Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, single, Inspector at the Liceo Nocturno in Parral, and a socialist militant, was detained on September 12, 1973, at approximately 11:00 hours, at his home by Army and Carabineros personnel in the presence of his parents and siblings.

The home was violently raided by the uniformed men, who caused damage to various belongings. Among the captors identified were Sub-officer Germaín Morales, who was in command of the patrol and later passed away, Sergeants Guillermo Morales and Luis Hidalgo, Corporals Ramón Valenzuela and another surnamed Zúñiga, and the official Garrido, all of whom belonged to the Parral Carabineros.

The young Aguayo was taken to the local police station, where he remained detained until the following day, after which he was required to report to sign in three times a day. During his time at the police facility, he was beaten and his hair was cut.

Upon arriving to sign in on September 14, at approximately 12:00 hours, he was detained once again by order of the Governor, Army Captain Hugo Cardemil. He was held at the police station until the following day—September 15—the date on which he was transferred to the Parral Jail.

He remained at this facility until September 26 of that year, the day he was removed by a Military and Carabineros patrol at approximately 10:00 hours, along with other detainees: Hugo Soto Campos, Oscar Saldía Daza, Enrique Carreño González, and Claudio Escanilla Escobar.

All of them have been forcibly disappeared since then, except for Enrique Carreño, who appeared in January 1974 at the Linares Jail, a facility from which he was removed in February of that year, a date since which he has also been forcibly disappeared.

During his time in jail, his family members brought him clothing and food daily, until a prison official surnamed Moya informed them that he was no longer there and had been transferred to Linares. At this prison, he was seen by Juan Bernardino Fuentes Gatica, who was also detained there.

Fuentes was able to speak with him, as well as with Oscar Saldía and Hugo Soto, during a few days when they were placed in a collective cell. All of them had their heads shaved and were quite beaten. On September 22, the witness was held incommunicado; however, he maintained some contact with other inmates and thus learned that they had all been taken away by Military and Carabineros personnel, never to be seen again, nor was their whereabouts ever known.

Among the military personnel who participated in the transfer of prisoners from the Parral Jail to the Linares Artillery School, Fuentes mentions Lieutenants Dodge and Sáenz and Corporals Raúl Ugalde and Manuel Moya, all from the staff of that Military Institute.

Among the Carabineros, he points to the aforementioned officials Hidalgo and Valenzuela and Germaín Morales, who later passed away. It should be added that the Governor of Parral, Army Captain Hugo Cardemil, created a "Special Commission," composed of military and police personnel, which operated at the Investigations facility.

This Commission was tasked with interrogating the detainees who remained in jail and deciding who would be sent to Linares, to the Army Artillery School, or to the city's jail.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

His sister filed an amparo (habeas corpus) petition before the Court of Appeals of Talca in November 1974, which was dismissed. In October of that same year, she also filed a complaint for alleged disappearance before the Parral Court, a case that was temporarily dismissed.

After he was removed from the jail, Aguayo's mother spoke with the Governor, Captain Cardemil, who told her that he himself had transferred her son to the Artillery School in Linares. On the other hand, at this military facility, they indicated that her son had not been taken there. She was also unable to locate him at the Linares Jail.

Source: Vicariate of Solidarity

"Callín" was sent to buy yeast and never returned. His mother waited for him at the door until she died. She would say: "But how? He just went to buy something, how can he be taking so long?" and she would sit on her doorstep waiting for him. "Callín" was always a restless child; he liked to hang out with the older ones.

They would gather in the corner plaza, make graffiti in favor of Allende, or hand out pamphlets. At sixteen, he believed in the revolution. His family, eight or nine siblings, children of peasants, never got involved in politics, but "Callín" did.

He worked shining shoes in the Plaza de Armas of Parral, where you can still see the shoeshine stands, although all of them have disappeared. Claudio Jesús Escanilla Escobar was his name, but everyone in Parral called him "El Callín." On September 13, he was detained by a military patrol.

He was with Nelson León and Emiliano Mena, but they would be released days later. Mrs. Julia, his mother, was told by the shoeshine boys in the plaza that the military and Carabineros sergeant Luis Hidalgo had detained him, and that, apparently, he was a prisoner at the Parral Police Station.

And indeed, on September 14, they transferred him to the jail, where Mrs. Julia was only allowed to leave him clothes and food, as they never allowed her to see him. Along with "Callín," thirty-three other people were detained, most of them young people who were not yet twenty-two years old.

Children of workers, peasants, poor people who, for one reason or another, were detained, taken to the Parral Police Station, and then never heard from again. Even from that time, the idea circulated that they had been taken to Colonia Dignidad, the German enclave that operated with total impunity for decades in Chile and was led by the former member of the Hitler Youth, Paul Schäfer.

The first to be detained was Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, twenty years old; he was followed by Hugo Enrique Soto Campos, eighteen years old and a high school student. Aurelio Clodomiro Peñailillo Sepúlveda, thirty-two years old and retired due to disability, was also detained.

Also Oscar Eladio Saldías Daza, twenty years old, from a low-income family, who worked to take care of his mother and a five-year-old niece they were raising. Also Enrique Ángel Carreño González, the only university student, who was released and then arrested, never to be heard from again.

Also José Ignacio Bustos Fuentes, fifty-two years old, a peasant who lived with his mother, who searched the military barracks of Linares and Talca, but no one ever saw him again. Also Rafael Alonso Díaz Meza, twenty-three years old; Irineo Alberto Méndez Hernández, twenty-two; Manuel Eduardo Bascuñán Aravena, twenty-three; Óscar Abdón Retamal Pérez, nineteen and a student; Roberto del Carmen Romero Muñoz, twenty-three years old and an agricultural worker.

In October, the following people disappeared: Armando Edelmiro Morales Morales, nineteen years old and a high school student. Luis Enrique Rivera Cofré, twenty-one years old, father of nine-month-old Vladimir Rivera Órdenes and an unborn child who would also be named Luis.

Also disappeared were Víctor Julio Vivanco Vásquez, nineteen years old; and José Hernán Riveros Chávez, twenty-three. In Catillo, a community near Parral, Miguel Rojas Rojas and Gilberto Rojas Vásquez, father and son, were detained.

Also Ruperto Oriol Torres Aravena, fifty-eight years old, a peasant and father of three children who were left orphaned. Also Ramiro Romero González, twenty-eight years old, a peasant, married, two children.

And Alfredo Durán Durán, forty-eight years old, who worked at the Civil Registry. The last cases of forcibly disappeared persons in Parral correspond to 1974, plus one murdered woman, Bella Aurora Sepúlveda Valenzuela.

These were twelve men, eight of whom were linked to a singular repressive event known as the "El Águila" case. Among them were Aroldo Vivían Laurie Luengo and Hernán Sarmiento Sabater. The last detainees were José Luis Morales Ruiz, twenty-one years old, an artisan who had two children, and Juan Francisco Ponce González, for whom there is no record and who does not even appear in the Rettig Report.

In the majority of the detainees, except for those involved in the "El Águila" case, the name of Luis Hidalgo appears—a friendly gentleman who, until the day of his death, walked through the center of Parral with total impunity.

No one ever confronted him, out of fear, of course. He was not convicted, he did not step foot in jail, he did not repent, and it is most likely that for many, he is one of the most prominent figures in Parral.

When I asked Mrs. Julia why she went out every day to sit outside her house, she replied: "In case 'Callín' appears, so he knows this is his home." No one could ever get her to leave that spot until she died, waiting for the son who, on that fateful day, went out to buy yeast.

Book: En el pueblo hay una casa pequeña y oscura. Author: Vladimir Rivera Órdenes (Parral, 1973) is a screenwriter, narrator, and teacher. Chronicle: The pride of being from Parral.

Source: ruil.cl

Date: 08-30-2021

Where is my son? Last living Human Rights mother in Parral breaks down remembering his disappearance in Colonia Dignidad

An emotional video was released in the context of the invitation to the International Colloquium "Tracing the Footsteps of Colonia Dignidad," held by the Catholic University of the Maule and the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Persons (AFDD).

Mercedes Fernández (95) cried while remembering her son, Luis Evangelista Aguayo, who disappeared on September 14, 1973. Mercedes Fernández is the last living Human Rights mother in Parral. "After 47 years, I still ask myself, 'Where is my son Luis Evangelista?' So many years without seeing him, so many years suffering.

It is the pain that remains with one when one has few years of life left," she said with a broken voice at the end of the invitation, with an image of Luis hanging on her chest.

Source: lavozdelosquesobran.cl

Date: 09-10-2020

Santiago Court orders the Treasury to pay compensation to relatives of a forcibly disappeared person in Parral.

In a unanimous ruling, the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the State of Chile to pay a total compensation of $150,000,000 to the mother and siblings of Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, who was detained in September 1973 in Parral, with his whereabouts unknown since then.

The sentence maintains that regarding the payment that is alleged and which the judge rejected, it is necessary to take into consideration that, without prejudice to the benefits unilaterally established by Law 19.123, nothing prevents legal action from being taken as is done in the lawsuit, especially if one considers that it was not proven that the plaintiffs had received any compensation for a specific amount or in the form of periodic pensions that could be comparable to the one they are now claiming.

The resolution adds that regarding the statute of limitations that is alleged, the uniform jurisprudence that exists on the matter will be taken into account, in particular what was resolved by the Supreme Court subsequent to the ruling on the unification of jurisprudence that is cited, in the sense that internal civil law expressly contradicts International Human Rights Law, which enshrines the right of victims and other legitimate holders to obtain reparation for all damages suffered, as recognized by Law 19.123 itself, so it is not possible to make a distinction between the criminal and civil actions that arise from the same events. Therefore, it concludes that the appealed sentence of September 7, 2017, written on page 235 and following, is confirmed, with the declaration that the compensation that the Treasury of Chile must pay to the plaintiffs for moral damages suffered due to the death of their son, in the case of Mrs. Mercedes del Carmen Fernández Barra, and of their brother, in the case of Ana Luisa Aguayo Fernández, Carlos Antonio Aguayo Fernández, Sebastián de la Cruz Aguayo Fernández, and Julio Enrique Aguayo Fernández, are raised to the sum of $50,000,000 for the former, and $25,000,000 for each of the other plaintiffs, plus the current interest for non-readjustable operations that accrue between the date the default occurs and the date of its effective payment.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl

Date: 10-04-2018

Place discovered where Germans burned those executed by Colonia Dignidad

“...And what is it that we have found: here there is soil of a yellow tone, and from here to there, it is black. All of this is the burning.” The faces of the family members listening to archaeologist Iván Cáceres are focused on a point he indicates with his finger on the screen.

It is a photograph of the place where, for the first time, the site was detected where the people who were executed by firing squad in one of the foothills of the Andes near Colonia Dignidad were burned until they disappeared.

There is Mercedes Fernández (85), who is searching for her son Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández; sitting and resting her chin on a cane, María Lucía Villavicencio, widow of Álvaro Modesto Vallejos Villagrán, the “Loro Matías,” listens.

Also observing the image is María Cristina Escanilla, who is searching for her brother Claudio. In the small community center, on a cold April morning in the center of Parral, about twenty family members of the forcibly disappeared from that city, Linares, and Talca, gathered to listen, for the first time, to one of the scientists working to establish the final fate of a hundred people who were detained in the first months of the last dictatorship and made to disappear by the German citizens who ran the German sect, some 40 kilometers east of Parral.

It was the family members themselves who gathered the courage and took the initiative to meet and invite the expert who has been working since November of last year on surveys and excavations of a dozen points in the Chenco sector.

These are scientists who had already been to that place in 2005, 2006, and 2009, conducting surveys while Judge Jorge Zepeda was in charge of the investigation. They had found a pit with vehicle engines belonging to the disappeared and signs of at least 10 more pits. However, Zepeda stopped the work without explanation.

Almost nine years later, they returned to the site. Judge Mario Carroza, who took on a final complaint, promoted by the Human Rights Program and the Associations of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of Parral and Talca, requested the hiring of the team of Cáceres and Kenneth Jensen.

Since 2014, a team from the PDI (Investigations Police) and the Legal Medical Service attempted to analyze the sites, without results. In a few months, Cáceres and Jensen managed to detect empty pits, used to bury bodies in 1973, which were unearthed in December 1978 as part of the "Operation Retiro de Televisores" (Operation Television Removal).

But the main objective of their work focused on detecting the place where a couple of witnesses claim the bodies had been burned.

What the relatives of the forcibly disappeared had heard for years, as the way in which all biological and cultural traces of their loved ones had been eliminated, that morning became an absolute truth.

One of those testimonies, which guided the work of the experts, was that of the former German colonist Willy Malessa. He was the driver of the backhoe used to unearth a dozen pits.

“(Gerhard) Mücke indicated to me the sector where I had to dig, in a place where it was noticeable that the earth had been moved previously. After having dug about two to three meters deep, I realized that not only earth came out on the machine's shovel, clearly observing a body from which details could not be seen, since the soft parts were in the middle of a decomposition process and it looked like a white mass, with patches of hair on its head.”

The raw account of the German was recorded in August 2017, at the place where the events occurred in 1978. He was taken there by Judge Carroza, to whom he detailed what he remembered.

“I do not remember exactly how many bodies I took out of that excavation, but there were several. I had to repeat this excavation in two more sectors, where upon digging, more bodies and remains of them came out, all of which were put into a truck,” he said.

They put them in sacks

"Operation Retiro de Televisores" was an order from the dictator Augusto Pinochet and was executed in a coordinated manner throughout the country, following the discovery of bodies in the ovens of Lonquén.

Military units throughout the country illegally exhumed the remains of people murdered for political reasons after the coup d'état and were ordered to make them disappear. There were recorded instances of bodies being thrown into the sea, rivers, lakes, and some burnings (Los Ángeles and Linares).

Malessa continued the tale of horror: “I remember that Mücke and (Karl) Van den Berg were always present, on the hopper of the vehicle. I would bring the shovel or bucket of the machine closer and they would take the bodies and put them into sacks.

I cannot specify the number of corpses I took out of the pits, but I imagine there were between 30 and 40 bodies. This operation lasted about two weeks or a little more.”

At this point, the magistrate and the archaeologists paid the greatest attention to Malessa's statements. Already in 2009, another former colonist, Georg Laube, had pointed out the existence of this place to Judge Zepeda. However, it was dismissed at the time, without any explanation.

“After taking out the bodies, I was ordered to prepare a flat piece of land, where they arranged a kind of grill, a place where the sacks were unloaded. From that moment on, I stayed in the machine and observed that Van den Berg and Johan Spatz tried to burn the sacks and their contents with wood and thick fuel made of gasoline, to set them on fire.”

The testimonies of the leaders of the Germans of Colonia Dignidad are not precise regarding the formula used. But they all agree that they used three highly combustible elements to finish the task: kerosene, phosphorus, and napalm.

Regarding the capacity of Colonia Dignidad to use this type of chemical agent, Dr. Dieter Maier explains from Germany to El Dínamo that “in its beginnings, Colonia Dignidad did not have the means to burn the bodies unearthed during 'Operation Retiro de Televisores.' They copied the recipe for making napalm for the war in Vietnam and achieved the objective.”

Maier has been a researcher on the German enclave since the 1970s and accompanied the complaints of former prisoners who survived captivity in Colonia Dignidad.

Regarding the discovery of the place where the bodies were burned, he noted that “we knew that several forcibly disappeared persons passed through Colonia Dignidad and that a high number of them were imprisoned or murdered there.

I always calculated that there were more than 100 people. Today my careful estimate is even higher. To them, we must add the opponents of the dictatorship who fell due to the alliance of repressive agencies (DINA, Military Intelligence Service, and Patria y Libertad) to which Colonia Dignidad belonged.”

Information left uninvestigated

Archaeologist Iván Cáceres advances in his account to the family members and pauses on the role of Willy Malessa: “He testified several times with the judge and he is one of the people who was working on the removal of the bodies.

That is why we are interested, because he operated one of the machines and he told us that there was a place where they had been burned and that place had to be worked on.”

The task is urgent due to the passage of time and the harshness of winter. Therefore, it is striking that this information, which was known to the former judge Zepeda, was not investigated in 2009 when it was revealed by a witness.

Georg Laube described the same site that is being worked on today to the program En La Mira of Chilevisión in 2014.

“One person saw a machine digging here. Another person told me that they were sent with weeding tools and saws to clean and remove all the blackberries and clean that whole place. This is a place that is flooded with water in the winter,” says the former colonist.

Precisely, Cáceres points out that this is the reason why that place was chosen to burn the bodies. “This was a wetland or humid place where we had to do drainage a few months before. We cut weeds and probed looking for evidence of burning.

This whole area was one of intense vegetation, shrubby, of one hectare that we had to clean and perform horizontal surveys. We made these trenches with shovels, with small brushes, searching gently, because here we had to find a point where remains of charcoal or ashes would appear.”

Likewise, the sector meets another characteristic described by the witnesses. The pits and the burning were done on the edge of an old road, but the German leaders modified the layout to hide clues.

“The interior roads were modified, and we have seen that through aerial photographs and the topographic analysis of the sector, which allowed us to find signs of excavations compatible with those they mention and tracks of machinery from the era,” Cáceres noted.

Using a technique of opening “trenches,” the experts managed to find an area of four by two meters in that terrain. “This evidence is charcoal; in one of these trenches, we found this. Therefore, this work must be done by specialists,” explains the expert, who points to another point on the slide: “This is clay, this is part of the hill, and this is charcoal; it is a different thing, and as archaeologists, we have to interpret it.”

“...And what is it that we have found: here there is soil of a yellow tone, and from here to there, it is black. All of this is the burning.”

The archaeologists describe the existence of at least three burned logs that were used to support the grill: “This is a burned log; another one here that Rodrigo Lorca, an archaeologist, is examining; another one, which Isidora Pérez is examining, and another one over here. We have a bounded area.”

The epilogue of this chain of horrific events, which the specialists are trying to reconstruct, also coincides with Malessa's version. Once the bodies were burned, the charred remains were put into the same truck and thrown into the waters of the Perquilauquén River, which crosses Colonia Dignidad.

“If we look at the profile and observe this plane, it maintains the same level and then begins to drop. That is compatible with what they (the Germans) say, that once they burned the bodies, they shoveled out the remains, scraped, and we see that there is a depression of about 20 to 30 centimeters,” recounts Cáceres.

Report to Judge Carroza

The excavations concluded on April 25. The team delivered a report to Judge Carroza where they propose the need to continue the work to search for the next link in the search for the truth of what happened in Colonia Dignidad: a pit that, according to former colonist Willy Malessa, was not unearthed and, therefore, still contains remains of the disappeared.

El Dínamo asked the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Lorena Recabarren, on Thursday, May 3, about the continuity of funding for the work in Colonia Dignidad. However, as of this Sunday, she did not respond to the inquiry, nor did she acknowledge receipt of it.

The ministry depends on the Minister of Justice, Hernán Larraín, who was a defender of Colonia Dignidad.

In the 90s, he spoke of slander, persecution, and bias by the judges who were investigating sexual abuse against Chilean children and human rights violations.

Although he has excused himself by saying he did not know what was happening, Larraín was at Colonia Dignidad during the same period in which there were political prisoners and a regime of segregation of men and women prevailed.

Myrna Troncoso, president of the relatives of Talca and coordinator of the Associations of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of the Maule Region, victims of Colonia Dignidad, said that “it has been painful for us to hear all this, but necessary and clarifying, which gives us the peace of mind that they are working in the best possible way, aware that all this has the objective of bringing peace of mind to us, the family members.

We hope that other Germans cooperate and tell the truth once and for all.”

Source: rebelion.org

Date: 08-05-2018

Parral Episode | Compensation to relatives of a Forcibly Disappeared person in 1973.

The ruling of the 6th Civil Court of Santiago ordered the state to compensate the mother and siblings of Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, who was forcibly disappeared starting September 26, 1973, in Parral, Seventh Region, in the well-known “Parral episode.”

In the ruling (case file 20.138-2016), Judge Mindy Villar Simón established the responsibility of the State for the actions of its agents and ruled out the statute of limitations for the civil action, as it is a crime against humanity, stating in part:

“(…) it is observed that the fact just noted has a diametrically different aspect from those regulated by our Civil Code. Thus, it is known that in the present case we are facing an action that derives from the commission of an international crime, provided for and sanctioned through norms contained in instruments of the same character, which, as stated, are ratified by Chile, specifically, in what is contemplated by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and whose imprescriptibility is expressly regulated in the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity of November 26, 1968, without prejudice to other international instruments that regulate the perpetration of criminal actions that transgress fundamental rights such as the American Convention on Human Rights and principles of international law or Customary International Law,” the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds that: “from the aforementioned international regulation received by the facts upon which the compensation claim in question rests and due to the degrading character of human dignity that these possess, where all possibility of recognition of the rights and freedoms that concerned the victim is annulled, it can be concluded that the entity and nature of these do not present equivalence with those that private law considers as illicit events; that is, the former, as stated, are physical and moral insults against Human Rights and are international crimes that have supra-constitutional regulation—norms integrated, as stated, into our legislation—and the latter stem from the violation of either the breach of a contractual duty or a willful or negligent civil tort, whose legal statute must be governed by common law norms.”

“(…) it is necessary –it continues– to add that subordinating the statute of limitations of the action in question to the norms provided in this regard by the national common law would entail establishing an arbitrary distinction that is incoherent with the international regulation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, since it is not reasonable to grant the action in question a treatment dissimilar to the criminal action derived from behaviors described in the law as crimes against humanity, given the fact that international regulations have not done so, but on the contrary, have advocated the opposite, as has been said; to make a distinction like the one described where the same international regulation has not done so by applying to the effect private law norms not relevant to the effect according to the nature of the noted facts would mean sliding into the terrain of the arbitrary or making a capricious decision on the case, which cannot be endorsed by the undersigned.”

“That in correlation with what was reflected previously and the considerations pertaining to the application of International Law and its guiding principles according to the situation of the case, and considering that the fact of the application of the statute of limitations contemplated by private law would suppose the violation of those and leave without application the responsibility of the State as provided by article 38, second paragraph of the Fundamental Charter, it only remains to reject the exception of statute of limitations raised by the Treasury,” it concludes.

Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández and the Parral Episode;

Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, single, Inspector of the Night High School of Parral, socialist militant, was detained on September 12, 1973, around 11:00 hours, at his home, by Army and Carabineros personnel, in the presence of his parents and siblings. The home was raided with violence by the uniformed men who caused damage to several assets.

Among the apprehenders, Sub-officer Germaín Morales was identified, who was in command of the patrol and who later died, Sergeants Guillermo Morales and Luis Hidalgo, Corporals Ramón Valenzuela and another with the surname Zúñiga, and the official Garrido, all of them belonging to the Parral Carabineros.

The young Aguayo was taken to the Police Station of that town, where he remained detained until the following day, having to go three times a day afterward to sign in. During his stay at the police facility, he was beaten and his hair was cut.

Upon appearing to sign in on September 14, around 12:00 hours, he was left detained again, by order of the Governor, Army Captain Hugo Cardemil. He was kept at the Police Station until the following day—September 15—the date on which he was transferred to the Parral Prison.

In this establishment, he remained until September 26 of that year, the day on which he was taken out by a Military and Carabineros patrol, around 10:00 hours, along with other detainees: Hugo Soto Campos, Oscar Saldía Daza, Enrique Carreño González, and Claudio Escanilla Escobar.

All of them have been missing since then, except for Enrique Carreño, who appeared in January 1974 in the Linares Prison, a facility from which he was taken in February of that year, the date from which he has also been missing.

During his stay in prison, his relatives brought him clothing and food daily, until a prison official with the surname Moya informed them that he was no longer there and that he had been transferred to Linares.

In this prison, he was seen by Juan Bernardino Fuentes Gatica, who was also detained there. Fuentes was able to talk with him, with Oscar Saldía, and with Hugo Soto, for a few days when they were placed in a collective cell.

All of them were shaved and quite beaten. On September 22, the witness was held incommunicado; however, he maintained some contact with other inmates, and that was how he learned that all of them had been taken out by Military and Carabineros, never to be seen again nor their whereabouts known.

Among the military personnel who participated in the transfer of prisoners from the Parral Prison to the Linares Artillery School, Fuentes mentions Lieutenants Dodge and Sáenz and Corporals Raúl Ugalde and Manuel Moya, all from the staff of that Military Institute. Among the Carabineros, he points to the officials Hidalgo and Valenzuela mentioned above and Germaín Morales, who later died.

It should be added that the Governor of Parral, Army Captain Hugo Cardemil, created a “Special Commission,” composed of military and police, which operated in the Investigations facility. This Commission had the task of interrogating the detainees who remained in prison and deciding who were sent to Linares, to the Army Artillery School, or to the Prison of that city.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

His sister filed an amparo (habeas corpus) appeal before the Court of Appeals of Talca in November 1974, which was dismissed. Also in October of that year, she filed a complaint for alleged disappearance before the Court of Parral, a case that was temporarily dismissed.

After having been taken out of prison, Aguayo's mother spoke with the Governor, Captain Cardemil, who told her that he himself had transferred her son to the Artillery School in Linares. On the other hand, at this military facility, they indicated that her son had not been brought there. She also did not locate him in the Linares Prison.

Source: ruil.cl

Date: 06-01-2018

Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared arrive at Colonia Dignidad for a pit revealed by a witness

The Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of Talca, San Javier, Linares, and Parral visited, for the first time, the site indicated by a witness as the place where several pits were dug in 1973.

A circular area, cleared of brush, approximately 50 meters in diameter, surrounded by native forest, shrubs, and blackberry bushes, is the place where Mercedes Fernández (87) has her gaze and her life set. In that place, about 12 kilometers from the main entrance of Villa Baviera, there could be vestiges of her son, Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, whom she last saw on September 12, 1973.

The young man, a high school inspector from Parral, was 21 years old when a Carabineros patrol took him, a few hours after the coup d'état that occurred on September 11, 1973. He is one of the more than 40 people who were kidnapped and made to disappear from that commune, whose fate may have ended in the Colonia Dignidad Detention, Torture, and Extermination Center.

The Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared of Talca, San Javier, Linares, and Parral visited, for the first time, the site indicated by a witness as the place where several pits were dug in 1973, to throw and hide in them the bodies of prisoners who were executed by firing squad between September and December 1973.

Mrs. Mercedes Fernández is one of the 70 people who traveled this Sunday, September 10, the 12 kilometers into the German enclave by vehicle, and then walked about 600 meters, among ancient trees and steep paths. “This same route is the one my son could have taken before they killed him,” sobs the octogenarian mother.

She is one of the few mothers who survive, after years of searching. On the muddy terracotta-colored paths of the German estate, also looking at every corner, searching for vestiges of their brothers, are María Cristina Escanilla Escobar, who is searching for her brother Claudio Escanilla Escobar, 17 years old at the time of his detention in Parral on September 13, 1973; Raquel Vivanco, searching for Víctor Vivanco Vásquez, 19 years old, last seen on October 8, 1973, in Parral; Elena Villalobos, also searching for her brother, Waldo Villalobos Moraga, a forcibly disappeared person since December 23, 1973, in Linares; Lidia Lara, for her part, has not seen her brother, Fernando Antonio Lara Rojas, since May 7, 1976, when they took him from the house they shared in Talca.

Myrna Troncoso, president of the AFDD at the regional level, said that they met last Thursday with the investigating judge Mario Carroza, who explained to them in detail a field operation carried out on August 25, when they fixed the location, with the witness present, with the police, and with forensic anthropologists.

The leader explained that “there is a new clue, a light of hope that some of us will know if this land still hides one or several of our beloved family members. We must be prudent, cautious. We must not have expectations beyond what science and the correct actions of Judge Mario Carroza tell us.”

She added that “it is about the testimony that we value a lot, of a former German colonist who worked on unearthing corpses and who for the first time revealed that this place hides a pit that was not excavated in 1978.”

Myrna Troncoso made a call to other German colonists or former conscripts who participated in these events to come forward to the judge or the family members.

“We are mothers, sisters, grandmothers. We search for our dear family members because it is an open wound that does not heal if there is no Truth. If they know something, please come forward or write to ddhhtalca@gmail.com for any information about Colonia Dignidad. This helps us but also those who have that information. It will be a relief of conscience for them who were ordered by officers.”

For her part, the lawyer Mariela Santana announced that they will become a party to the investigation being instructed by Judge Carroza. “Now more than ever we must keep the family members informed, and we have useful information for the case regarding illegal inhumation and exhumation, which we will deliver in due course to the magistrate, which will mean a tremendous advance after so many years,” the professional noted.

While silence consumed the voices of the family members, Deacon Guido Gossens (a well-known activist and human rights defender in the Maule Region) led the first Christian prayer at the site.

Despite the calls for caution regarding expectations, Mercedes Fernández's eyes could not hold back and were drowned in tears.

Myrna Troncoso and other family members were locked in an emotional embrace because, despite reason, hope has been reborn.

During the visit to the site, it was reported that the Government released the necessary funds to carry out the procedures at the site, which will be in charge of anthropologists Iván Cáceres and Kenneth Jensen. The scientists have worked on numerous cases of searching for sites used to bury or exhume people murdered during the dictatorship.

Judge Jorge Zepeda, who investigated the Colonia Dignidad case for 16 years without convicting any German leader for crimes against humanity, removed them from the case in 2009, when he did not accept the scientists' suggestion to search in the same place that today has become the only site in the country with sufficient information to consider that it was a site used as a pit.

Likewise, Myrna Troncoso stated that if necessary, they will request the Government of Germany to provide economic resources or technology to support the scientific tasks.

“Germany apologized and is willing to help financially. More than memorials, what we need, what is urgent today is to know the truth, and for that, we must put resources into science and technology,” she explained.

She announced that they will be part of a bilateral commission that is being formed, at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with Germany, where “we hope they listen loud and clear to the message of the family members, because we do not have intermediaries, and hopefully there would only be family members and victims, without external institutions or NGOs that do not know what it has meant to fight for 44 years against Colonia Dignidad.”

Source: eldinamo.cl

Date: 12-09-2017

Ruling of the 6th Civil Court of Santiago that accepts the lawsuit of relatives of the forcibly disappeared of Parral

The Sixth Civil Court of Santiago condemned the State of Chile to pay a total compensation of $100,000,000 (one hundred million pesos) to the mother and siblings of Luis Evangelista Aguayo Fernández, who was forcibly disappeared starting September 26, 1973, in Parral, Seventh Region.

In the ruling (case file 20.138-2016), Judge Mindy Villar Simón established the responsibility of the State for the actions of its agents and ruled out the statute of limitations for the civil action, as it is a crime against humanity.

“(…) it is observed that the fact just noted has a diametrically different aspect from those regulated by our Civil Code. Thus, it is known that in the present case we are facing an action that derives from the commission of an international crime, provided for and sanctioned through norms contained in instruments of the same character, which, as stated, are ratified by Chile, specifically, in what is contemplated by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and whose imprescriptibility is expressly regulated in the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity of November 26, 1968, without prejudice to other international instruments that regulate the perpetration of criminal actions that transgress fundamental rights such as the American Convention on Human Rights and principles of international law or Customary International Law,” the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds that: “from the aforementioned international regulation received by the facts upon which the compensation claim in question rests and due to the degrading character of human dignity that these possess, where all possibility of recognition of the rights and freedoms that concerned the victim is annulled, it can be concluded that the entity and nature of these do not present equivalence with those that private law considers as illicit events; that is, the former, as stated, are physical and moral insults against Human Rights and are international crimes that have supra-constitutional regulation—norms integrated, as stated, into our legislation—and the latter stem from the violation of either the breach of a contractual duty or a willful or negligent civil tort, whose legal statute must be governed by common law norms.”

“(…) it is necessary –it continues– to add that subordinating the statute of limitations of the action in question to the norms provided in this regard by the national common law would entail establishing an arbitrary distinction that is incoherent with the international regulation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, since it is not reasonable to grant the action in question a treatment dissimilar to the criminal action derived from behaviors described in the law as crimes against humanity, given the fact that international regulations have not done so, but on the contrary, have advocated the opposite, as has been said; to make a distinction like the one described where the same international regulation has not done so by applying to the effect private law norms not relevant to the effect according to the nature of the noted facts would mean sliding into the terrain of the arbitrary or making a capricious decision on the case, which cannot be endorsed by the undersigned.”

“That in correlation with what was reflected previously and the considerations pertaining to the application of International Law and its guiding principles according to the situation of the case, and considering that the fact of the application of the statute of limitations contemplated by private law would suppose the violation of those and leave without application the responsibility of the State as provided by article 38, second paragraph of the Fundamental Charter, it only remains to reject the exception of statute of limitations raised by the Treasury,” it concludes.

Source: adprensa.cl, Jan 5, 2018