D.O.B. : 21 03 40, 33 years of age at the time of his detention. Address : Plot on Camino la Vara. San Bernardo, Santiago. Marital Status : Single Occupation : Agricultural worker Repressive Context : President of the Despertar Campesino Union, militant of the Communist Party. Date of Detention : October 1, 1973

Mauricio Carmelo Cea Iturrieta, 33 years of age at the time of the events, father of three children from a stable relationship, agricultural worker, union leader, and militant of the Communist Party, was detained for the first time from his home on September 27, 1973, by military personnel from the San Bernardo Infantry School.

On that occasion, he was told he was being taken to provide some statements and would then return home. That day, from their respective homes, other individuals were also detained, including Iselcio Enrique González Sandoval and Roberto Avila Márquez, both members of the Communist Party; the former was a leader of the Supply and Price Board (JAP), and the latter was in charge of the Company Committee of the San Bernardo Railway Workshops and a JAP leader.

The search conducted by his relatives was fruitless. The Infantry School denied their detentions. In April 1974, the relatives of these three individuals were informed by the National Executive Secretariat of Detainees (SENDET) that they had died on October 1, 1973, at the Chena Detention Camp.

No further information was provided regarding the circumstances of their deaths or the location where their bodies were buried.

In August 1990, by judicial mandate, the exhumation of two graves in the Huelquén Parish Cemetery, Paine, was carried out, in which at least 4 bodies had been buried since 1973. These bodies were found lifeless by local residents of the area with clear signs of having been shot; one even had his eyes blindfolded and his hands tied with wire.

They were found on the road connecting Paine to Huelquén. A large number of people approached the place where the bodies were located, among them relatives of the forcibly disappeared from the area, who, upon seeing that they were people not from the area, reported the fact to the Carabineros police, who, despite the passing of days, chose not to take measures to recover the bodies.

Faced with this situation, and in a humanitarian gesture, the locals, with the consent of the parish priest of Paine, proceeded to transport the bodies in a farm wagon to the cemetery. There, three bodies were wrapped in grain sacks and buried in a pit dug by the locals.

The fourth body was buried in another pit in the same cemetery. As a result of the aforementioned exhumation, it was possible to recover the remains of 3 people from one grave, while in a second grave, no remains were found, only remnants of clothing.

In December 1991, after performing the forensic analysis of the remains, it was established that they corresponded to Mauricio Carmelo Cea Iturrieta, Iselcio Enrique González Sandoval, and Roberto Avila Márquez.

Mauricio Carmelo Cea Iturrieta had been fired by his employer, Alvaro Vial Valdés, on September 18, 1973. Upon going to the San Bernardo Labor Inspectorate to file a complaint for unjustified dismissal, he found his employer there, who had notified the Inspectorate of the dismissal, accusing him of being a "communist." Despite this, he continued living at the same address located inside his employer's property, as it would take time to find a new home.

Under these circumstances, on September 27, around 9:00 in the morning, military personnel from San Bernardo arrived at his home in an institutional jeep and immediately proceeded to detain him in the presence of his wife. Afterward, he was loaded onto a military truck that headed toward the Rinconada de Chena Estate.

At that location, other people were detained: Iselcio Enrique González Sandoval, Carlos Cornejo, Víctor Soto, Juan Campos, and Roberto Avila Márquez, all of whom were taken to the Cerro Chena Detention Camp in San Bernardo.

It should be noted that all these arrests were carried out outside of any legality. Information gathered during the judicial investigation of the case has identified Lieutenant Andrés Magaña Bau as the officer in charge of the September 27, 1973, operation.

On September 30 at 9:00 A.M., Cea Iturrieta returned unexpectedly to his home. His wife, before the Tribunal, recounted: "He came back terribly mistreated, dirty, and covered in mud. He was urinating blood and his left arm was completely swollen and bruised, so much so that his hand had become immobilized..." Cea Iturrieta refrained from recounting in detail the moments he had lived through in order to avoid causing his wife suffering, but he did state that he had been held at Cerro Chena, where he was subjected to torture and interrogations, and from where he had been released.

On September 30, Cea Iturrieta traveled with his family to the home of González Sandoval. The latter had been detained on September 27 and was still being held at Cerro Chena. There was a family tie between them.

On October 1, 1973, military personnel returned for Cea Iturrieta, and he was taken into custody again by the San Bernardo military. His family began a long search. Only in April 1974, when they went to SENDET, did they find a long list of dead people published, which included the names of Cea Iturrieta, González Sandoval, and Avila Márquez.

There, they were given a certificate stating their deaths on October 1, 1973, at the Chena Detention Camp. The document was signed by Colonel Jorge Espinoza U. They were never informed about the destination of their bodies, nor the circumstances of their deaths.

Only the relatives of Roberto Avila Márquez obtained the registration of his death in the Civil Registry. Carlos Cornejo, Víctor Soto, and Juan Campos, who had been detained in the same operation, regained their freedom at later dates.

For his part, Fernando Avila Alarcón, Councilman of San Bernardo and General Secretary of the CUT, son of Roberto Avila Márquez, was detained on September 29, 1973, by Investigative Police personnel from the Plaza de Armas in San Bernardo and handed over hours later to the guard at the Infantry School.

He had no difficulty recognizing the uniformed officers who were in that facility because he had performed his military service in that unit, and furthermore, in his capacity as Governor, he had interacted with them at public events.

He recognized the Colonel, Director of the School Leonel Köening Alterman, his deputy director Pedro Montalva C., Major Lucares, Lieutenant Andrés Magaña B., Corporal Zapata, Sergeant Estermeier, and Lieutenant Guzmán. The same day, hours later, he was transferred to the Cerro Chena detention facility, specifically to the sheds of the old Tejas de Chena school.

On the night of September 30, he was loaded onto a truck along with other detainees, and after the vehicle drove around several times, they were taken to "the red-roofed house" where shooting exercises were held, located inside the Cerro Chena military compound.

He remained there until October 3, 1973. Before the Tribunal, he recounted his encounter with his father during his time at Chena: "On September 31, I asked Sergeant Estermeier for permission to see my father, Roberto Segundo Avila Márquez, and he authorized it.

He was lying on the ground, and when I approached, I asked him how he felt. My father replied that he needed to urinate, and I asked for authorization again to accompany him; they gave it to me, and a conscript accompanied me.

At that moment, I was with many of the railway workers who were later executed by firing squad. Among them were Conejo González, Ariel Monsalves, Pedro Oyarzún Vivanco Silva, and Chamorro. I also saw my brother David Avila Alarcón there.

I saw him very mistreated. My father was also in very bad shape, and when he urinated, I realized he was urinating blood, and he also had one of his cheekbones open. My father told me that they were looking for weapons and that they were implicating him in maintaining hidden weapons and having a guerrilla school in the house.

My father was also a communist, but he only became a militant when I became a Councilman; he dedicated himself more to his activities as an assistant at an Evangelical Baptist Church. He never had a guerrilla school or weapons in his house; I know this for a fact because I went to see him very often.

What happened was that base meetings of the party were held there, and he was also in charge of the JAP"...

On that occasion, Roberto Segundo informed his son that he had been detained in the same operation as five other people, including Mauricio Carmelo Cea Iturrieta.

Fernando Avila was notified on October 2 that he would be transferred to the National Stadium, which was carried out the following day. That day, he was able to say goodbye to his father: "Before they took me away, I asked Corporal Alarcón for permission to see my father.

They gave it to me, and with other companions, we made a bed of straw for my father. I saw him very ill, and he managed to speak to me to tell me to look after my mother and our younger sister; he asked me to have courage and to take care of myself. I kissed him on the forehead and managed to tell him that I was going to the National Stadium. It was the last time I saw him alive."

Mauricio Cea Iturrieta, like Iselcio González Sandoval and Roberto Avila Márquez, could only be buried definitively in December 1991.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On August 10, 1990, the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Archbishopric of Santiago denounced to the Maipo/Buin Court of Letters the existence of at least 4 bodies buried irregularly in the Huelquén Cemetery, which corresponded to people whose identities were unknown and who had been victims of kidnapping and homicide. Under case file No. 39404 1, the investigation was set in motion.

On August 13, 1990, the same human rights organization requested the San Miguel Court of Appeals to appoint a Visiting Judge to investigate the fate of 50 detainees in the town of Paine who remain disappeared to this day, as well as to investigate the irregular procedures in which 20 peasants were killed by their captors after being victims of illegal arrests, in the majority of which the remains were never returned to their families, with the place of their burial remaining unknown to this day.

The request for a Visiting Judge also provided information about at least 3 places where burials had allegedly taken place in 1973, accompanying evidence that allowed for the assertion that they were forcibly disappeared persons.

On that occasion, the public alarm caused by the discovery of the remains was highlighted, and reference was made to what had previously occurred with the findings in Pisagua, Iquique, and Chihuío, Valdivia.

On August 16, 1990, the San Miguel Court of Appeals agreed to appoint an Extraordinary Visiting Judge, with the designation falling to Mr. Germán Hermosilla. The visit was assigned case file No. 2 90-E, and the recent complaint, file 39404 1, was joined to it.

During August 23, 24, and 25, 1990, work was carried out on the exhumation of two graves located in Patio No. 3 of the Huelquén Cemetery.

In order to perform an exhumation causing minimal damage to the remains, the Tribunal appointed a team of experts who, together with the Legal Medical Institute team, worked on the exhumation. It should be noted that, as stated in the judicial filing, the bodies of 3 people were found wrapped in a single sack in one pit.

In a second pit, clothing corresponding to the fourth victim was obtained, but not their remains.

During the months of August and September, more than 10 witnesses appeared before the Tribunal who had not only seen the bodies on the side of the road that joins Paine and Huelquén but had also participated in the burial. Héctor Pozo Calderón reported the facts to the Tribunal with these words:

"In the first week of October 1973, Father Miguel Urrutia asked us to bury three people who were dead, two of them at the 24 de Abril Settlement, next to the road, under a eucalyptus tree, and one of these two was inside a canal; the third was at the intersection of the Paine and Huelquén road. All three were male, and all three showed bullet impacts.

The youngest of them impressed me a lot because he had a bullet entry in the nape of his neck and the projectile had blown off his forehead; he was blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back with wire.

He was dressed very well, wearing a white shirt, a navy blue or gray sweater, dark blue pants, and black shoes; he carried a bicycle registration card with a name I don't remember, and I couldn't be sure if we buried him with it or if someone took it out before. This was the body that was on the Paine to Huelquén road near the intersection.

Regarding the other two, one of them was also young, not very well dressed, he was fat and measured about 1.80 meters. He had bullet impacts with entry on one side and exit on the other; I estimate he was about 45 years old; he was dressed in sports clothes, fair, pinkish complexion, brown hair, and was wearing a Castilla-type jacket and dark pants; his clothes were muddy.

The body of this person was one of the two found at the 24 de Abril Settlement.

The third one found near the interior was in a canal; he was thin, approximately 37 years old; I think he had dark clothes, a blue shirt, and loose overalls, all very muddy.

We searched the clothes of the three looking for their identification, and we speak in the plural because about ten of us gathered to proceed to bury them; no one knew them; we put them inside some wheat sacks, made of hemp, opening them at the sides, and we wrapped them.

We put them in a farm wagon pulled by a tractor, driven by a Mr. Tamayo, and we headed to the 'La Rana' Cemetery in Huelquén to bury them. We took advantage of a grave that was already dug in the upper part under some hawthorns.

We leveled the pit to a depth of one meter ten and put all three together. This was around 4:00 in the afternoon, on a weekday. It took us about an hour. We placed a cross that we found lying around.

Before signing, I want to add that later, about two weeks after we buried these three people, another body was found of a person who appeared dead in a canal, and I learned they had buried him in the same 'La Rana' Cemetery in a grave located further down, but I don't know the exact place."

On October 3, 1990, Ana Sara de las Mercedes Durán Aravena appeared to testify before the Tribunal; she had worked as a secretary at the Huelquén Parish Office, and among her duties at that time was keeping the records of the names of the people who were to be buried, for which she required a burial permit from the Civil Registry.

In part of her statement, she affirmed: "...however, some burials were carried out without this burial permit, only with the verbal authorization of Father Urrutia and because I asked for it at the request of Mr.

Armando González, who was like the accountant for all the settlers. I only know of three people buried in this way..." referring to the fourth person, she added, "...but there is the possibility that they buried him without me knowing by direct verbal order from Father Urrutia to the gravedigger, or on his own account they could have been buried."

On October 29, 1990, the director of the Legal Medical Service sent the Tribunal the report of protocols Nos. 2.957, 2.958, and 2.959 belonging to the exhumation of one of the graves in the Huelquén Cemetery.

In its conclusions, it established that the dates of death corresponded to more than 14 years. The three bodies were male. The causes of death were trauma caused by projectiles, and the report was accompanied by a projectile found among the remains and gunpowder residue found on the clothing.

On November 28, 1990, the Visiting Judge sent the projectile found to the Investigative Police so that an expert analysis could be performed to determine the weapon with which it was fired, indicating its nature, its exact caliber, and other pertinent information, the probable date it was fired, and the persons or services that used that type of weapon during the last 4 months of 1973.

On January 17, 1991, the Criminalistics Laboratory, ballistics section of the Investigative Police, reported to the Tribunal that it was not possible to determine the type of weapon with which it was fired, the exact caliber, and the probable date of firing, adding regarding the nature of the projectile: "given that it was possible to determine the presence of copper, what was submitted could correspond to a jacketed projectile; if so, these were designed to be fired by automatic or semi-automatic firearms," and regarding the persons or services that used that type of weapon, it added: "if the specimen submitted corresponds to a jacketed projectile, all the armed institutions of the country possess automatic or semi-automatic weapons that fire this type of projectile, as well as any person who has access to this latter type of firearm."

On August 7, 1991, the Vicariate of Solidarity, in a "Take Note" brief for case 290-E, explained to the Visiting Judge that "after work exploring new information regarding persons disappeared in the area of San Bernardo and the Rinconada de Chena Estate, and after analysis of their respective anthropometric files, which have been compared with the data from the report of the Legal Medical Institute on the human remains found in the La Rana Cemetery of Huelquén, we can point out to Your Honor that an important approximation has been produced regarding the probable identity of these remains." Next, it provided the information on the forcibly disappeared persons Iselcio Enrique González Sandoval, Roberto Segundo Avila Márquez, and Mauricio Cea Iturrieta.

On that occasion, the anthropometric files corresponding to these 3 cases were delivered to the Tribunal, as well as sworn statements from direct relatives of these 3 victims in which they recounted the circumstances of the disappearance.

For his part, Fernando Avila Alarcón appeared before the Tribunal as a direct witness of the stay of these 3 people, including his father, at the Cerro Chena detention camp.

The information was sent to the Legal Medical Institute in order to carry out a confrontation of expert reports. On November 19, 1991, the Legal Medical Service informed the Tribunal that the team in charge of examining human bone remains exhumed in the Huelquén Cemetery and sent to that Service on August 25, 1990, achieved the identification of the remains described in protocols No. 2957 as corresponding to Iselcio Enrique González Sandoval, protocol No. 2958 as corresponding to Mauricio Carmelo Cea Iturrieta, and protocol No. 2959 as corresponding to Roberto Segundo Avila Márquez.

On November 21, 1991, the Tribunal met at the Legal Medical Service, as did the relatives of the victims. The exhumed remains were shown to the latter, who accepted the experts' report, thus acknowledging their loved ones.

The remains were left at the disposal of the families for burial. For his part, the Visiting Judge ordered the registration of their deaths in the Civil Registry of Independencia.

On December 31, 1991, a criminal complaint was filed for the crime of kidnapping resulting in death of Mauricio Carmelo Cea Iturrieta and Iselcio Enrique González Sandoval, in the 2nd Criminal Court of San Bernardo, against all those who may be responsible, whether as authors, accomplices, or accessories.

This case was entered under Case File No. 30517 5; at the end of 1992, it was in the summary stage.

Source: Corporation report

48 years ago, following the 1973 coup d'état, Cerro Chena was converted into a center of detention, torture, barbarism, and extermination. On October 6, 1973, 18 political prisoners were massacred by agents of the civic-military dictatorship.

More than a hundred detainees were executed or forcibly disappeared at that location. Added to this are more than 600 people, political prisoners who were tortured, among them a hundred women. Judicial statements and investigations reveal that the workers and prominent communist militants of the San Bernardo Railway Workshops were detained on September 28, 1973: Pastor Roberto Ávila, Arturo Koyk Fredes, Alfredo Acevedo Pereira, Raúl Castro Caldera, Hernán Chamorro Monarde, Manuel González Vargas, Ariel Monsalve Martínez, José Morales Álvarez, Pedro Oyarzún Zamorano, José Silva Oliva, and Ramón Vivanco Díaz. In addition, the young socialist students who were detained on September 27, Francisco Viera Ovalle and Héctor Hernández Garcés, 19 and 17 years old respectively. Likewise, Ricardo Solar Miranda, who worked as a night watchman and was a militant of the MIR, added to the MIR militant peasants from Linderos, Paine: Juan Cuadra Espinoza, Gustavo Martínez Vera, and Carlos Ortiz Ortiz. Also, Javier Antonio Pacheco Monsalve, a furniture maker and former GAP member, who was detained on October 5; his death was tormentous and his body was destroyed by beatings.

Likewise, Franklin Valdés Valdés, a leader of the Fenats; Juan Martínez Aldana, a socialist leader; Manuel Rojas Fuentes and René Martínez Aliste, conscripts; Vicente Blanco Ubilla, a neighborhood leader; Mauricio Cea Iturrieta, a peasant; the Councilman of Buin, Héctor García García; and Rubén Lamich, a communist leader from Buin.

Many more comrades were murdered at Cerro Chena. In addition, the Councilmen of San Bernardo, Dr. Luis Andrade Balcázar (who died as a result of the torture), Fernando Ávila Alarcón, and Bernandino Jara Zúñiga were detained and tortured there.

The unconstitutional coup d'état of 1973 was against the elected government, where state terrorism was inseparable from institutional and economic violence against the people. In the first phase of repression, the dictatorship did not worry about hiding the crimes, with the aim of traumatizing the country and crippling knowledge.

Its work and its evil were ideological. It was to annihilate leaders and militants of the popular movement.

Among the torturers and criminals of Cerro Chena, several of whom have been convicted, are the former Army officers Iván de la Fuente, Alejandro Emilio Valdés Visintainer, and Alfonso Faúndez Norambuena, Julio Cerda Carrasco, the officers Víctor Pino Pérez (member of the DINA), and Andrés Magaña Bau, currently deceased.

Sergio Rodríguez Rautcher, Eduardo Silva Bravo, Juan Nielsen Stambuk, Jorge Romero Campos, Carlos Kyling Schmidt, Luis Cortez Villa, Marcial Cobos Farías, Luis Villarroel Contreras, Héctor Maturana Zúñiga, Luis Garfia Cabrera, Víctor Sandoval Muñoz, Jorge Saavedra Meza, Carlos Duran Rodríguez, Hernán Pizarro Collarte, Ciro Ahumada Miranda, Pedro Montalva Calvo, Pedro Montabone Domínguez.

The former Carabineros Colonel Sergio Ávila Quiroga, the former Prefect of the Investigative Police Roberto Rozas Aguilera, and the police officers Oscar Vergara Cruces and Mario Campos Ripley, among other state terrorists.

In 2012, October 6 was established as "Railway Worker's Day" in recognition of those martyred, and in 2018, the National Monuments Council declared the Access Portico to the hill, located on the Pan-American highway, a National Monument in the category of Historical Monument.

Also declared were the "Escuelita," a place of torture in September of that year, located to the northwest of the hill of death, and the "Red-Roofed House," of which only vestiges remain, where it functioned as a place of torture and extermination from October 1973.

The dictatorship, after murdering and forcibly disappearing thousands of our comrades, imposed the 1980 Constitution, which was drafted on the blood, torture, betrayals, and hatred of the coup plotters against the people. They imposed denialism and the relativization of the massacres and extermination of thousands of social fighters.

Families and human rights organizations demand that a Memorial be built in homage and recognition of the victims of the genocide, with the participation of the people affected by the tormentous dictatorship.

Source: elclarin.cl 5/10/2021

Date: 05-10-2021