Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme
Obrero — 24 years old.
Background
Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme
Obrero — 24 years old.
Case summary
Mario Gabriel Salas Riquelme, a 24-year-old laborer and leader of the Santiago Pino settlement, was a militant of the Partido Socialista. On September 30, 1973, he was detained by military personnel during a raid in Pudahuel and executed that same day by multiple gunshot wounds after being transferred to a detention center.
Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos[1]
On September 30, 1973, six residents of the Santiago Pino camp in the Pudahuel commune (formerly the Barrancas commune) were detained:
Víctor BARRALES GONZALEZ, 25 years old, laborer, camp leader, Socialist militant;
Sergio Osvaldo DE LA BARRA DE LA BARRA, 26 years old, postal agent for Correos, camp president, Socialist militant;
Raúl Eliseo MOSCOSO QUIROZ, 24 years old, camp leader;
Mario SALAS RIQUELME, 24 years old, laborer, camp leader, Socialist militant;
José Eusebio VILLAVICENCIO MEDEL, 25 years old, laborer, camp vice president; and
Luis Sergio GUTIERREZ RIVAS, 29 years old, mine worker, Communist militant, former regional secretary in Lota.
According to accounts provided by witnesses, at approximately 05:00 hours, a raid was carried out at the camp, which is located behind the Casa de la Cultura in Barrancas. The operation was led by military personnel, who detained six other individuals who were subsequently released.
The detainees were taken to the Casa de la Cultura, a site used as a detention center, where a group of soldiers belonging to the Escuela de Suboficiales de Santiago and personnel from the Regimiento Yungay of San Felipe were stationed.
All of the detainees died on that same day, September 30, and the place of death was recorded as the "public thoroughfare," with the cause of death listed as "multiple gunshot wounds." Only in the case of Víctor Barrales does the certificate indicate the Santiago Pino camp as the location of the incident. The bodies were transported by military personnel to the Instituto Médico Legal.
Luis Gutiérrez did not die as a result of the gunshot wounds he received, and from the Instituto Médico Legal, he was sent to the Hospital José Joaquín Aguirre; at this location, he was visited by his spouse on October 2, 1973.
That same day, she was informed that he had been transferred to the Hospital Militar, where there is no record of his admission, and his trail has been completely lost to this day.
The official version regarding the fate of these six individuals, as published in the newspapers on October 2, 1973, is that at the time of the raid, military forces had been attacked by a group of extremists who were then captured. The press report further states that "All of them were executed at the camp itself."
The official version provided through the press is not credible, as there is no evidence to suggest the existence of an "attack by extremists"; because even if that had been the case, it does not seem necessary to kill the residents who were being arrested; because there is sufficient evidence to confirm the detention of the camp residents and their subsequent transfer to the Casa de la Cultura; and because of the selective nature of the arrests and the political affiliations of the detainees.
All of the above led the Commission to the conviction that the executions, outside of any legal process, of Víctor Barrales González, Sergio Osvaldo de la Barra de la Barra, Raúl Eliseo Moscoso Quiroz, Mario Salas Riquelme, and José Eusebio Villavicencio Medel, and the disappearance of Luis Sergio Gutiérrez Rivas, constituted a grave violation of human rights, attributable to the actions of State agents.
References
- 1Museum of Memoryhttps://interactivos.museodelamemoria.cl/victims/?p=1207