homicide, he obtained his liberty after paying a bail of $300,000. On January 7, he was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator.

8.- Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade: He acknowledged his participation, saying: “They were difficult days, we slept little.” Prosecuted for homicide, and after paying $300,000 in bail, he was released on provisional liberty.

9.- Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras: He confessed details of the massacre. Prosecuted for homicide, he had been on provisional liberty since paying $300,000 in bail. Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator of the homicides.

10.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Gabriel Washington González Salazar: After denying any participation, he had to acknowledge his role in the homicides. He is free.

11.- Corporal 1st Class (ret.) Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme: The first to break the pact of silence. His testimony was key to clarifying what happened to the 19 victims in Laja. Prosecuted for homicide, he also obtained his liberty after paying the $300,000 bail.

12.- Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila: He belonged to the Carabineros for 30 years. In his first statement, he said that after September 11, the Laja Police Station moved to CMPC facilities. Later, he confessed that he shot when ordered to do so. Prosecuted for homicide and on provisional liberty, on January 7, he was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator.

13.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Nelson Casanova Salgado: He denied his participation, but it was proven in the investigation. Prosecuted for homicide, he was free after paying bail. Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator.

14.- Corporal 1st Class (ret.) Luis Muñoz Cuevas: As he remained on guard duty at the station that night, Judge Aldana dismissed his case.

15.- Sub-Officer (ret.) Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete: His mission that night was to stop traffic in the hospital area so the caravan could pass. Afterward, he returned to the Police Station. His case was dismissed. On January 7, Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as an accessory to the 19 qualified homicides.

16.- Sub-Officer (ret.) Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme: He also remained on guard duty that night at the Laja Police Station, for which his case was dismissed.

17.- Sub-Officer Sergio Castillo Basaul: He did not participate in the firing squad, but his role was decisive in guiding the detentions in San Rosendo. He died on September 16, 2005, from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, esophageal varices, and Laennec's cirrhosis, which is caused by alcoholism.

LUIS SÁEZ: THE 20TH VICTIM EXECUTED

The first time the Carabineros of the Laja Police Station went to look for Luis Sáez Espinoza (37 years old) at his home in the Mario Medina neighborhood, it was September 11, 1973, at 10:00 AM. Sáez was an employee and union leader of the CMPC, as well as a militant of the MAPU.

As soon as he learned of the Coup, he went into hiding. Since he was not there when the Carabineros arrived, they raided his house in front of his wife, Rosa Ibaca, and his children. Three hours later, the patrol led by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos returned in the jeep that the Matte Group company had provided them, with helmets and long weapons.

They raided his home again, but this time they arrested Rosa. Pointing their rifles at her, they took her to some neighbors, and since no one knew where Luis was, they left her there. The next day, the scene was repeated.

On September 14, Sergeant Rodríguez arrived again to look for Luis and, for the third time, did not find him. That day, he gave his wife the message: that he should turn himself in, just as Alfonso Macaya had done the day before.

Minutes later, social workers from the company arrived to see how the family was doing and promised to speak with Lieutenant Fernández Michell so they would not raid that house again. The children were traumatized.

Six days later, the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, went to speak with the woman. He told her he knew where Luis was and that he wanted to speak with her. The priest took her in his truck. When they met, she told him he had to turn himself in.

Luis was afraid; he knew his life was in danger, that only two days earlier the group of 19 detainees had disappeared without a trace. So that nothing would happen to him, the priest convinced him to go to Los Ángeles and not to the Laja Police Station.

He accepted. That same day, September 20, 1973, shortly before the curfew, they went in the priest's truck to the Los Ángeles Prefecture. Luis got out of the vehicle, presented himself, and was detained there. Priest Eicher was a witness.

The next day, the same priest notified Sergeant Rodríguez that Luis had already turned himself in.

Rosa went to leave him clothes and food at the Red Cross office, but everything was returned to her because Luis was not in any detention center. His wife searched for him for years with the help of the priest and the bishop of Los Ángeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, but nothing. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis.

The search extended until 1979, when the investigation led by visiting judge José Martínez led to the whereabouts of those executed in Laja and San Rosendo, but not their victimizers. While the others had been taken to the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, Luis's remains appeared buried clandestinely in the same place where the massacre took place, at the San Juan Estate, next to a CMPC pine forest.

He had a bullet hole and was tied with wire.

Source: ciperchile.cl, January 17, 2020

Case File 27-2010: Laja Paper Mill Case

Having seen

The present case file 27-2010, from the first instance of the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Concepción, and accumulated case files 2.770, 2776, and 2760 of the Laja Criminal Court; 359-2010, 103-2011, 116-2011, 329-2011, 347-2011, 462-2011, 465-2011, 600-2011, 644-2011, 722-2011, and 791-2011, all from the 34th Criminal Court of Santiago, and case file 323-80 of the 3rd Military Court of Concepción, has been instructed in order to investigate the facts presented in the complaints on pages 71, 112, 134, 631, 1018, 1283, 1848, 1793, 2980, 3284, 3768, 3862, 3921, 4366, filed by relatives of 19 victims and against those who may be responsible for the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide of Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Gárfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales (19 victims), detained between September 13 and 17, 1973, by Carabineros officers of Laja without legal or judicial order and transferred to the Police Unit of said locality, where they were visited by their relatives, who brought them food and clothing during their stay at the aforementioned police facility until September 17, 1973, the last day there is news of them as of the date of the filing of the aforementioned criminal actions. Subsequently, it became known that they were executed by their captors on the night of September 17, 1973, at the San Juan estate in the commune of Laja, and their bodies were buried in pits dug in the open field of the aforementioned place.

SEVENTY-FIRST

Eduardo René Cuevas Jara, in the reconstruction of the scene whose records are on pages 2682 and 3816, asserts that he was detained on September 11, 1973, between 4:00 PM and 4:30 PM, along with 18 or 19 other workers, among them Araneda and Acuña, as a result of a list of people that Mr.

Pedro Jarpa had, being beaten by Sergeant Rodríguez, and they were transferred to the Police Station in several jeep-type vehicles, without remembering who was driving them. He specifies that as the workers came out, they were called by Pedro Jarpa, as their names appeared on a list that had been prepared by Carlos Ferrer and Humberto Garrido.

Source: Judiciary, January 7, 2020