On December 5, 1974, Luis Hernán FUENTES GONZALEZ was detained at his workplace at the San Bernardo railway station by unidentified plainclothes agents. Luis Fuentes disappeared on that date, and there has been no information regarding the places where he may have been held.

The Commission concludes that the testimonies regarding his detention, added to the fact that nothing further has been heard from him, lead to the conviction in conscience that Luis Fuentes disappeared due to the actions of State agents, who thereby violated his human rights.

Source: (Rettig Report)

This October 6 at 11 in the morning, a tribute will be held in the commune of San Bernardo, as it is every year by various organizations, to the 11 railway workers detained and subjected to political executions during the dictatorship, specifically on October 6, 1973.

Starting in the final days of September, Alfredo Acevedo, Roberto Ávila, Raúl Castro, Hernán Chamorro, Manuel González, Arturo Koyck, Adiel Monsalves, José Morales, Pedro Oyarzún, Joel Silva, and Ramón Vivanco, communist militants, were detained in their homes and on the premises of the Maestranza de Ferrocarriles de San Bernardo by soldiers from the Escuela de Infantería de San Bernardo, only to be subsequently executed at Cerro Chena in the same commune.

National Railway Worker Day The task of recovering memory and demanding truth and justice has been carried out over all these years by political, social, union, and human rights organizations. Today, this activity, organized by the Agrupación de Amigos del Parque Mártires de la Maestranza with the support of other organizations and figures, is being realized through a great achievement reached at the parliamentary level with the approval and publication of Law No. 20.581, which establishes October 6 as the National Railway Worker Day, an initiative also strongly supported by the Agrupación Maipo Contigo and promoted by Senator Soledad Alvear, among others. “This is a tribute to our martyr railway workers, to those who gave everything for a better country, for a better society, and also a recognition of the thousands of workers who throughout our history have given their best for the railways of Chile and the progress and development of our country,” states Claudio Quintanilla, president of the Agrupación Amigos del Parque Ferroviarios Mártires. New Initiatives During the event, new initiatives and demands related to the recovery of historical memory will be announced. One of them concerns the request to EFE authorities to name one of the commune's railway stations after Alfredo Rojas Castañeda; Alfredo Rojas was the General Director of Railways until the 1973 coup d'état and to this day remains on the list of the forcibly disappeared. The other station, which will be located at Freire and Balmaceda, is to be named “Mártires Ferroviarios” in tribute to these eleven workers from the commune's Maestranza Central. Agrupación Amigos del Parque Ferroviarios Mártires de la Maestranza-AAPFMM

Source: cronicadigital.cl 1/10/2012

Date: 01-10-2012

Judge searches for bodies of the forcibly disappeared on Army land

The head of the First Civil Court of San Bernardo, Cecilia Flores, will enter Army land at Cerro Chena today to search for the remains of the forcibly disappeared at the site, a proceeding that will be witnessed by lawyers from the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program.

The magistrate, who has exclusive dedication to investigating four cases filed in that court, requested authorization to enter the military compound where the city's Escuela de Infantería is located, which has been identified as a possible site of illegal burials by human rights organizations.

The Army granted authorization to the magistrate and her entourage, composed of experts from the Servicio Médico Legal and the Policía de Investigaciones, to enter the compound and carry out excavations in the area in search of graves where peasants from the Paine area and other forcibly disappeared persons from locations near San Bernardo might be found.

Judge Flores is investigating the disappearance of Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR) militant Jenny Barra Rosales, detained in 1977; that of Army reservist Manuel Rojas Fuentes, disappeared since September 1973; that of Luis Fuentes González since 1974; and a fourth case filed for several unidentified persons who are disappeared in the area.

Source: Tercera, December 5, 2001

Date: 05-12-2001