Address: José Miguel de la Barra 430, Apt. 432, Santiago Marital Status: Single, separated Occupation: Filmmaker Political Affiliation: Militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) Date of Detention: November 29, 1974

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes, a filmmaker and militant of the MIR, was detained along with her boyfriend, Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, a filmmaker and militant of the MIR, on November 29, 1974, at approximately 9:30-10:00 a.m., on a public street at the corner of Calle Bilbao and Los Leones, by civilians traveling in a pickup truck.

The previous night, both had attended the Las Condes cinema for the premiere of the film "A la sombra del Sol," in which they had participated in the production. After the film ended, they went with other members of the film crew to a reception at the home of one of them, where they remained all night.

The following morning, they left with the intention of going first to Müller's home and then to his workplace, Chile Films; however, they did not arrive at either location. A few days later, Jorge's father received an anonymous phone call informing him that his son had been arrested along with Carmen Bueno by DINA agents.

The detained couple was taken immediately to the secret DINA facility known as Villa Grimaldi, located at Avenida José Arrieta 8200, in the Peñalolén sector, where they were placed in separate rooms. In this place, they were subjected to torture, and some detainees reported having heard Carmen's screams when she was being interrogated.

The young woman was accused of having bought a dog for the top leader of the MIR, Miguel Enríquez, who had died one month earlier in a confrontation with DINA agents.

There are numerous witnesses to the presence of Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno at this DINA center, all of them former prisoners who managed to survive torture, disappearance, or death. Among them are Iris Guzmán Uribe and her 16-year-old daughter, Marcela García, both detained on November 20, 1974, along with another minor son, Iván Guzmán, and Humberto Menanteaux.

The latter was released after being forced to participate in a press conference acknowledging that the MIR was finished. However, he was re-detained and days later appeared dead in the hills of Buin, with signs of having been flogged.

Mother and daughter were systematically tortured at Villa Grimaldi, to such an extent that Iris Guzmán had to be admitted to the Clínica Santa Lucía, a medical center owned by the DINA, located on the street of the same name, where years later the private offices of the retired former Director of that organization, General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, operated.

On one occasion, she was tortured in the presence of her children and then forced to witness their abuse. Marcela García notes that on one occasion, she was taken out along with Carmen Bueno in a pickup truck by agents for the purpose of identifying people.

Another prisoner who was with Carmen was Fátima Mohor, who arrived at Villa Grimaldi on December 2, 1974, and spent four days in a dungeon with the victim, during which time she told her that she had been detained with Jorge Müller.

She notes that Carmen seemed mentally well, but not physically, as she complained of pain in her vagina and hands, the result of the punishments to which she had been subjected.

In the same room at Villa Grimaldi was also María Antonieta Castro Ramírez, detained along with her mother, Julieta Ramírez, and her spouse, Juan Rodrigo Mac-Leod Treuer, both of whom are forcibly disappeared.

She was with Carmen Bueno again at the Cuatro Alamos Incommunicado Camp in December of that year, though not together. María Antonieta was taken out for a few days and returned at the end of that month, being placed in the cell where Carmen had been; Carmen had been removed in the meantime.

However, she was able to read her name written on a wall and six lines, apparently indicating the days she had remained there.

Jorge Müller, meanwhile, was in Villa Grimaldi in the same cell as Víctor Zúñiga, who notes that he had clear signs of having been beaten. Zúñiga spoke with him, and they were transferred—a few days apart—at the same time to Cuatro Alamos, though they were not kept together on that occasion.

At the Cuatro Alamos facility, where they arrived around December 12, they were seen by several other detainees, among them Nelson Aramburu Soto, Manuel Padilla Ballesteros, and Miguel Squella Espina.

Witnesses agree that Jorge and Cecilia communicated in this facility through signs when the women were taken to the bathroom. Around December 17, they were caught in these communications by an agent they called "Dum Dum," and Müller was taken to the office of the facility's Chief, Orlando Manzo Durán, who reprimanded him and told him he would be punished.

The day after this incident, the couple was taken out of Cuatro Alamos by three DINA agents who transported detainees, a date from which they were never seen again anywhere. When they took him from his cell, he thought he was going to be transferred to the "free talk" section at Tres Alamos, but upon arriving at Manzo's office, one of the agents said something to him that the other detainees could not hear, but they saw Müller put his hands to his face and then lean against the wall.

Immediately after, Carmen left the office, and both were taken outside. The news that they were not going to the "free talk" section was later confirmed to them by a Cuatro Alamos guard nicknamed "Mauro."

Among the Cuatro Alamos guards that the prisoners remember is the aforementioned Dum-Dum, a retired carabineer of about 40 years old who used to walk around with an iron bar, hitting the walls and the detainees.

Another, also mentioned, Mauro, turned out to be Carlos Carrasco Matus, who was himself arrested and is also forcibly disappeared. There was also a 19-year-old Army conscript nicknamed "El Mono chacarero," from the south.

Another one they remember is an Army non-commissioned officer of about 25 years old whom they called "El Bigote." The Director of Cuatro Alamos was called "Dayán," because he wore an eye patch.

During the same days that Jorge and Carmen were detained, other people linked to the film industry were also detained, among them the Argentine director Carlos Piaggio and his wife, Francisca Valdés. Piaggio worked at Chile Films, like Müller, and they were together at Cuatro Alamos.

On the other hand, in an Investigative report to the Visiting Minister Servando Jordán, who was investigating the disappearances of people detained by security services, it is noted among other data that Jorge Müller, on February 3, 1972, collaborated on a production directed by Dunan Kuzmanovich Salinas, titled "Amanece el día," in which sequences were filmed in a neighborhood near Calle Bilbao, for which the corresponding investigations were carried out.

It should be noted that near Calle Bilbao, in the sector between Antonio Varas and Pedro de Valdivia, there are military housing projects, the Army Telecommunications Regiment, and the Carabineros School. Opposite the latter are the homes of officers of that public force.

Jorge Müller was also part of the film crew for the celebration of the Chilean Holy Year, an event held days before his arrest at the Votive Temple of Maipú and organized by the Episcopal Conference of Chile.

Days after the arrest, people in civilian clothes and Carabineros visited Carmen Bueno's home several times, which she shared with a sister. These people, without identifying themselves, interrogated the building's concierge, asking if the Bueno family lived there.

On January 16, 1975, civilians who did not identify themselves arrived at the home of the young woman's parents, located on Hernando de Magallanes, in the Las Condes commune. They were attended to by her mother, who demanded they identify themselves, but they downplayed the visit, stating that they were friends of Carmen and that they were there to pick up some "political documents" that "a Mr.

Müller" had sent to be kept there. Finally, the civilians left.

Around the same time, personnel also in civilian clothes arrived at the offices of the Banco del Estado station branch, where one of Carmen's sisters worked. They identified themselves as security agents to her boss and requested all of her identification data.

In July 1975, Carmen Bueno appeared on a list of Chileans killed in Argentina, some in alleged confrontations with that country's security forces and others among themselves, as a result of "internal feuds." This falsehood was published by two press outlets that appeared only that day, undoubtedly with the sole objective of releasing this news.

One was the newspaper "O'Dia" of Curitiba, Brazil, and the other was the Argentine magazine LEA, both absolutely unknown in their countries. This information was denied by the Argentine and Brazilian authorities, who stated they had no knowledge of these events.

The Chilean military government, faced with this evidence, had to acknowledge that there was no record of these alleged deaths of Chileans abroad. The members of this list correspond to people detained by Chilean security forces, whose existence was denied by the authorities. All of them have been forcibly disappeared since then.

Subsequently, in May 1976, the press published cables from Argentina referring to an alleged statement from a Revolutionary Coordinating Junta of the Southern Cone, denouncing the death of five Chileans at the hands of extreme right-wing extremist groups in Argentina.

Among them, "María Bueno Cifuentes" is mentioned, which could have referred to the victim's sister, María Olimpia, but she was based in Sweden with her papers in order, which was officially established by authorities in that country. Therefore, the information necessarily had to refer to Carmen Bueno, who had already been declared dead in the sad list of "the 119."

In November 1975, the Chilean delegate to the United Nations, Sergio Diez Palma, submitted a report from the military government he represented to the UN Commission on Human Rights. In this presentation, Ambassador Diez attempted to demonstrate that the reports of prisoner disappearances and human rights violations in Chile were false and malicious.

Among other things, he provided a list of seventy people who had been reported as disappeared who supposedly did not legally exist; among these names was that of Jorge Müller Silva. However, as he also held German nationality, since his father is German, the Embassy of the F.R.G. requested explanations from the military government, which responded through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the inclusion of Müller in this report was due "to a regrettable error, the causes of which are being investigated." The result of this alleged investigation was never made known.

Jorge Müller Silva and Carmen Bueno Cifuentes have been forcibly disappeared since they were taken together from Cuatro Alamos on December 18, 1974, by agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). Their detention was always denied by the military government authorities, despite the evidence recounted.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On December 7, 1974, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on behalf of Carmen Bueno before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 1534-74, which was dismissed on January 23, 1975, by the Court after receiving negative reports from the Ministry of the Interior regarding her detention and from military authorities regarding any proceedings against her.

The Court ordered the records to be sent to the corresponding Criminal Court so that the reported facts could be investigated.

Thus, on January 27, 1975, case file 91.149 was initiated in the 6th Criminal Court of Santiago, to which a complaint filed before the same Court for the alleged disappearance of Jorge Müller was added in May of the same year.

The authorities repeatedly responded negatively regarding the detention of both victims, both through the Ministry of the Interior and SENDET. The Director of the DINA responded in June 1975 that the Court should address the Ministry of the Interior or SENDET, departments whose mission was to provide information regarding this type of inquiry.

The Judge received the same message years later, in October 1978, from the National Intelligence Center (CNI), the legal successor to the DINA.

In November 1975, witnesses to the victims' imprisonment, Fátima Mohor and María Antonieta Castro, testified before the Court; they were at that time prisoners at the San Juan de Pirque camp for women, located in the Cajón del Maipo. After their testimonies, the Court again officially requested information from SENDET regarding the affected parties, but the response was, once again, negative.

On December 16, 1975, the summary proceedings were closed, and a temporary dismissal was issued, as the crime had not been proven. This resolution was approved by the Court on March 30, 1976.

On May 14, 1976, Carmen Bueno's father again filed a writ of amparo on behalf of the young woman before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 400-76, based on the testimonies of detainees Fátima Mohor and María Antonieta Castro.

However, once again, the Court rejected the appeal after receiving a negative response from the Ministry of the Interior and reviewing the dismissed case. This resolution was appealed, and on June 26 of the same year, the 2nd Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the ruling of the Court of Appeals that denied the amparo.

Shortly before, in January 1976, the reopening of case 91.149 was requested, and new testimonies from people who were imprisoned with them at Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Alamos were submitted. But the authorities' responses remained negative.

The CNI also indicated that this information was not only a matter for the Minister of the Interior, but that it was prohibited from providing any request directly to the Courts of Justice that had not been channeled through that Ministry.

In May 1979, the investigation continued under the Visiting Minister Servando Jordán, appointed to investigate cases of disappearances of people detained by the DINA.

Minister Jordán added to this process another case for the alleged disappearance of Jorge Müller followed in the 8th Criminal Court, case file 11.899, initiated in December 1974 by a complaint filed by his mother to the Investigations police, a department that handed the records over to the Court.

After receiving negative reports from the Ministry of the Interior and SENDET, the Judge closed the summary and issued a temporary dismissal because the crime had not been proven, ten days after the summary had been opened. The Court revoked this resolution because the investigation was incomplete.

In September 1976, the judge of the 8th Court ordered the Ministry of the Interior to bring the detainee Víctor Zúñiga Arellano, a witness to Müller's imprisonment, before the Court. Two months later, the Minister of the Interior responded that the detainee had been released.

The truth is that Zúñiga's release only took place days before the Secretary of State sent his response to the Court. Zúñiga testified years later before the Visiting Minister, providing his testimony.

On May 3, 1978, the Judge resolved to close the summary and issue a definitive dismissal, as it was pointless to continue the investigation due to the recent enactment of the Amnesty Decree Law 2191. The Court, however, revoked this ruling and returned the case to the summary stage, as the crime had not been proven nor the investigation exhausted.

In both original cases, a complaint was filed for kidnapping, prolonged incommunicado detention, unnecessary rigor and mistreatment, and arbitrary detention in places not contemplated by law, of Carmen Bueno and Jorge Müller, against the security agents found responsible.

Continuing the investigation, Minister Jordán visited the Cuatro Alamos facility, now transformed into premises for a Juvenile Rehabilitation Center. However, no very precise data was found because the facilities had been renovated and repainted. For this reason, it was not possible to verify the marks left by the prisoners, among which were those made by Carmen Bueno in cell No. 5.

The Commander of this facility, Orlando José Manzo Durán, a Gendarmerie official who was on special service with the DINA from April 1974 to March 1977, the date this facility was closed, testified several times before the Minister.

Manzo indicates that Cuatro Alamos depended on the DINA, but was located inside the area of the Tres Alamos Camp, which was in charge of the Carabineros and depended on SENDET. He adds that there was a Registry Book of entries and exits of detainees that he managed personally.

This consisted of a filing cabinet in which a file was made for each person. He points out that there were three types of exits from the place: one was when the prisoners were released, according to Decrees of the Ministry of the Interior; the second was due to illness or ailment of the detainee that could not be treated in the camp; and the third was when they "confessed that they were in agreement with members of the Popular Unity, with whom they had to make contact," so that DINA agents could apprehend these others or also to identify places where there might be weapons or documentation.

These exits were temporary, as were those for health reasons, in which 99.9% of cases returned. Everyone in Cuatro Alamos was incommunicado from the outside.

He states that no one was flogged there because "there were no means for it, given that the facility was practically part of Tres Alamos, where the detainees were in 'free talk' and received visits from the outside."

Another thing he points out is that those detained by the DINA arrived at the Camp many times without an official order and sometimes arrived with a file opened by the captors, but a file was still made for them at the Camp.

Commander Manzo does not remember any of the detainees who are forcibly disappeared; however, he does remember others, all of whom were released, some of whom were only in that facility for a few days. Nor does he identify them from the photographs that the Court shows him "because of the conditions of treatment in which the detainees arrived," they came "bearded, dirty, emaciated..."

He also declares that he is not "authorized by the Government" to inquire about who is disappeared, "because I would probably get into trouble" if he started investigating where they were.

Finally, he points out that the original records of the detainees were taken by the DINA and he kept the copy, and that these all passed to that Intelligence Directorate when Cuatro Alamos was closed.

The Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández, however, responded to Minister Jordán that in the documentation of the CNI, successor to the DINA, the detention of Carmen Bueno was not recorded. Furthermore, according to information provided by the CNI, the Cuatro Alamos Books had been incinerated "as a security measure."

The same "security measure" was not implemented with the Tres Alamos Books, 13 of which were made available to the Visiting Minister by the Carabineros. The disappeared victims did not appear on these lists. In any case, those prior to August 1976 were also incinerated, in accordance with the document regulations of that Institution.

During the processing of the visit, new testimonies were submitted by people who were imprisoned along with Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno both at Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Alamos. One of them, Nelson Aramburu, was confronted with Orlando Manzo, who insisted that he did not remember Jorge or Carmen or other situations that Aramburu points out, such as the communication between the detainees.

Although he expresses that they could have been there with false identities, since sometimes they were detained with false documentation.

The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Videla Cifuentes, informed the Court on January 18, 1980, that no investigation had been requested regarding the legal existence of Jorge Müller.

This was not the response given by that same Ministry on February 3, 1976, to the German government, a nationality that Müller also held because his father was a citizen of that country. On that occasion, it was explained that the inclusion of the affected party in the list of people without legal existence contained in the report presented by Ambassador Sergio Diez to the United Nations was due to "a regrettable error" whose causes were being investigated.

On August 1, 1978, relatives of seventy forcibly disappeared detainees filed a complaint for kidnapping before the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago against the former Director of the DINA, General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, and other officers of that Security Service.

This Court declared itself incompetent and sent the records to the Military Court of Santiago, where case 553-78 was opened in the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office.

(For complete background on the complaint against Manuel Contreras, see the case of Eduardo Alarcón Jara.)

On April 28, 1980, after having reviewed this complaint, Minister Jordán declared himself incompetent to continue the investigation into the disappearance of Carmen Bueno and Jorge Müller and sent the records to the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office.

On August 27 of the same year, the 4th Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed this resolution, which had been appealed.

On September 2, a complaint was filed before the Supreme Court against the Ministers who did not grant the appeal, but on December 22, 1980, the Highest Court did not grant this appeal. A request for reconsideration of this resolution was made, which was also not accepted.

Case 553-78 of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office reviewed the records accumulated by the Visiting Minister for cases of forcibly disappeared detainees, Servando Jordán. In 1983, the prosecutor issued a dismissal of the case, a resolution that was later revoked.

Without any proceedings being carried out for four years, on November 20, 1989, the Army Lieutenant Colonel, Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case because the process had had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes that occurred during the period between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because, during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which totally and definitively dismissed the case—which was still in the summary stage—because "the criminal responsibility of the persons allegedly accused of the reported facts was extinguished." The complaining parties appealed said resolution to the Court Martial, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A complaint was then filed before the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution.

Other efforts made privately by the relatives before the authorities did not have better luck.

In April 1976, the Minister of the Interior, General Raúl Benavides, along with stating to Jorge Müller's mother that that Secretariat of State had no record of her son, expressed that the alleged disappearance of her relative "does not exclude the possibility of having surreptitiously abandoned the national territory with false documentation or a double identity."

This constitutes one of the responses that the military government was accustomed to giving to inquiries made by the victims' relatives. In May of the same year, 1976, the Government responded to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that "It is presumed that these people have hidden voluntarily to carry out clandestine subversive activities because other people, apparently disappeared..., have lately been involved in criminal activities and some of them have requested asylum in foreign embassies." It adds that these reports correspond to a "campaign against the Government, organized by Marxist elements."

On the other hand, in October 1977, the Military Judge of Santiago, General Enrique Morel, in an interview with the magazine HOY, pointed out in relation to the case of "the 119" that it was already solved, since "many have been located alive and some were killed by the Argentine armed forces.

The fact has been proven by the documentation they carried when they fought." But, when consulted by Minister Jordán, General Morel pointed out that the magazine had misrepresented him and he only knew what the press media had published regarding the situation of the "119."

The Chilean Church was also not satisfied with the responses provided by the military government, which it considered "unsatisfactory," in a public statement by the Permanent Committee of the Episcopate in November 1978.

The Bishops say they have reached the conclusion that the Government would not carry out an investigation that would establish the truth of each case and the corresponding responsibilities. The Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández Fernández, had assured the ecclesiastical authorities that an investigation would be carried out to clarify the reported cases.

Jorge Müller's mother fell ill with cancer, which caused her death in 1990, without being able to find her son or know the whole truth of what happened to him.

Source: Vicaría de la Solidaridad

November 29 commemorates the Day of Chilean Cinema, a day that arises from the unyielding struggle of film workers as an exercise in audiovisual memory and a tribute to Carmen Bueno and Jorge Müller, a couple of Chilean filmmakers detained on November 29, 1974, by state agents of the DINA in broad daylight, at Bilbao and Los Leones.

By Camilo Parada, Anticapitalist Movement

These young filmmakers, Carmen was 24 and Jorge 27 when they were detained, were seen at Villa Grimaldi, a terrifying center of detention and torture during the civil-military dictatorship of the Pinochetist right, the same one that has been regaining momentum in recent years.

Jorge and Carmen were victims of torture, and to this day, it is not known what happened to their bodies; that is, they are classified as forcibly disappeared, a systematic practice in right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.

It is important, nearly 50 years after the coup, to recognize the pain, but above all to recover the vital, artistic, creative, and militant dimension of Carmen and Jorge and of all the people murdered by Pinochetism.

Jorge Hernán Müller Silva was a cameraman recognized for his excellent technique and gaze, a gaze that was always positioned politically. He was the cameraman for the historic documentary "The Battle of Chile" (1975) by director Patricio Guzmán, with the precise stamp of Pedro Chaskel's editing; but also for the films "A la Sombra del Sol" (1974) by Silvio Caiozzi and Pablo Perelman; or "La Tierra Prometida" (1972), an epic film about the nitrate miners' struggle by Miguel Littin—although it was made in the early 70s, it could only be released in 1991 due to the fierce pressure of the coup-plotting siege; and Jorge also participated in "La Expropiación" (1973) and "El realismo socialista" (filmed between 1972 and 1973) by the filmmaker and theorist Raúl Ruiz.

For her part, Carmen Bueno Cifuentes was an actress and filmmaker from the School of Communication Arts of the Catholic University. She worked early on as a production assistant, for example, on "El Primer Año" (1972), a documentary by Patricio Guzmán that recounts the first year of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government; Carmen also worked in the television production of children's programs.

As an actress, we find her in Miguel Littin's "La Tierra Prometida," where she also performed production and costume duties, etc. She also worked on the film "A la sombra del sol" by Caiozzi.

Both Carmen and Jorge were an essential contribution to Chilean cinema, a cinema with a social and political gaze that was persecuted by the dictatorship, but Carmen and Jorge were also revolutionary militants in the MIR; they fought and organized to overturn the system of oppression and for a world liberated from all alienation, for social revolution.

It is important to underline this dimension, because we are talking about fighters for a more just society, and that is part of the legacy, a fundamental part, inseparable from their work as filmmakers and creators.

Cinema stimulates the emergence of memory, both historically and subjectively, but memory is always a concept in dispute; it is not about neutral remembering. It is made visible and invisible according to the interests being defended.

That is why it is important to understand how, as revolutionary socialists, we defend a militant memory that speaks to us of the class dimension, of the vitality of the struggle, and not only of the tearing (certainly real), but also of recovering the dimension of men and women who gave and give their lives to change the world from the ground up, sinking the bourgeois empire, as our internationalist song says, and thus promoting all creative freedom.

Carmen and Jorge were united by love, cinema, and militancy in the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). These are inseparable dimensions that communicate with each other; our memory is a living memory, projected in our struggle to transform everything.

It is not a memory emptied of content that remains only in pain; it is a memory of struggle. That is why this day is so important, beyond the light speeches of the institutions that try to empty the revolutionary character of cinema and transform it into a consumer commodity.

This day arises from a struggle of film workers and not from the State and the multinational film companies, which always join and assume it late. It is a day that was raised from below to commemorate Carmen and Jorge, memory, freedom of creation, and the labor recognition of those who perform cinematographic work.

There is a flaw in cultural policies in relation to Chilean cinema, the policies of state promotion, development, creation, dissemination, protection, and preservation of national audiovisual works, of research, and of new audiovisual languages.

They are deficient due to their neoliberal logic and abandonment of workers at the mercy of the fluctuations of a precarious sector. Thus, they leave aside organizations that have proposed measures, such as SINTECI, the National Inter-company Union of Film and Audiovisual Professionals and Technicians.

Greater financing and labor protection are needed, as well as promoting a true local film development plan that allows for exiting the precariousness of work and, in turn, allows for creative freedom to combat the large multinational production companies that tend toward monopoly and are channeled under a specific narrative so that everything remains the same.

May the tribute to Carmen and Jorge be a class-based, militant, and free cinema so that cinema is not a booty of the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, may it be a creative tool of the working class. This is also fighting for more democracy and for all rights, against the impunity of yesterday and today.

May our tribute as revolutionaries be organization and struggle to turn everything around. In summary:

“Independence of art, for the revolution; the revolution for the definitive liberation of art” (Leon Trotsky).

Source: anticapitalistas.cl 11/29/2022 Date: 11-29-2022

“Operation Colombo”: 65 DINA agents convicted for the disappearance of filmmakers.

The extraordinary visiting minister for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, issued a conviction against 65 agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping of the couple of filmmakers Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes, 24 years old, and Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, 27 years old, crimes perpetrated starting on September 29, 1974, in Santiago.

The Facts During the investigation stage, Minister Hernán Crisosto managed to determine the following facts: «On November 29, 1974, Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes and her partner Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), were detained on a public street, at the corner of Francisco Bilbao and Los Leones in Santiago, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who forced them into a C-10 pickup truck and transported them to the clandestine DINA detention center called "Villa Grimaldi," located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, in La Reina, and subsequently to the clandestine detention center called "Cuatro Álamos," located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, in Santiago, which were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access.

The victims, Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes and Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, during their stay at the Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos barracks, remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected in the former to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks with the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of the MIR, in order to proceed with the detention of its members.

The last time the victims, Bueno Cifuentes and Müller Silva, were seen alive occurred on an undetermined day in mid-December 1974, and to date, there is no information regarding the whereabouts of both, and they remain forcibly disappeared to this day;

The name of Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes appeared on a list of 119 people, published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the magazine "LEA" of Argentina, dated July 15, 1975, in which it was reported that Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal feuds that arose among those members.

The publications that declared the victim, Bueno Cifuentes, dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad.»

The Convictions

In the resolution, the presiding judge sentenced the former army officers and former DINA leaders César Raúl Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 20 years in prison as authors of the crimes.

Meanwhile, former officers Orlando José Manzo Durán, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, and Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana were also sentenced to 12 years in prison as authors.

The same sentence must be served by agents: Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis; Demóstenes Eugenio Cárdenas Saavedra, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Heriberto del Carmen Acevedo, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Julio José Hoyos Zegarra, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, José Mario Friz Esparza, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Basclay Humberto Zapata Reyes, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Rodolfo Valentino Concha Rodríguez, Juan Ángel Urbina Cáceres, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Luis Fernando Espinace Contreras, Hugo Rubén Delgado Carrasco, Carlos Eusebio López Inostroza, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Héctor Wacinton Briones Burgos, and Leonidas Emiliano Méndez Moreno.

Likewise, Minister Crisosto sentenced the agents Daniel Valentín Cancino Varas, Fernando Enrique Guerra Guajardo, Jorge Antonio Lepileo Barrios, Lautaro Eugenio Díaz Espinoza, Raúl Alberto Soto Pérez, José Jaime Mora Diocares, Eugenio Jesús Fieldhouse Chávez, Jaime Humberto Paris Ramos, José Stalin Muñoz Leal, Juan Carlos Escobar Valenzuela, Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo, Víctor Manuel San Martín Jiménez, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Reinaldo Alfonso Concha Orellana, Osvaldo Octavio Castillo Arellano, Guido Arnoldo Jara Brevis, Hugo Hernán Clavería Leiva, Carlos Enrique Miranda Mesa, Víctor Manuel Álvarez Droguett, Olegario Enrique González Moreno, Miguel Ángel Yáñez Ugalde, Víctor Manuel Molina Astete, Gustavo Galvarino Caruman Soto, Rafael de Jesús Riveros Frost, and Héctor Carlos Díaz Cabezas to 6 years in prison as accomplices to both crimes.

In the case of agent Samuel Enrique Fuenzalida Devia, a sentence of 3 years and one day in prison was applied for his responsibility as an author, with the benefit of supervised release.

Meanwhile, a total of 6 agents were acquitted because their responsibility in these crimes was not proven.

Source: Resumen.cl, November 28, 2015

The documentary "The Battle of Chile," recently broadcast by the La Red channel in a commendable informative effort, allowed new generations to encounter eloquent and robust documentary material regarding the process experienced in Chile between 1970 and 1973.

For older generations, it must have evoked those thousand days of mobilizations, debates, and confrontations, where it was clearly established which projects and interests are at stake in Chile.

The work of "The Battle of Chile" is one of the most enriching in terms of information and documentation about the period of the Popular Government led by President Salvador Allende, especially due to the testimony of social protagonists—that is, women, workers, residents, and union leaders—as well as the voices of business owners, conservatives, military personnel, and trade association leaders.

One can see and hear interventions by President Allende that are key to the 1970-1973 process. It was the work of an exceptional team, and the material remains relevant and necessary nearly half a century after those events.

On the team was the prominent and sensitive cameraman Jorge Müller Silva. It is likely that many young people who were able to see the documentary in recent days do not know that he is a forcibly disappeared person.

Those of his generation know it and do not forget it. It is another dramatic example of how officers of the Armed Forces and Carabineros, and militants of the right, acted with cruelty, hatred, and irrationality against thousands of compatriots, solely for their way of thinking and their professional practice.

On the morning of a day in November 1974, Müller, along with his partner and filmmaker, Carmen Bueno, was detained at Bilbao and Los Leones by a group from the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA).

Both were taken first to the Villa Grimaldi detention and torture center, and then to another similar center, Cuatro Álamos. Both were tortured, held incommunicado, and kept illegally imprisoned until mid-December 1974.

They were taken out of Cuatro Álamos, according to the testimony of several detainees, and were never heard from again. They became part of the list of the forcibly disappeared, surely executed by military personnel and Carabineros.

As occurred during the dictatorial period, the Supreme Court and other instances of the Judiciary rejected the writs of amparo and petitions for investigation regarding the detention, kidnapping, and disappearance of Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno.

The Military Prosecutor's Office, an entity for which it is still not investigated how many crimes and irregularities it committed during the dictatorship, closed the case. The insistence of family members, friends, and human rights lawyers finally allowed for a judicial process to be carried out, which was conducted by magistrate Hernán Crisosto.

The crime of illegal detention, torture, and disappearance was proven. About fifty DINA agents, mostly from the Army, were prosecuted and found guilty of the criminal action against Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno. Among them, César Martínez, Pedro Espinosa, Raúl Iturriaga, and Miguel Krassnoff were convicted.

The two filmmakers participated in several documentaries and film works, worked at Chile Films, and were militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Müller worked on "Reportaje a Lota," "La tierra prometida," "La Expropiación," and "Realismo Socialista."

Today, with the editorial and journalistic decision of the La Red channel, it was possible to once again admire Jorge Müller's work as a cameraman, with his masterful camera handling in "The Battle of Chile." And it was remembered again that he was one of the victims of the dictatorship.

Taken from El Siglo

Source: cubaperiodistas.cu 9/28/2021

Date: 09-28-2021

Rudolph, Rudy, Rodolfo: Three lives, the same righteous man

Living a century is to be a witness and, at times, a protagonist of transformations. It is to know the weaknesses and the strengths, the light and the darkness that can inhabit a human being. Approaching a centenary of life, a man who grew, flourished, and was stripped of what he held most dear departed this week.

Throughout his life, he knew how to stand up again, supported by a solid ethical scaffolding, in a cycle that repeated itself and was lived on two continents. Rodolfo Müller, originally from Northeim, Germany, born in the year 1922—99 years ago, to be precise—undertook a new "journey to another plane," according to his close family who surrounded him when he stopped breathing on June 8.

A child who grew up in an old town surrounded by the Leine and Rhume rivers, among birch forests, walking on ancient cobblestones and traversing the fragments of the medieval wall that protected the town from external dangers.

A refugee who fled systematic marginalization and terror along with his family, with a suitcase in his hand. An immigrant who flourished in a distant country, in which he placed his hopes, but also where he faced ghosts he thought he had left behind in the old continent.

As a child, the then-Rudolph—Rudy to those close to him—starting in March 1933, saw posters pasted on the walls denouncing "international Jewry." And he saw men in brown shirts outside the few Jewish shops to write down the names of the non-Jews who entered.

Soon, they would not be able to walk down the street without the yellow star pinned to their arm. Along with a brother and a friend, they were the only Jewish children in the school; the friend, in particular, was a target of aggression, and Rudy would come to his defense. "They had a little more respect for me because I defended myself," he once said.

That inner strength, of not letting himself be provoked, the instinct to defend the most vulnerable, and looking at life as a gift, were attributes that would serve him well throughout the course of his long life.

Aboard the steamship that departed from the port of La Rochelle, they learned that their destination was that long and thin line that appeared as the end of the world on the globe. They had never heard of a place called Chile before. They arrived there in January 1937.

Rodolfo Müller was industrious from a young age. On the ship that crossed the Atlantic, there was a book to learn Spanish, and upon arriving in Valparaíso, he already mastered the language quite well. Once settled in Santiago, he entered high school, but found the level too low.

Upon turning 15, he dropped out, preferring to learn a trade. In a small workshop on Calle Santo Domingo at Morandé, he learned to operate a lathe. The workshop was tasked with installing the first observatory in Santiago, along Gran Avenida, near an aviation field, and at night they would observe the stars, losing himself, amazed, in the galaxy.

The workshop also manufactured sound heads during the boom of sound cinema, which were installed in theaters in small towns all over Chile. As an adult, and already a father of two children, he would say that he really felt happy in his time as an apprentice, "because I learned everything." With that trade, he opened a mechanical garage for repairing Citronetas, with which he later supported his own young family.

Despite his early experience in installing cinemas throughout the country, he did not suspect that his son would become passionate about that medium. The story of Jorge, the cameraman who filmed The Battle of Chile and several other works, is quite well known.

Few know, however, that when Jorge was filming the striking truckers' camp, the events at the Estadio Nacional, and many other events of the time, his father lent him the old Citroneta. Rodolfo and his wife Irma Silva worried that he was exposing himself and taking too many risks. "I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm just filming what I'm seeing," Jorge would answer them. "They (the military) wouldn't understand it that way later," Rodolfo noted many years later.

Starting on November 29, 1974, when Jorge and his partner Carmen Bueno were kidnapped in the middle of Providencia, at the corner of Bilbao and Los Leones, by a squad of men in civilian clothes, Rodolfo and Irma opened themselves to the world. They formed a team of two, strengthening each other in the countless efforts to find the whereabouts of Jorge and Carmen.

Rodolfo Müller and Irma Silva did not only dedicate themselves to searching for their son. In their house in Providencia and in their home in El Quisco, they sheltered other persecuted people so that the same thing would not happen to them as had happened to their son.

Parallel to opening their home and their hearts to shelter people, they continued their daily search efforts. It was rumored that they were in Tres and Cuatro Álamos, and they went there to leave them clothes, cakes, and soap. At the German embassy, they obtained a visa with the hope of taking him to his native country as soon as he reappeared.

Along the way, they met other people engaged in the same pilgrimage. They ended up joining the new association of relatives of the 119, formed after the July 1975 setup orchestrated by the dictatorship to explain the fate of forcibly disappeared persons.

Many times, the relatives would meet at the couple's house, the spacious living room becoming small, with people settling on the floor. A companion remembers them: "Some husbands ended up separating because the women commonly focused more, if not entirely, on the search. But they always arrived together at the association's meetings."

In 1978, with other people impacted by the repressive practices of the dictatorship, Irma and Rodolfo formed the folk group Aydar, which operated out of various churches and schools, rotating between different spaces in the eastern sector of Santiago.

Rodolfo, wearing a wool cap, played Chiloé tunes on his accordion, an instrument he learned to play in his youth in Northeim. The same music of Chiloé accompanied him this week when he undertook his infinite journey, joining Irma and Jorge.

Resilience, the ability to adapt to changes, to continue learning, and to give oneself to others during the course of life have been pointed out as key elements of the long-lived. These attributes shone in Rodolfo Müller.

Rudolph, Rudy, Rodolfo, from his different interwoven identities, was able to channel the horror through the transformative power of solidarity and justice. In that process, he transformed others and at the same time was transformed himself.

In every young person, they found something of their son, and thus, the legacy of Rodolfo, which is in part that of Irma and Jorge, persists in every being that was touched by them.

Source: elClarin.cl, June 14, 2021

Date: 06-14-2021

Jorge Müller ACC, Latent Image of a generation (EXCERPT)

The ACC recognizes Jorge Müller as an honorary member of the association for his outstanding career and importance to national cinema, stemming from his great work as a cinematographer. Research: Wayra Galland Carbo.

Participants: Angelina Vazquez, Patricio Guzmán, Antonio Larrea. Acknowledgments: The Müller family, the Bueno family, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, the National Library, Grupo Arca, Soledad Abarca, José de la Parra, Fernanda Riveros, José de la Vega, Pablo Perelman, Carolina Labbé, and Verónica Garay.

Introduction

This research on Jorge Müller was born from an interest in Cinematography. Twelve years ago, I heard about him on a film set. I was 20 years old and decided to write a thesis that sought to determine if Jorge had developed a particular camera style during the truncated beginning of his career.

In this process, I found literary sources that contradicted each other, and beyond analyzing the films, I needed to document—using precarious tools—the background information from those close to him. That is how I met the Müller family.

After visiting them several times, Mr. Rudolph Müller decided to open a cabinet and show me a large quantity of files kept for more than 40 years. While I was reviewing the documents, he arrived with a radio and a cassette.

He told me to listen to it and commented: “I’m going for a walk and will be back.” As soon as he left, I began to listen to the broken voice of Irma Silva narrating her testimony:

IRMA SILVA

“Now, at this very moment, it comes to my mind how it all began, how this nightmare began that I believe will never end because I have come to convince myself that what is missing here is courage, that courage that our ancestors, the Indians, had.

Even if some do not want it, we carry their blood in our veins, but the bravery, the courage, the daring of those people was not inherited by the Chileans, or perhaps it is hidden, and since the occasion has not presented itself to defend what is most dear to them, that is why it has not surfaced.

But I, with my Indian blood, little or much, am willing to give my last drop of blood to defend what is most dear to me: My son. I believe I will continue in this struggle, in this war that is not a war.

As I wrote in a verse for my boy that says: What are you doing sitting there thinking, my son? Thinking about what, thinking about what they say, that there is a war. But what war? How did it all start?

It seems like a century ago. Every minute has passed in my life like a thousand hours, like in the first moment, I refused to believe that my son had been detained, but why? Why? Where is he? What is he accused of?

Where is the Law that I was always aware of and believed existed? Why doesn't he appear? Searching, searching, asking. Suddenly, after 5 days, a phone call. – Jorge and Carmen were detained on Calle Los Leones on Friday the 29th. -Who is speaking?

No answer, and they hang up. Terrifying anguish. What to do? Do I ask a friend or not? What to do? What do I do?…” I listened to the testimony of a mother who was looking for her son, a mother violated by the State by denying the legal existence of a human being who had come from her womb.

One who was tortured, whose life was taken, and who was forcibly disappeared. I had a son in my womb at that moment, and upon listening to the cassette, I felt, alongside his mother’s voice, that I had inherited an emotional responsibility that has taken me time to accept and understand.

Only after going through various stages of the research and processing the pain acquired through different creative means, reflecting on reality by coming face-to-face with the country’s history through cinema and photography, have I assumed with commitment and urgency the duty to disseminate these results to perform an act of metaphorical justice.

For this reason, with the permission of the family, his friends, and the support of those who have helped me in the process, I share part of this story. He was born on January 10, 1947. He studied at various schools during his primary education and finished his schooling as a student at the School of Applied Arts of the University of Chile.

One of his classmates was the photographer and designer Antonio Larrea.

ANTONIO LARREA

“In the first two years of the School of Applied Arts, we had only general art studies; it wasn't graphic design because you could choose your major in the second year. You chose graphic design or photography; you started defining yourself, you could be a sculptor, a painter, etc.

There was a complete range, but the first years were pure art where everything would serve you for any of the areas you decided to enter. Among all [the subjects] was composition, which Jorge used in cinema and I used in photography.

We didn't have direct photography classes; most things were learned outside. There was no photography laboratory, but there was everything related to composition in painting: volumes, forms, spaces, colors—all those things were directed toward art.

When we got to know photography, we applied all this knowledge. We had teachers like Rodolfo Opazo, a Chilean painter, and Pedro Lobos, who was a great muralist, like in the Mexican style. They are the teachers who left the biggest mark on us.

The 1968 trip was key for both of us. With Jorge, we exchanged ideas in the workshop, especially about composition—clean composition, clean lines, an element with a horizontal line. Speaking of photography, Jorge later began to apply that in his filming.

We made a documentary. There was a program on Channel 9 called ‘Emisión 0,’ so Hernán Puelma proposed to the channel that we would make a documentary in the south, one about the Araucanía and the other about Chiloé.

They gave us sponsorship, so we could go with the channel’s banner, and we left in June of ’68, in the middle of winter. I have photos that I took during the trip because all these photos were going to serve to support the documentary, because we had very little film and Jorge had bought a machine at the ‘persa’ [flea market], a tiny one, hand-cranked, so we had a few rolls.

It was the first filming we could do. I carried a camera, I had a light meter, so if we ran out of film, we would complement it with photographs.” After the School of Applied Arts, he traveled to Valparaíso to study cinema in Viña del Mar, where he met his generation of classmates.

Unfortunately, this school closed its operations after a while, and the friendships formed there continued working in Santiago for Chile Films. Jorge Müller worked as a cameraman between the late 60s and early 70s.

He was the cameraman for “The Battle of Chile” (Patricio Guzmán), “In the Shadow of the Sun” (Caiozzi-Perelman), and director of photography for “The Expropriation,” “Palomilla Brava,” and “The Socialist Realism” (Raúl Ruiz), and “Crónicas del Salitre” (Angelina Vazquez), among other projects, in addition to living through the lights and shadows of his generation, with a committed conception of art and a truncated political project.

ANGELINA VAZQUEZ

“Art—poetry, theater, song, cinema—touched and intertwined in daily life, with the need to learn and the awareness of the capacity to learn that action provided as a cognitive leap… I had a daily political practice, but one external to power, and also a daily practice of years of poetry, music, theater; we did a little bit of everything, or a lot of everything.

Injustice was perceived and explained with clarity. The primary feeling of indignation was answered with a desire to interpret the world, with tools that today seem perhaps short to us, but which opened up a world of questions and attempts to answer.

There are many diffuse, cherished memories: my brother and beloved Jorge Müller, without whom, after his disappearance, I felt that part of my soul and my cinematic eye had died. Pablo Perelman, who later went to Brussels.

From ’71 on, they would be inseparable from my professional and personal life. Valeria Sarmiento, with whom we have always maintained a close and cherished relationship. Jorge Pacheco, my boyfriend from school, who, along with Luis Salvatierra and Omar Andía, made me share so many things.

Pepe de la Vega, Lito Morris, Marianela [Astudillo], Chimpilo, Bombero… an endless line of faces, laughter, dances, beaches… In short, I cannot name them all. Luciano Tarifeño, who was like a dean because he was part of the team of people who created the port city’s television channel, with whom I shared a house and who helped me so much.

Of the teachers, Pepe Román, Aldo Francia, Diego Bonacina, ‘Guatón’ Mori, and a long list of professionals who perhaps were only a few meters away, but whom one felt in many cases were good companions in discovery and some also a source of experience.

I feel that one studied and worked a lot. And the school continued in the afternoons and nights of Valparaíso and in the memorable parties we held, which were another way to continue conversations about cinema.

And I read a lot, a lot. Film theory, film history, screenwriting, editing… Art theory. They were true binges in which we were defining a way of looking, and perhaps laying the foundations for future work?

In my house (and Luciano’s), memorable parties were held with students and teachers, friends of cinema from other latitudes… Raúl Ruiz, very close in that peripheral life to the school. So much so that he took my friend Valeria to Santiago, after a beautiful wedding at the Naval Club.”

PATRICIO GUZMÁN

“During the second semester of 1972, Chile Films commissioned me to make a feature-length fiction film about Manuel Rodríguez based on a script by Isidora Aguirre, later adapted by the writer Alfonso Alcalde.

I chose Jorge Müller for the camera team as an assistant and Patricio Castilla as director of photography. After the great strike of October of that same year, due to a lack of resources, Chile Films gave up on the project.

However, before this production was completely paralyzed, I organized a minimal film crew to film the great strike. This team was made up of a cameraman (Jorge Müller), an assistant director (Guillermo Cahn), a Brazilian sound engineer (whose name I don’t remember), and myself.

We went out to film the industrial belts [cordones industriales], which were made known in Chile for the first time. They were a kind of industrial territory. They were the action unit of dozens of factories that were in the same sector.

Thanks to them, the right could not paralyze the country, and the workers managed the factories for two months on their own. We filmed mainly in the Cerrillos Belt and the Vicuña Mackenna Belt. This was my first real, human, and aesthetic contact with Jorge.

Our film did not have great ambitions. It was a 40-minute project whose purpose was to show other workers how self-management was possible. We used a 16mm Arriflex camera and a Nagra recorder. However, despite the limitations, from our first contact, both Jorge and I felt a clear preference for sequence shots—that is, long shots that did not fragment the action so much—and trying to cover a situation all at once, camera on the shoulder, and of course, improvising a lot.

On these two points (handheld camera and improvisation), our entire future relationship would be based. This short film was titled ‘The October Response’ and won the Chile Films Mobile Circuits Prize at the end of 1972.

I was able to keep this negative and took it out of the country along with the materials for ‘The Battle of Chile’ I-II-III. In 1989, I dismantled this negative and included it in the third part of this trilogy, which is called The Popular Power.

After finishing this work, we were fired from Chile Films, since the Manuel Rodríguez project was definitively suspended. We met in the Parque Forestal to reflect on our future, and I defended the idea of continuing to film everything that was happening in reality, a project that took shape and turned into ‘The Battle of Chile’ I-II-III.

Among these ‘remnants’ of the team were: Jorge Müller, Guillermo Cahn, and Federico Elton, all of them later definitive members of the Battle of Chile group, whose preparation we started in February 1973 and finished four days after the coup d’état.

That is to say, I worked with Jorge for practically a whole year, between October 1972 and September 1973, seeing each other almost daily. We had an Eclair 16mm camera (with two magazines) and a 120mm zoom.

We also had a wide-angle lens, which we almost never used, as the zoom was better adapted to our mobility. We had three batteries. We didn’t have a stabilizer. One of the great virtues of the Eclair is that the magazine fits into the camera body without the need to thread the film.

Jorge always kept our spare magazine loaded because there were many pauses. We had a black bag and two portable lights that ran on some very unstable, precarious, and heavy batteries.”

Source: acc-chile.com, 11/07/2020

Date: 07-11-2020

CNCA pays tribute to artists who were victims of the dictatorship

Within the framework of the “Month of Memory,” the National Council of Culture and the Arts held a tribute to artists who were victims of the military dictatorship, an event where the writer Jorge Montealegre presented his book “Eclipsed Memories: Grief and Community Resilience in Political Imprisonment.” An emotional tribute to artists, cultural practitioners, and artisans who were victims of the dictatorship took place this Friday, September 9, in Valparaíso, at the Extension Center of the Council of Culture and the Arts (Centex).

The head of the Memory and Human Rights Unit of the National Council of Culture and the Arts, Francia Jamett Pizarro, highlighted the institution’s role in observing symbolic reparation policies. “The celebration of commemorations and tributes to victims of human rights violations are part of the values and principles of the Council expressed in the 2011-2016 Cultural Policies.

This recognition of the artists who were victims of the dictatorship responds to an institutional commitment that seeks to highlight their lives and their works, and to build new narratives around symbolic reparation,” the official stated.

The writer Jorge Montealegre presented his book “Eclipsed Memories: Grief and Community Resilience in Political Imprisonment,” where he recounts how artistic and cultural creation, while living in prisoner camps, allowed those who were imprisoned for political reasons to endure the ongoing human rights violations they suffered in a more dignified manner.

The “Month of Memory” cycle, organized by the CNCA, began last Friday, September 2, with a symbolic internal tribute to remember the legacy of Galia Díaz Riffo and Romina Irarrázabal Faggiani, officials who died five years ago in the Juan Fernández plane crash.

Source: cultura.gob.cl 09/09/2016

Date: 09-09-2016

ANEF inaugurates memorial for victims of the dictatorship with the presence of President Bachelet

In a solemn ceremony outside the ANEF headquarters this Monday, September 8, a memorial was inaugurated in honor of public employees who were victims of the civic-military dictatorship. The event was attended by the President of the Republic, Michelle Bachelet; the representatives of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), Lorena Pizarro, and of Political Executions (AFEP), Alicia Lira; along with the Minister of Labor, Javiera Blanco; the Minister of Mining, Aurora Williams; the president of the CUT, Bárbara Figueroa; the Undersecretary of Labor, Francisco Díaz; Joan Jara, widow of Víctor Jara; the parliamentarians Tucapel Jiménez, Maya Fernández, Lautaro Carmona, Hugo Gutiérrez, and Claudio Arriagada; as well as social and union leaders. At the ceremony, the choir of former political prisoners dedicated some songs to the fallen of the ANEF. Afterward, Lorena Pizarro and Alicia Lira gave speeches, celebrating this act of memory and calling on the authorities to seek truth and justice in the cases that are still pending regarding the forcibly disappeared and political executions. “With this memorial, we close a debt of the ANEF to the State workers who were executed and disappeared during the dictatorship, without forgetting that ours was one of the sectors most affected during this dark period,” noted the president of the ANEF, Raúl de la Puente, in his speech. De la Puente also recalled the resistance and struggle of some of those honored, such as Jorge Peña Hen, Reinalda Pereira, Carlos Prats, and the President’s father, Alberto Bachelet. The memorial bears the names of 380 forcibly disappeared and political executions inscribed on elegant bronze plaques—public employees from various sectors who, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior, were victims of the tyranny. “One cannot build a solid community without taking responsibility for the violence that fractured our society and ended the lives of wonderful people, like those who receive our tribute today,” President Bachelet noted in her speech. “We need that justice to be soon, and we need, for that to be possible, for those who have relevant information, whether civilians or military, to provide it,” stated the President, who urged the Justice system to work toward finding the truth. After the ceremony, the plaques that make up the memorial at the entrance of the ANEF were shown to the attendees, where the priest Mariano Puga, a recognized collaborator of the workers, blessed the memorial. Finally, we must highlight the excellent organization of the event by the Secretary of Culture, Recreation, and Sports, Nayadé Zúñiga.

Source: anef.cl 09/09/2014

Date: 09-09-2014

Court orders State to pay $100 million to relatives of a disappeared person

The Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the Treasury to pay $100 million in compensation to the father and sister of filmmaker Jorge Müller Silva, who has been forcibly disappeared since November 1974 and is one of the victims of the so-called “Operation Colombo.” In a split decision, the capital’s appellate court for the first time addressed the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which sentenced the State of Chile for the application of the 1978 Amnesty Law to deny compensation to victims of military repression.

In that sense, it determined that the Treasury has responsibilities that are imprescriptible in cases of repressive policy. In the first instance, in August 2001, the 29th Civil Court of Santiago had denied the compensation, but the members of the Third Chamber of the court reversed that measure, ordering the aforementioned payment.

The majority opinion, supported by Judge Mario Rojas and the lawyer member Hugo Llanos, states that “this Court considers that the preparation and execution of the detention and subsequent torture and disappearance of the victims could not have been perpetrated without the superior orders of police leadership and State agents, or without the collaboration, acquiescence, and tolerance manifested in various actions carried out in a coordinated and concatenated manner by members of the police and intelligence services.” “They not only gravely failed in their duties to prevent and protect the rights of the alleged victims, enshrined in Article 1.1 of the American Convention, but they used their official status and resources granted by the State to commit violations (…) the State became the principal factor in the grave crimes committed, configuring a clear situation of State terrorism,” the resolution adds. Furthermore, the ruling maintains that “the question of the statute of limitations for the action cannot be resolved based on the norms of private law, because these serve different ends. If this thesis were accepted, it would certainly violate not only the American Convention on Human Rights (…) but also Article 5 of the Political Constitution of the Republic, which, in addition to recognizing the binding nature of international law instruments, establishes for State bodies the duty to respect and promote fundamental rights, among which must be placed the right to compensation that has been invoked in these proceedings.” The ruling also provides an extensive analysis of the resolutions in which the IACHR has condemned different states for cases of human rights violations to support the payment of compensatory damages to the victims’ relatives. In the minority vote, Judge Gloria Ana Chevesich maintains that the facts are time-barred, since the claim for compensation was filed only in 2000, 26 years after the events occurred. The filmmaker and his partner Jorge Müller Silva was a 27-year-old young filmmaker at the time of his detention and was captured along with his partner, fellow MIR militant Carmen Bueno Cifuentes (24), at the corner of Avenidas Francisco Bilbao and Los Leones on November 29, 1974. Both young people had participated the previous night in the premiere of the film “In the Shadow of the Sun” at the Las Condes cinema, as they were part of the film’s crew. Müller was also one of the most prominent cameramen of his time and had participated in the recording of the documentary “The Battle of Chile,” by Patricio Guzmán, which portrayed the Chile of the Popular Unity and the presidential campaign of Salvador Allende, and which has become one of the most internationally awarded works of cinema. At the time of their detention, the couple was working on the filming of the “Chilean Holy Year,” an event that took place days before their arrest at the Votive Temple of Maipú and which had been organized by the Episcopal Conference of Chile. The couple was taken to the Villa Grimaldi center, where they remained detained and subjected to intense torture by State agents, who were particularly harsh with Bueno, as she was accused of having given a dog to the then-leader of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), Miguel Enríquez. They were later transferred to the Cuatro Álamos facility, where they were seen by several witnesses who coincide in stating that both communicated through signs when the women were taken to the bathroom. Their communications were discovered by DINA agents, and the next day, their trail was lost.

Source: El Mostrador, March 30, 2007

Date: 03-30-2007

Judge Guzmán strikes again at the DINA

In one of the prosecutions that ended up dismantling one of the main setups of the past dictatorship, the special judge Juan Guzmán indicted ten former DINA agents, several of them from its high command, including the former chief Manuel Contreras, for eight victims disappeared in what is known as Operation Colombo.

This is the second indictment issued by Judge Guzmán for this setup that occurred in 1975, the first being the one decreed on September 2, when the magistrate prosecuted 16 former agents for 37 victims of the Colombo operation.

The resolutions adopted by Judge Guzmán in this episode constitute, as a whole, the most massive prosecution issued so far by this judge, and one of those that covers the largest number of victims and defendants in the trials being conducted for human rights violations.

The accused, all in retirement and declared defendants as authors of aggravated kidnapping, are, in addition to Contreras, the former chief of the DINA Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade, General César Manríquez Bravo, brother of Mario, a retired colonel charged as the intellectual author of the crime of Víctor Jara; the former second-in-command of the DINA, Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo; the former chief of Villa Grimaldi, Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito; the former chief of the DINA Cuatro Álamos facility, Gendarmerie officer Orlando Manzo Durán; the former chief of the DINA Halcón group, Brigadier Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko; the former chief of the Army Intelligence Directorate’s Secret Service and former member of the DINA high command, Colonel Francisco Ferrer Lima, who is serving a sentence in Punta Peuco for the crime of union leader Tucapel Jiménez; the former chief of the DINA Tres Álamos facility, Carabineros officer Conrado Pacheco Cárdenas; Army non-commissioned officer Basclay Zapata Reyes; and the former civilian agent Osvaldo Romo Mena. The eight new victims of Colombo are: Aldo Pérez Vargas, Roberto Aranda Romero, Jorge Müller Silva, Modesto Espinoza Pozo, Carlos Pérez Vargas, Carmen Bueno Cifuentes, Rodrigo Ugas Morales, and Carlos Gajardo Wolf. The last five appear on the list of the 119 disappeared by this operation, but the first three do not. The setup The so-called Operation Colombo was born in the first months of 1975, when the DINA and the former dictator Augusto Pinochet himself, as well as other military ministers, began to spread information that the MIR was preparing “guerrillas” in different Argentine cities to have them enter Chile clandestinely through border crossings to fight the military regime. The newspapers El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Últimas Noticias, and the evening paper La Segunda were in charge of publishing them. The peak of the setup occurred between July 17 and 19, 1975, when first the Brazilian newspaper O Dia, which had a short circulation, reported that 59 Chileans had been executed in Argentina by their own leftist comrades, attributing the deaths to political “settling of scores.” On the 19th, the Argentine magazine Lea published in its only issue that the same had happened to another 60 Chileans, most of them from the MIR. In April 1975, a body destroyed by an explosion appeared in a Buenos Aires basement with a sign that said “discharged by the MIR.” It was said to be the forcibly disappeared communist David Silberman. However, it was not him. On July 12, 1975, two other bodies appeared in Buenos Aires, shot and burned with a similar legend. The dictatorship reported that they were those who had been listed as disappeared in Chile, Jaime Robotham Bravo and Luis Guendelman Wisnik. Which also turned out to be false. On July 24, 1975, La Segunda published on its front page perhaps the most representative headline of the invention: “Exterminated like rats: 59 Chilean MIRistas fall in military operation in Argentina.” Objective and origin of the action The objective of Operation Colombo was to make people believe that dozens of people, whom their relatives, lawyers, and churches in Chile considered forcibly disappeared, had in reality left clandestinely for Argentina to prepare in guerrilla warfare to return to Chile to fight. And that in the meantime, abroad, political scores had been settled by killing each other or falling in military operations in Argentina, a country that was experiencing political and military turmoil in the final months before the March 1976 coup d’état. Regarding the origin of the name Operation Colombo, it refers to statements by the former DINA civilian agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, who admitted in Buenos Aires in 1978—accused of “espionage”—that in 1975, the agent Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann (former chief of the DINA Foreign Department and current retired general) arrived in that capital to make a “Chilean subversive” named “Simelman or something similar” appear dead in Argentina. It was Silberman. According to Arancibia Clavel, Iturriaga told him that it was Operation Colombo, in which they had the collaboration, among others, of the Argentine civilian and member of the Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) Martín Ciga Correa.

Source: La Nación, January 4, 2004

Date: 01-04-2004

Kidnapping of Jorge Müller and Carmen Bueno: DINA agents are convicted for the disappearance of the filmmakers

The members of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate, César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, will receive a 20-year prison sentence for their role as authors.

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that convicted César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 20 years in prison as authors of the crime.

The highest court rejected the appeals for cassation in form and substance filed against the sentence that convicted agents of the defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of the filmmaker couple Jorge Hernán Müller Silva and Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes.

Crimes committed starting on November 29, 1974. In a unanimous ruling (case file 43.971-2020), the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court—composed of judges Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, Judge María Teresa Letelier, and lawyer Pía Tavolari—confirmed the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced César Manríquez Bravo, Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, and Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko to 20 years in prison as authors of the crime.

Meanwhile, Orlando Manzo Durán, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Alejandro Francisco Astudillo Adonis, Sylvia Teresa Oyarce Pinto, Gerardo Ernesto Godoy García, Manuel Heriberto Avendaño González, Nelson Aquiles Ortiz Vignolo, Silvio Antonio Concha González, Pedro Ariel Araneda Araneda, Luis Rigoberto Videla Inzunza, Jorge Segundo Madariaga Acevedo, Teresa del Carmen Osorio Navarro, José Abel Aravena Ruiz, Rosa Humilde Ramos Hernández, Pedro René Alfaro Fernández, Luis René Torres Méndez, Jerónimo del Carmen Neira Méndez, Palmira Isabel Almuna Guzmán, Carlos López Inostroza, Hugo del Tránsito Hernández Valle, Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, and Fernando Eduardo Lauriani Maturana must serve 12 years in prison as co-authors. “That, in this way, the elements of the examined crime and the participation in them of these accused were considered verified by the first-instance court, conclusions that the second-instance judiciary adopted, endorsed in the 7th consideration of the challenged sentence,” the ruling states. The resolution adds: “That, consequently, and even ignoring the grave formal defects of the examined appeals for nullity, the infractions denounced by the defenses of Carlos López Inostroza, Jerónimo Neira Méndez, Luis Videla Inzunza, Pedro Alfaro Fernández, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, and César Manríquez Bravo have not been configured in this case, since the facts established in the challenged sentence and the participation in them of these accused have been adjusted to the laws regulating evidence, so that no reproach can be raised in this regard to the challenged sentence, so that the appeals for nullity under examination will be entirely dismissed.” Operation Colombo In the first-instance sentence, the special judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Hernán Crisosto Greisse, established the following facts: On November 29, 1974, Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes and her partner Jorge Hernán Müller Silva, militants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), were detained on a public street, at the corner of Calle Francisco Bilbao and Los Leones in Santiago, by agents belonging to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), who forced them into a C-10 pickup truck and transported them to the clandestine DINA detention center called ‘Villa Grimaldi,’ located at Lo Arrieta No. 8200, La Reina, and subsequently to the clandestine detention center called ‘Cuatro Álamos,’ located at Calle Canadá No. 3000, Santiago, which were guarded by armed guards and to which only DINA agents had access. During their stay at the Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Álamos barracks, they remained without contact with the outside world, blindfolded and tied up, being continuously subjected in the former to interrogations under torture by DINA agents who operated in said barracks with the purpose of obtaining information regarding members of the MIR to proceed with the detention of its members. The last time the victims Bueno Cifuentes and Müller Silva were seen alive was on an undetermined day in mid-December 1974, and to date, there is no information regarding the whereabouts of both, and they remain disappeared. The name of Carmen Cecilia Bueno Cifuentes appeared on a list of 119 people published in the national press after it appeared on a list published in the Argentine magazine ‘LEA,’ dated July 15, 1975, which reported that Bueno Cifuentes had died in Argentina, along with 59 other people belonging to the MIR, due to internal disputes that arose among those members. The publications that declared the victim Bueno Cifuentes dead had their origin in disinformation maneuvers carried out by DINA agents abroad. In the civil aspect, the sentence that ordered the Treasury to pay $50 million as moral damages to the sister of the victim Bueno Cifuentes was confirmed.

Source: radio.uchile.cl, February 23, 2024