In mid-1981, General Augusto Pinochet gave the order for the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), under the command of General Arturo Álvarez Scoglia, to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez, president of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), who had emerged as the primary Chilean labor leader and was planning, along with other opposition leaders, a major national strike against the military government.

Álvarez Scoglia created a special group to carry out the mission and designated three officers as members of the execution command. However, the agents showed an evident "lack of commitment" to the assigned task, and the DINE command had to replace them, turning to two officers who had been members of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) and who, in that year of 1981, were attached to the National Information Center (CNI), created in 1977 to succeed the DINA.

These were Lieutenant Colonel Maximiliano Ferrer Lima and Captain Carlos Herrera Jiménez, alias "Mauro" or "Bocaccio."

Both officers installed themselves at the beginning of November in the facilities of the Counter-Espionage Unit, dependent on Department II of Counterintelligence of the Army Intelligence Corps (CIE), located at Avenida Echeñique 5995, in the commune of La Reina.

That unit was part of the intricate and highly secret structure of the DINE, led by Commander Víctor Pinto Pérez. Ferrer Lima and Herrera Jiménez, along with two teams of agents under their command, then dedicated themselves to preparing every detail of the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez.

They were in the midst of this when the various services of the military dictatorship's intelligence community learned that former President Eduardo Frei Montalva had decided to check into the Santa María clinic to undergo surgery for a bothersome hiatal hernia.

At the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI was certain that the much-feared opposition labor union unit was coming together rapidly and that its primary architect was Tucapel Jiménez. The matter was even more serious because Jiménez was also holding conversations with several of the main political leaders of the opposition, among them Eduardo Frei Montalva.

The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicarage of Labor Pastoral Care along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church. The CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a broad national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, furthermore, of numerous entities and governments from around the world.

The Task of the CNI

From its inception, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the labor world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Labor Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Army Colonel Roberto Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade since 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo ("Felipe Bascur"), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the "Ollagüe" barracks, located on Calle José Domingo Cañas, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Calle Agustinas and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez ("Manolo Arriagada"), Héctor Lira ("Julián Reyes"), Nelson Fernández Franco ("Carlos Santander"), and Jorge Ramírez Romero ("Carlos de la Fuente"), respectively.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important success when it managed to recruit for its tasks Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, a man who, moreover, was in the absolute confidence of the former president.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

The Labor Brigade achieved an important success when it managed to recruit for its tasks Luis Becerra, Frei Montalva's driver, a man who, moreover, was in the absolute confidence of the former president and knew very closely the activities and the inner circle of the Christian Democrat leader.

In 1977, the Ministry General Secretariat of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile, an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to form pro-government labor leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition labor leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

One of the actions with the greatest public repercussion by Galleguillos, who also directed the National Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement (MRNS), was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting "traitor" and "sellout" at Tucapel Jiménez.

The following day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He declared later that the order had been given to him by the then-Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was assisted by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also counted on a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man of Radical origin, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Confederation of Private Employees of Chile (Cepch).

Very soon, the CNI refined its methods of tracking, surveillance, wiretapping, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on Calle República.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary to Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located. Under the direct command of Schmied were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive organization maintained within the leadership circles of the opposition labor movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content. Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Leaders such as Tucapel Jiménez, Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, and Manuel Bustos, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed at the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office. A folder was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, in addition to their contact networks.

In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed "Omar" recruited as an informant the employee who worked as an assistant for the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme. The "junior" was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez.

Twice a week, the young man delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where in exchange he received a cash payment. In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias "Gabriel Carrasco González," although everyone called him "Barnabás."

Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI. He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting an employee of his at a business he owned at Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to "Manolo" or "Carlos de la Fuente," his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive organization maintained within the leadership circles of the opposition labor movement could only be identified in the first semester of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez.

The Hard Road to Unity

At the end of May 1976, ten important labor leaders, nine of them linked to the PDC, who claimed to represent 400 unions and more than 600,000 workers, sent a document to the military government in which they complained about the new labor legislation that was being imposed and the marginalization of workers from political decisions.

The signatories were Tucapel Jiménez (ANEF), Ernesto Mellado (peasants), Pedro Cifuentes (Iansa), Antonio del Campo (bank employees), Guillermo Santana (Copper Workers Confederation, CTC), Manuel Bustos (textiles), Ernesto Vogel (Fifch), Federico Mujica (Cepch), Antonio Mimiza (oil), and Eduardo Díaz (ComaCh).

From that moment on, they were known as the Group of Ten, and very soon other important labor organizations joined them, such as the Plastic Workers Confederation, the Federation of Professionals and Technicians of the National Health Service, and the Federation of Unions of the Banco Español.

At the end of the summer of 1978, the former deputy Gladys Marín entered the country clandestinely, followed by Manuel Cantero Prado, both members of the political commission. Two months later, in May, the new Interior Direction Team (EDI) was constituted, headed by Marín, along with Cantero ("Miguel"), Oscar Riquelme ("El viejo Pablo"), and Nicasio Farías ("Héctor"), who took charge of the Infrastructure Front, entrusted with all the logistical work and the search for resources and materials for clandestine tasks. "Mariana," meanwhile, had to assume the delicate management of the party's finances.

One of the main tasks of the EDI was to rebuild the internal structures and, in particular, the labor fabric. For this, Moisés Labraña, responsible for that sector in the Communist Youth (JJ.CC.), was promoted to the party's labor officer and integrated into the EDI.

Labraña counted on a determined team in which Héctor Cuevas, Alamiro Guzmán, and José Lecaros, among others, stood out. The PC labor leaders managed to refine links with the main labor leaders of the Christian Democracy, among whom were Manuel Bustos of the textile workers; Eduardo Ríos of the maritime workers; and Ernesto Vogel of the railway workers; and with other historical figures, such as the octogenarian Clotario Blest.

Left-wing labor unionism grouped itself, meanwhile, into the National Labor Coordinator (CNS), created under the wing of the Center for Labor Studies, dependent on the Cardijn Foundation, which in turn was closely linked to the Catholic Church.

The CNS appeared publicly in 1978, representing, as it maintained, some 400 base unions, mainly industrial, of small and medium mining, and of the peasantry. Among the members, the Mining Confederation, Fensimet, Fenamex, Fiemec, Ranquil, UOC, Association of Pensioners, Sanitation Workers, the Painting Federation, and the Graphic Union stood out.

There also existed the Unitary Workers Front (FUT), a small formation of Christian labor leaders, led by Carlos Frez, the dismissed president of the Port Workers Union, linked long before to the Young Christian Workers and the Christian Workers' Action Movement.

Thus, more than three thousand workers from these three labor references converged on May 1, 1978, toward Plaza Almagro, a few blocks south of La Moneda, to commemorate Labor Day. Carabineros forced them to disperse, but they regrouped a few blocks from there, at the San Francisco church, next to the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, where they were again driven away.

By mid-afternoon, pickets of workers continued shouting slogans in various places in downtown Santiago. At nightfall, the balance of the demonstrations indicated nearly 400 detainees, several foreigners and religious figures among them. The military dictatorship and the pro-government press were forced to acknowledge, for the first time, the dissident street demonstrations.

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties, nor the Christian Democracy, perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers.

On May 22, relatives of the forcibly disappeared occupied simultaneously the offices of UNICEF and the parishes of Jesús Obrero, on General Velásquez, in the western sector of the capital; La Estampa, in Independencia, a few meters from Plaza Chacabuco, in the northern sector; and Don Bosco, on Gran Avenida, in the southern zone.

They stayed there until June 7, demanding to know the fate of their relatives. Neither the CNI nor the police dared to evict them because the Catholic Church was involved, and, furthermore, the demonstration coincided with the arrival in the country of five high-ranking representatives of the American AFL-CIO and a visit by prosecutor Eugene Propper, who was investigating the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington.

On June 7, two surprise marches were carried out through the downtown streets of Santiago in solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared. The presence of dissident pamphlets in places of high attendance became frequent in those days, and graffiti on walls in neighborhoods and on the main avenues of the city began to multiply.

In university headquarters, flash rallies emerged, and folk music gatherings (peñas) multiplied under the wing of religious venues and some nightclubs. In the working-class neighborhoods, meanwhile, all kinds of community organizations began to be created, and in the factories, slowly, the workers dared to meet to stammer their demands.

In August, at the Chuquicamata division of Codelco, next to the city of Calama, the copper miners decided to go to the cafeterias at lunchtime with their empty "lunchboxes." The prolonged protest movement for labor demands received the name "viandazo."

At the beginning of September, surprised and flustered by the symptoms of labor unrest, the dictatorship decreed a state of siege in the degree of internal commotion. The right of amparo (habeas corpus) before the courts of justice was limited, the arrest and internal exile of persons were authorized, as well as the cancellation of nationality and the prosecution of detainees in military courts.

Almost a month later, on October 20, 1978, the illegality of the main entities that made up the CNS was decreed, labor headquarters were raided, assets and bank accounts were confiscated, and numerous leaders were arrested.

At the same time, the renewal of labor leaders in the private sector was also decreed, and many businessmen took the opportunity to fire opposition workers who could be elected. In the following weeks, some nine thousand labor leaders were replaced.

Several of the main world labor organizations intervened then, and the powerful American AFL-CIO threatened a boycott of Chilean exports starting in early 1979. Alarmed, the military government announced the appointment of a new Minister of Labor, the economist José Piñera, who took office on December 26, committed to normalizing labor relations, and announced the promulgation in mid-79 of a Labor Plan that would put an end to the problems.

Pérez Zujovic, Frei, Jaime Castillo, and Modesto Collados

Neither the PC nor the other left-wing parties, nor the Christian Democracy, perceived well the effects that the Labor Plan designed by Minister Piñera would provoke among the workers. In July 1979, the main decrees that imposed the new labor institutional framework were promulgated: union affiliation ceased to be mandatory, and the formation of several unions in the same company was authorized; collective bargaining became by company and not by productive branch; the dismissal of workers "for company needs" was authorized; the right to strike was restricted to 60 days, with the possibility of replacing workers after that period; and retirement was postponed from 60 to 65 years for men and from 55 to 60 for women, among other measures. Those provisions were devastating; the labor movement was weakened to the extreme, and the fear "of losing the job" was imposed.

In 1980 and 1981, despite the protests of labor leaders, Piñera's Labor Plan was consolidated. The Group of Ten transformed into the Democratic Workers' Union (UDT), although without several Christian Democrat leaders who were marginalized, such as Manuel Bustos, who became the leader of the new National Labor Coordinator (CNS).

The Hour of the Executioners

When the plan to assassinate Tucapel Jiménez was already underway and the military dictatorship learned that Frei Montalva would check in for surgery, an apparently parallel operation was activated to eliminate the former president and cover up the homicide as a series of post-surgical complications. However, Judge Alejandro Madrid did not manage to specify the details of the conspiracy.

He convicted former Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, a former member of the CNI and later of the DINE, and the driver Luis Becerra, but he could not clarify from which branch of the military dictatorship the order to assassinate him came.

Lillo Gutiérrez was the agent who controlled Becerra and Genaro Cerda Weber, a DC militant and husband of Hilda Navarro Varas, secretary of that same party. Lillo, transferred in the late 80s to the DINE, participated in the assassination in Uruguay of the chemist Eugenio Berríos, and for that crime, he was sentenced in August 2013 to ten years and one day in prison.

For many years, it was presumed that the chemist Berríos was the one who had inoculated the former president with some poison or other toxic substance while he was in the clinic. In fact, the former director of the Investigative Police (PDI), Nelson Mery, asserted during the trial that Berríos was assassinated to prevent him from talking about the assassination of Frei Montalva.

Judge Madrid also convicted four doctors: one—the gastric surgeon Patricio Silva Garín—as the principal author; another—Pedro Valdivia Soto, a former member of the DINA—as an accomplice; and the remaining two—the pathologists Helmar Rosenberg Gómez and Sergio González Bombardiere—as accessories after the fact.

The magistrate also failed to establish whether these doctors conspired among themselves for the crime and/or obeyed orders to commit it.

Human rights lawyers, very close to the PDC, who requested that their names be withheld, told INTERFERENCIA that they considered the more than 800-page ruling very weak and that, in their opinion, both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court will have to make strenuous efforts to draft a new and better resolution.

Source: interferencia.cl, December 19, 2019

Case No. 1.643; qualified homicide case of Tucapel Jiménez Alfaro

Multiple Confrontation Proceeding of the Political-Union Brigade of the National Information Center.

Multiple confrontation proceeding of individuals who worked in the political-union unit of the National Information Center, from page 1127, Volume III (classified), to which the following persons appeared:

• Miguel Eugenio HERNANDEZ OYARZO
• Luis Tomás ROJAS TORRES
• Daniel Valentín CANCINO VARAS
• Carlos Enrique ASALGADO MARTINEZ
• Pedro René ALFARO FERNANDEZ
• Juan Manuel ARAOS ARAOS
• Gustavo Galvarino CARUMAN SOTO
• Juan Evaristo DUARTE GALLEGOS
• Germán Ricardo ERAZO AHUMADA
• Héctor Alfredo FLORES VERGARA
• Segundo Armando GANGAS GODOY
• Enrique del Tránsito GUTIERREZ RUBILAR
• Luis Germán GUTIERREZ URIBE
• Guido Arnoldo JARA BREVIS
• Jaime Andrés MARQUEZ CAMPOS
• Luis Eduardo MORA CERDA
• José Jaime MORA DIOCARES
• José Stalin MUÑOZ LEAL
• Enrique Segundo NARANJO MUÑOZ
• Nelson Aquiles ORTIZ VIGNOLO
• Manuel Humberto POBLETE VERGARA
• Manuel Alexis TAPIA TAPIA
• Rudeslindo URRUTIA JORQUERA

Source: Judiciary, August 5, 2002

Judge Montiglio indicted 98 former agents for victims of Operation Colombo - The biggest blow to repression

Among the accused, all retired, are eight Army colonels and 23 non-commissioned officers, 40 Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, two former FACH (Air Force) agents, one former Navy agent, and seven former Investigative Police agents.

The biggest blow to the repression of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship was dealt yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, who indicted 98 former agents from different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and the Investigative Police for 42 victims of Operation Colombo.

This is the largest resolution issued among the nearly 400 human rights violation cases currently being investigated in the country. It even surpassed the 67 former agents indicted by the same Judge Montiglio in 2007 for the crimes of the Lautaro Brigade and its Delfín Group at the Simón Bolívar barracks.

Among those indicted for Colombo are eight Army colonels (Ret.), six of whom had not been indicted in any case before. Also declared defendants were 23 Army non-commissioned officers (Ret.), of whom at least 50 percent appear for the first time in these types of cases.

Among these non-commissioned officers is Juvenal Piña, alias "El Elefante," a former agent of the Lautaro Brigade, who was the one who suffocated the communist leader in hiding (1976), Víctor Díaz, with a plastic bag over his head, before injecting him with cyanide.

In addition, the magistrate indicted 40 former Carabineros officers and non-commissioned officers, including Ricardo Lawrence, Heriberto Acevedo, Claudio Pacheco, and José Mora, all former members of the same Brigade. Among those prosecuted are also former agents who belonged to the Investigative Police. The only civilian (Army) is Juan Suárez.

Of the total list, at least thirteen are already serving sentences for other cases (see list).

As of the closing of this edition, the accused were still being detained to be interned in different locations, such as the Peñalolén Military Police Battalion.

Among the 42 victims for whom the minister issued his resolution are María Angélica Andreolli, Miguel Acuña Castillo, Juan Carlos Perelmann Ide, Juan Chacón Olivares, Jorge Müller Silva, Luis Guendelmann Wisniak, Mario Calderón Tapia, and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes.

Operation Colombo and the media

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; this information was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents.

Operation Colombo was part of Operation Condor and consisted of a setup by the dictatorship to make the population believe that 119 detainees who were forcibly disappeared had clandestinely left for Argentina and died there in confrontations with police and Army forces during the phase prior to the 1976 military coup in Argentina.

Some of those names appeared as militants "murdered" in Buenos Aires and its surroundings, with signs on their bodies stating they had been executed by their own comrades in a settling of scores due to internal disputes. However, this also turned out to be a setup.

The list of the 119 was published in the magazine Lea (Buenos Aires) and the newspaper O Dia (Brazil) in 1975; this information was also false. Both publications were created by DINA agents abroad and had only one edition.

In Chile, the pro-dictatorship press, such as the newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Ultimas Noticias, and La Segunda, reproduced the intelligence services' setup. The headline of the evening paper remains in memory: "Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIR members fall in military operation in Argentina." They were part of the list of the 119 disappeared of Colombo.

The former fugitive Raúl Iturriaga, who was one of those in charge of the DINA's foreign department, was the one who first shed light on this operation in Buenos Aires.

According to the former civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, convicted in Buenos Aires for the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife, it was Iturriaga who met with him at the beginning of 1975 to ask him to prepare what was necessary because "we have to make some dead people from Operation Colombo appear."

It was about preparing the appearance of the supposed bodies of Jaime Robotham and Luis Guendelmann as part of the setup.

List of the indicted

Army (all retired)

Víctor Molina Astete (colonel); Sergio Castillo González (col); Eduardo Guerra Guajardo (col); Víctor San Martín Jiménez (col); José Fuentes Torres (col); Manuel Carevic Cubillos (col); Jaime Paris Ramos (col); César Manríquez Bravo (col); Raúl Toro Montes (non-commissioned officer); Eduardo Reyes Lagos (NCO); Orlando Torrejón Gatica (NCO); Osvaldo Tapia Alvarez (NCO; committed suicide); Juvenal Piña Garrido (NCO; “El Elefante”); Juan Suárez Delgado (civilian); Nelson Paz Bustamante (NCO); José Aravena Ruiz (NCO); Luis Torres Méndez (NCO); Raúl Soto Pérez (NCO); Jorge Andrade Gómez (NCO); Juan Escobar Valenzuela (NCO); Rolando Concha Rodríguez (NCO); Gustavo Apablaza Meneses (NCO); Hiro Alvarez Vega (NCO); Víctor Alvarez Droguett (NCO); Jorge Venegas Silva (NCO); Carlos Rinaldi Suazo (NCO); Carlos Letelier Verdugo (NCO); Reinaldo Concha Orellana (NCO); Máximo Aliaga Soto (NCO); Hugo Clavería Leiva (NCO); Samuel Fuenzalida Devia (NCO)

Investigative Police

Juan Urbina Cáceres; Hugo Hernández; Manuel Rivas Díaz; Herman Alfaro; Eugenio Fieldhouse; Osvaldo Castillo

Carabineros (officers and non-commissioned officers, all retired):

Gerardo Godoy García; Ciro Torres Sáez; Alejandro Molina Cisternas; Camilo Torres Negrier; Héctor Lira Aravena; José Fritz Esparza; Claudio Pacheco Fernández; Jorge Sagardia Monge; Sergio Castro Andrade; Luis Villarroel Gutiérrez; Armando Cofré Gómez; Fernando Roa Montaña; Gerardo Meza Acuña; Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar; Luis Mora Cerda; José Muñoz Leal; Juan Duarte Gallegos; Carlos Miranda Meza; Rufino Jaime Astorga; Luis Urrutia Acuña; Luis Zúñiga Ovalle; Pedro Alfaro Hernández; Orlando Inostroza Lagos; Rosa Ramos Hernández; Gustavo Caruvan Soto; Héctor Valdebenito Araya; Manuel Avendaño González; José Mora Diocares; Guido Jara Brevis; Nelson Ortiz Vignolo; Ruderlindo Urrutia Jorquera; Héctor Flores Vergara; Jerónimo Neira Méndez; Manuel Montré Méndez; Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo; Claudio Orellana de la Pinta; Nelson Iturriaga Cortés; Luis Gutiérrez Uribe; José Ojeda Obando

Air Force

Delia Gajardo Cortés; Hernán Avalos Muñoz

Navy

Teresa Navarro Osorio

Indicted individuals already serving sentences:

Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda; Pedro Espinoza Bravo; Raúl Iturriaga Neumann; Marcelo Moren Brito; Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; Ricardo Lawrence Mires; Basclay Zapata Reyes; Conrado Pacheco; Francisco Ferrer Lima; Gerardo Urrich; Orlando Manzo Durán; Rizier Altez España; Fernando Lauriani Maturana

Source: La Nacion, May 27, 2008

Case No. 2.182-98: "Eight from Valparaíso" episode

33) Testimonies of Luís Germán Gutiérrez Uribe (3449, 3453, 3456), an agent assigned to the DINA’s “Cóndor” group at “Villa Grimaldi,” stating that the group's name changed to “Vampiro,” under the command of Fernando Lauriani.

Among the officials was Pedro Juan Herrera Henríquez and a woman whose nickname was “Pinina.” Lauriani was in charge of the “Vampiro” group for a short time, moving on to serve as an aide to Marcelo Moren.

Daniel Cancino was the “second in command” in the “Vampiro” group; as he knew more than Fernando Lauriani, he was the one who ultimately guided the group, and when Lauriani left, Cancino took charge. In January 1975, by order of Marcelo Moren Brito, Eduardo Lauriani moved with his people to the V Region in order to repress a MIR cell. “We all moved, the members of the group, in two vehicles; I was in the Chevrolet C-10 pickup truck driven by Hoyos, Ortiz Mora, and Muñoz, in addition to myself; in another vehicle were Fernando Lauriani, Daniel Cancino, and all the others mentioned, including Alfaro and Gangas.” They presented themselves at the Maipo Infantry Regiment No. 2, and were assigned some facilities and men to assist them. He participated in several arrests; the first occurred in the “El Belloto” sector; Lauriani was in charge of the operation, and the detainee was interrogated by Lauriani, Daniel Cancino, and an Army Captain from the Regiment. All detainees were subsequently transferred to “Villa Grimaldi.”

Source: Judiciary, July 30, 2010

When Chilean unionists were watched, followed, and listened to

Since its inception in 1977, the CNI exercised close surveillance over the union world through the Labor Brigade. The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Agustinas Street and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

In 1977, the Ministry Secretariat General of Government created, under the dependency of the Directorate of Civil Organizations, the National Secretariat of Guilds and placed Misael Galleguillos at its head, a Mathematics professor from the Valparaíso branch of the University of Chile and an active militant of Patria y Libertad during the Popular Unity government.

His apparent mission was to train pro-government union leaders, but in truth, his main role consisted of monitoring and infiltrating opposition union leaderships and passing all that information to the CNI.

The directorate of the Secretariat of Guilds had its offices in the Diego Portales building, but most of its officials and collaborators worked nearby, in a three-story house that stood on the corner of the Alameda and Victoria Subercaseaux Street, on the side of Cerro Santa Lucía.

Galleguillos, enthusiastic about his task, recreated the National Revolutionary Syndicalist Movement (MRNS)—inspired by an old movement of the same name—headquartered in a large house on Vergara Street 180, in the old República neighborhood, southeast of downtown Santiago, and closely linked to the CNI.

Several of the main pro-government union leaders gathered there, including René Sotolicchio, president of the National Association of Municipal Employees; Valericio Orrego Salas, president of the Association of Employees of the Ministry of Public Works; Carlos Navarrete, president of Union No. 1 of Street Markets of Santiago; and Jaime Tramont Castillo, a union leader from Valparaíso.

Galleguillos also summoned Werner Anís Bischosausen, Eugenio Cáceres Contreras, Ramón Callís Arrigorriaga, Iván Catalina Sánchez, Gustavo Cuevas Torrealba, Héctor Larenas Bugueño, Luis Lillo Abarca, Lázaro Maluenda, Claudio Matte, and Pedro Urquieta.

Claudio Matte and Héctor Larenas financed the rental of the headquarters, where the security officers were Hugo Cabezas Freire, a member of the CNI, and Rigoberto Moreno, a former Navy official.

The leadership of the movement, headed by Galleguillos, was composed of José Fernández Jorquera, Arturo Marshall de Amesti, Alfredo Urrutia, Fernando Muñoz Parra, and Marcelo Retamal Moreno, who dedicated themselves to planning shock actions, producing propaganda, and programming union training courses for the cadres and leaders they summoned to their meetings.

Luis Lillo Abarca was in charge of training, and Héctor Larenas Buqueño was in charge of propaganda and public relations.

Black shirts and Nazi salutes

In another building, located at Larraín Street 8081, in front of the Tobalaba airfield, or in a vacant lot in Farellones, paramilitary training was carried out for the militants who made up the shock groups. This task was performed by Fernando Muñoz, Genaro Pozo, and Manuel Hernández. The use of black shirts, the Nazi-style raised-arm salute, and the singing of military anthems were mandatory.

Other militants such as Pablo Medina, Jorge Salinas (ex-Patria y Libertad, nicknamed “Bombero Loco”), and Santiago Schesta took on the preparation of explosives that they installed in previously determined areas, which press releases attributed to leftist groups.

One of the MRNS actions with public repercussions was the boycott of an ANEF press conference, in which Guillermo Henríquez, Jorge Salazar Hojman, Genaro Pozo, and Jorge Baldrich Camus burst in shouting “traitor” and “sellout” at Tucapel Jiménez.

The next day, Baldrich appeared photographed in El Mercurio. He later declared that the order had been given to him by the then-Minister Secretary General of Government, General Sergio Badiola Brodeg, who was assisted by the undersecretary of the portfolio, the lawyer Jovino Novoa Vásquez.

Galleguillos also had a secret informant among the opposition who anticipated all the activities of the "Group of Ten." It was Federico Mujica Canales, a short man, a constant pipe smoker, who presided over the Cepch.

Already in 1975, in the glory years of the DINA, opposition union leaders were closely watched and their meetings recorded by agents or collaborators infiltrated among them. Marcia Merino, “la flaca Alejandra,” a MIR member who collaborated with the DINA, received from Rolf Wenderoth at the central barracks in Belgrado verbatim transcripts of the meetings of the Group of Ten, the National Union Coordinator (CNS), and the Unitary Workers' Front (FUT).

Her task was to analyze the contents and infer probable courses of action of the unionists, then returning them to Wenderoth’s offices.

After the installation of the CNI in 1977, the DINA’s replacement continued the same method of tracking, surveillance, eavesdropping, and penetration. The information gathered was incorporated into individual folders, and their contents were periodically replicated, with copies sent to the central barracks on República Street.

There, they were received by Mirtha Espinoza Caamaño, the secretary of Colonel Roberto Schmied, head of the Interior Department, who was later appointed commander of the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, where the various anti-subversive brigades were located. Under Schmied’s direct command were Major Zanelli and Captain Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, in charge of operational tasks.

The secretary recorded the information in control books, with the date of entry, the originating unit, and a brief description of the content. Acronyms and codes were used according to the respective units and sections. Thus, for example, F.1.1 corresponded to the head of the division; F-1.2 to the deputy head, and so on, according to the various departments into which the CNI was divided.

Close surveillance was exercised over the union world through the Labor Brigade or Political-Union Brigade, which depended directly on the Metropolitan Intelligence Division, under the command of Colonel Schmied Zanzi.

The head of the brigade from 1979 was Carabineros Captain Miguel Eugenio Hernández Oyarzo (“Felipe Bascur”), who had performed similar functions in the DINA in 1977, from the “Ollagüe” barracks, located on José Domingo Cañas Street, in the commune of Ñuñoa.

By mid-1979, the brigade moved to a new secret barracks on Agustinas Street and was divided into four groups, each under the command of Army Captain Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez (“Manolo Arriagada”), Héctor Lira (“Julián Reyes”), Nelson Fernández Franco (“Carlos Santander”), and Jorge Ramírez Romero (“Carlos de la Fuente”), respectively.

Among the agents were Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Juan Araos Araos, Carlos Asalgado Martínez, Edmundo Alberto Asenjo Gálvez, Daniel Cancino Varas, Gustavo Caruman Soto, Juan Evaristo Duarte Gallegos, Germán Erazo Ahumada, Ricardo Erazo Ahumada, Héctor Alfredo Flores Vergara, Segundo Gangas Godoy, Enrique Gutiérrez Rubilar, Luis Gutiérrez Uribe, Guido Jara Brevis, Jaime Márquez Campos, Luis Mora Cerda, José Mora Diocares, José Muñoz Leal, Enrique Naranjo Muñoz, Nelson Ortiz Vignolo, Manuel Poblete Vergara, Luis Tomás Rojas Torres, Manuel Tapia Tapia, and Rudeslindo Urrutia Jorquera.

Leaders such as Eduardo Ríos, Ernesto Vogel, Manuel Bustos, and Tucapel Jiménez, among others, had their telephones tapped, and all correspondence sent to them and their families from abroad and within the country was reviewed at the unit the CNI maintained at the Post Office. A folder was kept for each one with their personal, work, and family background, as well as their contact networks.

In 1976, a CNI agent nicknamed “Omar” recruited as an informant an employee who worked as an assistant at the ANEF, at its three-story headquarters located at Alameda and Riquelme. The “junior” was named Julio Olivares Silva and was the son of a friend of Tucapel Jiménez.

Twice a week, the young man delivered his reports to the Labor Brigade barracks, where in exchange he received a cash payment. In 1977, Olivares Silva was incorporated into the CNI staff under the alias “Gabriel Carrasco González,” although everyone called him “Barnabás.”

Infiltration of leaderships

Valericio Orrego, for his part, also became a paid collaborator of the CNI. He infiltrated Carlos Santa María, a leader of the Group of Ten, by recruiting an employee of his at a business he had on Bandera and General Mackenna. The informant was named Patricio Pezoa and had to report periodically to “Manolo” or “Carlos de la Fuente,” his control agents in the CNI.

One of the most secret paid snitches that the repressive organization maintained in the leadership circles of opposition unionism could only be identified in the first half of 2009. It was the socialist Víctor Hugo Gac, a member of the executive committee of the CNS, a man then very close to Arturo Martínez, the current president of the CUT, to whom the CNI paid 40,000 pesos per month for his reports.

Thus, at the beginning of the spring of 1981, the CNI was certain that the much-feared opposition union unity was being achieved and that the main architect of it was the president of the fiscal employees, Tucapel Jiménez.

The matter was even more serious because Jiménez was also holding conversations with some of the main political leaders of the dissidence, including Eduardo Frei Montalva. The ANEF leader and the former president had already met at the Vicarage of the Workers' Pastoral along with some dignitaries of the Catholic Church.

CNI analysts reached the conclusion that a national strike with unpredictable consequences was being prepared, with the support, moreover, of numerous bodies and governments from all over the world.

The information gathered by the CNI reached La Moneda, and in the following weeks, the director of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINE), General Ramsés Arturo Álvarez Sgolia, received the order from General Augusto Pinochet to eliminate Tucapel Jiménez.

by Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: interferencia.cl, May 5, 2020