Enrique René Astudillo Alvarez, 51 years old, married, father of 7, and two of his sons: Omar Enrique Astudillo Rojas, 19, single, and Ramón Astudillo Rojas, 27, single—all three agricultural workers with no known political affiliations—were detained on October 7, 1973, at approximately 10:30 p.m., at the Fundo Naguayán in Isla de Maipo, the property where they also worked.

A patrol of Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo police station, commanded by Sergeant Pablo Ñancupil Raquileo and including officers Jacinto Torres, Manuel Muñoz, Héctor Vargas, and David Coliqueo, arrived at the home. They proceeded to violently raid the dwelling and arrest the father along with his two eldest sons, Ramón and Omar Astudillo Rojas.

The three detainees were loaded into a pickup truck belonging to the Fundo Naguayán, which the patrol was using and which already held other detained peasants. All were tied up and forced to lie face down; according to witnesses, the Carabineros stood on top of them, and during the journey to the police station, the detainees were constantly beaten, insulted, and threatened with death by their captors.

The detention of Enrique Astudillo and his two sons took place in the presence of his spouse and his five minor children. The wife and mother of the victims, Rosario Rojas Alvarez, made countless efforts to locate them without success.

On December 3, 1973, she was granted a certificate stating that her spouse, Enrique Astudillo, "has been detained since October 8, 1973." This certificate was signed by Colonel Jaime Garín Cea, Chief of the State of Siege Zone for the Department of Talagante, and was issued so that she could collect an invalidity pension her husband received because his left arm was nearly immobilized due to an accident.

It should be noted that, in the same operation, other peasants from the same area were detained: Sergio Maureira Lillo, 46, and four of his sons: José, Rodolfo, Segundo, and Sergio Maureira Muñoz, aged 26, 22, 24, and 27 respectively, as well as the brothers Carlos, Nelson, and Oscar Hernández Flores, aged 39, 32, and 30 respectively.

That same day, in the morning hours, four young men had been apprehended in the plaza of Isla de Maipo by Carabineros from the local station. These young men were: Iván Ordóñez Lama, 17; Miguel Brant Bustamante, 19; José Herrera Villegas, 17; and Manuel Jesús Navarro Salinas, 20.

All the detainees were taken to the Isla de Maipo police station; this facility was the last place they were seen alive.

On November 7, 1975, Chile's delegate to the United Nations, Sergio Diez, declared in his presentation before the Third Committee of the General Assembly that "many of the alleged disappeared do not have a legal existence," while others "were located in the records of the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago." Of the fifteen detained in Isla de Maipo, eight appear on the lists: one of them, Sergio Maureira Muñoz, as having no legal existence, and the other seven as deceased: 1) Enrique Astudillo Alvarez, entry 3166, date of death: October 7, 1973, at 2:00 p.m. 2) Nelson Hernández Flores, entry 3238, date of death: October 11, 1973, at 2:30 p.m. 3) Oscar Humberto Hernández Flores, entry 3201, date of death: October 9, 1973, at 12:30 p.m. 4) José Manuel Herrera Villegas, entry 3130, date of death: October 6, 1973, at 11:30 a.m. 5) José Manuel Maureira Muñoz, entry 3263, date of death: October 11, 1973, at 8:30 p.m. 6) Rodolfo Antonio Maureira Muñoz, entry 3332, date of death: October 15, 1973, at 1:00 p.m. 7) Segundo Armando Maureira Muñoz, entry 3335, date of death: October 15, 1973, at 4:00 p.m.

It was never possible to establish the origin of or the parties responsible for creating these lists; neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the authorities of the Legal Medical Institute took responsibility for them.

At the end of 1978, a Catholic priest received, under the seal of confession, information about a place where numerous human remains were located. Considering the gravity of the reported fact, a commission was formed to verify its accuracy before formalizing a judicial complaint.

This commission was composed of Monsignor Enrique Alvear, Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago; Monsignor Cristián Precht, Vicar of Solidarity; Jaime Martínez, Director of the weekly Qué Pasa; Abraham Santibáñez, Sub-Director of the magazine Hoy; and lawyers Alejandro González and Máximo Pacheco.

The commission met on November 30, 1978, at the site of the discovery, an abandoned lime kiln located in the town of Lonquén, a small village 14 kilometers from the city of Talagante and near the town of Isla de Maipo. There, they were able to confirm the existence of two kilns, approximately nine meters high, in one of which a large number of human remains were found.

Once the information was verified, the respective complaint was formalized the following day, December 1, before the President of the Supreme Court, Israel Bórquez, requesting that he report it to the Plenary of that Court.

In this way, the judicial investigation began, which allowed for the determination that the remains found belonged to the fifteen locals detained in Isla de Maipo on October 7, 1973; they had been executed by Carabineros and their remains illegally buried in the kilns.

The victims' families requested the release of the bodies to give them a proper burial. The Court Martial ordered the Military Prosecutor to hand over the remains to those who could legally prove kinship. Their families prepared to bury them.

Although the Prosecutor ordered "strict compliance with that order," on the day of the funeral, he ordered that they be buried in the town of Isla de Maipo, apart from the families, who had gathered that day at the Recoleta Franciscana Church awaiting the remains to hold a funeral mass.

The bodies were buried by officials of the Legal Medical Service in the Municipal Cemetery of Isla de Maipo in a mass grave, with the exception of Sergio Maureira Lillo, who was buried in an individual grave. Days later, the families held a funeral liturgy without the presence of their loved ones' bodies.

The Military Prosecutor also refused to authorize the registration of the deaths in the Civil Registry and Identification Service, a resolution that was confirmed by the Supreme Court. Days later, a religious service for the eternal rest of these victims was held at the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral, also without the presence of the remains.

Years later, the Lonquén Kilns, which by that date had become a place of pilgrimage, were dynamited.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On March 29, 1974, the Committee for Cooperation for Peace in Chile filed a mass recurso de amparo (habeas corpus), file 289-74, before the Santiago Court of Appeals, on behalf of 131 people who were disappeared as of that date and whose information had been verified by the aforementioned organization.

Among these 131 people were Enrique Astudillo and his sons, Omar Enrique and Ramón Astudillo Rojas, and the other eight peasants apprehended in the same operation.

On November 28 of that same year, the 6th Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals dismissed the petition. An appeal was filed with the Supreme Court, which confirmed the denial on January 31, 1975, ordering the opening of a summary proceeding to investigate the commission of possible crimes.

In the same resolution, it agreed to appoint a Ministro en Visita (Special Investigating Judge), a designation that fell to Mr. Enrique Zurita Camps.

On February 24, 1975, the Investigating Judge appeared at the First Criminal Court of Santiago, initiating case file 106.657.

During the investigation, the Astudillo family members were summoned to testify by Judge Zurita, and the facts of the detentions were placed on record.

On September 25, 1975, without having delved into any of the cases of the forcibly disappeared, the summary proceeding was closed because "no further progress could be made in the investigation." On September 29 of the same year, the Judge issued a ruling, and in the case of the Isla de Maipo detainees, he declared himself incompetent, arguing that the proceedings carried out established that Enrique Astudillo and his two sons, Sergio Maureira and his four sons, and the three Hernández Flores brothers had been detained on October 7, 1973, by Carabineros of Talagante and handed over the following day at the National Stadium to the charge of SENDET, an organization that did not report to confirm or deny this fact.

The Judge's resolution states verbatim that "Consequently, the Carabineros of Talagante or SENDET must answer for the disappearance of the named persons, this Court lacking jurisdiction in both cases." It adds the order to remit the records to the Second Military Court of Santiago.

On July 1, 1976, the Military Court designated the Third Military Prosecutor's Office to continue the investigation under file 1.382-76. On August 9, one month later, the summary proceeding was declared closed, and the following day a temporary dismissal was proposed, which was approved on September 14 by the Military Judge, who ordered the case to be archived.

In parallel, on June 17, 1974, a recurso de amparo (file 613-74) was filed before the Santiago Court of Appeals on behalf of the members of the Maureira family, which also mentions the detention and subsequent disappearance of the other six peasants arrested in the same operation, among whom were Enrique Astudillo Alvarez and his two sons.

The Acting Chief of the Isla de Maipo police station, Luis Acevedo Vargas, sent two official letters to the Court. In the first, dated December 10, 1974, he states verbatim that "they were indeed detained in the month of October of last year by personnel of this unit, and were sent with an unnumbered memo, dated the 8th of the same month, for the reasons indicated therein, to the National Stadium Prisoner Camp where they were received in good order, as evidenced by the signature registered on the back of the copy of the memo, which appears to say Sergeant 2nd Class González."

The aforementioned memo contains the personal data (name, age, marital status, education, activity, ID number, and address), political affiliation, and the charge imputed to each of the eleven detainees.

In the case of Enrique Astudillo Alvarez, the following is noted: "51 years old, married, agricultural worker, basic education, ID No. 1447 of the Department of Talagante, residing at Calle El Rosario s/n, of communist affiliation and recognized extremist participation in land seizures and union instigator; his link with extremist elements hidden in the hills of the Naltagua Cordillera is presumed, as he has been caught on repeated occasions transiting in said sector without justified reason, in completely suspicious attitudes."

Regarding Omar Enrique Astudillo Rojas, it indicates: "20 years old, single, worker, basic education, no ID card, residing at Calle El Rosario s/n; with the same affiliation and activities as No. 2." (No. 2 refers to Enrique Astudillo Alvarez).

In the case of Ramón Astudillo Rojas, it states: "27 years old, single, basic education, no ID card, residing at Calle El Rosario s/n, similar to case No. 2."

At the end of the text, it is requested that they be interrogated by specialized personnel, as it is presumed that the detainees are extremists and are meeting to reorganize, which has been verified by their own statements and by the initial inquiries carried out by the station's personnel. The memo is signed by Lieutenant Lautaro Castro Mendoza, Chief of the Station.

In the second official letter, sent two days after the previous one, the Carabineros reiterated the detention of the petitioners, carried out on October 7, 1973, by personnel of that station on the grounds that they had been caught in a clandestine meeting at the home of Sergio Maureira Lillo.

It adds that all of them "are of recognized leftist extremist affiliation" and that they were planning to attack officers of that station and their families, one of whom they had already threatened. It also points out that they were sent to the National Stadium where "they were received in good order" and that it is unknown if they were subsequently placed at the disposal of any court.

The Court repeatedly requested information from SENDET regarding this background without receiving a response.

On March 10, 1975, the 1st Chamber of the Court of Appeals dismissed the amparo and ordered the records to be sent to the corresponding Criminal Court.

On the other hand, on October 1, 1974, a complaint for the "presumed misfortune" (disappearance) of the eleven detained peasants was filed (file 22.826-1) before the Talagante Court of Letters.

The filing states that, when carrying out some of the detentions, the Carabineros caused bodily injuries to the relatives of the arrested; it adds that the police officers were in a manifest state of intoxication and that they stole items from some of the raided homes. There is no information on the processing of this complaint.

On December 1, 1978, the Vicariate of Solidarity, represented by the Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago, Monsignor Enrique Alvear Urrutia, and the Episcopal Vicar, Monsignor Cristián Precht Bañados, filed a complaint before the Supreme Court regarding the discovery of human remains inside two old mineral processing kilns on the slopes of the Lonquén hills, in the department of Talagante.

This information had been provided to a priest days earlier by a person under the seal of confession.

Prior to the presentation to the Supreme Court, the ecclesiastical authorities formed a commission that went to the indicated place, verifying the truthfulness of the information.

In the presentation, signed by Bishop Monsignor Enrique Alvear, Vicar Monsignor Cristián Precht, and lawyers Máximo Pacheco and Alejandro González, they requested the Supreme Court to "adopt measures to ensure a rapid and exhaustive investigation."

The Supreme Court remitted the records to the Talagante Criminal Court to conduct the respective summary proceeding, initiating case file 27.123-3. As a first step, the magistrate appeared on December 1 at the site, located about 3.5 km from the town of Lonquén, confirming the existence of a stone structure, approximately 9 meters high by 16 meters wide, in which there were two kilns, each with an entrance opening of 1 meter by 80 cm, and whose upper part had two pits that showed a large accumulation of dirt and stones.

After inspecting one of the entrances and removing some debris, remains, pieces of cloth, and hair were extracted; observation inside revealed the presence of other human remains.

In successive excavations, human remains were extracted and sent to the Legal Medical Institute for analysis. Some projectile casings were also found.

On December 6, the Plenary of the Supreme Court appointed the Minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Adolfo Bañados Cuadra, as Ministro en Visita Extraordinaria to continue the investigation into the discovery of the Lonquén remains.

Several peasants residing in the vicinity of the kilns were summoned to testify; they stated that a few days after September 11, 1973, Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo station informed them of an order prohibiting passage to the sector where the kilns are located, as there was an "extremist hideout." Other peasants said they had seen military vehicles and heard gunfire.

Regarding the construction of the kilns themselves, a report from the Investigations Department of Infrastructure indicated that part of it was old, over 60 years old, while inside one of the kilns there was an iron platform upon which a slab was executed based on stone and brick joined with lime or plaster, which was no older than 8 years.

The report concludes by indicating that "apparently, this work was executed by throwing the mixture first from the upper opening of the kiln and then the rest of the material, as there is no orderly placement of the elements, which suggests that it was executed by non-specialized personnel."

Regarding the ballistic expertise of three casings found, the Forensic Ballistics section of the Investigations Criminalistics Laboratory reported that the 7.62 NATO casings had been fired by an automatic rifle, brand SIG, caliber 7.62 NATO SG 510-4, of Swiss origin; all were fired by the same weapon of the indicated characteristics.

When the Court appeared at the Isla de Maipo station, it was verified that the 1973 logbooks had been sent to the Third Police Station of Talagante for incineration, and regarding the weaponry, three SIG SG.510-4 automatic rifles, cal. 7.62 mm, appear in the records.

At the Third Police Station of Talagante, information was obtained regarding the staff existing at the Isla de Maipo station and the Lonquén outpost, which amounted to 21 officers. The Lieutenant was Lautaro Castro Mendoza.

During the process, the list of 63 "allegedly disappeared persons who were located in the records of the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago," which was presented along with another list of "alleged disappeared persons without legal existence" by the Chilean government to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1975, was reviewed.

The Court requested the autopsy protocols from the Legal Medical Institute that, according to the list, corresponded to Segundo, Rodolfo, and José Maureira Muñoz. In relation to this, Dr. Claudio Molina, Director of the Institute, declared that "the inaccuracy of the list of 'presumably disappeared persons' is evident at least regarding protocol No. 3332, since the study of the corpse revealed that it was a woman." He added that he had seen this list in a 1975 publication and that, together with another doctor, he identified the signature as belonging to Dr.

Vargas (former Director of the Institute), "but I do not know on what basis this professional would have endorsed said entry."

The Judge of the 7th Criminal Court of Santiago appeared at the Legal Medical Institute at the request of Judge Bañados, and it was verified that none of the people on the list appeared in the Institute's Index Book; the only thing that coincided between both lists was the data that appeared in the "date of death" column with the date of entry in the Registry book.

By the date of this proceeding, Dr. Vargas had passed away. In the processing of case 240005-1 of the Maipo-Buin Court, which investigates the disappearances in Paine, it was established that Dr. Vargas's signature was not the one known.

In this regard, Minister of the Interior Sergio Fernández Fernández reported that there was no record that the list of persons corresponded to any official communication issued or sent by that Ministry.

Meanwhile, the Acting Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Army Colonel Roberto Soto Mackenney, reported that the aforementioned list appeared in Volume No. 2 of "The Current Situation of Human Rights in Chile," published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in October 1975.

The source of the data contained in said list corresponds to information provided by the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago in 1975.

Ultimately, it was not possible to establish responsibility for the creation of the list.

In February 1979, as a result of finding evidence that the remains found belonged to the Isla de Maipo detainees, proceedings began to identify the clothing found in the kilns. The victims' relatives appeared, most of whom were able to recognize the clothing their relatives were wearing at the time of their detention.

Previously, the anthropometric data of these 15 victims had been delivered to the Court.

When the Carabineros who belonged to the Isla de Maipo station in September 1973 were summoned to testify, Carabinero Captain Lautaro Eugenio Castro Mendoza appeared and stated that he gave the order to detain "several subjects of the Maureira family" for being dangerous people linked to the interests of the previous government who were planning to attack the barracks; furthermore, "other individuals from the sector with the surname Hernández and others whose names I do not remember, until reaching eleven people," were detained.

He himself led the picket and defined the detentions by following a list attached to a map found in the house of one of the Maureira family's sons. Once the arrests were finished, they were taken to the barracks where they were interrogated, confirming his suspicions "regarding their dangerousness." Castro adds that, after the interrogation was finished, he himself ordered their transfer to the National Stadium, but before that, one of the detainees informed him in private that there were weapons hidden in an abandoned mine.

For this reason, they went to the abandoned mines in Lonquén in a municipal truck and a private pickup, with 8 to 10 Carabineros and the detainees. Once they arrived at the sector, they were suddenly attacked with firearms from the hills, to which they responded by firing back, a situation that lasted ten to fifteen minutes.

Upon proceeding to look for the detainees, they verified that all of them were dead. All the Carabineros were unharmed.

Subsequently, he decided, after consulting with the personnel, to bury the corpses in the kilns to avoid reprisals against them and their families; thus, "the bodies were thrown inside and immediately I ordered that dirt and debris be thrown over them."

When asked about the statements he gave in other proceedings asserting that the detainees had been taken to the National Stadium, he points out that he lied out of fear, since "upon being arrested, all these subjects had a threatening attitude that seemed very serious to me in the sense that they could take revenge in any way against our own persons and families."

Regarding the memo, he declares that it was signed by him but he does not recognize the signature and handwritten script at the bottom.

He reiterates that the detainees were eleven and that he does not know the minors who supposedly also died that day. He was referring to Iván Ordóñez, Miguel Brant, José Herrera, and Manuel Navarro. All the Carabineros who participated in the events were armed with SIG rifles and NATO ammunition.

Other Carabineros from the staff also appeared; several of them confirmed Captain Castro's version, adding that the detainees were tied with trintrollas (a type of cord), that they were lying on the platform of the truck, and that they used their hands and feet to throw stones and material from the hillsides into the kilns.

On March 15, 1979, the relatives of the disappeared from the Maureira, Astudillo, and Hernández families filed a criminal complaint for kidnapping against the Carabineros who participated in the arrest, for forgery of a public document against Lieutenant Castro, and for qualified homicide against those who turned out to be responsible.

The following day, Judge Bañados rejected the processing of the complaint because there was insufficient evidence to affirm that they were indeed the people found in the kilns and that, in the event that the Carabineros were responsible, that Court would lack the jurisdiction to substantiate the process.

On April 4, 1979, the Ministro en Visita declared himself incompetent. In the resolution, the Judge points out the following conclusions:

He establishes that the identity of the corpses found corresponds to the 15 detainees from October 7, 1973, in Isla de Maipo.

He presumes that "multiple crimes of homicide were committed, apparently in a single act."

He considers it established that the information given by the Carabineros that the victims were taken as detainees to the National Stadium is false.

He likewise considers the official information that the corpses entered the Legal Medical Institute during the years 1973 and 1974 to be false.

He establishes as "intrinsically implausible" the version of Captain Lautaro Castro, who explains the death of the detainees as the result of an armed attack caused by unknown persons at night, because "it is impossible to imagine that the opposing projectiles could have impacted, under the conditions already expressed, only the prisoners and not their captors; that from the shootout that occurred there, no trace remained, in any respect, and that, in all cases, the injuries were of such a condition that they caused the instantaneous death of the victims."

He points out that, "in none of the fifteen skeletal remains studied by the Legal Medical Institute were signs of perforations, fractures, or other types of vestiges that could be related to firearm projectiles impacting a living organism verified, so the death of the fifteen people must be attributed to other causes."

He considers that the Carabineros acted in the line of duty and that "the Chief of the Station had direct interference and responsibility in the events, without prejudice to that which may affect those who acted under his command."

The records were sent to the Military Justice system on April 10, and in the Second Military Prosecutor's Office, the process (file 200-79) was instructed under Prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar Swett.

From this stage of the process, it is worth highlighting the statement of a witness, a brother-in-law of the Hernández brothers, who was also arrested on October 7, 1973, along with them at their home.

He maintains that he was with the eleven detainees during the journey to the station, and upon arriving at this facility, he only remained for about half an hour and was then taken to his home by a Carabinero.

Former Carabinero official Pablo Ñancupil Raquileo, discharged in 1977, who served at the Isla de Maipo station between 1971 and 1975, also appeared. He points out that he was in charge of the detention of the Maureiras and the Astudillos, ordered personally by Lieutenant Castro; he does not remember having apprehended the Hernández brothers.

He adds that in the respective searches of the homes, they did not find weapons or documents that would allow them to be classified as "dangerous." In relation to this, Lieutenant Castro had previously stated that he had been guided by a list and a map of the barracks found in the house of one of Sergio Maureira's sons to carry out the other detentions.

Former Carabinero Ñancupil adds that about two days after the arrest, he saw, in a room of the police facility used as a storage room, "more than 10 and fewer than 25 people," lying on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs, among whom he recognized the detainees he had apprehended and also three of the young men apprehended in the plaza, whom he names by their surnames: Brant, Ordóñez, and Navarro.

He also states that he did not participate in the transfer of the detainees from the station and does not know their fate, although he says that, as a result of people's comments that the detainees had not appeared, he heard a Carabinero say: "How are they going to appear... if we killed them."

On July 2, 1979, the Military Prosecutor issued an indictment against Lautaro Castro Mendoza, Juan J. Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, Jacinto R. Torres González, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, and Justo Romo Peralta, as authors of the crime of unnecessary violence causing the death of all the detainees on October 7, 1973.

On August 16, the sentence was issued that totally and definitively dismissed the case in favor of the defendants, by virtue of the 1978 Amnesty Decree Law; this resolution was appealed and confirmed by the Court Martial on October 22, 1979.

On the other hand, the Military Prosecutor's Office did not return the remains, and for the second time, they were buried apart from their families. Despite the evidence in the process, the deaths of Enrique Astudillo Alvarez, Omar Enrique Astudillo Rojas, and Ramón Astudillo Rojas were not registered in the Civil Registry. No death certificate is available.

Source: Corporation Report

On October 7, 1973, at 9:45 p.m., a group of eleven peasants from the town of Isla de Maipo was detained by Carabineros officers. The police did not carry arrest or search warrants for the homes of these individuals.

Numerous witnesses saw them being beaten and loaded into a white pickup truck owned by the proprietor of the Fundo Naguayán—where the houses of the three families were located—and saw them being tied up and laid face down on the floor of the vehicle.

They were agricultural workers: Enrique Astudillo Álvarez (51 years old), Omar Astudillo Rojas (20), Ramón Astudillo Rojas (27), Carlos Hernández Flores (39), Nelson Hernández Flores (32), Oscar Hernández Flores (30), Sergio Maureira Lillo (46), José Maureira Muñoz (26), Rodolfo Maureira Muñoz (22), Segundo Maureira Muñoz (24), and Sergio Maureira Muñoz (27).

The Carabineros officers stood on their backs. They were paraded through the streets of the town to intimidate the entire population. Finally, they were taken to the police station.

The same fate befell four young men who had been detained that same day in the town square: Miguel Brant Bustamante (22 years old), Manuel Navarro Salinas (20), Iván Ordóñez Lama (17), and José Herrera Villegas (17).

The families were deceived by government authorities. They were informed that the detainees had been transferred to the Estadio Nacional in the capital. In 1974, the relatives filed a writ of amparo. When the local authorities were questioned by the courts, they merely stated that "all had been transferred on October 8, 1973, to the Estadio Nacional." This was completely false.

The SENDET (National Service for Detainees) contradictorily indicated that it "did not have, and had never had, information about them."

Sergio Diez—today a senator for Renovación Nacional—who was then a delegate of the Augusto Pinochet Ugarte dictatorship to the OAS, lied in 1975 before the entire world, stating that: "these people had no legal existence," while other "Lonquén detainees had been admitted to the Legal Medical Institute in October 1973."

On November 29, 1978, an informant provided the Catholic Church with the exact location where the ill-fated remains of the peasants and young men were found: some lime kilns in the town of Lonquén, 14 kilometers from the town of Talagante.

The Vicar of Solidarity, Cristián Precht, and the Bishop of Santiago, Enrique Alvear, decided to verify the information by going to the site along with journalists—Jaime Martínez (Qué Pasa) and Abraham Santibáñez (Revista Hoy)—and lawyers Máximo Pacheco (PDC) and Alejandro González.

The press reported: "In an old stone construction, about twelve meters high, attached to the slope of a hill, inside which there are two silos of two and a half meters, were the corpses (...) In the other, covered with stones from above and with an exit in its lower part, also walled up, were human remains, a skull, torn clothes (...)".

It was a precise and painful blow to the conscience of thousands of Chileans. A wound open to this day, unspeakable. An image of pain and human misery, of limitless horror and brutality that the history of humanity will remember forever.

Pinochet and his lackeys could do nothing to hide the horrendous crime. The bishop informed Israel Bórquez, president of the Supreme Court and a collaborator of the regime, who sent the records to the Talagante Court. Judge Juana Godoy was appointed to initiate the investigation.

In December 1978, the remains were sent to the Legal Medical Institute. The plenary of the Supreme Court appointed Judge Adolfo Bañados as the visiting minister, who ordered autopsies and ballistic examinations and consolidated the cases in which the disappearance of persons or alleged misfortune had been reported. He interrogated the relatives of the "forcibly disappeared" peasants.

The police officers involved: Lautaro Castro Mendoza—head of the Isla de Maipo station—and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, Jacinto Torres González, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, and Justo Romo Peralta, provided the courts with the version that they had "taken the highly dangerous detainees to the Lonquén kilns in order to unearth the weapons they had hidden, and that later—at the site—they had suffered an armed attack by unknown persons, with the peasants being killed in the shootout.

Fearing reprisals, they had decided to hide the bodies in the abandoned kilns."

In April 1979, Minister Bañados had to declare himself incompetent due to the prevailing legislation that grants immunity to uniformed personnel and hands over criminal cases in which they are involved to the Military Justice system.

However, before leaving the case, he established the responsibility of these police officers for the events. His resolution states: "The version (...) to try to explain the death of their prisoners, not only contradicts the merit of the case files in multiple aspects and details, in particular, of course, regarding the number of victims, but it is intrinsically implausible (...) in none of the remains were signs of perforations, fractures, or other types of traces that could be related to firearm projectiles impacting a living organism found, so the death of the fifteen people must be attributed to other causes."

The case then passed into the hands of the "Second Military Court," which charged the Carabineros officers as "authors of the crime of unnecessary violence causing death." After a short process, the case was definitively dismissed by means of the Amnesty Law issued by Pinochet, legislation under which the eight Carabineros had requested to be covered.

Subsequently, the "Court Martial" confirmed that resolution.

The murderer Lautaro Castro was promoted to the rank of Captain.

One year after the bodies of the peasants and young men were found, the remains were handed over to their families. The bodies were transported by officials of the Legal Medical Institute to Isla de Maipo and buried immediately—except for Sergio Maureira Lillo—to avoid the presence of their relatives, depositing them in a mass grave.

The relatives, aggrieved once again by the military authorities, filed a complaint with the Court Martial—which was forced to accept it—against military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar Sweet for "lack and abuse committed by not complying with the order to deliver the bodies." He was given a written censure.

In January 1980, the Supreme Court decided to set it aside, considering that the prosecutor "did not commit any fault. It was the judges themselves who imposed it on him who indicated the procedure he used."

A complaint was filed again with the justice system for the death of the Isla de Maipo peasants. This case was handled by visiting minister Héctor Solís, who could not continue his investigation. The minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes, continued the investigation, finalizing it on September 12, 2016, when she issued a first-instance sentence.

The minister convicted the 7 Carabineros who detained the fifteen peasants; the former Carabineros were convicted of the crime of qualified kidnapping: Lautaro Castro Mendoza, head of the patrol, to a sentence of 20 years in prison for his responsibility as an author.

David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro were sentenced to 15 years in prison. Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was sentenced to 900 days in prison.

The case went to the second instance, the San Miguel Court of Appeals, which confirmed the sentence on May 16, 2017. On June 16, 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that convicted 6 former Carabineros, given that the head of the Carabineros, Lautaro Castro, had died before the conviction.

On February 18, 2010, the acting visiting minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Héctor Solís, announced the identification of 13 of the 15 bodies whose remains were found in 1978, finally allowing for their burial, with the removal of the remains from the Legal Medical Service taking place on March 26.

On March 27, a public wake was held in the Civic Courtyard of the Isla de Maipo Municipality, and on Sunday the 28th, the solemn burial of the victims took place in the Isla de Maipo Parish Cemetery.

The Lonquén Kilns were demolished to erase all traces and footprints of memory, to definitively impose oblivion.

By Arnaldo Pérez Guerra

Source: prensaopal.cl, October 7, 2020

Date: 10-07-2020

LAUNCH OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM CITIZEN FORMATION AND MEMORIES

MAYOR CARLOS ADASME AND THE ASTUDILLO FAMILY PARTICIPATE IN AN EMOTIVE AND SOLEMN LAUNCH CEREMONY FOR THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM CITIZEN FORMATION AND MEMORIES Law 20.911 creates a new mandatory Citizen Education subject for 3rd and 4th-year high school students, which will begin to be taught in 2020.

This will incorporate civic knowledge and competencies, topics of political theory, and ethical training, to strengthen citizen formation as a democratic exercise. Under this theme and with the purpose of preserving memory and respect for human rights in our commune, today the highest authority launched the Educational Program Citizen Formation and Memories.

The Program aims to educate, inform, and transform the perspective regarding historical processes that occurred in our commune and the country. The project is considered a strategy to involve students from 7th grade to 4th year of high school in an active and experiential way.

As a commitment to the truth and highlighting the life testimony of a son of Isla de Maipo, this project will bear the name of the former councilman, son of a forcibly disappeared person, and former President of the Lonquén Corporation, “Emilio Astudillo Rojas.”

Source: islademaipo.cl 9/11/2019

Date: 09-11-2019

The departure of an indispensable man

At midnight last Friday, August 9, Emilio Astudillo Rojas passed away at his home in Isla de Maipo.

A man whose life took a radical turn forty-six years ago. On the fateful night of October 7, 1973, at barely seventeen years old, he witnessed how his father and his two older brothers were kidnapped by police agents to—after five years of fruitless searching—face the devastating truth that emerged at the end of 1978; his relatives, along with twelve neighbors from Isla de Maipo, were found inside the fateful Lonquén kilns.

From then on, Emilio had to take the place of his disappeared father, not only in the home but later also in the union struggle, first at the same estate where Mr. Enrique Astudillo worked and then at the provincial, and even national, level.

In the midst of the dictatorship, Emilio understood that his fundamental task would be to thwart the designs of reactionary and criminal violence, with the courageous premise that where one falls, ten will rise.

After the recovery of democracy, all his efforts were turned to the important work of building memory and vindicating the memory of those who fell in the city and fundamentally in the countryside. This is how he was a key actor in the formation of the Association of Relatives of Victims of Lonquén and the corporation of the same name.

His leadership and the firm will to fight for truth and justice is a challenge that his premature death leaves to those of us who were his friends and companions. Emilio, friend: you can rest easy, because wherever you are, your brilliant example will be the light that illuminates our path. “There are men who struggle for a day and they are good.

There are others who struggle for a year and they are better. There are those who struggle for many years and they are very good. But there are those who struggle all their lives: these are the indispensable ones."

BERTOLT BRECHT

Source: corplonquen.260mb.net 8/9/2019

Date: 08-09-2019

Lonquén: Thirteen victims identified in case that confirmed the existence of forcibly disappeared persons in Chile

The SML, together with Minister Héctor Solís, informed the relatives of the political executions of the Lonquén kilns of the identification of thirteen of the fifteen victims of the dictatorship. Emilio Astudillo, representative of the families, indicated that with this confirmation they will be able to close a long stage of mourning and bury their loved ones.

The Legal Medical Service (SML) confirmed the identity of thirteen victims of human rights violations, corresponding to the findings of the Lonquén kilns, one of the emblematic cases of the dictatorship that marked a milestone by corroborating the existence of forcibly disappeared persons in our country.

In an extensive day, Minister Héctor Solís, together with the national director of the SML, Dr. Patricio Bustos, met with the families of the victims to inform them of the results of the expert reports and the genetic analysis that were carried out in the Texas Laboratory, as Bustos explained. “We have delivered the identity of thirteen victims, whose genetic identity has been ratified by the laboratory of the University of Texas, where the bone samples of the victims as well as the blood samples of the relatives were sent, which gave certainty of the identity of these people,” reported the director of the SML. The expert reports concluded the positive identification of thirteen of the fifteen victims of the detention of a group of peasants that took place in 1973 in Isla Maipo, whose ages fluctuate between 17 and 52 years. The identified bodies correspond to Enrique Astudillo Álvarez, Omar Astudillo Rojas, Ramón Astudillo Rojas, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, Sergio Maureira Lillo, José Maureira Muñoz, Iván Ordóñez Lamas, Miguel Brant Bustamante, Carlos Hernández Flores, and Nelson Hernández Flores. However, through the process, it was not possible to corroborate the identity of two people: Oscar Hernández Flores and Manuel Jesús Navarro González. The SML, by instruction of Minister Solís, will continue with the necessary procedures for the effective identification of these two victims. The identifications were made from remains found in 1978 in an abandoned lime mine, located in the town of Lonquén, in the El Triunfador agricultural cooperative, a small town located fourteen kilometers from Talagante. The President of the Association of Relatives of Victims of Lonquén, Emilio Astudillo, whose father and brothers were also identified through this process, pointed out that today there is the tranquility of being able to end a long stage of mourning and vindicate the memory of his relatives. “There is a certain tranquility, because we are going to close part of the mourning that we have lived for 36 years. We are going to close a cycle in our lives, we will be able to give dignified burial to our relatives, and most importantly, we are going to vindicate their memory, because when they were kidnapped from their homes, they were accused of being ‘alleged extremists,’ even though they were field workers and social leaders of that time. And that is what we are going to vindicate when we bury them, that they were social fighters, that they fought for better well-being for themselves and for their children,” affirmed Astudillo. Astudillo also confirmed that the bodies will be waked for two nights, from March 5 to 7 in Isla de Maipo, at a memorial inaugurated in 2008 for the victims of Lonquén, the same place where, after 36 years, the funerals will take place.

Source: radio.uchile.cl 2/18/2010

Date: 02-18-2010

Lonquén: the end of the adjective “alleged”

On December 1, 1978, the Vicaría de la Solidaridad announced the discovery of fifteen corpses in lime kilns in Lonquén. It was soon learned that the bodies belonged to a group of forcibly disappeared persons from Isla de Maipo.

This event, which served as the basis for the first chapter of Los archivos del cardenal, demolished the dictatorship's official version, which denied the existence of the disappeared. Members of a discreet commission convened by Cardinal Silva Henríquez and former officials of the Vicaría reconstruct here one of the most significant events in the organization's history.

Abraham Santibáñez, deputy director of the magazine Hoy, received a call from the Vicaría asking him to report to the Plaza de Armas building immediately, as they had important information to provide. That hot November of 1978, the country was under a state of emergency, and the only opposition magazine with permission to circulate was Hoy.

Santibáñez asked no further questions and headed from Providencia toward the large house occupied by the Vicaría de la Solidaridad next to the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral.

Jaime Martínez, the director of the magazine Qué Pasa, received a similar call. Máximo Pacheco, former Minister of Justice under Eduardo Frei Montalva and former parliamentarian, then vice president of the Chilean Commission for Human Rights, was also summoned.

At the Vicaría, the three met with the auxiliary bishop of Santiago, Enrique Alvear, and the vicar, Cristián Precht. There, it was explained to them that if they agreed to stay, they would receive confidential information, regarding which they had to maintain strict secrecy while awaiting the filing of a formal complaint.

Everyone nodded, and the door was closed. As recalled by María Luisa Sepúlveda, then a social worker at the Vicaría and today president of the board of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights Foundation, they were told about the discovery of skeletal remains and were asked to form a commission of "good men" to verify the information.

The request was that they depart immediately for the site of the events in Vicaría officials' cars.

"We wanted to constitute a commission that would have credibility before any court," says Javier Luis Egaña, then executive secretary of the Vicaría.

Augusto Góngora, who was the director of the magazine Solidaridad (of the Vicaría), recalls that for the authorities of the ecclesiastical institution, the presence of Martínez in the group was very important: "I was very impressed that he agreed.

Qué Pasa was a right-wing magazine, and we assumed that Martínez's political ideas were favorable to the regime. However, I believe he acted motivated by a superior ethical sense. He could not distance himself from a denunciation of that magnitude. I believe his training as a journalist also influenced him."

Abraham Santibáñez recalls that he wanted to call Hoy to warn them that he would be delayed, but they prevented him. "We told them not to worry, that we would take care of that," recalls Egaña.

The mission was of transcendental importance because, until then, reports regarding the forcibly disappeared had been officially dismissed, both in Chile and in international forums. In 1975, for example, the Chilean ambassador to the UN, Sergio Diez, had cast doubt on the existence of people whose disappearance had been reported to the courts.

The Supreme Court itself had questioned the identities of the prisoners. And the Ministry of the Interior routinely issued reports denying that the disappeared had ever been detained by security services.

An old man with a cucalón

In the first week of November 1978, an "extravagant old man, with a cucalón (a type of hat) on his head, a grown beard, and high boots" appeared at the offices of the Vicaría. He wanted to make a report about human remains he had found in Lonquén, on the condition that his identity be kept secret. He was attended to by the priest Gonzalo Aguirre, who had an office set up to receive reports.

Inocencio de los Ángeles confided that he was a peasant, a hermit, who lived in the vicinity of the Lonquén lime kilns. In the days following the coup d'état, he had heard gunshots and the sound of bundles falling into the enormous stone pits. He was convinced that there were about one hundred and fifty bodies there.

Gonzalo Aguirre traveled to the site with Inocencio and found skeletal remains. However, the decision was made at the Vicaría to postpone further actions until the conclusion of the symposium "The Dignity of Man: His Rights and Duties in the World Today," which had been organized by the Church and was being held in Santiago to commemorate the International Year for Human Rights.

That meeting, of an ecumenical and secular nature, was attended by the highest authorities on human rights from the United Nations, the OAS, international organizations, and a special envoy from the Vatican.

"It was the first meeting of these characteristics in Latin America [since the beginning of the military dictatorships], and the importance of the guests was such that efforts to prevent its realization did not prosper," recalls Enrique Palet, at that time a member of a committee of advisors to Vicar Cristián Precht and the symposium's sponsoring committee.

The meeting was not free from vicissitudes. The original idea was for it to take place entirely in the Cathedral. With that objective, the altar was removed, the pews were moved, and desks and work tables were installed.

Behind, in the presbytery, a sign hung across the entire width that read: "EVERY MAN HAS THE RIGHT TO BE A PERSON." Forty-eight hours before it began, Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez summoned the organizers to analyze the suspension of the symposium, as the Cabildo de Santiago—the ecclesiastical entity that administers the Cathedral—opposed the use of the temple for that purpose.

The Government had offered the Diego Portales building, but the Cardinal had already rejected it for obvious reasons.

"It will always weigh on me how hard we were on him. We unanimously opposed the suspension. The Cardinal told us that he had responsibilities as a pastor and that, even despite his personal feelings, he had to deny the use of the Cathedral, except for the inaugural and closing acts.

I still remember that, when the meeting ended, I saw him walk away alone down the hall of the Vicaría, with his hat in his hand. How unfair we were. With everything he had done," relates Palet.

Recovered from the bad news, the organizers transformed the interior of the Vicaría to turn it into an event center. The sign behind the Cathedral altar remained there all week. At the symposium's opening ceremony, the Cantata of Human Rights was presented, composed by the priest Esteban Gumucio for the lyrics and Alejandro Guarello for the music: "...

But Cain came and it was night. Like a beast, he threw himself against his brother," read a verse of the work. In the narrated passages, the voice of Roberto Parada thundered in the Cathedral.

Uncovering the discovery of the skeletal remains in the middle of the symposium would have had a global impact. But at the Vicaría, they feared that the dictatorship would accuse them of orchestrating a setup.

"We told ourselves: 'They are going to destroy us.' It was the first demonstration that the forcibly disappeared existed and that one could no longer continue talking about 'alleged' ones," explains Egaña.

María Luisa Sepúlveda recalls that "it was very distressing to keep the information to ourselves and manage the security of the place. The symposium had begun in April with discussions in grassroots organizations about human rights in different areas, at a time when no one could do anything, and international authorities were coming to meet with those working groups to debate their conclusions.

We didn't want to do anything that would risk that work that had cost so much, nor that the report would end in a show and they would steal the bodies from us."

It had already happened to them with those executed at the Cuesta de Chada in 1974. After receiving the report about the appearance of about twenty bodies, the Vicaría officials arrived at the site only to discover that they had been removed. "We came to find them in 1990, as skeletal remains piled up in the Legal Medical Service," says María Luisa Sepúlveda.

The symposium ended on November 25, but the last delegate left Chile on the 29th. Only then did the Vicaría feel free to proceed to handle the Lonquén case. Only a handful of those attending the assembly were warned to be attentive to the events following their departure.

A bed frame

Abraham Santibáñez relates that upon arriving at the site, a group of seminarians with pickaxes and shovels was waiting for them to help them with the task. First, they tried to enter the kilns, which were funnel-shaped, from above.

But a solid cement slab prevented it. Then they tried through a pit that opened at the base. It was a tube-shaped space that narrowed, forcing the witnesses to crawl and enter through a small hole that finally opened up under the kilns. Light did not enter from anywhere, and they had to light torches with newspaper to illuminate and look upward.

"There was a metal grate, like that of a bed frame, that had been left across our heads, and on it, one could see yellowish skulls, with remains of hair, scraps of clothing, long bones," describes Santibáñez.

Máximo Pacheco said in an interview: "We began to open the kiln from below, and suddenly a skull comes out. And then, a bone, another bone, and another bone. I thought I was going to faint. Never in my life had I seen such a thing."

Pacheco recalls that the heat was unbearable and that in the shade of a small tree, he took a break to recover next to Bishop Alvear. Santibáñez adds that "someone suggested, against all orthodoxy, that we should take some bones, in the event that after our departure they came to take them away. And so it was done."

On December 1, 1978, the highest officials of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, together with Máximo Pacheco and Bishop Alvear, appeared at the Supreme Court to file the complaint and request an investigation. They were received by the president, Israel Bórquez, who some time before had declared himself "fed up" with reports about the forcibly disappeared.

"He told us: 'Do you think that if you dig a hole in your garden and a bone comes out, it is enough to come and bother the Supreme Court?' I told him: 'Sir, that is not the case. And this complaint is not to you, but to the Court, and I would like you to present it (to the Plenary of the Court)'," relates Pacheco in the cited interview.

Bórquez reproached Bishop Alvear that it had been a mistake to present the complaint with the sponsorship of Pacheco and Alejandro González (then legal head of the Vicaría), since they had been Minister and Undersecretary of Justice for President Eduardo Frei Montalva, respectively, and for the judge, that meant they were politicians of the disastrous old regime; but he agreed to present it before the Plenary.

A few hours later, the Supreme Court ordered the judge of Talagante to initiate the investigation.

The identification

On December 6, Judge Adolfo Bañados was appointed to investigate as a visiting judge. The news, which the Vicaría shared with the families who until then were searching for the disappeared still with the hope that they were alive, unleashed a wave of anxiety among the relatives.

"Everyone thought they could be their relatives. We suspected, due to the initial report, that there could be about one hundred bodies and we thought they could correspond to later events, perhaps the 119 of the DINA," states María Luisa Sepúlveda.

The relatives of the disappeared began to arrive in Lonquén while the social workers of the Vicaría, together with the psychologist Sergio Lucero, tried to contain their anguish in the offices of the Vicaría.

"There was no one among us with forensic experience, and the Legal Medical Institute was controlled by the dictatorship. With the help of a lawyer from the University of Chile, we began to build anthropomorphic files of the victims.

It must be remembered that until then, the families were looking for them alive. We had to start asking them about their height, if they had had injuries, if they had dental records, what clothes they wore. Not everyone had photos. In that time, many people made their own clothes: they began to arrive with buttons, pieces of fabric. It was very hard, very hard," says María Luisa Sepúlveda.

The first news that helped clear the puzzle was knowing that the bodies were only fifteen. And later, in February 1979, the receipt from a soda fountain in Isla de Maipo that appeared in one of the jackets recovered from the kilns.

Only then did the search focus on the relatives from Isla de Maipo. They were men from three peasant families who worked on the Naguayán estate, and four young men captured in the plaza of Isla de Maipo: Sergio Maureira Lillo, 46 years old, detained together with his sons Sergio Miguel (27), José Manuel (26), Rodolfo Antonio (22), and Segundo Armando (24); Enrique René Astudillo Alvarez (51), together with his sons Ramón (27) and Omar (19); Carlos Segundo Hernández Flores (39 years old), together with his brothers Nelson (32) and Óscar (30).

The young men captured in the plaza of Isla de Maipo were Iván Ordóñez Lama, 17 years old, and his friends José Herrera Villegas (17), Miguel Brant Bustamante (19), and Manuel Navarro Salinas (20).

All of them had been detained on October 7, 1973, by a patrol of seven carabineros under the orders of Lieutenant Lautaro Castro Mendoza. In charge of the patrol was Pablo Ñancupil, who personally knew several of the victims.

After the group's disappearance, their relatives had received contradictory information about their whereabouts and had toured the detention centers of Santiago and its surroundings, until in 1975 Sergio Diez said before the United Nations that "many of the alleged disappeared have no legal existence." The Chilean ambassador then provided a list among which eight of the disappeared from Isla de Maipo appeared: he had put Sergio Maureira on a list of fictitious names and gave seven others as found dead in the Legal Medical Service.

The families in Chile were desperate with the news, but they did not receive any confirmation about the deaths until that summer of 1978-1979—shortly after the discovery in the Lonquén kilns—they were summoned to the Vicaría to provide the background information for the files of their disappeared relatives.

María Luisa Sepúlveda recalls that Rosario Rojas, the wife of Enrique Astudillo and mother of Ramón and Omar, wore a braid that she promised not to cut until she found her own.

One by one, the relatives from Isla de Maipo had to face the task in the morgue of recognizing their relatives by the clothes they were wearing on the day of their disappearance.

It was them. Rosario cut her braid.

Withdrawal of televisions

The discovery of the corpses of the fifteen forcibly disappeared persons from Isla de Maipo not only refuted, in practice, the version provided by Ambassador Diez before the United Nations. It also demolished the label of "alleged" forcibly disappeared, used by the regime's authorities, the judiciary, and the officialist press of the time.

Judge Bañados, furthermore, had the audacity to consider the crimes proven and to detain and prosecute the carabineros before disqualifying himself and transferring the case to the military justice system on April 4, 1979.

In August, the military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar applied the amnesty law, releasing the accused. With no few difficulties, the lawyers of the Vicaría managed to get Prosecutor Salazar to sign the order for the delivery of Sergio Maureira's body, and with that notification, the wake was organized at the Recoleta Franciscana church on September 14.

Four thousand people gathered waiting for the bodies to be delivered to hold the funeral mass and bury them in the General Cemetery.

"We had organized ourselves. Some were waiting at the Medical Legal. I was going from the Recoleta church to the Vicaría, to call. A lot of time passed, but they never told us there were problems. The church was full, with ordinary people. Many came from far away, with great effort. When they told us they were not going to deliver the bodies, it was very hard," relates María Luisa Sepúlveda.

"It was a chilling cry of weeping. I still have it here," says Góngora, as if covering his ears. "People were fainting, screaming. A movement was felt throughout the church, as if everyone felt the instinct to hug the relatives. With everything they had done to them. It was a cruelty that we never imagined possible."

Officials of the Legal Medical Institute had removed the bodies during the night and had dumped the skeletal remains, mixed together, into a mass grave in the Isla de Maipo cemetery. The body of Sergio Maureira, the only one officially identified by the prosecutor's office, was buried in a coffin in a dirt grave.

Abraham Santibáñez notes the fact that denying the burial served no judicial purpose, since the remains had already been identified and the perpetrators had been amnestied. The bodies, as evidence, could no longer incriminate anyone.

Javier Luis Egaña has no doubt that the order came from a higher level. "It was an unspeakable evil, of a profound contempt for human dignity. Although I do not doubt that there were thoughtless officials at the intermediate level, a thing of that magnitude required consultation at the highest levels. It was a decision made coldly."

The relatives of the forcibly disappeared held hunger strikes, and the Archbishopric of Santiago requested the delivery of the bodies to the families. Numerous national and international entities did the same.

But the Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández, and the other authorities remained unmoved. Already in March 1979, Fernández had rejected the content of a letter signed by more than forty personalities, among them several National Prize winners, Patricio Aylwin, Jaime Castillo Velasco, and the Zaldívar brothers.

The signatories asked that political responsibilities be investigated in the cases of the assassination of Orlando Letelier and the disappearances in Isla de Maipo.

This was, in part, the response from the Ministry led by Fernández: "Faced with such pitiful attitudes, the Ministry of the Interior can only disqualify in an absolute and categorical form the referred declaration, as false as it is inopportune and harmful to the honor of Chile and its institutions, which has only been forged by the desperation of those who can do nothing against the advance of the entire nation, dedicated entirely to working honestly and loyally for its own development and which repudiates those who, without stopping at any kind of collusion, intend to return to chaos, anarchy, and demagoguery."

María Luisa Sepúlveda recalls that subsequent judicial proceedings revealed that in December 1978, after the appearance of the bodies in Lonquén, Augusto Pinochet gave the order for regiments throughout the country to carry out the operation called "Withdrawal of televisions." It was the order to exhume and dispose of the bodies of the disappeared that had been hidden in clandestine graves like those of Lonquén.

Epilogue

The relatives of the disappeared from Isla de Maipo would not stop suffering. As long as the dictatorship lasted, they could not recover the bodies of their relatives. The kilns were bought by a private individual, dynamited, and closed to the public.

The carabineros prosecuted by Bañados were released, and the civilians who instigated the crime against the peasants never faced trial. A process that seeks to establish these responsibilities remains open in the Court of Appeals of San Miguel.

Regarding the remains, Emilio Astudillo, today a councilman for Isla de Maipo, relates that in 2006, and despite doubts within the group of relatives itself, they decided to request an exhumation to achieve the full identification of their loved ones.

It took four years for national and international experts—hired by the Government after the scandal over the erroneous identifications in Patio 29—to provide certainty of the identity of thirteen of the fifteen skeletal remains that were removed mixed from that mass grave.

Two victims still await expert reports for their full recognition. As a result of those scientific investigations, the relatives confirmed that the peasants were murdered by beatings and rifle butts, and thrown tied into the kilns.

Astudillo relates, at the foot of the small memorial created with great effort and difficulties in the Isla de Maipo cemetery, that only in March 2010 did the relatives receive a sample of the skeletal remains to bury them in coffins little larger than a shoebox.

At last, they were able to say goodbye to them, although some, like his mother (the woman who inspired the character played by Luz Jiménez in the first chapter of Los archivos del cardenal), could not bear the wait of thirty-seven years.

Rosario Rojas died shortly after giving the DNA sample that confirmed that her husband and two of her twelve children were murdered because of a hatred she never managed to understand.

Source: casosvicaria.udp.cl undated

Received by memoriaviva on 3-29-2011

Dear sirs, My father Enrique Astudillo Alvarez and my brothers Ramón and Omar Astudillo were exhumed in 2006 from the Isla de Maipo cemetery, and their remains were transferred to the Legal Medical Service of Santiago... the identification process between the Legal Medical Service of Santiago, Chile, and the TEXAS laboratory in the UNITED STATES lasted 4 years... and in February 2010, the information was delivered to the relatives that our loved ones had been identified, information delivered by Judge SOLIS who had the case.

The remains of our relatives were delivered by the Legal Medical Service on March 26, 2010, to give them a Christian burial... in the Isla de Maipo cemetery... after a 2-night wake... Sincerely,

EMILIO ASTUDILLO ROJAS

President of the Lonquen Victims Association Son and Brother of the victims Mail: reastud@islademaipo.cl

Source: EMILIO ASTUDILLO ROJAS