Address: Néstor del Río, house No. 7, Pob. San Alfonso, Los Angeles Marital Status: Married, 6 children Occupation: Typographer Political Affiliation: No known political affiliation Date of Detention: September 16, 1973

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Heriberto Rivera Barra, married, 6 children, typographer, with no known political affiliation, was detained on September 16, 1973, at 09:30 in the morning at his home by Carabineros from the Southern Police Station of Los Angeles.

They proceeded to arrest him without showing any warrant, not even allowing him to put on his shoes or pants. Half-naked, they took him from his home and forced him into a green pickup truck owned by the Agricultural and Livestock Service (S.A.G.), driven by First Corporal José Germán Salazar.

Also in the vehicle as a detainee was his neighbor, Ejidio Acuña Pacheco, who had been apprehended at his home half an hour earlier by the same police officers and who is also forcibly disappeared.

That same day, the Carabineros in the aforementioned van detained Juan Chamorro Arévalo and Juan Heredia Olivares—both disappeared since that date—in the Población San Alfonso, as well as José Villagrán Villagrán, who died the following day at the city hospital due to gunshot and stab wounds on different parts of his body.

On the afternoon of the same day, Heriberto Rivera’s spouse, Mrs. Eloísa Hurtado Inostroza, and their daughter Nora went to the aforementioned police station, where they were informed that the detainee had been handed over to the Liceo de Hombres in Los Angeles.

On the morning of the 17th, Mrs. Eloísa went to the Los Angeles Regiment to ask about her husband. The uniformed officers sent her to the Red Cross, telling her that they would provide the information she needed; at that location, she was told that Heriberto Rivera did not appear on the lists of detainees.

To this date, the whereabouts of Heriberto Rivera Barra remain unknown.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On December 2, 1974, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on behalf of the affected party before the Court of Appeals of Concepción by Nora del Carmen Rivera Barra, the detainee's daughter. It was registered under No. 3268, and the document requested that various authorities be officially notified.

On December 18, 1974, the Commissioner of Los Angeles, Carabineros Major Carlos De la Cerda Paredes, responding to official letters No. 271 and 273 sent by the Court, reported that "after reviewing the guard logs of the Police Station and the Investigations department of Los Angeles, the detention of the affected party is not recorded." Furthermore, he added that the First Corporal mentioned in the document is the unit's mechanic and does not perform order and security duties.

Therefore, "it can be presumed that the detention could have been carried out by Army patrols, who were taken to the prisoner camp at the regiment," adding that there is a possibility he may have traveled to Argentina.

Brigadier General Nilo Floody Buxton, Commander-in-Chief of the III Army Division, informed the court on January 13, 1975, that the affected party had not been detained by order of that Command.

On January 23, the Court received a telegram from the Minister of the Interior, General Raúl Benavides, informing them that Heriberto Rivera was not being held by order of his department.

That same day, the case was assigned to the 1st Chamber of the Court, which established that the affected party was not in detention and there was no arrest warrant for him; therefore, the amparo was rejected.

It is worth noting that when the Court rejected the amparo, more than two years after the events under investigation, it did not order the opening of a summary proceeding for presumed death in the competent criminal court.

The case of Heriberto Rivera is part of the list of forcibly disappeared persons from the Diocese of Los Angeles sent by its Bishop, Monsignor Orozimbo Fuenzalida, in September 1978 to the then-Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández F., a presentation that also received no response.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad

Justice? Los Ángeles: four crimes, one convicted. And the Supreme Court reduces the sentence.

The Supreme Court issued a final judgment in a case regarding human rights violations committed in the city of Los Ángeles in September 1973. The case was investigated by visiting judge Carlos Aldana of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, who, in the first instance, had sentenced the only convicted individual to 10 years and one day for three crimes and 541 days for the fourth crime.

In a split decision (case file 12.226-2017), the Second Chamber of the country's highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and acting lawyer Jaime Rodríguez—sentenced former Carabinero José Jermán Salazar Muñoz to 5 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Ejidio Acuña Pacheco, HERIBERTO RIVERA BARRA, and Juan Chamorro Arévalo; and to 61 days in prison as an accomplice in the simple homicide of Tito Villagrán Molina.

These crimes were perpetrated starting on September 16, 1973, in the city of Los Ángeles, Biobío Region.

The crimes were carried out by five Carabinero officers. Of them, only three were prosecuted by a justice system that was late and lenient with criminals. Two of the accused, Juan Manuel Villablanca Méndez and José Miguel Beltrán Gálvez, died in the eternal confusion of a complicit, blind, and inefficient justice system.

The procedural stage ended only in September 2015 with a single person convicted. Now, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court has added the final shovel of mockery to this farce by reducing the sentences that had been imposed on the only convicted criminal.

The right-wing majority that established itself this time in the chamber continues to make its pro-impunity criteria prevail; only ministers Juica and Valderrama voted to, at the very least, maintain the first-instance ruling.

Source: resumen.cl 09/15/2017

Date: 09-15-2017

“Liceo de Hombres”. Not one less: To the widows, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers who lost their relatives, currently forcibly disappeared

The building persists, but not the memory. The grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, and mothers are not here to remind you; the will to acknowledge it is not here, but the traces still persist on the walls, the blood spatters, the radio with the volume turned up high to silence the screams, the acidic aroma on the stairs where I walk today with my children—it is Nicanor whose feet feel heavy climbing step by step—now he examines a door that looks bewitched, the sturdy handrail remains impassive in the face of being another yesterday, amidst rifle-butt blows, the wood resists everything; every interrogation, every urination, every blindfold, every parade of shoves and spitting.

They were peasants, leaders, professionals, childhood friends; the teacher with fingers white from chalk on the blackboards also fell prisoner there; that is how, this time, the classrooms were used as cells. The wood comments, there are many people in here, the children say good afternoon—the breeze runs through the hallways, sniffing from time to time.

It is here that other vestiges rest, which are added to others from past eras; when the youngsters ran through the hallways, they also served as a human depot, where they dozed like cigarette butts, discarded, damp, and nervous—Elena and Nicanor go to music class, each carrying a recorder.

Once agape from the thirst and hunger of days, they were taken down to the shed; from there they emerged wounded, broken, and uncertain. Today Nicanor, the youngest at five years old, looks for himself among a model of a building, observes every corner, asks “what is this about,” “will that be the new Cultural Center of this city,” I answer him.

Heriberto Rivera Barra, 47 years old, typographer, at the time of his detention was bedridden with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). His spouse was informed at the Southern Police Station that he had been taken to the “Liceo de Hombres,” a place where his detention was denied; the police authority stated that “Rivera Barra has left the country for the Argentine Republic.”

The investigative commission formed the conviction that he was indeed arrested by State agents and taken by them to some place where his disappearance and final fate occurred. “Dad, you’re wrong, this is a model of a prison,” “Why do you say that, Nicanor?”, “Look closely, they put a policeman there.” What is a policeman doing in a Cultural Center?

It was very cold that September, that time of seclusion where ears were gnawed, soon even eardrums would be brought to their knees.

The evidence coincides in pointing out that inside the Liceo de Hombres, the prisoners were kept in overcrowded conditions in classrooms, deprived of water and food, without the right to go to the bathroom—the conditions were unsanitary.

They were prevented from sleeping, as they were taken during the night to the courtyard to be tortured, with an undetermined number of people passing through this site. At this hour, the children go with other children to music class.

Source: latribuna.cl 11/17/2016

Date: 11-17-2016

Los Ángeles, Chile. Luis Acuña Pacheco is a key witness in two cases of forcibly disappeared persons from Los Ángeles. He recently delivered to the minister of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana, a sketch detailing the chronology of the events and locating the site of the detentions, because where a housing complex stood more than 30 years ago, there is now a children's playground.

Luis Acuña Pacheco, with a calm voice, says that for his family, the years remained stagnant in that September 16, 1973, when he saw his brother, Egidio, for the last time, when he was forcibly taken by Carabineros who arrived at his home at house number five of the Villa Hermosa, and in the process, another neighbor, Heriberto Rivera Barra, also a forcibly disappeared person, was taken.

Acuña Pacheco defines these 36 years as very difficult. "The years go by, I get older and more sensitive. I don't want the years to pass and for justice not to be served," he reflects, while specifying that he trusts in the investigative work carried out by Minister Carlos Aldana, who in mid-April performed the reconstruction of the scene for the death of five people, among them Egidio Roespier Acuña Pacheco, who was 24 years old at the time of his detention.

He commented that the reconstruction of the scene, the only one in the investigation, led him to recall very intense episodes for him and his family, finding himself, moreover, meters away from those who in those years went to his home to look for his brother and took him away in a green pickup truck belonging to the Agricultural and Livestock Service.

"That morning it was very cold. My brother, who was in pajamas as it was a Sunday, managed to change clothes, unlike our neighbor who practically left in pajamas. There was no explanation whatsoever to justify the detention of Egidio, just as there is none for so many people that we fight day by day to find, or to know what happened to them." "I saw my brother leave the house trying to give me peace of mind.

In those times, I was a 14-year-old teenager, but I have not forgotten even the slightest detail of the events that marked our lives forever."

Investigation He points out that the minister of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana, has been rigorous in the investigation, but like all the relatives of the forcibly disappeared, they want to know what happened to their loved ones.

"To find perhaps some clue that allows us to give them a burial. To bring them flowers, to go see them at some cemetery," he states, while recapitulating the episodes following the arrival of the uniformed officers who knocked on the door of his house in the Villa Hermosa.

He recalled that in the place where the Silva Arriagada plaza is currently located, in the 70s there was a housing complex. "About thirty houses, one of those was our parents', from where Egidio was taken."

According to Human Rights reports, Egidio Roespier Acuña was violently taken from his home by six police officers who raided his residence. From the house, he was taken to an undetermined location aboard a dark green pickup truck, van-type, belonging to the Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG).

The same officers are also held responsible for detaining, on that same day, September 16, Heriberto Rivera Barra, Juan Chamorro Arévalo, José ‘Tito’ Villagrán Villagrán, and Juan Heredia Olivares, whose relatives have for more than three decades remembered the episodes lived from the moment of their detention, and which they relived at the moment of giving their testimonies to the minister investigating this situation.

Minister Aldana was appointed by rotation in 2005 to investigate human rights violations that occurred in the region between September 1973 and 1978, the period during which the Amnesty Law was in effect.

In Psychological Treatment

Luis Acuña expresses that he receives care from medical specialists at PRAIS, and that he longs for justice to be served and for responsibilities to be established in the cases of human rights violations. "My father died 10 years ago.

He was 79 years old, and he always wondered what happened to Egidio." "Where could my son be, was one of his constant questions, and he died asking it, without knowing anything," reflects Luis Acuña.

He adds that they currently remain attentive to the developments that may arise regarding the investigative proceedings that Minister Carlos Aldana is maintaining.

Source: https://mqh.blogia.com/ 05/05/2009

Date: 05-05-2009

In a split decision (case file 12.226-2017), the Second Chamber of the country's highest court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and acting lawyer Jaime Rodríguez—convicted José Jermán Salazar Muñoz to the penalty of 5 years and one day in prison, as the perpetrator of the qualified kidnappings of Ejidio Acuña Pacheco, Heriberto Rivera Barra, and Juan Chamorro Arévalo; and to 61 days in prison as an accomplice in the simple homicide of Tito Villagrán Molina.

These crimes were perpetrated starting on September 16, 1973, in the city of Los Ángeles, Biobío Region.

Source: tribunadelbiobio.cl 09/14/2017

Date: 09-14-2017

Former Carabinero convicted of human rights violations is sentenced for abusing his granddaughter

A former Carabinero who was serving a sentence for human rights violations during the dictatorship in freedom was sentenced by the Oral Criminal Trial Court of Los Ángeles to six years of effective prison for abusing his granddaughter.

This is José Germán Salazar Muñoz, who was a non-commissioned officer of the Carabineros in 1973. As the head of a police patrol, he proceeded on September 16 of that year to the arrest of five people in Los Ángeles, who disappeared.

The remains of only one of the detainees, Tito Villagrán, appeared later.

While the minister of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana, prosecuted Salazar Muñoz for the cases of Egidio Acuña Pacheco, Heriberto Rivera Barra, and Juan Chamorro; the judge of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Joaquín Billard, sentenced him to 3 years and one day of supervised release for the kidnapping of Juan Heredia.

The prosecutor in charge of the sexual abuse case, María Gemita Rojas, pointed out that the prosecutions for human rights violations did not influence the sentence dictated by the justice system. For Silvia Chamorro, sister of one of the disappeared, it is outrageous that only now, after being declared guilty of the sexual abuse of a granddaughter, will the 75-year-old former uniformed officer have to serve a custodial sentence.

Chamorro added that what is happening in Chile in the cases of forcibly disappeared persons, 40 years after the military coup, is regrettable. The conviction for sexual abuse can still be appealed by José Germán Salazar before the Concepción Court, through an appeal for annulment, the Los Ángeles Prosecutor's Office pointed out.

Source: biobio.cl 08/26/2013

Date: 08-26-2013