The DINA's Lautaro Brigade was the extermination unit established by Manuel Contreras and led by Army Major Juan Morales Salgado. This brigade operated from the clandestine barracks at Calle Simón Bolívar 8630.

The actions of this group of DINA agents known to date include the capture of the Communist Party leadership in 1976. The brigade functioned with a contingent of more than 70 members, whose operational personnel carried out the gathering of intelligence, arrests, interrogations/torture, executions, and the disappearance of the detainees' bodies.

For these purposes, they had access to extensive infrastructure; in addition to the barracks themselves, they had a varied number of vehicles at their disposal, as well as access to the Puma helicopters of the Army Aviation Command (CAE), which operated from Peldehue.

The members of the Lautaro Brigade came from all four branches of the Armed Forces, in addition to having some civilian agents attached to the various branches. Its composition was mostly non-commissioned officers.

The fact that there were at least seven agents from the Navy in this brigade makes it clear that the institution lied when it declared that the Navy had withdrawn all its personnel from the DINA in 1975.

Another characteristic of the Lautaro Brigade was that it included a large number of women, who, as has been discovered, were characterized by their coldness and cruelty in the face of these crimes. Several of them, due to their knowledge of medicine and nursing, cooperated in the experiments carried out in the chemical laboratory at Michael Townley's house in Lo Curro.

Townley constantly attended the Calle Simón Bolívar barracks to experiment on detainees with the gas manufactured by the chemist Eugenio Berrios. The information that has been recovered as of August 2007 emerged following the investigation into the “Calle Conferencia” case, carried out by Judge Víctor Montiglio, who managed to establish the fate of a number of detainees from the Communist Party leadership, including the clandestine Secretary General of the PC, Víctor Manuel Díaz López, as well as Bernardo Araya Zuleta, María Olga Flores Barraza, Mario Zamorano Donoso, Onofre Jorge Muñoz Poutays, Uldarico Donaire Cortés, Jaime Patricio Donato Avendaño, Elisa Escobar Cepeda, Lenín Adán Díaz Silva, Eliana Espinoza Fernández, and Marta Lidia Ugarte Román. To date, it has been established that Víctor Manuel Díaz López was arrested in the early hours of May 12, 1976, at the house located at Calle Bello Horizonte No. 979, in the Las Condes district, days after the arrest of several PC leaders detained in the operation known as the “Ratonera” at Calle Conferencia No. 1587. Víctor Díaz was taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture center and subsequently transferred to “Casa de Piedra,” another DINA torture center located in the Cajón del Maipo, a place where it is known that Augusto Pinochet visited Víctor Díaz and other PC leaders detained there. At the beginning of 1977, Manuel Contreras gave the order to Juan Morales Salgado to eliminate Víctor Díaz. In compliance with that order, agents Sergio Escalona Acuña and Bernardo Daza Navarro took Díaz from a cell and tied a plastic bag over his head, suffocating him, while Army Lieutenant (nurse) Gladys de las Mercedes Calderón Carreño injected him with cyanide. Subsequently, they proceeded to place the body in plastic bags, tie it up, attach a piece of rail to it, and place it in potato sacks, then tie it with wire to ensure the bindings would not open. The body was transported in vehicles to the Army regiment in Peldehue, where they had other executed victims brought from Villa Grimaldi and tied in the same manner as Víctor Díaz. They loaded the bodies into the Army Aviation Command's Puma helicopter and departed for the coast of the Fifth Region to throw the bodies into the sea. This modus operandi of the Lautaro Brigade agents demonstrates the brutality and dehumanization of all its members. Below is the list of some of the agents of the Lautaro Brigade.

1 Acevedo Acevedo, Heriberto del Carmen - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 2 Ahumada Despouy, Joyce Ana - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 3 Altamirano Sanhueza, Orlando del Tránsito - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 4 Alvarez Droguett, Victor Manuel - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 5 Alvarez Vega, Hiro - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 6 Arriagada Mora, Jorge Hugo - FACH (Air Force) - Civilian Employee (Ret.) 7 Aspe Rojas, Celinda Angélica - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 8 Benavides Escobar, César Raúl - Army - General (Ret.) 9 Bermúdez Méndez, Carlos Justo - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 10 Bitterlich Jaramillo, Pedro Segundo - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 11 Cabezas Mardones, Eduardo Patricio - FACH (Air Force) - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 12 Calderón Carreño, Gladys de las Mercedes - Army - Officer (Ret.) and nurse 13 Castro Andrade, Sergio Hernán - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 14 Chaigneau Sepúlveda, Federico Humberto - Army - Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) 15 Daza Navarro, Bernardo del Rosario - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 16 Díaz Radulovich, Jorge Iván - FACH (Air Force) - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 17 Díaz Ramírez, Guillermo Eduardo - FACH (Air Force) - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 18 Escalona Acuña, Sergio Orlando - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 19 Escobar Fuentes, Jorge Marcelo - Army - Brigadier (Ret.) 20 Ferrán Martínez, Guillermo Jesús - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 21 Garea Guzmán, Eduardo - Army - Civilian Employee (Ret.) 22 Guerrero Aguilera, Gustavo Enrique - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 23 Guerrero Soto, María Angélica - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 24 Gutiérrez Valdés, Pedro Antonio - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 25 Jaime Astorga, Rufino Eduardo - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 26 Jímenez Escobar, Berta Yolanda - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 27 Krassnoff Martchenko, Miguel - Army - Brigadier (Ret.) 28 Lagos Yañez, Luis Alberto - FACH (Air Force) - Civilian Employee (Ret.) 29 Lawrence Mires, Ricardo Víctor - Carabineros - Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) 30 López Tapia, Carlos José - Army - Colonel (Ret.) and Army Professor 31 Magna Astudillo, Elisa del Carmen - Army - Officer (Ret.) 32 Manríquez Manterola, Jorge Lientur - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 33 Marcos Muñoz, Carlos Segundo - Civilian - attached to the Army 34 Meza Serrano, José Miguel - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 35 Montre Méndez, Manuel Antonio - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 36 Morales Salgado, Juan Hernán - Army - Colonel (Ret.) and Army Professor 37 Navarro Navarro, Teresa del Carmen - Navy - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 38 Obreque Henríquez, Manuel Jesús - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 39 Ojeda Obando, José Alfonso - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 40 Orellana de la Pinta, Claudio Orlando - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 41 Oyarce Riquelme, Eduardo Alejandro - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 42 Pacheco Fernández, Claudio Enrique - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 43 Pichunmán Curiqueo, Jorge Segundo - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 44 Piña Garrido, Juvenal Alfonso - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 45 Reyes Lagos, Eduardo Antonio - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 46 Rinaldi Suárez, Carlos Ramón - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 47 Rivas González, Adriana Elcira - FACH (Air Force) - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 48 Riveros Valderrama, René Miguel - Army - Officer (Ret.) 49 Saavedra Vásquez, Orfa Yolanda - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 50 Sagardía Monje, Jorge Laureano - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 51 Sarmiento Sotelo, José Manuel - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 52 Silva Vergara, Marilin Melahani - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 53 Sovino Maturana, Hernán Luis - Army - Captain (Ret.) 54 Torrejón Gatica, Orlando Jesús - Army - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 55 Troncoso Vivallos, Emilio Hernán - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 56 Urrutia Acuña, Luis Arturo - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 57 Vacarella Gilio, Italia Donata - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 58 Valdebenito Araya, Héctor Manuel - Carabineros - Non-commissioned Officer (Ret.) 59 Vilches Muñoz, Ana del Carmen - FACH (Air Force) - Civilian Employee (Ret.)

Source: AFDD, La Nación, El Mostrador, Punto Final, Memoria Viva archives

Excerpt from the Calle Conferencia indictment - Santiago Court of Appeals, Case file No. 2182-98

José Alfonso Ojeda Obando as co-perpetrator of the crime of aggravated kidnapping committed against the person of Víctor Díaz López, perpetrated in this city between May 12, 1976, and an undetermined day in the first fortnight of January 1977, and as co-perpetrator of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping of Mario Jaime Zamorano Donoso, Onofre Jorge Muñoz Poutays, Uldarico Donaire Cortéz, Jaime Donato Avendaño, Elisa del Carmen Escobar Cepeda, Lenin Adán Díaz Silva, and Eliana Marina Espinoza Fernández, perpetrated starting from May 4, 1976.

Source: Judiciary, 2013