On the eve of the 39th anniversary of the death of Fernando Álvarez, his widow, Adriana Ramírez, only wants to know who, how, and why they executed her husband on November 8, 1973. The pharmaceutical chemist and former professor at the University of Concepción says that today, for the sake of her three “little angels,” she had to overcome her grief.

She reveals that in the Intendencia’s safe, Álvarez kept the name of the real perpetrator behind the death of Corporal Aroca. The document was seized by the Carabineros patrol that arrived early to arrest him at his home on September 11, 1973. Retired General Washington Carrasco and six retired Carabineros officers have testified in this human rights case.

In a simple apartment with a view of Cerro Caracol, living with her rocking chair, her collection of blue and brown bottles, and handicrafts from Hugo Chávez’s homeland, lives Adriana Ramírez Núñez in her solitude—the widow of Salvador Allende’s last intendant in Concepción, Fernando Álvarez Castillo.

From high above, the bustle of children at recess can be heard; there is noise in the street, but inside that home—where she keeps the copper urns containing the ashes of her parents and her husband—there is total peace.

After the formal introductions, she—with a piercing and inquisitive gaze—seems to ask herself: Do I speak or do I not speak? She does not like interviews, but the arrival of Marcela, her youngest daughter, encourages her.

She says that she was the only one of the three children who protested when they were told of their father’s murder: “Why? Why?” she sobbed. Alerted by the doorbell that rang at 7:25 a.m. on September 11, 1973, at Freire 1899 in Concepción, and the voices coming from the first floor, she went down a few steps and managed to see her father putting on his trousers over his pajamas. “Go back upstairs!” a plainclothes Carabinero ordered her, and the girl returned to her room and stayed there curled up, quiet, mute, waiting.

She was 9 years old.

This pharmaceutical chemist and retired former professor at the University of Concepción, who at 78 years old still walks as tall as a pear tree, will mark thirty-nine years of widowhood this coming November 8.

Her stature—rather short—says nothing of the strength of her words when, in the middle of the interview, she clarifies: “I am a grounded woman, very practical, and that rubs people the wrong way. I thought more about my children than about the one who left, and I could not risk losing my source of income at the University of Concepción; I had to feed my three little angels.” And she dedicated herself to her work and raising her children, the eldest being 15 years old.

Adriana never actively participated in human rights groups, and although she is a Communist Party militant and felt after the coup that “I had the plague”—as she describes the stigma that fell upon all survivors of the former Unidad Popular during the military government—at the Institute of Chemistry where she worked, there was always solidarity, starting with former dean Germán Acuña (father of the Christian Democrat doctor Germán Acuña Gamé), deputy director Sergio Quadri, and other faculty and administrative staff.

Her colleagues, she says, were “exceptional.”

She also considers the investigation being carried out by Judge Carlos Aldana to be exceptional, in case file 31-2010, for the crime of illicit association and the homicide of Fernando Álvarez, in which she is a plaintiff.

She is also a plaintiff on behalf of the State against all those who may be responsible as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups for the repeated crimes of “kidnapping and qualified homicide, consummated,” committed to the detriment of Fernando Álvarez Castillo, sanctioned under Articles 141 and 391 of the Penal Code, respectively, in relation to Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Fernando Álvarez Castillo was classified as a victim of human rights violations in the category of forcibly disappeared by the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, as noted by the Undersecretary of the Interior, Rodrigo Ubilla Mackenney.

What do you expect from the inquiries being made by Judge Aldana?

“That the murderers tell me why and how they killed him and who gave the order. That is all I want to know; I am not asking for compensation or anything like that. They treated him like a criminal from the moment they arrested him.

I know the surnames of all of them, but not their faces. I want to know what a criminal is like who beats another person to death, whatever his name is and whatever branch he belongs to,” the widow specifies.

Being investigated in the case for their alleged responsibility are retired General Washington Carrasco and retired Carabineros officers Benjamín Bustos, former Prefect of Concepción; Fernando Pinares, former commissioner of the Fourth Carabineros Precinct (today the First Precinct); captains Sergio Arévalo Cid and Alex Graft; and Lieutenant Roberto Ricotti.

All were members of the civil commission of the time that later became the Sicar, a Carabineros intelligence agency that reported to the deputy prefect of services, Fernando Poo (now deceased); Luis Ortiz Lorenzo, head of E-2 (military intelligence, also deceased); and two or three others involved who participated in the interrogations of Álvarez and other political prisoners regarding the discovery of weapons, the crime against Corporal Exequiel Aroca, and the famous Plan Zeta—which was never successfully articulated at the time—and which was allegedly aimed at eliminating certain military officers, judges, and people linked to the Right.

The Russian AKAs

Following his arrest and a stay of little more than a month on Isla Quiriquina, where he was held in custody by the Navy, the former official was transferred on November 5, 1973—along with Dr. Jorge Peña Delgado and professor Eliecer Carrasco—to the facilities at Salas 329 to be interrogated by the Carabineros Civil Commission and the E-2.

A fourth member of the group, the former president of the Banco Concepción, Ozren Agnic, was taken to the Estadio Regional.

The interrogation was ordered by the former commander-in-chief of the III Army Division, retired General Washington Carrasco—as he himself acknowledges in court records—following the discovery of 10 Russian AKA machine guns with ammunition found in Lota.

Captains Arévalo and Graft allegedly participated directly in the inquiries, although they testified before the courts that they only attended the interrogation as observers of the two military men—a non-commissioned officer and a corporal—who arrived at the Fourth Precinct on the afternoon of November 7.

And although at the time, Álvarez’s death was attributed according to the official version to cardiorespiratory arrest—as reported by the newspapers El Sur and Diario Color—the former intendant died as a result of a hemothorax, a blunt blow to the left side of his body that caused the rupture of blood vessels in his lung and filled it with fluid. Three autopsy reports coincide in this assessment.

Early on November 8, Álvarez was found lifeless in his cell on the second floor of Salas 329; there is no certainty of the time of death, but there is of the moment the interrogation ended: at 7:00 p.m., although his wife suspects he died shortly before midnight: “I was here, at this very table playing solitaire, and I felt a sharp pain in my head, as if something had stopped.

They killed Fernando, I thought. It was a Wednesday night, and we had been looking for him since Monday the 5th. I told Julio, a cousin who was with me, that we should go to sleep; that a lot of work awaited us the next day.”

She says that—alerted to her husband’s transfer from Quiriquina to Concepción on the 5th—she had requested an audience, and the day after experiencing that “sensation,” she was waiting in the anteroom of the III Army Division to speak with the head of military intelligence when two detectives arrived to find her and took her to the Legal Medical Institute to identify the body and certify his identity.

That same night, General Carrasco called her on the phone to offer his condolences in the name of the Armed Forces—“I felt it as a mockery,” she says—and in a later interview, he acknowledged that he had ordered him interrogated regarding an alleged illegal importation of weapons and the Plan Zeta.

On that occasion, “he said that he never thought the interrogation would be so harsh and that Fernando would not withstand it, and just as we wished, he placed a plane at our disposal to transport and cremate the body in Santiago.”

She adds that she was only authorized to look at the corpse, but she observed the tips of his fingers blackened and two visible marks on his face from blows, which indicates to her that they had applied electricity.

She knows, she adds, that an agreement between the Army and the Carabineros had been broken, since it was the latter who had arrived early to arrest him at his home; and that happened because of “the knowledge Fernando had regarding the person responsible for the death of Corporal Aroca, who had been shot by an unknown person in front of the PS headquarters.

Fernando was murdered by State agents without having any responsibility for arms trafficking crimes or the so-called Plan Zeta.”

You also testified that before being taken to Quiriquina, the Carabineros took your husband to the Intendencia and he gave them a document he had in the safe. Do you know what it was about?

I am the only one who knows about that document, because Fernando showed it to me. It was a paper, a sheet, and on it was the name of the real murderer of Corporal Aroca.

And why didn’t you take it to the courts?

He didn’t have time; that was shortly before September 11. In those days, I don’t know if you remember, we were all running around with different activities. We also knew the Coup was coming.

And who was mentioned in the paper?

I didn’t read it. I even offered to keep it, but Fernando chose to leave it in the Intendencia’s safe. I cannot prove that the document exists, but Fernando showed it to me and told me that it had been a Carabineros officer.

Is that why, you believe, the Carabineros were in such a hurry to arrest him and get hold of the paper?

“They got there first. Washington Carrasco, in the interview we had, said that the agreement between the three branches that existed in Concepción was that the Army would take charge of the intendant. Those were his words; and that the Carabineros got there first and he didn’t know why.”

Crime at Castellón 46

Corporal Exequiel Aroca Cuevas (39, married, father of four) was murdered on August 30, 1972, in front of the PS headquarters at Castellón 46 in Concepción, at the end of a march by supporters and opponents of the Allende government, when the police arrived in two buses to address complaints from neighbors who were protesting about stones being thrown at their houses while there was a “caceroleo” (pot-banging protest) in the sector.

That night, around 10:30 p.m., a witness identified as Julio Schindler, who was heading home in the university district, stumbled upon the scene and transported the mortally wounded policeman to the Regional Hospital.

In the midst of the Unidad Popular, according to Schindler, the result of a sort of conspiracy was being lived: to produce a death to change the political balance of forces at the time, in which some Carabineros officers were allegedly involved.

Eleven months later, the military coup took place, and for that crime, only the “guerrilla” Héctor Figueroa Yáñez was held responsible. “I didn’t shoot from the roof of the PS!” the man, sentenced to 9 years in prison by a military court for the crime of assaulting a Carabinero resulting in death, told this journalist from Norway, where he lives today.

And he added in a publication in El Sur in August 2007: “I know there were our people up there (on the roof of the PS headquarters); they shot with empty bottles. From other roofs further back, they shot at our people, and we assume it was people from Patria y Libertad.

If the prosecutor who sentenced me had wanted to know the truth, he would have found it, but he did not act in the most correct way; they forced me to sign a statement under beatings.” In the same publication, Figueroa admitted that there were weapons in the PS headquarters: “Yes, there was something to protect the Allende government, but they belonged to a very restricted circle.”

The death of Corporal Aroca caused such a stir in a region and a country as polarized as Chile was in 1973 that a special commission of the Chamber of Deputies, tasked with investigating a constitutional accusation presented by the PDC at the time, dismissed Intendant Wladimir Chávez.

With that murder—as a corollary—they accused him of having violated clear constitutional provisions regarding the granting of permits for public gatherings.

In that context, in October ’72, Fernando Álvarez Castillo assumed the position and became Allende’s third intendant in Concepción after Egidio Contreras and Waldimir Chávez, with periods of interim service by Gilberto Grandón.

Testimonies of those involved

In court records, the former head of the Sicar, Sergio Arévalo, declares that as a result of reports at the time, they found 10 AKA machine guns in Lota, and General Washington Carrasco ordered the head of intelligence of the III Division to send Army officials to interrogate Álvarez with all the elements.

In that context, at the beginning of November, they brought him from Quiriquina to the Fourth Carabineros Precinct. Once there, a place was set up to interrogate him and Dr. Peña Delgado. Neither, he says, had information about the weapons, and neither of them was subjected to illegitimate coercion.

Once the interrogation was concluded, the military and Carabineros left, and the next morning he learned of the death.

Retired Colonel Roberto Ricotti García, later a liaison between the Carabineros and the Army, declares that the interrogation lasted between 5 and 6 minutes and dealt with armaments—“it was said that weapons had arrived from Cuba hidden in bags of sugar”—political meetings, and the presence of foreigners at the time.

Neither of the two former officers admits to having committed illegitimate coercion, although in his testimony, Dr. Peña states that Carabineros officials wearing uniforms—among them Major (ret.) Fernando Pinares—interrogated him.

He, he says, was not coerced, but in one of the interrogations regarding the existence of clandestine hospitals, someone removed his blindfold and “I saw him (Fernando Álvarez) lying on a bench, his body tied to it, and when I tried to approach, they hit me with a rifle butt in the calf, which knocked me to the ground.”

The interrogations had a “softening” system first—describes professor Eliecer Carrasco, former secretary of the PS in Concepción—; they would tie them up and sit them in a chair with a hood to prevent them from seeing and to hinder their breathing, in addition to holding weapons to their temples; then they would leave them alone, and before interrogating us, “they would beat us brutally; on one occasion I fell off the chair while tied up.

I remember the first blows were to the pit of the stomach, and only then would they start interrogating us.”

Sentenced to 5 years in prison by a war council in Concepción, lawyer and former deputy for Concepción Iván Quintana identifies in court records Captain (ret.) Arévalo Cid as his torturer at the former Fourth Carabineros Precinct of Concepción, where he was detained a week before Álvarez, Peña, and Carrasco. “I was tortured at least three times; in two of them, I was blindfolded, and in the last one, they removed the blindfold to confront me with other political prisoners.

I had the opportunity to see my torturers (…) and among them were lieutenants Ricotti, Jorge Offerman, and Alex Graft, and among the Carabineros, Héctor Cares and Raúl Hemosilla; another wore optical glasses, and a fourth was on guard in front of the house of General Silvio Salgado, in Chorrillos and Chépical, near my residence.”

Curious. For their “direct and immediate participation,” the same officers and troop personnel mentioned by Quintana—in addition to Major (ret.) Pinares—are mentioned to the judge by the former prefect of Concepción, also investigated in the events, Benjamín Bustos, who received the order to arrest Álvarez directly from General Carrasco on the night of September 10 to 11, when a sort of local command was established.

It is also known about the Carabinero Hermosilla that he was allegedly the author of the death of the mayor of Coelemu, Luis Acevedo Andrade. The body was buried illegally on the road to Santa Juana, in front of the Iglesia de Piedra.

Announcer and scriptwriter

A law graduate, but a radio worker—announcer and scriptwriter—at the University of Concepción Radio, was Fernando Álvarez. He had a good voice, diction, and a broad culture, says his wife. The couple met during Allende’s first presidential campaign (1952) and married in 1958.

And practical as she is, she clarifies: “In no case was it love at first sight, but he was an intelligent, cultured man, very accessible, with a good manner, and very affectionate with his children Marcos, Aurora, and Marcela; he played marbles with them, flew kites, and helped them with their homework.”

Adriana remembers that she was “first lady” between October 1972 and September 1973; she was in charge of the Coordinating Committee of Mothers’ Centers—Cocema, the predecessor to Cema Chile—and although she was interested in women being trained in basic electricity and plumbing, the initiative only managed to be written on paper.

At the time, social activity was intense—which is why she laughs when she remembers that, in a confrontation, Major Commissioner Fernando Pinares denied knowing her twice—; she supervised the sales room where products from state-owned companies were sold—glass, earthenware, and fabrics from Tomé, mainly—so that women could make garments.

But she did not leave the Central Institute of Chemistry, where she was dedicated to elemental organic microanalysis, because she was very clear that the political position would be temporary, and the University supported her with a more flexible schedule—and even more so after ’73—because there were no other people who could operate the equipment.

“I was never a mere side dish nor just the wife of…; I was part of the Allende government by conviction, and all my life I had a level of awareness of what was happening and what was going to happen, but I never indoctrinated my children, just as my father and mother did not do with me,” she says.

But Marcela, the daughter, now a pediatrician, says that her mother reacted with alarm when she—a student leader of Medicine at the FEC—fought the regime in her own way and the CNI came to the house looking for her. The University, she says, was her moment of rebellion.

“I felt in debt to my father, and I shouted and protested everything I had to shout and protest, but when for the first time I failed a course and my mother scolded me and hit me, I understood that I had not chosen the right path; it was a luxury I could not afford; we had to move forward, be good people and professionals to—from there—serve the just cause of changing the world, as our parents set out to do.

We were fortunate, I would also say: we had a body, we were able to mourn him, live our grief, and from that grief, move forward.”

Since that morning when he was arrested, the family never saw the husband or the father again. Nor did Concepción see the last UP intendant. And while Marcela has continued to ask herself “Why? Why?”—without finding the answer—every May 29, on his birthday, and every November 8, on the day of his death, she brings four red roses, one for each member of the family, and places them next to the copper urn that her mother treasures in the bedroom.

And the fact is that Doña Adriana does not like cemeteries. Another peculiarity of this Capricorn woman. “I am a stubborn goat!” she asserts.

Source: Revistanos.cl, October 2012