On April 29, 1976, PC militants Manuel Guillermo RECABARREN GONZALEZ, his brother Luis Emilio RECABARREN GONZALEZ, and the latter’s spouse, Nalvia Rosa MENA ALVARADO—who was three months pregnant—along with their two-year-old son, were detained in an operation carried out by DINA agents in the area of Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.

A few hours later, the child was abandoned near the home of his paternal grandparents.

The following day, April 30, the father of the victims, Manuel Segundo RECABARREN ROJAS, also a PC militant and former President of the JAP of San Miguel, went out to make inquiries to determine the whereabouts of his family members.

However, he was also detained and taken to Villa Grimaldi, the place from which all trace of him was lost in August 1976. There has been no further news of any of the four detainees.

The Commission is convinced that the disappearance of all these individuals was the work of DINA agents, who thereby violated their human rights.

Address: "Cantares de Chile" No. 6271, Paradero 16 of Sta. Rosa, San Miguel, Santiago Marital Status: Married, two children Occupation: Plumber Political Affiliation: Militant of the Communist Party Date of Detention: April 29, 1976 * Name: NALVIA ROSA MENA ALVARADO Date of Birth: 26-08-55, 20 years old at the time of her detention Address: "Cantares de Chile" No. 6271, Paradero 16 of Sta.

Rosa, San Miguel, Santiago Marital Status: Married, one child, pregnant Occupation: Homemaker Political Affiliation: Militant of the Communist Youth Date of Detention: April 29, 1976 * Name: LUIS EMILIO RECABARREN GONZALEZ Date of Birth: 06-02-47, 29 years old at the time of his detention Address: "Cantares de Chile" No. 6271, Paradero 16 of Sta.

Rosa, San Miguel, Santiago Marital Status: Married, one child Occupation: Graphic Technician. Photomontage artist Political Affiliation: Former leader of the Association of Employees of the State Technical University.

Militant of the Communist Party Date of Detention: April 29, 1976 * Name: MANUEL SEGUNDO RECABARREN ROJAS Date of Birth: 18-09-25, 50 years old at the time of his detention Address: "Cantares de Chile" No. 6271, Paradero 16 of Sta.

Rosa, San Miguel, Santiago Marital Status: Married, six children Occupation: Retired Political Affiliation: Former president of the unions of Editorial Universitaria and Editorial Nacimiento. Former national leader of the Graphic Workers' Guild. President of the Supply and Price Control Boards (JAP) of San Miguel. Leader of the Communist Party Date of Detention: April 30, 1976

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, married, one child, three months pregnant, homemaker, militant of the Communist Youth; her spouse Luis Emilio Recabarren González, graphic technician, former union leader; her brother-in-law Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, married, two children, plumber; both militants of the Communist Party, and her father-in-law Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, married, six children, retired, former graphic union leader, militant of the Communist Party, were detained by the DINA between April 29 and 30, 1976.

On April 29, around 9:30 PM, Nalvia Rosa Mena was detained—in the company of her husband Luis Emilio Recabarren González, their two-and-a-half-year-old son Luis Emilio Recabarren Mena, and her brother-in-law Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González—by DINA agents in an operation set up in the area of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.

That day, at approximately 7:30 PM, Nalvia Rosa, along with her son, went to her husband's workplace, located at Calle Nataniel No. 47, in order to head home from there in the company of him and her brother-in-law Manuel Guillermo, which they did around 9:00 PM; however, they did not reach their destination.

The only one who arrived near the home was little Luis Emilio, who was abandoned around 11:30 PM at the location by a tall, heavy-set individual who was traveling in a taxi.

Through subsequent inquiries and information from neighbors who were eyewitnesses to the apprehension, it was learned that Nalvia Rosa—three months pregnant—had been struck in the abdomen with the butt of a machine gun, despite her screams and pleas, and, in an unconscious state, was forced into one of the vehicles in which the agents were traveling.

The following day, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, father of the Recabarren González brothers, left home very early and was detained at 7:10 AM, just as he was preparing to board a bus for the purpose of initiating efforts to locate his relatives who had been detained the night before.

From there, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas was taken by his captors to the barracks known as Villa Grimaldi, a clandestine detention center of the DINA, where he was seen by other detainees. Some of them, who regained their freedom, declared before the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation that they had lost track of him in August 1976.

It was noted in the report of that Commission that, since that date, there has been no further news of any of the four detainees.

It should be noted that, although the military government denied the detention of those affected, there are statements from July 14 and 17, 1976, from the National Social Communication Division (DINACOS), through which it was announced that after operations carried out by the security services, thirty-two "mailbox houses" (safe houses) of the Communist Party had been dismantled, which served as a link between the National Directorate of said party and its Regional Committees; in addition to the detention of militants of said group, it was added that no further information could be provided so as not to hinder the investigations being carried out.

Another piece of evidence of the action of security agencies in the disappearance of those affected appeared in the August 12, 1976, edition of the weekly "Qué Pasa," in which an article under the title "From the MIR to the PC" points out that militants and leaders of the Communist Party had been detained following operations carried out by the security agencies.

Names of some of the detainees were even provided.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On April 30, 1976, a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) was filed before the Santiago Court of Appeals in favor of Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, and Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, which was registered under No. 352-76.

During its processing—and only 20 days after being filed—the Division General and Minister of the Interior, Raúl Benavides Escobar, issued an official report stating that none of the individuals under the writ were being held by order of that Ministry, adding that the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) did not have records of the victims in its files (May 20, 1976).

On May 26 of the same year, Minister Benavides reiterated this information. On June 1, 1976, and without further proceedings, the Court rejected the amparo. The Supreme Court confirmed the resolution on June 7, 1976, ordering the Court of Appeals to arrange for the referral of the records to the corresponding Criminal Court.

Thus, case file No. 109.195 was instructed in the 2nd Criminal Court of San Miguel on June 24, 1976, which was consolidated with case file No. 20.027-9, originating from a kidnapping complaint that the family of the victims had filed on June 18, 1976, before the same Court.

On August 26, 1976, the Division General and Minister of the Interior, Raúl Benavides Escobar, reported that none of the victims were being held by order of that agency. Faced with a judicial order, the Investigations police stated they had gone to the Santiago Jail, the Penitentiary, and the Correctional House without obtaining positive results.

Likewise, they stated that the victims did not appear in the lists of the National Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET) (July 30, 1977). After statements were taken from relatives, and without further proceedings, the summary was closed on September 30, 1977, and the case was temporarily dismissed because, "notwithstanding that the existence of the reported crime of kidnapping of Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, and Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas appears 'proven' by the records of the case, there is insufficient evidence to accuse specific persons as author, accomplice, or accessory to the same." On November 17, 1977, the Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution.

On December 7, 1977, Ernestina Elena Alvarado Rivas—mother of Nalvia Rosa Mena—filed a criminal complaint against Nelson Rivas, a civil servant of the Ministry of National Defense, for his role as an accessory to the crime of kidnapping perpetrated against her relatives.

In the filing, she recounted the circumstances surrounding their detentions and added that in July 1976 she had sent a letter to General Rolando Garay Cifuentes in order for him, in his capacity as Military Chief of the Plaza of Santiago, to inform her of the whereabouts of the victims.

In the first days of August, Ernestina Alvarado noted, she went to the Confidential Department of the Ministry of Defense (6th floor) to inquire about the result of the investigation requested of General Garay.

There, she was attended to by a civil servant in plainclothes who said his name was Nelson Rivas, and who—in a second visit—informed her that the investigation was coming to an end and that her relatives were alive and located.

At the end of August 1976, the witness met for a third time with Nelson Rivas, who denied what had been expressed in the previous meeting. Faced with Ernestina Alvarado's insistence, Nelson Rivas replied, "Have I given you anything in writing? I have to look out for my own skin." The Court accepted the complaint, reopening case file 20.027-9 on that same day, December 7, 1977.

Two days later, on December 9, the Judge issued an order to investigate, which was answered on February 9, 1978. However, on March 7, 1978, a new order had to be issued since the Court verified that the previous investigation "did not extend at all to the person of Nelson Rivas," identified as an accessory to the crime of kidnapping.

On April 19 of the same year, the Investigations police reported that "in relation to the official Nelson Rivas, there is no one by that name in the (Confidential) Department, nor has there been previously." It was added that in the Personnel Department of the Ministry of Defense, "no information was obtained in relation to Nelson Rivas, due to the maternal surname and the rank he might have held being unknown."

On April 28, 1978, the summary was closed and the case was totally and definitively dismissed by virtue of the Amnesty Decree Law 2.191, issued on April 19 of that same year. The Prosecutor's ruling stated that "the crime of kidnapping investigated in these records having been proven, and no evidence having been gathered thus far to accuse a specific person as author, accomplice, or accessory to the same, this Ministry is of the opinion to set aside the resolution under consultation regarding the definitive dismissal of the case, and to order the continuation of the investigation with the indicated objective or, in the alternative, to temporarily dismiss the case." On June 21, 1978, the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered that the dismissal should be of a temporary nature. The resolution was appealed, and on October 4, 1978, the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the reopening of the summary, indicating the need to identify the official Nelson Rivas and summon him to appear before the Court.

Faced with the inquiries made by the Court, Colonel Julio Bravo Valdés, Undersecretary of War, reported on November 8, 1978, that Nelson Rivas did not appear in the personnel records of the "Agency that operates on the 6th floor of this Ministry." In October 1979—and after various efforts were made to locate Nelson Rivas—the Court appeared at the Identification Cabinet of Santiago, noting that there were a total of 49 people who answered to that name.

The fingerprint records of those persons and their respective photographs were then attached to the process. Simultaneously, official letters were issued tending to identify the aforementioned Nelson Rivas.

Regarding him, the Acting Minister of the Interior, Enrique Montero Marx, reported on February 4, 1981, that the leadership of the National Intelligence Center (C.N.I.) had stated it lacked information.

On February 19 of the same year, Colonel Rigoberto Majmud Gallardo, Acting Chief of the General Staff of the General Command of the Army Garrison of Santiago, issued an official letter stating that in his department "there has not been nor is there an official by the name of Nelson Rivas." For his part, Lieutenant General and Minister of National Defense Washington Carrasco Fernández, faced with an inquiry aimed at identifying the Department Chief who worked on the 6th floor of that Ministry in August 1976, communicated that it was "impossible to access what was requested" because the documentation on personnel matters had been destroyed by internal provisions since "there is not enough space for its filing."

On November 3, 1982, Ernestina Alvarado appeared before the Court, ratifying all her previous statements and stating that none of the photos shown to her corresponded to the Nelson Rivas who worked on the 6th floor of the Ministry of Defense.

She added that, subsequently, she was attended to in that place by Colonel Cruz, who told her that indeed there was no Nelson Rivas there and that "possibly it was some person who was using a pseudonym." In a document from March 1983, Ernestina Díaz pointed out that Ana González González—mother of the Recabarren González brothers and spouse of Manuel Recabarren Rojas—and Viviana Díaz Caro, daughter of the currently forcibly disappeared Víctor Díaz López, had also interviewed Colonel Cruz.

In this regard, Ernestina Alvarado requested that Colonel Cruz be identified and that General Rolando Garay Cifuentes be summoned to testify. In relation to these requests, Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado, Minister of National Defense, issued an official letter stating that no Senior Officer with the surname Cruz worked in that Ministry (September 29, 1983) and that Major General Rolando Garay was retired, serving as Ambassador of Chile to the Republic of Egypt (September 12, 1983).

Viviana Díaz Caro testified before the Court on June 21, 1984, stating that indeed in the month of January 1979 she had gone to the Ministry of Defense, together with Mrs. Ana González González, with the purpose of requesting authorization to hold an event at the Caupolicán Theater regarding the forcibly disappeared.

To do so, they had to go up to the 6th floor of that Ministry, where they were attended to by an Army Colonel with the surname Cruz. It was then that Mrs. González asked him if he knew Nelson Rivas, to which the Officer responded positively, even offering to call him.

However, when a person arrived at the office, Colonel Cruz asked him if he was Nelson Rivas, to which he replied that his name was Nelson but that his surname was not Rivas. Then Colonel Cruz told them that he had been mistaken and that no Nelson Rivas worked there.

For her part, Mrs. Ana González added that Colonel Cruz had given her "his word as a Military man" that Nelson Rivas worked there. Subsequently, Colonel Cruz was identified as Marcelo Moren Brito, a DINA official.

By virtue of these latest findings, the Court requested the Filiation and Background Extract of Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito, Rut 3.392.364-3, who appeared before the Court on June 27, 1985. He disclosed his curriculum within the Army, saying that he had been retired in May 1985 and that he had been assigned to the DINA from the end of 1973 until 1977, remaining at Villa Grimaldi and at the General Headquarters.

He added that in 1979 he worked on the 6th floor of the Ministry of Defense, in the Army General Command, and that he was the person who informed General Enrique Morel Donoso about "the alleged disappeared." He explained that at that time General Rolando Garay was serving as Intendant of Santiago and that he would ask General Morel for information related to the "presumed disappeared." His role—Moren Brito noted—was to make inquiries to the Investigations police, CNI, and other agencies, to inform General Morel.

He added that in his department there was no Colonel Cruz and that it must have been he himself who attended to the aforementioned ladies. He concluded by saying that a Corporal with the surname Rivas worked on the 6th floor of the Ministry of Defense, but that his name was not Nelson and he did not remember his precise name, which should be registered in the General Command.

On July 25, 1985, a confrontation took place between Viviana Díaz Caro and Marcelo Moren Brito. She recognized the agent as "Colonel Cruz" and reiterated her statements. For his part, Marcelo Moren Brito said that he had never called himself "Colonel Cruz," that there was indeed a Corporal with the surname Rivas, and that he remembered having attended to the witness in his office on the 6th floor of the Ministry of National Defense.

Also on this same day, Moren Brito was confronted with Mrs. Ana González González, who recognized him as "Colonel Cruz," adding that he had told her that a civil servant named Nelson Rivas worked there, a matter he later denied. Moren Brito reiterated the previous terms and stated he had spoken with Ana González on the 6th floor of the Ministry of Defense.

Based on Moren Brito's statements, the Court initiated proceedings to locate Corporal Rivas. On December 19, 1985, Brigadier General Carlos Ojeda Vargas, General Commander of the Army Garrison of Santiago, issued an official letter stating that that department had no record that any Corporal with the surname Rivas had provided services between the years 1973 and 1974.

A judicial order was then issued stating that Corporal Rivas worked on the 6th floor of the Ministry of National Defense, Confidential Office, and that in the years 73-74 he was in the General Command of the Army Garrison of Santiago.

On March 7, 1986, the Investigations police reported that the entrusted task could not be carried out at the Ministry of Defense because there was no further data regarding his name. It was also noted that they had been told at that Ministry that any type of inquiry the Court required should be made via official letter.

On March 11, 1986, the Court decreed a series of proceedings. Among them, a new summons for Colonel (R) Marcelo Moren Brito; summoning Orlando José Manzo Durán, given that many detainees were held in the Cuatro Alamos Camp; requesting written reports on these events from Generals Rolando Garay and Enrique Morel; and issuing an official letter to the Army General Command to report whether it was customary for officials working in the Confidential Office of the 6th floor of the Ministry of Defense to use names other than their own, given the nature of their functions.

On May 8, 1986, Orlando José Manzo Durán appeared and declared that between 1974 and 1977 he was on a service commission at the DINA, serving as Commander of the Cuatro Alamos Camp. In relation to the victims, he said he had no information to provide and did not know if they were detained or not in Cuatro Alamos, although it was feasible that it could have been.

On June 17, 1986, Army Major Enrique Morel Donoso declared by official letter. He said that in 1976 he was serving as Commander of the II Army Division based in Santiago, and that he had nothing to do with problems of detainees or the disappeared.

He added that in 1976 Marcelo Moren Brito was not in Chile, but was fulfilling a service commission in Brazil. He also clarified that he did not have "the memory or the feeling that General Garay, as Intendant of Santiago, had made requests for reports on presumed disappeared persons to me." Furthermore, he added that he was sure he had not been aware that any investigation ordered by him had been carried out.

On June 25, 1986, the statements provided by Major General Rolando Garay Cifuentes via official letter were recorded. He said that during 1976 he was serving as Commander of the Army Garrison of Santiago and Chief of the Zone in a State of Emergency of the Metropolitan Region.

He stated that in that capacity he received all kinds of letters whose contents he does not remember. Regarding Marcelo Moren Brito, he expressed that he knew him by name, but that he did not know him personally. He also expressed that he performed his work as Intendant of Santiago from 1977 until 1980.

On July 8, 1986, Marcelo Moren Brito appeared for the second time. On this occasion, he said he did not remember the physical characteristics of the Army Corporal with the surname Rivas and reiterated that General Enrique Morel Donoso ordered inquiries to be made about "presumed disappeared persons." Almost simultaneously, on July 15, 1986, Colonel Sergio Moreno Saravia, Undersecretary of War, informed the Court that there was no Confidential Department on the 6th floor of the Ministry of National Defense and that its personnel did not use names other than their real ones.

Regarding Marcelo Moren, it was stated that he had served in the facilities of...

the 6th floor between the end of 1978 and January 1981, and that there was no record whatsoever regarding "that it had been his responsibility to investigate, participate in, or direct inquiries into the disappearance of the aforementioned persons" (Recabarren family).

On November 4, 1986, the summary proceedings were closed and the case was provisionally dismissed for the eighth time. In his ruling, the Prosecutor noted, "this Ministry is once again presented with the dilemma of passively accepting that the Judge crashes against the Wall of Silence or asking Your Illustrious Honors to insist that obstacles are meant to be overcome; this requires an excess of investigative zeal that, in times of legal normality, when a Judge was a Judge, his orders, heeded and respected, were an outstanding characteristic." It concluded by saying, "whatever the result, the destiny of this process is that it may not be able to have its essential element, the defendant, but we could, at least, provide an undoubted sense that the impossible has been done to provide the peace of mind of knowing the fate of the disappeared persons." The ruling was signed by Prosecutor Tomás Dahm Guíñez. On December 5, 1986, the San Miguel Court of Appeals revoked the resolution in question and ordered the reopening of the summary proceedings. Subsequently, in March 1987, faced with a new provisional dismissal, Prosecutor Dahm stated, "upon examining the evidence added to this process, for this Ministry, it is the sensation of a sad, long, dark, and fruitless night in search of the truth." Finally, he added, "despite the 10 years of processing without positive results, and the three hundred and ninety-three pages, this Ministry is of the opinion that the effects of the provisional dismissal should be suspended, revoking the resolution in question" (March 6, 1987). On August 28, 1988, the San Miguel Court of Appeals revoked the Judge's resolution and ordered, among other things, a new appearance before the Court by Marcelo Moren Brito. At this stage of the process, on October 6, 1988, Brigadier Humberto Leiva Gutiérrez, National Deputy Director of the C.N.I., reported that none of the affected individuals had any record of political activities or pending arrest warrants. On December 16 of the same year, Major General Enrique Morel Donoso made a second statement, by Official Letter, in which he reiterated his certainty that General Garay did not request any investigation from him regarding disappeared persons. Also, Major General Rolando Garay Cifuentes, in December 1988, declared once again by Official Letter, noting that between the years 1977 and 1980 he served as Intendant of Santiago and that, in that capacity, he was not related to situations involving detainees. When the summons for Marcelo Moren Brito was pending—without the Court having been able to locate him—on August 9, 1989, the 2nd Military Court of Santiago requested the inhibition of the 2nd Criminal Court of San Miguel to continue hearing the case. In this way, the Ordinary Justice system declared itself incompetent, and the records were sent to the Military Justice system, which filed them in the 2nd Prosecutor's Office, being accumulated into case file No. 553-78 (October 16, 1989), which had originated from a complaint filed by relatives of 70 forcibly disappeared persons against General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Colonel Marcelo Moren Brito, and Lieutenant Colonel Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo. Without any action being taken regarding the disappearance of Nalvia Rosa Mena, the two Recabarren González brothers, and their father, Manuel Recabarren Rojas, and with no action taken 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 of the reported acts being extinguished." The plaintiff parties appealed said resolution to the Court Martial, 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 records of the complaint against Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda can be found in the file of Eduardo Alarcón Jara, July 30, 1974).

Source: (Corporation Report)

Press

Letter from Ana Gonzalez to Juan Emilio Cheyre

Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief Army General

Juan Emilio Cheyre Espinosa

I want to begin this open letter addressed to you, General Cheyre, with the thought of a poet whom our poet Gabriela Mistral admired: "Men go in two camps, those who love and build, those who hate and undo." In your interview in the magazine "Siete más siete," you express that you are afraid; I would say that as a good soldier, it is not fear that invades you, but rather that you are horrified, appalled by the brutal and macabre crimes, rapes, and torture that your subordinates have recounted to you; crimes that revolt the conscience of any normal human being.

Let us reason together, General: if some soldiers were brave enough to carry out the Coup d'État and opted for the culture of death, under the pretext of saving the country from the sinister constitutionalists, among them General Prats, why did they abandon that bravery at the moment of acknowledging the crimes by telling the truth?

General, you say that your wife knows how to carry her sorrows. I am glad for that, only that between my sorrows and those of your wife, there is a great difference. She suffers for her father, who is accused of violating Human Rights.

I suffer for the magical and dreamy 21 years of my daughter-in-law Nalvia, three months pregnant, for my sons Luis Emilio and Mañungo, and for my husband Manuel. All of them were detained and hidden in the depths of the earth.

But I do not suffer only for my pain of absence; I die a little each day thinking about what my loved ones suffered, in the most complete helplessness. General, there is only one way for you to understand.

Let us each put ourselves in the other's place. Think for a second that I am you and they had snatched away your children, your unborn grandson, your beloved wife, your dear mother, and no one told you absolutely anything—defenseless before the State, defenseless before Justice, defenseless before the media.

However, your father-in-law, General Forestier, has had Justice and the right to have his loved ones near; mine had nothing, only darkness and abandonment. I would like to believe that for mine there were no grills, no pau de arará, no wet or dry submarines.

I would like to believe that Nalvia's baby was born and other hands rocked its cradle, I would like to believe that that grandson is still alive and would be 27 years old and that one day I will find him.

All that truth, General, is in your hands—truth that will not destroy the Army. On the contrary, only then will it be your army and my army, and the army of all Chileans, because it will have redeemed itself from what one day led them to kill their own brothers.

You already know the terrible history, therefore you have part of the solution; you cannot continue to be the shoulder to cry on or listening to the breast-beating of a mea culpa; it does not only have to do with the army but with the entire Nation.

There can be no impunity because this drama runs through all of Society and, for its sake, it is necessary that there be Truth and Justice, Now and immediately! When the Law exercised by institutions, by people who hide the truth, looks a lot like crime, you declare yourself "hopeless" because of the obstacles that, in your opinion, the bills on human rights have faced, because "the victims are not being given answers to their legitimate aspirations and are kept in a permanent state of mourning.

And for the prosecuted, many of whom may even be innocent, a situation almost of vengeance is applied to them by not being able to advance the processes." Do you declare yourself hopeless, General Cheyre?

How should I feel, and the thousands of relatives of the forcibly disappeared in Chile, who have spent an entire lifetime clamoring for Truth and Justice? Those are our "legitimate aspirations" that you say you recognize.

Why do you speak of "a situation almost of vengeance" when referring to those prosecuted for human rights violations? I invite you to look for a single statement, an action, a gesture from our Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, or in my own struggle, that is associated with vengeance.

Precisely because we are not driven by vengeance is why we appeal to Justice, the civilized way that society has to investigate and punish crimes. Because we still believe in Justice, despite everything.

It is that we will never compromise with the impunity that is still doggedly pursued by those who do not want to understand that crimes against humanity are not subject to amnesty, do not prescribe, and enjoy universal jurisdiction.

General, you are not insensitive to pain, like me. The truth shakes you and me, but you seem not to have assumed yet that truth and justice are an imperative necessity for the good of our society. I appeal to your military honor, to your conscience, to your love for the institution.

The stubborn facts lead you to a single path: impunity cannot be the epilogue of this national tragedy. Only then, only then, will there be a Never Again, as you and I wish. However, in your words, I notice a veiled threat when saying that "as long as we behave well," and with this phrase between the lines, you are taking away my right to dream of a better tomorrow.

Never again an 11th of September, never again massacres at the Santa María School, never again a massacre in Lonquimay, never again massacres at the Seguro Obrero, never again massacres at Plaza Bulnes, never again massacres in José María Caro, never again massacres in Puerto Montt, never again massacres in any corner of the country, never again human rights violations, never again, never again, never again.

Ana González de Recabarren

Source: Santiago, January 28, 2004

Date: 01-28-2004

Supreme Court revokes ruling and sentences 14 former DINA agents for the crime of 17 communist militants in 1976

The Supreme Court sentenced 14 agents of the dissolved National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, Clara Elena Canteros Torres, Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, Daniel Palma Robledo, Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán, José Eduardo Santander Miranda, Mario Jesús Juica Vega, Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, Carlos Mario Vizcarra Cofré, Miguel Nazal Quiroz, Juan Aurelio Villarroel Zárate, and Julio Roberto Vega Vega; and the qualified homicide of Eduardo Canteros Prado. The crimes were committed between April and August 1976, in the province of Santiago. In a unanimous ruling (case file 71.900-2020), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Jorge Dahm, María Cristina Gajardo, María Soledad Melo, and Eliana Quezada—revoked the sentence issued by the Eighth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals in April 2020, which applied the partial statute of limitations to the accused. In a replacement sentence, the Supreme Court sentenced former DINA leaders and former Army officers Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo and Jorge Claudio Andrade Gómez to 15 years and one day in prison, as authors of 16 counts of qualified kidnapping and 10 years and one day as authors of one count of qualified homicide. Meanwhile, Rolf Arnold Wenderoth Pozo was sentenced to two terms of 10 years and one day in prison, as the author of three qualified kidnappings and one qualified homicide; Juan Hernán Morales Salgado and Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño to 10 years and one day in prison, as authors of six qualified kidnappings. In the case of former agents Sergio Orlando Escalona Acuña, Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, Jorge Iván Díaz Radulovich, and Gustavo Enrique Guerrero Aguilera, they were sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison, as authors of a single case of qualified kidnapping. Likewise, former agents Orlando Jesús Torrejón Gatica, Claudio Enrique Pacheco Fernández, Orlando del Tránsito Altamirano Sanhueza, and Carlos Eugenio López Inostroza must serve 7 years as accomplices to the 16 qualified kidnappings and 5 years and one day in prison as accomplices to the qualified homicide. Finally, Hermon Helec Alfaro Mundaca must serve 7 years as an accomplice to 15 qualified kidnappings and 5 years and one day in prison as an accomplice to the qualified homicide. The criminals Carlos José Leonardo López Tapia and Ricardo Víctor Lawrence Mires, who had been sentenced in the first-instance ruling issued by Minister Leopoldo Llanos in July 2017 to 20 years in prison, died during the course of the process. Also deceased are those sentenced in the first instance, Ciro Ernesto Torré Sáez, Orlando José Manzo Durán, and Pedro Segundo Bitterlich Jaramillo. In dismissing the partial statute of limitations, the Supreme Court establishes that: "(...) it is necessary to take into consideration that the matter under discussion must also be analyzed in accordance with international Human Rights regulations contained mainly in the Geneva Conventions, which prevent the statute of limitations, total or gradual, regarding crimes committed in cases of non-international armed conflicts." The resolution adds that: "The same conclusion is reached by considering both the norms of the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons and those of the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, since in accordance with that regulation, the gradual statute of limitations has the same nature as the total one." "From another perspective, legal doctrine on this matter has expressed that its foundations are found in the same considerations of social stability and legal certainty that gave rise to Article 93 of the Penal Code, but that it is intended to produce its effects in those cases in which the realization of the ends provided for the statute of limitations does not occur naturally but after a gradual process, that is, when the time necessary to prescribe is about to be fulfilled, which would justify the mitigation of the penalty," it adds. "However," it continues, "it is evident that that conclusion is for cases that do not present the characteristics of crimes against humanity, as these are imprescriptible. Consequently, for such mitigation to be appropriate, it is necessary that it be a crime in the process of prescribing, which does not happen in this case, so the passage of time does not produce any effect, because social reproach does not diminish with time, which only occurs in cases of common crimes." The Facts In the first-instance ruling, presiding minister Leopoldo Llanos Sagristá established that within the framework of the systematic repression of opponents of the military regime, in the months of April and August 1976, the detentions of a series of people, all militants of the Communist Party, took place. On April 29, 1976, in the sector of Santa Rosa and Sebastopol streets in the commune of San Miguel, the brothers Manuel Guillermo, 22, and Luis Emilio Recabarren González, 29, were detained by DINA agents, along with Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, 20, and her two-year-old son. The child was abandoned near his home at night. The following day, April 30, at 7:00 a.m., Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, 50 years old, was detained shortly after leaving his home in the same sector and as he was about to board a public bus. All the detainees were taken to the clandestine detention and torture center 'Villa Grimaldi'; Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González and Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas were also seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' facility, and Luis Emilio Recabarren González at 'Cuatro Álamos'. From those facilities, the DINA made them disappear. On July 23, 1976, around 8:00 p.m., at the intersection of Rojas Magallanes and Panamá streets in the commune of La Florida, the young Clara Elena Canteros Torres, 21 years old, was detained by DINA agents. She was subdued as she got off public transport. She was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' where she was seen by witnesses, and on August 20, 1976, she was taken out of that facility along with other detainees Mario Juica Vega and Óscar Ramos. Since then, they have been disappeared. At 9:40 p.m., Eduardo Canteros Prado, 48, Clara Elena's uncle, a civil engineer, was detained on the public thoroughfare by DINA agents, in front of his home located on Panamá street, in the commune of La Florida. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'. In 1990, his remains were found at the Las Tórtolas estate in Colina, a facility that belonged to the Army until 1980. On July 27, 1976, around 5:15 p.m., Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, 49 years old, was detained by DINA agents from his office located at Mallinkrodt 70, Barrio Bellavista. They took him to the 'Villa Grimaldi' facility. On August 4, 1976, Daniel Palma Robledo, 61, a businessman, was detained in the morning on Avenida Matta, between San Diego and Arturo Prat streets; after picking up his mail, he bought a newspaper, and as he was leaving, he was detained and taken to an unknown destination, but he was seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' extermination barracks. On the same August 4, at 3:00 p.m., the doctor Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, 39, was detained. They captured him during his commute between the Parochial Hospital of San Bernardo and his private practice, located at Barros Arana and Arturo Prat streets. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' and, subsequently, to 'Cuatro Álamos', from where he was made to disappear. On the night of August 4, the surgeon Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán, 43, was detained by DINA agents while driving his vehicle. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi' and then to 'Cuatro Álamos'. On August 6, 1976, shortly after leaving his home, around 9:30 a.m., the student leader and member of the Central Única de Trabajadores, José Eduardo Santander Miranda, 29, was detained by DINA agents; surviving witnesses saw him at the 'Villa Grimaldi' facility. On August 9, Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, 45, a carpenter and construction worker, union leader, and organization head of a regional branch of the Communist Party, was detained in the morning in the vicinity of the 'Villa México' neighborhood in the commune of Maipú and was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'. Subsequently, he was seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' barracks. On the same August 9, Mario Jesús Juica Vega, 34, a merchant, was detained around noon in the vicinity of Plaza Egaña, in the commune of Ñuñoa, and taken to 'Villa Grimaldi', a place where he was seen by numerous witnesses. On August 20, he was taken from that facility along with two other detainees, and since then the DINA has kept them disappeared. On August 11, 1976, at 9:00 a.m., while leaving his home located on Chiloé street, between Santa Rosa and Gran Avenida, in the commune of San Miguel, the merchant Miguel Nazal Quiroz, 44, was detained by DINA agents. He was taken to 'Villa Grimaldi'. On the night of the same August 11, Carlos Mario Vizcarra Cofré, 31, a body shop worker, was detained at his home in Quinta Normal by agents who took him to 'Villa Grimaldi', a facility where witnesses saw him until August 25 of the same year. Subsequently, he was seen at the 'Simón Bolívar' facility. On August 13, Juan Aurelio Villarroel Zárate, 55, a union leader and photoengraver, was detained around noon by DINA agents near the Estación Mapocho while traveling from his home in Conchalí. He was taken to Villa Grimaldi. On August 16, 1976, at 11:30 a.m., the worker Julio Roberto Vega Vega was detained by DINA agents on Avenida Presidente Balmaceda, between Cueto and Libertad, in the commune of Santiago. Several witnesses saw him held in both 'Villa Grimaldi' and the 'Simón Bolívar' barracks. by Darío Núñez

Source: resumen.cl, July 30, 2023

Date: 07-30-2023

Santiago Court confirms payment of compensation for the detention and disappearance of the plaintiff's father, brothers, and sister-in-law

In a unanimous ruling, the First Chamber of the Court of Appeals confirmed the judgment ordering the State to pay $80,000,000 in compensation for the disappearance of the plaintiff's father, siblings, and sister-in-law, who were detained by DINA agents in late April 1976, in the area of Calle Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the judgment ordering the State to pay $80,000,000 (eighty million pesos) in compensation for the disappearance of the plaintiff's father, siblings, and sister-in-law, who were detained by DINA agents in late April 1976, in the area of Calle Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 8.041-2021), the First Chamber of the Court of Appeals—composed of Justices Marisol Rojas, Inelie Durán, and María Paula Merino—confirmed in all its parts the challenged judgment, which had upheld the claim.

“Given the merit of the records, the judgment under review of May 27, 2020, issued by the 17th Civil Court of Santiago in case file C-30503-2019, is approved,” the ruling states.

The ratified first-instance judgment established that: “(…) in relation to the first premise, that is, the existence of an unlawful act, in accordance with the nature of the matter and the facts to which the litigation pertains, and based on the merit of the evidence mentioned in the previous grounds and the testimony provided by the plaintiff, it is legally proven in the case file that the plaintiff's father, two of his siblings, and a sister-in-law were detained without legal cause and illegally by State agents, transferred to illegal detention and torture centers, without details being known of their stay in said facilities or their subsequent transfer or whereabouts, and they remain forcibly disappeared to this date.”

The ruling added that the described conduct “indefectibly accounts for the commission of illegal and arbitrary acts that affect the most essential aspects of human beings, such as life, liberty, and dignity, and which, by their extent and scope, transcend the individual, affecting all of humanity, and therefore fall within the concept of crimes against humanity.”

“Indeed, it is evident from all the documentary evidence provided, which offers irrefutable proof of the forced disappearance and subsequent stay of the plaintiff's relatives in the torture centers known as ‘Villa Grimaldi’, ‘Simón Bolívar’, and ‘Cuatro Álamos’, circumstances and background that allow this judge to consider as proven the existence of the unlawful acts invoked in the terms set forth in ground 13,” it concluded.

Therefore, it resolved

“I.- That the claim dated October 12, 2019, is upheld, declaring that the defendant is civilly liable for the acts of which Juan Francisco Recabarren Durán was a secondary victim, consisting of the detention and disappearance of his father Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, his siblings Luis Emilio and Manuel Guillermo, both surnamed Recabarren González, and his sister-in-law Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado, which occurred between April and August 1976, and the State is ordered to pay the plaintiff the sum of $80,000,000 (eighty million pesos) as compensation for moral damages;

II.- That the sum ordered to be paid shall accrue adjustments and interest from the time this judgment becomes final and until its effective payment.”

Source: pjud.cl 8/3/2022

Date: 08-03-2022

These are the 17 DINA agents benefited by the Santiago Court of Appeals in the case of the disappearance of 17 communist leaders

Among those implicated in the crime is the former Army Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, deputy director of Augusto Pinochet's repressive agency in the 1970s. The list includes agents linked to the Brigada Lautaro, one of the most feared units of the era.

The ruling by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which acquitted and reduced the sentences of 17 former agents of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA)—the dictatorship's agency that operated between 1973 and 1977—caused indignation among some.

Specifically, the panel composed of Justices Juan Cristóbal Mera Muñoz, Mireya López Miranda, and lawyer Cristián Lepín Molina acquitted seven DINA agents in the case of the disappearance of 16 people and the murder of a 17th, events that occurred in 1976, where the victims were last seen at the Villa Grimaldi detention center.

The victims are the following militants and leaders of the Communist Party: Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Manuel Guillermo Recabarren González, Nalvia Mena Alvarado, Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas, Clara Canteros Torres, Alejandro Rodríguez Urzúa, Daniel Palma Robledo, Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán, José Eduardo Santander Miranda, Mario Jesús Juica Vega, Víctor Hugo Morales Mazuela, Carlos Mario Vizcarra Cofré, Miguel Nazal Quiroz, Juan Aurelio Villarroel Zárate, Julio Roberto Vega Vega, and Eduardo Canteros Prado (the only one who was not forcibly disappeared).

In light of this controversy, INTERFERENCIA investigated the criminal records of these State agents who were once part of the machine of torture, disappearance, and homicide that systematically violated human rights, fundamentally in the 1970s. Most of those benefited are involved in other cases of similar characteristics, so they will remain in prison.

The acquitted

1. Pedro Espinoza Bravo. Former Army Brigadier and former deputy director of DINA. He was convicted for the murder of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, former Army Commander-in-Chief General Carlos Prats, and Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria.

He was part of the "Caravana de la Muerte" (Caravan of Death) and a material author of the murders of American journalists Charles Horman Lazar and Frank Randall Teruggi Bombatch. He also received convictions in France for "kidnapping accompanied by torture and acts of barbarism" in the cases of French citizens Jorge Klein, Etienne Pesle, Alfonso Chanfreau, and Jean Yves Claudet.

The Santiago Court of Appeals acquitted Espinoza exclusively of the crimes committed at the Villa Grimaldi detention and torture center. “There is no evidence that he led any brigade that operated in Villa Grimaldi, much less the Delfín group, during 1976, which is what matters for these purposes,” the ruling reads.

Specifically, he is exempted from responsibility for the kidnapping and disappearance of 17 victims carried out through the so-called Delfín group in 1976.

2. Rolf Wenderoth Pozo. Former Army Colonel and deputy director of Internal Intelligence for DINA. He was part of the Brigada Mulchén, known for the use of sarin gas in several murders and for being responsible for the assassination of Carmelo Soria.

Wenderoth was the liaison agent for Luz Arce, a member of President Salvador Allende’s GAP (Personal Security Group), who was broken under torture to become a DINA agent, and he was part of the teams in charge of the Villa Grimaldi and Belgrano detention and torture centers.

3. Hermón Alfaro Mundaca. Former PDI commissioner and DINA agent. He was part of Villa Grimaldi from 1975 and was prosecuted along with 97 other agents for the disappearance of 41 people in the context of the "Operación Colombo" case and the "Case of the 119," a disinformation operation by the dictatorship in collusion with El Mercurio and La Tercera to hide disappearances.

The famous headline in La Segunda on July 24, "Exterminated like rats," corresponds to this case.

4. Pedro Bitterlich Jaramillo. Former Army non-commissioned officer and DINA agent. He was part of the Brigada Lautaro, which—among other criminal missions—was in charge of the "Death Flights," through which DINA disposed of the bodies of its victims using Army Puma helicopters.

The case of Marta Lidia Ugarte Román corresponds to this operation; she was a victim of a death flight, but her body was returned by the sea, a case for which Bitterlich was convicted as one of the authors of qualified kidnapping, along with Pedro Espinoza and several other agents.

He was also implicated in the cases known as Operación Colombo, Calle Conferencia I and II (aimed at the extermination of the Communist Party leadership), and Operación Cóndor (in which the repressive agencies of several Southern Cone dictatorships colluded to commit and cover up crimes beyond their borders).

5. Claudio Pacheco Fernández. Former Carabineros non-commissioned officer and DINA agent. He was also part of the Brigada Lautaro. He was implicated in Operación Colombo.

6. Orlando Torrejón Gatica. Former Army non-commissioned officer, DINA and CNI agent. He was part of the Brigada Lautaro and went on to be part of the Green and Blue Brigades of the CNI, the repressive agency that succeeded DINA. He was prosecuted in the Calle Conferencia II case.

7. Orlando Altamirano Sanhueza. Former Navy non-commissioned officer and DINA agent. He was also part of the Brigada Lautaro.

8. Carlos López Inostroza. DINA agent. Implicated in the Calle Conferencia I and Marta Ugarte cases.

Those who received sentence reductions

9. Ricardo Lawrence Mires. Former Carabineros lieutenant colonel and DINA agent. According to Memoria Viva, he is one of the agency's main and cruelest torturers, having been the one who pressured Luz Arce before her conversion.

He was assigned to the Londres 38, José Domingo Cañas, and Villa Grimaldi torture centers. Lawrence is known lately for having been a fugitive and one of the most wanted by the PDI for the homicide of Alfonso Chanfreau, having turned himself in to the OS-9 of the Carabineros on January 10.

10. Jorge Andrade Gómez. Former Army lieutenant colonel, DINA and CNI agent. He was part of the School of the Americas, an institution created by the United States to teach repression and torture techniques that would be used in the dictatorships of the 70s in Latin America.

He was a lieutenant to Miguel Krassnoff after his time at Villa Grimaldi and was implicated in the Calle Conferencia and Cóndor operations, and in numerous kidnappings. In the CNI, he was part of Operation Alfa Carbón I, in which the CNI killed seven MIR militants, and he was convicted for the 1985 murder of 20-year-old Paulina Alejandra Aguirre Tobar of the MIR.

11. Juan Morales Salgado. Former Army Colonel and director of DINA's Brigada Lautaro. Also known for his participation in the 1974 homicide of Prats and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert, in the city of Buenos Aires.

For this crime, he was sentenced to 15 years and 1 day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree, as well as for illicit association. This retired Armed Forces officer only entered prison in 2010. Likewise, another conviction weighs on him for the kidnapping of five young people in an episode known as the Linares Case, for which Morales Salgado received a sentence reduction from the Supreme Court in 2011.

12. Gladys Calderón Carreño. Former Army lieutenant, nurse, and agent of DINA's Brigada Lautaro. She was convicted in 2018 by visiting judge Mario Carroza for her role in the events involving Operación Cóndor, for her authorship in the qualified homicides of Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, Jacobo Stoulman Bortnik, Matilde Pessa Mois, Hernán Soto Gálvez, and Ruiter Enrique Correa Arce.

Also, as published by El Mostrador, she participated in the Calle Conferencia operation and the detention of Víctor Díaz López of the Communist Party.

13. Ciro Torré Sáez. Former Carabineros captain and administrative chief of DINA. According to the Memoria Viva website, Judge Llanos sentenced him in 2017 to fifteen years and one day of imprisonment in its maximum degree as the author of the qualified kidnapping of Luis Emilio Recabarren González, Carlos Enrique Godoy Lagarrigue, and Iván Sergio Insunza Bascuñán.

Previously, Torré had been convicted by the Supreme Court for the qualified homicide of Lumi Videla Moya, a member of the MIR, who was kidnapped along with her husband by DINA in 1974, dying in the José Domingo Cañas detention center. The highest court sentenced him to 5 years and one day in 2009.

14. Orlando Escalona Acuña. Former Navy non-commissioned officer and member of DINA's Brigada Lautaro. He was previously convicted as a co-author of the 1976 kidnapping and qualified homicide of Víctor Díaz López, a Communist Party militant who in 1973 reached a leadership position in the Central Única de Trabajadores de Chile (CUT).

In addition, the Supreme Court issued a sentence against him for the kidnapping of former communist deputy Bernardo Araya Zulueta and his wife María Olga Flores Araya in 1976.

15. Juvenal Piña Garrido. Army non-commissioned officer and member of DINA's Brigada Lautaro. He received the same sentence reduction as Sergio Orlando Escalona Acuña, both involved in the kidnapping of Daniel Palma Robledo.

Piña is also serving a sentence for the qualified kidnapping of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

16. Jorge Díaz Radulovich. Air Force non-commissioned officer and member of DINA's Brigada Lautaro. The Supreme Court sentenced him for the 1976 kidnapping of former deputy Bernardo Araya Zulueta and his wife María Olga Flores Araya to 5 years and one day of imprisonment as a co-author of the crime.

According to Memoria Viva, Díaz was mentioned in the book La Danza de los Cuervos as a member of the "Comando Vengadores de Mártires" (Martyrs' Avengers Command).

17. Gustavo Guerrero Aguilera. Carabineros non-commissioned officer and member of the Brigada Lautaro. He was implicated in the Calle Conferencia operation. He originally received a ten-year sentence for the kidnapping of Daniel Palma Robledo, but his sentence was reduced to three years and one day of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree.

Source: interferencia.cl 13/4/2020

Date: 13-04-2020

The heartbreaking story of the 2-year-old boy who saw his parents disappear and still wonders why he is alive (excerpt)

In an operation by Chilean intelligence, Luis Recabarren, his parents, and his uncle were intercepted in 1976. All of them were detained. He was 2 years old, and his mother, who was pregnant, was struck in the abdomen with a rifle. That was the last day he saw his loved ones alive. In an intimate and heartbreaking testimony, Luis recalls his past in a conversation with BBC Mundo.

"Why did I survive?" That is one of the questions that has marked the life of the Chilean Luis Emilio Recabarren Mena for decades.

To understand it, one must know his story.

42 years ago, when he was 2 and a half years old, he lost his paternal grandfather, an uncle, his father, his mother, and the brother or sister she was carrying in her womb in less than 48 hours.

The year was 1976, and Chile was living under the military regime of Augusto Pinochet.

On April 29, four members of his family were detained during an operation by intelligence agents.

He was one of them.

Everyone disappeared except for him. He was the only one who survived. And he still does not know why.

Since then, he has tried to reconstruct what happened that day and find out the fate of his parents, his uncle, and his grandfather, who suffered the same fate just one day later.

He has spoken with witnesses, read files, and searched for their traces in photos. But he still has gaps in his memory.

In a heartbreaking testimony offered from his home in Sweden, where he has lived since 1984, Recabarren—the grandson of the tireless human rights activist Ana González, who died on October 26—opens up his past, his memories, and his pain to BBC Mundo.

And he asserts that he will fight to know who killed his parents until the day he dies.

The Fateful Day

On April 29, 1976, Nalvia Mena Alvarado, who was 21 years old, went with her only son, Luis, to look for her husband at his office.

Luis Emilio Recabarren was 29 years old and worked in a downtown neighborhood of Santiago.

On the way back, the family met one of the father's brothers, Manuel Guillermo, and the four of them set off toward the home of the paternal grandparents, Ana González and Manuel Recabarren.

Since his birth, "Puntito," as Luis was affectionately called, lived with his parents and grandparents in that house.

"They captured us as we were getting off the bus," he recounts.

"Arriving at the Santa Rosa bus stop, there was an operation with three cars parked. They were waiting for us."

"When my father saw that they grabbed my mother, who was holding me, he tried to do something. But they beat him, and they hit her in the stomach with a rifle. Then they put us in one of the vehicles, and the three cars left in a hurry."

The Abandonment

On the same day of the detention, Luis was separated from his parents.

At some point, someone put him in a black vehicle and left him one block away from his paternal grandparents' house.

"He left me dumped on the street in the middle of a curfew. A neighbor heard me crying, looked out, and said: 'It's Puntito!' She came out, picked me up, and took me to my grandmother."

The next day, April 30, his paternal grandfather went out very early to look for his children and his daughter-in-law.

He never returned. He also disappeared.

Desperate, his grandmother Ana González went to look for Nalvia's mother, Ernestina Alvarado, to tell her what had happened.

Thus began the tireless search by his grandmothers for his parents, his grandfather, and his uncle.

The Silence

After being brought to his house, "Puntito" could not speak for a month.

His upbringing passed into the hands of his maternal grandmother, Ernestina. He visited Ana frequently, and she became a constant and beloved figure in his life.

"I would fall asleep crying every night," he says.

"I missed my parents. They gave me so much love. I felt that it wasn't my home, that I should be somewhere else, that this was something temporary, which is why I thought I shouldn't be a bother. 'I must eat all my food, I must behave well,' I told myself."

He confesses that, despite the love of his loved ones, he felt like an orphan and on occasion tried to run away from home.

His relatives never tried to disguise what had happened to his parents.

"They were always with the raw, real truth, without hiding anything, with the goal of processing it."

"What did my mom do so they would let me go?"

When he learned to read, he tried to understand the information that was "out there" about the torture and abuses of the government.

He began to ask himself: "Did that happen to my mom? Did they do those tortures to her? Did they use electricity on my dad, my grandfather, my uncle? What happened to them in their final moments?"

And very powerful questions arose that intrigue him to this day:

"Why did I survive?"

"What did they do so they would let me go?"

"What did my mom do so they would let me go?"

"And the fact is that in those days, they killed children too."

Later, through the testimonies of witnesses, "it was learned that they were taken to the torture camp of (Villa) Grimaldi and later they were transferred to other places. Their trail was lost there. Some say they killed them and threw them into the sea."

The Decision to Leave

Under the shelter of a "solidary" sector of the Catholic Church, his grandmothers and other mothers and relatives of the forcibly disappeared began to meet.

Thus, they gave life to the emblematic Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD).

Ana and Ernestina took Luis to the meetings, and there he was happy with other children who were going through similar tragedies, but about which they did not speak to each other. They just wanted to play.

"We would run through the hallways and courtyards of the Vicariate of Solidarity, which was in the center of Santiago. I felt special when they took me there."

But the time to leave Chile had arrived. He was 11 years old.

"At the end of 1984, when my maternal family was destroyed, my other uncles fell into detention camps and were tortured," he says.

His grandmother Ernestina saw no other option but to take him and other granddaughters to Sweden.

"What if they appear?"

Ernestina began to prepare him for the departure. She spoke to him about Sweden, its forests, its parks, its social democracy, its civil rights.

And that, plus the experience of getting on a plane for the first time, excited him, but another question arose:

"What if my parents appear? I have to be here because maybe they won't find me," he says.

"I thought, I dreamed that they would return and I wanted to be there when that happened."

But they left.

"I will bring you a gift"

Recabarren's voice breaks when he tells us about the moment he had to say goodbye to "a soul friend," a boy who lived in the neighborhood.

"I promise Sergio to return..."

A silence follows that sentence.

"And..."

More silence.

"I told him: 'I promise to return to Chile and I will bring you a gift.' We cried a lot until we said goodbye."

On the way to the airport, he remembers "the tremendous pain of leaving relatives who tried to compensate for the disappearance (of my parents) with a lot of love."

"It was the sadness of abandoning my country (...) of knowing that I was only going to have one grandmother," he indicates.

Sweden

In the European nation, he began a new life, although with the same pain.

"I kept falling asleep crying, but in silence so as not to bother."

"It was a perpetual mourning, but I tried to study, learn the language, I started swimming classes, I played sports."

He says that he arrived in Stockholm, where there was already a Chilean community that knew who he was.

"It was my people, my folks, I received enormous affection. The parents knew the story, but their children did not."

A Brother

"When you were a child, did you ever manage to rationalize that you could have had a little brother or a little sister and that they were taken too?" we asked him.

"All the time, all the time," he says.

And with a choked voice, he continues: "I realized that that sliver of hope, which I kept making grow, was not letting me live, was not letting me think."

"As a child, I thought with illusion: 'Could it be? Maybe I have a brother.' In Sweden, I grew up with my cousins, that's why I asked myself: 'Will I have a brother, will I have a sister?'"

At night, when he slept, dreams of his parents would come.

"I dreamed that I was hugging my mother by the waist."

When he turned 29, the age at which his father disappeared, he wondered what the relationship with him would have been like if nothing had happened: "Would we be good friends?"

"My parents' friends tell me that I look a lot like my mother and that I also have a bit of my father."

The Revenge That Never Came

"Do you remember at what moment you realized that you would not see your parents again?" we inquired.

"It was a long process," he responds. It came to an end in Sweden.

"When I cried at night, I began to accept the perpetual disappearance and to think that they were murdered, that they had been thrown into the sea. That they went through cruel things."

"I fought against myself, I told myself: 'I have to take revenge, I have to be a guerrilla, I have to find the culprits.'"

When he told his grandmother, she got very angry and told him:

"No, no, no! That is what they want, that hatred consumes you and you are not going to be able to celebrate that you are the survivor of your parents. And you have to tell that, you have to tell what happened."

Little by little, in the middle of adolescence, he "understood" that "now they were at peace."

"And that I had to find my center, my balance, in order to have a life."

From that perspective of love and the search for justice that his grandmothers instilled in him, he decided to face his life.

He also faced it with something his parents enjoyed: art, music, ballet. He studied at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, became a professional dancer, and performed in several countries.

The Reconstruction of the Facts

Recabarren knows some details of what happened on April 29, 1976, because there were several witnesses in the phases of the detention and the disappearance of his parents and his uncle.

"That is what one reads in the testimonies that were collected and in what the Rettig Report says, which compiles each case," he indicates.

The Rettig Report was carried out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body created with the arrival of democracy to investigate human rights violations during the Pinochet era.

In 1991, that report, which only counted disappearances and executions, recognized 2,279 deaths at the hands of State agents.

A "Very Strong" Memory

Beyond what he has read and investigated and what he has been told, Luis asserts that, despite his young age, there is something he remembers from the day he saw his parents and his uncle for the last time.

And he managed to evoke it after receiving psychological help focused on people with chronic post-traumatic stress at the Swedish Red Cross.

"The psychologist helped me bring out a memory in which I see my mother very close to me, talking to me, and behind her there is a body on the floor. In the doorway, there is another man, he is standing. I don't know if it is my dad or my uncle, he is trying to see what is happening outside. We are in a room."

That room, he believes, was the place where they were held as detainees.

"In that memory, how do you see your mom?" we asked him.

"She looked like an angel," he responds. "It is a memory that I have very, very strong."

Why His Parents?

When we asked Luis why he thinks his parents were detained, he reflects on his name.

"Luis Emilio Recabarren Serrano (1876-1924) was the founder of the Workers' Party in Chile about a hundred years ago (1912). I don't know if we are relatives or not. It has never been relevant to me."

But beyond that possible association that the agents could have established, his father was a union leader.

"My mother's father and brothers were union leaders. They were all idealists, they were a generation with political potential who wanted a change in society."

The government's objective, he says, was to break the families that had a political stance against them. "They wanted to kill ideas, (to commit) a political genocide."

His parents were members of the Communist Party. "They were not violent, they were not terrorists. They only wanted to transform society, to fight for equality."

Forming an Image of His Parents

Luis knows that his parents "fell in love at a Communist Party Congress."

That is what his grandmothers and uncles told him.

"My dad was quite charismatic, he received a lot of attention from the girls. But at first, my mom didn't pay him any mind because she knew what he was like," he says between laughs.

Since adolescence, Nalvia "opposed inequalities," she liked to help the community and "was not one of those who waited for someone to come to solve the problems of the commune."

"I have the impression that my mother was very delicate. She sang in the French high school choir, she drew, she had artistic qualities."

Both his father and his mother liked ballet a lot. They tell him that she listened to classical music when she was carrying him in her womb.

Both were thin and very tall "for the average Chilean." He himself is 1.86 meters tall.

"Until I Die"

In an interview of Recabarren with the journalist Ivonne Toro of the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, published on October 29, he says that he needs to know who it was that killed his mother.

"To this day, I do not have concrete information about how the operation against my parents was or who was involved," he indicates to BBC Mundo.

"The full truth has not been able to be known."

"My whole life, until I die, I am going to search for the truth about what happened. I am not going to stop. And if I die, my children will search for it. This goes by generations. It is tireless."

He is married to the Swedish journalist Sara Recabarren and has three children aged 7, 11, and 15. With them, he learned what unconditional love really is.

"As long as I am strong, they will be strong," he says.

"They are going to continue the fight. My inclination as a father is to protect them, but I know that they will be able to transform all this pain into something positive."

"A Duty"

Recabarren says that as long as he feels strong, he will continue telling his story. But it is not easy.

"My uncles who survived torture have great difficulty talking about what happened to them, even with their own children."

"Now that my paternal grandmother is not here, I have to do it. It is a duty."

"For me, Chile is a paradox: I hate Chile for what it has caused me and, at the same time, I love Chile because I am from there, because it is my people, and because after my grandmother's death, I feel its solidarity, its affection."

Source: 24horas.cl 5/11/2018

Date: 05-11-2018

Ana González de Recabarren passed away at 93

The emblematic neighbor of our commune, a bastion of Human Rights, passed away this morning. The distinguished neighbor lived in Cantares de Chile in San Joaquín.

During the morning of this Friday, the historic human rights leader Ana González de Recabarren passed away at 93 years of age. The woman became a symbol of the fight against the ferocity of the dictatorship and impunity, after losing her husband, her two sons, and her pregnant daughter-in-law at the hands of Pinochet's secret police. She never stopped searching for truth and justice.

BIOGRAPHY

She was born in Toco, a nitrate office near Tocopilla, in 1925. In the 1930s, she moved with her family to live in the latter city. Subsequently, she moved to live in the Bulnes neighborhood in Renca, Santiago. She married Manuel Segundo Recabarren Rojas.

She became a militant of the Communist Party at 17 years old and ceased her militancy around the year 2000.

In December 2016, Ana was admitted to the San José Hospital due to respiratory failure. Since then, her health declined considerably. On February 10, 2017, at 91 years old, the musician Ana Tijoux and her band gave her an intimate concert, in which they performed the song "Sacar la voz."

In the first years of the military dictatorship, she lost a large part of her family at the hands of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). Two of her sons, Luis Emilio (29 years old) and Manuel "Mañungo" Guillermo Recabarren (22), and the spouse of the former, Nalvia Rosa Mena Alvarado (20)—who was pregnant—were detained and forcibly disappeared on April 29, 1976.

Only her grandson Luis Emilio "Porotito" Recabarren Mena, then 2 years old, returned alive. The next day, April 30, her husband Manuel (50 years old) went out to look for his children and his daughter-in-law and was also detained and forcibly disappeared. According to some testimonies, he was seen alive at the Villa Grimaldi detention center.

After the disappearance of her relatives, she joined the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared (AFDD), becoming one of its main leaders, along with Sola Sierra, Mireya García, Viviana Díaz, and Clotario Blest.

She participated in a hunger strike at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and was a representative of the AFDD along with Gabriela Bravo and Ulda Ortiz in various international institutions such as the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the International Red Cross, the International Commission of Jurists, the Holy See, Amnesty International, among others.

She was the protagonist of a documentary filmed in 1996, Quiero llorar a mares, which was broadcast in 2000 as a chapter of El mirador (Televisión Nacional de Chile), and which the following year obtained an Ondas Award in the Ibero-American category of "Best television program, professional or station." In June 2000, she filed a lawsuit for the disappearance of her four relatives against Augusto Pinochet.

In 2011, she was nominated for the National Human Rights Prize of Chile, which finally went to Viviana Díaz. González and Andrés Aylwin were honored in an act of the New Majority parties held on September 9, 2013, for their fight in defense of the victims of human rights violations during the Pinochet regime.

Source: radiosanjoaquin.cl, October 26, 2018

Date: 26-10-2018

TESTIMONY OF ANA GONZALEZ DE RECABARREN, wife of Manuel Recabarren Rojas, mother of Manuel and Luis Emilio Recabarren and his pregnant wife Nalvia Ro

September 28, 2008. At the end of April 1976, on the 29th, my sons Manuel, 23 years old, Luis Emilio, 29 years old, and his wife, Nalvia Rosa, 21 years old and three months pregnant, were detained. The next day, the 30th, my husband Manuel Recabarren Rojas, 50 years old, was also detained; to this day, they remain forcibly disappeared.

Immediately after the detentions, amparo appeals were filed, and we went to all the necessary legal instances to find their whereabouts. The only information we have obtained as a result of the Dialogue Table is that, in a list presented by the military, the name of my son Luis Emilio appeared, whose body had allegedly been thrown into the sea.

As a consequence of this horror, my eldest daughter, Anita María, fell ill with cancer that would finally cause her death. The whole family, some more, some less, have had to overcome emotional and psychological problems that have dragged on since then, harming even the youngest, since my grandchildren, despite the young age they were at the date of this tragedy, have had to carry the trauma of not knowing what happened to their parents, uncles, and grandfather.

Personally, the pain of feeling that society has not known how to assume what this black night meant and has meant for our country, ignoring the achievement of truth and justice, however hard it may be, and this despite the advances that in a few cases have occurred in the Courts of Justice.

Even the detention of Pinochet in London, which filled us with expectations and the longing that the crimes of the dictatorship would be judged and that we would advance toward the recovery of dignity, has been diluting in the nooks and crannies of the system that we have inherited from the dictatorship.

Even so, during the tyrant's detention in London, we met every night, in vigil, making our own the slogan "A night without sleep so that humanity can sleep peacefully." Night after night we counted: and there go one, two, three... until counting 502 days, in which we felt the support of humanity that recognized in Pinochet the murderer of the soul of Chile.

Source: amnesty.org

COMPLETE TESTIMONY OF ANA GONZALEZ DE RECABARREN AND HER LETTER TO GENERAL EMILIO CHEYRE

The year was 1976, and May First was approaching. With Manuel, my husband, we had agreed to pay a small tribute to the workers of EMOS, where he worked as a concessionaire of the cafeteria. For breakfast, we would serve them some tasty baked empanadas, kneaded by the hands of my "Negro." On the afternoon of April 29 of that year, we left everything ready.

Manuel went to bed early. Besides helping me in the cafeteria, he also worked installing and changing household meters. I stayed up, and with my son Vachy, we sat in the living room to watch a movie on television.

Suddenly, I remembered that I wanted to ask Manuel for his opinion on a pamphlet that the Luis Emilio Recabarren Local Committee of the Communist Party, of whose leadership I was a part, had commissioned me to write for May 1st.

I was worried about that mission since it was the first time I had written something like that. I brought him the draft, and upon reading it, he told me, "I congratulate you, it is very beautiful, it has great human quality." "Get out of here," I told him, laughing.

As I left, he sent me a kiss. Proud, I returned to my son's side; my old man had given me his approval. I tell this small, unforgettable detail because it was the last gesture of tenderness that my "Samurai" gave me, as many graphic artists called him.

Then, the black night would cover the whole family forever. The movie was at its climax when, from afar, I feel the crying of a child. "Vachy," I say to my son, "it seems like a child is lost," and we continue watching the movie.

Suddenly, the heartbreaking crying seemed to be at our door. "Vachy, go see." From the doorway and at the top of his lungs, he tells me: "Mom, it's Puntito" (the little son of Nalvia and Luis, just over two years old).

Surprised, we ran to make sure: There, clinging to the gate, was my grandson crying inconsolably. Behind him was a lady to whom I ask, "What are you doing with my grandson?" to which she explains to us that upon leaving a friend's house, about six houses away from ours, she saw a car brake sharply, from which a burly man got out with a child in his arms and abandoned him on the edge of the gutter, getting back into the car that sped off in a southerly direction.

The little one was crying; she came out of the front garden of the house, took him by the hand, and asked him who he was, but the child was too small to talk, besides being terribly scared. She assumes that he must be known on our street and began to ring the doorbells house by house, but no one opened for her.

It was approximately eleven at night, and she had opted to take him to the nearest police station. It is at that moment that my son and I went out to help a child, without thinking that it was our Puntito.

The first thing we did was take the child and cuddle him in our arms; there was no way to console him. We told the lady that the child had left in the morning with his parents and his uncle heading to their work and that Nalvia would go for her pregnancy check-up at the Mother and Child Clinic, near her mother Ernestina's home.

Once the lady left the child safe, she disappeared into the darkness of the night. We went to the place indicated by her, and there we found Topo Gigio, my grandson's favorite stuffed animal, abandoned in the gutter, a mute witness to the brutal repression of State agents against defenseless human beings.

What to do, wake up Manuel? No, I left alone to Santa Rosa Street in case I could find out if anyone had been a witness to any police operation. I was walking troubled when I asked myself: Ana, how can you assume all this brutality alone?

I returned to the house to wake up Manuel. Perhaps in my inner self, I wanted to prolong the peaceful sleep of my "Negro," which was not possible; the tragedy had been unleashed, which still has not ended, even though more than thirty-two years have passed.

With Manuel, we went out to look for some clue, even the smallest one, that would help us understand what was happening, but nothing, no one had seen or heard anything. We even went to a restaurant that operated on Santa Rosa; maybe they could be there—stupid idea, stupid hope.

Human beings always cling to something, however irrational it may be, to maintain sanity, I believe. However, in those first hours, we did not obtain any clue. This came later, and in a fortuitous way.

We returned home; my grandson was still crying in the arms of his uncle Vachy. It was very difficult to calm him down. A difficult task when a little one cries for his absent mom and dad, even more so when we adults were more scared than he was.

The next day, April 30, we got up early; the truth is that we had not slept at all. Puntito and his uncle Vachy would stay at home; Rodrigo, our grandson, then four years old and who lived with us, would accompany us.

Manuel left first; I would follow him as soon as I had dressed the child. The sound of the bolt closing the front garden door sounded like a dark premonition that made my heart beat rapidly. That door has remained closed since then; it has never opened again.

I finished dressing my grandson and we left for my work, not taking more than ten minutes to arrive. In the distance, I see the workers outside and the cafeteria door closed: Oh, no, Manuel had also been detained!

I wanted to scream, to shout against every evil-born person, to cry out to heaven, but upon looking at the beautiful and innocent little eyes of Rodrigo, I calmed down; I could not transmit such pain to him.

With my eyes full of sadness, I smiled at him, and I have continued maintaining that smile throughout these years, and also the sadness, increased by the pain that, despite the return of democracy, justice has taken so long, so long, so long.

Source: amnesty.org

Open Letter to the Former Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Don Juan Emilio Cheyre

Mr. Juan Emilio Cheyre, General of the Republic. Present. General Cheyre: "Sadness often reveals to us the joys we did not know how to grasp; that same sadness makes us think about who we are, about what we want to do or say." These thoughts led me to you, General.

Perhaps this letter I write will not say anything to you, but I express here what I want to do and say: I had a daughter with a beautiful name: Anita María, beautiful inside and out. It has been exactly one month since she is no longer with us.

Her heart stopped beating. You will wonder why I am telling you about the passing of my daughter. Although you may not believe it, you, like other civilians and military personnel, do have something to do with the premature death of my daughter.

I am going to explain why: It must be in your memory the Dialogue Table, and you will remember that the Armed Forces released a list of our relatives thrown into the sea. In a meeting where the names of our beloved ones were made known to us, each of them was a brutal and accurate blow to our hearts.

The horror was reflected on our faces. Despite all the known barbarities—rapes of female prisoners with dogs, throat-slittings, murders of entire families, executions in the dead of night, pregnant women murdered, children murdered, poisoning of prisoners, burned alive, buried alive, and other tortures that the human mind resists believing—despite all this concrete, real knowledge, we have never ceased to be astonished by so much unnecessary barbarity.

That afternoon, the reading of the names seemed endless when I hear: LUIS EMILIO RECABARREN GONZALEZ, thrown into the sea in San Antonio, and immediately a heartbreaking scream and a guttural voice: "How could they do this to my brother!!" It was my daughter Ana María.

The doctors came to provide her with help; I stood up from my seat and ran toward her: she was unconscious. From that day on, my daughter, my accomplice in life, never returned to being herself, despite the attention of psychologists and psychiatrists.

The pain for what happened to her brother led to cancer. Today she is in the cemetery; her eyes went out, but the smile she left us on her beautiful face was like a gift to those of us who loved her. I would like to think that she was smiling because she was already next to Nalvia, to Luis Emilio, to her father, and to Mañungo, who would be telling her how their martyrdoms were in the most complete darkness and defenselessness in some extermination center.

General, you know that it is only an illusion; no one from the beyond will give us the answer: the answer is here, on earth. You know what it is; we and the country need it. The stubborn facts will impose themselves, as happened in the north of the country, in Pisagua, when our executed compatriots, scratching the earth, burst forth with their hands like a flower in the spring of the desert to reveal to us a piece of hope toward the truth.

In the newspaper La Tercera of December 5, 2004, in an extensive statement, you try to explain the inexplicable, such as, for example, that the Armed Forces "...acted...with the absolute certainty that their procedure was just and that they were defending the general common good and the majority of citizens"... "the truth liberates and brings peace to the spirits; but it must be a complete truth and always understood in the historical context in which the events occurred." General, do you believe that the historical context justifies the atrocities committed?

Does it justify the Simón Bolívar extermination barracks that we have only recently learned about? Does it justify the genocide? When I was a girl, learning about our national history, the gesture of Admiral Miguel Grau was engraved in me, when he returned to the widow of our hero Arturo Prat his letters and belongings.

What nobility, and he was the enemy. Why do you not return to us the bones of our beloved ones, Chileans who were massacred by other Chileans? I assure you that the country would advance along the path of honor, greatness, and the recovery of its mental health.

Do not fear the pain that the truth will cause us. Perhaps other Anita Marías will succumb, perhaps it is the price we must pay, but even so, the truth must impose itself, not only for the families of the victims but also for the families of the perpetrators and the entire country.

Just as you say, "the truth liberates and brings peace to the spirits." You also need it. The pain for the premature death of my daughter Anita María was mitigated in part because I was able to accompany her to the cemetery and mix my tears with those of many who loved her; I was able to place a flower on her grave and I was able to understand the healing power of the rite that has been denied to us for 33 years.

You will wonder why I write to you and not to the current Commander of the Army. Well, you were the Commander-in-Chief at that time, and that was the moment when the truth should have come to light. A covered-up truth came out that only intended to turn the page and with it give way to the application of the Amnesty Law.

I refuse, as a citizen of this country, that so much crime continues in impunity, that our pain continues to be ignored, and that we are denied the most elemental: Truth and Justice, nothing more but nothing less.

The Armed Forces, especially the Army, were the depositaries of the noble legacy of the Founding Fathers of the Nation. In the recent past, this legacy was shamefully tarnished by wretches so anxious for power that they were capable of reaching genocide.

This betrayal and felony muddied all their Institutions. It is just and necessary to wash away this affront; our country needs it, and the Armed Forces do too. Only then will they be worthy of being our Army. Farewell, ANA GONZALEZ DE RECABARREN. In Santiago, on the 19th day of the month of April 2007, 3 days before the 31st anniversary of the detention and disappearance of my loved ones.

Source: amnesty.org