The kidnapping of the 14 political prisoners from the Antofagasta jail, tied up and blindfolded, was recorded in the Gendarmerie Armed Guard's Logbook. The entry was written at 23:30 on October 18, 1973, starting on the thirteenth line of page 290.

It was the night of the Caravan of Death massacre in that city. Two young officers from the Antofagasta Armored School ordered their subordinates to load the detainees onto two trucks. The names of both officers were inscribed in the book because the Gendarmerie demanded they sign the logbook to record the removal: "Signed by Lieutenants Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas and Pablo Martínez Latorre." The trucks were placed at the disposal of "Lobo" Sergio Arellano, the head of the Caravan, by Santelices and Martínez's commander at the Armored School, Colonel Adrián Ortiz Gutmann.

Two hours later, the 14 kidnapped individuals, taken from the jail under the excuse that they would be taken to a court-martial that never took place, were torn apart by gunfire and bayonet stabs in the Quebrada del Way.

Today, Santelices, recently promoted to Division General, is the commander of the Army Garrison of the Metropolitan Region. Martínez Latorre is not part of the Army high command, and LND does not know if he is active or retired.

The content of the Guard's Logbook regarding the handover of the prisoners to the two officers was incorporated into a report from the Antofagasta Criminal Court dated February 5, 1986, whose presiding judge went to the jail to conduct "an ocular inspection" of the book where the entry and removal of the 14 detainees is recorded.

Among them were Eugenio Ruiz-Tagle Orrego, a MAPU militant and relative of former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, and the general manager of the northern branch of the Production Development Corporation (Corfo) and head of the Socialist Party of Antofagasta, Mario Silva Iriarte.

The judicial report is attached to the Caravan case, which was investigated by Judge Juan Guzmán and is currently being handled by Minister Víctor Montiglio. Meticulously, the book even recorded the license plates of the trucks: BFU-77 and EI-412.

The plaintiff lawyer in this case, Hugo Gutiérrez, maintains: "We have been left stunned to confirm that this Mr. Santelices is today a general of the Republic in active service, having kidnapped, tied up and blindfolded, the 14 prisoners who were later murdered by the Caravan of Death along with local officers from Antofagasta who also took part in the massacre.

Therefore, we will request the indictment of General Santelices, because General (R) Ortiz Gutmann has already been indicted for placing the military trucks at Arellano's disposal." In the pampa A witness to the kidnapping of the 14 detainees that night was the then-Gendarmerie corporal Luis González Pacheco. "They lined them up next to the trucks and one who was in charge started calling roll.

Then he said: 'Alright, get them up there!' The soldiers threw them into the truck like sacks of potatoes. The detainees were scared and some asked: 'Where are you taking me? What are you going to do to me?'" That was his account recorded in the proceedings.

It is General Santelices himself who recounts the epilogue in one of his judicial statements. He relates that they left Antofagasta in the trucks and headed into the pampa. They stopped and waited until Arellano's death squad arrived.

Traveling with him was Ortiz Gutmann, who ordered Santelices and Martínez to take the detainees down. "We lined them up in front of the trucks, which had their lights on. I saw that Fernández Larios was there.

Immediately, thousands of shots were heard," declares Santelices. They collected the massacred bodies and loaded them into the same trucks. "We took them to the morgue, where they were waiting for us," the general himself affirms.

It was the horrific spectacle that General Joaquín Lagos Osorio told Judge Juan Guzmán about before he died. "They were unrecognizable, massacred." Lagos was the division commander and was the one who confronted Arellano, shouting, "because of this crime behind my back." Hours later, he dared to confront the dictator Pinochet himself at the Antofagasta airfield. "You ordered it!" he growled at him.

Due obedience? The situation of General Santelices, who declares in the proceedings "I was only a second lieutenant who graduated in 1973," reopens the discussion. Are the young officers who obeyed orders criminally liable?

And if not, ethically and morally, should officers who participated in any way in crimes against humanity remain in the ranks of the Army, and even more so in the high command? For plaintiff lawyer Eduardo Contreras, General Santelices "is at least an accomplice or accessory after the fact and must be indicted, because the principle of due obedience has long since been discarded in these types of crimes." He adds that if a judge were to consider that he has no criminal responsibility, "ethically and morally, he cannot be where he is.

In these types of crimes, the principle of innocence that has been invoked regarding the case of these generals cannot apply until they are indicted and convicted by a judge. That is something that damages the image of the Armed Forces and offends society and the memory of the victims and their families."

Source: La Nacion, January 28, 2008

Interrogation and confrontations to be practiced on Santelices

General (R) Gonzalo Santelices Cuevas will be interrogated and confronted with other officers (R) who were present when personnel from the Antofagasta Armored School (10/19/1973) murdered 14 prisoners in the place in the desert known as the Quebrada del Way.

The proceeding was resolved yesterday by Minister Víctor Montiglio, who is investigating the case of the victims of the Caravan of Death, which, days after the military coup, was commanded by General Sergio Arellano Stark through the south and north of the country.

The judge thus granted a request filed by the plaintiff lawyer in that case, Hugo Gutiérrez, who asked that Santelices be investigated as an accused party and not as a witness, as he was previously interrogated by Judge Juan Guzmán.

Santelices left the Army last February, after LND made his procedural statements in this trial public. In them, the General (R) admitted to Judge Juan Guzmán that on the night of October 19, he took the prisoners from the Antofagasta jail, drove them in two trucks to the Quebrada del Way, and lined them up in front of the vehicles with the lights on.

Then, Arellano's men and Antofagasta officers wounded them with bayonet cuts and riddled them with high-caliber automatic rifles. Santelices acknowledged that he collected the bodies and drove them to the city morgue, "where they were waiting for us." With his departure from the Army, without being indicted or convicted for human rights violations, the principle of "presumption of innocence" was broken.

In this case, the Government considered that the general, regardless of his judicial fate, had a political and ethical responsibility that prevented him from continuing in the ranks of the Army and even more so in the high command.

It transpired that Santelices would be interrogated as an "accused party" and not as a witness. Among those he will face in the confrontations are General (R) Adrián Ortiz Gutmann, his commander at the Armored School in 1973, and Officer (R) Pablo Martínez Latorre.

It was together with the latter that Santelices removed the prisoners from the jail, as recorded in the guard logbook. The book was examined in 1986 by an Antofagasta criminal judge, a proceeding that is part of the file handled by Montiglio.

Source: La Nacion, March 4, 2008

New faces in the Santelices case

Among the "developments" emerging from the first proceedings that Minister Víctor Montiglio is initiating today in the case of General Santelices—still active for administrative reasons—is the emergence in the Antofagasta episode of the Caravan of Death of Officers (R) Pablo Martínez Latorre and Patricio Ferrer Ducaud.

They are the first two summoned by Montiglio in relation to the inquiries to decide the procedural situation of General Santelices and those testifying today. Regarding the proceedings with Santelices, who will be interrogated and confronted with the others, they begin in the coming hours, and the date of his summons is being kept confidential, coordinated between the judge and the Army's Administrative Support Command.

Another person appearing among those to be summoned soon, although not new to the case, as he is indicted as the perpetrator of the crimes against 14 prisoners in Antofagasta in October 1973, is General (R) Adrián Ortiz Gutmann.

In 1973, he was the commander of the Antofagasta Armored School to which Santelices and Martínez belonged—the two who, on the night of October 18, 1973, removed the prisoners from the Antofagasta jail and handed them over in the desert to be murdered by General Arellano Stark's squad and officers from that Armored School.

Major (R) Patricio Ferrer was the head of the Intelligence Department of the I Army Division in Antofagasta. He was the one who handed the list of the 14 prisoners to Santelices and Martínez, who ordered them to be tied up and blindfolded before loading them onto the two trucks in which they took them to their final destination and later to the morgue.

Ortiz Gutmann, who celebrated the military coup at the barracks, agreed that day to place the two Armored School trucks at Arellano's disposal to transport the detainees to the Quebrada del Way. On the afternoon of October 18, 1973, Arellano reviewed the list of all detainees in Antofagasta, together with the auditor of the I Division, Lieutenant Colonel Marcos Herrera Aracena.

And he finished finalizing the 14 names with Major Ferrer Ducaud. If Herrera is alive, he could also be on the list of those summoned by Montiglio and become another of the "developments" in this new episode opening in the Caravan process.

The judicial situation of Santelices and the rest of those summoned in one of the most emblematic trials for human rights violations appears difficult according to the legal criteria of Judge Montiglio who, for much less, has indicted several former agents in the Calle Conferencia case.

Source: La Nacion, March 6, 2008

Exoneration of General (R) Santelices for Caravan crimes rejected

General (R) Gonzalo Santelices will remain indicted for the crimes of the Caravan of Death in 1973 in Antofagasta, after the Fifth Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals resolved to reject his defense's arguments to exonerate him from these events.

By one vote, the former commander of the Metropolitan Region Garrison was saved from being elevated to the status of perpetrator of these 14 murders, given that on April 17, the trial judge Víctor Montiglio indicted him as an accomplice along with Colonel (R) Patricio Ferrer Ducaud and Lieutenant (R) Pablo Martínez Latorre.

The person whom the chamber did reclassify into the category of perpetrator was the then-head of the Intelligence Department of the I Army Division in Antofagasta, Ferrer Ducaud. He is the only one for whom the judicial resolution maintained preventive detention at the Military Police Battalion in the Peñalolén commune, considering him a "danger to the security of society." Santelices' defense The legal defense of Santelices attempted to demonstrate that, being in October 1973 a second lieutenant who had graduated only a few weeks earlier from the Military School, he did nothing more than receive orders from the commander of the Antofagasta Armored School, at that time Colonel Adrián Ortiz Gutmann. And that, furthermore, acting that time in conjunction with Martínez Latorre, he also obeyed his orders since Martínez was a lieutenant. However, the legal thesis of "due obedience" given his low rank and age was rejected by the ministers of the Fifth Chamber, just as it had been discarded before by Judge Montiglio when he submitted him to the process. Together with Martínez Latorre, on the night of October 18, 1973, Santelices kidnapped 14 prisoners from the Antofagasta jail, driving them in two trucks to the Quebrada del Way. There, he took them down and lined them up in front of the trucks, tied up and blindfolded, so that members of the Caravan and officers of the Antofagasta Armored School could riddle them with gunfire. Beforehand, the detainees suffered cruelty with deep bayonet cuts. Later, Santelices and a platoon of subordinates collected the bodies and took them to the morgue. While still a general in active service, Santelices was forced to leave the Army in February 2008, after La Nación Domingo revealed his participation in these crimes. Starting from the report, Montiglio investigated for 14 months, managing to prove the criminal responsibility of the three accused.

Source: La Nación, Tuesday, May 5, 2009

September 11, 1973, in Antofagasta: Tanks, repression, and the beginning of the military dictatorship

"On September 11, around 07:40, all of us at the Antofagasta Armored School were called to the courtyard where the director, Army Colonel Adrián Ortíz Gutmann, stated that Allende's government was over, that we had to go out into the street and take our combat positions, which in my case was that of a tank driver (APC, personnel carrier) of the First Rifle Company of the Armored School (...) 'You are prepared for war, so let's go.'" On the day of the coup d'état in Antofagasta, military vehicles and tanks left the Antofagasta Armored School in different directions.

One was stationed at the entrance of the Regional Intendancy, another in front of the Venceremos Camp, two at the intersection of the Carrizo bridge on the way to INACESA, another in front of the Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU).

At 10 in the morning, an army tank installed itself and pointed its cannons for long minutes at the front of the Third Police Station of Carabineros. Subsequent revelations by some officials indicate that it was the greatest fright they experienced.

It was a moment of terror. They did not know what kind of response they should have to this threat. They only managed to hide and cross their fingers that they would not fire at the police station. They quickly subordinated themselves to the local army as the military regime that would last 17 years was installed.

At the same time, in Santiago, General Mendoza, who held the sixth place in the Carabineros hierarchy, became part of the government junta, an unprecedented fact in Latin American dictatorships. In Antofagasta, on the morning of September 11, at the Fourth Police Station, the Tocopilla-born Carabineros officer and militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), Guillermo Shmidt, killed the major and the captain of the same station as an act of resistance to the coup d'état.

During the afternoon and night, Schmidt was savagely tortured and "sentenced to death" by decision of General Joaquín Lagos Osorio and the group that stormed the Antofagasta Intendancy. It has never been possible to verify that a trial existed as was made known by the local and national press.

What we do know, from judicial statements by officials of the Third Police Station of Antofagasta, is that he was interrogated and tortured in that same facility, with the aim of inquiring about other involved Carabineros.

The suspicions that more Carabineros were involved lasted several weeks, which led to several officials being detained and interrogated about their alleged relationship with Popular Unity parties and meetings with Schmidt.

The prefecture of the time took two decisions that same day: first, the quartering for one month of all personnel of the city's third police station located at the corner of Baquedano and San Martín streets and, second, the creation of the Carabineros Intelligence Service – SICAR – an organization that during the 17 years of the civil-military dictatorship would be in charge of so-called "counterinsurgency," supported by the concepts of the National Security Doctrine, under which they argued their actions: surveillance, raids, torture, murder, and forced disappearance of people.

According to the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, the SICAR was formed (at least) in: Arica, Santiago, Rancagua, San Fernando, Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, and Ancud. You may be interested in | Convictions issued against two former Carabineros officers for human rights crimes in various cases committed in 1973 in the north and south of the country This brief text seeks to contribute to elucidating the way in which repression was articulated during the first year of the dictatorship in Antofagasta at the hands of Carabineros de Chile, in particular, in the formation of the Carabineros Intelligence Service in the city, its institutional relations with other intelligence agencies, and the role its officials played in crimes and human rights violations. Based on the review and systematization of statements by agents in files and judicial sentences regarding the murder of Gumercindo del Carmen Álvarez Pizarro, and the forced disappearance of René Daniel Vallejos Parra, along with documentation produced by the Undersecretariat of Carabineros housed in the National Administration Archive, as well as press, institutional bulletins, and service records of police officials, we were able to reconstruct—in part—the trajectory of the SICAR in the city. (Re)structuring order and security With the coup d'état, Carabineros assumed a new role as a member of the "government junta," moving from having only functions related to 'order and security' to having influence in state administration and governance. In this regard, starting in 1974 (until 2011), they began to be part of the Ministry of Defense, whose function corresponds to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country (Plaza et al, 2023). With this, the institution responded to military objectives related to the National Security Doctrine, a military strategy that focused on the notion of the "internal enemy," which for the case of Carabineros, was materialized in the idea of "urban guerrilla" or "street disturbances," as a local focus of international terrorism (Vallejos, 2019). For its dismantling, not only was the so-called "Mobile Group" or "Anti-Riot Unit" needed, but a larger mechanism around "counterintelligence." At the national level, as stated in file Rol 629-2010 of the Santiago Court of Appeals, the SICAR was "initially structured as a security service, which by the beginning of 1974 was divided into four working groups, two of them operational: 'Operations' and 'Counterintelligence' and, two administrative, 'Analysis' and 'Archive and Kardex'." This structure coincides with the structure of the CAJSI (Jurisdictional Grouping Command for Internal Security), territorial organizations in charge of military personnel responsible for the repressive deployment (Seguel, 2022). In Antofagasta, until September 10, the so-called Carabineros Civil Commission and the "Radio Patrol Unit" operated in the Third Police Station of Antofagasta; the former was an organization created by the institution to face crime in the main cities of the country. Its members wore civilian clothes and had had street fights in the city's streets with supporters of the Popular Unity government and the MIR, within the framework of the growing and polarized political climate imposed by sectors of the local petty and middle bourgeoisie during the last months of 1972, and in the course of 1973. The newspaper El Mercurio de Antofagasta, in August 1973, published images outside the intendancy when members of the Civil Commission drew their weapons to threaten young protesters. The second organization, the "Radio Patrol Unit," was the continuation of the "Mobile Group," a group created within Carabineros in 1936 with the purpose of monitoring and controlling demonstrations and disturbances, which included tactics of dispersal and crowd control, and the acquisition of a series of implements for this: helmets, mowag vehicles, among others (Maldonado, 1996). This group was dissolved in 1970 by Salvador Allende after mass murders in the El Salvador Mineral (1966) and Puerto Montt (1969). In Antofagasta, they had a staff of about 30 people, and they operated in the Third Police Station. Once the coup d'état was perpetrated—as stated in judicial statements by Carabineros officials—members of the Civil Commission of the second, third, and fourth police stations were recruited for the SICAR. Julio Eduardo Aguilar Valdes (3rd Station) was designated as head of the SICAR. Also recruited were officer Ricardo Lillo Morandé, who would be second in command, and Héctor Enrique Ovando, both from the "Radio Patrol Unit," in charge, for example, of the water cannon vehicle that repelled street demonstrations in the city before the coup. Part of the organization's leadership was also Captain Arturo Lopez Argandoña and Orlando del Río Contreras. Although Aguilar Valdés' service record indicates October 15, 1973, as the date of assignment to the SICAR, prior to this there are already records of detentions such as the case of René Vallejos, at the beginning of October '73. Other officials of the Third Police Station were: Juan Ramirez Ruz, Jose Luis Villanueva Zeballos, Osvaldo Canto Aguayo, José Soto Ampuero, Alfredo Vega Ramos, Jaime Rodriguez Quiroga, and Juan León Hernández (Cachorro); from the second police station Civil Commission: Héctor Araya Sepúlveda, Luis Nuñez Yañez, Hugo Hermosilla Parodi, Enrique Contreras Henríquez, and Ismael Riveros Cuello (Cachuta). Between September and December 1973, they operated in the city's Third Police Station in the dungeons located in the building's basements (Case file 3-2011, p. 634; 1395). All the Carabineros who were recruited by the SICAR stopped wearing institutional uniforms. They acted in groups of 4 people with different tasks. Each group occupied a vehicle, including a Chevrolet Van that belonged to the Soquimich Company, a white Peugeot 404, provided by a businessman from the city whose identity was not mentioned, and a white double-cab pickup truck. In certain operations, they had broad institutional support, such as in the detention and disappearance of René Vallejos (10-04-1973), or the murder of Oscar Leiva (11-15-1975), occasions in which the detention involved more than 5 vehicles and a staff of about 30 people for each case. During 1974, the SICAR operated in the Carabineros Instruction Group (Avenida Matta No. 3211 - 3221), a place where a large number of left-wing militants were detained throughout the year. In May 1974, the detention of about twenty workers from the 'Michilla' mine was confirmed. One of them, Daniel Peña Brunes, a Communist Party militant, "appeared dead" under strange circumstances in the Antofagasta Public Jail. In September of the same year, at the Instruction Group, Gumercindo Alvarez Pizarro was murdered, a case for which there are convictions against two SICAR officials: Ricardo Lillo Morandé and Juan Arturo León Hernández. La Providencia – centralizing 'intelligence' In the judicial process regarding the murder of Gumercindo Álvarez (PC), Guillermo Castro Álvarez, a Carabinero from the Fourth Police Station of Antofagasta, declared that he was designated along with other people to a "general knowledge course" to integrate a "special group." Said course lasted two to three months and was held in Rocas de Santo Domingo, where the Antofagasta Brigade of the National Intelligence Directorate was formed under the charge of General Luis Antonio Besamat Morales. He also points out that there were about 15 people who made up the DINA "who wore special badges with the figure of a fist in the center." The other Carabineros who traveled to the mentioned course were: Claudio Bacarezza Díaz, Sub-officer of the Third Police Station, and Sergeant Cirilo López Vilca, Sub-officer Rodolfo Tapia Diaz, and Sub-officer Jorge Cabrera Ardiles, from the Second Police Station. In addition, other members of the army were added who can be consulted in the mentioned processes. Those who returned from the course in Rocas de Santo Domingo also created the Regional Intelligence Center (CIRE), whose work was surveillance and information on neighboring countries (foreign intelligence and counterintelligence), and local and regional intelligence and counterintelligence operations. The CIRE was initially constituted in a house located on Curicó street at Maipú, provided by the Antofagasta Bolivia Railway. In the last quarter of 1974, it operated in La Providencia, a former religious boarding school located on Matta and Chuquisaca streets in the city center, today occupied as a Site of Memory. Héctor Aldunate, an army officer and member of the CIRE, declared that in 1975 he was designated to be part of the Carabineros Intelligence Service (SICAR), which began to cohabit in La Providencia, "my designation was because Carabineros needed training to interrogate detainees" (Rol 22703-4, page 716). He points out that a room adjacent to the courtyard was used for taking statements and torture in which SICAR officials participated, in addition, "the same place where the SICAR was, the DINA was also there (...) there was an agreement between the services, in the sense of sharing information, but this was only at the leadership level" (page 717). As we have recorded in files and reports of the Vicariate of Solidarity and FASIC, mass detentions occurred throughout 1975. At least 56 people, militants of the Communist Party and the Revolutionary Left Movement, were detained. The detentions, these reports point out, were carried out by civilians from the DINA and the SICAR, and all were taken to La Providencia. From there, a group of people from the MIR were sent to Tres Álamos in Santiago, only to be expelled from the country later. The following year, 8 leaders of the Communist Party of Calama were detained and taken to La Providencia. In this way, the coordination of the repressive agencies finished momentarily dismantling the organization and resistance to the regime, expressed in a period of political semi-inactivity in the region during the following years. Civilian collaboration As has been recorded in judicial files, the SICAR had a civilian collaboration network. Among those mentioned by the implicated parties themselves are: the owner of the Fanzetti laundry located in the center of Antofagasta nicknamed 'Fandungo', who is said to have participated in the interrogations, and a man nicknamed Negro Martínez, as well as a photographer who, in 1980, published a photograph of detainees inside La Providencia in El Mercurio de Antofagasta. On the other hand, in 1974, Carabineros strengthened its internal organization. Along with training personnel for intelligence and repression tasks, as we saw previously, it hired professionals for auxiliary tasks as seen in Image 3. Several of them appear mentioned in non-judicial testimonies as part of the repressive framework. In the city, to date, there is no civilian who worked in armed institutions who has been investigated, even though they appear mentioned in judicial processes. Final considerations Since 2014, we have investigated the uses of the former clandestine center for political detention and torture La Providencia in Antofagasta. This work has been carried out based on testimonies from survivors of the detention center, in addition to the review of extensive documentation produced by human rights organizations of the time, and real estate archives to establish the ownership of the property. It has not been an easy task given the silencing and the acts of erasure and concealment carried out on the space. In addition to the obstacles regarding access to internal police information. The task of reviewing and systematizing a judicial file takes time, even more so when it is sometimes partial and not publicly available for cases of crimes against humanity. These files, in addition to the specific content regarding murders and kidnappings, describe the organization of repression, its territorial deployment, and logic of action. The exercise of translating these files aims not only to contribute to public records on the crimes committed by Carabineros de Chile, but also to provide input to popular organizations in the study of political repression and its multiple facets. Finally, we urge that judicial files on crimes against humanity be made public, for collective investigation and reflection as a contribution to truth and justice. Bibliographic references Maldonado, C. (1996). "Orden público en el Chile del siglo XX: trayectoria de una policía militarizada", in: Waldmann, Peter (Coord.), Justicia en la calle: ensayos sobre policía en América Latina, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung/Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre el Desarrollo Latinoamericano/Institut für Spanien und Lateinamerikastudien, Universitát Aubsburg-Isla/ Biblioteca Jurídica Diké, Medellín, Colombia, 1996, pp. 75-98. Plaza, C., Sánchez, C. and Vallejos, C. (2023). De miembros de la Junta a policía de la transición: Carabineros de Chile en la postdictadura (1988-1998). In Camilo Plaza, Luciano Sáez and Nicolás Acevedo (Comp.) 'Mientras llega la alegría: Transición inconclusa en las relaciones cívico - policiales (chile, 1990 - 1994)'. Santiago: Tesis XXI, 25-69. Seguel Gutiérrez, P. (2022). Las Comandancias de Áreas Jurisdiccionales de Seguridad Interior (CAJSI): el dispositivo de seguridad nacional estratégico para el involucramiento de las FF.AA. en la represión estatal en Chile, 1938-1974. Sudamérica : Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 0(16), 36-75. Vallejos, C. (2019). Carabineros de Chile y la seguridad nacional: una mirada a las representaciones policiales del orden público durante la dictadura, 1973-1990. Revista Historia y Justicia, 13.

Source: laizquierdadiario.cl, September 11, 2024