On July 26, 1976, primary school teacher and communist leader of the Sindicato Único de la Educación (Single Union of Education), Juan Antonio GIANELLI COMPANY, was detained. According to testimonies received by this Commission, agents of the Comando Conjunto appeared at his workplace, the Escuela de Niñas N° 24 in San Miguel, a location they had been monitoring in the days prior.

The victim was taken to La Firma, a facility from which he was allegedly later removed to be murdered and clandestinely buried at Cuesta Barriga. The Commission is convinced that his disappearance was the work of state agents, who thereby violated his human rights.

Source: (Rettig Report)

The tribute will be held on Friday, April 27, at the Casa del Maestro, located at Catedral 2395, corner of General Bulnes, near Cumming Metro station. Juan Antonio Gianelli Company, father of Antón Simón and Mi-Lai Melina, worked as a primary school teacher and leader of the Sindicato Único de la Educación (SUTE).

In the context of this May 1st, International Workers' Day, the Colegio de Profesores will hold an act of recognition for the union work of the teacher who was forcibly disappeared by the Comando Conjunto.

Gianelli was detained at the Escuela 24 de Niñas in Santiago on July 26, 1976. According to his students, security agents put him into a van and took him to a secret detention center. Despite the intense search by his relatives and after months of clandestine imprisonment, the professor was allegedly executed at Cuesta Barriga.

Source: colegiodeprofesores.cl 28/4/2018

Date: 04-28-2018

The State must compensate the relatives of Comando Conjunto victims

The entity must pay 500 million pesos to the relatives of José Sagredo Pacheco, Alfredo Salinas Vásquez, and Juan Antonio Gianelli Company, who were forcibly disappeared between 1975 and 1976. The Supreme Court determined that the State must pay a multi-million peso indemnity to five relatives of three victims of the so-called Comando Conjunto.

In a split decision, it was determined that the relatives of José Sagredo Pacheco, Alfredo Salinas Vásquez, and Juan Antonio Gianelli Company, who were forcibly disappeared between November 3, 1975, and July 26, 1976, will receive 100 million pesos each.

The ruling determines that these acts are crimes against humanity; therefore, they must be redressed in both criminal and civil aspects, in accordance with international legislation governing the matter.

With this, the five years and one day prison sentence for former Comando Conjunto agents Freddy Ruiz Bunguer, César Palma Ramírez, Juan Francisco Saavedra Loyola, and Manuel Muñoz Gamboa is confirmed; as is the four-year prison sentence for former agent Daniel Guimpert Corvalán, with the benefit of conditional remission; and the acquittal of agents Viviana Ugarte Sandoval, Eduardo Cartagena Maldonado, Raúl González Fernández, and Otto Trujillo Miranda.

Source: 24horas.cl 6/11/2014

Date: 06-11-2014

Court confirmed convictions against former Comando Conjunto agents

Prison sentences were ratified for five defendants for the kidnappings of Alfredo Salinas, José Sagredo, and Juan Gianelli. A sixth convicted individual had his case dismissed due to death. The Santiago Court of Appeals ratified the convictions issued in 2011 against former Comando Conjunto agents for the aggravated kidnappings of Alfredo Salinas Vásquez, José Sagredo Pacheco, and Juan Antonio Gianelli Company, which occurred starting on November 3, 1975 (the first two), and June 2, 1976 (the third), in the Metropolitan Region.

The first-instance sentences were issued on February 4, 2011, by the then-visiting judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes against six former agents of the so-called Comando Conjunto. In a split decision, the ministers of the Seventh Chamber of the appellate court, Dobra Lusic and Adelita Ravanales, along with the participating lawyer Rodrigo Asenjo, increased the sentences for three of the convicted and definitively dismissed the case against another due to death.

The convictions are as follows

Freddy Ruiz Bunger: 5 years and one day in prison, without benefits, as a co-author of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping of José del Carmen Sagredo Pacheco, Alfredo Ernesto Salinas Vásquez, and Juan Antonio Gianelli Company.

César Palma Ramírez: 5 years and one day in prison, without benefits, as a co-author of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping of José del Carmen Sagredo Pacheco, Alfredo Ernesto Salinas Vásquez, and Juan Antonio Gianelli Company.

Juan Saavedra Loyola: 5 years and one day in prison, without benefits, as an author of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping of José del Carmen Sagredo Pacheco, Alfredo Ernesto Salinas Vásquez, and Juan Antonio Gianelli Company.

Manuel Muñoz Gamboa: 5 years and one day in prison, without benefits, as an author of the repeated crimes of aggravated kidnapping of José del Carmen Sagredo Pacheco and Alfredo Ernesto Salinas Vásquez.

Daniel Guimpert Corvalán: 4 years in prison, granted the benefit of supervised release, as a co-author of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Juan Antonio Gianelli Company. Jorge Cobos Manríquez: case dismissed due to death.

In the first instance, he was sentenced to 3 years in prison, with the benefit of conditional remission. Meanwhile, the Court ratified the acquittal of the defendants Viviana Ugarte Sandoval, Eduardo Cartagena Maldonado, Raúl González Fernández, and Otto Trujillo Miranda.

Source: cooperativa.cl 6/21/2013

Date: 06-21-2013

New human remains found at Fuerte Arteaga

Visiting judge Amanda Valdovinos confirmed that human skeletal remains, corresponding to three people, were found inside the Justo Arteaga Army Regiment in Colina. The investigation corresponds to what was ordered by the Supreme Court after receiving the report from the Dialogue Table that concluded in January, which, according to information provided by the Armed Forces, stated that the remains of some 20 people were buried at that military facility.

Caucoto: "They are from the Comando Conjunto" Lawyer Nelson Caucoto told La Voz that all the remains that may be located in the Colina sector correspond to victims of the so-called Comando Conjunto. According to the Rettig Report, some of the forcibly disappeared persons are Humberto Fuentes Rodríguez, Luis Moraga Cruz, Ricardo Weibel Navarrete (identified), Ignacio González Espinoza (identified), Miguel Rodríguez Gallardo, Nicomedes Toro Bravo, José Sagredo Pacheco, Carlos Contreras Maluje, Juan René Orellana, Luis Emilio Maturana, Juan Gianelli Company, Fernando Navarro Allendes, Horacio Cepeda Marinkovic, Lincoyán Berrios Cataldo, Juan Fernando Ortiz Letelier, Waldo Pizarro Molina, Héctor Veliz Ramírez, Luis Lazo Santander, and Reinalda Pereira Plaza, among others. For this reason, the professional considers the system of designating special judges, which the Supreme Court carried out at the government's request, to be "inefficient." "The system has caused confusion, because without a doubt, more progress is made with one minister in charge of specific cases."

Source: Primera Linea July 19, 2001

Date: 07-19-2001

Juan Antonio Gianelli Company and Ana Altamirano

THE BAMBINO Juan Antonio Gianelli Company was a heartthrob who left a trail of broken hearts in his wake, fueled by vibrant eyes, an innate vitality, and a smile that certified his flirtatious Italian descent.

All this before running into his definitive Ana—it seems the name attracted him, as he had a long list of ex-girlfriends with that name—who held her own against him and who, in turn, had to leave her boyfriend Juan—a commercial engineer—to marry her husband Juan—a dancer, folklorist, teacher, and communist—in red.

According to Ana Altamirano, his wife: "I have never been able to handle pisco. The only time in my life I accepted a 'piscola' was when I met Juan Gianelli in '68. I was at a peña looking for musicians for an event I was organizing.

That's where I found those big eyes and that flirtatious smile offering me 'a little pisco.' I couldn't say no. I already had my background on who this handsome Italian was. A cousin who worked with him at the Politécnico de Menores in San Bernardo had told me a lot about this famous Gianelli who, besides being a teacher, was a dancer, folklorist, and PC militant.

I already knew what I was getting into, because the heartthrob also had a reputation for being very sought after by women. I ran into him again at the fifth CUT congress, where I participated as an organizer.

One morning I was very busy handing out credentials to the attendees when I heard someone calling me through the bars of the Caupolicán, which was the stadium where the meeting was held. 'Hey, beautiful!' the cheeky guy would say to me, trying to get me to hand him a credential.

I acted tough and told him he had to wait in line and wait his turn like everyone else. I think he was so stung that that's how I hooked him. The last night of the congress, he went to drop me off at my house in San Miguel; we were arriving at five in the morning and I suggested we go to the market to eat seafood.

I threw my folders inside my front door and we headed back to the center. Obviously, that night our courtship began. On August 14, '69, I married Juan Gianelli. I wore red and we offered the guests anticuchos and navegado.

Even Inti Illimani played at my party because a brother of mine was a member of the group in the early years. We only had a civil marriage. I almost died when Juan took out his ID card and it turned out the great heartthrob was barely 22 years old.

I had no idea he was so young; I always thought he was much older because he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Teachers' Union, and for that, you had to be at least 25 years old. It bothered me a lot, but he convinced me it was a silly thing and that was the end of the matter." The marriage lasted seven years.

The coup d'état caught us both working at the Ministry of Education. Juan stayed hidden in the office and I installed myself with my two-year-old son in my arms in Fernando Flores' apartment. I remember we spent the whole morning tearing up all the propaganda that a daughter of Fernando, who was very pushy, had in the house.

From then on, things became very complicated. Juan was constantly being moved from job to job without explanation, and very soon the security agencies began to circle. I didn't want to leave the country; I didn't want my children to grow up in a foreign place.

Finally, life became so complicated that we agreed to leave. Juan was going to be taken out of Chile in August '76. On July 26, I accompanied him by taxi to the Escuela N° 4 de Niñas in Santiago, where he was teaching.

That night he didn't return home. I went to the school to talk to the principal, who was my friend because we studied together in a course for principals that Allende's government had given. When I entered her office, my friend received me cordially: "What can I do for you, ma'am?"

Source: repositorio.uchile.cl (no date)

Relayed by Anita Altamirano, wife of Juan Gianelli Company.

"One day they are going to come and raid us and they are even going to take the baby" That day, July 26, I got up early and left because I had to go to the training center, and he came out in his pajamas to the door, but not to the street, because the house where we lived was like a Spanish style and had a little window that didn't open, and from there he signaled to me.

I never saw him again. That morning I was so furious because Nicolás López had stayed at the house again, and I kept telling him how long we were going to put up with it: "Until one day they come to raid us and they even take the baby." The nanny told me everything about that day, when he disappeared.

At the Vicariate, the first thing they asked me was what he was wearing, and the nanny started saying, he put this on, he put that on. It was so impressive because on the hanger had remained my brother's jacket, who had gone to Finland, and Juan took that jacket and put it on, not his own.

He left with the sweater I had knitted for him that he never wore, the striped long-sleeved shirt—I had kept it there as a souvenir—and some pants I was making for him. He bought the fabric on Santo Domingo street and asked me to make the pants, but they weren't finished.

I had told him they were missing the pockets, but he put them on anyway. For years I carried the pockets, which were one of the things that helped the Vicariate; I took them to them so they could see the fabric of the pants he was wearing.

The other thing is that Juan didn't hold my daughter in his arms much—it wasn't like now where everything is shared—and that day he did. Later I found out that the previous week he had taken her to his mother's house, who lived blocks away from the school where they were looking for him.

That day, July 26, three things happened that had never happened in life. I spent my time thinking that in the Cuban Revolution, the Granma landing was on July 26; my mother's birthday and Unamuno's birthday were on that day. What was going to happen on July 26?… premonitory. I spent days with that obsession with July 26.

Source: arqueologiadelamemoria.cl (no date)

Relayed by Anita Altamirano, wife of Juan Gianelli Company.

They dedicated themselves to folklore research

Juan was studious and very conciliatory. At an event at the Teatro Cariola, where assemblies were always held, everyone pushed for their own ideas, and Juan was capable of silencing the full theater. Then, in the afternoon, he was an artist; he danced in Héctor Pavez's Millaray group.

He was the best cueca dancer in Chile; they did tours through Europe, through almost all of America. In that, they went to the 50th anniversary of the University of the Russian Revolution. He did so many things; one didn't realize it, but as the years go by and you see the papers, you say how a person who was killed at 30 years old did 500 things in 10 years, and not only him, but his entire generation.

With Héctor Pavez, they later dedicated themselves to folklore research; they were in Arauco, just like Margot Loyola, and in Chiloé. He went to the roots, to the fields, to the towns, where there were popular singers.

He was Héctor Pavez's assistant because Juan was a dancer, not a musician. Héctor made the advertisements, the records that were released. Apart from that, Frei Montalva appointed him as an advisor to the National Board of School Assistance and Scholarships.

He was also an international leader of the teachers. Juan worked as a teacher until Allende came, because that's when he arrived at the Ministry of Education as a political chief of the Communist Party, and he worked in the Secondary Education Directorate.

Before Allende, he worked at the Politécnico de Menores, which was a child protection service as God intended, not like what there is now. This was in charge of the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Justice, and Ministry of Education, with foster homes.

They had a radio; Patricio Manns ran it and taught the children how to do radio. The children learned to make bread, learned to fix sockets, did plumbing. The boys were taken in from three years old; the Ministry of Health provided the technicians: psychologists, psychopedagogues, psychiatrists.

There were children who had murdered their own parents in the countryside, and in the end, they had done it out of pure ignorance, but there they weren't told they were murderers; instead, they were immediately given therapy, made to work, play soccer. Juan taught primary classes there, and everywhere he went, he brought music and dance.

Source: arqueologiadelamemoria.cl (no date)

Relayed by Anita Altamirano, wife of Juan Gianelli Company.

Juan was elected national leader there

Juan was a folk dancer for the famous Millaray group, formed by Héctor Pavez, who played and sang, and his wife, Gabriela Pizarro, in addition to his two sisters and Chamorro. This must have started in the 60s because they even went to the World Festival of Youth in Poland, when Víctor Jara and Mariana Ferreiro were in Cuncumén.

Later, Héctor Pavez formed Canto y Danzas de Chile, where he dedicated himself to researching Chiloé and started going with the group, with his sisters and Juan, to Chiloé, and there he made "La cueca larga" and a series of songs that are typical of the place; even the people from those places are mentioned in the cueca, and at the end it says: "Who served as my guide, Erick Barría," who is a communist teacher with whom we spent our honeymoon in Chiloé.

In Santiago, everyone had their own job, and many folkloric and political activities were held. Even in '68, between November and December, the IV Teachers' Congress was held in Los Andes, in the media luna of Guatón Loyola, as the cueca says.

So Juan was elected national leader there; that's when we were definitely already dating. We were at a group meeting and the man who had been the director of that Normal school that Frei closed came up and said to Juan: "Come here," with one of those important Communist Party members, and said: "The dancing and singing is over, now we are getting serious, you are going as a national candidate to be a teachers' leader." Forcibly disappeared since July 26, 1976 Juan was born in Santiago on October 26, 1946.

His father, Eduardo Augusto Gianelli, is of Italian descent, and his mother, Emilia Company Nadal, arrived with her family from Catalonia to settle in Chile. His childhood passed on Gran Avenida in the company of many siblings, while he completed his primary studies at the Ciudad del Niño school.

He then continued his secondary education at the Instituto Normalista Faustino Sarmiento, graduating in 1966 with a teaching degree. Juan had striking green eyes, was nearly one meter eighty tall, and his hair had darkened over the years.

From a very young age, even before the permitted age, he became an active participant in various social and political activities, being appointed by President Frei Montalva as an advisor to the National Board of School Assistance and Scholarships.

He then served as a national and international leader of teachers, in addition to working at the Alcibíades Vicencio Politécnico de Menores and its foster homes. Parallel to his political and social activity, Juan was a folk dancer in the Millaray group, which led him to various tours through America and then, in 1967, to a trip to Europe where he was invited to the World Festival of Youth in Poland.

After the dissolution of the group, he became part of the folklore research group Cantos y Danzas de Chile, dedicated to rescuing and collecting music from isolated areas, especially Chiloé. With the arrival of the Unidad Popular government, in whose campaign he participated actively, "the dancing and singing ended," and Juan ascended to the Ministry of Education as a political chief of the Communist Party, working in the Secondary Education Directorate, in addition to being appointed national manager of teacher welfare, standing out for his great dedication to teacher health throughout Chile.

Also, during this period, he served as a communist leader of the Sindicato Único de la Educación. In the midst of CUT primary elections in 1968, he met his wife Anita Altamirano, whom he married a few months later, in 1969.

A year later, his son Antón Simón was born, and then, in 1974, his daughter Mi-Lai Melina Gianelli. After the coup d'état, at 26 years old, Juan had to abandon his leadership positions and returned to his teaching work; however, by order of the ministry, he was punished and progressively demoted, ending up as a doorman or cookie delivery man in establishments where he had once been highly valued.

Despite the advent of the dictatorship, Juan maintained certain political activities clandestinely, making lists of disappeared comrades to send abroad, or disseminating information about an increasingly dismantled Communist Party.

At the time of his disappearance, on July 26, 1976, he was working at the Escuela 24 de Niñas in Santiago. That afternoon he had agreed to meet his wife on the Alameda to go to his mother-in-law's birthday, but he never arrived.

According to the students themselves who witnessed his detention, a group of men from the Comando Conjunto arrived to look for him at the school under the pretext of bringing him a package from the south, and they took him in a van that left him in front of the Municipal Theater.

Other witnesses declare that he was later taken to La Firma. It is believed that he was detained for more than a year by the FACH, and according to the testimony of a defector from the institution, "el Papudo," Juan was executed at Cuesta Barriga.

Source: arqueologiadelamemoria.cl (no date)

Relayed by Anita Altamirano, wife of Juan Gianelli Company.

Juan graduated in '66

Juan studied primary school on Gran Avenida, started next to his house in the Ciudad del Niño, and finished at a school around there; then he went to the Faustino Sarmiento normal school, which was a private normal school that the communists had created.

Juan graduated in '66 and spent two years at the Núñez because later, in '64, Frei closed the normal school. He started to get interested in teaching from a young age; at the Sarmiento, you entered at 13 or 14 years old, and from there he did up to fourth year.

In those years, you did two years of secondary school and then you were a professional, in the improvement of techniques in Spanish, Mathematics, Didactics, Language. He left with a teaching degree in '66, and he started at the top right away because they put Juan in a replacement position, and when you did a substitute position, they paid you the maximum salary, but that wasn't taxable, so people started getting used to having a better salary.

Later they took him out and sent him to another place also as a substitute, and he replaced his principal and earned the principal's salary, so he was always in chief positions and he was 22 years old.

I was also a teacher, and I had an activity in my school in the Guidance department that organized one activity per month from March to November, and in November it was my turn to give a presentation on the knowledge of folklore in Chile, from Arica to Magallanes.

So I called Juan on the phone from the school and said: "Could you come to give a talk at the school? Because I went to talk to Patricio Manns and he's busy." And he said: "No problem." I sent a notebook around the classroom so everyone could take notes; each child brought their chair, and that day a certain topic was scheduled, so I told them that a teacher was going to arrive.

And Juan didn't arrive. I had the whole school in the hall because they were fifth and sixth graders, the principal, the guidance counselor… "Shoot," he told me when I called him, "the absolute truth is that I fell asleep, and when I took the bus here, I remembered that I didn't have to come here but that I had to go to San Pablo," where he was in a huge school group that existed.

But he arrived at the school the next day, impeccable, in a suit, with one of those Argentine cuyana ponchos; as he was so gallant, he came like that. I was waiting for him, and to the principal, who was an old Amunátegui woman of about 80, Juan gave a rose. The principal melted and didn't even scold him, and that's where his talk started.

Source: arqueologiadelamemoria.cl (no date)

Relayed by Anita Altamirano, wife of Juan Gianelli Company.

We made a list of all the teachers who were in exile

Days after the coup, Juan arrived at my mother's house; we only went to our house to get clothes and things like that. When we decided to return to our house, around the end of the year, Juan went back to teaching halfway.

The principal was a radical, very right-wing, but he loved Juan very much; the doorman was at the door with the book at 7 in the morning, Juan would sign and leave, so if someone went to ask, they could tell them that he was there but that they had just sent him to the school inspection.

They didn't let him teach to protect him, but later they started to persecute him. The bosses, by order of the ministry, kept moving him from school to school, kept punishing him, demoting him, until they put him as a doorman.

I have some stamped papers where it says something like: "We are going to monitor him. We are going to put him under the direction of a trusted principal, and at any sign of political activity, he will be taken to military justice." I once couldn't take it anymore and went to talk to someone important in the party and ask when they were going to get Juan out of Chile. "Look at how he is, he can't even stand up, he's so thin, because one day he sleeps in one house, another day in another, and on top of that he is a public leader, and he also goes to teach." Later they started looking for him; first they went to look for him at the metalworkers' foundation, because they accused him of being the mastermind of that union school, and then they went to look for him at my mother's house, then at his parents', and the last house they went to was mine. They arrived to raid me, and Juan had gone that day, so this paper, which is his salary, was on the phone table, and when they entered, I told them: "But we are separated, here it is, he came to leave me money because he got paid his salary." One day he would stay at my mother's, another day we would both go to stay at his sister's. My daughter had been born in '74 and we didn't stop for a single day making lists of what had happened to the teachers. We both did this same activity but with other people, separately. I would go out with an apron, like a housewife, with house slippers, and I would travel all over Santiago with a bag as if I were going to the market. Juan did the same and other things too; they held meetings to find out about people and try to get statistics, because that was being denounced. Almost weekly, the information was sent abroad to know how many were missing in Santiago, disappeared, etc. In '76, it seems in April, we made a list of all the teachers who were in exile, and we went to talk to the president of the Supreme Court, and also to the Ministry of Education with the minister, who was Mónica Madariaga, and we brought her the lists that were going abroad, because from there people supported us. Since September 11, '73, they had been public and clandestine at the same time One day Juan arrived with Alejandra López when she was a baby in his arms, dying of laughter with Nicolás López, because they had stolen her from her mother. I asked them if they were crazy; they arrived to show me the baby. They were, I think, so harassed, so tense, that they slept poorly, because they were living a normal public life. About five of them stayed at my house between July 1 and July 26. They even did incorrect things because they were already too pressured; since the night of September 11, '73, they had been public and clandestine at the same time. That was one of the great mistakes of the Communist Party, and when I told them once, they almost crucified me. In '75, the OAS came to Chile to see the prisoner camps, and the entire union coordinating committee headed by the Communist Party, the Christian Democrats, and the Socialists who remained, organized an act in a stadium of the Departamental church, a massive act when there was no permission to do anything, and some banners were hung and everything. When the act ended, I was with the baby and Juan started making gestures with his hand for us to leave: "Gee, the revolutionary," I said, "If you said for everyone to come, I'm coming with my daughter," and from there I had to go back to my mother's house, leave my daughter, and return to the story alone, and Juan told me to leave, so I told him: "Why do you go around saying that we should reorganize, that we should gather people, that we should save and hide…," because that's what we did, look for houses to hide people and all those issues. And in that, the carabineros and the secret police arrived, but since it was a party of the type held in schools, they didn't take anyone, but they kept an eye on everyone because they were already following them. For the bombing, I was with my son Antón For the coup, Juan was 26. No one thought the coup was going to be so terrible and so long. Juan said: "They'll grab me and give me a good beating." Before the coup, from July onwards, we already sensed it. When the coup was coming, Juan spent his time working; my brother put the radio in the truck, made us get in, and the president was saying: "Each to their combat post and let's move forward." For the bombing, I was with my son Antón on the 11th, 12th, and 13th in the basements of the Ministry of Defense, because they cleared the whole building for security, and they threw us down, and I was there with the kid like the gypsies, drinking. On the second day, it finally hit me that Antón had to eat, because he was 2 years and 8 months old. Juan was in the building across the street, in the Ministry of Education, and my brother Homero in the one behind, when I saw that the tanks and helicopters arrived and took everyone out. For us, it was terrible because the elevator operator, the doorman, everyone who was there like the janitors were dressed like sailors, meaning they had been snitching on our political meetings, party meetings, academic meetings for three years. They were infiltrated military personnel and they knew everything. For the coup, they cleared the whole Alameda; they killed people right there on Avenida Bulnes. When Juan was those three days in the basement, a teacher commented to me: "We dedicated ourselves to tearing up everything political we were carrying and throwing it down the holes," without food, without anything. On the third day, I went up and Fernando Flores, who was a minister, put me up in his apartment with my son. On September 13, we left and went away. Juan was locked up longer because later I don't know where he went, and September 27 was the first time I saw him; that's when I knew he was okay. Everyone arrived at my mother's house. Juan was never told to be clandestine, nor to go into exile; they took too long, and that is a weight that the Communist Party has; they made many mistakes because they didn't classify people.

Source: arqueologiadelamemoria.cl (no date)

We went up the stairs where the president came down

The years '70, '71, '72, and '73 were non-stop because they appointed all of us as chiefs of something. I was the national chief of the Supervised Internship Office. There, the Communist Party members had just come to light; they had been clandestine for I don't know how many years after Videla.

We all knew each other, we had a presence, and no one at La Moneda was checking you; we went to have tea there, we went up the stairs where the president came down; that staircase was public because the Injuv operated upstairs, the chief was Manuel Guerrero, and everyone went in and out.

During Allende's government, we all worked happily; we felt a mystique with everything we were doing, like what Bélgica Castro was doing at the Teatro de la Chile. We got married, we joined the great campaign of the popular government, we all worked with a lot of love.

That year, Juan was appointed national manager of teacher welfare, so he worried a lot about the health of people from Arica to Magallanes, like the requests of a mother from Antofagasta who had a son with arsenic poisoning and she couldn't stay, but Juan hospitalized the little boy; we worried about going to see him, and not only that little boy, but everyone who came.

There was a comrade who arrived at the hospital and Juan was attentive to her; I met her at an alumni meeting and she started telling me that Juan was a fairy godmother to her, that he was very attentive to her, that she had her medications… This was in '69 when he was appointed; he even equipped the Casa del Maestro, did many activities, and parallel to that, he continued with his artistic thing, less so, but he continued dancing.

Everything was transparent; we went to Los Andes, they sent us to a meeting of poor, poor people, where we had to stay; in one house we had to sleep in what was the living room, they put two sommiers for us because we were two couples, in some white sheets with some embroidery, and worried about giving us a plate of noodles with a drink—how much would that cost those people?

And like that, people corresponded to you in everything. The artists and the people didn't care a fig if they were going to be paid; Nemesio Antúnez or José Balmes would arrive and make you an entire mural without charging a cent.

The day I went to get married, I saw his ID I am four years older than Juan. I was already a teacher and he had graduated about four years after me. I thought to myself that he must be over 25 years old because to be a national leader, it was a requirement.

But they increased his age, because to be a national leader, you had to have a minimum age and a number of years of service, and he didn't fit into either of the two because he had like three and a half years of seniority, and the minimum was five; also he had to be 25 years old.

The day I went to get married, I saw his ID; I stood there and "Well," he said to me. I didn't know how old he was when we got married; what was I going to ask him his age for? It's just that how would it occur to you that a guy who is a national leader, who travels, who goes to Colombia, who goes around giving seminars here and there… He was 22 and I was 25.

So he said to me: "Well, let's leave it at that," and I said: "Oh, how my mouth punishes me," because to my sister-in-law, who we were very good friends with and later we weren't friends anymore, I told her how she could be with a younger guy, never in her life.

And she married my brother who is younger than her. It was terrible, a shock for me because all my principles went down the drain; I have been very schematic. He hadn't told me his age because it hadn't been a topic. Juan was very young but very grown-up; that's why I was scared. Relayed by Anita Altamirano, wife of Juan Gianelli Company.

Source: arqueologiadelamemoria.cl (no date)