• Teobaldo José PAILLACHEO CATALAN, 57 years old, agricultural worker, Communist Party militant.

On October 3, 1973, at approximately 07:00 hours, Carabineros from Pilmaiquén, in a truck belonging to the National Electricity Company (ENDESA), arrived at the home of brothers Alfredo Segundo and Eduardo Pacheco Molina in Mantilhue, arresting both, along with their stepbrother Juan Mancilla Delgado, in the presence of their family.

Teobaldo Paillacheo Catalán, for his part, was arrested that same day at 10:00 hours at the Chiscaihue Settlement, also in front of witnesses, along with another peasant. All were taken to the Pilmaiquén Carabineros Unit and transferred to Entre Lagos, only to return to Pilmaiquén later.

Around 21:30 hours, they were taken out of the station and nothing more was heard of them. Based on the evidence gathered, it appears most likely that they were executed on the banks of the Pilmaiquén River.

Their bodies were not found, with the exception of some of Mancilla’s clothing. In any case, death certificates were issued for some of them by order of the corresponding Military Prosecutor's Office. The circumstances that convinced the Commission that State agents were responsible for the execution and concealment of the bodies of the five individuals mentioned above, and that these acts constituted violations of the fundamental rights of the victims, are as follows:

• The existence of witnesses to the detention of all the victims and hearsay witnesses regarding the time the detainees were removed from the Pilmaiquén Carabineros Unit;
• The existence of death certificates indicating Pilmaiquén as the place of death and October 9 as the date; and the fact that the registration was carried out "by order of the Military Prosecutor's Office dated November 22, 1973." As in other situations in the Region, these certificates were issued without any record of the existence of the bodies, which is irregular;
• Regarding Mancilla, there is testimony indicating that remnants of his clothing were found in the river and handed over to the Carabineros themselves;
• An official from the Fourth Military Court, based in Valdivia, informed the relatives that the victims were dead because they had attempted to escape;
• Although information regarding these events was formally requested from the Fourth Military Court of Valdivia and the Carabineros de Chile, the Commission did not receive a satisfactory response.
• Regarding Cárdenas Arriagada, the corresponding civil court declared him presumptively dead.

Source: (Rettig Report)

Eight police officers and the wife of one of them were prosecuted by a judge in Osorno for their responsibility in the crimes of aggravated kidnapping, homicide, and concealment committed after the military coup.

The eight defendants, one officer and seven non-commissioned officers—all retired—remain in custody as a preventive measure in the facilities of a Carabineros barracks in Osorno. The prosecution was ordered by Judge Raúl Ramírez, a magistrate with exclusive dedication to investigating human rights violation cases.

Ramírez has now prosecuted Lieutenant Colonel Baros Muñoz and former non-commissioned officers Mario Cabello, Sergio Jaramillo, René Bórquez, and Orozimbo Sepúlveda, charged with the aggravated kidnapping of Francisco Martínez and Reinaldo Huentequeo, who were detained on October 6, 1973.

Last Friday, he had decided to prosecute former non-commissioned officers Raúl Zapata and Carlos Ovando as perpetrators of the aggravated homicide of Communist militant Gilberto González de la Torre, an event that occurred in January 1974.

For the same crime, in the capacity of accomplices, former non-commissioned officer Camilo Astete and Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Baros were prosecuted. These four police officers were also prosecuted for the aggravated kidnapping of brothers Eduardo and Alfredo Pacheco, and of Juan Mancilla, Teobaldo Paillacheo, Valentín Cárdenas, and Enrique González, all Communist militants opposed to Pinochet who were forcibly disappeared after being taken to the Pilmaiquén police station in October 1973.

Meanwhile, non-commissioned officer Astete and his wife, Elsa Vilugrón, were subjected to prosecution as alleged perpetrators of the aggravated kidnapping of Marcelino Cárdenas, who was detained on December 30, 1973, and sent to the same Pilmaiquén barracks in Osorno.

Source: January 16, 2004, La Nación

Date: 01-16-2004

Supreme Court orders the State to compensate siblings of a forcibly disappeared agricultural worker

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court rejected the appeals for cassation on form and substance filed against the sentence that ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $50,000,000 for moral damages to the siblings of Valentín Cárdenas Arriagada, who was detained by Carabineros in October 1973 and presumably executed on the banks of the Pilmaiquén River, Los Ríos Region.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals for cassation on form and substance filed against the sentence that ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $50,000,000 for moral damages to the siblings of Valentín Cárdenas Arriagada, who was detained by Carabineros in October 1973 and presumably executed on the banks of the Pilmaiquén River, Los Ríos Region.

In a unanimous ruling (case roll 2147.864-2023), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Leopoldo Llanos, minister María Cristina Gajardo, and lawyers (i) Pía Tavolari and Andrea Ruiz—confirmed the challenged sentence issued by the Court of Appeals of Valdivia. “That such a proposal is inappropriate, since both appeals must meet different requirements, depending on whether it is one cassation or another, notwithstanding that Article 770 of the Code of Civil Procedure establishes that they must be filed simultaneously and in the same document,” the ruling highlights. The resolution adds: “Indeed, in the case of nullity of substance, it proceeds due to an infringement of the law that has substantially influenced the dispositive part of the ruling, and the adjective nullity is based on the concurrence of the grounds enumerated in Article 768 of the aforementioned Code. Likewise, in accordance with the provisions of Article 772 of the cited legal body, the document in which each appeal is filed must contain different mentions and both pursue different ends, even in the case of formal nullity which, when accepted, can only result in the case being returned to a certain procedural state, which is not possible if it concerns substantive nullity.” “That Article 770 of the Code of Civil Procedure establishes that the appeals must be filed jointly, that is, at the same time and not in a subsidiary manner as the appellant has done, which implies a defect in the way of proposing it. Indeed, the textual reason for such a provision is in harmony with the nature of the appeals, since by assuming defects that invalidate the ruling, subsidiarity has no place because it means that the appellant, by filing the appeal under examination only in the event that the substantive one is not accepted, validates or endorses the defects that they then attempt to revive given the assumption that their substantive allegations are not accepted, which violates the generic principle of procedural nullity,” it adds. “That the logical order in which both appeals must be filed in accordance with what is established in Article 770 of the Code of Civil Procedure is first the formal one and second the substantive one, and not the reverse as was done in the present case, because having this Court issued a pronouncement on the question of law submitted to it when resolving the first of the appeals filed, it is prevented, by virtue of the preclusion that has operated, from examining a ground based on an alleged procedural defect that intends nothing less than to lead it to invalidate its own sentence. Article 808 of the Code of Civil Procedure corroborates this interpretation by establishing that if appeals for cassation on form and substance are filed against a sentence, and the formal one is accepted, the substantive one will be considered as not filed, without regulating the reverse situation, which makes it clear that for the legislator it is not possible for it to occur,” it concludes. Therefore, it is resolved that: “the appeals for cassation on substance and form filed by the plaintiff against the final sentence of August 24, 2023, issued by the Court of Appeals of Valdivia in case Roll 392-2023, are rejected.” Decision agreed upon with the caveat of Minister Llanos and the participating lawyer Ruiz, who were in favor of cassating the challenged sentence ex officio, considering: “That the amount to which the compensation was reduced is far from what should be understood as full reparation, so these dissenters understand that we are facing an error that has substantially influenced the dispositive part of the sentence, estimating that the figure that meets the referred standards cannot be less than 30 million pesos for each of the plaintiffs.” In the case, it was established that: “(…) on October 3, 1973, Carabineros from Río Bueno and the El Salto de Pilmaiquén Station traveled to the Mantilhue sector, and without legal cause detained Alfredo Segundo and Eduardo Pacheco Molina and Juan Segundo Mancilla Delgado, whom they transported in an Endesa truck to the Chiscahue sector, where they also, without legal cause, detained Teobaldo José Paillacheo Catalán and Valentín Cárdenas Arriagada, loaded them into the same truck, and transported them to the Salto del Pilmaiquén Station, where they were locked up; subsequently, tied up, they were taken in a truck along with Enrique González Angulo, who had previously been illegally detained by the same officials, and they were transported to an indeterminate location, without their whereabouts being known to date or their remains having been found, it being presumed that they could have been executed by police personnel.”

Source: pjud.cl 5/5/2025