Juan Manuel Llanca Rodas, married, one child, a worker with no known political affiliation, was detained by military personnel in civilian clothing on September 17, 1975, at a business named "El Rincón" in Puente Alto.

He was taken to the Puente Alto Engineer Regiment, from where he disappeared on September 18, after being intensely beaten and tortured. The Regiment consistently denied his apprehension to his family.

The origin of his detention and his time at that military unit is accounted for by Mr. Alfonso Armando Brizuela Durán, who stated in his testimony that on the night of September 16, 1975, he was in the company of his friends Juan Manuel Llanca Rodas and Víctor Odulio Llantén Ayala at a restaurant in Puente Alto.

Around 11:00 p.m., they left the establishment, and shortly after, Juan Manuel got into a fight with an unknown man, who pulled out a weapon and attempted to fire, but the weapon jammed. The witness wounded the stranger with a pocketknife, after which they fled.

The following day, September 17, during the night, he was detained by several individuals who asked him about his pocketknife. He was taken to the Puente Alto Regiment, where he was held in a disused railway car that served as a cell.

On the morning of September 18, he was taken along with Víctor Ayala, who was also being held, to another area of the Regiment where Juan Manuel Llanca was found, handcuffed and lying on a mattress inside a small cell.

He and Víctor Ayala were also handcuffed and placed in adjacent cells while blindfolded. On the first night, they were taken to an office where they were interrogated separately and accused of assaulting an Army non-commissioned officer.

After the interrogations, they were returned to the cells. However, a short time later, Juan Manuel Llanca was taken out again and beaten. When he was returned to the cell, he knocked on the wall, and the witness responded.

During the night, Llanca Rodas was taken out several times to be beaten, always responding by knocking on the wall, until one occasion when he no longer did so. On the morning of September 19, he was taken from the cell along with Víctor Ayala, noticing that Juan Manuel Llanca was no longer in his cell.

Along with Víctor Ayala, he was tied by his hands and feet and laid on a cot where they were subjected to electric shocks. Then, at 05:00 hours, he was subjected to a mock execution. After about 5 or 6 days, he was transferred, along with the other detainee, to the secret DINA detention center, Villa Grimaldi, where he remained for about 3 days, before being taken to "4 Alamos," where he remained for several weeks until being transferred to the Santiago Penitentiary, remaining at the disposal of the First Military Prosecutor's Office, to later be prosecuted by the ordinary justice system.

Ultimately, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crime of robbery with violence against Temístocles Navarrete Becerra, an Army non-commissioned officer assigned to the Puente Alto Engineer Regiment. Once his sentence was served, he was released on July 5, 1986. He never had news of Juan Manuel Llanca Rodas again.

All efforts made by his family to locate his whereabouts were fruitless, and they still do not know the fate he met at the hands of his captors, who belonged to the aforementioned Regiment.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On January 25, 1991, and fundamentally based on the information provided by the witness Alfonso Brizuela Durán, his family filed a complaint for presumed misfortune before the First Criminal Court of Puente Alto. It was processed under case file 40829-M, and as of December 1992, it remained in the summary stage with pending proceedings.

Source: Rettig Report

Nearly 50 years after the military coup in Chile, inhabitants of the Cordillera Province remembered what happened, paying tribute to the affected individuals of the locality. It was September 11, 1973, when the former commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army, Augusto Pinochet, took control of the country through a military coup, overthrowing the then-socialist president Salvador Allende.

Violence and fear were the protagonists of that moment, as the Chilean Army was in command and there was no control over the limits of the power they could exercise; thus, the use of weapons, murders, and disappearances were the consequences of the unbridled military seizure of power.

This scenario was witnessed throughout the national territory, but the center of it all was the Metropolitan Region, and unfortunately, the Cordillera Province also lamented different events that are now part of the history of the military coup.

Perspective on the event

Portal Puente Alto spoke with Ricardo Klapp, a member of the Salvador Allende Cultural Center of Puente Alto, which is a social organization in the commune that watches over and works to defend human rights in the wake of 9/11.

Klapp commented that the date continues to be commemorated due to the number of people in the Cordillera Province affected, who to this day continue to demand justice for human rights violations. "In the Cordillera Province alone, we have 45 political executions, 2,000 former political prisoners tortured by the dictatorship, and 12 sites of violence.

All of this has been legally recognized, and to this day, there is no justice for their families," explained Ricardo. Given these numbers, Ricardo mentioned that "we have a great debt to all those people; that is why it is important to have moments of historical memory, to remember and pay tribute to our own, to the forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship." Let us remember that the torture sites in the Cordillera Province were: the 20th Carabineros Precinct of Puente Alto, the Carabineros sub-precinct of San José de Maipo, the Pirque police station, the Puente Alto prison, the San Gabriel border police station, the Puente Alto juvenile prison, and the Puente Alto investigative barracks.

Source: portalpuentealto.cl 9/9/2021 Date: 09-11-2021

"Consequently, given the gravity of the facts described in the plaintiff's brief, the facts established in the case, and the aforementioned background, the court considers the requirement under analysis, regarding the moral or non-patrimonial damage of the plaintiffs as victims by repercussion, to be met." The Seventh Civil Court of Santiago ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $50,000,000 for moral damages to the spouse and daughter of the forcibly disappeared person Juan Manuel Llanca Rodas, who was kidnapped in September 1975 by State agents in the commune of Puente Alto.

In the ruling (case file 4.679-2023), Judge Paulina Valenzuela Negrete rejected the exceptions of full reparation and statute of limitations filed by the State, after establishing that the plaintiffs were victims of human rights violations by repercussion. "Regarding the plaintiffs by repercussion, Ms.

Elizabeth del Carmen Moya Lagos and Ms. Paola Elizabeth Llanca Moya, although the defendant has not questioned the configuration of the moral damage suffered by the plaintiffs, it is established by the psychological reports issued by psychologist Ms.

María Angélica Correa, belonging to the Corporation for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the People, both dated August 17, 2023, that the interviewees currently present sequelae as a result of the detention and disappearance of their spouse and father, which occurred during the civil-military dictatorship of 1973," the ruling states.

The resolution adds: "Thus, it is concluded in each of the aforementioned reports that the plaintiffs suffer from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, adding with respect to Mrs. Elizabeth Moya that the impact of the experience lived as a result of the kidnapping and disappearance of her husband not only causes sequelae in individual terms, altering individual and emotional structures for coping with the psychosocial trauma of which she was a victim, but also causes irreparable damage to her life project and family stability." "Consequently, given the gravity of the facts described in the plaintiff's brief, the facts established in the case, and the aforementioned background, the court considers the requirement under analysis, regarding the moral or non-patrimonial damage of the plaintiffs as victims by repercussion, to be met," it adds. Likewise, the ruling records: "Regarding the concurrence in this case of the fourth of the requirements indicated in the eighth motive, that is, that between the illicit action against the direct victim and the moral damage produced in the direct victim and the victims by repercussion, there exists a cause-and-effect relationship, it will also be considered met, since, based on what is stated in the eighth foundation to the preceding one, it is inferred that the damage established in the previous motive, suffered by the plaintiffs in their capacity as victims by repercussion, was directly caused by the activity deployed by the State of Chile through its agents against the direct victim." "That –it continues–, regarding the fifth and final requirement indicated in the eighth foundation, that is, that the damage is not already compensated, it will also be considered met, in attention to what was reasoned in the sixth consideration." For the court, in this case: "(...) having determined the existence of the moral damage suffered by the plaintiff and the State's responsibility to compensate for it, it is appropriate to set its amount in money, for which the court will consider the merit of the background provided to the process, setting the compensatory quantum according to the entity and nature of the damage caused to the victims that allows in some way to repair, mitigate, or help to cope with the pain caused by the established illicit act, which will be done prudently, given the impossibility of setting with any exactitude and certainty the sum that serves those objectives, in order to comply with the principle of full reparation that governs the matter." "Thus, the court will regulate the amount of moral damage in the total amount of twenty-five million pesos ($25,000,000) for each of the plaintiffs, as will be stated in the operative part," it orders.

Source: pjud.cl 10/7/2024

A "Memorial for Justice and Dignity of the Cordillera Province" will be inaugurated on December 10, at 11:00 a.m., at Balmaceda and Irarrázaval, Puente Alto. The Memorial is a tribute and recognition to the Forcibly Disappeared and Politically Executed in the Cordillera Province.

It uses rocky materials from our Andean hills bordering Puente Alto and San José de Maipo. It is built with granite rocks extracted from the quarry of the border hill Cerro Blanco; in addition to ceramics with the faces of the Cordillera victims and the chained anchor of the former Railway Regiment (a place of deaths and torture).

The Memorial is an educational reference for the universal values that link human rights with the rescue of historical memory. It will also contribute to healing and overcoming the pains of the unfinished mourning of families from working-class sectors by registering and disseminating the names of those executed and disappeared during the dictatorship.

Their names have been confirmed, investigated, and qualified by the State, human rights organizations, and the Salvador Allende Human Rights Cultural Center. In the wake of the coup d'état, more than 45 people were executed in the Cordillera Province, and 16 were kidnapped, swelling the long list of the forcibly disappeared.

In total, more than 61 people. In the Cordillera Province, more than 2,000 former political prisoners suffered unspeakable torture. Also, nearly 4,000 were dismissed for reasons of political persecution, several thousand were raided, detained in citizen protests, and many had to go into exile due to the hatred unleashed against the humble.

The Memorial constitutes a monument, a cultural work, a collective social recognition, to preserve historical memory. Throughout the national territory, memorials have been built to rescue and remember the history of comrades who gave their lives for a better Chile.

Participants will include the "Trió Memorial," the payador "El Manguera," Human Rights groups, social organizations, the Undersecretariat and Human Rights Program, and family members and comrades of those honored.

Source: cronicadigital.cl 12/9/2016 Date: 12-09-2016

HUMAN RIGHTS: JUDGES PROSECUTE NINE RETIRED MILITARY OFFICERS FOR TWO KIDNAPPINGS

Nine former uniformed officers were prosecuted in the last few hours as authors of two qualified kidnappings that occurred between 1974 and 1975. The first indictment was issued by Judge Colomba Guerrero, of the First Criminal Court of Puente Alto, who investigated the disappearance of Juan Manuel Llanca Rodas, who was last seen at the Puente Alto Regiment No. 2 in 1975.

In this case, the former commander of the regiment, Mateo Durruty, and former uniformed officers David Miranda, Pedro Teyssedre, René Cruces, and Carlos Canales were charged as authors of the kidnapping.

Likewise, the judge of the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago, María Inés Collins, submitted the DINA leadership to trial for the disappearance of the former MIR member Carlos Cubillos Gálvez, whose trail was lost at the detention center known as Londres 38.

In this case, General (R) Manuel Contreras, Brigadier (R) Miguel Krassnoff, Brigadier (R) Marcelo Moren Brito, and the civilian Osvaldo Romo were charged. The latter face a series of prosecutions in human rights cases, which are in charge of different judges.

Lawyer Sergio Concha, who is handling the cases, especially highlighted the work of Judge Guerrero, since since she arrived in the middle of last year at the First Criminal Court of Puente Alto, there was a change in the development of the Juan Llanca case. "The case had been in that court for approximately 10 years; there had been at least four magistrates who had not been greatly interested in this case (...) all this was solved when Magistrate Guerrero arrived, who dedicated herself to investigating what until then had not been investigated," he stated.

Source: October 29, 2004 El Mercurio Date: 10-29-2004

FORCIBLY DISAPPEARED IN THE REGIMENT, YEAR 1973

ARIEL ARCOS LATORRE, 23 years old, ENRIQUE JULIO PAGARDOY SAQUIERES, 21 years old, JUAN ANTONIO POVASCHUK GALEAZZO, 24 years old. Young Uruguayans, Tupamaro militants. JUAN MANUEL LLANCA RODAS, 26 years old, married, construction worker, who fought with fists with non-commissioned officer Temístocles Navarrete Becerra of the Puente Alto Regiment and was detained on September 17, 1975, at his home.

He has been missing since September 19, 1975. Indicted for the disappearance of three Uruguayans and a Puente Alto worker. Regarding events that occurred in 1973 and 1975, the former commander of the Puente Alto Regiment, Mateo Durruty Blanco, blamed his subordinates for being a "troop of disloyal men." "Mamo Contreras" called him a "traitor; Durruty is lying and evading his military responsibility by trying to pass it on to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), and that is called military treason." The former commander of the regiment replied: "All of this was a DINA invention." The confrontation between the genocidal figures took place in Judge Colomba Guerrero's office. Durruty insistently denied that the regiment he commanded served as a center for detention and torture after the military coup. A handful of his subordinates, mainly conscripts who were doing their military service at that time, affirmed and admitted the existence of detainees. Durruty was prosecuted as the author of the kidnapping and disappearance of the worker Juan Llanca, which occurred on September 17, 1975, and as the author of the kidnapping and disappearance of the Uruguayan citizens: Ariel Arcos, Juan Povaschuk, and Enrique Pargadoy. Before Juan Llanca was killed and his body thrown into the Maipo River to make him disappear, his executioners fed him crushed glass to cause him serious internal injuries. A witness to this torment was his fellow captive Alfonso Brizuela Durán, as he recounted in the judicial investigation not only before the judge but also face-to-face with Durruty himself, who of course refuted the fact and tried to deny it: "I never knew anything; there were never detainees in my regiment." He lied again. In the case of the Uruguayans, they were detained at the end of 1973 by officials of the San José de Maipo sub-precinct inside an abandoned mine in the mountain sector when they were trying to clandestinely cross into Argentina after the coup d'état. The three had arrived in Chile after the coup d'état in Uruguay. The three Uruguayans were taken by Carabineros to the Puente Alto regiment, where they were tortured. At the end of September 1973, they were taken out of the barracks; (Arcos, Povaschuk, and Pargadoy) were separated from the rest of the prisoners, disappearing until now. In the train cars of the regiment that Durruty commanded until December 1973, hundreds of detainees passed through (according to the investigations of the trials of these four victims) and suffered horrific torments. During that period of high repression, Colonel Durruty, currently imprisoned in Punta Peuco, had as his second-in-command Lieutenant Colonel Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, currently imprisoned in Punta Peuco, who later joined the general staff of the sinister DINA along with Marcelo Morén Brito, Miguel Krassnoff, and Pedro Espinoza, among other criminals. Along with Durruty, officers Francisco Martínez Benavidez (deceased), Lander Uriarte Burotto, and Gabriel Montero Uranga (deceased) were prosecuted and some convicted for these crimes. The non-commissioned officers Moisés Retamal Bustos and Guillermo Vargas Avendaño (all imprisoned in Punta Peuco). In addition to David Miranda Monardes and Pedro Teyssedre Cartagena, both officers of the Intelligence Section II of the Puente Alto regiment, and the non-commissioned officers who were part of the same section, Luis Canales Pino and René Cruces Tapia. The sentencing judge, Mario Carroza, issued a final conviction against the genocidal figures in the case of the Uruguayans. Regarding Llanca Rodas, Visiting Minister Sylvia Pizarro issued an acquittal in the second instance.

Source: memoriahistorica.minjusticia.gob.cl