Minister Álvaro Mesa sentences retired Army conscript to 12 years in prison for the homicide of a student in Temuco.

The magistrate sentenced Gabriel Artemio Matus Hernández to 12 years of effective imprisonment.

The minister visiting human rights cases for the Courts of Appeals of Temuco, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, and Coyhaique, Álvaro Mesa Latorre, sentenced a retired Army conscript as the perpetrator of the qualified homicide of Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui, which occurred on March 30, 1974, in Temuco.

The magistrate sentenced Gabriel Artemio Matus Hernández to 12 years of effective imprisonment, along with the accessory penalties of absolute perpetual disqualification from public offices and political rights, and absolute disqualification from holding professional titles for the duration of the sentence, due to his responsibility in the aforementioned crime.

The investigating minister's inquiry established: A.- That immediately following the events of September 11, 1973, the armed forces and security forces took control of the city of Temuco, with Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse, Commander of the Infantry Regiment No. 8 "Tucapel" of this city, establishing himself as Governor of the commune, and also remaining as Chief of the Temuco Garrison.

B.- Within the aforementioned military unit, various military patrols were formed for the purposes of enforcing the curfew, as well as for guarding points classified as strategic within the city. These patrols were composed of officers, non-commissioned officers, and conscript soldiers from the various companies that made up the Infantry Regiment No. 8 "Tucapel" of Temuco, depending on their guard rotation.

The order these patrols received from the officers and non-commissioned officers in charge of the guard was that they were to fire immediately upon anyone who violated the curfew. C.- That Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui, single, 21 years old at the time of his death, a student with no political affiliation, was drinking on March 30, 1974, around 00:15 hours, with his brother and a friend at a venue called "Posada Turística," located very close to the Copec Norte of Temuco, a place classified as strategic.

Once the victim decided to go to his home, during curfew hours, he was intercepted by a military patrol belonging to the Infantry Regiment No. 8 "Tucapel" of Temuco that was stationed at that location.

Without legal or rational grounds, one of the members of the patrol opened fire on Contreras Plotsqui, who fell lifeless on the public thoroughfare meters from his home located in the Población Pueblo Nuevo of Temuco.

D.- A witness to the above was his father, León Exequiel Contreras Schonfeldt, a journalist for Radio Cooperativa, who arrived at his home at that moment, identifying himself as such to the military and showing a safe-conduct pass.

His sister, who saw him lying on the ground already lifeless, also attempted to approach the body to assist him, which was not permitted by the military, who also treated them in a violent and rude manner.

The father was ordered to remove the body at 06:00 AM on March 30, 1974. E.- His brother and his friend, with whom the victim was before the events, upon hearing the gunshot, decided to leave the "Posada Turística" venue and surrender to the military patrol stationed at Copec Norte, waving a white handkerchief.

They were detained by a member of the patrol for about an hour and ordered to sit on the grass outside the venue. Once the truck arrived to pick up the patrol, they were loaded onto it and taken to the door of their home.

There, the military ordered them to load Contreras Plotsqui's body onto the military truck, subsequently heading to the Tucapel regiment in Temuco, also taking the victim's brother, where he was kept in detention for two days, a place where they referred to him at all times as "the brother of the dead man." F.- The forensic autopsy specifies that "the precise and necessary cause of death of Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui was shock and acute anemia, determined by a transfixing thoracic gunshot wound." G.- On March 30, 1974, Communiqué No. 2 of the Temuco Military Garrison was published, which reported that: "1(...) on the night of March 29 to 30, 1974, on Avenida Caupolicán (Copec Norte) at 02:15 hours, citizen Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plostqui was detained by a military patrol of the Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 8 'Tucapel' of Temuco. 2.- The aforementioned citizen tried to assault and snatch the service weapon from a member of the Patrol, which forced them to open fire immediately, resulting in the death of Mr. Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui." In the civil aspect, he sentenced the State to pay compensation for damages and moral injury of $100,000,000 to the victim's siblings. Minister Álvaro Mesa was appointed as an investigator for human rights cases on September 27, 2011. As of March 1, 2017, he was appointed by the Supreme Court to also take on the investigation of the jurisdictions of the Courts of Appeals of Valdivia and Puerto Montt, with the cases from Coyhaique added as of March 1, 2018. He currently oversees 186 cases, which are broken down as follows: 1.- 146 cases are in the investigation stage. 2.- 24 cases are in the stage of defense for the accused and, where applicable, the filing of civil lawsuits. 3.- 31 cases have been ruled upon, mostly with convictions. To date, through 110 indictment orders, the investigating minister directs his inquiries against those charged, at a certain stage of the investigation, with specific crimes. Additionally, 50 accusation orders have been issued, which are resolutions aimed at imputing responsibilities against one or more persons regarding the events under investigation.

Source: diarioconstitucional.cl, November 6, 2018

Supreme Court confirms ruling that sentenced retired military officer for the homicide of a student in the Población Pueblo Nuevo of Temuco in 1974

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the highest court rejected the appeals for cassation on the merits filed against the sentence that convicted a retired military officer for his responsibility in the crime of the homicide of Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui.

An illicit act perpetrated in March 1974, in the city of Temuco. The Supreme Court rejected the appeals for cassation on the merits filed against the sentence that convicted a retired military officer for his responsibility in the crime of the homicide of Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui.

An illicit act perpetrated in March 1974, in the city of Temuco. In a unanimous ruling (case roll 12.342-2019), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and ad hoc lawyers Pía Tavolari and Carolina Coppo—ruled out any error of law in the sentence, issued by the Court of Appeals of Temuco, which sentenced Gabriel Artemio Matus Hernández to 5 years and one day in prison as the perpetrator of simple homicide of the 21-year-old, ruling out that he had acted with treachery (alevosía). "That, according to the preceding analysis, what is relevant for the purposes of determining whether the accused acted with treachery in the act imputed to him consists of determining whether, based on such factual attribution, it is possible to conclude that it was he who took advantage of or created a state of defenselessness in the victim," the ruling states. The resolution adds that: "The foregoing is because the subjective element of treachery—the treacherous intent—necessarily implies that it must be the agent who 'must have the intent to seek or intentionally procure the obtaining of those special favorable conditions to carry out the crime (...) which consists of the conscious will to kill and, furthermore, the concrete circumstance that this is executed through aggression that eliminates the possibilities of defense' (Medina Jara, Rodrigo, Manual de Derecho Penal, Parte Especial, Volume II, page 50, Lexis Nexis)." For the Penal Chamber: "(...) on this particular matter, it is convenient to reiterate that what was established in the case files was that on March 30, 1974, around 00:15 hours, Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui was drinking together with his brother and a friend at a venue called 'Posada Turística,' that once he decided to go to his home, during curfew hours, he was intercepted by a military patrol belonging to the Infantry Regiment No. 8 'Tucapel' of Temuco that was stationed at that location, and that one of the members of the patrol, without legal or rational grounds, opened fire against him, and he fell lifeless on the public thoroughfare meters from his home, without his father being allowed to assist him, the precise and necessary cause of death being shock and acute anemia, determined by a transfixing thoracic gunshot wound." "In this case," it continues, "the evidence presented was insufficient to establish the factual assumptions on which treachery is based, since there is no background information that allows asserting that Gabriel Artemio Matus Hernández created or took advantage of the victim's state of defenselessness in order to avoid any risk to himself, and it is not sufficient for this purpose that such an advantageous situation was produced by mere chance. Furthermore, the appeal under study does not denounce as infringed the rule of Article 12 No. 1 of the Penal Code, a legal precept that defines treachery and which, therefore, has the character of a decisorio litis (decisive for the litigation), a formal defect in its formulation that by itself would have led to its rejection." "That, in short, one can only agree with the correct subsumption of the proven facts carried out in the criminal type of Article 391 No. 2 of the Penal Code by the challenged ruling, from which it necessarily follows that the crime for which the appellant was convicted has been correctly classified and, consequently, there has been no erroneous application of the law imputed to the ruling in question, which is why the appeal under study will be dismissed," it concludes. In the first-instance resolution, the visiting minister Álvaro Mesa Latorre deemed the following facts proven: "A.- That immediately following the events of September 11, 1973, the armed forces and security forces took control of the city of Temuco, with Colonel Pablo Iturriaga Marchesse, Commander of the Infantry Regiment No. 8 'Tucapel' of this city, establishing himself as Governor of the commune, and also remaining as Chief of the Temuco Garrison. B.- Within the aforementioned military unit, various military patrols were formed for the purposes of enforcing the curfew, as well as for guarding points classified as strategic within the city. These patrols were composed of officers, non-commissioned officers, and conscript soldiers from the various companies that made up the Infantry Regiment No. 8 'Tucapel' of Temuco, depending on their guard rotation. The order these patrols received from the officers and non-commissioned officers in charge of the guard was that they were to fire immediately upon anyone who violated the curfew. C.- That Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui, single, 21 years old at the time of his death, a student with no political affiliation, was drinking on March 30, 1974, around 00:15 hours, with his brother and a friend at a venue called 'Posada Turística,' located very close to the Copec Norte of Temuco, a place classified as strategic. Once the victim decided to go to his home, during curfew hours, he was intercepted by a military patrol belonging to the Infantry Regiment No. 8 'Tucapel' of Temuco that was stationed at that location. Without legal or rational grounds, one of the members of the patrol opened fire on Contreras Plotsqui, who fell lifeless on the public thoroughfare meters from his home located in the Población Pueblo Nuevo of Temuco. D.- A witness to the above was his father, León Exequiel Contreras Schonfeldt, a journalist for Radio Cooperativa, who arrived at his home at that moment, identifying himself as such to the military and showing a safe-conduct pass. His sister, who saw him lying on the ground already lifeless, also attempted to approach the body to assist him, which was not permitted by the military, who also treated them in a violent and rude manner. The father was ordered to remove the body at 06:00 AM on March 30, 1974. E.- His brother and his friend, with whom the victim was before the events, upon hearing the gunshot, decided to leave the 'Posada Turística' venue and surrender to the military patrol stationed at Copec Norte, waving a white handkerchief. They were detained by a member of the patrol for about an hour and ordered to sit on the grass outside the venue. Once the truck arrived to pick up the patrol, they were loaded onto it and taken to the door of their home. There, the military ordered them to load Contreras Plotsqui's body onto the military truck, subsequently heading to the Tucapel regiment in Temuco, also taking the victim's brother, where he was kept in detention for two days, a place where they referred to him at all times as 'the brother of the dead man.' F.- The forensic autopsy specifies that 'the precise and necessary cause of death of Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui was shock and acute anemia, determined by a transfixing thoracic gunshot wound.' G.- On March 30, 1974, Communiqué No. 2 of the Temuco Military Garrison was published, which reported that: '1(...) on the night of March 29 to 30, 1974, on Avenida Caupolicán (Copec Norte) at 02:15 hours, citizen Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plostqui was detained by a military patrol of the Mountain Infantry Regiment No. 8 'Tucapel' of Temuco. 2.- The aforementioned citizen tried to assault and snatch the service weapon from a member of the Patrol, which forced them to open fire immediately, resulting in the death of Mr. Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui (...).'" In the civil aspect, the sentence that ordered the State to pay a total compensation of $90,000,000 (ninety million pesos) for moral injury to the victim's siblings was confirmed.

Source: pdju.cl, October 22, 2021

The man who never existed: the enigmatic story of the man executed at Lake Villarrica (Part I)

In 1974, a man whose identity has never been established was violently murdered by soldiers in the midst of a military campaign. A non-commissioned officer was sentenced to 12 years, but the Supreme Court recently overturned that conviction.

This is the first of three parts recounting the events. It was 1974. According to most versions, the events occurred around January or February, although another testimony says it was at the end of that year.

What is clear is that a group of 40 conscripts from the Tucapel Regiment of Temuco was conducting an instruction campaign on the shores of Lake Villarrica, led by officers who formed a "counter-guerrilla" company, but one afternoon an unexpected event broke the routine of running, jumping, crawling on elbows and knees, etc.

It was the arrival of a military truck, in the back of which there was a single occupant. Several of the non-commissioned officers who were in the instruction had seen him before. He was a young man of about 25 to 30 years old, a thin, kind, and educated man who was a prisoner at the Tucapel, in a room attached to the regiment's guardhouse, which they informally called "Prevention." No one knew or knows—to this day—his name, although in the judicial file that remained as the only testimony that he once lived and was murdered, several nicknames appear by which he was known in the military barracks: "El Nortino" (The Northerner) seems to have been the most common, although they also called him "El Porteño" (The Man from the Port) and, likewise, "El Telefonista" (The Telephone Operator), because according to some testimonies, they forced him to work answering the phone. "Didn't you bring me here to kill me?" he asked when they made him get off the truck. "Noooo, we are going to do some instruction here," replied one of the lieutenants in charge of the instruction, Sergio Velásquez, according to the witnesses' version. Of course, that was not true. The drawing The investigation, which was led by visiting minister Álvaro Mesa, in charge of investigating human rights violation cases in the La Araucanía jurisdiction, began almost by chance, when the judge was investigating another homicide, this time with a name and surname: that of Exequiel Zigomar Contreras Plotsqui, a 21-year-old young man who was executed by gunfire by a patrol from the Tucapel regiment outside his home on March 30, 1974. In search of the soldier who had fired—who turned out to be Gabriel Matus Hernández—the judge and detectives from the Human Rights Brigade of the PDI (Investigations Police) of Santiago interrogated numerous soldiers who were part of the local regiment on that date and, as happens in most of these cases, practically all those summoned said they had seen nothing anomalous. However, there were two exceptions, two non-commissioned officers who, along with recounting various situations they experienced at that time, coincided in telling what they had seen at Lake Villarrica. Manuel Mora Torres was the first to remember. He described "El Nortino" as a thin young man, dark-skinned and approximately 1.70 meters tall, "with considerable knowledge of leftist ideology and who apparently held a high position within his ideology." According to Mora—who places the lake campaign toward the end of 1974—after the truck arrived, Lieutenant Velásquez held a drawing with several slips of paper with the words "No" or "Yes." The first one to draw "Yes" had to fire at the prisoner. According to Mora's testimony, that paper was drawn by a corporal surnamed Farías, better known as "El Loco Farías" (Crazy Farías), who "upon knowing that it would be his turn to execute, stated that he would be the 24th person to eliminate." In other words, it would be the twenty-fourth homicide he would commit. This Farías was a peculiar character. Another former soldier, José Romero Silva, said that he remembered a Corporal Farías who once "pretended to be a lieutenant in front of a lady he was courting" and that, furthermore, when he arrived in Temuco, transferred from Santiago along with another corporal surnamed Oporto, "they told us that they had killed Allende." The second witness to remember the events that occurred at the lake was Heraldo Espinoza Elgueta, who at that time was a second corporal. Just like Mora, he recounted to the minister how the prisoner arrived, as well as the drawing by which it would be decided who would end the life of "El Nortino," with one difference: Velásquez "held a drawing with Spanish playing cards," he asserted, adding that the one in charge of killing the victim would be the one "who drew the card with the highest number." Velásquez, who is 84 years old today and whose family did not agree to speak with El Mostrador, also recounted in the judicial case that a corporal surnamed Lizama Saldías was the one who was drawn, but that despite this, "Corporal Farías volunteered and killed him." The execution What both former soldiers agree on is the way in which "El Nortino" was murdered. "The detainee was placed sitting down and blindfolded on the shore looking toward the lake, while Lieutenant Velásquez, Espinoza, Lizama, and I positioned ourselves behind the detainee at a distance of one meter. Immediately after, Farías took out his 9 mm Stager pistol and placed the barrel on the part that joins the cervical spine with the neck, proceeding seconds later to fire the weapon," Mora recounted. After that, they mutilated him. "Immediately after, with a nylon rope, a stone was tied to the body so that it would have weight and remain in the depths of the lake, so Lieutenant Velásquez and Corporal Farías transported the body in a boat to the middle of the lake, where they threw it so it would sink. When they returned to the group, Farías commented that Lieutenant Velásquez, with a corvo (military knife), had opened him up in order to remove the viscera and that he had cut off his penis and placed it in the detainee's mouth." In a subsequent statement, he added more details: "This person did not make any gesture of pain nor did he complain that they were going to kill him. Then I approached and on his forehead, at the height of the nose, (I saw) a trickle of blood coming out," he said. When questioned by Mesa regarding the state in which "El Nortino" was found, he was clear: "The person did not arrive with signs of torture or mistreatment in Villarrica. Fully conscious. I would dare say they never tortured him." Espinoza points out that he was further away at the time of the execution, about 15 meters away. Likewise, he differs from Mora on the position of the victim, as he stated that "they positioned the detainee on his knees facing the lake." However, he again coincided on the essential point, the actions of Farías: "The latter, the executor of the shot, killed that person with a ballistic impact from an automatic pistol directly to the nape of the neck," he told the PDI in August 2015. After that, he recounted that Velásquez (whom he mentions as a captain), Farías, and a second officer loaded the body onto a private boat to throw it into the water. "The next day I went, out of curiosity, to the place where they executed him, where I observed in the sand the footprints of the body and bloodstains, but at that moment Corporal Farías, in an arrogant manner and without respecting my rank, approached me and told me what I was doing in the place, that I shouldn't be there, meanwhile he manipulated his weapon and pointed it at the sky." Conviction and acquittal After several years of investigation, Judge Mesa concluded that the Corporal Farías mentioned above was Benjamín Farías Lavín, who has always denied it, arguing that there is a mistake, since there was another soldier with the same surname in the regiment. An essential part of Farías Lavín's defense was, furthermore, the fact that he was transferred from Santiago to La Araucanía on February 18, 1974, and only reported to the regiment at the beginning of March, so if the events occurred in January or February, he could not have been there. During a confrontation between him and Espinoza in 2017, the latter could not recognize him, and the same happened with Mora. Faced with this, Farías Lavín asserted that there was another corporal in the regiment with the surnames Farías Veliz. However, as Minister Mesa pointed out to him on that occasion, this one belonged to another company, unlike him, who was indeed in the company where Espinoza and Mora also served, as evidenced by the documentation. Velásquez, in turn, when interrogated in 2016, responded somewhat enigmatically when asked about the homicide: "I must point out that I do not remember the events described above, nor do I rule them out." However, immediately afterward, he reconsidered and said that he did not remember having carried out campaigns in that body of water and that he also did not remember having received orders from his superiors regarding carrying out detentions in that area and killing someone. Despite the contradictions and inaccuracies—as Mora said in the last confrontation, "I already have 80 years in my body"—Minister Mesa sentenced Benjamín Farías to a 12-year prison term after accusing him of qualified homicide, the same as the Human Rights Program of the Ministry of Justice, which was the only plaintiff in the case. For the judge, it was a more than complex decision, given that not only was there no body, but the victim's name was not even known, for which he based his ruling even by resorting to international situations in which perpetrators of NN (unidentified) persons had been convicted, such as a case that occurred in Argentina. The local Court of Appeals subsequently confirmed the first-instance ruling, but on March 12, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court acquitted Farías, since—among other reasons—the ministers did not find the reasoning of the accusation against him sufficient and, furthermore, asserted that "there is only the physical description of a body that, according to the very words of the accusing witnesses, was disappeared, and despite the searches carried out in search of obtaining its identification, they were fruitless, all of which affects the degree of veracity and probative force." Indeed, although a composite sketch of "El Nortino" was made in 2018, which heads this report, his identity has never been found. In other words, the Supreme Court ministers say, the "corpus criminis" (body of the crime) and other evidence that would allow supporting the statements of Mora and Espinoza are missing. El Mostrador attempted to speak with Farías's lawyer, Christian Salgado, in order to know his version after being acquitted, but the professional did not respond to the messages sent to him. In turn, the Judiciary, through the communications office of La Araucanía, responded on March 28 to the requests of this media outlet to speak with Minister Mesa, stating that "the request" was being processed, without a concrete response ever arriving. As for Manuel Mora, none of the phones or forms of contact that appear for him currently work. However, this is a story that we have not yet finished writing.

Source: elmostrador.cl, April 5, 2025