Excerpt from the statement by Dr. Alberto Neumann, former Pisagua prisoner

Upon our arrival at the Pisagua Prison, there were already prisoners there from Iquique and other locations in the northern zone. Upon arriving in Pisagua, the Navy placed us under the responsibility of the Army, the institution in command of the prison.

I must add that the prison's penal population, as well as the inhabitants of Pisagua, had been evacuated, such that the entire town was a military zone. ... In the aforementioned penal facility, we prisoners were overcrowded, because the physical space was insufficient.

I remained deprived of liberty in that place until the end of October 1973, at which time I was transferred along with a group of 3 detainees to Valparaíso. I must add that this group was composed of 3 doctors who were from Valparaíso.

In the final period of our stay in Pisagua, we doctors were placed in cells separate from the rest of the prisoners and were in charge of the medical care of the political prisoners, using the prison's infirmary office for such purposes.

On September 29, 1973, at lunchtime, as the prisoners were going out to the prison courtyard to eat, the military chief of the detention center, Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín, addressed us, telling us that more prisoners would be arriving, because not a single one would escape—referring to militants or people of the left—and that for this, it was necessary to do some carpentry and similar work, requesting volunteers among the prisoners to perform those tasks.

Many volunteers offered themselves, because for the prisoners, being able to do some work was a relief from the inhumane conditions in which we were living. Then, Lieutenant Colonel Larraín chose six: Marcelo Guzmán, Nolberto Cañas, Michael Nash, Juan Calderón, Luis Lizardi, and Juan Jiménez.

The six aforementioned prisoners were from here in the North and had been detained by the Army. That night, Commander Larraín informed us that the 6 aforementioned prisoners had tried to escape and, as a consequence, had been put to death.

He added that the detainee Michael Nash was the one who managed to get the farthest, which Larraín attributed to the fact that Nash had military training, as this prisoner was doing his military service in Iquique and had been detained—according to Nash himself, who told me this on one occasion when we shared a cell—for having refused to participate in the military coup.

Source: Judiciary, June 1, 1990

Pisagua, 30 years after the tragedy

The 30th anniversary of the tragedy at the Pisagua prison camp was commemorated this weekend by survivors of that site, which was commanded as the main military authority of the zone by General Carlos Forestier.

Forestier faces charges for the ten forcibly disappeared—seven from Pisagua and three from Iquique—for which he is being prosecuted as the perpetrator of the crime of kidnapping. The activities that took place in Iquique and yesterday before the mass grave of Pisagua, in which 19 bodies were found in June 1990, were organized by the Association of Former Prisoners of Pisagua.

They were attended by various political and social leaders, as well as by associations of relatives of the disappeared and those executed in the zone and at the national level. The final history of Pisagua is linked to the seven main episodes that occurred in the months following the coup d'état.

In them, under the high command of Forestier, the camp commander Ramón Larraín, and Army officers who until recently remained active, 25 prisoners were murdered. Some of these crimes were attempted to be covered by the legal mantle of some "war council," which was later proven to constitute "a farce," as one of those same officers, now retired, recently admitted in the proceedings being instructed by Judge Daniel Calvo.

The "escape" of six detainees on September 29, 1973, was proven in the trial to be no such thing, and that the prisoners were coldly murdered. Officers who served on the camp's rotating guard recognized this in the proceedings.

The "war council" of October 11, 1973, where they killed another five prisoners, was also not a real "council," and even the military auditor of some of those supposed "war tribunals," Captain (Ret.) Enrique Sinn Bruno, recognized in the trial that this council was "another farce." On October 30, 1973, they killed four socialist leaders from the Iquique regional branch, who had allegedly been sentenced to death by another "war council." It is the same Sinn Bruno, who participated in that "council," who declared in the trial that they were forced to change the sentence already issued, which condemned them only to a minor prison term, and to issue another that sentenced them to death. The then-captain and later Army inspector, today General (Ret.) Sergio Espinoza Davis, participated in that "council." In January 1974, Forestier issued a communiqué stating that six prisoners were released from Pisagua. But the judicial investigation established that the detainees were murdered on January 15 and 16 of that year. The other four prisoners were likewise extrajudicially riddled with bullets, using other "war councils" as an excuse for three of them.

Source: lanacion.cl, October 27, 2003

A long and narrow clandestine cemetery

From time to time, the country regains its memory. These are sharp, tremendous, and tragic blows that serve as a reminder that there are pending processes in Chile. Open wounds. Cases that have to do with the collective memory of a country that, despite official efforts, does not reconcile with its own history.

A country that, sheltered by macroeconomic figures and a desire for progress, prefers to set aside one of the most traumatic events of its short life as a nation: the 1973 military coup and its tragic consequences.

Deaths, torture, and disappearances are the hallmark of a process that broke Chile's democratic order, and in which victims continue to be counted. The latest events once again awaken the hopes of the relatives of the forcibly disappeared.

Mothers, wives, and children of people they stopped seeing 25 years ago, when they were detained by the security agencies of the government presided over by former General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Today, Chilean society is shaken by news speaking of the possibility that some of the forcibly disappeared were alive inside the former Colonia Dignidad, a German enclave that was used as a prison camp during the 1973 coup and where it is presumed a clandestine cemetery containing the bodies of several of them is located.

Another fact is the new discovery of remains in the north. This involves three graves where around 150 political prisoners executed by firing squad in 1973 are allegedly buried, discovered in the vicinity of the Pisagua Detention Camp (First Region), after an alleged uniformed officer revealed the existence of these deposits to the deputy for Antofagasta, Felipe Valenzuela (PS).

With the information provided by this source, who was stationed at the site during the military coup, it was possible to locate the points dug at an equidistant distance from one another on the banks of the Camarones River, near Quillagua Viejo.

The search efforts yielded results at 6:00 PM on Monday, May 4, when the first body was unearthed. Valenzuela indicated that the corpses are tied by their hands and show signs of having been riddled with bullets.

This is a new discovery that adds to those that occurred starting in 1990, when Chilean society was able to observe how 20 bodies were discovered on land near the Pisagua Prison (in the photo). It was June 1990, just months after democracy was recovered, a discovery that shook the national memory and exposed the brutality with which some elements of the Armed Forces acted.

Remains in Pisagua On Friday, June 1, 1990, lawyers Héctor Salazar, Carlos Vilas, and Ernesto Montoya filed a complaint for "illegal inhumation" on behalf of the Vicariate of Solidarity of Santiago and the Commission of Human Rights before the Criminal Court of Pozo Almonte.

Two hours later, the Court was constituted at the site. The judge, Nelson Muñoz Morales, and his secretary remained there, in a tent, collecting testimonies. The Vicariate of Solidarity already had information a year earlier regarding the existence of this clandestine cemetery, located north of the Pisagua cemetery.

It was the communist doctor Alberto Neumann Lagos who provided his testimony and a sworn statement to the members of the organization. However, it was evaluated that the conditions were not right at that time to undertake the corresponding legal actions.

Therefore, it was decided to wait for the December 1989 elections. Once the Concertación won and Patricio Aylwin took charge of the government, they waited a little longer, as access to the site was blocked by a military barrier.

Thus, they reached May 31, when it was decided to file the complaint. The first body appeared at a depth of about 70 centimeters. Then others appeared. The bodies were covered by two burlap sacks tied at the hips with thick wires.

They were blindfolded, their clothes were intact, and bullet holes pierced their chests. The Pisagua concentration camp is two hours from Iquique. It is accessed by a difficult road where some stretches must be traveled bordering a precipice.

On September 14, 1973, 38 detainees were taken there in trucks, beaten and cold. "When we saw the town, the ghost took shape. They immediately locked us in the prison. In the town, there were about 200 fishermen.

Commander Larraín gathered them and told them they had to leave because the 'Marxist cancer' had arrived at the place. We had to remain locked up. The prison has three floors. They called the first one 'catacombs'; on the second and third, there were four cells.

On September 18, the ship Maipo arrived with a cargo of 400 prisoners from Valparaíso. A tremendous overcrowding was caused. We had to sleep standing up. They opened the doors for us only twice a day. At 7 in the morning, they gave us a piece of bread and a cup of tea, and at 4 in the afternoon, a plate of beans.

We had 7 minutes to eat, relieve ourselves, and drink water," recalled Francisco Prieto Enríquez, a former prisoner who remained in Pisagua until May 31, 1974, in the magazine Análisis in June 1990. Concentration camp The discovery of the remains in Pisagua caused a national impact.

An impact that legitimized the existence of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created by President Aylwin to investigate cases of human rights violations committed from September 11, 1973, to March 11, 1990.

The salinity of the sea and the desert preserved the bodies in chilling integrity. The skeletons retained their clothes, the bindings, the blindfolds, and above all, the expressions of pain. As the investigations progressed, new information came to light: the victims had been executed outside of all legality.

The magazine Análisis from June 11 to 17, 1990, recounts that on September 29, 1973, Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín, commander of the concentration camp, shouted to the prisoners that he needed five volunteers for work outside.

Some, eager to get some fresh air, volunteered. "We saw Juan Alarcón, Nolberto Cañas, Marcelo Guzmán, Michel Nash, Luis Lizardi, and Juan Jiménez leave. Shortly after, Larraín arrived, very agitated. Amidst insults, he informed us that our companions had tried to escape, that they had not obeyed the order to halt, and that they had been executed by firing squad.

No one believed him," recalls Francisco Prieto. On October 11, José Córdova, Humberto Lizardi, Mario Morris, Julio Cabezas, and Juan Valencia were taken from the camp. They were never seen again. Through a communiqué signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Sixth Division and a trusted man of General Pinochet, Carlos Forestier, it was reported that they had been executed by firing squad to comply with the sentence of a War Council.

The file was never found. The detainees were executed in Pisagua, despite the claim that the trial had been held in Iquique, without the presence of the sentenced. The prisoners had no doubt that it had been revenge.

The military prosecutor Mario Acuña was a lawyer from Iquique with ties to drug trafficking. His illicit activities had been discovered thanks to an investigation carried out by the prominent member of the State Defense Council, Julio Cabezas. On September 11, 1972, Acuña was appointed prosecutor by military judge Forestier. One of his first actions was to order the detention of Cabezas.

Source: latercera.cl, May 1998

Justice dawns for "Choño" Sanhueza

On February 12, the Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the prosecution of Enrique Fuenzalida Puelma, former military prosecutor of Arica between April 1974 and June 1976, for his alleged responsibility in the murder of communist militant Manuel Sanhueza Mellado, which occurred in July 1974.

The uniformed lawyer is allegedly the perpetrator of the crime of kidnapping and homicide of Sanhueza, whose remains were found in 1990 in Pisagua. The court ordered the arrest of the accused, who in the following days entered the Punta Peuco prison.

Manuel Sanhueza—"Choño" Sanhueza—was a prominent leader of the Communist Youth since the mid-60s, a member of the central committee, national head of settlers, and regional secretary in Arica at the time of his detention by the Military Intelligence Service (SIM).

His body was found in a hidden grave in Pisagua, along with 19 other corpses, on June 2, 1990, following a complaint by the Vicariate of Solidarity. The discovery of "Choño's" corpse, preserved by the desert salt, was captured in a photograph widely disseminated in Chile and the world, where he appeared blindfolded, shot in the chest, and with a grimace that shook not only the relatives of those executed and the forcibly disappeared during the years of the military dictatorship. "Choño," son of Víctor Sanhueza and Margarita Mellado, was born in Concepción on November 22, 1943, very close to the Agüita de la Perdiz neighborhood, on the slopes of Cerro Caracol. From a young age, he was a furniture maker and a hardworking community leader, just like his father. He was also a talented midfielder for the neighborhood soccer club La Toma, whose skill dazzled leaders of the Universidad de Chile who tried to bring him to their honor team, the then-famous "Blue Ballet." Manuel preferred to continue in the working-class neighborhoods of Concepción, organizing new sports clubs, working alongside his father, and helping his neighbors. In 1960, he joined the Communist Youth, and by 1966 he was already participating with enthusiasm in the Ramona Parra Brigade. Very soon, the "old guard" noticed him, and in 1967 he was sent to a cadre school in the Soviet Union. Upon his return in 1969, he was assigned to the regional committee of the "Jota" (Communist Youth) in Valdivia, and by 1970 he was already fulfilling duties on the central committee as the head of settlers. Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, also a member of the PC youth leadership, was his companion and friend. While he was a prisoner in Cuatro Alamos in 1976, he wrote a text remembering "Choño," which years later his son—Manuel Guerrero Antequera—disseminated through social networks: "In a revolutionary organization, no one is indispensable, but it is difficult to imagine a better person in charge of community work than 'Choño,' a position he held during the last years before the fascist coup. He was an indefatigable activist; he traveled through the neighborhoods encouraging the organization of cultural and youth centers, neighborhood councils, supply and price committees, and volunteer work days. Before that, he had been a leader of several land seizures that homeless settlers carried out by forcibly occupying vacant state or private lots, where they would raise a shack of cardboard or sheets, with no protection other than their organization and determination, as well as the inevitable Chilean flags they hoisted like a shield. 'Choño' knew that struggle like the back of his hand. A man born and raised in the neighborhoods, a fighter for his livelihood, since he was a child he was the creator of his own life with more imagination than money, good at telling jokes, a friend to his friends, a conversationalist, a flirt, a lover of good food and good wine." Manuel Guerrero regained his freedom shortly after and continued working in the underground until March 1985, when he was kidnapped by agents of the Carabineros Communications Directorate (Dicomcar) and had his throat slit along with two other communist leaders on the shoulder of a rural road in the western zone of Santiago.

ALONGSIDE VÍCTOR JARA

With his picturesque and clear language, "Choño" stood out among his companions. He spoke without beating around the bush, without mincing words. When discussions became tangled, he used to say that the most important thing was to know that imperialism was the fundamental enemy; having that clear, there were no problems with the rest.

Despite having completed only a few years of primary school, he possessed a broad culture, the product of his self-taught efforts. He was accustomed to carrying a book that he read with care and later discussed with anyone willing to listen.

With the same simplicity with which he spoke in the neighborhoods, he addressed university students who always invited him to their events, talks, and forums. With his characteristic countenance and figure, with his bowed legs and enthusiasm that stood up to any test, he was wherever he was needed.

He was inexhaustible. His contagious enthusiasm captivated Víctor Jara, who let himself be led by "Choño" through the marginal neighborhoods of the country, getting to know the marrow of the working-class suburbs and the trembling flesh of poverty.

The vital rhythm of both amalgamated and grew, so it was common to see them enter and leave, talk and argue, overwhelming everything with their programs in various neighborhoods and communes of Santiago.

José Manuel Parada used to say that if the fever of "Choño" and Víctor had infected all young communists, they would have ended up dedicated exclusively to community work. From that relationship between the two innate activists was born the collection of songs by Víctor Jara that, gathered on a long-playing record, bore precisely the name La Población.

Since he settled in Santiago, Manuel Sanhueza lived in Quinta Normal and regularly stopped by the PC local where he was a militant, at the base of the Paula Jaraquemada neighborhood, in the old Carrascal district, whose militants were quite undisciplined but among the most combative when it came to defending the popular government.

The mere presence of "Choño" brought order to the most heated meetings. Sanhueza would begin his intervention by taking off his watch, which he placed on the table, and with his characteristic voice, he would say: "Compañeros, what the hell is going on?" And immediately, calmly, he would begin to enumerate the difficulties until reaching the responsibilities; and then his voice would rise, he would strike his fist on the table cover, and finish by sentencing: "And now, compañeros… the fooling around is over!" He always made time to teach the most diligent how to lead a meeting, how to write a political report, how to organize a march… In the end, with everyone more relaxed, he would invite them to talk over a bottle of red wine at "Don Rigo's," a recreational tavern in the Tropezón square, by Walker Martínez and Mapocho, in a diamond tip where it was said that the brave died. In mid-1972, he was sent to Arica to support the communist youth work in the 1973 parliamentary campaign. His efforts and those of his companions led the PC to elect two deputies: Oriel Viciani, in Arica; and Vicente Atencio, in Iquique. "Choño" had fallen in love with a "jotosa" (Communist Youth member)—Cecilia Rojas Orellana—and they decided to get married, settle in the city of eternal spring, and join the tasks of supporting Salvador Allende's government. In Arica, the coup caught him by surprise, but he was not daunted. He assumed the role of clandestine regional secretary of the "Jota" and faced the problems head-on. He tried to reorganize the party, traveled through the towns of the zone encouraging the militants, created a clandestine newspaper, and it occurred to him to call for small meetings on the beaches. It was too much, and his name was already on all the wanted lists carried by the agents of repression.

THE DETENTION

At four in the morning on July 10, 1974, a military intelligence patrol violently broke into "Choño's" home, in the Venceremos neighborhood—later 11 de Septiembre and today Cardenal Silva Henríquez—and along with his pregnant wife, his brother-in-law, and his father-in-law, he was taken to the Rancagua regiment, which was commanded by Colonel Odlanier Mena.

Manuel Sanhueza was subjected to savage torture for 17 days. He was even taken to a foothills sector where they continued to flagellate him for another two days, hanging him naked in the open air, enduring the altiplano cold.

On July 27, the three men were taken out of the Rancagua regiment and driven to Carabineros facilities in Pisagua. On the morning of the 28th, the brother-in-law and father-in-law were taken to Arica and locked in the prison camp, from where they were taken to the Military Prosecutor's Office.

There, an official read them a telegram stating that Manuel Sanhueza had died in a fishing accident along with two other common prisoners, with only the gendarme who was guarding them surviving, and that his body could not be recovered.

Cecilia, "Choño's" wife, lost the child she was expecting due to the torture to which she was subjected. She, her brother, and her father searched for Manuel fruitlessly, until they could no longer go on.

The woman left for exile. Only on June 18, 1990, at the Legal Medical Service of Iquique, did María Maluenda, mother of José Manuel Parada, recognize the corpse of "Choño" found in the Pisagua grave. He had been tortured with malice and brutality.

Obviously, they did not manage to extract any denunciation from him. Had he done so, many people would have fallen, given the knowledge Sanhueza had of his organization, both at the local and national levels. His remains were transferred to Concepción, where his family and the residents of Agüita de la Perdiz gave him a final burial.

THE PISAGUA CAMP

The first prison camp was built in the late 40s, during the presidency of Gabriel González Videla, as a detention center for communists. Located 192 kilometers north of Iquique, it was enabled again in the first days of the 1973 military coup.

Nearly 2,500 prisoners passed through there. The camp was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín. On May 6, 1974, the army moved the detainees to the second floor of a warehouse in the hamlet.

Ten days later, 126 common prisoners arrived; almost nothing has been known about them. Although there is no evidence of mass executions of common prisoners, as there are no complaints, in 1998 Carlos Herrera Jiménez, a former military intelligence agent, admitted to having participated in the execution of criminals and minors.

In 1973, Pisagua was a town with a military base and a prison. Most of the prisoners were locked in the 26 cells of the prison, ten of them two by four meters. The women remained captive in a building next to the theater.

In general, the prisoners came from different cities of the Norte Grande, while many others were former prisoners of the training ship Esmeralda and had been taken there on the freighter Maipo, of the Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores.

On the day of the coup, in Arica, Colonel Odlanier Mena Salinas assumed the role of the highest military authority of the province, seconded by his aide, Captain Ricardo Gaete, and Captain Patricio Varela as the public relations officer.

On that same date, a military tribunal in time of war was constituted, integrated by Mena himself plus the civil judge Humberto Retamal and Lieutenant Colonel Mario Carrasco González. A war council was also formed, composed of Lieutenant Colonels Eduardo Oyarzún Sepúlveda and Walter Luther Melcher and Majors Julio Salazar Lanteri, Hugo Sepúlveda Fuentes, and Luis Aguayo Benard.

The Military Intelligence Service (SIM) was in charge of the interrogations and surveillance of the political prisoners. For this, Lieutenant Colonel Eduardo Oyarzún, second commander of the Rancagua regiment, formed two groups: an operational command, in charge of Major Julio Salazar, and an intelligence command, under the command of Major Luis Aguayo.

Among the detainees, word spread that the group led by Aguayo Benard, seconded by Captain Patricio Padilla and non-commissioned officers Juan Cereceda Lawson, José Luis Catalán, Luis Carrera Bravo, Pedro Fuentes Carrasco, Sergio Mercado Valenzuela, and René Bravo Llanos, was in charge of the dirtiest work, such as torture, rape, and executions.

In charge of the military zone of the Norte Grande was General Carlos Forestier. In August 2015, Judge Carroza prosecuted retired non-commissioned officers Luis Carrera Bravo and Napoleón Ríos Carvajal for their responsibility in the kidnapping with homicide of Manuel Sanhueza.

Both are in Punta Peuco. Lawyer Adil Brkovic, meanwhile, a plaintiff in the process, is trying to find out what happened to Hugo Martínez Martínez and Henry Torres Flores, two alleged "criminals" alongside whom—according to the military—"Choño" had died.

Source: puntofinal.cl, March 4, 2016

Flora Sanhueza: Class-based Feminist Resistance

On September 18, 1974, Flora Sanhueza Rebolledo passed away—a libertarian sweetness amidst the saltpeter and the parched lands of the Chilean north. Her parents, Spanish anarchists who had gone into exile following the failure of the 1917 general strike and the subsequent repression, had made their way there.

In Iquique, the pain of spilled blood still hung in the air, as did the scent of the gutted screams of families machine-gunned by order of General Roberto Silva Renard, a lowlife with an extensive criminal curriculum, directly responsible for the massacres of striking saltpeter workers in 1907 and of citizens protesting the rising price of meat in Santiago in 1905.

Educated in an anarchist environment, with parents who followed the pedagogical principles of Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, Flora grew up among the dreams of daily struggle shared by the family’s friends and acquaintances—exiles who had arrived from everywhere, such as Juan De Marchi, that old anarchist who imbued a young Salvador Allende with humanism.

In 1935, at 23 years old, Flora decided to travel to Spain, to the roots of her conscience, to live the social changes taking place... until the death decreed by the fascist military arrived. The most precious good is freedom, and Flora Sanhueza defended it with faith and courage on the streets of Barcelona on July 19.

She would not put down her rifle and would march to the front with the Durruti Column.

After the Republican defeat, Flora and her partner, a Yugoslav communist, crossed into France to be interned in concentration camps, from which they managed to escape in 1942 to join the Resistance until the end of World War II.

Flora decided it was time to return to Chile. It was 1946, and the lawyer Gabriel González Videla had just won the election with the support of the Communist Party, to which he granted three ministerial portfolios.

Flora Sanhueza arrived in Chile in 1947 only to discover that González Videla had turned out to be a toad. Or, more accurately, a rat.

"González Videla is the rat who shakes his mane, full of manure and blood, over the land of mine that he sold. He has betrayed everything." Through the Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy, he banned the Communist Party and unleashed fierce repression against the labor movement.

Flora carried out a beautiful act of resistance. She created the Luisa Michel Libertarian Athenaeum, dedicated to the education of women who wove fishing nets. Education and the weaving of mutual support networks—even if from a position of practical clandestinity—were necessary to resist, as the times barely allowed for anything else when General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo succeeded González Videla in his second approach to the presidential chair.

The Athenaeum would become the Luisa Michel Libertarian School, also open to the children of the working class.

The school withstood all kinds of pressure until the beginning of 1960, but Flora remained deeply involved with her community in Iquique, providing support and warmth to anyone who needed it. Chile, held prisoner by the oligarchies that had sold it to British nitrate interests and American copper interests, was forging the Popular Unity to be returned to the hands of its people.

An old friend of the family, Salvador Allende, was reaching the presidency. And the usual suspects were once again decreeing death.

On September 11, 1973, Flora Sanhueza was placed under house arrest and subsequently transferred with her son, Héctor Pavélic, to the Pisagua concentration camp. The Pisagua concentration camp had been inaugurated by González Videla to stuff it with communist prisoners, and it was there that a lieutenant named Augusto Pinochet took his first steps.

Closed in February 1949, it was reopened by Ibáñez del Campo. In September 1973, it returned to operation under the command of another illustrious uniformed psychopath, Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín.

Executions and torture marked the day-to-day life in the facility. They hung Flora from a pillar and used her for target practice, missing on purpose, just to have a laugh. Many prisoners were buried in the sand up to their necks under the desert sun, while the military approached to urinate on their heads.

A young 19-year-old soldier, Michel Nash, refused to participate in the barbarity. He was executed by firing squad. Flora Sanhueza was brutally tortured, including being raped in front of her son.

Flora Sanhueza, 63 years old, her body broken, ended up admitted to the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago. She would die there on September 18, 1974. Her remains returned to Iquique, to a small piece of land, a garden of acacias.

Source: prensaopal.cl, March 7, 2020

History: A Name in a Telegram

In these days, a criminal complaint will be filed in Iquique seeking to reopen the case regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of the minor Henry Torres in 1974 in Pisagua, and to investigate the existence and fate of his companion, Hugo Martínez Martínez, who is absent from the Rettig and Valech Reports.

An important material finding—a telegram issued by the Army—could add a new name to the official list of the forcibly disappeared: number 1211.

"A letter has arrived for Mrs. Rogelia Flores Mejías. She must pick it up at the radio station." It seemed like a pedestrian phrase, just another message lost in the radio airwaves. It was not. When the woman arrived at the station, she learned that the letter had been written by Henry Torres Flores, her youngest son, who was informing her of his detention at the detention center the dictatorship had set up in Pisagua, a town located 192 kilometers north of Iquique. "My dear and remembered mommy, I hope that upon receiving this letter you are in very good health, as well as my brothers and sisters. I am in fair health, and after greeting you, I proceed to tell you the following: Mom, this is very sad for you if Dad hasn't written to let you know that I am detained in Pisagua, together with my uncle Hugo. Mommy, when you find out the reason why at the courthouse, don't be surprised, everything has an explanation," begins the missive dated July 23, 1974, in which he requests money and toiletries. The information was disturbing but not alarming. Despite being only 15 years old, Henry no longer lived with his mother in Calama. Without finishing school and with the boldness of someone who matures early in difficult circumstances, he had traveled to the San Carlos neighborhood of Iquique to work with his father as a laborer, unloading trucks. Sometimes he returned to Calama, sometimes he did not.

That he was detained along with other common prisoners for violating the curfew, as the paper narrated, was a possibility at the time. With the letter in her hands, Rogelia went to buy cigarettes, a notepad, toilet paper, and razor blades.

She took the identity card her son had forgotten in Calama and set off for the Sixth Army Division with the certainty that she would once again take care of her offspring. She was probably reassured by the fact that Henry was not alone.

He was accompanied by "Uncle Hugo," whom she did not know, but who had written the letter. Henry was illiterate. One thing did worry her. The letter, smuggled out by some detainee from the concentration camp, was stamped by the Army with the word "censorship." That is why she preferred not to carry it with her.

She did well. When she arrived, Pedro Collao Martí, head of Intelligence for the Sixth Army Division command, told her categorically that there was no record of her son's detention and asked her for the letter back.

She never handed it over, just as she never saw her son again. Rogelia died on New Year's Day 2009, years after the father of her children. Today, that letter, zealously kept by the mother, is the only memory the Torres Flores family retains of the disappeared teenager.

The most important thing, however, was that the letter constitutes compelling physical evidence to determine the detention and disappearance of Henry, and also, in light of a new piece of information, the existence and fate of "Uncle Hugo," until now a "ghost" in the judicial process.

The Uncle Hugo Martínez from Antofagasta

Florencio Torres Flores lives today in Iquique, the same city where he was born. He is the eldest of Henry's three brothers. Including him, there were six. As a twenty-something in the early seventies, he went to live in Calama.

All the brothers left with their mother, but he says that Henry always returned to his father because he did not like going to school and, for that reason, was illiterate. "There was no way to restrict him.

But he was a normal boy, cheerful, he laughed with everyone, played with everyone, like any child. He didn't participate in political parties, I think, if he didn't know how to read or write. None of us participated in politics either," he recalls.

When in mid-1974 they denied Henry's presence in Pisagua, he accompanied his mother to file a complaint at the first court of Iquique for alleged disappearance. In addition to the letter, over the years other common prisoners from the infamous detention center gave them more information about Henry. "Inside Pisagua, there were many people we knew who told us that Henry had been 'taken out' (murdered).

That's why when my mom went to look for him, they told her he wasn't there and they wanted to take the letter from her. Now my brother Pascual has the letter. They made copies and put them in the case file.

To this day we think he might appear, alive or dead, but my mommy passed away with that pain. She told me, 'You are going to have to follow the steps I have followed, as the eldest brother that you are,'" he says. During the dictatorship, they never received an answer.

Only in democracy did the PDI (Investigations Police) arrive to take their statement regarding Henry's case. "That was when they asked us for the first time about 'Uncle Hugo,' but we didn't know anything.

We knew about him through the letter Henry sent to my mom; we never saw him before, we don't know if he was young or old, we only knew he was named in the letter. Perhaps my brother Pascual knew him." The information was completed some time ago by Freddy Alonso, a former political prisoner who has meticulously reconstructed the history of the Pisagua detention and torture center.

It was he who found a key piece of data: the surname of Henry's companion. He asked Pascual Torres Flores who "Uncle Hugo" was, and he replied, "Hugo Martínez, a friend of my brother from Antofagasta."

Death in Pisagua

Freddy Alonso was detained in Iquique in November 1973. A Public Administration technician and member of the MAPU, he remained in Pisagua for a year and then served a two-year residency sentence in Iquique. His investigations into the crimes in Pisagua led him to work closely with Sola Sierra, the emblematic president of the AFDD (Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared).

He is the former detainee who knows the most about what happened during the short but lethal existence of this concentration camp. "I started investigating while I was a prisoner. And this is something I am not ashamed to tell: I wrote everything down on small pieces of paper that I took out in my backside when I was released.

When we arrived at the village of Huara with the military patrol, we entered a restaurant where there were some comrades; I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom and put the papers in my shoes." That is how Freddy Alonso began the reconstruction of a history that became the book "The Truth of Pisagua," published in 2004.

The Pisagua prison camp was set up in the first days after the 1973 Coup and was used for those persecuted by the civil-military dictatorship until May 6, 1974, when the army transferred all political prisoners to the second floor of a supermarket in the same hamlet.

Ten days later, 126 common prisoners arrived at the camp, where Freddy returned every morning, along with two conscripts, to fetch the pots (30-liter containers) and take them to the improvised new detention center.

Once there again, he was a witness to the treatment the military gave to the common prisoners—the same treatment they gave to them—and which he has testified to before Ministers Juan Guzmán, Daniel Calvo, Joaquín Billard, and Mario Carroza. "Through Pisagua passed the sick mentality of Nazism; practically a sort of morbidity and sadism was developed on the part of our guards: beatings, floggings, torture, mock executions, and executions." A fact that Alonso could never forget was the entry of the 126 common prisoners into Pisagua while he was going to get those pots.

According to his account, "the commander Ramón Larraín Larraín, in charge of the concentration camp, asked them, 'Who are the young ladies coming in this group?' He asked again kindly, but on the third time he shouted, 'Who the fuck are the faggots coming in this group?' Eighteen came out. 'And who are the little boyfriends?'...

He paired them up himself, raised his hand, a Pegaso truck appeared, and they were loaded onto it, headed north. I never saw them again."

Although there is no evidence of mass executions of common prisoners, as there are no complaints, in 1998 Carlos Herrera Jiménez, a former CNI agent and confessed murderer of Tucapel Jiménez, shed some light on the internal workings of the camp in an interview with Mónica González.

Stationed in Pisagua for the coup, he admitted to having participated in the execution of criminals and minors and said that there was a time when executions followed one after another. Although the Chilean Army, on the occasion of the Roundtable Dialogue, acknowledged having executed Henry Torres Flores in July 1974 in the town of Pisagua, nothing is known about the details of his death or the identity of those responsible.

The case of Hugo Martínez Martínez is even worse, as no one ever filed any appeal for him, and he does not appear in any State report.

This nebula, however, could be cleared up in light of a new piece of information.

New Evidence: An Army Telegram

Human Rights lawyer Adil Brkovic will file a legal action for the first time to find the whereabouts of Hugo Martínez Martínez. This is within the framework of a complaint demanding the reopening of the case of Henry Torres Flores for qualified kidnapping, which had been temporarily dismissed.

Brkovic found his name a few months ago, for another case. Investigating the responsibility of Enrique Fuenzalida Puelma (military prosecutor of Arica between April 1974 and June 1976) in the death of another detainee, Manuel Sanhueza Mellado, he gained access to important material reported by the Army: a half-burned telegram that accounts for the final fate of Henry and "Uncle Hugo." Officially, the telegram, which bears the stamps and signature of the VI Division of the Chilean Army, reports that Mr.

Manuel Sanhueza Mellado drowned on October 2, 1974, in Pisagua, in a fishing accident, together with the common criminals Henry Torres Flores and Hugo Eugenio Martínez Martínez. "The determining fact is that the military, through this telegram, declares them dead along with Sanhueza, a communist leader detained in Arica on July 10, 1974, and transferred to that prison camp on July 28 together with his father-in-law and brother-in-law, being executed by firing squad, presumably, the same day he arrived.

It is anecdotal that the telegram is dated the same day the prison camp was officially closed," explains Brkovic. Manuel Sanhueza was found in the clandestine grave of Pisagua on June 2, 1990, when the Vicariate of Solidarity found twenty corpses arranged by date of execution in the town cemetery.

It was a discovery that had been anticipated by Human Rights organizations, but which nonetheless shocked the entire country. This important evidence is in the file currently in the possession of the visiting minister Mario Carroza Espinosa, within the framework of the investigation into the aggravated kidnapping of Manuel Sanhueza Mellado, and accompanies the criminal complaint that Florencio Torres Flores will file against all those who result responsible as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups of the crime of qualified kidnapping of his younger brother.

Brkovic reflects on the motivations for these absurd crimes. "We have no explanation for the executions of Torres and Martínez, except for 'social cleansing,' which was one of the dictatorship's criteria for executing people, in addition to those they considered militarily dangerous.

And it is important to investigate the death of Hugo Martínez, because by doing so, dignity is returned to the victim, regardless of their social status, and it dignifies us all as a society."

Source: the clinic.cl, February 9, 2016

An Experience of Theatrical Imposition or Resistance in Pisagua, 1973.

Before 1973, Pisagua consisted of a small village, a military base, and a prison. After the coup d'état of September 11, it was transformed into a concentration camp for political prisoners, through which nearly 2,500 people passed. The camp was under the control of the 6th Division of the Chilean Army and under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín.

Most of the prisoners were locked in the facilities of the Pisagua prison. Its 26 cells (10 of them 2x4 meters) came to house 500 male prisoners. The women, for their part, remained locked in a building next to the village theater.

While it was in operation, no visits from the prisoners' families were allowed, nor were visits from the Red Cross or other humanitarian and religious organizations. In that place, political prisoners were subjected to systematic torture, illegitimate coercion, physical and psychological rape, executions, humiliations, and abuse. [1]

History illustrates that it was not the first time that Pisagua was used as a detention camp for political prisoners; something similar had already occurred during the González Videla government (1946-1952), in 1946, when the "cursed law" was enacted against all opponents of that government, especially against the Communist Party of Chile.

Thus, forced at first, the detainees in 1973 had to summon the courage to create a theater group that would help them keep their morale high, recreate themselves, and why not, generate a form of resistance against the torture to which they were subjected daily.

I proceed to provide the background of that theatrical event in the words of its own protagonists. Raúl Rodríguez [2] recalls:

"The truth is that together with the prisoners of that time, we began to ask ourselves what we were doing, because we felt the need to 'unplug' from so much nonsense that had come down on us. So it occurred to us to create a theater group; this was very similar to what the other work groups were: the carpenters, the bricklayers, and the road workers...

So we occupied the Municipal Theater and organized performances every Sunday from six to eight in the evening. The truth is that the leadership commanding the camp also realized that they had to give an escape valve to the matter, and they authorized us.

I remember it was Commander Larraín. Subsequently, the guards that followed adopted the same procedure... Of course, we worked to a full house. All the military and the political prisoners went... We never lacked an audience. It was faithful. (Laughs)... In the morning, an ecumenical mass was held with the participation of all religious creeds...

In that group, we had many valuable people: René Medina, Guillermo Morales, Freddy Alonso, Marino Jiménez, Ormazábal, the 'choro' Granaderos, and a gentleman who sang tangos. In time, we mounted one of the great works, Johnny Good, which was an extraordinary work because we even had the church harmonium that ended up in the theater.

The master of the harmonium was Guillermo Morales... One of the good librettists we had was the lawyer Raúl Hidalgo Guerrero. Now I remember that Raúl made a play that was the defense that Arturo Prat made, in his capacity as a lawyer, in favor of Luis Uribe, in an episode of his life that he had with an uncontrolled love.

Doctor Vladislav Kusmicic also worked with us... We even had a folk group called Voces del Desierto (Voices of the Desert). René Medina, Kusmicic, and two other people I don't remember were there... Thus, the program varied between tangos, folklore, sketches, and comedians, the latter directed by Marino Jiménez.

We even had an animal circus... All the dogs in Pisagua disappeared there (Laughs)... And the whole program was sponsored by the La Pisagüeña Residential. Its slogan was 'twelve go, ten arrive' (Laughs).

Cruel joke... The reaction of the military when they saw the performances was good, although sometimes the comedians 'went too far' and made some parodies or threw some jabs at the military. Famous was, for example, 'Mucho Moco' (Much Snot), which was an allusion to a lieutenant. There were several difficult situations that were solved with the prison guards.

With all the cruelty that was happening, it was necessary to find a lifeline... I think this theatrical management has been little valued. Well, Freddy Alonso has made it known in his book about Pisagua...

I remember that for December of '73 we made a living nativity scene; Mr. Arturo Carvajal played the baby Jesus and we accommodated him in a manger. After that Christmas activity, the theater matter continued to develop until the beginning of the year 1975, when the prison population began to drop, as the War Councils were issuing rulings that decided how many were executed, how many were relegated to other sites, or released...

At the same time, some artists left us. When there were fewer of us, we were taken out of the prison and we were housed where the market used to be, next to the theater. There, the activity died. There were very few of us left." [3]

Guillermo Morales evokes

"The first show we had to do was imposed by Commander Larraín as a result of the women who fell into a state of incongruity; they didn't want to eat and the command was worried. So it occurred to him to gather us all and he said to us: 'Is there a funny guy, some wretch who has a talent to cheer up his own comrades a little?' Then a comrade appeared whose name is Andrés Daniel, a radio announcer...

Andrés Daniel, at gunpoint, had to point out. We even complained to him about why he was making this terrible invitation to us. So they gathered all of us who had any possibility of doing some art and gave us ten minutes to organize ourselves to do a show the next day, for the benefit of our comrades.

It was madness. Nobody could do anything. A lieutenant took us out around twelve. Scared, we left thinking they were going to torture us, but no, it was to gather us and agree on what we were going to do the next day...

We did something, we planned something. And we came to this theater... The women were seated every other seat. Upstairs was full of military guards, with bullets chambered. Commander Larraín was located here, on this side.

The prisoners were every other seat and the rest standing in the back... To start the show, the commander reads a sentence and then shouts: 'Now, already, the funny guys.' With that stage, with that audience, with that tension, we started a sketch.

The host, that same night, due to the incommunicado status of certain military personnel, was tortured, they beat him. He had an ulcer. They left the poor 'negro' for history. He was our host that morning.

So he said: 'If they want to kill me, let them kill me right now. I'm not hosting anything. I'm not presenting anything.'... The commander shouted: 'Well, what time are you going to start?'... We pushed him, we told him: 'Negro, do it for us, do it for the comrades, do it for the women.' And as best he could, he went out and announced the first show.

We went out with four comrades to do a sketch. It turned out terribly boring... We went back in ashamed, but we insisted again. It seems the women gave us the encouragement... Since there wasn't much lighting, we managed to see the first and second rows and we saw that the women wanted to smile a little.

That encouraged us and we did the same sketch again... This time they died of laughter, they smiled... There, the same 'negro' got excited and announced a singer, Chico Carter, a comrade from Valparaíso, a singer of tangos.

He sang really beautifully. A lieutenant handed him a guitar. He plucked the guitar well... He plucked... Fumando espero (Smoking I Wait), he was going to sing, but the song wouldn't come out. There the commander shouted: 'Good, imbecile... are you going to sing or not?' So he left...

Right there we brought him. On the third attempt, the song came out. He sang beautifully. There everyone applauded, even the military. That was the first performance and then others came that were obtained.

Thus, the theater took off; we even managed to compose a musical comedy. The benefits we achieved with these presentations were so great that they brought us here next door, to the supermarket as it was called; they assigned us bunks, blankets, and the treatment of us improved.

We had seventy actors on stage in the comedy of the great love of Johnny Good... We had three premieres of the comedy... Even the youngest ones acted in the play. There were comrades who were seventeen or sixteen years old.

They didn't have the personality to get on stage, but they knew the play by heart. They were gangsters on one side and gangsters on the other, whatever... They were incorporating themselves on their own... 'Will I do it well?' they asked.

I told them: 'But if you know the character'... 'Yes, I made myself a machine gun, why as a gangster?' They had their uniforms, their makeup, they knew everything, so it was just going and incorporating themselves...

We made the play musical because next door in the chapel there was a harmonium and we brought it... There was singing. There was poetry. There was everything. But above all things, there was a lot of camaraderie, a lot of friendship. Everyone, everyone was friends... That gave us more strength to endure all the nonsense, all the humiliations we suffered here." [4]

Freddy Alonso (2004) specifies

"On Sunday, May 26, at 6:00 PM, previously planned by those of us who participated in the shows, several comrades who were being interrogated and beaten wanted to continue participating, because their reasoning was that this was the last performance, due to the war council that was coming, therefore they wanted to say goodbye to all their comrades in whatever condition they were in.

A great gesture by these boys that was recognized by all of us.

In this show, a tribute was paid to Arturo Prat when he was a lawyer, regarding the defense he made of Lieutenant Uribe in the English courts; the author of this work was the prisoner-lawyer Raúl Hidalgo Guerrero. Subsequently, the musical work The Love Story of Johnny Good or Juan Bueno was repeated, where most of the artists who were going to the council participated." (212)

It is very difficult to imagine that in that site with a deep and painful history, a conglomerate of men had the courage and the predisposition to create and express themselves through the theatrical genre. Despite the mark of pain, this brutal example reveals to us how theater is a cruel testimony of the history lived a few decades ago in our country. [5]

The accounts of the detainees are chilling, even more so when we conjecture that in the same room where they presented their works, the screams of the tortured resonated in the midst of that demented ritual officiated by the agents of the State.

We can speculate that in the face of those inhuman circumstances, theater served as a way to exorcise cruelty and suffering; it allowed the expression of many messages that political prisoners had to hide or simulate in front of their jailers; likewise, it was a support to deploy creativity and the need to believe in another world: better and more just.

Cited Sources

ALONSO, La Verdad de Pisagua 1973-1974. Ediciones Campus. Iquique, 2004. SALVATIERRA, Hugo. Chacabuco Voces del Desierto. Pehuén Editores, 1994. Report of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech Commission Report) Website: http://www.derechoshumanos.net/paises/America/derechos-humanos-Chile/informes-comisiones/comision-nacional-prision-politica-y-tortura.htm.

The true story of Jhonny Good www. cinetecadigita

[1] Valech Report. During the government of Ricardo Lagos (2003), the creation of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture was ordered, chaired by Monsignor Sergio Valech. It was an organization created to clarify the identity of the people who suffered deprivation of liberty and torture for political reasons, by acts of State agents or persons in their service, in the period between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1990, during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. [2] Interview conducted in 2016 with this former announcer of Radio Esmeralda and Radio Lynch of Iquique. [3] In the newspaper El Tarapacá on October 31, 1973, the execution was reported, among others, of José Demóstenes Rosier Sampson Ocaranza, Public Relations Officer of the Municipality of Iquique, theater actor, and socialist militant, referring to the alleged participation of those convicted in a plan destined to provoke civil war in Chile and the rebellion of the Armed Forces. [4] www. cinetecadigital.ccplm.cl [5] A similar experience that demonstrates how art allowed a little light to be given to the consciences locked in concentration camps is the one that was lived at the same time in the Chacabuco Office, where political prisoners organized a song festival. See Recuerdos de un campo de concentración by Hugo Salvatierra, in the text Chacabuco Voces del Desierto. Pehuén Editores, 1994.

Source: edicioncero.cl, October 27, 2016

Source: The true story of Jhonny Good

Brief review of military plots in Chile

Salvador Allende trusted in the loyalty of General Augusto Pinochet. He believed that a large part of the Army and the Carabineros would remain faithful to the Constitution and the legitimate government of the Unidad Popular. But that was not the case.

There were many precedents that demonstrated the tradition of coups, both within the Armed Forces and the Carabineros. Allende and many of his collaborators had suffered it firsthand, since the first decades of the 20th century.

The names of the conspirators were repeated over and over again in the uprisings promoted from military salons or clubs. Nevertheless, it seems that no one in the UP measured in its true dimension what that would mean for the country.

Two plots by uniformed personnel were recorded in 1955, under the government and sponsorship of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. They were known as Puma (For A Better Tomorrow) and Línea Recta (Straight Line). Although several of those involved were sanctioned, the majority remained in important political and military positions from where they—finally—fostered the military coup of 1973.

Carlos Ibáñez, a former dictator, was elected president in 1952 with 46.8% of the vote. He arrived at La Moneda without the support of any of the traditional parties, but in the arms of groups that showed clear disgust toward political conglomerates. In his campaign, Ibáñez accused politicians of being unpatriotic and incited the citizenry against them.

Six years earlier, in 1946, the radical lawyer Arturo Olavarría Bravo—they called him “Pitín”—founded the Chilean Anticommunist Action, ACHA, ahead of the presidential elections of September of that year. Its purpose was to fight against communists and ensure they were marginalized from the political system.

Olavarría had been Minister of Agriculture and Minister of the Interior under Pedro Aguirre Cerda and, from the latter position, he sent Jorge González von Marées, leader of the local National Socialists, to an insane asylum. In 1946, after the death of President Juan Antonio Ríos, “Pitín” faced Gabriel González Videla in the internal primaries of the Radical Party, where he was defeated.

Shortly after, he met the young lawyer Jorge Prat Echaurren, grandson of the Chilean naval hero, and they formed ACHA, requesting funds from the U.S. government for their “war” against communism. In 1952, Olavarría was the generalissimo of Ibáñez’s campaign and later his Foreign Minister and Minister of the Interior.

The Puma military group was organized after the 1952 elections, when it was thought that Ibáñez’s victory might be rejected by the right. Then, in 1955, Línea Recta emerged to support Ibáñez following the departure from the government of the Popular Socialist and Agrarian Labor parties, pillars of Ibañismo.

Jorge Prat, meanwhile, had founded the nationalist magazine Estanquero in 1946, whose director was Rafael Valdivieso Ariztía, who thirty years later would be secretary of the Council of State, a creation of General Pinochet’s dictatorship.

THE LÍNEA RECTA

Prat Echaurren appeared involved in the Línea Recta conspiracy, formed by Army and Air Force officers who supported Ibáñez. The conspirators intended to remove the leadership of the Armed Forces and carry out a coup d'état.

On February 22, 1955, Ibáñez met with 58 conspirators at his residence at Dublé Almeyda 2854. One of the leaders of the officers participating in the meeting was Major Roberto Viaux Marambio, a persistent conspirator in the late 60s and early 70s.

Prat drafted a manifesto for Línea Recta where he called on the “healthy and uncontaminated inhabitants of the country to unite around a plan of austerity, progress, and well-being, together with clean, patriotic, and capable men, possessed by the fervor of service to the fatherland.” He stated that “the country is mired in an incredible degree of prostration, moral and material decay, and political anarchy,” because “electoral partisanship has made the country a land of conquest, dividing Chileans.” He also warned “that the treacherous forces of international communism are alert to take advantage of the chaos and disintegration.”

After the meeting with the uniformed men, Ibáñez asked Olavarría to join Línea Recta.

The conspirators were discovered and the movement was reported to the commander-in-chief of the Army, General Raúl Araya Stiglich. On May 19, 1955, the military prosecutor of the Second Army Division, Colonel (J) Máximo Honorato Cienfuegos, initiated a process against those involved, initially titled “for sedition” and later replaced by “transgression of discipline.” On December 21, 1955, the military judge General Horacio Gamboa (author of a coup attempt in March 1970) issued a sentence and dismissed the case against those involved, considering that they had not committed a crime.

The Court Martial subsequently accepted an appeal against that resolution and sentenced General Ramón Salinas Figueroa, Squadron Commander Oscar Squella Avendaño, Flight Captain Carlos Arredondo, and Captain Hugo Barros Barros to be removed from the Armed Forces. Regarding 19 other defendants, it recommended the application of administrative disciplinary measures.

SURPRISING COUP-PLOTTING LINKS

In 2011, Doctor of History María Elisa Fernández, an academic at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Chile and current advisor to the Foreign Ministry, published research on Puma and Línea Recta and their relationship to the 1973 military coup.

She states that an analysis of military literature from the early 20th century reveals a political-ideological discourse that characterizes Chilean soldiers as possessing particular qualities, such as moral superiority, patriotism, and nationalism; and that they define themselves as saviors of Chilean society.

Therefore, she adds, some officers would see their participation in politics in the 50s as the duty of a patriotic soldier, rather than as a military-political intervention.

Fernández maintains that in the Military School and the War Academy, training, preparation in barracks, and assigned missions force the military to develop relationships of friendship, connections, and loyalties that give rise to a feeling of belonging to a corporation with common interests, forming a kind of “military class.”

To reconstruct these movements and achieve an analysis of the composition of each one, María Elisa Fernández reviewed personal files, service records, and court-martial reports—sources that had never been consulted before.

The historian analyzed the service records of 130 officers out of the 187 identified as members of Puma and/or Línea Recta. At the end of the Ibáñez government, only 25 of them were retired, and at least twenty remained in service by the 1970s. This means that a third of the high command—generals and colonels—was still in the Army for the 1973 coup.

“One of the most important duties of this group—and of the high command in general—is the control of education in military institutions. That is to say, those who integrated Línea Recta and Puma turned out to be influential in the new generations of officers; furthermore, they were the pillar of Pinochet’s coup d'état,” the researcher points out.

PF reviewed the backgrounds of the twenty officers who participated in Línea Recta and who remained in active service under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Among them stood out Víctor Barría Barría, deputy director of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) in 1973 and later head of the DINA in Buenos Aires, when General Carlos Prats, commander-in-chief of the Army during the Unidad Popular, was assassinated; Eduardo Gillmore Stock, brother of the military vicar; Camilo Valenzuela Godoy, the general who tried to prevent Allende from reaching the Presidency and who was involved in the assassination of General René Schneider, predecessor to General Prats; Ramón Larraín Larraín, the officer in charge of the Pisagua concentration camp in 1973; Manuel Pinochet Sepúlveda, directly responsible for the massacre of workers at the El Salvador copper mine in 1966; Mario Meneses Navarrete and Ernesto Guiraldes, former directors of the Army Factory and Arsenal (FAMAE). All of them, and the rest of the officers in service in 1973 who participated in Línea Recta in 1955, were professors at various military institutes under Pinochet’s de facto regime.

Other conspiracies

1932 COUP D'ÉTAT

On the night of June 4, 1932, accompanied by a hundred Alessandrist, socialist, and Ibañista adherents, Colonel Marmaduque Grove Vallejo entered La Moneda and addressed the president, the radical Juan Esteban Montero, who had succeeded the ousted Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo the year before.

“As commander-in-chief of the three branches of the Armed Forces, I have resolved to depose the government over which you preside and establish the Socialist Republic in Chile, in whose name I proceed to take command of the nation for the people of Chile and with the people of Chile,” Grove notified Montero.

A Government Junta was then installed that lasted twelve days in power (the so-called “Socialist Republic”), composed of General (r) Arturo Puga, the socialist Eugenio Matte, and the journalist Carlos Dávila. The Junta dissolved the Congress appointed by Ibáñez. It also pardoned the sailors convicted for the Squadron uprising.

On June 16, a military conspiracy accused Matte and Grove of leading the country toward communism. The press reported that two U.S. warships were heading to the Chilean coast to protect the lives and interests of American citizens.

Matte, Grove, and other socialists were taken prisoner and exiled to Easter Island. A state of siege was decreed, and Carlos Dávila, who overthrew his former comrades, assumed the presidency. His government lasted 89 days, until September 13, 1932, when he resigned, handed over power to his Minister of the Interior, and went into exile in the United States.

THE UPRISING OF ARIOSTO HERRERA

In 1939, Pedro Aguirre Cerda and the Popular Front were in power. The problems of anarchy experienced between 1924 and 1932 seemed to have been overcome. Alessandri had brought the country to an apparent calm, but on the right and among some uniformed officials, both active and retired, discontent grew with the “communoid regime of the black Aguirre,” as they disparagingly called the president.

A few officers showed their annoyance in poor ways. General Ariosto Herrera Ramírez, commander of the Second Division, was called to retirement. He had been a military attaché in Benito Mussolini’s Italy and did not hide his sympathies for him, nor for Hitler and Franco.

His anti-communism had led him to refuse to march in front of La Moneda on May 21, upon seeing red flags waving. He ordered them to be removed at the point of sabers and threats.

On August 25, 1939, Ariosto Herrera attempted to rise up against the government. He left his house at dawn and quartered himself in the Tacna regiment. Inside the barracks, he emboldened his officers: “Whoever is with me, one step forward.” Only two soldiers decided to take the step. That was the end of that coup adventure.

THE “LAS PATITAS DE CHANCHO” PLOT

Almost at the end of 1948, Gabriel González Videla enacted the Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy, intended to persecute communists. To secure his government, he formed a coalition he baptized as the “National Concentration cabinet,” composed of anti-communist radicals, liberals, conservatives, and members of a splinter faction of the PS.

In Argentina, General Juan Domingo Perón was in power, a personal friend of Carlos Ibáñez, with whom he shared ideas close to Italian fascism. Perón was convinced that Argentina had a divine destiny on the Pacific coast, and he saw in a possible Ibañista government the door to fulfilling his dream.

For this reason, he encouraged Ibáñez’s attempt to overthrow González Videla and/or win the 1952 elections later.

That year, Perón’s hand, after the thwarted coup attempts, appeared mentioned as an accomplice to the plot known as “Las patitas de chancho” (The Pig’s Trotters), in which a branch of the La Montaña Masonic lodge and military personnel sympathetic to a nationalist-style dictatorial government participated, which intended to depose González Videla and the entire political-party scene of the era to impose a nationalist military regime.

That conspiracy, developed between September and October 1948, had the goal of creating conditions for a coup d'état that would allow General Carlos Ibáñez to take power. The plot was named that way because the coup-plotting gatherings were held in a restaurant in San Bernardo whose specialty was the typical causeo of pig’s trotters.

COLLIGUAY CONSPIRACY

It occurred after the so-called Hunger March called by trade union organizations, such as the Confederation of Workers of Chile (CTCH), the Banking Federation, and popular organizations, such as the National Command Against Price Hikes and Speculation.

This action also appeared associated with the Agrarian Labor Party, the Ibañista coalition Popular Libertarian Alliance, and Raúl Ampuero’s Popular Socialist Party. It also counted on the support of leaders and militants of the illegal Communist Party, temporarily called the “Workers’ Party.”

The march took place on August 22, 1951, in Santiago, culminating in an event at Plaza Artesanos. Among the speakers were the communist leader Domiciano Soto and the popular socialist banking leader Edgardo Maass, who delivered incendiary speeches against the government.

The next day, news circulated of the kidnapping of both by Investigations agents, creating great social effervescence. The government offered rewards for information on the disappeared. On Sunday, August 26, Soto and Maass were found next to their armed guard—Carlos Fellemberg—in the vicinity of an abandoned mine in Colliguay. The purpose of the conspirators was to destabilize the government.

REBELLION AT THE WAR ACADEMY

In May 1967, the young officers of the Navy delivered a letter to their high command and political authorities where they stated “...the urgent need for better technical means and a salary increase.” The missive, termed by the press as the “Lieutenants’ Manifesto,” showed the restlessness of the middle ranks of the Navy, convinced of the negligence of their bosses and political authorities.

During those days, more than a hundred young Army officers also gathered at the Military Club. At the meeting, known as the “Pilsener Meeting,” the uniformed men deliberated on the economic situation affecting their institution.

The rebellion broke out on May 1st at the Army War Academy, when 98 student officers belonging to the regular and intelligence courses, through their head professors, presented their resignations to the institution.

At the Polytechnic Academy, meanwhile, another 54 officers made the same decision. That attitude, according to General (r) Horacio Toro Iturra, involved in the movement, began to be imitated in the other military institutes.

The unrest in the Army did not stop with the change of Minister of Defense or the new commander-in-chief. Moreover, it was channeled through two high-ranking officers who appeared as its natural leaders.

The Infantry and Armored officers identified with Major Arturo Marshall Marchesse; and those of Artillery, Engineering, and Cavalry, with General Roberto Viaux Marambio. Both officers, stubborn conspirators, would give people something to talk about in the following years.

By Manuel Salazar Salvo

Source: puntofinal.cl, September 15, 2017

Order to locate former uniformed personnel

The special judge Daniel Calvo Flores, who reactivated the Pisagua Case Roll No. 2.182-98 regarding the disappearance of ten people who were executed in that prison camp between September 29 and October 29, 1973, began the interrogation of former uniformed personnel, as well as the location of those who were in the cove at that time, one hundred kilometers from Iquique.

The judge will assemble next Monday in the cove with the defendants, among whom are the former vice-commander of the Army, General (r) Carlos Forestier, currently released on bail, and the non-commissioned officer (r) Miguel Chile Aguirre Alvarez, in addition to other former uniformed personnel.

The high-ranking officer, who was the former intendant of Tarapacá, would not participate because he is in delicate health.

The objective is to determine what happened to ten prisoners, seven of whose bodies have not been located.

SUMMONS

Judge Calvo, who began a series of interrogations on Tuesday, summoned the uniformed personnel Sergio Espinoza Davies, Patricio Williams Vega, Jorge Addison-Smith García, Ciro Casanueva Aguila, and Ricardo Ibarra Ceballos to testify at the Santiago Court of Appeals.

Yesterday, Sergio Benavides Villarreal, Arturo Contador Rosales, Roberto Ampuero Alarcón, Sergio Figueroa López, and Gabriel Guerrero Reeve were required to do so. Today, José Mario Vergara Bustos must appear.

Likewise, he issued an official letter to the General Staff of the Navy, in order to request the complete identity of whoever served as Maritime Mayor or Port Captain in the town of Pisagua between September 11, 1973, and December 31, 1980.

To the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie, he requested the list of all personnel who were assigned to the Pisagua Prison between September 11, 1973, and until that facility was in operation.

To the General Staff of the Army, he requested the identity of all health officers who were assigned to any of the units dependent on the VI Army Division, in the months of September 1973 to December 1974.

On the other hand, he issued an official letter to the General Directorate of Aeronautics in order for it to send the information from the records corresponding to non-commercial flights that landed or took off from the Iquique airport between the days of October 28 to November 2, 1973; the identity of both the captain of each aircraft and those who traveled as passengers must be specified.

The magistrate also asked the Army for the identity of Juan Aguirre Guaringua, or Guaringa, who was assigned to one of the units dependent on the VI Army Division starting in September 1973.

Likewise, he requested from the Civil Registry and Identification Service the death certificates of Ramón Larraín Larraín and Mario Acuña Riquelme.

Source: estrellaiquique.cl, July 10, 2003

The brave soldiers: Uniformed personnel assassinated for standing up to the Dictatorship

Military personnel, conscripts, airmen, sailors, and carabineros who to this day appear on the long and sad lists of the forcibly disappeared or victims of political executions left behind by the 17-year dictatorship.

Victims of their own institutions, these are soldiers who paid with their lives for refusing to be accomplices to the systematic human rights violations committed since September 1973. Michel Nash was executed by firing squad at age 19, and an “attempted escape” was invented to justify his death.

Mario Lavanderos was made to look like a suicide. Carlos Carrasco was murdered with chains at Villa Grimaldi. Three cases, out of more than fifty, which we examine in depth here and which demonstrate that the Chilean right was even willing to unleash its brutality upon “its own” with the goal of forever halting the threat to its privileges.

MICHEL NASH: “HE WANTED TO HAVE A WEAPON IN HIS HAND TO DEFEND HIS GOVERNMENT”

For Eduardo Juri, his cousin Michel Nash possessed a superior political consciousness and an uncommon capacity for organization. By age 16, he had already organized the people of his neighborhood—the Santos Dumont area in the Recoleta commune—around the Neighborhood Council and the JAP (Popular Supply Committees).

They formed a Popular Unity Committee which, according to Juri, “far surpassed the Communist Party.” “Michel was a communist, but he never limited himself to that,” he notes. In 1973, Michel entered military service at the Granaderos Regiment No. 2 in Iquique. “He was fully aware that a confrontation was coming, and he wanted to have a weapon in his hand to defend his government,” Eduardo emphasizes.

For that very reason, he decided to answer the call and fulfill what he believed at the time was his duty. On September 11, Nash realized immediately what was happening. His sister Leila recounts it thus: “He had been assigned to guard duty and saw the violence, the brutality, the raids, and for him, that was a savage blow.

It was not something he could accept,” she explains. It is for this reason that the following day, Michel requested his discharge. “I swore to defend the people of Chile, not those who carried out an institutional breakdown,” the 19-year-old would later say, according to accounts from other prisoners in Pisagua.

Referring to his resignation, Juri says there was no possibility his cousin would have done anything else. “He had a very clear political consciousness, very advanced for his age. We have no doubt that he was a leader and that he had a leftist group within the regiment.

And if they detained and killed him, it is because they knew he was dangerous,” he maintains. Nash left the Granaderos No. 2 and was immediately detained. They took him to the Telecommunications Regiment in Iquique, where they interrogated him, and from there to the Pisagua Concentration Camp “to suffer the unspeakable,” as Leila emphasizes.

The other prisoners, upon seeing him “shorn,” were suspicious. Only after they saw him arrive wounded and suffering after a torture session did they take him in and begin a relationship with him. On September 29, Michel was chosen along with a group of prisoners to perform carpentry work.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Larraín Larraín, the prisoners attempted to escape, an act for which they were allegedly put to death, applying the so-called “Ley de Fuga” (Escape Law). The body of the 19-year-old never appeared; it was not in the mass grave that was revealed years later.

According to Leila, his body was removed from the site along with those of two other murdered prisoners, then burned, pulverized, and thrown into the sea. In 2018, Michel’s mother passed away without ever knowing what happened to her son. “When my mom died last year, I took her ashes to the sea at Pisagua, a symbolic way for her to be reunited with my brother.

But in truth, if we stick to the testimonies, it is almost impossible for us to find him,” Leila concludes.

MARIO LAVANDEROS LATASTE: FOR THE FREEDOM OF FOREIGNERS

About five days before his death, Army Major Mario Lavanderos (37) had been appointed to direct the Foreigners Section of the National Stadium detention center. “He was simple and kind to everyone,” a friend of his states on the Memoria Viva portal.

It is believed that it was that same simplicity and sensitivity that led Lavanderos to compile a list of Uruguayan people deprived of liberty at the sports facility and deliver it to the then-ambassador of Sweden, Harald Edelstam, a recognized sympathizer of the Popular Unity and active in the rescue of political prisoners.

Lavanderos was shocked by the level of violence exercised against the prisoners, which is why it is thought he did not hesitate to expedite their release. On October 16, he signed a document granting freedom to 55 Uruguayan detainees, who were handed over as refugees.

However, Lavanderos was nervous. He was not sure of the “correctness” of his actions. Perhaps he imagined he could suffer reprisals. This is attested to by the then-Aviation Commander Leopoldo Moya Bruce, who left a record that the Army major was worried about his actions in favor of the foreign detainees.

However, the efforts had been initiated by his predecessor in the Foreigners Section of the National Stadium, Carlos Meirelles, who had established conversations with the Embassies of Uruguay, Sweden, and Panama to release nine Uruguayan citizens for their subsequent transfer to Cuba.

This is stated in the book Terrorismo de Estadio: Prisioneros de guerra en un campo de deportes (Stadium Terrorism: Prisoners of War in a Sports Field), by journalist Pascale Bonnefoy. Well then. On October 17, 1973, Lavanderos granted freedom to the Uruguayans and headed to the War Academy casino, where he prepared to have dinner.

At the location, he encountered Colonel David Reyes, who was drinking alcohol—a practice that, according to witnesses, was common. Lavanderos did not drink even a little, as stated in the ruling of case number 143 of the Military Prosecutor’s Office and in the breathalyzer test performed after his death.

Reyes asked the assistant waiter to go rest. But he did not leave and lay down on the floor behind the bar, surely to lock up after everyone left. Around 3:00 a.m., he heard a gunshot, so he entered the room quickly.

Immediately after, the sentry—Corporal 1st Class Francisco Lazar Muñoz—came down from the second floor, followed by the sergeant major of the guard. According to Lazar, Reyes asked him not to report the incident.

The assistant waiter maintains having seen Reyes trying to place a pistol in Lavanderos’s hand while he lay face down on the table in a pool of blood. As stated in the Prosecutor’s Office documents, Lavanderos was already dead. In March 1993, the Rettig Report determined that Major (Ret.) Mario Lavanderos Lataste was a victim of human rights violations committed by State agents.

CARLOS CARRASCO MATUS: A HUMANITARIAN SOLDIER

Carlos Carrasco Matus arrived almost by chance to be part of the intelligence apparatus that operated during the Pinochet dictatorship. In ’73, it was his turn to perform military service. As The Clinic reported in June 2015, his brother, Sergio, recounted that Carlos fell asleep on the day he was supposed to go to “get out of service.” That was how he was sent to fulfill what they call patriotic duty at the Buin Infantry Regiment. “Due to his good military record, he was incorporated into regular military service, reaching the rank of corporal second class in the Chilean Army.

Later, he was incorporated into the DINA, serving as a guard at the Tres Álamos prison camp in Santiago,” notes the Memoria Viva site. At 21, he had been a militant of the MAPU before entering the Army, secretary of his neighborhood council in Conchalí, and a student leader while studying at the Commercial Institute No. 5.

There, he met Luis Alejandro Fuentes Díaz. By the beginning of ’75, Carrasco Matus had already completed a year of military duties, so he was entitled to vacation. It was during this time, specifically on March 14, that he was detained at his home in the presence of his mother and brother.

Those who carried out his apprehension identified themselves as members of the DINA. That same day, they detained his friend Luis, and both were sent to Villa Grimaldi. According to a testimony provided by Fuentes in 1990, Carlos had entered the DINA against his will.

Based on what he told his friend while they were detained, he was chosen along with other young men to form a special repressive force. In Luis’s opinion, “it is evident that from then on, an entire inhumane existence began for Carlos.

Carlos described detention centers, as well as torture sessions he had to witness, including some in which he was forced to participate.” “Mauro”—as Carrasco was known when he served as a guard at the Tres and Cuatro Álamos detention centers—felt less bad doing that work than having to witness torture, according to Fuentes. “On countless occasions, he took out messages for family members who did not know the whereabouts of the ‘disappeared.’ Many times, he gave cigarettes or extra portions of food to those held there,” he asserts.

In that sense, his friend describes Carlos as someone who “was ideologically convinced of the necessity of the socialist transformation that Chile required.” Carlos’s entire family had a leftist tradition.

The Rettig Report points out that “apparently, he had been a member of a leftist party before September 1973. There are numerous testimonies from people who passed through that and other places who affirm with admiration and affection that there was a guard named ‘Mauro’ who was humanitarian and who tried to give them encouragement, making their lives in that center more bearable.” The Commission adds that “the DINA realized this and obtained proof that ‘Mauro’ was Carlos Carrasco and that he was providing information and names of prisoners who were there to leftist parties or their family members.” According to Luis, Carlos did not know at the beginning that the information he was providing was being used to alert comrades from the MAPU and the MIR. After a while—he recalls—“the leadership of the MIR demanded that Carlos be aware of how the information he gave to Alejandro was being used.” “It was a difficult situation, because it could mean significant dangers,” he adds. Carlos accepted, and from that moment on, he did so consciously. Once the DINA realized this situation and detained Carrasco in his own home, he was tortured in ‘the tower’ of Villa Grimaldi. Witnesses recount that screams of desperation could be heard. Carrasco cried because they shouted “traitor” at him: he knew that would lead to his death. Meanwhile, Norma Matus and Carlos Carrasco—the young man’s parents—did the impossible to find out their son’s whereabouts. The day after the detention, Orlando Manzo Durán—who at that time introduced himself as Aníbal Barrera—arrived at the family home asking for his son’s service weapon, saying that in three days he would be back. “However, Manzo Durán, two days later, went to the family’s home to notify them that Carrasco Matus ‘had escaped’,” the Rettig Report notes. Beaten with chains and in the hands of Army Colonel and DINA agent Marcelo Moren Brito, Carlos Carrasco lost his life after they left him dying in one of the back patios of Villa Grimaldi. It was never known what happened to his body.

Source: elciudadano.com, December 10, 2019

Minister Vicente Hormazábal sentences retired Army officers for the application of torture to 35 victims in Iquique and Pisagua

In the civil sphere, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa accepted, with costs, the claims for damages filed and ordered the state treasury to pay a total sum of $2,570,000,000 (two billion five hundred seventy million pesos) for moral damages to 33 of the victims.

The minister for extraordinary cases of human rights violations of the Courts of Appeal of Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta, Copiapó, and La Serena, Vicente Hormazábal Abarzúa, sentenced three retired Army officers for their responsibility in the repeated crime of applying torture to Juan Alberto Araya Álvarez, Nelson Eddy Clery Cabezas, Freddy Beder Alonso Oyanadel, Luis Alberto Caucoto Ortega, Guillermo Ernesto Morales Armas, Héctor Reinaldo Pavelic Sanhueza, Hugo Medardo Bolívar Salazar, Héctor Mateo Taberna Gallegos, Luis Emilio Morales Marino, Alberto Orlando Viveros Madariaga, Juan Enrique Mercado Jordán, Eduardo Bernal Acuña, Haroldo Segundo Quinteros Bugueño, Miguel Belisario Cabrera Riquelme, Ornaldo Jesús Bacian Callpa, Rigoberto Orlando Echeverría Allende, Ángel Gabriel Prieto Henríquez, Francisco Germán Prieto Henríquez, Manuel Evaristo Espinoza Godoy, Juan Luis Gómez Guerrero, Carlos Antonio Lillo Quea, Juan Antonio Prieto Henríquez, Luis Pedro Caroca Vásquez, Manuel Guillermo Jiménez Méndez, Óscar Fernando Pizarro Talamilla, Raúl Ángel Díaz Bravo, José Ramón Steinberg Montes, Vladislav Dusan Kuzmicic Calderón, Juan Rolando Morales Herrera, Luis Rafael Alberto Angulo Córdova, Héctor Francisco Inostroza Núñez, Orlando Herrera Pinto, Luis Segundo González Vivas, Ernesto Paul Montoya Peredo, and Sylvia Amanda Urtubia Bobadilla. These crimes were committed in the city of Iquique and the town of Pisagua, during various periods between 1973 and 1974. In the ruling (case file 21-2012, Volume A), the visiting minister sentenced Pedro Santiago Collado Martí to 15 years in prison as the perpetrator of the crime against 29 victims. Meanwhile, Conrado Vicente García Giaier must serve 13 years in prison for his responsibility in the case of 13 victims, and Arturo Alberto Contador Rosales 8 years of imprisonment for his responsibility in the case of eight victims. In the ruling, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa established the following facts: a) That starting on September 11, 1973, countless people from Iquique—sympathizers, supporters, or members of the Communist, Socialist, or MAPU political parties—were detained, being accused in some cases of specific acts, such as organizing plans to poison the city’s water, assaulting barracks, belonging to paramilitary groups, kidnapping children of military personnel, organizing, carrying out, and participating in clandestine meetings, stockpiling weapons, and seizing public services, communications, and the port by force of arms, among others, without any accusation other than their sympathy, closeness, or membership in a leftist political party that, at the time, was constituted and operating within the institutional legality of the country, or being a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). b) That all these people, men and women of varying ages—a group ranging from adolescents to middle-aged people—by orders of General Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen (deceased), commander-in-chief of the VI Army Division and head of the State of Siege zone of the Tarapacá Province, were taken, in the case of men, to the Sixth Army Division or the First Carabineros Police Station of Iquique, and that part of their detention invariably ended at the Telecommunications Regiment of the time, a place where they were placed in what could be called patios, and then separated by political affiliation or other reasons into containers, “pigsties” (a site where the military raised pigs), or oases (a sector where there was vegetation). Everyone’s data was requested by Army personnel, with a portion of these people being interrogated in a sector of the unit located on a second floor, presumably in the building corresponding to the infirmary, and a number of them tortured in various forms and intensities, depending on the political importance the military regime attributed to them, and then, taking into account that same imputed political relevance, they were transferred to Pisagua immediately or after a few days, normally in trucks, at early or late hours of the day, guarded by personnel from the same branch of the Armed Forces. c) That, in the case of women, their passage was through the Logistics Battalion, being controlled by Army personnel. Next, they were transferred to the Buen Pastor, guarded by nuns, where they had to share space with prisoners for common crimes, and then they were sent to Pisagua, where they were kept detained on the second floor of a theater under armed guard. d) That the Pisagua Prisoner Camp was directed by Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Caupolicán Larraín Larraín (deceased), comptroller and commander of the Prisoner of War Camp and Military Garrison of Pisagua, who in turn received direct and peremptory orders from Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen. The camp guards were formed by a contingent led by a captain, who was assisted by two or more lower-ranking officers, lieutenants or sub-lieutenants, and by the respective troop of enlisted personnel. Larraín ordered the entry of the detainees, and under his command, direct or delegated to the officers guarding the camp, sessions that the victims called “general softening up” were executed, consisting of blows of all kinds, on various parts of the body, with greater or lesser force, “tasks” executed by the contingent on duty, with certain Carabineros or Army officers standing out and the officers in charge of the guard repeating these tasks. e) That, upon the Camp beginning to operate, the prisoners were placed by political importance or by party on different floors of the prison, the lowest being called “catacombs,” cells that were in the worst conditions of habitability and overcrowding. As time went on, the prisoners themselves were made to build pavilions to continue housing people, which were not finished being built, a period during which some of them enjoyed certain privileges due to their skills, fundamentally manual ones, such as cooks, diver-gatherers, furniture makers, waiters, etc., although they did not stop noticing the physical effects that the beatings caused on their companions, the same period in which they received the visit of some journalists who, under the guise of the International Red Cross, and despite the refurbishment ordered by Commander Larraín, managed to record and inform the world about the existence of the Camp, a video that was converted into a document that is on record. f) That only a portion of the accused detained in Pisagua were subjected to a War Council, which were held in the school of that town. There were councils for the Socialist, Communist, or multi-party groups, formed by various officers specially called for that purpose, with Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme (deceased) serving as prosecutor and Ramón Larraín Larraín and Carlos Forestier Haensgen, interchangeably, as the ratifying entity of the sentences ordered by the Council. A large percentage of prisoners were condemned informally, that is, without there being a written sentence or at least without them receiving one; many times they were condemned solely on the merit of their confessions obtained through torture, and having to travel by their own means to the places where they were to serve their sentences, remaining imprisoned or relegated until their term, reduction of sentence, or conversion to exile. g) That, along with the “collective softening up” sessions, there were individual interrogations, with the purpose of obtaining the aforementioned confessions, in which a determined and permanent group under the command of prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme—integrated, among others, by Roberto Fuentes Zambrano (deceased), René Valdivia Castro (deceased), Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez (deceased), and Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros (deceased)—interacted on some occasions with officers in charge of the custody of the Prisoner Camp, who applied torture that left the victims with physical and/or psychological sequelae, as evidenced by the expert reports carried out according to the Istanbul Protocol by the Legal Medical Service. h) That this team of interrogators traveled regularly to Pisagua from Iquique in a small plane piloted by Army officer Carlos Teodoro de la Barra Daniels (deceased). The reason why this group did not have a stable presence in Pisagua was because they executed the same practices against detainees at the Telecommunications Regiment, where they were under the command of Pedro Santiago Collado Martí who, according to his own words, directed the Military Intelligence Service, composed of military personnel and carabineros, and who had a bond of friendship with prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme, holding meetings he called “colloquial” at least once a week. i) That, in general terms, the torture consisted of blows to the body using rifle butts, hands, feet, placing the detainees naked or semi-naked on the floor and walking on them, sleep deprivation, exposure to the sun for hours and to the cold of the night without clothing, climbing and descending hills using “elbow and toe” exercises, throwing them into drums down slopes, electricity to certain parts of the body, submerging the head in water (submarino), blows to the ears (teléfono), mock executions, interrogations in which a firearm was left by their side, hanging by their extremities with the purpose of obtaining the stretching of the body for prolonged periods, rape, sexual abuse, keeping them on meager food rations, and the constant threat of being executed by firing squad themselves or their family members, among others. In the civil sphere, Minister Hormazábal Abarzúa accepted, with costs, the claims for damages filed and ordered the state treasury to pay a total sum of $2,570,000,000 (two billion five hundred seventy million pesos) for moral damages to 33 of the victims.

Source: pdju.cl, November 7, 2023

Minister Sergio Troncoso sentences retired Army officers to life imprisonment for qualified kidnapping in Iquique and Pisagua

“That, for what has been considered, this sentencer deems it normatively inappropriate to apply an amnesty to crimes against humanity, because jus cogens norms are at stake for which the penalization of these illicit acts is mandatory, and this has been repeatedly resolved by the higher courts of justice.” The minister for extraordinary cases of human rights violations of the Court of Appeal of La Serena, Sergio Troncoso Espinoza, sentenced, with costs, retired Army Colonel Conrado Vicente García Giaier to life imprisonment, with the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions, political rights, and professional titles, as the perpetrator of the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of Artemio Rufino Salinas Valdivia, Gerardo Enrique Soudre Rojas, José Alejandro González Carreño, Damián Ernesto Rojas Gallardo, Carlos Aldo Valdivieso Martínez, Juan Adolfo Guillermo Petersen Gallardo, Luis Alberto Tapia Hidalgo, Patricio Alberto Polanco Polanco, Odesa Raquel Flores Tiayna, Alfonso Pedro Araya Pallero, and Eddie Omar Márquez Cortez. These crimes were committed in the town of Pisagua after September 11, 1973. In the ruling (case file 21-2012, Volume B), Minister Troncoso Espinoza sentenced, with costs, the former Army Brigadier Pedro Santiago Collado Martí to life imprisonment, with the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification for public offices and positions, political rights, and professional titles, as the perpetrator of the crime of applying torture to the victim Luis Fernando Fuentes López and the repeated crime of qualified kidnapping of Agusto Samuel Ahumada Gallardo, Enrique Silva Olivares, Mario del Carmen Magne Castillo, Artemio Rufino Salinas Valdivia, Rigoberto Ernesto Pizarro Prado, Ricardo Enrique Torres Morales, Ignelia Patricia Fuentes Rojas, Gerardo Enrique Soudre Rojas, José Alejandro González Carreño, Damián Enrique Villegas Castillo, Damián Ernesto Rojas Gallardo, Carlos Aldo Valdivieso Martínez, Juan Ernesto García Justiniano, Pedro Segundo Aguilera Sanquea, Juan Adolfo Guillermo Petersen Gallardo, Luis Alberto Tapia Hidalgo, Patricio Alberto Polanco Polanco, Odesa Raquel Flores Tiayna, Alfonso Pedro Araya Pallero, Jorge Ramón Zúñiga Poblete, and Eddie Omar Márquez Cortez. These crimes were committed in Iquique and Pisagua after September 11, 1973. “That, having issued an indictment in this process, in accordance with the provisions of Article 424 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Court already decided that there was no merit to decree the dismissal, which is why the reasoned order required by law was issued, so that this is more than sufficient to dismiss the request for dismissal made by the defense attorney for Conrado García. Furthermore, the background information on which the incident-filer bases his arguments relates to events that occurred regarding certain victims and which are situated in the repressive actions developed inside the Telecommunications Regiment, without encompassing the set of charges that have been formulated against him in this case. Moreover, what was established in the cited ruling is only one more piece of evidence that can be refuted with the evidence presented in the current process, which will be analyzed later in this sentence. Therefore, the request will be rejected, with costs,” the ruling states. The resolution adds that: “The most violent era of the entire repressive period corresponds to the first months of the de facto government, and it can be indicated by way of example that, of the 3,197 victims of executions and forced disappearances identified by the Rettig Report, 1,823 occurred in the year 1973, and that 67.4% of the testimonies qualified by the Valech Commission refer to having been detained between September and December 1973 (18,364 people out of a total of 22,824 detentions). From all of the above, it follows that the events that this investigation deals with, if effective, would undoubtedly correspond to crimes against humanity, as they include acts of torture perpetrated in a context of systematic or generalized oppression against a civilian population, typical of such a category of illicit acts.” “That, for what has been considered, this sentencer deems it normatively inappropriate to apply an amnesty to crimes against humanity, because jus cogens norms are at stake for which the penalization of these illicit acts is mandatory, and this has been repeatedly resolved by the higher courts of justice,” it adds. “Consequently, as it is mandatory for all State bodies to give strict application to the norms and principles of International Human Rights Law, which exclude any possibility of benefiting those responsible for crimes against humanity with the institution of amnesty, the allegations formulated in that sense by the Defense of Pedro Collado Martí will be dismissed, with costs,” it concludes. In the case, Minister Troncoso Espinoza decreed the acquittal of Collado Martí from the charges formulated against him as the perpetrator of the crime of applying torture to Encina Encina. In the civil sphere, the visiting minister granted the claims for damages and ordered the state treasury to pay a total compensation of $2,100,000,000 for moral damages to the plaintiffs, broken down into $50,000,000 in favor of Jorge Patricio Encina Encina; $80,000,000 to each of the plaintiffs Ahumada Gallardo, Silva Olivares, Pizarro Prado, Fuentes Rojas, González Carreño, Rojas Gallardo, Valdivieso Martínez, Polanco Polanco, Varela Barbagelata, and Flores Tiayna; $100,000,000 to each of the plaintiffs Magne Castillo, Salinas Valdivia, Fuentes López, Torres Morales, Soudre Rojas, Villegas Castillo, Aguilera Sanquea, Guillermo Petersen Gallardo, Araya Pallero, Zúñiga Poblete, and Márquez Cortez; and $150,000,000 to Tapia Hidalgo.

Softening up In the resolution, Minister Troncoso Espinoza established the following facts: “1.- That starting on September 11, 1973, countless people from Iquique—sympathizers, supporters, or members of the Communist, Socialist, or MAPU political parties—were detained, being accused in some cases of specific acts, such as organizing plans to poison the city’s water, assaulting barracks, belonging to paramilitary groups, kidnapping children of military personnel, organizing, carrying out, and participating in clandestine meetings, stockpiling weapons, and seizing public services, communications, and the port by force of arms, among others, without any accusation other than their sympathy, closeness, or membership in a leftist political party that, at the time, was constituted and operating within the institutional legality of the country, or being a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). 2.- That all these people, men and women of varying ages—a group ranging from adolescents to middle-aged people—by orders of General Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen (deceased), commander-in-chief of the VI Army Division and head of the State of Siege zone of the Tarapacá Province, were taken, in the case of men, to the Sixth Army Division or the First Carabineros Police Station of Iquique, and that part of their detention invariably ended at the Telecommunications Regiment of the time, a place where they were placed in what could be called patios, and then separated by political affiliation or other reasons into containers, ‘pigsties’ (a site where the military raised pigs), or oases (a sector where there was vegetation inside the Regiment). Everyone’s data was requested by Army personnel, with a portion of these people being interrogated in a sector of the military unit located on a second floor, presumably in the building corresponding to the infirmary, and another number of them tortured in various forms and intensities, depending on the political importance the military regime attributed to them, and then, taking into account that same imputed political relevance, they were transferred to Pisagua immediately or after a few days, normally in trucks, at early or late hours of the day, guarded by personnel from the same branch of the Armed Forces. 3.- That, in the case of women, their passage was through the Logistics Battalion, being controlled by Army personnel. Next, they were transferred to the Buen Pastor, guarded by nuns, where they had to share space with prisoners for common crimes, and then they were sent to Pisagua, where they were kept detained on the second floor of the local theater under armed guard. 4.- That the Pisagua Prisoner Camp was directed by Lieutenant Colonel Ramón Caupolicán Larraín Larraín (deceased), comptroller and commander of the Prisoner of War Camp and Military Garrison of Pisagua, who in turn received direct and peremptory orders from Ernesto Carlos Joaquín Forestier Haensgen. The camp guards were formed by a contingent led by a captain, who was assisted by two or more lower-ranking officers, lieutenants or sub-lieutenants, and by the respective troop of enlisted personnel. Larraín ordered the entry of the detainees, and under his command, direct or delegated to the officers guarding the camp, sessions that the victims called ‘general softening up’ were executed, consisting of blows of all kinds, on various parts of the body, with greater or lesser force, ‘tasks’ executed by the contingent on duty, with certain Carabineros or Army officers standing out and the officers in charge of the guard repeating these tasks. 5.- That, upon the Camp beginning to operate, the prisoners were placed by political importance or by party on different floors of the prison, the lowest being called ‘catacombs,’ cells that were in the worst conditions of habitability and overcrowding. As time went on, the prisoners themselves were made to build pavilions to continue housing people, which were not finished being built, a period during which some of them enjoyed certain privileges due to their skills, fundamentally manual ones, such as cooks, diver-gatherers, furniture makers, waiters, etc., although they did not stop noticing the physical effects that the beatings caused on their companions, the same period in which they received the visit of some journalists who, under the guise of the International Red Cross, and despite the refurbishment ordered by Commander Larraín, managed to record and inform the world about the existence of the Camp, a video that was converted into a document that is on record. 6.- That only a portion of the accused detained in Pisagua were subjected to a War Council, which were held in the school of that town. There were councils for the Socialist, Communist, or multi-party groups, formed by various officers specially called for that purpose, with Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme (deceased) serving as prosecutor and Ramón Larraín Larraín and Carlos Forestier Haensgen, interchangeably, as the ratifying entity of the sentences ordered by the Council. A large percentage of prisoners were condemned informally, that is, without there being a written sentence or at least without them receiving one; many times they were condemned solely on the merit of their confessions obtained through torture, and having to travel by their own means to the places where they were to serve their sentences, remaining imprisoned or relegated until their term, reduction of sentence, or conversion to exile. 7.- That, along with the ‘collective softening up’ sessions, there were individual interrogations, with the purpose of obtaining the aforementioned confessions, in which a determined and permanent group under the command of prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme—integrated, among others, by Roberto Fuentes Zambrano (deceased), René Valdivia Castro (deceased), Miguel Chile Aguirre Álvarez (deceased), and Blas Daniel Barraza Quinteros (deceased)—interacted on some occasions with officers in charge of the custody of the Prisoner Camp, who applied torture that left the victims Agusto Ahumada Gallardo, Enrique Silva Olivares, Mario Magne Castillo, Artemio Salinas Valdivia, Rigoberto Pizarro Prado, Luis Fuentes López, Ricardo Torres Morales, Ignelia Fuentes Rojas, Gerardo Soudre Rojas, José González Carreño, Damián Villegas Castillo, Damián Rojas Gallardo, Carlos Valdivieso Martínez, Juan García Justiniano, Pedro Aguilera Sanquea, Juan Petersen Gallardo, Luis Tapia Hidalgo, Jorge Encina Encina, Patricio Polanco Polanco, Óscar Varela Barbagelata, Odesa Flores Tiayna, Alfonso Araya Pallero, Jorge Zúñiga Poblete, and Eddie Márquez Cortez with physical and/or psychological sequelae, as evidenced by the expert reports carried out according to the Istanbul Protocol by the Legal Medical Service. 8.- That this team of interrogators traveled regularly to Pisagua from Iquique in a small plane piloted by Army officer Carlos Teodoro de la Barra Daniels (deceased). The reason why this group did not have a stable presence in Pisagua was because they executed the same practices against detainees at the Telecommunications Regiment, where they were under the command of Pedro Santiago Collado Martí who, according to his own words, directed the Military Intelligence Service, composed of military personnel and carabineros, and who had a bond of friendship with prosecutor Mario Acuña Riquelme, holding meetings he called ‘colloquial’ at least once a week. 9.- That, in general terms, the torture consisted of blows to the body using rifle butts, hands, feet, placing the detainees naked or semi-naked on the floor and walking on them, sleep deprivation, exposure to the sun for hours and to the cold of the night without clothing, climbing and descending hills using ‘elbow and toe’ exercises, throwing them into drums down slopes, electricity to certain parts of the body, submerging the head in water (submarino), blows to the ears (teléfono), mock executions, interrogations in which a firearm was left by their side, hanging by their extremities with the purpose of obtaining the stretching of the body for prolonged periods, rape, sexual abuse, keeping them on meager food rations, and the constant threat of being executed by firing squad themselves or their family members, among others.”

Source: pdju.cl, January 2, 2025