Representative Position: Mayor of the Til-Til Commune from 1945 to 1949; Councilman of Til-Til until September 11, 1973, representing the Communist Party. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Date of Detention: August 7, 1976

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Manuel de la Cruz Vargas Leiva, married, father of four, retired, former Mayor of Til-Til, and a militant of the Communist Party of Chile, was detained around noon on August 7, 1976, by DINA agents in the vicinity of the Estación Central.

Moments earlier, he had been in that same place with his son, Manuel Enrique, who recounted that his father had mentioned to him on that occasion that he was being sought by security agents during those days.

Furthermore, he indicated that he was on his way to meet his spouse, as he needed to give her money for household expenses. Manuel Enrique said goodbye to his father and only heard of him again when he was informed that he had not arrived at his spouse's location.

She, Mrs. Irene Marín, later recounted that the victim "that day, was supposed to meet with me in order to give me the monthly pension... he did not show up for our appointment; that morning he called me on the phone and asked if I was going to go out, and I answered no.

He agreed to call me again that afternoon to agree on the place where he would give me the money for the month, but he did not call me again."

After apprehending Manuel Vargas Leiva, the DINA agents took him to the Villa Grimaldi compound located on José Arrieta in the commune of Peñalolén, as stated in the final report of the Rettig Report. In a sworn statement dated December 4, 1979, Juana del Carmen Vicencio Hidalgo, who was detained on August 13, 1976, relates that while she was detained at Villa Grimaldi, she was interrogated intensely by Manuel Vargas Leiva.

She adds that on one occasion, she was able to see and speak with Mario Juica Vega in that same facility, a person who always accompanied Manuel Vargas; the last time she had seen them together was July 30.

Juica Vega had been detained on August 9 and, like the victim, remains forcibly disappeared. Subsequently, at the end of September 1976, four individuals in civilian clothes arrived at the victim's home in Til-Til.

There, they spoke with the mother-in-law of Manuel Enrique Vargas, the victim's son. Their interest was to establish which assets were the property of the victim. That was the last time the agents appeared.

Years earlier, in 1949, while serving as Mayor of Til-Til, Manuel Vargas Leiva was detained and relegated to the island of Melinka. Years later, after the Military Coup of 1973, precisely in the early hours of January 22, 1975, five individuals in civilian clothes arrived at the victim's home in Til-Til, traveling in a FARGO station wagon without license plates.

The subjects raided the house and took his children, Flavia and Manuel Enrique, "kidnapping" them, as there was no competent order. They took them to the vicinity of a beach where they locked them in small sheds.

At noon the following day, they interrogated them regarding their father's friends, the places he visited, and whether he had weapons in the house. During the interrogation, the agents beat both siblings continuously and even threatened them with death. At night, they took them from the place and returned them to their home.

On May 21, 1976, civilians traveling in a Peugeot taxi arrived at the same address around 4:00 in the afternoon. The subjects asked Manuel Enrique if Vargas lived there, and when he replied that he was the only Vargas living there, the agents left, surprised, according to his account.

A week later, on May 27, 1976, the same subjects returned to the aforementioned address, accompanied by three others and traveling in a light blue Peugeot car. The agents spoke with Mrs. Norma Cimino, Manuel Enrique's mother-in-law, and asked her about him. They also added that they were looking for the victim and that he had escaped from them, but that they would locate him in Santiago.

They returned again on June 3, 1976. On that occasion, they showed a passport-sized photo of Flavia Vargas, the victim's daughter, and asked Mrs. Norma for her address in Santiago; they also asked for the age and physical description of Manuel Vargas Leiva. Finally, the DINA agents detained the victim, who remains to this day in the status of forcibly disappeared.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDINGS

On August 23, 1976, Irma Marín filed a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) before the Santiago Court of Appeals in favor of her spouse, Manuel Vargas Leiva. The document, which denounced the detention of the victim, entered the Court on August 24, 1976, under case file No. 807-76.

On August 31, 1976, the Minister of the Interior informed the Court that the victim was not being held by order of that State Secretariat.

The Metropolitan Area Headquarters of Investigations indicated that the victim was not being held in any of its dependent units. A similar response was provided, through the Minister of the Interior, by the Prefect of the Metropolitan Zone of the Carabineros: the same report states that the detention of the aforementioned citizen is not registered in the Kardex of that state department, nor is there any resolution or order affecting him.

On October 1, 1976, based on the merit of the information received and, particularly, on the statement by the Ministry of the Interior, the Court rejected the Amparo, further ordering that the records be sent to the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago. On October 7, the Supreme Court confirmed the appealed resolution.

On November 16, 1976, case file No. 3,628 for the alleged disappearance of Manuel Vargas Leiva was initiated in the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago.

On December 21, 1976, the 11th Judicial Precinct of Santiago informed the Court that inquiries made at the National Service of Detainees (SENDET), social services, detention centers, and Tres Alamos did not provide information regarding the victim.

On January 13, 1977, the Judge of the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago reviewed and consolidated case file No. 103,107 from the 5th Criminal Court, as it was investigating the same facts. It should be noted that the aforementioned case originated from a complaint for alleged disappearance filed with the 5th Criminal Court on October 25, 1976.

International Police informed the 10th Criminal Court that the victim had no record of leaving the country. The Civil Registry and Identification Service also reported that there was no record of the detention of Manuel Vargas Leiva.

After various reports from different public entities stating they had no information on the victim, on July 7, 1977, the Judge determined to close the summary proceedings and temporarily dismiss the case, given that the "alleged disappearance" of the victim had not been established.

That resolution was appealed by the complainant, and on October 27, 1977, the Court confirmed the resolution of the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago.

On January 5, 1978, a criminal complaint for the crimes of kidnapping and illegal arrest of Manuel Vargas Leiva was filed before the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago. On January 10, 1978, the complaint was consolidated with case file No. 3,628 of the same Court.

The public entities consulted, such as the Civil Registry, International Police, etc., reported again; the answer was always that there was no information on the victim.

Between March and April 1978, various hospitals, including those of the Armed Forces and Police, reported that the victim had not been admitted to their facilities.

On June 27, 1978, the II Military Court of Santiago informed the Court that, upon reviewing the entry logs, no proceedings against the victim appeared. The Military Prosecutor's Offices belonging to the aforementioned Military Court, as well as the Aviation Court, reported the same.

On June 30, 1978, the Minister of Justice, Mónica Madariaga, informed the Court that there was no record in that State Secretariat that a medical examination had been performed on the victim. The Judge declared the summary closed, as the investigation was exhausted, on July 31, 1978.

On August 7 of the same year, given that "from the investigation conducted, the alleged disappearance of Manuel de la Cruz Vargas Leiva has not been established," the case was temporarily dismissed. The Court of Appeals approved the ruling on December 13, 1978.

On March 12, 1980, the Extraordinary Visiting Minister, Servando Jordán López, appointed by the Court of Appeals to investigate the cases of forcibly disappeared persons in Santiago, resolved to return the case to the summary stage. During that month, various witnesses linked to the victim testified before the Minister.

On April 25, after reviewing case file 553-78 processed in the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office and initiated in the 10th Criminal Court, where Manuel Vargas Leiva appears—a case known as "Complaint against Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda and others"—Minister Jordán declared himself incompetent to investigate the facts of the case, ordering them to be sent to the competent Military Court that was already investigating the facts.

An appeal was filed, but the request was denied.

On September 3, 1980, the Military Judge accepted jurisdiction and sent the records to the 3rd Military Prosecutor's Office, with the case registered under No. 654-80. On September 8, the III Military Prosecutor's Office resolved to elevate the records to the Second Military Court in order to resolve the consolidation with case file No. 553-78.

On September 23, 1980, the Military Judge resolved to consolidate the case with file No. 553-78. The aforementioned case began when, on August 1, 1978, relatives of 70 disappeared persons, including those of Manuel de la Cruz Vargas Leiva, filed a complaint before the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago for the crime of aggravated kidnapping against General (R) Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Army Colonel Marcelo Luis Moren Brito, and Army Lieutenant Colonel Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo.

The identities of other agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), information on the secret detention centers of the aforementioned organization, and other data relative to its structure and the means at the DINA's disposal were also provided to the Court.

Without carrying out any proceedings, on May 10 of that year, the Judge of the 10th Criminal Court declared herself incompetent and sent the records to the Military Justice system; after several appeals, in May 1979, the case was established in the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago, under file No. 553-78.

In 1983, the Court reviewed the four volumes of the Extraordinary Visitation for cases of forcibly disappeared persons in the Metropolitan Region, which was substantiated by Minister Servando Jordán; they contained important information regarding the actions of the DINA and the responsibility of that security organization for hundreds of forcibly disappeared persons.

Without any proceedings being carried out for four years, on November 20, 1989, Army Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case, because the process had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes that occurred during the period between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because, during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which dismissed the case totally and definitively—which was still in the summary stage—due to "the criminal responsibility of the persons allegedly accused in the reported facts being extinguished." The plaintiff parties appealed that resolution to the Martial Court, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A Complaint Appeal was then filed before the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution.

(Complete background on the complaint against Manuel Contreras can be found in the case of Eduardo Alarcón Jara, July 30, 1974).

Source: (Corporation Report)

At the end of May of that year, it became known in the regional committees of the PC (Communist Party) that the entire Party Leadership had fallen. Only Víctor Cantero and Inés Cornejo were safe—the latter having been removed from the organization for health reasons.

The DINA wanted Cantero, the man they presumed responsible for the funds. In the pursuit, the agents kidnapped the brothers Julio and Eduardo Budnik.

In the early hours of April 30, 1976, around 3:30 AM, DINA agents, supported in the vicinity by members of the Joint Command, arrived at the house located at 1587 Conferencia Street, in the southwestern sector of the Santiago commune, where a leather goods workshop operated, owned by the leather worker Juan Becerra Barrera.

They told him that his sister-in-law, María Teresa Zúñiga, who lived at 5113 Alejandro del Fierro Street in Quinta Normal, had suffered a tragic car accident. Becerra agreed to accompany them, getting into the vehicle they were using. He was immediately handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken to Villa Grimaldi.

That was the beginning of an operation designed by the DINA commanders to capture the leadership of the Communist Party. A favorable point for Manuel Contreras's objectives was having achieved the collaboration of Elisa Escobar Cepeda, a liaison for Mario Zamorano, who was detained by DINA agents at the end of March or the beginning of April 1976.

Becerra had been a friend of Zamorano since the early sixties, and in 1974, the Party leader had asked him to use his house on Conferencia to hold meetings every two or three months. Zamorano also frequently visited the home of Becerra's mother, located on Alejandro del Fierro Street in the commune of Quinta Normal.

Elisa Escobar knew both places and provided their characteristics, as well as the probable dates of the meetings, to the men of the DINA.

Thus, that night at the end of April, agents of the Purén brigade, supported by other groups from the Terranova barracks, detained several of the residents of both houses, whom they tortured for almost two days before taking them back to their homes and setting up the traps to wait for the communist leaders who would attend the scheduled meeting.

On April 30, the agents occupied the house on Alejandro del Fierro and held four adults and a ten-year-old child there. Ana María Becerra, Juan's sister, married to Julio Maigret, one of those held in the Quinta Normal house, found out what was happening there and went on May 2 to notify the Vicaría de la Solidaridad.

There, she met with the auxiliary bishop of Santiago, Enrique Alvear, and told him what was happening to her family. The prelate, carrying some medications required by one of those detained in the Alejandro del Fierro house, appeared at the dwelling, questioning the DINA agents about their actions.

They wanted to detain him as well, but one of the group leaders decided to let him go. Alvear communicated in writing to the president of the Supreme Court and the Minister of Justice what he had witnessed.

Despite that circumstance, five DINA agents installed themselves on May 2 in the Conferencia house and forced its occupants to pretend they were working in the leather workshop that operated there.

The communist leaders summoned to the meeting would enter without major precautions, unless a certain handbag hanging in the window was missing, the agreed-upon signal to warn of imminent danger. Becerra had yielded to torture at Villa Grimaldi and confirmed the details of the appointment at his house.

What Becerra did not know was that Víctor Díaz himself was supposed to attend that meeting, which was scheduled to discuss union issues, but he was sidelined at the last minute for security reasons and replaced by Jaime Donato, a member of the Party's Union Commission.

On May 3, Elisa Escobar went to the Conferencia house to warn that Mario Zamorano would arrive the next day with other people.

At 7:00 PM on May 4, unaware of the detentions that had occurred in the previous hours, Mario Zamorano, one of the Party's top leaders, appeared at the Conferencia workshop. Everything was apparently normal, and he entered by pulling the cord that opened the door.

Two men fell on top of him; he tried to resist, but they shot him in the leg, and he fell, bleeding profusely. They wrapped him in a blanket and dragged him into an interior room. Only minutes later, Jorge Muñoz Poutays, also a member of the Leadership, entered the trap.

That early morning, a van took the detainees away. The next morning, Wednesday, May 5, Jaime Donato Avendaño, a member of the Central Committee and head of the Union Front, arrived at the house. Shortly after, Uldarico Donaire, known as "Rafael Cortez," another of the Party's top leaders, in charge of the Control and Cadres Commission, appeared.

Elisa Escobar returned to the house on May 6, around 1:30 PM. She asked for Zamorano and, in an evident cover-up operation, was detained by the DINA agents.

While in the hands of the DINA, Elisa Escobar went on May 8 to the house of Eliana Espinoza, a liaison for Víctor Díaz, and upon not finding her, left a message with her father, asking her to meet at a certain point in Santiago. Eliana Espinoza arrived at the place but found no one. It was at that moment that the DINA began its surveillance.

Meanwhile, Víctor Cantero, also a member of the Party's Leadership, arrived at a meeting of the Santiago regional committees, which Donaire and Muñoz were supposed to attend, but they did not appear. The meeting was immediately adjourned, and anxiety spread among the leaders.

After the apparently failed contact with Elisa Escobar, Eliana Espinoza decided to go see Víctor Díaz to express her concern. They met on May 11, and at the end of the meeting, she agreed to return to get him out of the place.

Víctor Díaz, head of the local communism in the underground, was detained at 2:00 AM on May 12, 1976, by a large contingent of the DINA. Under the name José Santos Garrido Retamal, he was residing with a married couple who were friends, where the head of the house was the engineer Jorge Canto Fuenzalida, on Bello Horizonte Street, in Las Condes.

He was periodically visited by a woman named "Ana," who was actually Eliana Espinoza Fernández, his liaison with the PC high command.

When Eliana arrived to visit him that day, the 11th, she was visibly agitated. They spoke as always in low voices and in private. She left very soon. That night, around 2:00 AM on the 12th, persistent ringing of the doorbell woke the family.

Upon looking out into the street, the owner of the house could see six subjects in civilian clothes armed, some with long machine guns. One of the agents shouted: "We are from the DINA!"

They took Víctor Díaz out of the house around 3:00 AM. He was dressed in his pajamas, with shoes but no socks, and a jacket thrown over his shoulders. His hands were tied behind his back, and due to the strong and numerous blows, he had one eye half-closed, his lower lip was swollen, he was breathing with difficulty, and he was walking and limping more than usual.

The next day, the DINA's offensive continued with the detention of Fernando Lara Rojas, 27 years old, a regional leader of the PC in Talca who had been collaborating with a Party team in Santiago since 1975.

On May 19, following a call from Eliana Espinoza to meet, César Cerda Cuevas, 47 years old, a construction worker, national leader of the CUT, and member of the Central Committee, was detained on the street. He was last seen at Villa Grimaldi in September.

At the end of May, it became known in the regional committees that the entire Party Leadership had fallen. Only Víctor Cantero and Inés Cornejo were safe, the latter having been removed from the organization for health reasons.

The DINA wanted Cantero, the man they presumed responsible for the funds. In the pursuit, the agents kidnapped the brothers Julio and Eduardo Budnik. Subsequently, Eduardo Cantero and Clara Cantero, 22 years old, brother and daughter of Víctor, respectively.

Eduardo's remains were found in 1990 at the Las Tórtolas farm, which had been military land. Nothing has been found of Clara yet. She disappeared from Villa Grimaldi.

In mid-July 1976, the National Division of Social Communication (Dinacos) reported that security agencies had managed to dismantle 32 "mailbox" houses of the Communist Party, which served as a link between the Leadership and the regional branches of said party.

The officers who commanded the direct repression against the PC took the communist leaders to secret detention centers. From Villa Grimaldi, they took them to the Simón Bolívar barracks, where they were subjected to ferocious torments and also used as guinea pigs by Michael Townley, who sought to test on humans the effects of the sarin gas that the chemist Eugenio Berríos had managed to produce.

In the last days of that month of July, what remained of the PC Leadership instructed Víctor Cantero and Inés Cornejo to leave the country and hand over the Party leadership to another team. Before that, at the end of May and after a quick consultation among the survivors of the Central Committee, it was agreed that the chosen one should be Fernando Ortiz Letelier, a university professor and member of the Central Committee.

Amidst dramatic conditions, where every day some leader disappeared, Fernando Ortiz assumed the leadership of the PC, seconded by Waldo Pizarro, Horacio Zepeda, and Fernando Navarro. At the end of October, Cantero and Cornejo took asylum in the Italian embassy. Luis Canales, Virginia González, and Víctor Galleguillos were also ordered to do so.

At the beginning of August 1976, another devastating blow was launched against the PC's Organization apparatus. At noon on August 4, Hugo Vivanco Vega was detained on a public street, very close to his house; shortly after, they captured his wife, Alicia Herrera, at their home.

On the 5th, Oscar Ramos Garrido, former intendant of Llanquihue, member of the Central Committee and head of Organization, and his son Oscar Ramos Vivanco, were arrested at their home.

On the 9th, Víctor Morales Mazuela, José Corvalán Valencia, Mario Juica Vega, Jorge Salgado Salinas, and Pedro Silva Bustos were detained, all intermediate leaders linked to the Leadership bodies. On the same day, the 9th, they seized Marta Ugarte Román, a member of the Central Committee.

On August 10, Nicolás Vivanco, Hugo's son, fell. On the 7th, Manuel Vargas Leiva, former mayor of Tiltil and member of the Central Committee, had disappeared. On August 11, Miguel Nazal Quiroz, member of the Central Committee and secretary of the San Miguel regional branch; and Carlos Vizcarra Jofré, former leader of the Jota (Communist Youth) who had moved to the Party; on the 16th, Julio Vega Vega, union leader; on the 18th, Nelson Jeria, secretary of the Northern Regional of Santiago; on the 26th, the Joint Command detained Víctor Cárdenas, and the DINA detained Gabriel Castillo Tapia and Pedro Silva Bustos, members of the Organization team who maintained contacts with the regional branches.

On September 12, 1976, a French citizen was admiring the surf at La Ballena beach, in the Los Molles resort, near La Ligua, when among the rocks he saw the tied body of a woman that had been washed up by the sea. It was Marta Ugarte, the treasurer of the PC, kidnapped at the beginning of August before arriving at her house.

In the weeks prior, several disfigured bodies had appeared on the banks of the Maipo River. They showed signs of bullet wounds and were tied with wire from their necks to their legs, inside potato sacks.

The second PC leadership began to fall on December 9, when Armando Portilla Portilla, a member of the Central Committee, was detained. On the 13th, on a public street and before numerous witnesses, Fernando Navarro Allende, also a member of the Central Committee, was captured.

Two days later, on the morning of the 15th, Horacio Cepeda Marinkovic and Lincoyán Berríos Cataldo were detained at the Lo Plaza roundabout in Ñuñoa. That same afternoon, Fernando Ortiz Letelier and Waldo Pizarro Molina fell on Larraín Street, and in other neighborhoods of Santiago, Héctor Véliz Ramírez, Luis Lazo Santander, and Reinalda Pereira Plaza, 29 years old, five months pregnant, were detained.

Three days later, Lisandro Cruz Díaz and the MIR member Carlos Durán González were kidnapped by the DINA. On December 20, with the detention of Edras Pinto Arroyo, former secretary of the PC deputies, the DINA's offensive against the communists ended.

The detainees were tortured until they died. They were injected with cyanide and other lethal substances. The gold fillings that some possessed were ripped from their mouths. Their bones were broken. They were suffocated with plastic bags.

Experiments with sarin gas were conducted on them. A blowtorch was applied to them to erase their faces, scars, fingerprints, and any other trace that would allow them to be identified. Finally, their bodies were placed in potato sacks, with pieces of rail tied with wire, loaded onto Army helicopters, and thrown into the sea off the central coast.

At the beginning of 1977, the DINA had almost completely achieved its objective: to exterminate the PC Leadership. It had also managed to accumulate a large amount of information about the internal organization and the support networks built abroad by the communists.

They then focused on another of the priority goals: to identify and capture those in charge of finances and to appropriate the funds that came from Europe and those that, very secretly, some local financial operators managed in Chile.

Source: interferencia.cl 5/5/2021