Lorenzo Homero Tobar Avilés, 24 years old, a member of the MIR, disappeared in Argentina in approximately July 1976. The affected individual left Arica at the end of October 1973, heading to Peru and later Cuba, along with other members of the MIR.

In March 1976, the affected individual entered Argentina, and his whereabouts have been unknown since then. Various pieces of evidence gathered by this Commission allowed it to reach the conviction that agents of the Chilean State, in collaboration with agents of the Argentine State, participated in the disappearance of Lorenzo Homero Tobar Avilés.

Source: CVR Human Rights Violation

At the ceremony held at the Plaza República de Chile, next to our country's embassy in Buenos Aires, a memorial was inaugurated last Tuesday, September 5, in memory of the 101 Chilean men and women murdered and disappeared in Argentina.

After the military coup of September 11, 1973, many Chilean men and women sought refuge in Argentina. It was the most accessible place for the vast majority, both for social and union leaders and for left-wing militants.

However, the situation in Argentina was complex, as with the rise to power of Estela Martínez, widow of Perón (July 1, 1974), and her advisor, the sinister José López Rega, the Peronist government suffered a violent right-wing turn, which would include the appearance of death squads that anticipated the work that the Videla dictatorship would later carry out more intensely.

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50 years of the Military Coup: The Argentines murdered by the Chilean dictatorship Argentina did not end up being a safe refuge for the Chilean men and women who were escaping state terrorism, much less for the left-wing militants who intended to build a rearguard in Argentina for the resistance against the military dictatorship in Chile.

The number of Chilean men and women disappeared and/or executed in Argentina is extremely high; there are at least 101 people, who today have a memorial that remembers them. It should be noted that the design of this memorial was carried out ad honorem by the Argentine architect Susana Coloma, who is the daughter of a Chilean forcibly disappeared person and an Argentine forcibly disappeared person.

The authorities announced the installation of a commemorative plaque in honor of the Argentine men and women disappeared and executed in Chile after the military coup, which will take place next Monday, September 11, in Santiago.

Source: resumen.cl 8/9/2023

Date: 08-09-2023

The CD O´Higgins of Arica still knows nothing about Lorenzo Homero Tobar Aviles; there have been no traces since 1976. This is his story.

Text extracted from the book "Operación Cóndor" from the Museum of Memory:

He played soccer at the neighborhood club, Deportivo O’Higgins; he was a strong midfielder. It was normal for friends to come look for him at his house so he could go play. Lorenzo Homero Tobar completed his primary studies at School No. 1 and his secondary studies at the Industrial School in the city of Arica.

He could not finish his formal studies. He participated in the Club Deportivo O’Higgins as a player in the division that corresponded to his 24 years. His neighborhood friends were like Homero: simple, generous, curious, and participatory, more dedicated to "pichanga" (pickup soccer) than to the curiosities emerging in those times.

They were healthy young men, without vices; the most they had was a cigarette bought "loose" at Mrs. Cutipa's store. He left Arica at the end of October 1973, heading to Peru and later to Cuba along with other members of the MIR.

In March 1976, he entered Argentina clandestinely, and his whereabouts have been unknown since then. "Homero," as his friends called him, is remembered to this day as a person who was always happy, generous, and always attentive to others.

Source: fundacioclubes.org 24/6/2023

Date: 24-06-2023

Special 40th anniversary of the coup d'état in Chile (II) The three from Arica

After the coup, three young MIR members clandestinely took a high-ranking party leader out of the country, heading to Peru. Later, they left for Cuba to receive military training with the intention of returning to fight in Chile.

First, they would test themselves in Argentina, but there, repression devoured them. Their disappearance was never reported. Disoriented at night in the desert, they had returned to their starting point.

Around October 10, 1973, the Regional Secretary of the MIR for the Norte Grande, Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, the "Trosko," left on foot from the Valle de Lluta in Arica to leave clandestinely for Peru. He went with two companions from the local MIR.

But the lights they saw at dawn were not from Tacna, as they expected, but from Arica. On the night of October 28, the same two companions, Mario Espinoza Barahona and Jorge Vercelotti Muñoz, again assumed the mission of taking the "Trosko" out of the country.

Two other MIR militants in Arica joined this trip: Homero Tobar Avilés and Bruno González. This time they would succeed. Two years later, "Trosko" Fuentes was kidnapped in Paraguay and handed over to Chilean agents, thus inaugurating the joint operations of the secret intelligence services of the Southern Cone, known as Operation Condor.

Fuentes remains disappeared. The following year, three of the four MIR militants who helped him leave Chile disappeared in Argentina. The families of Espinoza, Vercelotti, and Tobar did not formally report their disappearance until 2011.

In the case of Espinoza and Tobar, they did not do so because they never had reliable news about them; they did not even know which country they might be in. Vercelotti's family did find out about his death, but remained silent for 30 years.

Only in 2011 did the Advisory Commission for the Qualification of Forcibly Disappeared, Political Executed, and Victims of Political Imprisonment and Torture in Chile recognize the three as victims of human rights violations.

Until 2008, it was not known that Mario Espinoza Barahona was the identity of the Chilean forcibly disappeared person with the political name "Mauro" who appeared in the official report of victims of the Argentine dictatorship, CONADEP, under record No. 10015.

That year, based on an internal MIR document obtained by the American journalist John Dinges, it was possible for the first time to associate an identity with "Mauro," and this author was able to locate his family, obtain a photograph, confirm his identity with witnesses, and begin to reconstruct his story.

Until then, Mario Espinoza had only been "Mauro," a Chilean MIR militant and sergeant of the Argentine ERP, who disappeared in August 1976 in Buenos Aires. His family in Arica had not been able to make the connection because they had no news of him since his departure for Peru in 1973. "The family never made any report, since they always had the hope that he was safe abroad, just like other people who had to leave our country.

But the doubt always remained, since he never communicated with them," states Héctor Uribe, a childhood friend and brother of Espinoza's partner at the time he left the country. During the inquiry into the identity of "Mauro" – initiated in 2002 at the request of Dinges for his investigation into Operation Condor (FOOTNOTE 1) – the name of another Chilean forcibly disappeared person in Argentina emerged, about whom human rights organizations in Chile and Argentina, as well as his family, knew nothing: Homero Tobar Avilés.

Originally, it was suspected that "Mauro" was the brother of Elmo Catalán Avilés, a leader of the guerrilla tendency of the National Liberation Army of the Socialist Party of Chile, who died in Bolivia in 1970.

Elmo Catalán had a half-brother on his mother's side who was disappeared in Argentina, but it was not "Mauro." It was Homero Tobar. Tobar's trail evaporated as soon as he arrived in Argentina in 1976, and the few versions about him are contradictory.

His family never reported his disappearance. Regarding Jorge Vercelotti, there is certainty about his death. In 2008, the Federal Chamber of Buenos Aires confirmed that Vercelotti had been executed on March 18, 1976, in Ciudadela, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, along with a Paraguayan companion, Claudio Ocampo Alonso, also a militant of the Chilean MIR.

This is the story of the three boys from Arica, those who took "Trosko" Fuentes clandestinely out of the country, at night through the desert. In Arica Vercelotti, Tobar, and Espinoza knew each other well.

Arica was a small city in 1973, and one of Espinoza's sisters was a close friend of Tobar's mother, because they worked nearby. At the same time, the large house of the Catalán family offered boarding, and Vercelotti came to live there when he arrived in Arica.

Vercelotti and Tobar had been militants together in the MAPU before joining the MIR during the government of President Salvador Allende. In their new political organization, they met Espinoza, a young and charismatic militant, athlete, and passionate Scout.

In the MIR, Mario Espinoza adopted the political name "Mauro," the same as his beloved three-year-old nephew, the son of his sister Clara. His friends and family called him Pepe, and some party comrades called him "the Gypsy." He was born in Arica in 1951 into a family of 10 siblings and joined the MIR in the late sixties.

He was a volunteer conscript of the Civil Defense and studied at the Industrial Lyceum until 1972, when he abandoned his studies and took a job in a windshield workshop. In his Scout group, they called him the "Cunning Fox." "We went out to explore a lot.

We had our codes and rituals, and Pepe had a lot of knowledge of techniques, how to mislead, detect, disguise himself, avoid situations," says R.B., a neighborhood friend and companion in the Scouts and in politics, who requested that his name be withheld.

Homero Tobar, born in Calama in 1952 but raised in Arica, was the youngest brother of the Catalán family on his mother's side. Without having known his father and discriminated against by his own siblings, one of whom was a military officer, Homero Tobar did not share his political activity with his family, with the exception of a couple of cousins. "With Homero, we lived a few blocks away and we saw each other a lot because we were the two youngest in the family.

He was my beloved little cousin; I grew up with him. He was a very lonely person. Homero's family was a traditional family and they never accepted him because he wasn't a Catalán. His interest in politics was born from Elmo.

They didn't see each other much, but Elmo was his example," says his cousin Omar Segovia. With little academic and political training, the year Elmo Catalán died and he turned 18, Homero Tobar joined the recently created MAPU party.

He was recruited by the Regional Secretary of the MAPU in Arica, Julio Jiménez, who had known him since he was small, since his family and the Catalán family were long-time friends. "At that time, a university student from the Christian Democrats who joined the MAPU was renting a room in Homero's house.

Between that friend and me, we recruited Homero. Later, he was expelled from the MAPU along with Jorge Vercelotti for being ultra-leftists, for treating Allende as a reformist," states Jiménez. Tobar joined the MIR in March 1973.

In the neighborhood and among his comrades, he was better known as Homero Catalán, but in the MIR, he adopted the same name that his half-brother Elmo used in Bolivia: "Ricardo." "Homero was reserved, he didn't give his opinion much.

He had no training, his family didn't worry about his studies, and he was mistreated by his siblings. The only educated one in that family was Elmo, but they didn't know each other much, since Elmo wasn't in Arica," says Jiménez.

Jorge Vercelotti (FOOTNOTE 2) was born in Antofagasta in 1951. His father had been a sergeant major in the Army, already retired at the time of the military coup. He studied biology for a year at the University of Chile in Antofagasta, where he joined the Christian Left.

Later, he began to militate in the MAPU, and in 1972, he left the university and his city to move to Arica. There, he worked in the Treasury and for a time, he stayed in the large house of the Catalán family, which also offered boarding.

He was solid and wore thick-rimmed glasses as was the style at the time, and for that reason, even though his political name was "Marco," they called him "Tevito" or "Tevo," because of his resemblance to the animated puppy that danced in the presentation of Televisión Nacional. "Homero and Jorge were two children, in the cleanest sense of the word, full of illusions and desires to make the revolution, to change this country...

At some point, they decided that the MAPU was too reformist and they went to the MIR," recalls A.T., a comrade of theirs in the MAPU. In the MIR, like Espinoza, they dedicated themselves to the union area.

Tobar participated in the attempt to form an industrial cordon in the northern sector of the city. In 1973, Espinoza and Vercelotti began to integrate into the new operational units that the MIR was organizing in the north. "I knew both of them quite well, Mario and 'Tevo.' They were very dedicated.

Mario was very consistent, well aware that one had to have a bigger commitment. He joined the units right away, he didn't make problems. He and 'Tevo' didn't go around boasting, they were quiet. They didn't cause disorder or think they were the best," recalls Juan Carlos García, then a MIR leader in Arica.

Vercelotti had spent a period of military training in Cuba. He was part of a small group of local militants sent to the island months before the military coup. He left for Cuba with two companions in mid-May 1973, while Espinoza and another companion, "Manuel" (FOOTNOTE 3), stayed in Santiago waiting to leave with a second group that ultimately did not manage to travel.

During that wait, the attempted coup d'état known as the "tanquetazo" of June 29, 1973, occurred. Vercelotti was in Cuba, but Espinoza was caught by the military movement in Santiago. "Manuel" says that together with Espinoza, they temporarily joined a MIR operational unit in the capital and participated in the defense of the Radio Nacional antenna.

Vercelotti returned from Cuba in mid-July 1973, and from then on, the group of militants began their return from Santiago to the north. Espinoza and "Manuel" returned to Arica hitchhiking. Vercelotti went to see his family in Antofagasta.

It was the last time they saw him. "Jorge was shy, he spoke little. He got very nervous when he had to speak before a group; he wasn't used to it. We always considered him a worker – he dressed like a worker and worked in union matters.

Years later we found out he had been a university student," says Marco Donoso, then a secondary student and head of the party's student leadership in Arica. Tobar, on the other hand, made himself noticed beyond his real responsibilities in the party.

According to one of his comrades at the time, he was voluntaristic and anxious. He exposed himself more than necessary, and when the military coup came, he justifiably feared for his safety. "When the coup happened, his brother Gustavo, who was a military man, hid him in his house.

That was the most important gesture Gustavo made to show that he considered him a brother despite everything, because Gustavo was always his executioner in the family," said his cousin Omar Segovia. Taking out "Trosko" After the military coup, the local leadership of the MIR in Arica sought to protect "Trosko" Fuentes.

The political leader had arrived in the city from Antofagasta a few days earlier to report on the last meeting of the party's Central Committee. A large assembly had been held at the University of Chile headquarters with all the militants on Monday, September 10.

At two in the afternoon on September 11, with the presidential palace in Santiago in flames, Vercelotti accompanied the MIR union leader in Arica to find "Trosko" and take him to a safe house on Cerro La Cruz, belonging to a supporter of another left-wing party.

He remained there for a couple of days. "Trosko" Fuentes was one of the people most wanted by the military, and they had put a price on his head. He went from one safe house to another. Vercelotti was in charge of making contacts with the militancy, members of the leadership, and other left-wing parties.

At the time of the coup, a good part of the local MIR leadership was in Arica, except for the person in charge of Special Tasks, who was in Antofagasta. Both the head of the MIR in Arica and those responsible for the student and organization fronts, as well as the person responsible for Special Tasks, would be arrested in the weeks that followed. "They fell for different reasons, but not because of 'Trosko.' That 'Trosko' was in Arica was unknown to the military at that time: none of them were interrogated regarding 'Trosko'," relates Marco Donoso. "Trosko" was running out of contacts and logistical support. He did not know the names or addresses of his party comrades in Arica and could not return to Antofagasta either. He then decided that the best alternative was to leave for Peru. At that time, the official policy of the MIR was that none of its militants should seek asylum or leave the country. However, although it can be presumed that "Trosko" knew that party policy, the order "The MIR does not seek asylum" had not reached the base militants in Arica. "We had no idea about that policy. The first contact we had in Arica with the central MIR in Santiago was months later, in 1974. This story happened naturally. There was danger and 'Trosko' had to be taken out of the country, period. The idea was always to go to Cuba to then re-enter Chile," explains Donoso. With repression looming and the local leadership arrested, they searched among the youngest and least exposed militants to entrust them with the task of organizing the departure of "Trosko" Fuentes from Chile. The responsibility fell to "Carlos," a secondary student who had recently joined the MIR. "Fernando," who had recently entered the university and the party, also participated in that mission. They were in charge of planning the departure, ensuring logistical and economic support, coordinating the supporters, and determining a safe route and transport to the border. "Trosko" Fuentes hid in "Fernando's" house. A first departure was planned for the second week of October 1973, in which "Trosko" was accompanied by Vercelotti and Espinoza, who served as his bodyguards. "I have always thought that if 'Trosko' had to choose someone to be his bodyguard, it would be Vercelotti. 'Trosko' had a very good opinion of him and Espinoza. He had appreciation and affection for them for their dedication, and therefore, a lot of trust. I can attest to that, since he often expressed it to me in conversations," affirms Juan Carlos García. Round trip through the desert When planning the departure, "Carlos" had contacted a small farmer from the Valle de Lluta, who knew the routes and had great experience with border crossings. "He mapped out a route from the exact starting point, even giving known landmarks they should encounter. Only three would go: 'Trosko,' Tevito, and Mario. We went to drop them off in a vehicle at the place in the Valley that the farmer had indicated to me. In the vehicle were the three of them, and we were accompanied by Cacho Salcedo, a friend of Cacho, and me. This happened more or less at 10 at night and we said goodbye with a hug. The conditions for making the journey were quite basic: apart from some personal belongings, they went with a compass. I remember that 'Trosko,' due to the impossibility of carrying it, left as a gift to 'Fernando' a blanket that had great meaning for him, because it had belonged to Luciano Cruz," related "Carlos." The plan was to reach the Valle de Lluta by vehicle, cross the border on foot, and advance 40 kilometers to the Peruvian city of Tacna. In fact, two university students from the MIR had already done it shortly before. They had managed to cross the border without problems, but were arrested almost immediately by the Peruvian police and handed over to the Chilean police. The two young men ended up in the Arica jail. According to Juan Carlos García, the departure of the university students to Peru had been premature. "I always heard that the contact was with the Tacna police. There was an agreement with the Cubans that consisted of having to present themselves to the Tacna police, and they would take them to the Cubans. But it seems they arrived too soon, before consolidating the contacts," he said. In the first attempt, "Trosko," Espinoza, and Vercelotti walked in circles through the desert and returned to another point in the Valle de Lluta; from there, they moved back to Arica. "Carlos" states that "Trosko" then returned to "Fernando's" house and the others went to the places where they had been until the day before. The farewell Espinoza lived in his sister Clara's house until the day he left Chile. "After the coup, Pepe continued living with me and working at the factory. He would arrive home for lunch and return to work. He was always nervous, asking if anyone had asked for him. Pepe was afraid of being in Arica; 'I'll run away or they'll kill me,' he told me," says Clara Espinoza. Before the next departure attempt on October 28, 1973, Espinoza began to say goodbye to those he loved most. The day before, he summoned his childhood friend, a companion in the Scouts and in politics, R.B. "We were outside his sister Clara's house and he was holding his nephew Mauro in his arms. He told me it was going to be the last time we would see each other. He was very clear that it was not easy to return," the friend stated. He never saw him again. He also visited a neighboring family in the Juan Noé neighborhood. The owner of the house, Bernarda Lepe, frequently welcomed her son's neighborhood and Scout friends, among them Espinoza, so they affectionately called her "Grandma." Being a family of socialist militancy, he spent many hours in her house, said Lepe. "I was like his confidant, because Pepe said his family didn't understand him, they didn't share his political ideas. That's why he took refuge with us. Pepe was another son to me," she said. That day, Bernarda, her husband Sergio Gárate, her daughter Patricia, and a couple of friends were waiting for him. To them, Espinoza announced that he was leaving Chile. Bernarda gave him a gold ring with a red stone and told him: "This will be useful to you, at least you can sell it." Espinoza said he would keep it as a souvenir. "Pepe was an extraordinary person. He had a human warmth that is rarely found. He had a great rapport with everyone," comments Patricia Gárate. The Gárate family never forgot that day. It was not only the last time they saw Espinoza, but also the day the head of the household was taken away. In the middle of the farewell, detectives arrived to arrest Sergio Gárate, a Customs official and member of the Socialist Party. "When they came to arrest him, the boys got very nervous," said Patricia Gárate. "But the detectives were acquaintances and they hurried to arrest my dad and take him to jail to avoid handing him over to the military. My dad was detained for a year and a half in the Arica jail." The day they were to leave for Peru, Espinoza brought three friends to his sister Clara's house. Two of them were Tobar and Vercelotti, whom Clara already knew. She remembers that afternoon well, because it was her birthday. They didn't talk much. She prepared tea with fried eggs for them and they sang "Happy Birthday." That afternoon, Espinoza confided to his sister that they were taking a person out of the country and they would go through the hills toward Peru, not through the border crossings; they would be waiting for them at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima. He said that later they would go to Cuba and that she would soon have news of him. Clara cried. Clara packed a bag for him and gave him some jewelry. "I told him to exchange them for food or anything, because he wasn't carrying anything, just a little clothing. He was wearing a blue suit with a tie, because he said that dressed in that suit he was going to present himself before Fidel Castro. He took some ponchos, blankets, pants. He left with the orange jacket he always wore," she remembers. The four left at dusk on foot through the streets of Arica, while Clara followed them holding the hand of her little son Mauro. "He signaled for me to go back, but I followed him, crying. I remember military trucks passing by. After a few blocks, I went to my older brother's house. Pepito left, he got lost, he turned the corner, and I didn't see him again," she relates. Crossing the border The Caravan of Death commanded by General Sergio Arellano Stark had recently left Arica, after leaving a trail of dead in the northern part of the country. "Trosko" Fuentes was still in the sights of the military, but Arellano and his entourage did not imagine that they had just met in the same city. A logistical support network had been mobilized among local militants, friends, and supporters, even from other left-wing parties. This time, they were guided through the desert by a Peruvian with experience in border routes, who had to be paid for the service, recalls "Carlos." The Peruvian would accompany them starting from kilometer 25 of the Valley, they would cross the border together on foot, and then a truck would pick them up and take them to Tacna. "On that occasion, I accompanied 'Trosko' only to a meeting street and he was picked up in a taxi in which Tevito and Homero were going. Later, Mario and Bruno, who were waiting in different places, were picked up. The incorporation of Homero and Bruno was due to Tevito's persuasion, since he considered it necessary for them to leave. This was a situation that was resolved just a couple of days before that departure," states "Carlos." That night, in a Citroen van, a supporter took "Trosko," Espinoza, Tobar, Vercelotti, and Bruno González to the valley, and from there they continued the journey on foot. For several months, Espinoza's friend, R.B., followed the Peruvian who took them out of Arica. "But later someone told me that the man had stepped on a mine at the border and had died. The people I knew on Pepe's side were in prison or had left the country. I left Chile in December 1973, and I never heard from him again," he said. What happened, according to what "Trosko" Fuentes later told Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy ("Patula") in Havana, was that the group was detained at the border by the Peruvian police. They took all their belongings, and, it is to be assumed, also the jewelry that Clara Espinoza and Bernarda Lepe gave to Espinoza. They feared being returned to Chile, as had already happened before with the two university students who ended up in prison in Arica. They asked for political asylum, but it was denied. They were transferred to Lima. "But the Peruvians had the attitude of helping the persecuted Chileans in a covert way. 'Trosko' told me that they called the Cuban consul and he helped them travel to Cuba a couple of weeks later," recalls Saavedra. In the year that followed, "Carlos" and "Fernando," the two young men from Arica in charge of the operation to take "Trosko" out of the country, were arrested, as were almost everyone who participated in one way or another in it, as well as the new local party leadership. There were more than twenty detainees. In January 1974, Homero Tobar's girlfriend in Arica, Miriam, received a letter from him stamped in Mexico, saying he was fine. Mario Espinoza's mother received a similar letter from her son at the beginning of 1974, also from Mexico. In the letter, Espinoza asked that after reading it, they destroy it. The mother traveled to Iquique and showed the letter to one of her sons, Raúl, who was doing his military service in the regiment of that city. "The letter came from Mexico and in it, he spoke only of generalities. Later, my mom tore up the letter. We didn't know anything more about him," states Raúl. The MIR had sent those letters from Mexico, because by then, "Mauro," "Ricardo," "Marco," and "Trosko" Fuentes were already in Cuba. The plan was to receive military instruction in Cuba and return clandestinely to Chile to fight against the incipient military dictatorship. Establishing the rearguard Upon arriving in Cuba, the group was housed at the Hotel Presidente in Havana, as many Chilean refugees did after the coup. In December 1973, along with other MIR militants who had come from different parts, they began to receive military instruction in urban and rural guerrilla warfare. First, they were at Punto Cero and later at the Pinar del Río Base. Despite being severely criticized by his party's National Directorate for having left the country, "Trosko" Fuentes was appointed by the General Secretary of the MIR, Miguel Enríquez, as the organization's representative in Cuba. He had to take charge of a first group for military instruction and designated "Mauro" as the group leader. According to who would later be his boss in Cuba, Enérico García ("Fernando"), "Mauro" demonstrated indisputable leadership qualities. "Mauro was serious, responsible in fulfilling the tasks that arose from the group's needs. Cheerful, fun, a good friend, supportive, always willing to collaborate. He was not yet a leader who trained other cadres, but a more than interesting project of a MIR militant and combatant was foreseen in him," describes García. The group in charge of "Trosko" spent nearly a year in different instruction courses. The plan was to prepare militarily on the island and re-enter Chile clandestinely. However, the conditions for the return were not met. The MIR was being hit hard, communications with the party inside were extremely difficult, and there was no way to ensure a support structure for the arrival of militants from abroad, states Enérico García. In the first months of 1974, the MIR leader Edgardo Enríquez, "Pollo," brother of the MIR general secretary, arrived in Cuba. "Pollo" remained in the party leadership in Havana, while "Trosko" Fuentes prepared his transfer to Argentina. In that period, some militants abandoned the military task, including Bruno González, who had left with "Trosko" from Arica. He entered into conflict with the MIR's policy, and at the end of 1974, he joined the MAPU in Havana. With conditions in Chile unfavorable for the return, the MIR had decided to establish a rearguard in Argentina. That country would serve as a base of operations while militants, resources, and means were transferred to Chile. In addition, the MIR cadres trained in Cuba would have a theater of operations where they could gain experience for what they hoped would be the fight in Chile, and at the same time, they would support Argentine revolutionary organizations. There was still a year left until the military coup in Argentina, and left-wing organizations in that country were in full swing. The relationship between the Revolutionary Workers' Party – People's Revolutionary Army (PRT-ERP) of Argentina and the MIR was optimal. As soon as the coup d'état occurred in Chile, the top leader of the PRT, Mario Roberto Santucho, instructed that a suitcase with one million dollars be sent to the MIR in Chile and offered help to get its militants out of Chile and into Argentina. (FOOTNOTE 4) "The political relationship of the MIR with the PRT was important and close. The PRT was, moreover, our main financial source. We had expectations that as the struggle in Argentina progressed, we could create a rearguard to operate in Chile," affirms the then MIR leader Andrés Pascal Allende. At the beginning of 1974, many MIR militants and those of its sister organization in Uruguay, the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, who were refugees in Argentina, had joined the PRT-ERP. In February of that year, Santucho publicly presented the foundational document of the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR), which included the Argentine ERP, the Tupamaros of Uruguay, the National Liberation Army (ELN) of Bolivia, and the MIR of Chile, which had already been incubating for some time. With the last three countries under the military boot, the JCR was conceived as a coordinator of revolutionary organizations that would provide mutual support in military, logistical, and economic matters to advance the armed revolution in each of their countries. The JCR had its clandestine central base in Buenos Aires. Each organization designated a representative to the JCR, and the MIR delegated that task to Edgardo Enríquez. Among other things, he was in charge of the network of Chilean militants who were entering Argentina clandestinely to eventually leave to fight in Chile. Of the organizations that participated in the JCR, the Argentine PRT-ERP was the one that was in the greatest expansion, and starting in March 1974, it began to prepare a guerrilla focus in the province of Tucumán, creating the Ramón Rosa Jiménez Mountain Company. The Company initially dedicated itself to training tasks until the end of May of that year, when it began to operate. Among its hundred combatants were several Chileans. In that context and with that plan, "Trosko" Fuentes moved to Argentina to prepare the conditions for the entry of more Chilean militants, who would participate with the PRT-ERP in both urban units and the Mountain Company. It would be their trial by fire and springboard toward Chile. Among those who were to participate is...

there were Mario Espinoza, Jorge Vercelotti, and Homero Tobar, the boys from Arica.

The house on Calle 68

"Trosko" Fuentes left for Buenos Aires in September 1974. In Havana, he was replaced in his duties of attending to MIR exiles and groups forming militarily by Juan Saavedra ("Patula"), who had arrived in Cuba in March of that year.

Of the original group in training, only seven remained: Homero Tobar Avilés ("Ricardo"), Jorge Vercelotti Muñoz ("Marco"), Mario Espinoza Barahona ("Mauro"), Heriberto Leal Sanhueza ("Miguel Ángel"), Miguel Orellana Castro ("Pablo"), Claudio Ocampo Alonso ("Juan", a Paraguayan), and Luis Alberto Barra García ("Alejo").

Mario Espinoza was also known as "Mauro 2" because there was already a MIR leader in Cuba using the same political name.

The Paraguayan Claudio Ocampo ("Juan"), then 26 years old, had joined the MIR after arriving in Chile on a scholarship to study pedagogy during the Unidad Popular government. His father had been a soccer coach at the Club Nacional in Paraguay and moved with his family to Ecuador, where Claudio lived much of his childhood and adolescence alongside his three older brothers.

In Ecuador, he entered the chemistry faculty at the Universidad de Quito, but decided to move to Chile during the Allende government, as an uncle had done shortly before. After the military coup, he sought asylum in the Panamanian embassy for more than a month.

"My father traveled to Santiago to help obtain the safe-conduct to get him out of the country. He traveled to Panama, then went on to Mexico, and later to Cuba," recounts his brother, Milton Ocampo.

Claudio Ocampo arrived in Cuba at the end of 1973 with his Chilean partner and a young daughter, and shortly thereafter, he joined the party's tasks.

"Juan was focused, profound; nothing was banal to him, everything was important. He was a great conversationalist, distrustful, with a deep commitment to the cause, to the party, with a vision of the revolution that was perhaps more inclusive.

He did not speak of his personal history or his country of origin. He did not accept the possibility of disloyalty. That made him powerful in the group, and a good military cadre," says Enérico García, his political chief in Havana.

After a year in Cuban schools, in December 1974, the group began receiving training from MIR instructors in the areas of intelligence, political education, conspiratorial methods, documentation, and photography, among others. They had full-day training sessions every day.

They were continuing their own training when, in February 1975, Enérico García arrived in Cuba, having been imprisoned in Chile after the military coup. He took charge of continuing the task of preparing small groups to enter Chile clandestinely. His assistant in that task was Juan Lara Muñoz. (FOOTNOTE 5).

García was responsible for four small groups receiving specialized instruction by area. "Patula" took charge of the Documentation group. A second group dedicated itself to the Communications area. The unit led by "Mauro" specialized in Rural Guerrilla warfare.

The fourth group consisted of former socialist militants who were already in Cuba receiving military instruction at the time of the military coup, and who in 1975 left their party to join the MIR. During that transition, they participated in a "micro-brigade"; they lived together and worked in construction while integrating into their new party.

The four groups lived compartmentalized in different houses in Havana. "Mauro's" group lived in an opaque yellow house on Calle 68, which is why it was known as "the house on 68." They were strictly prohibited from contacting or frequenting other Chileans on the island.

They lived on the second floor of the house, and a Cuban family resided on the first. By that time, Ocampo had separated from his Chilean partner, and Espinoza was beginning a romantic relationship with a Cuban woman, which lasted until his departure for Argentina.

"The group that made up the house on 68 had the characteristics that generally marked the young MIR militancy of that era: a social commitment against all odds, a desire for direct participation in popular struggles, a commitment to the search for the 'new man' that Che proclaimed, and not sparing any effort or sacrifice in their militancy," affirms Enérico García.

The dismantling of the MIR in Argentina

"Pollo" Enríquez entered Argentina clandestinely in May 1975. That same month, "Trosko" Fuentes was arrested while entering Paraguay from Argentina alongside Amílcar Santucho, brother of the top leader of the PRT-ERP.

The arrest of "Trosko" Fuentes in Paraguay and his transfer to clandestine centers of political imprisonment and torture in Chile four months later marked the beginning of the joint operations of the security services of the Southern Cone countries known as Operation Condor.

Personnel from Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile participated in the capture of Fuentes and Santucho, which opened a vein of information extracted under torture by the intelligence services of the three countries that would eventually lead to the detection and subsequent arrest of practically the entire MIR contingent in Argentina.

Jorge Fuentes Alarcón was arrested and brutally tortured in Paraguay until September 1975, when he was handed over to agents of the Chilean DINA, who transferred him to Chile. He was seen at the clandestine center of Cuatro Álamos and later at Villa Grimaldi, from where he was forcibly disappeared in January 1976.

In the months that followed the arrest of "Trosko" Fuentes in Paraguay, a large part of the rural leadership of the Ramón Rosa Jiménez Mountain Company was annihilated, beginning its decline. During the year and a half of efforts to develop that guerrilla focus in Tucumán—in which the MIR members preparing in Cuba were to fight—half a dozen Chileans died in combat: Rubén Estrada ("Sergio"), Jaime Miguel Vergara ("César"), "Luciano", "Marcelo", the Swedish national and Chilean MIR militant Dag Arne Runing ("Julio"), and Domingo Villalobos Campo, known as "Sargento Dago".

Long before the military coup of March 24, 1976, in Argentina, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A) was already operating, and an underground dirty war was being waged against the left in that country. "The situation was extremely fragile. The MIR practically had no apparatus in Argentina, and one was only just being set up at the beginning of 1976," states Andrés Pascal.

It was in this context that the MIR leadership in Havana accelerated preparations to send combatants to collaborate with the JCR.

Enérico García was supposed to be one of the first to travel to Argentina to, together with "Pollo" Enríquez, prepare the entry of the others and the subsequent clandestine transfer to Chile. But he himself warned the MIR leadership that the conditions were not in place to guarantee the safety of the groups once in Argentina.

However, the person in charge of the MIR's External Committee in Cuba, Manuel Cabieses, assured that the situation was under control, because that was what Edgardo Enríquez was reporting from Argentina.

Enríquez's second-in-command in Buenos Aires was the Argentine Patricio Biedma Schadewaldt ("Nico"), who had joined the MIR in Chile, where he had lived since 1968; Biedma had returned to Argentina after the military coup in Chile.

The MIR leadership in Cuba decided that the first group, the one from the house on 68, should leave, and García remained in Havana. The members of the group led by "Mauro" left Havana in a staggered manner starting in December 1975, arriving in Argentina a few weeks later.

Everyone traveled with false identities and passports of different nationalities and passed through Prague and other European cities before arriving in Paris. There, they received their mission, itinerary, contacts in Argentina, and final instructions from the party.

Espinoza was the first to leave in December 1975. He was followed that same month by Jorge Vercelotti, Claudio Ocampo, and Miguel Orellana. In February 1976, Heriberto Leal left, and in March, Homero Tobar. The first ones arrived in Argentina in February 1976.

Before leaving, and as was the custom, each one left a letter written to their family that the MIR was to deliver in the event of death. Only Vercelotti's family received it, very shortly thereafter.

While the militants of the "house on 68" were establishing themselves in Argentina, in March 1976, due to political differences with the party, García was expelled from the MIR and moved to the Cuban city of Santa Clara.

He would not return to Havana or the MIR until 1978, so he was never able to follow up on the group he had been in charge of. Only in 1978 did he learn that they had all died or been forcibly disappeared; the first two within a few weeks of having entered Argentina clandestinely.

Killed by the Triple A

The plan for the group led by "Mauro" was to gain combat experience alongside the PRT-ERP in the rural guerrilla in Tucumán, strengthen the JCR, and establish a rearguard in Argentina for the eventual clandestine entry into Chile.

That stage was not to last more than six months. Originally, they were to join the Ramón Rosa Jiménez Mountain Company, but by then, the company was practically dismantled, and the PRT-ERP had been infiltrated and was being harshly persecuted.

Therefore, despite their specialization in rural guerrilla warfare, the six had to join urban operational groups of the PRT-ERP in different areas of Buenos Aires and other cities.

Upon arriving in Argentina at the beginning of 1976, some of them stayed for a time in a JCR safe house in Del Viso, in the north of the province of Buenos Aires, where the Argentine couple Osvaldo Bartolini and Susana Gabelli lived.

The ERP militant Susana Islas had also arrived at that house in December 1975 from the Mountain Company. Little by little, they would be distributed into different tasks and safe houses of the PRT.

By mid-March 1976, only Jorge Vercelotti, Claudio Ocampo, and Susana Islas remained in the Del Viso house, along with the Argentine couple. From there, all were kidnapped on March 18, except for Susana Islas. Islas managed to survive because she arrived home later.

The bodies of Bartolini and Gabelli were found on March 20, 1976, far from the sector.

Vercelotti and Ocampo were found the following day on a public street in Ciudadela, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. According to the judicial file of the time, Vercelotti was completely naked and Ocampo was wearing only pants.

Both were blindfolded and gagged, and their false passports with which they had entered the country had been taped to their backs with adhesive tape. Inside both passports, three identical papers were found. One said "Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria – ELN – MIR – ERP – MLN", the second said "MIR", and the third was a flyer titled "Comando General, 3 AAA, Parte de Guerra nº 1".

They had no bullet wounds. The autopsies of their bodies showed signs of beatings and torture, and that they had been suffocated with oil; in both cases, the cause of death was "cardio-respiratory arrest of traumatic origin."

The discovery of their bodies was reported the following day in the Argentine newspaper La Nación, which spoke of a "clash." Both families learned of their deaths through letters sent by the MIR's External Committee.

In Ocampo's case, the envelope addressed to his father contained only a copy of the La Nación newspaper clipping. However, the father could not travel to Buenos Aires to recover the body because two months earlier, another of his sons, 17-year-old Luis Ocampo, had been imprisoned in Asunción, accused of participating in a supposed armed group of almost non-existent existence in his country.

An uncle and his mother searched for Claudio, but they never managed to find his remains.

According to Federico Tatter, a leader of the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of Paraguay, when Luis Ocampo was released from prison in early April 1976, he traveled to Argentina in search of his brother.

In that task, he had the collaboration of the Service for Peace and Justice (SERPAJ) and particularly its director, the Argentine writer and 1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. But Luis, who is now deceased, was also unable to find his older brother.

The Vercelotti family received a similar letter from the MIR with the newspaper clipping. It also included the letter that Jorge had written to his family in Cuba before leaving. However, the family did not search for his remains nor report his death. The head of the family, a retired military officer, imposed silence.

"The family could not do anything to find out what had happened to Jorge for fear of reprisals. Years passed in which we lived only with the pain of having lost him and with the silence that my father requested to protect the rest of the family. Silence that no one agreed with, but that we complied with," points out Celia Vercelotti, Jorge's sister.

In 2005, after her father's death, Celia began the long and painful process of searching for the truth and her brother's remains. She started by sending a general request for information over the Internet. Three years later, she received an email from the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF).

The identification of Ocampo and Vercelotti was possible a few years ago thanks to the fact that, at the time, the police took photographs of the bodies and their passports and took fingerprints of those who appeared—according to their false passports—as the Salvadoran citizen David Linares Cortez (Ocampo) and the Ecuadorian Pedro Quintana Vargas (Vercelotti).

In 1990, a former member of the EAAF who worked at Amnesty International in London gave the forensic team information about a Chilean MIR militant of Paraguayan nationality with the surname Ocampo who had been kidnapped by an ultra-right-wing commando in Buenos Aires.

The EAAF already knew the case of the two bodies found in Ciudadela in 1976, but the fingerprints that had been taken from the bodies did not match the fingerprint records they had of the Argentine disappeared. Only in 2005 was the EAAF able to count on the collaboration of the Paraguayan government through the Truth and Justice Commission created in that country.

"With that Commission, we exchanged information about Paraguayan citizens disappeared in Argentina and requested their help in searching for Ocampo's fingerprints. In parallel, we learned of the letter that Celia Vercelotti sent to the Argentine Secretariat of Human Rights, in which she attached the MIR letter about the murder in Ciudadela, mentioning the detail of the passports taped to their backs.

There was not much to deduce. We requested Vercelotti's fingerprints from the Chilean government. In both cases, the expert reports were positive," explains Daniel Bustamante, an EAAF researcher.

Ocampo's identity was confirmed in 2008; Vercelotti's in 2009.

Both had been buried in March 1976 under the false names that appeared in their passports in separate niches in the Morón city cemetery, in Ciudadela. Eight years later, their remains—still under the false identities—were moved to a common grave, making it impossible today to individualize them for exhumation and repatriation.

It has not yet been possible to identify and locate the daughter that Ocampo had with his Chilean partner to provide her with information about her father. Today she would be around 42 years old.

The disappearance of "Mauro"

Days after the death of Vercelotti and Ocampo, and shortly after Homero Tobar's arrival in Argentina, the long-announced coup d'état against the government of Isabel Perón took place on March 24, 1976.

On April 10, the MIR official in Argentina and representative to the JCR, Edgardo Enríquez, was kidnapped. In 2009, the EAAF was able to confirm his death upon discovering his fingerprints and a photograph of his body in the archives of the Pirovano Hospital in Buenos Aires; however, his body has not been recovered, and he remains forcibly disappeared.

Patricio Biedma ("Nico") assumed "Pollo" Enríquez's responsibilities in Argentina.

During the first half of 1976, half a dozen Chileans were kidnapped and forcibly disappeared in Argentina, among them Nelson Cabello Pérez and Frida Laschan Mellado (FOOTNOTE 6) (both in April 1976, Buenos Aires), the young socialists Juan Hernández Zaspe, Manuel Tamayo Martínez, and Luis Muñoz Velásquez (April 1976, Mendoza), and Óscar Urra Ferrarese (May 1976, Buenos Aires).

They would be followed by Luis Elgueta Díaz and María Cecilia Magnet Ferrero (both in July 1976, Buenos Aires), José Francisco Pichulmán Alcapán (August 1976, Neuquén), Rachel Venegas Illanes (September 1976, Buenos Aires), and María Eliana Acosta Velasco (September 1976, La Plata), among others.

However, despite the coup d'état, the acute repressive situation, and the disappearance of "Pollo" Enríquez, between April and May 1976, the first two members of the second group sent by the MIR from Cuba, specialists in Communications, arrived in that country.

However, they were warned by the PRT itself of the serious security problems and the difficulties they would have in keeping them safe in the country, so they returned to Cuba a couple of months later. Both eventually entered Chile clandestinely.

The third group, specialized in Documentation, stayed in Havana, except for one member who entered Chile. The fourth group, that of the former socialists, began its entry into Chile starting in February-March 1976. Several of them did not survive.

Meanwhile, "Mauro" had joined the Northern Column of the PRT-ERP in Buenos Aires and for several months in 1976 lived in the house of a PRT comrade, María del Carmen Castro ("Nora"), with whom he had to travel throughout the northern and western area of Greater Buenos Aires to familiarize himself.

"I remember that Mauro arrived in Argentina with a Samsonite bag, which at that time was the best. He brought dollars and a few things, one or two pairs of jeans, a shirt that I remember was light blue with small checks, a small towel, toothpaste, and a toothbrush, all bought in France," says Castro.

In approximately May 1976, "Mauro" moved to the house of the Argentine couple Ricardo Luis Iwanski ("Quico") and Rosa Delia Cabot ("Blanca"), who was pregnant, and their two-year-old son. From then on, "Mauro" began to participate in urban operational actions of the PRT-ERP, also using the political name "Santiago."

In mid-June 1976, "Mauro" was saved from being arrested. Military personnel had arrived at Iwanski's house to arrest the entire group, but only Cabot was kidnapped. Today she is forcibly disappeared. "Mauro," Iwanski, and an Argentine with the political name "Claudio" managed to escape on that occasion, affirms Castro.

A month later, Iwanski was kidnapped. He also remains forcibly disappeared. "Claudio" survived.

"Around mid-June, more or less, Mauro went to the house on a Sunday and I saw him tired. Suddenly he had stopped being the cheerful Mauro I knew. He told my mom that where he lived there were walnut trees and that the next time he came he would bring her walnuts.

August arrived and Mauro didn't come. My mom asked me about him and I told her he had a lot of work. But I suspected the worst," recalls Castro.

Between June and August 1976, the Army had virtually annihilated the ERP guerrilla and dismantled numerous PRT cells, kidnapping about 200 militants. In that context, "Mauro" was arrested in July 1976.

During that period, Biedma was also arrested, although it is not clear if "Mauro" and Biedma were arrested at the same time.

According to a surviving prisoner from the clandestine center Automotores Orletti, operated by the Argentine Army Intelligence Service (SIDE) in Buenos Aires, when he was taken there on August 23, 1976, Biedma had already been there for quite a few days. "Mauro" arrived later, in September. "As soon as 'Mauro' was in our cell, he started chatting with 'Nico'; it was evident they knew each other," he stated.

This witness, who requested that his name be withheld, shared a cell with Biedma and "Mauro." Biedma, he says, told him that he had been arrested by chance and that for several days he was able to hide his identity from his captors due to the false documents he carried.

It is not clear if Biedma passed through another detention center before Orletti, but he believes that "Mauro" was indeed in another place before Orletti.

The guards treated Biedma differently, says his cellmate: "It was a respectful treatment toward him, as if in recognition of a worthy enemy. 'Nico' stood out from all of us for his composure, a very tempered character.

I saw him smile—which was not easy there—help others, and he even taught me, singing quietly, a very well-known Chilean song, 'Arriba en la cordillera.' In the 45 days I remained there, he was the only one they allowed to take a shower on one occasion."

The three shared a cell on the upper floor of Orletti along with other kidnapped people whose number varied according to arrests and transfers. In the first days of October, a dozen Uruguayans arrived in that cell. "We were all blindfolded and handcuffed, and some with shackles on our ankles," recounts this witness. "The metal door was very noisy and that alerted us when they entered our cell, and when we knew we were alone, we would lower our blindfolds and thus we could see each other and chat in a low voice.

We were illuminated all day by a small electric light bulb that was very high up. There were mattresses on the floor and we would sit or sleep on them. Food was very scarce. There was no way to wash ourselves, and they would take us to a bathroom with a toilet located in a patio or terrace.

In the cell, there was a bucket for urinating. Neither the injured nor the wounded received medical attention, not even a comrade wounded by a bullet in the leg. Frequently they played music at a very high volume, and not only when they were torturing."

According to this former Argentine prisoner, whose testimony before the truth commission in Argentina was key to knowing about the existence of "Mauro" in Orletti, officers from other Southern Cone countries arrived at that torture center to interrogate their compatriots. Automotores Orletti became the base for Operation Condor in Argentina.

"I am certain that 'Nico' was interrogated by Chileans because he told me so himself, specifically that they were DINA agents. I believe 'Mauro' was not tortured in Orletti because they had already tortured him in another center, but the same Chilean agents did interrogate him in Orletti.

I calculate that they must have taken him there for that. 'Mauro' told me that they were charging him with the death of two Buenos Aires provincial police officers," affirms the witness.

A CIA cable dated September 22, 1976, titled "Argentina-Cuba: Castro's Support for Local Subversion?", obtained by journalist John Dinges and published in his book on Operation Condor, gives an account of the intimate relationship that the Argentine and American intelligence services had.

The document transmits the details of the interrogation of Patricio Biedma and "Mauro" inside the torture center shortly after it happened. The cable notes:

"Argentine security forces captured Patricio Biedma and Mario Espinosa, Chileans who have worked for some time for the terrorist cause in Argentina. Biedma says he was the head of the Chilean MIR in Argentina, and the group's delegate to the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR), a coalition of regional terrorist organizations.

Espinosa also claims to be a member of the MIR and, more recently, a combatant in the People's Revolutionary Army of Argentina (ERP).

Biedma says he met frequently with an official of the Cuban Embassy in Buenos Aires who 'regularly' provided funds for the JCR as well as to the ERP and the Montoneros. [FOUR LINES OF THE CABLE ARE CROSSED OUT]

…Espinosa also claims that the Cuban embassy provides funds to Argentine leftists, and that he himself received instruction in Cuba, and that he was later introduced to the ERP by a Cuban contact in Argentina."

The former political prisoner remained in Automotores Orletti until October 7, 1976. When he was released, only Biedma and "Mauro" remained in the cell. Orletti was closed a month later. Biedma is forcibly disappeared.

The surviving prisoner from Orletti positively identified the photograph of Mario Espinoza Barahona as corresponding to his cellmate, "Mauro." Enérico García also recognized Mario Espinoza as "Mauro," the leader of the group in military training in Havana.

Although the CIA cable correctly identifies "Mauro" as Mario Espinoza, for many years it was thought that "Mauro" was a brother of Elmo Catalán. The confusion was due, apparently, to distorted information that reached Argentina.

Daniel Bustamante, an EAAF researcher, says that the forensic team was informed of statements made by Enérico García and Juan Saavedra before the Rettig Report regarding the disappearance of Heriberto Leal, in which they stated that within the group of Chileans in Cuba there was one from Arica, with the political name "Mauro," and that he was a brother of Elmo Catalán.

However, García asserts that what he recounted to the Rettig Report was a meeting to which he was summoned in 1990 by a lawyer from the Vicaría de la Solidaridad—whose name he does not remember—who wanted to confirm information: an Argentine conscript had said that a body had been found in the Andes on the Argentine side that corresponded to a MIR militant named Mauro, from Arica.

"I told that in my statement, transmitting the lawyer's information. I didn't have any information about a body in the Andes, but I always had it perfectly clear that 'Ricardo' was Catalán's brother, not 'Mauro.' What I never knew until many years later were their real names," affirms García.

The mistaken version that "Mauro" could be a brother of Elmo Catalán spread among researchers and the human rights community, and the fact that both Espinoza and Tobar were from Arica contributed to it.

However, although the distorted information misled those who were searching for the true identity of "Mauro," it served to discover another forcibly disappeared person who was not even on the radar of human rights organizations in Chile or Argentina: Elmo Catalán's half-brother, Homero Tobar.

A disappearance without a trace

The disappearance of Homero Tobar ("Ricardo") in Argentina is a total enigma. There is no reliable information, nor have any witnesses or any evidence of his eventual arrest, imprisonment, or death emerged. At the moment, no one has recognized him in photos. However, there is a possibility that he was in Río Negro.

In the first months of 1976, when Tobar had just arrived in Argentina, he sent his girlfriend Miriam a second letter. In it, he told her that he was in Río Negro and that he was working. It was the last time the Catalán family heard from Homero Tobar.

The real name of Homero Tobar Avilés appears in a document from the Advisory Commission on Backgrounds (CAA) of the State Intelligence Secretariat, to which this author had access, regarding the Chilean Hugo Inostroza Arroyo, a former ERP militant settled in the Neuquén area with his family for years.

According to this CAA document, Task Group 1, Inostroza acted as the "military leader of the ERP in the provinces of Neuquén and Río Negro," and his "contacts in the MIR" in 1976 were Lorenzo Homero Tobar Avilés ("Ricardo") and José Luis Appel de la Cruz ("Claudio"), citing them by their full real names and their political aliases.

Appel de la Cruz was forcibly disappeared in Neuquén in January 1977.

Consulted about this, Inostroza said he did not know Homero Tobar and did not recognize him in a photograph. According to the Catalán family's version, years after Tobar's departure from Chile in October 1973, his mother received a call from Argentina informing her that her son was dead.

Later, in the eighties, a relative told the family that according to her husband, who was a detective, Tobar had already died, but she refused to provide any additional information. It has not been possible to contact this relative or her husband to ratify this information.

Another version circulating in the Catalán family is that of a first cousin of Homero, Carmen Segovia Avilés. While working at the Human Rights Commission of Arica, she said, in approximately 1984 she learned that her cousin was a forcibly disappeared person and that, apparently, he had died on the border of Chile with Argentina.

"I learned that Homero had entered Chile near Los Andes with a couple of other comrades, and Father Roco, in Quilpué, gave him refuge. He was in Quilpué for about two days, and then he returned to Argentina to look for more comrades to bring into Chile.

They say he was killed there, but it is not clear," said Segovia. This version has not been able to be confirmed but coincides to some degree with the information provided by the lawyer from the Vicaría de la Solidaridad to Enérico García in 1990.

The letters that never arrived

The families of Homero Tobar and Mario Espinoza never reported their disappearance because they were never informed by the MIR or other people that they could have been kidnapped or that they were forcibly disappeared.

Before leaving Cuba for Argentina, each militant filled out a form with their personal data, a photograph was taken of them, and they were asked to write a farewell letter to their family. The MIR was to send these letters to their families in the event of death.

The families of Mario Espinoza and Homero Tobar did not receive those letters—it is not clear why. Although there was no record of their deaths and the MIR in Argentina was practically dismantled, someone in the party should have found out about their disappearance. Someone should have reported it.

Those letters, along with the forms and photographs of all of them, were kept for many years by a MIR leader in Havana, who still lives in Cuba. Consulted through third parties in 2009, he indicated that he no longer had them in his possession.

According to Enérico García, those documents, as well as the entire MIR archive in Havana, are now in the hands of the Cuban government. Efforts to recover them have been fruitless.

"When the MIR split in the second half of the eighties, there were disputes between the different currents regarding the possession of the MIR archives that were in Cuba. As a member of the party leadership told me in the late nineties when I claimed the letters of these boys, in the face of those disputes, the Cuban government intervened and kept the entire archive.

The Cubans said they would hand over the archives if the representatives of the different currents of the MIR reached an agreement. And that was as far as we got," affirms García.

Notes

1 - John Dinges, "The Condor Years", The New Press, New York, 2004. 2 - Jorge Vercelotti was born as Jorge Machuca, which was his father's maternal surname. In the mid-seventies, his father rectified his surname and it became Jorge Vercelotti.

He never found out about that rectification. 3 - "Manuel" requested that his real name be withheld. 4 - It is not clear if that money actually reached the hands of the MIR. María Seoane, "Todo o Nada", Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1991, pp. 215-216. 5 - Juan Lara died on September 12, 1981, after being shot accidentally during the withdrawal from a MIR operation in Santiago. 6 - Frida Laschan and her husband, the Argentine Ángel Athanasiu Jara, were kidnapped along with their almost six-month-old son, Pablo.

The baby was handed over to an Argentine family and his true identity was restored in August 2013.

Source: September 14, 2013. Source: The Clinic Online

Date: 09-14-2013

Lorenzo Homero Tobar Avilés Forcibly disappeared in 1976

Homero Tobar was a militant of the MIR in the city of Arica, in northern Chile.

He was a half-brother of Elmo Catalán, who died in 1970 in Bolivia, where he had joined the National Liberation Army (ELN). Like Elmo, Homero's war name was "Ricardo". He left Chile clandestinely for Peru at the end of October 1973 along with other MIR comrades, Mario Espinoza Barahona and Jorge Machuca Muñoz, who would also be forcibly disappeared in Argentina in 1976.

The three had accompanied the MIR leader Jorge Fuentes Alarcón out of the country, who was subsequently a victim of Operation Condor in 1975. From Peru, he traveled to Cuba, where he was part of the MIR groups that were preparing to re-enter Chile clandestinely to fight against the military dictatorship.

However, the decision was made to first enter Argentina and join the PRT-ERP while conditions were being prepared for entry into Chile. Homero Tobar left Havana in February 1976, arriving in Buenos Aires a few weeks later, with a passport in the name of "Mario Ricardo Salvatore Cerretto Torcell".

There is no information about the circumstances of his disappearance in Argentina. His disappearance was never reported to human rights organizations, so he does not appear in the official reports of the human rights commissions in Chile or Argentina. He was 24 years old.

Did you know Leonor, Juan, Egidio, Juana, Mario, Heriberto, Lorenzo? Do you know anything about them? Contact www.desaparecidos.org

Source: colectivoepprosario.blogspot.com 8/31/2009

Date: 08-31-2009