In July 1974, Henry Francisco TORRES FLORES disappeared. It is on record that at that time, he sent a letter to his relatives from Pisagua, stamped by the authorities of the facility where he was being held.

After that, no further news of him was ever received. Having confirmed his detention, the Commission is convinced that his disappearance was the work of State agents, who thereby violated his human rights.

Source: (Rettig Report)

Testimonies, photographs, letters, and other documents that families and friends provided or wrote specifically for publication are incorporated into the book "Breaking the silence of children and adolescents who were political executions during the civil-military dictatorship 1973-1990," which was produced by the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) with the support of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, through the Culture, Memory, and Human Rights Unit, and the Human Rights Chair of the University of Chile.

The publication, based primarily on the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (1991) and the Report of the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (1996), seeks to reconstruct each of the victims' lives and stories in a comprehensive and careful manner.

During the research, the archive of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions was accessed, where documents that families have preserved over the years are kept. Illustrations by Álvaro Gómez were also included. The creation process was a complex challenge that involved combining delicacy, respect, and methodological rigor to state a painful and inescapable truth in this work.

Source: cultura.gobierno.cl 20/4/2023

Date: 20-04-2023

Rescuing historical memory: Minister Toro visits Pisagua and meets with human rights groups from Tarapacá

During her recent visit to the Tarapacá region, the Minister of National Assets, Javiera Toro, met with local human rights groups to delve into one of the pillars of her administration: rescuing and recognizing sites of historical memory, incorporating the perspective of groups linked to the issue.

Representatives of the Corporation for Human Rights and Memory Sites, the Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners, and the Unión El Morro Club spoke with the head of the ministry about the debt the State maintains regarding human rights reparations.

Among these, they mentioned the lack of justice in many cases, the failure to fulfill the guarantees of the Valech Program, and the lack of interest from previous governments in developing initiatives to preserve historical memory. "From National Assets, we have defined that our management will address the rescue of historical memory as one of its central pillars, through the protection or recovery of sites, properties, and heritage to make them available to everyone.

It is fundamental that the State assumes an active role to recognize and take charge of our past, which was largely violent. Remembering and not forgetting is a guarantee of non-repetition," stated Minister Javiera Toro.

Luis Caroca, head of the Corporation for Human Rights, handed her a folder with the projects the organization has carried out to preserve the legacy of the victims of the dictatorship, also expressing his interest in having a property to use as a headquarters and museum. "I am very satisfied because (the minister) listened to our requests, our history, our position.

For any project we want to carry out to access funding, we need the bailment of the land or the place," Caroca expressed regarding the importance of the ministry's work. Visit to Pisagua Minister Toro also visited the town of Pisagua—one of the main prison and extermination camps during the dictatorship—to learn about the state of conservation of the most significant sites in the port.

One of the stops on the tour was the former Pisagua jail, which was acquired by the Provincial Government and is awaiting restoration. She also visited the Pisagua mass grave and the memorial built at that site in memory of the victims.

In the town, the Secretary of State gathered the concerns of the residents, represented by the president of Neighborhood Council No. 2, Félix Parra, who noted that "we want to achieve a population in Alto Pisagua, to be able to recover the old hospital and a headquarters for the fishermen's unions." The provincial delegate of Tamarugal, Luz González, expressed that "the neighbors of Pisagua want to revitalize their cove; the distance has led to an isolation they want to leave behind.

Pisagua is a town with a lot of history; its architecture in buildings such as the theater, church, former hospital, or its clock tower are a mirror of a glorious past that the town wants to value again.

That is why it is important to be permanently visiting the territories, as President Gabriel Boric entrusted us." Finally, the Regional Ministerial Secretary (Seremi) of National Assets, Osvaldo Ardiles, explained that, based on the new guidelines, the Seremi team is already working on surveying the memory sites in Tarapacá to generate a proposal for the recognition of these places.

Source: bienesnacionales.cl 25/04/2022

Date: 25-04-2022

In memory of the 35 victims of the dictatorship in Iquique and Pisagua murdered between 1973-1974

Anyelina Rojas Valdés.- Although the processes are advancing, even with several sentences condemning the perpetrators of the crimes committed in Iquique and Pisagua between 1973 and 1974, the families feel the pain because many of them have not found the remains of their loved ones, because the sentences seem disproportionate in relation to the gravity of the crimes, and because it comes 43 years after the events occurred.

For this reason, for the relatives, for the survivors, and for those who died, it is necessary to remember the political executions and the forcibly disappeared. They are part of the Heritage of our Memory.

FOR MEMORY

After September 11, 1973, the arrests of militants and sympathizers of the Unidad Popular parties, or anyone who appeared suspicious, began immediately. In Iquique, political prisoners first passed through the Telecommunications Regiment, to then be transferred, in the vast majority, to the Pisagua prison camp.

It was the forced journey... The first lawsuit for the death of the forcibly disappeared and the political executions of Iquique and Pisagua was filed in 1987 by the lawyer of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, Carlos Fresno, that is, 14 years after the crimes occurred.

The case went to Military Justice and was dismissed. On June 2, 1990, the clandestine grave of Pisagua was discovered, where bones appeared that gave an account of deaths by bullet impacts, blindfolded, hands tied, and bagged.

This event shocked the city of Iquique, Chile, and the entire world. From the bowels of the earth, a truth systematically denied by the military authorities and the Chilean Army, which administered the Pisagua prison camp, came to light.

Thus, the last to be executed was the first to resurface from the brackish earth. Manuel Sanhueza, a militant of the Communist Youth, affectionately called "Choño." A fundamental role in discovering the clandestine grave of Pisagua was played by the then-judge of Pozo Almonte, Nelson Muñoz, now deceased.

For many months before, the magistrate had been in charge of a small group with which he searched for the remains of those executed in Pisagua. Only on June 2, 1990, was a result reached, and the truth surfaced from the bowels of the northern earth.

It was a tense day. It was feared that the bodies would be stolen as a way to hide the crime. Despite this, the remains arrived at the Legal Medical Service that night. As a result of the discovery, the minister of the Court of Appeals of Iquique, Hernán Sánchez Marré, was designated as a Visiting Minister.

The judge had to declare himself incompetent because there were military personnel involved; therefore, the case was under the jurisdiction of the military courts. In this way, the desires for truth and justice were thwarted again.

After the return to democracy, President Patricio Aylwin created the National Corporation for Reparation and Reconciliation, which allowed, for the first time after 17 years of dictatorship, the establishment of an accredited list of human rights victims, whether as executed, detained, or forcibly disappeared.

This report is one of the precedents that the Special Judge, Mario Carroza, has had, along with hundreds of testimonies, to accredit the crimes and issue several sentences. Carroza was preceded in chronological order by Joaquín Billard, Carmen Garay, Daniel Calvo, and Juan Guzmán.

The case is titled "Nash and others" and was filed against Pinochet and all those who may be responsible in 1998. In parallel, in Iquique, the minister of the Court of Appeals, Mónica Olivares, was designated as a visiting minister to investigate all cases of human rights crimes in the jurisdiction of Tarapacá that occurred starting in 1973.

The Minister works independently of Judge Carroza and keeps the cases she handles in complete secrecy so as not to damage the investigation. In one of them, referring to the murder of the prison guard Isaías Higueras, she has just achieved a sentence against Blas Barraza and Miguel Aguirre, already sentenced in other cases by Minister Carroza.

Several of the cases of what happened in Iquique and Pisagua are represented by the human rights lawyer Adil Brkovic. He is also a fundamental piece for advancing the investigations and holds important information and testimonies.

THE VICTIMS

The first execution occurred in Iquique, less than 1 week after the military coup, affecting the life of: 1.- LUIS FERNANDO ROJAS VALENZUELA, 49 years old. According to the official information of the time, it is indicated that the victim allegedly resisted his arrest by a military patrol and that he even tried to snatch the rifle from one of the soldiers.

In Military Order No. 24 of the Government Junta, Luis Rojas was executed on the spot at around 7:00 PM on September 17, 1973. The truth is that the Rettig Commission finds the explanation little credible and accredits that he was, at the very least, a victim of unnecessary violence.

In light of the indictments made by the Special Judge, Mario Carroza, who is investigating the crimes that occurred in Iquique and Pisagua, other crimes are accredited. This is the case of 6 prisoners to whom a "false escape law" was applied, according to information contained in the Rettig Report and considered in the minister's investigation, along with many other proceedings.

The first three of this group, whose remains appeared in the clandestine grave of Pisagua on June 2, 1990, are: 2.- JUAN CALDERÓN VILLALÓN: He was 25 years old at the time of his arrest in September 1973.

He was an official of the Customs Investigation Department of the Superintendence of Customs in Valparaíso, where he was arrested. A militant of the Socialist Party. After his arrest, he was transferred to Pisagua aboard the ship Maipo and executed in Pisagua on September 29, 1973. 3.- MARCELO GUZMÁN FUENTES: Health Educator, 34 years old, head official at the Iquique Hospital at the time of his arrest.

He was a militant in the Socialist Party. He presented himself voluntarily to the Telecommunications Regiment, without suspecting that that act of compliance with the military authorities would end his young life.

Executed in Pisagua on September 29, 1973. 4.- LUIS ALBERTO LIZARDI LIZARDI: Port worker, 29 years old, and a militant of the Socialist Party. He was arrested on September 11 and taken to the Telecommunications Regiment, and subsequently transferred to Pisagua, where he was finally executed on September 29, 1973.

These three people, while they remained detained in Pisagua, were taken out of their cells to perform voluntary work outside the prison and transferred to the Pisagua Viejo sector, where the Cemetery is located.

There, the escape law was applied to them, and they were buried at the site. Their remains appeared in burlap sacks in the clandestine Pisagua Grave, discovered on June 2, 1990, after years of fruitless searching.

In the investigation led by Minister Mario Carroza, it is established that the events constitute the commission of the crime of qualified homicide, provided for and sanctioned in Article 391 No. 1 of the Penal Code.

On the same day—September 29—three other detainees were taken out of their cells to complete the previous group, but their remains did not appear, maintaining to this day the status of forcibly disappeared.

They are: 5.- NOLBERTO CAÑAS CAÑAS: 48 years old, a militant of the Socialist Party, and at the date of his arrest, he was serving as Interventor of the Northern Fishing Complex. He was arrested in Iquique, transferred to the Telecommunications Regiment, and from there to Pisagua, where he was executed on September 29, 1973. 6.- JUAN JIMÉNEZ VIDAL: 42 years old, a Customs official in Valparaíso with no known militancy.

After the military coup, he presented himself voluntarily on September 13, 1973. Executed on September 29, 1973. 7.- MICHEL SALIM NASH SÁEZ: A 19-year-old youth who was fulfilling his Military Service in Iquique.

He was a militant in the Communist Party. He was discharged and arrested on September 11 and transferred to Pisagua. There are testimonies indicating that he refused to use his weapon against the people.

He was executed on September 29, 1973. Despite being part of the previous group where military authorities acknowledged their execution by "escape law" and supposedly buried in the Pisagua Cemetery, his remains did not appear.

In the investigation led by the minister, charges arise against the soldier Miguel Aguirre Alvarez, to whom participation as an author is attributed in the crimes of repeated qualified kidnapping against Juan Jiménez, Michel Nash, and Nolberto Cañas.

The Special Judge issued sentences in all these cases on August 17, 2016. It was possible to confirm what is already indicated in the Rettig report, which states regarding the false escape: "With their deaths explained as the result of an escape, this Commission cannot believe it, as it seems very improbable that these prisoners would have tried to flee while they were being transported to do work.

The strong military guard of these transfers, the configuration of the place, and the state of health of some of them, especially Cañas Cañas, make the escape attempt improbable and absolutely implausible that the only means to avoid them consisted of putting them to death." Thus, Juan Calderón, Nolberto Cañas, Marcelo Guzmán, Juan Jiménez, Luis Lizardi, and Michel Nash were victims of serious human rights violations committed by State agents.

ANONYMOUS HERO

An emblematic case is that of the young soldier Michel Nash, an anonymous hero. He leaves a testimony of life for history: that there is no law of command or due obedience when it comes to murdering. For that noble gesture, he paid with his life.

Michel Nash was a militant of the Communist Youth, for which, when the coup d'état occurred and his superiors told him that he would have to take up arms against "the Marxists," he refused and said that he was willing to defend his Homeland, but that he would not shoot at the people he swore to protect.

Immediately after, he was discharged from the Army and stripped of his soldier's uniform on September 11 and sent to the Pisagua Prison camp. That would be a trip of no return. Minister Carroza also recently achieved a sentence for the cases of: 8.- JORGE MARÍN ROSSEL: 19 years old, he was a militant of the Socialist Party and Secretary of the Youth of that party in Iquique.

He worked as an official for Emporchi. He was married and had a small daughter who, at the time of his arrest, was just 3 months old. He was arrested on September 28, 1973, by State agents at his home and taken to the Telecommunications Regiment.

Since that date, he has been missing. 9.- WILLIAMS MILLAR SANHUEZA: 42 years old, 5 children, he was a worker for the State Railways company. He was a union leader and a militant of the Socialist Party.

He was arrested on September 16, 1973, at his home and released. Subsequently, on the 24th of the same month, he was required by a Military Order, presenting himself at his work. From there, he was transferred to the Investigations Barracks and then to the Telecommunications Regiment, from where his trail was lost.

According to the information collected in the investigation stage led by Minister Carroza, after September 11, 1973, the general headquarters of the VI Army Division, based in Iquique, organized an intelligence corps that, among others, arrested Jorge Rogelio Marín Rossel and Williams Robert Millar Sanhueza and transferred them to the Telecommunications Regiment "to lock them up as political prisoners, under the complacent and complicit gaze of the officers who were part of that military facility (...)" The purpose was "to keep them in a sector of the regiment known as 'La Chanchería' where they were subjected to interrogations under torture until September 29 of that year (...) an occasion on which the other prisoners stopped seeing them, and a military authority order announced to the media a conjectured escape and ordered that if they were located, they should be shot on the spot. Since that day, their whereabouts are unknown, despite the intense searches by their relatives." This case of a false confrontation is inexorably connected to that of the soldier: 10.- PEDRO PRADO ORTIZ, also dead, supposedly as a victim of the previous two, but finally, he was a victim of the same dictatorship. The minister's sentence opens a path to establish the truth in the death of this young soldier. For his family, the Army's version at that time seemed credible; however, today it is possible to access the other versions that allow clarifying what actually happened in the early hours of October 1, 1973, when the young man met his death. Another case, of which there is not much information, is that of: 11.- MANUEL HERIBERTO ARAYA ZAVALA, 29 years old, who was arrested at his home by soldiers, and his trail is lost after passing through the Telecommunications Regiment and Pisagua. Today he is a forcibly disappeared person. According to investigations, on October 9, 1973, he was arrested in Arica and taken to the Rancagua Regiment, along with two other socialist militants, whose final destination was Pisagua. The official version indicates that the military vehicle in which they were traveling overturned and caused their deaths. Years later, it was proven that the vehicle was pushed into a ravine.

FIRST EXECUTIONS

Five prominent public professionals, some militants of Unidad Popular parties and others without militancy, were the first to be executed in Pisagua. It occurred on October 11, 1973, after being processed and sentenced to death in a supposed First War Council, which was not such and which was carried out in the Political Prisoners Camp, in charge of the military prosecutor Mario Acuña.

Acuña—now deceased—was a man feared by all the prisoners. It was not for nothing that their fate, which translated into living or dying, was in his hands. He also possessed a true criminal record for his connection with drug trafficking and smuggling.

He arrived in Iquique as a judge after being punished, and the military coup allowed him to regain power, to the point of being designated the prosecutor of Pisagua. Regarding these deaths of October 11 and through Order No. 82, the head of the State of Siege Zone of the Tarapacá Province and Commander-in-Chief of the Sixth Army Division, Carlos Forestier Haensen (deceased), reported the execution of 5 people after the War Council was constituted the day before, October 10.

The same Council that, according to subsequent investigations and records, is debunked. The executed were: 12.- JULIO CABEZAS GACITÚA: 45 years old, a lawyer by profession, he served as Fiscal Prosecutor of the State Defense Council of Iquique and did not belong to any party.

After being called in a Military Order, he surrendered voluntarily to the military authorities. There are testimonies that remember him walking with a blanket on his arm toward the Sixth Army Division.

He never thought of his tragic end. This is a case of great impact, since it is attributed that his death was a revenge by the Military Prosecutor Acuña, involved in a drug and smuggling case where his participation was already accredited.

Lawyer Cabezas, who had no political militancy and was not a supporter of the Unidad Popular, was considered a man of great prestige and austerity. He was designated by the State Defense Council to investigate smuggling and cocaine trafficking in Iquique.

In 1972, Mario Acuña arrived in Iquique, transferred from a court in San Miguel, where he was involved in a scandal while being a judge. In this northern city, he assumed the functions of a judge. Journalistic investigations again connect him to a criminal case, as he is linked to a group of people who diverted merchandise to Peru and Bolivia—a smuggling crime—which were destined from the central level to the north.

A publication called "The Untouchables" provides profuse information on this situation, indicating that with the operation, they contributed to the black market and in exchange received cocaine as payment for services.

This is precisely what the Prosecutor of the State Defense Council, Julio Cabezas, was investigating. Even the Supreme Court—relates Freddy Alonso, a former detainee who investigated the subject—had backed the accusations against him so that his fate was already sealed.

The higher court had authorized the exoneration and jail for Acuña. But the coup occurred, and the events took another course. Acuña was designated Military Prosecutor of Pisagua and was in charge of the supposed War Council where, along with Cabezas, Mario Morris Berríos (Customs Investigations), Juan Valencia Hinojosa (ECA Administrator), José Córdova Croxato (Port Administrator), and Humberto Lizardi Flores (teacher) were executed.

Curiously, all of them—except for Lizardi—made up, until days before, the Investigating Commission of the State Defense Council for the smuggling and drug trafficking case. 13.- JOSÉ CÓRDOVA CROXATO: 35 years old, he served as Port Administrator of the Iquique Port Company, being arrested on September 11 at his workplace, Emporchi.

He was a militant of the MAPU. 14.- HUMBERTO LIZARDI FLORES: A 26-year-old young English teacher at the Iquique branch of the University of Chile (current UNAP) and a militant in the MIR. He was also arrested on September 11 while teaching at the then-Commercial Institute.

His mother, Baldramina Flores, has dedicated her life to honoring the memory of her beautiful son. 15.- MARIO MORRIS BARRIOS: 27 years old, he was an official of the Customs Investigation Department and had no political militancy.

He had just been assigned to the city of Iquique, so he was staying at a hotel, where he was arrested on September 11. 16.- JUAN VALENCIA HINOJOSA: 51 years old, head of the Agricultural Trade Company (ECA) of Iquique and a militant of the Communist Party.

On September 11, he presented himself voluntarily to the Intendancy, without foreseeing that he was handing himself over to murderous hands. A Military Order regarding these executed people was published in the then-newspaper El Tarapacá on October 26, 1973, that is, 15 days after the executions took place. "They were condemned for being confessed and being authors of the crimes of treason to the homeland (note: crime not applicable to civilians) and espionage; and for violation of the State Security Law, by actively participating in subversive and infiltration plans in the Armed Forces." Once democracy was recovered, the Commission declared that it had serious doubts about the holding of the War Council. According to the version of people who were detained in Pisagua, "the procedures that were subsequently observed each time a Council was held were not carried out on this occasion: in general, the fact of having constituted the Council was made known, naming the accused and grouping them according to the penalty requested for each of them. Then they were presented to the lawyer who would defend them. Furthermore, there has been no knowledge of any defense carried out by any lawyer in this supposed first War Council." There is a testimony indicating that the 5 prisoners were executed in the Pisagua cemetery and their remains deposited in sacks. All of them appeared in the clandestine grave, discovered on June 2, 1990. On October 21, the Salesian priest is murdered.

17.- GERARDO POBLETE,

only 31 years old, a philosophy professor, is taken from the Don Bosco school and beaten to death at the Carabineros Police Station in Iquique. For his murder, the Carabineros non-commissioned officer BLAS ESPINOZA BARRAZA is serving a sentence of 5 years and one day.

Along with him, the Carabineros non-commissioned officer FROILÁN MONCADA SAEZ and the Carabineros major, ENZO MENICONI LORCA—who died in 2008—were sentenced; the latter was convicted as an accessory. He served as the prefect of the Iquique Carabineros and was also a guardian of the Don Bosco School.

Furthermore, Blas Barraza, along with Miguel Aguirre, was prosecuted for other crimes against humanity, such as the murders of Miller and Marín, and that of Isaías Higueras, crimes for which they were sentenced. The war council, established in Pisagua on October 29, sentenced to death:

18.- RODOLFO FUENZALIDA FERNANDEZ,

43 years old, a civilian pilot, detained on the 11th. He was a militant of the Socialist Party. Like almost all the detainees, he made the journey from his place of detention to the Telecommunications Regiment and from there to Pisagua.

19.- JUAN ANTONIO RUZ,

32 years old. He worked as a Customs official and turned himself in voluntarily at the Telecommunications Regiment.

20.- JOSE SAMPSON OCARANZA,

33 years old, who worked as a public relations officer for the Iquique municipality. He also presented himself voluntarily. He did so before the Carabineros.

21.- FREDDY TABERNA GALLEGOS,

was the youngest of this group, only 30 years old, and like the others, he presented himself voluntarily, without foreseeing that this decision would be irreversible. Today, a street in his neighborhood, El Morro, remembers him by his name.

This War Council acted illegally, as the Auditor did not share the criteria for the death penalty and proposed 10 years, due to his irreproachable prior conduct. The legislation states that all sentencers must agree on the penalty.

Furthermore, it establishes that the crimes of which they were accused were not proven. And worse still, if they had been executed, the same sentence, the report cites, recognizes that the crimes were committed "in a state of frustration." That is, they were not carried out.

It also recognizes the subjection to systematic torture, applied to obtain confessions. The Commission already establishes that the 4 were "executed by State agents in a process that, by not having conformed to the law, violated the rules for safeguarding the human rights of the accused."

THIRD WAR COUNCIL

Exactly one month later, when the atmosphere of terror was the constant in the Pisagua prison, the third War Council was constituted... The death of the following is intuited:

22.- GERMAN PALOMINOS LAMAS,

25 years old. He is sentenced to death. He was a militant in the Socialist Party. He was a carpenter by trade. He is accused of belonging to the subversive group AGP and that, within the organization, he was in charge of preparing bombs and handling explosives.

The accusation points out that the objective was to attack the regiment. Palominos, says the official version, confessed to these crimes. Recently, Judge Carroza handed down a sentence for this crime.

23.- ISAIAS HIGUERAS ZÚÑIGA

He was a prison guard at the Iquique jail and a communist militant. The events occurred on January 11, 1974, when Higueras met his death as a result of the brutal torture session to which he was subjected in Pisagua.

His relatives received a sealed urn, but they never believed the version. The newspaper Fortín Mapocho, dated June 16, 1990, page 12, records... 12 days after the discovery of the Pisagua grave, that Iván Zamora Ordenes, a former prison official known as "the warden," confessed to having participated in executions, receiving military orders.

And that his companion Isaías Higueras died as a result of the beatings. He was forced to record in the statistics that his companion had died as a result of a sudden heart attack.

24.- NELSON MARQUEZ AGUSTO

29 years old, a communist militant. He lived at the party headquarters on Calle Tarapacá and worked as a fishing crew member. With his mental faculties disturbed, according to witnesses, as a consequence of the innumerable torture sessions to which he was subjected, he attempted an impossible escape and was executed in the Pisagua camp.

THE NON-POLITICALS

Six prisoners without political ties and associated with drug trafficking activities were supposedly released, according to what was informed to their families. However, their bodies appeared in the Pisagua Grave. In the Museum of Memory, the following are identified:

25.- ORLANDO CABELLO CABELLO.

44 years old, a retail merchant, with no political affiliation. Detained at his home by Iquique Carabineros, placed at the disposal of the Telecommunications Regiment, and subsequently transferred to Pisagua.

26.- NICOLAS CHANEZ CHANEZ.

43 years old, a transport businessman, with no political affiliation. He was detained and sent to the Iquique Investigations Barracks, from there transferred to Pisagua.

27.- JUAN MAMANI GARCIA.

27 years old, a transporter, with no political affiliation, was detained by Carabineros, taken to the Iquique Telecommunications Regiment, and from there transferred to Pisagua.

28.- LUIS MANRIQUEZ WILDEN.

44 years of age, a retail merchant, with no political affiliation.

29.- HUGO MARTINEZ GUILLEN.

36 years of age, a retail merchant, with no political affiliation, detained by Carabineros on November 2, 1973, taken to the Telecommunications Regiment, and subsequently transferred to Pisagua.

30.- JUAN ROJAS OSEGA,

38 years of age, with no known political affiliation, detained by Carabineros personnel on November 1, 1973, transferred to the Telecommunications Regiment, and from there to Pisagua. They were linked to drug trafficking and merchandise smuggling, but the accusation was not judicially established.

According to the Museum of Memory, the official information provided through a military communiqué from the Army's VI Division was that these individuals had been released on January 29, 1974. Furthermore, some of the families were officially notified of the supposed release of their relatives through a letter from the Chilean Army.

Thus, the spouse of one of the forcibly disappeared received letter No. 3550 380, dated July 19, 1974, issued by the Command of the Army's VI Division, in which it states that Nicolás Chanez was detained and transferred to Pisagua "for the purpose of investigating and determining responsibilities in an alleged violation of the Arms Control Law." "Once it was investigated and his innocence was proven, as far as the Arms Law is concerned, he was released on the date indicated above.

If he has not arrived home by this date, you must look for the answer elsewhere or ask yourself, your conscience as a wife who knows the activities your husband carried out." The bodies of all of them were found in 1990 in the Pisagua grave, bagged, with their hands tied and their eyes blindfolded.

This Commission is fully convinced that Orlando Cabello, Nicolás Chanez, Juan Mamani, Luis Manríquez, Hugo Martínez, and Juan Rojas were not released but executed without a prior trial and their bodies made to disappear by State agents.

MORE EXECUTIONS

The fateful year 1973 ends, but the practices of disappearance and death by State agents continue.

31.- ALBERTO YAÑEZ CARVAJAL,

31 years old and a prison official, was detained in January 1974. Executed along with

32.- LUIS TORO CASTILLO,

34 years old, a railway worker. They were accused of an alleged "Plan 22," which consisted of a series of attack points in the event of a Civil War or Military Coup. One of the most shocking deaths, because it affected a minor, was that of:

33.- HENRY TORRES FLORES

16 years old. He was a laborer, with no political affiliation, and resided in Calama with his mother. His father lived in Iquique, which is why he was visiting him in this city when the events occurred.

He was detained in July 1974 by military personnel and taken to the Pisagua prisoner camp. A letter sent to his mother, bearing the military censorship stamp, confirms his time in this prisoner camp, from where he disappeared. Since then, he has been a forcibly disappeared person.

34.- MANUEL SANHUEZA MELLADO,

30 years old, a member of the Central Committee of the JJCC (Communist Youth). He was detained on July 10, 1974, and transferred to Pisagua, where he disappeared. His remains were found in the clandestine grave of Pisagua.

Indeed, it was a moment of special silence when his almost intact body emerged from the earth, with the rictus mortis, like a heartbreaking scream, to expose the crimes of the dictatorship.

35.- MARCELINO LAMAS LARGO

23 years old, a socialist militant, was detained by members of the Army and seen in the dungeons of the former customs facility in Iquique. A place from which he has disappeared to this date.

Source: edicioncero.cl 9/11/2016

Date: 09-11-2016

History: A name in a telegram

In these days, a criminal complaint will be filed in Iquique, seeking to reopen the case of the kidnapping and disappearance of the minor Henry Torres in 1974 in Pisagua, and to investigate the existence and fate of his companion, Hugo Martínez Martínez, absent from the Rettig and Valech reports.

An important material finding, a telegram issued by the Army, could add a new name to the official list of forcibly disappeared persons, number 1211. "A letter has arrived for Mrs. Rogelia Flores Mejías.

You must pick it up at the radio station." It seemed like a pedestrian phrase, one more message lost in the radio space. It was not. When the addressee arrived at the station, she learned that the letter had been written by Henry Torres Flores, her youngest son, who informed her of his detention in the detention center that the dictatorship set up in Pisagua, a town located 192 kilometers north of Iquique. "My dear and remembered mommy, I hope that upon receipt of this letter you are in very good health, as well as my brothers and sisters.

I am in fair health, and after greeting you, I proceed to tell you the following: Mom, this is very sad for you if my dad hasn't written to let you know that I am detained in Pisagua, along with my uncle Hugo.

Mommy, when you find out the reason why at the courthouse, don't be surprised, everything has its explanation," begins the letter dated July 23, 1974, in which he requests money and toiletries. The information was disturbing but not alarming.

Despite being only 15 years old, Henry no longer lived with his mother in Calama. Without finishing school and with the boldness of someone who matures early in difficult circumstances, he had traveled to the San Carlos neighborhood of Iquique to work with his father as a laborer, unloading trucks.

Sometimes he returned to Calama, sometimes he did not. That he was detained along with other common prisoners for violating the curfew, as the paper narrated, was a possibility at the time. With the letter in her hands, Rogelia went to buy cigarettes, a notepad, toilet paper, razor blades.

She took the identity card that her son had forgotten in Calama and set off for the Sixth Army Division with the certainty that she would once again take care of her child. Probably, the fact that Henry was not alone calmed her.

He was accompanied by "Uncle Hugo," whom she did not know, but who had written the letter. Henry was illiterate. One thing did worry her. The letter, taken out by some detainee from the concentration camp, was stamped by the Army with the word "censorship." That is why she preferred not to carry it with her.

She did well. When she arrived, Pedro Collao Martí, head of Intelligence of the Sixth Army Division command, told her firmly that there was no record of her son's detention and asked for the letter back.

She never handed it over, just as she never saw her son again. Rogelia died on New Year's Day 2009, years after the father of her children. Today that letter, zealously guarded by the mother, is the only memory the Torres Flores family keeps of the disappeared teenager.

The most important thing, however, was that the letter constitutes compelling physical evidence to determine the detention and disappearance of Henry, and also, in light of a new piece of evidence, the existence and fate of "Uncle Hugo," until now a "ghost" in the judicial process.

Uncle Hugo Martínez from Antofagasta Florencio Torres Flores lives today in Iquique, the same city where he was born. He is the oldest of Henry's three brothers. Including him, there were six. As a twenty-year-old, in the early seventies, he went to live in Calama.

All the brothers left with their mother, but he says that Henry always returned to his dad because he didn't like going to school and, for that reason, he was illiterate. "There was no way to restrict him.

But he was a normal boy, cheerful, he laughed with everyone, played with everyone, like any child. He didn't participate in political parties, I think, if he didn't know how to read or write. None of us participated in politics either," he remembers.

When in mid-1974 they denied Henry's presence in Pisagua, he accompanied his mother to file a complaint at the first court of Iquique for alleged disappearance. In addition to the letter, over the years other common prisoners from the infamous detention center gave them more information about Henry. "Inside Pisagua there were many people we knew who told us that Henry had been 'taken out' (murdered).

For a reason, when my mom went to look for him, they told her he wasn't there and wanted to take the letter from her. Now my brother Pascual has the letter. They made copies and put them in the case file.

To this day we think he might appear, alive or dead, but my mommy passed away with that pain. She told me, 'you are going to have to follow the steps I have followed, as the older brother that you are,'" he says.

During the dictatorship, they never had an answer. Only in democracy did the PDI (Investigations Police) arrive to take their statement for Henry's case. "That's when they asked us for the first time about 'Uncle Hugo,' but we didn't know anything.

We knew about him through the letter Henry sent my mom, we never saw him before, we don't know if he was young or old, we only knew he was named in the letter. Maybe my brother Pascual knew him." The information was completed some time ago by Freddy Alonso, a former political prisoner who has meticulously reconstructed the history of the Pisagua detention and torture center.

It was he who found a key piece of data, the surname of Henry's companion. He asked Pascual Torres Flores who "Uncle Hugo" was, and he replied, "Hugo Martínez, a friend of my brother from Antofagasta." Freddy Alonso was detained in Iquique in November 1973.

A Public Administration technician and a MAPU militant, he remained in Pisagua for a year and then served a two-year residency sentence in Iquique. His investigations into the crimes in Pisagua led him to work closely with Sola Sierra, the emblematic president of the AFDD (Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared).

He is the former detainee who knows the most about what happened during the short but lethal existence of this concentration camp. "I started investigating while I was a prisoner. And this is something I'm not ashamed to tell: I wrote everything down on small pieces of paper that I took out in my buttocks when I was released.

When we arrived at the village of Huara with the military patrol, we entered a restaurant where there were some comrades, I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom and put the papers in my shoes." That is how Freddy Alonso began the reconstruction of a history that became the book La verdad de Pisagua (The Truth of Pisagua), published in 2004.

The Pisagua prisoner camp was set up in the first days after the 1973 Coup and was destined for those politically persecuted by the civil-military dictatorship until May 6, 1974, when the army moved all political prisoners to the second floor of a supermarket in the same village.

Ten days later, 126 common prisoners arrived at the camp, where Freddy returned every morning, along with two conscripts, to fetch the funds (30-liter pots) and take them to the improvised new detention center.

Once there again, he was a witness to the treatment the military gave the common prisoners, the same they gave them, and which he has testified to before Ministers Juan Guzmán, Daniel Calvo, Joaquín Billard, and Mario Carroza. "Through Pisagua passed the sick mentality of Nazism; practically a sort of morbidity and sadism developed on the part of our guards: beatings, floggings, torture, mock executions, and executions." A fact that Alonso could never forget was the entry of the 126 common prisoners into Pisagua while he was going to fetch those pots.

According to his account, "Commander Ramón Larraín Larraín, in charge of the concentration camp, asked them, 'Who are the young ladies coming in this group?' He asked again kindly, but the third time he shouted, 'Who are the motherfucking faggots coming in this group?' Eighteen came out. 'And who are the little boyfriends?'...

He paired them up himself, raised his hand, a Pegaso truck appeared, and they were loaded onto it headed north. I never saw them again." Although there is no evidence of mass shootings of common prisoners, as there are no complaints, in 1998 Carlos Herrera Jiménez, a former CNI agent and confessed murderer of Tucapel Jiménez, shed some light on the internal workings of the camp in an interview with Mónica González.

Stationed in Pisagua for the coup, he admitted to having participated in the execution of criminals and minors and said that there was a time when the shootings happened one after another. Although the Chilean Army, on the occasion of the Dialogue Table, acknowledged having executed Henry Torres Flores in July 1974 in the town of Pisagua, nothing is known about the details of his death or the identity of those responsible.

The case of Hugo Martínez Martínez is even worse, as no one ever filed any appeal for him and he does not appear in any State report. This nebula, however, could be cleared up in light of a new piece of evidence.

New evidence: an Army telegram Human Rights lawyer Adil Brkovic will file a judicial action for the first time to find the whereabouts of Hugo Martínez Martínez. This is within the framework of a complaint that demands the reopening of the Henry Torres Flores case for qualified kidnapping, which had been temporarily dismissed.

Brkovic found his name a few months ago, through another case. Investigating the responsibility of Enrique Fuenzalida Puelma (military prosecutor of Arica between April 1974 and June 1976) in the death of another detainee, Manuel Sanhueza Mellado, he had access to important material reported by the Army: a half-burned telegram that accounts for the final fate of Henry and "Uncle Hugo." Officially, the telegram, which has the stamps and signature of the VI Division of the Chilean Army, reports that Mr.

Manuel Sanhueza Mellado drowned on October 2, 1974, in Pisagua, in a fishing accident, along with the common criminals Henry Torres Flores and Hugo Eugenio Martínez Martínez. "The determining piece of evidence is that the military, through this telegram, declares them dead along with Sanhueza, a communist leader detained in Arica on July 10, 1974, and transferred to that prisoner camp on July 28 along with his father-in-law and brother-in-law, being shot, presumably, the same day he arrived.

It is anecdotal that the telegram is dated the same day the prisoner camp was officially closed," explains Brkovic. Manuel Sanhueza was found in the clandestine grave of Pisagua on June 2, 1990, when the Vicariate of Solidarity found twenty corpses ordered by date of execution in the town cemetery.

It was a discovery that was foreseen by Human Rights organizations, but which nonetheless shocked the entire country. This important evidence is in the file currently in the possession of visiting minister Mario Carroza Espinosa, within the framework of the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Manuel Sanhueza Mellado, and accompanies the criminal complaint that Florencio Torres Flores will file against all those who result responsible as authors, accomplices, or accessories to the crime of qualified kidnapping of his younger brother.

Brkovic reflects on the motivations for these absurd crimes. "We have no explanation for the executions of Torres and Martínez, except for 'social cleansing,' which was one of the dictatorship's criteria for executing people, in addition to those they considered militarily dangerous.

And it is important to investigate the death of Hugo Martínez, because by doing so, dignity is returned to the victim, regardless of their social status, and it dignifies us all as a society."

Source: theclinic.cl 2/09/2016

Date: 02-09-2016

The disappearance of the boy Henry Torres in Pisagua

At the beginning of this new year, and as if he did not want to continue it in an already very long and painful wait, the mother of the boy detained and disappeared in Pisagua, Henry Torres Flores, passed away.

Indeed, after a long and painful ordeal of waiting for Truth and Justice, Rogelia Flores Mejías has just passed away, the mother of Henry, who at only 16 years old was detained in Iquique in July 1974.

This is one of the most dramatic cases of a detained-disappeared child that is added to the nearly thirty similar cases that occurred in the country under the Pinochet dictatorship. Henry Torres was a boy with a certain maturity acquired in the early work as a laborer that he performed to help at home.

He lived with his mother in Calama and had traveled to Iquique to see his father, who lived in the San Carlos neighborhood, who also passed away after a painful wait to know the whereabouts of his son.

Upon being detained by a military patrol, the boy is transferred to the Pisagua prisoner camp, and his mother finds out about his situation through a letter that her son sends her to Calama from that political prisoner camp, dated July 23, 1974, and with a military censorship stamp.

Upon receipt of her son's letter, the mother travels immediately to Iquique and goes to the headquarters of the VI Army Division to inquire for information about her son. She is attended by Major Enrique Cid Coubles, who summons her in the afternoon to tell her firmly that there is no record of her son's detention.

The following is the tenor of the letter sent by her son, the only document that proves his detention, in addition to the testimony of the political prisoner Moisés Azola, who knew him and saw him in Pisagua while he was in captivity: "Pisagua, July 23, 1974. (there is a CENSORSHIP stamp) Mrs.

Mercedes Flores Mejías. My dear and remembered mommy, I hope that upon receipt of this letter you are in very good health, as well as my brothers and sisters. I am in fair health, and after greeting you, I proceed to tell you the following: Mom, this is very sad for you if my dad hasn't written to let you know that I am detained in Pisagua, along with my uncle Hugo.

Mommy, when you find out the reason why at the courthouse, don't be surprised, everything has its explanation. Moving on to another point, I ask if you can send me cigarettes, toilet paper, a handkerchief.

Mom, I ask you please talk to my dad so that he helps you in sending me some little things, like a notepad, envelopes, a ballpoint pen, cookies, cigarettes, a razor, a mirror, face soap, toothpaste and a toothbrush, and a razor.

Mommy, tell my sister to remember me and to send me something, any little thing, especially money to buy bread. At the same time, I ask you, Mom, tell my brothers that they also cooperate with a grain of sand each, be it anything, now that I am in a wretched predicament and where I need them most.

Also, Mommy, send word to me about how my sister Uberlinda's baby is doing and have her write, also Celinda. Feeling the bitter news very much, I say goodbye to you, Mom, along with my uncle Hugo. Greetings to everyone in general and may God keep you and your children.

Send me pants, underwear, and socks. Sincerely greets you, Henry Torres Flores, your son" Despite this compelling documentary evidence, General Forestier consistently denied the detention of the boy Henry Torres in Pisagua.

The strange circumstances of the boy's detention and disappearance remain to be known, but the worst was to be expected given the criminal characteristics of his captors, starting with the then-commander of the prisoner camp, the then-lieutenant colonel Ramón Larraín, in addition to what is already known about his boss Forestier and all the torturer henchmen who were in charge of executing criminal tortures and even death on political prisoners.

In 2001, and as a result of the lying "dialogue table," the Armed Forces ended up acknowledging his death and fate: upon being murdered, he would have been sent to the legal medical service of Iquique, but without certainty of the whereabouts of his body. Epifanio Flores. Communist Party of Chile - Iquique Regional Committee

Source: pciquique.blogspot.com 1/03/2009

Date: 01-03-2009