D.O.B. : 09/15/55, 18 years old at the time of his detention Address : Calle San Joaquín near Sierra Bella, Población Isabel Riquelme, San Miguel, Santiago. Marital Status : Single Occupation : Street vendor Political Affiliation : No known political affiliation Date of Detention : October 15, 1973 Luis Herminio Dávila García, an 18-year-old street vendor with no political affiliation, was detained on October 15, 1973, at approximately 8:00 p.m. at his home, in front of witnesses, by two Carabineros from the San Joaquín police station.

They wounded him with gunfire before placing him into a police van.

The events began to unfold after September 11, 1973, when Luis Herminio Dávila was sharing a home in the Población Isabel Riquelme with the couple Rosa Myriam Curillán Antinao and César Muñoz Casaborne.

On September 14 of that year, César Muñoz was detained by Carabineros from San Joaquín; he remained forcibly disappeared for a time before eventually being released from the Estadio Nacional. On September 18, 1973, at approximately 11:00 a.m., Carabineros launched an unexpected operation in the neighborhood.

During this operation, homes were raided and all the men were detained, though they were later released. However, one resident, Humberto Picarte Patiño, who was seen being held at the San Joaquín police station, did not return home.

His body was identified by his relatives at the Legal Medical Institute; it bore a gunshot wound to the chest and his testicles had been crushed. The following day, September 19, Carabineros from the same station violently entered the home of Luis Gilberto Matamala Venegas, a 16-year-old friend of the victim and a resident of the Población Isabel Riquelme who had a police record for petty theft.

Without asking any questions, they fired directly at him. Matamala Venegas died while being transported by his relatives to a local clinic. According to witness Rosa Ester Picarte, a Carabinero known as "Paco Pedro" participated in the death of this young man.

Luis Herminio Dávila, frightened especially by the death of his friend Luis Gilberto Matamala and given that he also had a police record, decided to go to his mother's home in Villa Kennedy, Pudahuel, where he remained until October 10, 1973.

On that date, he returned to the Población Isabel Riquelme and tried to convince Rosa Myriam Curillán to go to the Pudahuel home, where, as he told the witness, "they would be safer." The victim feared for his safety due to his criminal record.

Myriam Curillán did not accept the proposal, as she had not yet been able to locate the place where César Muñoz Casaborne was being held. Consequently, the victim decided to remain there. He locked himself in the house and did not leave the neighborhood, as Carabineros continued to detain suspects.

On October 15, 1973, Luis Herminio was inside his home with Rosa Myriam Curillán and her sister, Elena. They were telling jokes and laughing loudly. At that moment, two Carabineros from the San Joaquín police station passed by the house.

Upon hearing the voices, they used their weapons to force open the front door and entered the home. Since it was dark and there was no electricity, Luis Herminio Dávila tried to hide behind a bed frame.

After asking for César Muñoz and insisting that there were other people in the building besides the Curillán sisters, the uniformed officers fired several shots into the ceiling. At that moment, Luis Dávila ran out toward the street.

The Carabineros followed him and forced both witnesses to remain inside their house. They heard gunshots and then heard a vehicle arrive at the scene. A few minutes later, the Carabineros left.

The next day, Rosa Myriam Curillán and her sister Elena left their home and went to the house of a neighbor, Nataniel Ascuí, where they stayed for a couple of days. He told them that the previous night he had seen a Carabineros van arrive and saw them throwing a bundle into the vehicle. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis Herminio Dávila.

On November 28, 1973, Justo Dávila, the victim's older brother, went to the San Joaquín police station to inquire about the victim. There, he was received by officer Segundo Cifuentes Pérez ("Ronconi"), who told him: "so you are Dávila the elder; if you don't clear out, the same thing will happen to you as happened to your brother.

Do you want to know about him? Fine, I'll tell you outside." Both left the police station and, after walking a short distance, the Carabinero told him, "I'll give you two minutes to jump this fence and start running." As Justo Dávila was jumping the fence, Cifuentes Pérez fired at him. Justo Dávila was admitted to the Posta 3 in Santiago, where he underwent surgery that same day.

According to witnesses, the events that occurred in the Población Isabel Riquelme also resulted in two other deaths: "El Nacho" (whose identity is unknown) and "El Diente," possibly named Manuel Orellana Jaque. Additionally, a resident named Juan Jara Zurita was wounded and left disabled as a result of similar events.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On March 21, 1979, the Supreme Court of Justice, following a filing by the Episcopal Vicars of Santiago, ordered the initiation of a process to investigate 9 cases of "alleged disappearances" to the Santiago Court of Appeals.

The name of the victim was included on the list. Also included, among others, was the case of Sergio Pérez Molina, the spouse of Lumi Videla, whose body was thrown into the Italian Embassy in November 1974.

The Court of Appeals referred the records to the 3rd Criminal Court of Santiago, where case file No. 130923 was opened on July 26, 1979.

The process began with the summoning of the victims' relatives to testify. Mrs. María Luisa García Vásquez (the victim's mother) did not appear before the Court, as she could not be located by the investigating detectives.

In the specific case of Luis Herminio, the judicial investigation was limited to recording official reports from authorities regarding all the situations presented, establishing that he had no record of travel abroad and that his body had not been admitted to the Legal Medical Institute.

Regarding his identification record, it was not added to the process because the Identification Cabinet did not have his name on file. However, the Investigations police reported that Luis Herminio Dávila García did have a control card at that agency.

In general terms, in addition to investigating the other situations in a similar manner, it was established that there was no "List of Detainees of the Estadio Nacional." Information regarding this was obtained through an official letter that the Minister of National Defense, Lieutenant General Raúl Benavides Escobar, sent to the Minister of the Interior at the time, Sergio Fernández Fernández, on November 22, 1979, communicating that such a list did not exist.

The summary was closed on September 17, 1982, and the case was temporarily dismissed on September 23 of that same year because "the existence of the alleged crime that has been reported" was not fully proven. The Santiago Court of Appeals approved the resolution on April 7, 1983.

Years later, on August 20, 1991, a complaint was filed for the crime of kidnapping committed against Luis Herminio Dávila in the 2nd Criminal Court of San Miguel, case file No. 57869 4; the case was temporarily dismissed under Article 409-1 in May 1992 without having established the final fate of the victim.

The anthropometric records of Luis Herminio Dávila García were attached to case 4449 AF of the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago, regarding the crime of illegal burial in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of unidentified persons who died between September and December 1973.

The investigating judge of the case ordered the excavation of 108 graves in September 1991. From there, 125 bodies were exhumed and sent to the Legal Medical Institute. Currently (late 1992), the forensic identification reports are pending.

Source: (Corporation Report)

The ministers ratified the ruling that condemned the State for its responsibility in the erroneous identification, in 1994, of Luis Herminio Dávila García, who was detained on October 15, 1973, at his home located in the Población Isabel Riquelme.

The Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the Treasury to pay a total compensation of 160 million pesos to the mother and siblings of a victim illegally buried in a grave in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, who was erroneously identified by the Legal Medical Service.

In a split decision, the ministers of the Eighth Chamber of the appellate court, Leopoldo Llanos, Adelita Ravanales, and María Eugenia Campos (substitute), ratified the ruling that condemned the State for its responsibility in the erroneous identification, in 1994, of Luis Herminio Dávila García, who was detained on October 15, 1973, at his home located in the Población Isabel Riquelme.

The resolution of the Court of Appeals was adopted with the dissenting vote of Minister Ravanales, who maintained that there is no State responsibility in the matter. The ruling orders compensation of 80 million pesos to María Lucía García Vásquez (the victim's mother), and 20 million pesos to each sibling (Justo Ludovico, Gemita Teresa, Luis Alberto, and Belkis Cristina Dávila García).

Luis Dávila García, an 18-year-old street vendor, was detained at his home in the Población Isabel Riquelme on October 16, 1973, by personnel from the Carabineros de Chile. His name was recorded in the Rettig Report in 1991.

The remains of Dávila García were initially identified on October 28, 1994, by the Legal Medical Service (SML) using anthropometric examinations. In 2006, it was detected that his case was one of the errors in the identifications made that year.

On November 19, 2011, the remains of Dávila García were correctly identified using mitochondrial DNA testing performed at the University of North Texas laboratory.

Source: elmostrador.cl 8/31/2012 Date: 08-31-2012

Two victims of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship identified in Chile

Santiago, Chile, Nov 19 (EFE).- The Legal Medical Service (SML) handed over to their families the remains of two victims of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) that had previously been erroneously identified, the agency reported today.

The remains belong to Juan Segundo Utreras Beltrán, 23 at the time of his disappearance, and Luis Herminio Dávila García, 18, both street vendors who were detained between September and October 1973 by regime agents.

Their remains, handed over to their families between yesterday and today, were identified thanks to the joint work of a multidisciplinary forensic team from the SML, as well as genetic analyses performed by the University of North Texas, in the United States.

Both are among the victims who were thrown into graves marked as "NN" in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago and who, upon being exhumed after the restoration of democracy in the country, were misidentified by the Legal Medical Service.

In 2006, it was discovered that there were errors in those identifications, and the SML then reopened the process. With Utreras and Dávila, 45 of the 124 victims of Patio 29 have now been identified in this second phase.

With the end of the dictatorship, the Rettig Commission and the National Corporation for Reparation and Reconciliation certified a total of 3,195 disappearances and executions during the regime between 1991 and 1992, while in 2004 the Valech Commission reported 28,459 cases of political imprisonment and torture.

The Rettig Commission was reopened in February 2010 to receive new cases of both the deceased and the tortured, and last August it announced that it had certified 30 cases of disappearances and executions and 9,795 cases of torture that until that moment did not appear in the official records. EFE

Source: larepublica.ec 11/19/2011 Date: 11-19-2011

SML hands over remains of two victims of the Patio 29 case

Juan Segundo Utreras Beltrán and Luis Herminio Dávila García were identified through the joint work of a multidisciplinary forensic team from the Special Forensic Identification Unit and genetic analyses performed by the University of North Texas.

During Friday and this Saturday, the Legal Medical Service (SML) handed over to their families two victims associated with the Patio 29 case. They are Juan Segundo Utreras Beltrán and Luis Herminio Dávila García, who were identified through the joint work of a multidisciplinary forensic team from the SML's Special Forensic Identification Unit and genetic analyses performed by the University of North Texas.

Their identities were previously reported to the families by the minister investigating the case, Alejandro Solís Muñoz. Juan Segundo Utreras Beltrán, a street vendor, was 23 years old when he was detained at his home in the commune of Cerro Navia on September 17, 1973.

Since then, his whereabouts were never known. Given the existence of eyewitnesses to the event, along with other evidence, the Rettig Commission confirmed with certainty that Juan Utreras was detained and forcibly disappeared by State agents.

Meanwhile, Luis Herminio Dávila García, 18, was also a street vendor and had no political affiliation. He was detained on the night of October 15, 1973, at his home, in front of witnesses, by two Carabineros from the San Joaquín police station, who wounded him with gunfire before placing him into a police van.

Source: soychile.cl 11/19/2011

Patio 29: Behind the Iron Cross (BOOK)

Patio 29 was usually used for the burial of the indigent, psychiatric patients, and people who died without being identified (NN). However, between September 1973 and January 1974, its graves were used to hide victims of the repression as "NN." Javiera Bustamante and Stephan Ruderer reconstruct the painful history of the site, using testimonies from the relatives of the forcibly disappeared, letters, documents, and other sources.

The book also accounts for the arduous process of identification and the handover of the bodies, as well as the irregularities that characterized these proceedings. The powerful photographs that illustrate the volume were taken by visual artist Mara Daruich. Bustamante, Javiera; Ruderer, Stephan

Source: ocholibros.cl (no date)