Guillermo del Carmen Bustamante Sotelo, married, father of 6, agricultural worker, and union leader, was detained on the morning of September 14, 1973, at his home at the "El Gomero" estate by a group of approximately 10 Carabineros belonging to the Isla de Maipo police station.

Among them, the victim's spouse was able to identify Sergeant Emeterio Bravo, as well as Carabineros Justo Romo Peralta, Jacinto Torres González, and Aquiles Mardones Gutiérrez.

Guillermo Bustamante was taken from his home and placed into a green pickup truck, where he was forced to lie face down, while other Carabineros proceeded to raid the home, claiming they were "searching for weapons," which they did not find.

The detention was carried out in the presence of the victim's spouse, his six children—all minors—and several neighbors.

On the same day and during the same operation, other workers from the "El Gomero" estate were detained and subsequently released; also on that day, in the town of Lonquén, agricultural worker Juan de Dios Salinas Salinas was detained, and he also remains in the status of forcibly disappeared.

Guillermo Bustamante's spouse, Andrea Núñez Tamayo, began searching for her husband the following day. She went to the Isla de Maipo police station, where a police officer informed her that all detainees had been transferred to the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, but his name did not appear on the lists of detainees at that facility.

Furthermore, two of the people detained on that same occasion were indeed held at that detention center, but they never saw Guillermo Bustamante there.

She also made inquiries at the Ministry of Defense, the National Secretariat for Detainees (SENDET), the Penitentiary, the Public Jail, the Investigations Service, the Estadio Chile, and the Legal Medical Institute, without obtaining any information regarding her husband's whereabouts.

Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo remains to this day in the status of forcibly disappeared.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On May 10, 1974, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus), Case No. 452-74, was filed before the Santiago Court of Appeals, which was rejected on October 25 of the same year. The records were sent to the Talagante Court of Letters, where, on February 20, 1975, case file 23.205 for alleged disappearance was opened.

Information was requested from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior, with negative results. The Commander of the Air Force Combat Command reported that the victim had not been detained by order of the Aviation Tribunals, and the National Military Prosecutor's Office certified that he did not appear in case 152-74.

Furthermore, the Legal Medical Institute indicated that the body of Guillermo Bustamante was not registered.

Sergeant Emeterio Bravo and Carabineros Justo Romo, Jacinto Torres, and Moisés Aguilera appeared before the Tribunal.

Retired Sergeant Emeterio Bravo acknowledged having detained the victim on September 14, 1973, and stated that he was taken to the Isla de Maipo police station. He claimed to be unaware of what might have happened to him afterward and stated he had no knowledge of the detainee being taken to the Estadio Nacional.

He added that other people from the Lonquén and Isla de Maipo area were also detained in compliance with superior orders.

The other Carabineros acknowledged having detained many people on that date but claimed not to know Guillermo Bustamante or not to remember the circumstances of his detention. They stated that detainees were taken to the Isla de Maipo police station and from there to the Estadio Nacional.

They explained that his name did not appear in the registry books due to a possible immediate transfer to Santiago, and that the entry into the books or the creation of lists was not their responsibility, but that of their superior officers.

A temporary dismissal of the case was issued on the grounds that the crime was not sufficiently proven, a resolution that was approved by the Court of Appeals on May 19, 1976.

On September 13, 1979, a complaint for kidnapping was filed before the Military Court of Santiago. The investigation was handled by the Second Military Prosecutor's Office under Case No. 694-79.

The filing mentions the fact that the victim's name appears on a list of "presumably disappeared persons who were located in records of the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago." This list contains 63 names of people, with their respective Identity Card numbers, autopsy protocol numbers, and the date and time of their death.

In the case of Guillermo Bustamante, it is noted that he died on September 14, 1973, at 3:20 PM. Also appearing there are the names of seven other detainees whose remains were found in the Lonquén lime kilns in December 1978.

It should be noted that this list is part of the Report from the Government of Chile to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, delivered in October 1975 and presented by the Chilean Government Delegate, Sergio Diez, before the Third Committee of the General Assembly of that body on November 7, 1975.

Subsequent investigations into this list with authorities of that time failed to establish its origin or those responsible for its creation.

On July 24, 1981, the Second Military Prosecutor's Office determined that, as the investigation was exhausted and there was no evidence to fully prove the reported facts, case 694-79 was temporarily dismissed.

The resolution was sent for review to the Martial Court, which, on October 29, 1981, decreed a total and definitive dismissal, further stating that "from the records, it is clear that the events would have taken place within the period indicated by Decree Law No. 2.191, that is, between March 10, 1978, and September 11, 1973." In other words, the Amnesty Law was applied.

The anthropometric records of Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo were attached to case 4449-AF of the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago regarding the crime of illegal burial, in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, of unidentified persons who died between September and December 1973.

The investigating judge of the case ordered the excavation of 108 graves in September 1991. From there, 125 bodies were exhumed and sent to the Legal Medical Institute. Currently (late 1992), the forensic identification reports are pending.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

In the parish cemetery, another year was commemorated for the detention and subsequent murder of the 15 peasants who were victims of the dictatorship at the Lonquén kilns. "Our commitment is to maintain the memory to find the truth and justice longed for for so many years," stated Mayor Carlos Adasme during his speech.

Source: islademaipo.cl 7/10/2019

Date: 07-10-2019

Pardon petition presented for four human rights violators

Lawyer Raúl Meza made the presentation at the Ministry of Justice, appealing to the "humanity and mercy" of President Michelle Bachelet. The professional also announced that during the month of September, "an important sign of repentance by some inmates of Punta Peuco" is coming.

Lawyer Raúl Meza went to the Ministry of Justice to present a pardon petition for four criminals convicted of human rights violations committed during the civil-military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet.

The lawyer maintained that this is "the first collective pardon petition made in the country, which constitutes a historic event for the families of these convicts." The professional added that these requests relate "to strictly humanitarian matters" and asserts that medical records justifying the pardon petition were presented.

Meza added that records were also attached regarding other pardon requests that were accepted and that have no relation to cases of people with terminal illnesses. "Pardons were granted to people convicted of terrorism crimes; for the same reason, we want to appeal no longer to the times of justice, but to those of mercy," he affirmed.

The lawyer also announced that during this month of December, inmates at the Punta Peuco prison will give "an important sign of repentance and forgiveness" and noted that "therefore, the President has a historic opportunity to consolidate reconciliation."

Meanwhile, the president of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP), Alicia Lira, asserted that "it is not about feelings but about justice," and that it is the President who must pronounce herself on prison benefits and not her ministers.

Human rights lawyer Cristián Cruz said that Government authorities, especially the Minister of Justice, who showed himself to be in favor of granting prison benefits to criminals against humanity, have generated a climate conducive to justifying pardons based on alleged humanitarian reasons.

The crimes of the convicts seeking the pardon

The names for whom this pardon petition was made correspond to Pedro Eduardo Vivian Guaina, René José Guillermo Cardemil Figueroa, Marcelo Castro Mendoza, and Gustavo Muñoz Ramírez. All were convicted of crimes against humanity.

In the case of Pedro Eduardo Vivian Guaita, he was convicted for his participation in a case of detention and torture that occurred in the city of Copiapó in 1975, when he was serving as a Carabineros non-commissioned officer.

Guaita, along with seven other agents of the dictatorship, detained the victim and his wife, Nicza Báez, in 1975, and they were taken to the guardroom of a military facility in Copiapó, where they were separated.

Subsequently, they were reunited and taken to the second floor of the 23rd Motorized Infantry Regiment, where they were blindfolded, interrogated, and tortured, with only Báez managing to regain her freedom.

Meanwhile, René José Guillermo Cardemil Figueroa was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his participation in the homicide of 6 people. He, along with other members of the Army Non-Commissioned Officers School, violently raided the apartments of Tower 12 of the San Borja redevelopment, obeying a false report against one of the detainees from a neighbor.

The raid surprised the building's tenants while they were sleeping in their apartments. The military proceeded to detain 6 people: 2 Argentine tourists, an official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a university student, a dental surgeon, and an importer and militant of the National Party.

The six detainees—Ricardo Montecinos Slaughter, Carlos Adler Zulueta, Beatriz Elena Díaz Agüero, Víctor Garretón Romero, Jorge Salas Pararadisi, and Julio Saa Pizarro, a dental surgeon—were taken to the Barrancas Cultural Center in Pudahuel, a place transformed into a detention center by the dictatorship's agents.

The following day, the detainees were taken to the surroundings of the Lo Prado tunnel, where each one was ordered to flee to simulate an escape, and despite pleas for mercy, they were murdered by machine-gun fire.

Meanwhile, Marcelo Iván Castro Mendoza was prosecuted as the author of 13 qualified homicides and 2 kidnappings when he served as a Carabineros captain. He was finally sentenced as the author of the qualified kidnappings of Juan de Dios Salinas Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo to the penalty of 10 years and 1 day of major imprisonment in its medium degree.

Source: radio.uchile.cl 15/12/2016

Date: 15-12-2016

RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LONQUEN KILNS MASSACRE CAPTURED IN VALPARAISO

The Special Affairs and Human Rights Brigade (BAE) of the Investigative Police captured yesterday, in Valparaíso, the retired Carabineros Major Lautaro Castro (61), who was the head of the police station in Isla de Maipo, south of the Metropolitan Region, when, a few days after September 11, 1973, he ordered the detention and execution of 17 peasants.

Of the total number of prisoners, 15 were murdered without any legal procedure and illegally buried in the Lonquén kilns. The other two were executed at the Naltahua bridge.

REOPENING

Before assuming her position as a minister of the Supreme Court, Margarita Herreros was a member of the San Miguel Court of Appeals. In that court, she was in charge of the crimes committed in the rural town.

Until last year, the process regarding the Lonquén deaths was closed due to the application of the Amnesty Law. However, the case regarding the death of the two peasants at the Naltahua bridge had been reopened.

The victims are Juan de Dios Salinas Salinas and Guillermo del Carmen Bustamante Sotelo. Both, 29 and 39 years old respectively, were agricultural workers and were detained on September 14, 1973, by a Carabineros patrol accompanied by the owner of the adjacent land, who had acted as an informant.

From that date forward, nothing more was known of their fate. It is only suspected that they were sent to the Estadio Nacional or Estadio Chile prisoner camps and that they may have been buried in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery.

All the police officers who participated in the detentions were prosecuted last year.

Meanwhile, although Lautaro Castro—who changed his name to Marcelo a few years ago—testified on one occasion, when he was again required for interrogation, which would lead to his prosecution, he disappeared without a trace. Currently, the case was in the hands of the San Miguel Court minister, Marta Hanke, who issued an arrest warrant to the BAE.

After months of investigation, in the last two weeks, it was established that he was hiding in Valparaíso.

After searching a total of eight addresses, the detectives focused their attention on one located on Cerro Las Mercedes. In that sector, several neighbors identified the photograph of the retired major.

WITHOUT RESISTANCE

During the morning, a team of four detectives requested a warrant from the judge to raid the place. Inside was Lautaro Castro, who did not resist the arrest. At the time of his capture, he was accompanied by his wife, Ana Dipsi, and although his closest relatives claimed to be unaware of his whereabouts, they immediately began to arrive at the scene and make phone calls to the location.

The lawyer for the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program, Joseph Bereaud, indicated that Castro's capture was fundamental to closing the summary and initiating the sentencing stage. LN

The Lonquén case

The discovery of the bodies buried in Lonquén in 1978 became an emblem of the defense of human rights and exposed the State policy promoted by the dictatorship to hide the bodies of the victims.

Pinochet and the rest of the regime's masterminds knew that the macabre discovery of the Lonquén kilns would generate problems. Hence, a new and sinister strategy was created to hide the crimes committed throughout the country: "Operation TV Set Removal." Through this code, all military units were tasked with locating and removing the clandestine graves where the bodies of hundreds of murdered people had been dumped.

Subsequently, the remains were burned or thrown into the sea. After the disappearance of the two peasants at the Naltahua bridge, between October 7 and 8, 1973, the same Carabineros from Isla de Maipo detained dozens of peasants.

Fifteen of them suffered the repression of the police, led by the then-lieutenant Lautaro Castro.

After a back-and-forth of relatives who never found an answer regarding the fate of their loved ones, on December 1, 1978, the Vicariate of Solidarity presented a complaint to the Supreme Court regarding the discovery of human remains inside two mineral processing mines located on the slopes of the Lonquén hills.

The records were passed to the Talagante Court of Letters, which, through a summary, verified the existence of human remains inside the kilns. The case was passed to the military justice system, and on August 16, 1979, the sentence was issued that totally and definitively dismissed the prosecuted Carabineros by virtue of the Amnesty Law.

Last year, lawyer Nelson Caucoto requested the reopening of the case, and it is expected that with Castro's detention, the other responsible parties will also be sanctioned.

Source: radiopolar.com 29/06/2007

Date: 29-06-2007

Execution that occurred 31 years ago reconstituted

The head of the First Court of Talagante, Moisés Pino, will carry out tomorrow, September 14, the reconstruction of the scene of an execution that occurred 31 years ago on the same date.

It concerns the crime committed by Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo police station against two peasants from the same area, namely Guillermo Bustamante and Juan de Dios Salinas. The uniformed officers were also linked to the deaths of other people who were found years later in the Lonquén kilns, thanks to the work of former minister Adolfo Bañados, whose discovery led to the removal of bodies nationwide, called "TV Set Removal."

The proceeding will be carried out in the same place where the events occurred, that is, at the Naltagua Bridge, the place where these peasants were shot and then thrown into the rushing waters of the Maipo River, after which their fate is until now unknown, and they appear as forcibly disappeared in the Rettig Report.

Not only will the magistrate, his clerk, the court secretary, and the former uniformed officers be at the scene, but also the relatives of the victims, making it an event of particular characteristics, taking into consideration that it is being held on the same date the deaths occurred.

In the case, there are at least three confessions from former Carabineros who assert that both peasants were murdered without a judicial process, and whose execution was ordered by an officer of that unit, whose identity this media outlet reserves until the execution of the proceeding.

As in most cases of human rights violations, the files on the repressive situations that appear on the Internet account for all the judicial actions that were carried out for years to learn the facts, as well as the fate of the two peasants, but all were insufficient.

Source: September 20, 2004, El Mostrador

Date: 20-09-2004

History of Isla de Maipo By Guillermo Inostroza Rojas

History of Isla de Maipo

By Guillermo Inostroza Rojas

CHAPTER X

THE MARTYRS OF LONQUEN

Aware of how difficult it is in these times (1987) to refer to the "Lonquén Case," it will be done in some way, since although it is very painful, it is part of the island's history, as Lonquén is a very important district of its commune and because the 17 victims resided in Isla de Maipo.

We must keep in mind that the national authorities have considered the process closed. The relatives of the victims wait with resignation for justice to be served one day, and the opposition to the regime demands the reopening of the case and the punishment of the guilty.

It is undoubted that all accusing eyes are directed against the military regime, as uniformed personnel are the main suspects. But it happens that in this terrible episode, the government has no participation whatsoever.

Viewed impartially, its responsibility lies solely and exclusively in not ordering a thorough investigation; if it did, it would undoubtedly emerge successful and strengthened before national and international public opinion, as the entire island population gossips about who the suspicions fall upon in this matter.

Including the relatives of the martyrs, but fear forces everyone to remain silent. For this reason, this author, with a clean conscience and heart, will limit himself to summarizing it as part of the History of Isla de Maipo.

Everything began on September 12, 1973, about twenty hours after a Military Junta took power in Chile following a coup d'état. Then, a police patrol arrived at the "Santa Claus" (A) plot located in the Los Cuatro Caminos sector of Lonquén, proceeding to raid the home of Mr.

Juan de Dios Salinas, without detaining anyone. Two days later, on September 14 at 5:30 AM, another patrol appeared at the scene, taking the head of the household into detention. Other neighbors in the sector also fell in the raid, among them Mr.

Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo, a resident of the Gabriela Mistral neighborhood in La Islita. All were taken as detainees to the La Isla police station and locked in a dungeon.

In the early hours of September 17 to 18, when the clock pointed to approximately 2:30 AM, Salinas and Bustamante were taken from among their companions, and their whereabouts were never known again.

They were the only ones who were not found in the lime kiln. 20 days later, on Sunday, October 7, Mr. Sergio Adrián Maureira Lillo, 46, and his sons Sergio Miguel, 28, married with two children; Rodolfo, 27, married with one child; José Manuel, 25, single; and Segundo Armando, 23, single, were detained in their homes.

Minutes later, Carlos Segundo Hernández Flores, 39, and his brothers Nelson, 32, and Oscar Nibaldo, 30, met the same fate. All those named were neighbors of each other, residing on Camino La Ballica, and were founding members of the "Robert Kennedy" Sports Club, an institution they created, impacted by the fate of that American family, without thinking or perhaps having "in mente" that their destiny would one day be similar.

The raid continued at number 694 of Avenida El Rosario, capturing there Mr. Enrique René Astudillo Rojas, 65, and his sons Ramón Osvaldo, 27, and Omar Enrique, 20, who had just arrived from the northern city of Iquique, where he completed his Military Service in the "Carampangue" Regiment.

All of them, as has been established, were accused of being communists. This ceases to have a basis, since Mr. Felipe Segundo Acevedo Vera, who was indeed a communist, was not detained, despite having an unparalleled curriculum in the commune.

He was the first councilman of that collective in the history of Isla de Maipo, and in 1973, he was a very important member of the CUT (Central Workers' Union of Chile) and organized the island's unions into a single federation, which became the basis for what later became common throughout the country.

However, he was not detained and was able to move freely through the town. This graphically shows us that it was not the Marxists who were being persecuted here, but very specific people and families. Other innocent victims were a group of cheerful boys, "somewhat disorderly" as a policeman said later, composed of Manuel Jesús Navarro Salinas, 20; Miguel Angel Brant Bustamante, 19; Iván Ordóñez Lama, 17; and the young man from Santiago, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, who on that fateful day had the unfortunate idea of going to visit his grandmother, María Acevedo, who was ill, and when he was returning to the capital, he was captured in "La Plaza" along with the other boys when he was only 17 years old.

In the abandoned lime kilns of the Lonquén hill, the bodies of all the named martyrs were found five years after their detention, awakening global indignation and condemnation from the United Nations. Only time will determine, sooner or later, what was the reason or cause that covered so many island homes and families with blood and pain.

After the fall of the military regime, it was established that the prisoners Juan de Dios Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo were executed at the Naltagua Bridge in the early hours of September 18, 1973.

Source: http://www.inoschile.cl/