On November 1, 1977, José Luis DE LA MAZA ASQUET, a militant of the MIR, was intercepted in Tucumán by a patrol of plainclothes agents on a public street. He never reappeared. The victim had taken refuge in Argentina after being sought by the DINA at his home and workplace in Rancagua, settling in the provinces of Mendoza and Tucumán between the years 1975 and 1977.

Testimonies indicate that a person linked to the DINA in Argentina denounced José Luis DE LA MAZA to the Argentine police, informing them of his political background. The Commission considers that there are grounds to maintain that José DE LA MAZA was forcibly disappeared in Argentina, in violation of his human rights, and that agents of the Chilean State participated in the instigation of these events. (Rettig Report)

Source: Rettig Report

The amount to be received by the widow was increased, and the amount to be paid to the children was reduced. The Santiago Court of Appeals set at $260,000,000 (two hundred and sixty million pesos) the total compensation that the State must pay to the spouse and children of José Luis de la Maza Asquet, who was detained in November 1977 in Tucumán, Argentina, within the framework of the so-called "Operation Condor." In a unanimous ruling (case file 7.206-2020), the Second Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Omar Astudillo, Alberto Amiot, and lawyer (i) Pía Tavolari—increased the amount to be received by the widow and reduced the amount to be paid to the children. "That, in this instance, the illicit conduct upon which the alleged moral damage is based is not disputed, consisting of the disappearance of Mr. José Luis de la Maza Asquet, circumstances that affected the future and projections of the plaintiffs, since an event of this nature triggers a process that begins with the search for the forcibly disappeared person, and, given the socio-political circumstances of the disappearance, it acquires the character of being desperate, permanent, and exhausting," the ruling maintains. The resolution adds: "For this reason, when family members face the systematic denial of the events that occurred, feelings of frustration arise that seriously affect their sense of reality, since what they have lived and suffered is permanently denied by State authorities, despite the fact that, in most cases, there were witnesses and sufficient information to verify the facts. All of this leads to the process of fruitless searching being prolonged indefinitely. It should be noted that the family members kept the disappeared person alive in their thoughts, which translates into a permanent mortification marked by the pain of absence." For the appellate court: "It is understandable that the aftermath of the forced disappearance not only deeply affected the health of the victim's family members, but also damaged the family as a human group, causing a profound deterioration of their bonds and interactional dynamics, which caused severe alterations to the spouse and children, making the family system precarious and insecure, under the threat of disintegration." "On the other hand," it continues, "the experience of traumatic loss has left the family members in a situation of unresolved grief in which the dynamic of denial/acceptance of the loss becomes the propitious and complex scenario for the emergence of symptoms and experiences of an altered grief, difficult to differentiate from a major depressive episode due to the factor of time without a certain outcome, which is added to the stimulus of impunity as a contributing factor in this process of altered grief, which implies the absence of remains and the impossibility of giving them a burial, thereby contributing to the prevalence of alterations, in this case, in the person of the spouse and the plaintiff children, since it has been proven that they have suffered the most severe onslaughts related to the death and disappearance of Mr. José Luis de la Maza Asquet." "That in this understanding, and having been demonstrated that it is true that the plaintiffs suffered pain due to the breaking of their family environment, which never returned to the same state after the disappearance and death of Mr. José Luis de la Maza Asquet at the hands of State agents, which influenced the permanent search for their spouse and father, which became a priority for the family, which destroyed the family life project and affected the personal development of the plaintiffs to the present day, pain from which they have never been able to recover," the court reasons. Therefore, it is resolved that: "the sentence of April 30, 2020, is confirmed, with the declaration that the compensation for moral damage is increased to the sum of $80,000,000 (eighty million pesos) for Mrs. Irma Graciela Palma Melgarejo and, furthermore, with the declaration that the compensation for moral damage is reduced to the sum of $60,000,000 (sixty million pesos) for Mr. José Manuel de la Maza Palma; Mrs. Carmen Gloria de la Maza Palma and Mrs. María Loreto de la Maza Palma; amounts that will be satisfied in the manner established by the aforementioned sentence."

Source: legalnews.cl 5/3/2021

Date: 05-03-2021

Condor Plan: the stage of the Chilean victims

In recent weeks, Chilean witnesses testified in the "Condor Plan" trial, where 23 military leaders of South American dictatorships are being judged. It is expected that in the coming weeks, prosecutors and judicial authorities will travel to Paraguay to investigate the forcibly disappeared militants from that country.

José De la Maza Asquet was a 27-year-old Chilean who escaped the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He was married and a veterinary student at the University of Chile. He also divided his hours with militancy.

He was a student leader of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). Following the fall of President Salvador Allende in 1974, he began to be persecuted by Pinochet's forces and took refuge in the province of Tucumán.

Three years later, he was captured in the center of San Miguel de Tucumán and nothing more was ever known of him. A few days ago, his friend José Patrocinio Luna testified before Federal Oral Tribunal No. 1.

In the Condor Plan trial, 23 military leaders are being judged for crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorships of the Southern Cone against militants of opposing ideologies. "José came escaping from Chile, I don't remember the date well," Luna told judges Oscar Amirante, Adrián Grumberg, Pablo Laufer, and Ricardo Ángel Basílico. "We became very good friends, comrades.

We built a community soup kitchen and carried out very strong social militancy," said the witness. From the front row of the public gallery, his two children listened to him. Luna was born in the province where Independence was declared and was part of the "Tucumanazo," a massive social protest that occurred between November 10 and 14, 1970.

De la Maza decided to enter Argentina clandestinely after being pursued by security agents in the Chilean cities of Santiago and Rancagua. In Tucumán, he continued his militancy and joined Peronist groups.

On November 1, 1977, police detained him in the center of the Tucumán capital. According to judicial sources, De la Maza was betrayed by a Chilean agent of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA).

Luna answered questions from ad hoc prosecutor Pablo Ouviña and the judges, who wanted to know about his ties to De la Maza. The witness said that he was imprisoned for a few months in 1978 and that he later went into exile.

Luna said that the lawsuit for his case has been initiated in Tucumán, in the instruction stage. The trial is in its second year—it began in March 2013—and according to judicial sources who spoke to Infojus Noticias, closing arguments are expected in March 2015.

The trial instruction led by prosecutor Miguel Ángel Osorio is still working on the case, and it is likely that more events will be incorporated into the oral debate. The trial is going through the stage of the Chilean victims; the previous one was that of the Uruguayans.

It is expected that in the coming weeks, prosecutors and judicial authorities will travel to Paraguay because the next stage of the trial will deal with forcibly disappeared militants from that country.

Two weeks ago, José Luis's sister testified in the trial. Ximena De la Maza Asquet testified via videoconference from Chile. "We traveled to Tucumán to find out where my brother could be; we went to police stations and institutions, but all the leads were false.

We never heard from him again." That hearing had a special guest: Judge Baltazar Garzón listened to Ximena's statements from the public seats of the AMIA Hall. In conversation with Infojus Noticias, the Spanish magistrate stated that day: "This trial is very important legally, for the search for truth and reparation for the victims of dictatorial governments.

And politically, it shows the decision of a State, the Argentine one, and the cooperation of others like the Chilean one, to impart justice to the people whose fundamental rights were violated." On October 10, 1998, in a historic decision, Garzón indicted Augusto Pinochet Ugarte for alleged human rights violations in Chile, his native country, applying the principle of Universal Justice.

He accused him of being one of the ideologues of an "international organization that conceived, developed, and executed a systematic plan of illegal detentions (kidnappings), torture, forced displacement of people, murders, and/or the disappearance of numerous people, including citizens of Argentina, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Chile, and other states." On April 8, 2004, in one of the expansions of the indictment, the Spanish judge included the case of José Luis de la Maza Asquet in his accusation against Pinochet.

The Chilean genocidal leader died on December 10, 2006. At the end of March, Chilean journalist Laura Elgueta Díaz testified, ratifying before the Federal Oral Tribunal her detention in the clandestine center Club Atlético, which operated in the facilities of the Federal Police.

During the hearing, she pointed to the DINA agent—now deceased—Enrique Arancibia Clavel as one of her torturers, who is indicated as the author of the murder in Argentina of the Chilean general Carlos Prats.

Elgueta Díaz also testified regarding the disappearance of her brother, Luis Enrique Elgueta. Odette Magnet did the same for the disappearance of her sister, María Cecilia Magnet. For the moment, there are 23 Chilean victims being addressed in the trial: Edgardo Enríquez Espinosa; Luis Enrique Elgueta Díaz; Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez; Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velázquez; Juan Humberto Hernández Zaspe; Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler; José Luis De la Maza Asquet; Miguel Orellana Castro; Cristina Magdalena Carreño Araya; Ángel Athanasiú Jara; Pablo Germán Athanasiú Laschan; Frida Elena Laschan Mellado; Carlos Patricio Rojas Campos; Carmen Angélica Delard Cabezas; Gloria Ximena Delard Cabezas; José Luis Appel de la Cruz; Luis Arnaldo Zaragoza Olivares; Luis Alejandro Espinoza González; Oscar Julián Urra Ferrarese; Susana Ossola de Urra; Rafael Antonio Ferrada; Oscar Orlando Oyarzun Manso; María Cecilia Magnet Ferrero.

Source: infojusticias.gob.ar 27/4/2014

Date: 27-04-2014