Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas, married, father of five, union leader, and Communist militant, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the vicinity of the Vega Central, where he worked as a loader alongside Pedro Silva Bustos, also a Communist militant, who was detained that same day and remains forcibly disappeared to this day.

Other Communist Party union leaders detained on that August 9 are in the same situation, including Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, José Enrique Corvalán Valencia, and Mario Jesús Juica Vega. Following his arrest, Jorge Salgado was taken to the facility known as "Villa Grimaldi," where all traces of him were lost.

His time at Villa Grimaldi is documented in the testimony of Isaac Godoy Castillo, who stated that he was detained by the DINA on August 20, 1976, and released after spending 6 days at Villa Grimaldi. Upon arriving at the facility, he was tortured and interrogated regarding his activities in the Communist Party, after which he was locked in a room where two other detainees were being held.

Hours later, they took him to a patio—which he located next to the dungeon—that had stone masonry and a basin where he would drink water; toward the planters, there was a staircase with 5 steps, a railing, and a figure on top of it.

There was a group of detainees there, about 20 to 30 prisoners. On Sunday, the male prisoners were taken out of their cells and forced to trot. On Monday, after breakfast and lunch, he was able to see the guards while he was drinking water at the basin; one was a man 1.75 to 1.80 meters tall, with thick mustaches, a round face, and black hair; another wore brown clothing, was 1.75 meters tall, and weighed approximately 85 kg.

On Wednesday, they took the prisoners out to clean, forcing them to load a truck with branches and trash. When the trash work was finished, they locked about 14 people in his dungeon—he had been taken out earlier—among them Jorge Salgado, who mentioned that he had been captured while he was loading sacks at the Vega.

Days before the victim's disappearance, his home was raided by agents who claimed to be officials from the Investigations department.

His family carried out numerous efforts to locate him, but all were fruitless, and they still do not know his fate at the hands of the DINA.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

On August 30, 1976, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on his behalf before the Santiago Court of Appeals, case file 838-76, which was rejected on September 17 based solely on the negative report from the Minister of the Interior, with the records being sent to the corresponding court.

On December 16, the 2nd Criminal Court of the Presidente Aguirre Cerda Department initiated case 20.927. During the proceedings, the complainant, Luz Ernestina Jaque Rojas, the victim's wife, appeared and ratified the terms of her complaint, adding that after September 11, 1973, her home in the city of Calera had been raided twice by military personnel.

Furthermore, the respective investigation order carried out by the Investigations Service yielded no results.

On November 17, 1976, a complaint for "Presumed Misfortune" (disappearance) was filed before the same court and was consolidated into case 20.927. After receiving negative reports from the Ministry of the Interior, the Carabineros, the International Police, the Legal Medical Service, and various cemeteries in the capital, the case was temporarily dismissed on May 10, 1978, on the grounds that "the perpetration of a punishable act does not appear fully justified in the records." On July 6 of that year, the dismissal order was approved by the Court of Appeals.

Regarding administrative efforts, his spouse sent a letter, among others, to the Minister of the Interior, receiving a negative response from that Secretariat of State. She also appealed to international organizations concerned with human rights violations.

At the end of May that year, it became known within the regional committees of the PC that the entire Party leadership had fallen. Only Víctor Cantero and Inés Cornejo—the latter having stepped away from the organization for health reasons—were safe. The DINA wanted Cantero, the man they presumed was responsible for the funds. In the pursuit, agents kidnapped brothers Julio and Eduardo Budnik.

In the early hours of April 30, 1976, around 3:30 a.m., DINA agents, supported in the vicinity by members of the Joint Command (Comando Conjunto), arrived at the house located at Calle Conferencia 1587, in the southwestern sector of the Santiago commune, where a leather goods workshop owned by the leather worker Juan Becerra Barrera operated.

They told him that his sister-in-law, María Teresa Zúñiga, who lived at Calle Alejandro del Fierro 5113 in Quinta Normal, had suffered a tragic car accident. Becerra agreed to accompany them, getting into the vehicle they were using. He was immediately handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken to Villa Grimaldi.

That was the beginning of an operation designed by DINA commanders to capture the leadership of the Communist Party. A favorable point for Manuel Contreras's objectives was having secured the collaboration of Elisa Escobar Cepeda, Mario Zamorano's liaison, who had been detained by DINA agents in late March or early April 1976.

Becerra had been a friend of Zamorano since the early sixties, and in 1974, the Party leader had asked to use his house on Conferencia to hold meetings every two or three months. Zamorano also frequently visited the home of Becerra's mother, located on Calle Alejandro del Fierro in the Quinta Normal commune.

Elisa Escobar knew both locations and provided their characteristics, as well as the probable dates of the meetings, to the DINA men.

Thus, that night in late April, agents from the Purén brigade, supported by other groups from the Terranova barracks, detained several of the occupants of both houses, whom they tortured for almost two days before taking them back to their homes to set up the "mousetraps" in anticipation of the Communist leaders who would attend the scheduled meeting.

On April 30, the agents occupied the house on Alejandro del Fierro and held four adults and a ten-year-old child there. Ana María Becerra, Juan's sister, married to Julio Maigret—one of those held in the Quinta Normal house—found out what was happening and went to the Vicariate of Solidarity on May 2 to report it.

There, she met with the auxiliary bishop of Santiago, Enrique Alvear, and told him what was happening to her family. The prelate, carrying medication required by one of those detained in the Alejandro del Fierro house, appeared at the residence to question the DINA agents about their actions.

They wanted to detain him as well, but one of the group's leaders decided to let him go. Alvear communicated in writing to the president of the Supreme Court and the Minister of Justice what he had witnessed.

Despite that circumstance, five DINA agents installed themselves on May 2 in the Conferencia house and forced its occupants to pretend they were working in the leather workshop that operated there.

The Communist leaders summoned to the meeting would enter without major precautions, unless a certain handbag hanging in the window was missing—the agreed-upon signal to warn of imminent danger. Becerra had succumbed to torture at Villa Grimaldi and confirmed the details of the appointment at his house.

What Becerra did not know was that Víctor Díaz himself was supposed to attend that meeting, which was scheduled to discuss union issues, but he was sidelined at the last minute for security reasons and replaced by Jaime Donato, a member of the Party's Union Commission.

On May 3, Elisa Escobar went to the Conferencia house to warn that Mario Zamorano would arrive the next day with other people.

At 7:00 p.m. on May 4, unaware of the detentions that had occurred in the previous hours, Mario Zamorano, one of the Party's top leaders, appeared at the Conferencia workshop. Everything seemed apparently normal, and he entered by pulling the cord that opened the door.

Two men fell upon him; he tried to resist, but they shot him in the leg, and he fell, bleeding profusely. They wrapped him in a blanket and dragged him into an interior room. Only minutes later, Jorge Muñoz Poutays, also a member of the leadership, walked into the trap.

That night, a pickup truck took the detainees away. The next morning, Wednesday, May 5, Jaime Donato Avendaño, a member of the Central Committee and head of the Union Front, arrived at the house. Shortly after, Uldarico Donaire, known as "Rafael Cortez," another of the Party's top leaders in charge of the Control and Cadres Commission, appeared.

Elisa Escobar returned to the house on May 6, around 1:30 p.m. She asked for Zamorano and, in an obvious cover-up operation, was detained by DINA agents.

While in the hands of the DINA, Elisa Escobar went on May 8 to the house of Eliana Espinoza, Víctor Díaz's liaison, and not finding her, left a message with her father asking her to meet at a specific point in Santiago. Eliana Espinoza arrived at the location but found no one. It was at that moment that the DINA began tracking her.

Meanwhile, Víctor Cantero, also a member of the Party leadership, arrived at a meeting of the Santiago regional committees, which Donaire and Muñoz were supposed to attend but did not appear. The meeting was immediately adjourned, and anxiety spread among the leaders.

After the apparently failed contact with Elisa Escobar, Eliana Espinoza decided to go see Víctor Díaz to express her concern. They met on May 11, and at the end of the meeting, she agreed to return to get him out of the area.

Víctor Díaz, the head of the local Communist movement in hiding, was detained at 2:00 a.m. on May 12, 1976, by a large contingent of the DINA. Under the name José Santos Garrido Retamal, he was residing with a friend, the engineer Jorge Canto Fuenzalida, on Calle Bello Horizonte in Las Condes.

He was periodically visited by a woman named "Ana," who was actually Eliana Espinoza Fernández, his liaison with the PC high command.

When Eliana arrived to visit him on the 11th, she was visibly agitated. They spoke as always in low voices and in private. She left very soon after. That night, near 2:00 a.m. on the 12th, persistent ringing of the doorbell woke the family.

Upon looking out into the street, the homeowner could see six armed men in civilian clothes, some with long machine guns. One of the agents shouted: "We are from the DINA!"

They took Víctor Díaz from the house around 3:00 a.m. He was dressed in his pajamas, wearing shoes without socks, and a jacket draped over his shoulders. His hands were tied behind his back, and due to the heavy and numerous blows, he had a half-closed eye, a swollen lower lip, was breathing with difficulty, and was walking with a limp more than usual.

The next day, the DINA's offensive continued with the detention of Fernando Lara Rojas, 27, a regional PC leader in Talca who had been collaborating with a Party team in Santiago since 1975. On May 19, following a call from Eliana Espinoza to meet, César Cerda Cuevas, 47, a construction worker, national leader of the CUT, and member of the Central Committee, was detained.

He was last seen at Villa Grimaldi in September.

By the end of May, it was known in the regional committees that the entire Party leadership had fallen. Only Víctor Cantero and Inés Cornejo were safe, the latter having stepped away from the organization for health reasons.

The DINA wanted Cantero, the man they presumed was responsible for the funds. In the pursuit, agents kidnapped the brothers Julio and Eduardo Budnik. Subsequently, Eduardo Cantero and 22-year-old Clara Cantero, brother and daughter of Víctor, respectively, were kidnapped.

Eduardo's remains were found in 1990 at the Las Tórtolas estate, which had been military land. Nothing has been found of Clara yet. She disappeared from Villa Grimaldi.

In mid-July 1976, the National Division of Social Communication (Dinacos) reported that security agencies had managed to dismantle 32 "mailbox houses" (safe houses) of the Communist Party, which served as links between the leadership and the party's regional branches.

The officers commanding the direct repression against the PC took the Communist leaders to secret detention centers. From Villa Grimaldi, they were taken to the Simón Bolívar barracks, where they were subjected to fierce torture and also used as guinea pigs by Michael Townley, who sought to test on humans the effects of sarin gas that the chemist Eugenio Berríos had managed to produce.

In the final days of that July, what remained of the PC leadership instructed Víctor Cantero and Inés Cornejo to leave the country and hand over the Party leadership to another team. Earlier, at the end of May and after a quick consultation among the survivors of the Central Committee, it was agreed that the chosen one should be Fernando Ortiz Letelier, a university professor and member of the Central Committee.

Amidst dramatic conditions, where every day some leader disappeared, Fernando Ortiz assumed the leadership of the PC, seconded by Waldo Pizarro, Horacio Zepeda, and Fernando Navarro. At the end of October, Cantero and Cornejo sought asylum in the Italian embassy. Luis Canales, Virginia González, and Víctor Galleguillos were also ordered to do so.

At the beginning of August 1976, another devastating blow was launched against the PC's organizational apparatus. At noon on August 4, Hugo Vivanco Vega was detained on a public street very close to his house; shortly after, they captured his wife, Alicia Herrera, at their home.

On the 5th, Oscar Ramos Garrido, former intendant of Llanquihue, member of the Central Committee, and head of Organization, and his son Oscar Ramos Vivanco were arrested at their home.

On the 9th, Víctor Morales Mazuela, José Corvalán Valencia, Mario Juica Vega, JORGE SALGADO SALINAS, and Pedro Silva Bustos were detained, all intermediate leaders linked to the leadership bodies. On the 9th, they also seized Marta Ugarte Román, a member of the Central Committee.

On August 10, Nicolás Vivanco, Hugo's son, fell. On the 7th, Manuel Vargas Leiva, former mayor of Tiltil and member of the Central Committee, had disappeared. On August 11, Miguel Nazal Quiroz, member of the Central Committee and secretary of the San Miguel regional branch; and Carlos Vizcarra Jofré, a former leader of the Jota (Communist Youth) who had moved to the Party; on the 16th, Julio Vega Vega, union leader; on the 18th, Nelson Jeria, secretary of the Santiago North Regional; on the 26th, the Joint Command detained Víctor Cárdenas, and the DINA detained Gabriel Castillo Tapia and Pedro Silva Bustos, members of the Organization team who maintained contacts with the regional branches.

On September 12, 1976, a French citizen was admiring the surf at La Ballena beach, in the Los Molles resort near La Ligua, when he saw the bound body of a woman among the rocks that had been washed up by the sea. It was Marta Ugarte, the PC treasurer, kidnapped at the beginning of August before she could reach her home.

In the weeks prior, several disfigured bodies had appeared on the banks of the Maipo River. They showed signs of gunshot wounds and were tied with wire from their necks to their legs, inside potato sacks.

The second PC leadership began to fall on December 9, when Armando Portilla Portilla, a member of the Central Committee, was detained. On the 13th, on a public street and in front of numerous witnesses, Fernando Navarro Allende, also a member of the Central Committee, was captured.

Two days later, on the morning of the 15th, Horacio Cepeda Marinkovic and Lincoyán Berríos Cataldo were detained at the Lo Plaza roundabout in Ñuñoa. That same afternoon, Fernando Ortiz Letelier and Waldo Pizarro Molina fell on Calle Larraín, and in other neighborhoods of Santiago, Héctor Véliz Ramírez, Luis Lazo Santander, and 29-year-old Reinalda Pereira Plaza, who was five months pregnant, were detained.

Three days later, Lisandro Cruz Díaz and the MIR member Carlos Durán González were kidnapped by the DINA. On December 20, with the detention of Edras Pinto Arroyo, former secretary to the PC deputies, the DINA's offensive against the Communists ended.

The detainees were tortured until they died. They were injected with cyanide and other lethal substances. The gold fillings some possessed were ripped from their mouths. Their bones were broken. They were suffocated with plastic bags.

Sarin gas was experimented on them. A blowtorch was applied to erase their faces, scars, fingerprints, and any other trace that would allow them to be identified. Finally, their bodies were placed in potato sacks, with pieces of rail tied with wire, loaded onto Army helicopters, and thrown into the sea off the central coast.

By the beginning of 1977, the DINA had almost completely achieved its objective: to exterminate the PC leadership. It had also managed to accumulate a large amount of information about the internal organization and the support networks built abroad by the Communists.

They then focused on another of their priority goals: to identify and capture those in charge of finances and to seize the funds coming from Europe and those that some local financial operators were very secretly managing in Chile.

Source: interferencia.cl 5/5/2021 Date: 05-05-2021

DINA agents' convictions confirmed for the disappearance of union leaders in 1976

The Supreme Court rejected a cassation appeal and confirmed the sentence that convicted five leaders of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of union leaders José Enrique Corvalán Valencia (46), Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas (42), and Pedro Silva Bustos (39), crimes perpetrated starting August 9, 1976, in Santiago.

In a split decision issued this Wednesday the 14th (case file 62.032-2016), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Jorge Dahm, and the participating lawyer Jean Pierre Matus—confirmed the appealed sentence that imposed sentences of 10 years and one day of imprisonment on former army officers Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia, Rolf Arnold Wenderoth Pozo, Juan Hernán Morales Salgado, and former Carabineros officer Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, as authors of the repeated crimes of qualified kidnapping of the aforementioned victims.

The ruling was adopted with the dissenting vote of Minister Lamberto Cisternas, who was in favor of accepting the cassation appeal filed by the criminals and, consequently, applying the "half-prescription" (statute of limitations reduction) and reducing the sentences for all those convicted.

In the first instance in June 2015, visiting judge Leopoldo Llanos sentenced the repressive agents to 15 years in prison; this sentence was reduced in June 2016 by the Santiago Court of Appeals to 10 years in prison. This latter sentence is the one now ratified by the Supreme Court.

During the investigation stage, Judge Llanos managed to establish the following facts:

"a) That the events investigated in this process occurred in the clandestine detention center known as 'Cuartel Terranova' or 'Villa Grimaldi,' located at Avenida José Arrieta No. 8200 in the Peñalolén commune in the Metropolitan Region.

A group of agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) operated in Villa Grimaldi, whose Director was Colonel Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda, under whose hierarchical dependency were several officers and other officials from the different branches of the Armed Forces, Carabineros, and Investigations, as well as some civilians; all of whom, holding various degrees of hierarchy in the command, ordered some and executed others, the capture of people who were militants or sympathizers of political parties or leftist movements, whom they illegally locked up in the place, breaking them under physical torture of various kinds, with the object of making them provide information about other people of the political left in order to apprehend them.

b) The aforementioned agents were part of the 'Caupolicán' Brigade.

c) The first detainees arrived in mid-1974 at 'Villa Grimaldi'; and in January 1975, it became the operations center of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade, which exercised the function of internal repression in Santiago. d) The detainees were kept blindfolded the entire time, in deficient hygienic conditions, and with scarce food, which they did not receive during the first three days.

The most characteristic places where the detainees were kept were called 'La Torre,' 'Casas Chile,' and 'Casas Corvi.'

e) The following people were taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' as detainees:

1.-José Enrique Corvalán Valencia; married, six children, union leader, militant of the Communist Party, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, around 10:00 a.m. at the address located at Calle Ayacara No. 8583, San Ramón neighborhood, La Granja, and taken to Villa Grimaldi. 2.-Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas; married, five children, union leader, militant of the Communist Party, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader, together with Pedro Silva. 3.-Pedro Silva Bustos; married, six children, union leader and regional leader of the Communist Party and member of the organization commission of the central committee of the Communist Party, was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader. f) The consequences of these detentions is that the aforementioned people are in the status of disappeared, since, deprived of their liberty, they have not made contact with their relatives; nor have they carried out administrative procedures before State agencies or private organizations, nor do they have records of entry or exit from the country, with their death also not being confirmed."

Source: resumen.cl 16/12/2016 Date: 16-12-2016

NEW CONVICTION FOR FUGITIVE RICARDO LAWRENCE FOR THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THREE COMMUNIST MILITANTS IN 1976

The visiting judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Leopoldo Llanos, issued a sentence in the cases he is substantiating regarding three cases of forcibly disappeared persons from the Villa Grimaldi torture and extermination center.

The magistrate convicted six agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the qualified kidnappings of José Corvalán Valencia, Jorge Salgado Salinas, and Pedro Silva Bustos, crimes perpetrated starting August 9, 1976.

Manuel Contreras, Pedro Espinoza, Marcelo Moren Brito, Carlos López Tapia, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Juan Morales Salgado, and Ricardo Lawrence were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison as authors of the three crimes.

Lawrence has been a fugitive since February, when he did not appear to be notified in the lawsuit for torture filed by thirty survivors of Villa Grimaldi. Subsequently, he was convicted by the Supreme Court for the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau from the Londres 38 torture and extermination center.

Also a fugitive is the former Investigations Police official Daniel Cancino in the torture trial presented by more than 30 survivors of Villa Grimaldi.

In his sentence for the forcibly disappeared persons of the Communist Party from Villa Grimaldi, the magistrate managed to determine that José Enrique Corvalán Valencia; married, six children, union leader, militant of the Communist Party (PC), was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, around 10:00 a.m. at the address located at Calle Ayacara No. 8523, San Ramón neighborhood, La Granja commune.

On the same day, Jorge Orosmán Salgado Salinas; married, five children, union leader, also a PC militant, was arrested "in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader, together with Pedro Silva."

Silva was married, had six children, was a union leader, a member of the PC regional branch, and a member of the organization commission of the central committee of the Communist Party. He was detained by DINA agents on August 9, 1976, in the afternoon in the vicinity of the Vega Central where he worked as a loader.

By Carlos Antonio Vergara

Source: cronicadigital.cl 30/6/2015 Date: 30-06-2015