Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz, married, 3 children, teacher, union leader, and Socialist militant, left his home in San Fernando on November 20, 1973, around 7:30 a.m., to take the motor vehicle to the town of Polonia—located about 7 kilometers north of that city—where he worked as a teacher at the Public School.

However, he never arrived at his workplace, and his family never heard from him again. That same day, around 10:00 a.m., members of the Investigations police arrived at his home with an arrest warrant against him. They returned at noon and finally at 3:00 p.m., at which time they informed his spouse that he had not shown up for work.

Although the family searched for him in various police and military detention centers without success, some people claimed to have seen the victim being forced into a white jeep. Years later, in May 1977, other people also claimed to have seen him on Isla Santa María in Concepción; however, his whereabouts could not be established.

Prior to his disappearance, on September 7, 1973, his home was raided.

The Rettig Report reached the conviction that his disappearance was the work of State agents.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

The day after his disappearance, his spouse filed a complaint for alleged misfortune with the Investigations police, which she ratified before the Court of San Fernando, a tribunal that initiated case file number 31.347. On February 28, 1974, a temporary dismissal was issued because the crime could not be proven, which was approved by the Court of Appeals on March 19 of the same year.

In 1977, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed on his behalf before the Court of Appeals of Concepción, for which there is no further information. This appeal had been filed because the family received unofficial information stating that he was being held at the Isla Santa María Prison.

Source: (Corporation Report)

Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz (1939–1973) was a teacher, accountant, politician, and social leader. He served as a councilman for the commune of San Fernando in the 1971–1975 period and belonged to the board of the Central Workers' Union (CUT) of Colchagua.

He was born on June 29, 1939, in San Fernando, department of San Fernando, province of Colchagua, the son of Justino Vásquez and Blanca Muñoz Henríquez. He married Tania González González on July 23, 1966, in his hometown.

He was a teacher and accountant, working in education at the public school in the town of Polonia.

In 1971, he was elected as a councilman for the commune of San Fernando, a position he ceased to hold when the government of President Salvador Allende was interrupted on September 11, 1973.

He was the provincial secretary of the CUT in 1972, and the following year he served as its president. In the prelude to the 1973 coup d'état, Vásquez was detained by the military on 09/07/73 for possession of firearms, remaining incommunicado in a cell at the Colchagua regiment; however, he was soon released.

On 11/20 of the same year, he headed to the Polonia school but never returned. Numerous judicial actions have attempted to clarify the fate of Vásquez, without success.

He was officially declared deceased according to the civil registry entry of 1998. His widow passed away in 2018 without ever receiving news of her disappeared husband.

Source: museoauroradecolchagua.cl

Indicted as the perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz, who was a councilman in the commune of San Fernando.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals for cassation in form and substance filed against the sentence that convicted a retired official of the Investigations Police for his responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of the former San Fernando councilman, Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz. The crime was perpetrated starting on November 20, 1973, in the commune of the O’Higgins Region.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 135.452-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, minister María Teresa Letelier, and minister Roberto Contreras—confirmed the appealed sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced Carlos Romelio Yáñez Campos to 10 years of effective imprisonment as the perpetrator of the crime.

"It is worth demonstrating that the appellant's claims are based on a mistaken premise, in that he postulates that to determine Yáñez Campos's participation in the crime of aggravated kidnapping—as a perpetrator under Article 15 No. 3 of the Penal Code—it is essential to establish as a proven fact that he carried out acts of surveillance prior to November 20, 1973, the days on which the victim of these proceedings was detained," the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds: "With the above, the appellant overlooks that kidnapping is a permanent crime, so even if some minor circumstances have not been proven, or that he materially participated in the detention of the victim on the public thoroughfare, but rather intervened contemporaneously with distracting acts, intentionally and in a coordinated manner, contributing to that deprivation of liberty; he can be attributed responsibility as a perpetrator of the aforementioned illicit act, in the terms determined in the sentence under examination."

"For the preceding reasons, due to the formal defects observed in the appeal and because the infringement of the rules regulating evidence is not effective, the participation as affirmed by the second-instance sentence remains firm and, therefore, the ruling has not erred in the application of the other substantive provisions whose violation the analyzed appeal denounces, which will therefore be dismissed," it concludes.

Therefore, it is resolved that: "the appeals for cassation in form and substance filed by the representative of Carlos Romelio Yáñez Campos against the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals on October 6, 2020, in Criminal Case No. 3696-2019, are rejected, and it is not void."

In the first-instance sentence, visiting minister Mario Carroza Espinosa established the following facts:

"1.- That Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz, councilman of San Fernando, at the time the events occurred, general secretary of the Central Workers' Union (CUT), a militant of the Socialist Party, accountant, and primary education teacher, was heading around 08:00 a.m. toward his workplace, the 'Escuela Polonia,' located in the town of the same name, and habitually began his route from his home located on Curalí Street and then crossed Bernardo O’Higgins Avenue (in the commune of San Fernando), to continue his journey along Quechereguas Street in the direction of the railway station and thus board the motor vehicle that would take him to his work. That the aforementioned route was known to his closest associates, to whom he recounted that in the dates prior to his disappearance, he was constantly followed and, for that reason, feared being detained due to his political position;

2.- That on November 20, 1973, and as was habitual for him, the victim left his home at the same time, heading to his work, but upon reaching Bernardo O’Higgins Avenue, he was intercepted by third parties dressed in civilian clothes, who forced him to get into a vehicle in which they were traveling, to then be taken to an unknown location, losing contact with his family members from that moment on and ignoring his whereabouts from that date forward;

3.- That at the time these events occurred, the Provincial Intelligence Committee (CIP) was operating in San Fernando, which was in charge of Army Captain Ricardo Manríquez Pearson, an officer who, to fulfill his intelligence functions in the area, intervened in the San Fernando Investigations Police Barracks and issued instructions aimed at the repression of civilians who had been linked to the government prior to the military coup, and in that way, maintained absolute control of the city of San Fernando;

4.- That the disappearance of the victim at the hands of these State agents—Army, Carabineros, or Investigations—was confirmed by two witnesses who saw the victim at the moment he got into the white car, the same one that six firefighters at a gas station saw parked at the scene of the disappearance."

Source: elciudadano.com 03/15/2023

The Second Chamber confirmed the sentence that convicted Carlos Romelio Yáñez Campos to 10 years in prison as the perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz. The illicit act was perpetrated starting on November 20, 1973, in the commune of San Fernando.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals for cassation in form and substance filed against the sentence that convicted a retired official of the Investigations Police for his responsibility in the crime of aggravated kidnapping of the former San Fernando councilman, Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz. The illicit act was perpetrated starting on November 20, 1973, in the commune of the O’Higgins Region.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 135.452-2020), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, minister María Teresa Letelier, and minister Roberto Contreras—confirmed the appealed sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which sentenced Carlos Romelio Yáñez Campos to 10 years of effective imprisonment as the perpetrator of the crime.

"It is worth demonstrating that the appellant's claims are based on a mistaken premise, in that he postulates that to determine Yáñez Campos's participation in the crime of aggravated kidnapping—as a perpetrator under Article 15 No. 3 of the Penal Code—it is essential to establish as a proven fact that he carried out acts of surveillance prior to November 20, 1973, the days on which the victim of these proceedings was detained," the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds: "With the above, the appellant overlooks that kidnapping is a permanent crime, so even if some minor circumstances have not been proven, or that he materially participated in the detention of the victim on the public thoroughfare, but rather intervened contemporaneously with distracting acts, intentionally and in a coordinated manner, contributing to that deprivation of liberty; he can be attributed responsibility as a perpetrator of the aforementioned illicit act, in the terms determined in the sentence under examination."

"For the preceding reasons, due to the formal defects observed in the appeal and because the infringement of the rules regulating evidence is not effective, the participation as affirmed by the second-instance sentence remains firm and, therefore, the ruling has not erred in the application of the other substantive provisions whose violation the analyzed appeal denounces, which will therefore be dismissed," it concludes.

Therefore, it is resolved that: "the appeals for cassation in form and substance filed by the representative of Carlos Romelio Yáñez Campos against the sentence issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals on October 6, 2020, in Criminal Case No. 3696-2019, are rejected, and it is not void."

In the first-instance sentence, visiting minister Mario Carroza Espinosa established the following facts:

"1.- That Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz, councilman of San Fernando, at the time the events occurred, general secretary of the Central Workers' Union (CUT), a militant of the Socialist Party, accountant, and primary education teacher, was heading around 08:00 a.m. toward his workplace, the 'Escuela Polonia,' located in the town of the same name, and habitually began his route from his home located on Curalí Street and then crossed Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue (in the commune of San Fernando), to continue his journey along Quechereguas Street in the direction of the railway station and thus board the motor vehicle that would take him to his work. That the aforementioned route was known to his closest associates, to whom he recounted that in the dates prior to his disappearance, he was constantly followed and, for that reason, feared being detained due to his political position;

2.- That on November 20, 1973, and as was habitual for him, the victim left his home at the same time, heading to his work, but upon reaching Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue, he was intercepted by third parties dressed in civilian clothes, who forced him to get into a vehicle in which they were traveling, to then be taken to an unknown location, losing contact with his family members from that moment on and ignoring his whereabouts from that date forward;

3.- That at the time these events occurred, the Provincial Intelligence Committee (CIP) was operating in San Fernando, which was in charge of Army Captain Ricardo Manríquez Pearson, an officer who, to fulfill his intelligence functions in the area, intervened in the San Fernando Investigations Police Barracks and issued instructions aimed at the repression of civilians who had been linked to the government prior to the military coup, and in that way, maintained absolute control of the city of San Fernando;

4.- That the disappearance of the victim at the hands of these State agents—Army, Carabineros, or Investigations—was confirmed by two witnesses who saw the victim at the moment he got into the white car, the same one that six firefighters at a gas station saw parked at the scene of the disappearance."

Source: pjud.cl 03/11/2023 Date: 03-11-2023

The man who never existed: three names for a disappeared person without an identity (Part III)

Amidst the investigation regarding the name of the person who was executed in Lake Villarrica in 1974, the Justice system considered that it could have been one of three forcibly disappeared persons: Silvio Bettancourt, Luis Vásquez, and José Saldivia, all of whom are ruled out today.

Amidst the proceedings carried out by minister Álvaro Mesa to find the identity of the political prisoner who was executed in 1974 in Lake Villarrica, about which we have been reporting these days, the clerk working with the judge, Gonzalo Millalén, communicated with different Courts of Appeals in the country, informing them of the existence of an unidentified person (NN) who needed to be identified.

The first Court to respond was that of Punta Arenas, which reported the case of Silvio Francisco Bettancourt, who arrived from San Antonio to Magallanes in 1968 to study engineering in petrochemicals at the current University of Magallanes (Umag), at that time a branch of the old State Technical University (UTE).

In 1972, he began to militate in the MAPU (Movement of Unitary Popular Action) and the following year, after his professional internship, according to a report on the matter at Umag, he began working at ENAP.

After the coup d'état, his name appeared on a bulletin in which they ordered him—along with other people—to present himself before the new authorities, something he decided not to do, choosing instead to head to Río Gallegos, in Argentina. However, he never arrived at the address he was heading to, and his whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

Bettancourt's photo was shown to several of the former soldiers of the Tucapel regiment, but no one recognized him as "El Nortino," as they called the young man between 25 and 30 years old who was held for a long time in a room located next to the regiment's guard post, from where they moved him in 1974 to the shores of Lake Villarrica to be executed.

The composite sketch

On January 23, 2018, the forensic sketch artist of the PDI Criminalistics Laboratory of Valdivia, Cristian Ardiles, spent several hours meeting with Heraldo Espinoza, one of the two main witnesses to the crime, in order to create a descriptive portrait of the victim, which the expert estimated they had achieved with an 80% likeness.

Silvio Bettancourt's sister, Jenny, who resides in Switzerland, had not seen that portrait. However, upon being shown it, she is categorical in pointing out that it is not her brother, whom she believes never reached Río Gallegos, but rather thinks he was detained before crossing the border, to then be confined in some military or police barracks in Magallanes.

Another possible identity investigated in the Villarrica case was that of the teacher Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz, a militant of the Socialist Party, former councilman of San Fernando, and leader of the Central Workers' Union (CUT), who was a target of suspicion by uniformed officers from even before the coup.

In fact, as his son recounted to the detectives who investigated the case, on September 7, they had already raided his house at 855 Curalí Street, in San Fernando, taking him into custody for the day, although they released him at nightfall.

On November 20, however, he disappeared when he was going to his work at a rural school in the Polonia sector. In 2018, the family learned of the discovery of a body in the Araucanía Region, in Pucón, which they initially thought could be him, which was later ruled out.

According to his sister Olga, Luis Vásquez (34 years old at the time of his detention) was arrested by unknown subjects who forced him into a white jeep, and since then nothing more was known of him. The family went through the same pilgrimage of searching as so many other families of the time, asking for him at the National Stadium, the Chile Stadium, and in every police station and regiment they found.

When they were contacted by the PDI to check the descriptive portrait corresponding to "El Nortino," a small light of hope appeared, but it vanished quickly: "Upon being shown the photograph of the composite sketch on page 28, I do not recognize my brother Luis Justino; he does not look like him at all," stated Olga.

The Saldivia case

The last identity of a forcibly disappeared person that was considered as a possibility was that of José Sofanor Saldivia Saldivia, who was detained two weeks after the coup d'état. According to what was stated by minister Mesa in the middle of last year, when he appeared at the Valdivia Court of Appeals to carry out investigations regarding this case, "the victim was a CONAF worker who was detained by soldiers of the Tucapel Regiment on September 28, 1973, and taken to that military unit.

Witnesses point out that he had participated in the assault on the Neltume police station of the Carabineros de Chile and that he had been executed on the Villarrica bridge, over the Toltén River."

However, his body has never been found, and his identity does not correspond to that of the NN murdered in the lake either, because when his sister Elizabeth was questioned about it in 2018, on which occasion they showed her the composite sketch, she said that "regarding the photograph shown to me by PDI officials from Ancud, related to the disappearance of my brother José Sofanor Saldivia Saldivia, I do not recognize him as such, since his features are not his."

Today, as explained in the first article of this three-part series, the case is closed definitively, following the pronouncement of the Supreme Court, which acquitted the only person ever convicted in it, and the identity of "El Nortino" remains shrouded in a nebula.

That is why the only thing left to do is to try to identify that anonymous victim. Any information regarding this can be provided to the PDI, the Temuco Court of Appeals, the Human Rights Program, or even this newspaper.

By Carlos Basso Prieto

Source: elmostrador.cl, April 7, 2025

LUIS JUSTINO VASQUEZ MUÑOZ

Justino Vásquez was born on June 29, 1939. Married to Tania González and father of four children (Marcelo, Vladimir, Justino, and Valentina), he worked as a teacher and accountant. A leader of the Socialist Party in the commune of San Fernando, until the military coup he was a PS councilman for that commune in the current Sixth Region and Political Secretary of the Directive Council of the Central Workers' Union (CUT) of the Province of Colchagua.

He had studied at night, graduating with great effort as an Accountant from the Commercial Institute of San Fernando. His colleagues remember him as a very special militant, especially for his serious and introverted character, as well as his pale face and short stature.

According to those who knew him, he stood out for his honesty and political transparency, for the firmness with which he defended his positions, and for the strength of his principles in defending the cause of the workers.

After the military coup of September '73, he continued working as a primary education teacher, apparently without being bothered by the new military authorities who took charge of the city's control. A situation that contrasted with the fate suffered by dozens of his PS colleagues, who began to be detained by the military as early as mid-September, overcrowding the local jail.

José Antonio Guzmán, also a socialist militant, was one of the hundred political prisoners detained—as of November 1973—at the Colchagua Infantry Regiment No. 19, in the city of San Fernando. None of the detainees had been formally charged with any crime, let alone convicted.

Their lawyers told them that they were imprisoned under the State of Siege Law, which allowed the new authorities to detain for an indefinite period people they deemed to possess some type of union or student leadership and who, for that reason, could be considered a danger to the stability and governability of the Military Junta.

In conversations with other PS colleagues, Guzmán points out that it struck them that, being Justino one of the most important militants of the Party in San Fernando, he had not been detained to date, and that he continued working as a teacher, circulating in an apparently normal way through the city. "We made that reflection because Justino was a very well-known militant, as a councilman for the Party in the San Fernando Municipality and as a regional leader of the CUT."

Days later, the socialist prisoners received a visit from other Party militants, Jorge Hidalgo and Héctor Cornejo, who informed them that Justino had warned them that he was being closely watched by military intelligence, which was following him everywhere in order to discover what his contacts and meeting points were with people from the PS.

Consequently, he was trying not to involve more people from the Party, avoiding contact with militants and trying to lead a normal family and work life.

"We understood his behavior perfectly, which lasted a little more than two months, until he was captured and disappeared to this day," says Guzmán.

Indeed, after his routine work as a teacher, Justino tried to hide the intense political life he had had until the moment of the coup, not only as a councilman and provincial secretary of the Central Workers' Union, but also as regional secretary of the Socialist Party in the most convulsive months of the Popular Government, when President Allende required more than ever the support of the UP parties, by that time already irremediably divided into two irreconcilable strategic options.

On the morning of November 20, San Fernando dawned with that tranquility typical of sunny days in the province. Like every workday, Justino got up early to board the 7:30 a.m. motor vehicle, in which he used to travel about seven kilometers to reach the Polonia Primary School, where he taught gymnastics to primary school children.

That same morning, at the "Colchagua" Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 19, based in San Fernando, Captain Ricardo Manríquez, from very early on, alternated his tasks between Section II of Army Intelligence in the area and his position as the brand-new head of the Civil Investigations Police barracks in the city.

The Army had intervened in that institution and installed Captain Manríquez there to direct the repression and order the detentions of those who were considered dangerous or subversive elements. Justino had been on that list of military intelligence targets for a long time.

That day, the teacher Justino Vásquez did not arrive at his work, and like hundreds of Chileans, he disappeared forever. According to information provided by witnesses who were passing by the place, Justino was detained on November 20, at 7:30 a.m., between O’Higgins and Quechereguas streets, in front of the Female Technical School, when he was on his way to board the train that took him daily to his workplace, located at the Polonia School, north of San Fernando.

Indeed, when he was walking toward the railway station, he was intercepted by a white pickup truck, and three armed individuals, dressed in civilian clothes, got out, detained him, and forced him to get in along with two of the men in the back of the vehicle, which in a matter of seconds disappeared at high speed.

His wife, Tania González, upon learning of her husband's disappearance, made all the efforts and steps to find out the whereabouts of Justino Vásquez, asking for him at Investigations, at the Carabineros, and at the Colchagua Regiment, and everywhere the answer was the same: he was not detained and they knew nothing about him.

A former political prisoner from San Fernando, Pedro Videla Hormazábal, declared in the trial for Justino Vásquez that the Carabinero from that city, Carlos Becerra Herrera, told him one day that Professor Vásquez "was thrown into the sea in Pichilemu."

According to the consolidated information of the Documentation and Archive Foundation of the Vicariate of Solidarity, based on the Rettig Report and the supplementary one, Justino Vásquez appears, until now, as the only forcibly disappeared person from the VI Region.

On the other hand, according to the Final Report of the Armed Forces to the Dialogue Table, where they reported on the final destination of 200 disappeared persons, although Professor Justino Vásquez does not appear among the 151 detainees who are stated to have been thrown into the sea, 17 are listed as having been thrown into the "sea off Pichilemu."

At the time of his detention, Justino Vásquez was 34 years old.

Source: pschile.cl (no date)

Denunciation that human rights violator was waked in PDI chapel

Public Declaration

The Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) denounces to the national and international public opinion, once again, a very serious act of grievance inflicted upon the victims and their families of the human rights violations of the dictatorship.

With astonishment and indignation, we have learned that the criminal against humanity, Carlos Yáñez Campos, former prefect of the Investigations Police, who died on May 4, was waked in the institutional chapel of the PDI.

Said funeral ceremony was announced through the official channels of the PDI through Prefect Silvia Barra Muñoz, National Chief of Public Affairs, by means of a General Circular, also informing of the holding of a mass.

The facts are of extreme gravity because the PDI assumes, institutionally, a commitment to a person convicted of a crime against humanity, developing in a public venue such as the facilities of the Police Investigations School, an act of a private nature that, under no circumstances, can have an official character nor should it involve a force of public order and security, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior, with a human rights violator.

Carlos Yáñez Campos was convicted as the perpetrator of the aggravated kidnapping of Luis Justino Vásquez Muñoz, 34 years old, married and father of 4 children, a militant of the Socialist Party, leader of the Central Workers' Union (CUT), and former Councilman of San Fernando, perpetrated in the city of San Fernando starting on November 20, 1973.

His whereabouts remain unknown to this day, and he is part of the list of forcibly disappeared persons recognized by the report of the Rettig Commission.

Holding funeral rites for a criminal convicted of a crime against humanity, by a final and executed sentence, committed by a former prefect of the Investigations Police, constitutes an act of unacceptable denialism that demands an explanation from the Minister of the Interior and Public Security, Mrs.

Carolina Tohá, and from the General Director of the PDI, Sergio Muñoz Yáñez, who acted with apathy before a relative of the convicted state agent Carlos Yáñez Campos.

50 years after the military coup, acts of this nature constitute a flagrant violation of the guarantee of non-repetition, a principle of international human rights law oriented so that crimes committed by people like the former PDI prefect Carlos Yáñez Campos never happen again.

We exhort the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, to take action on this serious event and adopt the legal and administrative measures for the command responsibility of the PDI in these acts, which only deserves our repudiation and rejection.

We demand an explanation and non-repetition of such painful events for the families of the victims, who are still searching for more than 1,000 forcibly disappeared and executed persons without the delivery of their bodies, while the institutions honor the perpetrators. That is the pact of silence and impunity that the Armed Forces and Police maintain, which remains in force 50 years later.

AFEP

Santiago de Chile, May 10, 2023 Crónica Digital

Source: cronicasdelsur.cl 10/03/2023