36 years old, married, chemistry and biology teacher, forcibly disappeared on August 6, 1974, in Chañaral. Guillermo Haroldo Rojas Zamora, a member of the Socialist Party, was detained that night by civilians.

He has been missing ever since. According to the statement provided by his spouse, on August 6, 1974, at approximately 9:30 p.m., three individuals dressed in civilian clothes, traveling in a car with a license plate from Las Condes, appeared at their home in Chañaral and asked for Haroldo Rojas Zamora.

His spouse replied that he was at the Escuela Consolidada teaching night classes. After asking how to get to that location, the civilians left. The spouse adds that that same night, around 11:00 p.m., the school’s assistant arrived at their home to deliver some keys and her husband's jacket, stating that he had left the establishment with the three civilians.

In subsequent inquiries made by the spouse at the Chañaral Carabineros Station, the officer in charge confirmed that Guillermo Rojas Zamora had been held in transit and had later been transferred to Santiago by members of a security service.

Another relative traveled to the capital, and at the offices of the National Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET), they were informed that the teacher was at Cuatro Alamos. Officials at that facility denied he was being held there.

Subsequently, SENDET reported that he had been released on September 16, 1974. In September 1985, a legal proceeding was initiated for the crime of kidnapping in the case of Guillermo Rojas. That investigation contains statements from Carabineros indicating that he was indeed detained for several hours at the Chañaral Carabineros Station and was later transferred to Santiago by personnel from the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

With this evidence, the case was referred for lack of jurisdiction to the First Military Court of Antofagasta. The Military Court did not proceed with the investigation of the reported facts, as the criminal liability of those appearing as defendants had been extinguished by virtue of the 1978 Amnesty Decree Law.

Considering the evidence gathered and the investigation conducted by this Corporation, the Superior Council reached the conviction that Guillermo Haroldo Rojas Zamora was detained by State agents and disappeared while being held in that status. For this reason, it declared him a victim of human rights violations.

Source: (Corporation Report)

For the Teachers' Union (Colegio de Profesores), September 11 is an especially significant date. Military repression directly affected hundreds of teachers, with dozens of educators recorded as forcibly disappeared to this day, along with teachers who were victims of political executions due to their social and political activity.

Some of them were detained in their own schools, where they were lost track of forever. There are also hundreds of teachers who were tortured, exiled, and dismissed from their jobs. "There can be no context that justifies murdering, disappearing, or torturing.

There can be no context that justifies that," asserts Mario Aguilar, President of the Teachers' Union, on the day before a new commemoration of the 1973 Coup d'État. Furthermore, the Coup d'État meant the end of the Unified Workers' Union of Education (SUTE), the solid professional and trade union organization that teachers from all over the country, along with school support staff, had established in 1970.

Along with this, in the same year, 1973, the Military Junta ended the Normal Schools and their century-old tradition of teacher training, which had sustained the growth of Public Education throughout the 20th century.

Likewise, the regime intervened in the school curriculum, modifying the education provided in classrooms. The development of the Dictatorship also entailed the municipalization of State educational establishments.

This transfer diminished the extensive public school system built over decades in the country, but it also gave rise to the "Historical Debt" that affects thousands of teachers to this day. In 1981, teachers were forcibly transferred from their status as public servants to municipal employees without respecting the salary adjustments to which they were entitled, affecting their wages while they were active teachers and reducing their pensions once they retired.

One more consequence of the Coup d'État on the teaching profession, which remains unresolved to this day. For all these reasons, 136 teachers who were victims of forced disappearances and summary executions for political reasons have been permanently honored with a commemorative plaque in the building of the National Board of the Teachers' Union since 2014.

That building, in turn, bears the name of Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, another teacher who was a victim of the Dictatorship. Recently, the Reception Hall of the Casa del Maestro in Santiago was renamed in honor of Juan Antonio Gianelli Company, a teacher and leader of SUTE, who was forcibly disappeared by the Joint Command in 1976. "Along with remembering our colleagues and keeping them very present in our minds and hearts, it is also important to have a commitment as educators to a culture of Human Rights so that tragedies like this never happen again in Chile, so that Human Rights are never again trampled upon in Chile as they were during that period," reflects the President of the Teachers' Union.

Source: colegiodeprofesores.cl 9/10/2018

Date: 09-10-2018

Guillermo Haroldo Rojas Zamora Story: An empty chair with his jacket at school

It was the night of August 6, 1974. Guillermo Rojas Zamora had returned to Chañaral a few months earlier with his wife, Carla, and their two young children: Guillermo, seven months old, and Ximena, four years old.

He was teaching at the Escuela Consolidada in Chañaral. During the years of the Popular Unity, he had moved to El Salvador, where he held the position of education supervisor, and one of his initiatives was the creation of a high school for students who needed secondary education, so they could continue living in the city and not have to emigrate to other places to obtain it.

But after the Coup d'État, he was fired in February 1974. In Chañaral, he was welcomed with open arms at the school where he had previously worked. He had been teaching for ten years as a State teacher from the University of Chile, specializing in biology and chemistry; he had great faith in education as a tool to escape poverty and achieve changes in the country.

That is why he is remembered as an approachable, innovative teacher who cared about his students.

• He cared about his students, teaching more, seeking for them to learn. Back then, we were such a closed country; there was no internet, nothing. Books were what could show us more things; he always spent money on books and gave them to the students. He took them out into the field, something that wasn't done back then. He was one hundred percent dedicated, and they were afraid of that – recalls Carla Brown about her husband's facet as a teacher.

Estela Tapia was his student in those years.

• I was in the first year of humanities at that time. From '65, '66 until '69, we were his students, until the fifth year of humanities. He was terribly pedagogical; he taught until one learned, and when there were tests in the afternoons, he gave us reinforcement. Very loving, very psychological; he understood. For that era, when teachers were so rigid that they scared you, we trusted him and loved him very much. Now students trust us teachers with things in this era, but back then, no. He taught in a very fun and playful way.

Regarding his pedagogical methods, Estela recalls:

• He taught chemistry and natural sciences. To look at mosses and lichens, we would go on Saturdays; we would go out to the hills and he would hold the class there. We would leave in the morning and return in the afternoon, and we would bring our little things, like a picnic, then to the beach to see vertebrates, the fish. Sure, one time we got lost; we went through the Quebrada del Cabrito and ended up in Barquito. The class got lost, and it was like that, very good. He gave us many facilities so that we could learn, and he would write a big '1' on the blackboard, and whoever copied, he would give them the '1' without any fear because he said, 'I give you the maximum trust; I want loyalty, and those are values that are taught by example.' So no one dared to copy; more than out of fear of the '1', it was like, 'Why would we copy if the teacher helps us, loves us, and teaches us?' He was a wonderful person.

That night he didn't have classes, but he went to replace a teacher who was on sick leave. The navy blue jeep with Las Condes license plates stopped outside the house. Carla opened the door for them; there were three of them.

They told her they needed to speak with Guillermo; she replied that he was in class. Carla did not suspect that they were DINA agents. Her husband did not return that night. But a person from the school did arrive to tell her that he had been taken away under arrest.

At the Chañaral Police Station, they told her he was detained and would be released the next day. Hours passed and they did not release him. When night fell, they informed her that he was no longer there.

Friends and family helped search for him in different places where they might have taken him, but no one claimed to know anything about Guillermo. And the years passed. Many years later, Carla was watching television when a face startled her. It was "Guatón Romo."

• I didn't know who Romo was, but I never forgot his face. He appeared on television, and seeing him was like my whole body reacted, and I said, 'That man was in my house,' and indeed, in August '74, when Guillermo disappears... it is when the most people disappear, and he had made the tour through the north.

LOVE STORY

"I managed to be married for five and a half years and forty-four years waiting." That is how Carla summarizes this love story interrupted by the forced disappearance of Guillermo. It all started in Antofagasta; he had arrived at the port with his family from Caldera due to his father's work.

At the high school, he became inseparable from Carla's brother—same father but different mother—a friendship that remained intact when both entered the university. Through him, they met; when Carla arrived to study in Antofagasta, they fell in love, dated for four years waiting for her to finish her studies as a teacher, and got married.

There was an eleven-year age difference. She remembers him as a very good father:

• So when he first disappears and we start looking for him, and they tell me, 'Oh, he left with someone else... with another woman.' I knew he would never leave his children... in life, one can change a wife or a husband, but you can't change your children or your parents – she tells me while we talk in her office, and she assures me that she had the conviction that he would never have abandoned them, much less without saying goodbye.

Her daughter Ximena, despite her young age when her father disappeared, treasures memories.

• She remembers images and asks me if I remember them, like that we went to the zoo in Santiago, or that she used to go look for him at work, things about Christmas at home, like suddenly it comes to her head like a snapshot and she asks me if it's true, and I answer that it happened. On the other hand, Guillermo has no memories, except like my granddaughters and grandsons who have what we have been able to talk about, what they have been hearing. They are adults now, because they are 21, 22, 17 years old; they understand and ask why, because they didn't live through the dictatorship, so it seems stranger to them... they also want to know, and it's a replication of emotions, what I can leave them – relates Carla.

Ximena was born prematurely. Carla woke up with her water breaking; Guillermo then took her to the hospital and went back to grade some exams. He returned, and Carla was in labor, and he was nearby grading the exams.

He couldn't finish and returned to the school with the news that he had become a father, and he was so happy that he couldn't grade, so everyone got a seven. When Guillermo arrived in this life, his father was also fascinated because he had a man in the family.

Guillermo Rojas's family was right-wing. In fact, one of his brothers was a military officer who did not answer Carla's desperate call and only offered his help after retiring. On the other hand, her in-laws were a great family, worried about their grandchildren and their then-young daughter-in-law.

Her father-in-law died a few years after his son's disappearance; "he couldn't handle the grief," reflects Carla; while her mother-in-law lived until she was 98, waiting.

• She never lost her memory; you would talk to her and she was lucid, still waiting for her son. She always told me that if I knew any news, whatever it was, never hide it from her. I always told her that I was going to tell her the truth, that it was a commitment, and that didn't happen.

SUCH HARD YEARS

In 1974, Carla also worked as a teacher in Chañaral. The zone chief fired her, under the argument that "with so many right-wing people unemployed, I couldn't expect to work," she still remembers with a glint in her eyes.

Fortunately, she had family in Copiapó who took her in, taking into account that a disappeared person did not receive a salary, sick leave, or the possibility of pensions for their families. At the Liceo Católico Atacama, Carla returned to work. She hadn't been there a week when one of the priests received an anonymous call complaining about her presence at the establishment:

• When they hired me, they never asked me anything, and I didn't say anything. After the call, they called me to the office, and Father Jean said to me, "Carla, what's going on? I was called anonymously about such and such." Four years had passed; I told him what had happened, and he replied, "Don't worry, you will continue working... and I know who the person who called was, because I recognized the voice." So from that date on, I never felt unprotected again. The Catholic High School belongs to the Bishopric, and I finished working there after 30 years, and I returned to work here at the bishopric, at the IEP Foundation. I never lacked anything; in that, I must be grateful because it was not the same situation as other women, wives of forcibly disappeared persons – Carla tells me in a reflection on one of the least narrated aspects of the women who lived through the forced disappearances: impoverishment.
• I talked to one of them, whose husband was executed by firing squad, and she told me she couldn't forgive because she said, "Look at my hands, I worked as a washerwoman, gosh, how much I had to work, I had 6 children." One suffers in many ways. Here, one suffered not only because of the military; civilians have a lot to say about this. I was in Chañaral, and people would cross the street to avoid greeting me, people I knew. My parents, my grandparents had participated, they were collaborators with the people, and yet... one can say it was fear, but true friends were not afraid and were with me – continues this now-older woman about those years.

The efforts of Carla's family went far. They have dual Italian nationality, and her parents and grandparents took actions with their embassy regarding Guillermo's disappearance. From the Italian embassy, they asked the Chilean government what had happened to the teacher, the spouse of an Italian citizen, even though that country had severed diplomatic relations with Chile during those years.

The practical response was the threat to expel the entire family if they continued asking questions, and faced with the possibility of exile, Carla decided not to leave, fearing she would not find Guillermo if he were alive and released.

She remembers Bishop Fernando Ariztía with affection as a person who was concerned about her and her family, affectionate and always asking if there was any news regarding Guillermo. She remembers having participated in a meeting with relatives of the forcibly disappeared, in her active role regarding human rights violations, as well as feeling protected by a leader who was not afraid of the military. "I feel that a lot is owed to him in the region," says Carla.

THE LEADER

Guillermo loved to fish. He had friends in Chañaral with whom he shared this hobby. He liked to read, especially scientific topics, particularly physics. He was a member of the Socialist Party, knew many people in the city, and had emerged as a leader during the 1972 floods.

• The Salado River comes down and Chañaral is divided where the fire station and the cemetery were, and it takes everything below, and many of the houses that were flooded now also were in '72. He sets out to organize the community; in those years we had fewer tools, social networks didn't exist. In Chañaral, there was one telephone. There, he becomes a social leader in the community, a reference. His political participation was not that great for the consequences it had. They were afraid of him; he had the power to mobilize, that yes, a great power to gather, to bring together – recalls Carla.

Asked about the judicial process, Carla believes it has no destination to find the whereabouts of who was her husband.

• I have given statements in so many places, and there is no further evidence; there are no records of him anywhere, and I have no doubt that they killed him on the way and he didn't arrive anywhere. So he could be anywhere in the sea, with so much coastline, and they left him around there. Once my daughter went to see a psychic; she didn't tell him anything about her father, and the man told her: "Your father is always by your side, and he is in a very beautiful, humid place." It is not possible that they have found so many people, and he is not the only one; there are more people who have not appeared. I find it terrible and unfair. If this country was so bad, why didn't the dictatorship arrive and just put things in order, but not kill and torture? My great concern is that the years are passing; in those years I was 24, I was a girl, and I worry about leaving without knowing the truth, because I am going to leave that inheritance to my children and my grandchildren, and they will have to take up the baton of this. The people who have to say something are dying or saying they are sick, and we are not advancing. To close wounds, there must also be truth, at a minimum. I am not asking for anything more than to know the truth, that is to say, 'this happened, in such a place,' maybe we can't even recover him, but to know where he is, because at this minute we don't know, and we are always with this – reflects Carla on a process that in her family has not yet concluded.

THE EMPTY CHAIR

The Escuela Consolidada is currently the Liceo Federico Varela, where the disappearance of Guillermo Rojas has been transmitted orally and almost like a myth, without official documents to support the story. A teacher from the school, who was taken from his classroom in the night school by DINA agents, leaving his jacket hanging on his empty teacher's chair.

Source: vivenennuestramemoria.blogspot.com