Between September 13 and 16, 1973, 19 people were detained in the towns of Laja and San Rosendo. Six years later, their bodies were found in a clandestine grave in the Yumbel cemetery. It was one of the most shocking cases of human rights violations to occur in the Bío Bío region, and one that remains in memory.

“I want to see my dad, Jack Gutiérrez,” Mirta demanded of Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez at the Laja police station on that September 13, 1973. “There is no Gutiérrez detained here,” the officer replied. “I know he is here and I want to see him,” she insisted. “Yes, he is here,” Rodríguez finally admitted, “but that one is not leaving here alive.” “Why did you detain him?

Is he accused of killing someone or something like that?” “That’s my business. I know what I have to do with all these people I have here,” the sergeant replied arrogantly. “I won’t guarantee that this one is leaving here alive,” he added.

Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 45, had been detained on September 13, 1973, as he was leaving the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) in Laja after finishing his workday. The event occurred at 4:30 p.m.

Gutiérrez and Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz were walking toward their homes when they were intercepted by a patrol led by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez, who took them to the local police station in an Army jeep. A neighbor alerted Rosa Soto, Jack Gutiérrez’s spouse, who immediately went to the police station, where Sergeant Rodríguez himself confirmed the detention.

She was able to hand over clothing she had brought, and she returned with food that night. She did this every day until the 18th. That day, Mrs. Rosa arrived early to drop off breakfast for her husband, but she soon realized that the station’s facilities were empty and that an officer named Montoya was washing the walls and floors. “It seemed to me that the water coming from inside had blood in it, because it was a bit reddish, like when you wash a brick.

A chill went through my whole body.” “Where is my husband?” she asked the Carabineros officer, who would not look her in the face. “They took them to Los Angeles,” he replied, still keeping his back to her. “And where in Los Angeles are they going to leave them?” “At the Regiment,” was all he told her.

On her way out, Rosa Soto met another woman who confirmed that there was no one inside and that, according to the Carabineros, all the detainees had been taken to Los Angeles. She boarded the 1:00 p.m. bus and, at the Regiment, she saw the list of people they had received, but none of the Laja detainees were on it. “They must have taken them to the jail,” she was told.

But they were not there either. “They must be at the stadium, and if they are, you will see them from afar because it is small,” she was assured. Before her bus departed, Mrs. Rosa went to the stadium.

She did not see her husband or any of the acquaintances she had seen at the Laja police station. She returned to Los Angeles several times, achieving nothing. She even sent clothes for her husband to Isla Quiriquina, but eight days later they were sent back. “We went south, to Chillán, to Santiago, we went to ask in many places, but no, they weren’t there… By those days, rumors were already spreading here that they had been killed…”

In San Rosendo, a neighboring town separated by a railway bridge, something similar was happening. Between September 13 and 16, 19 people were detained in San Rosendo and Laja. Six were apprehended in the former, but all arrived at the Laja police station, where they remained until the 17th.

From the 18th onward, their trail disappeared. The stories followed with chilling similarity: Florinda Riquelme Concha recounted the case of her brother, Federico Riquelme Concha, 38, married, union leader, worker at the Laja paper mill: “On September 13, 1973, the moment my brother was leaving his work at the Laja paper mill, he was detained by a Carabineros patrol led by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez.

During the afternoon, my sister-in-law Selva Valdebenito went to notify us of my brother’s detention and that he was at the Laja police station, where she visited him on September 14, 15, and 16. On the 16th, Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez gave her some of my brother’s belongings because he was going to be transferred to the Los Angeles Regiment.

On the 17th, when she visited him again, she was informed that my brother had been taken to the Los Angeles Regiment that day. From that moment on, I accompanied my sister-in-law to the various places where there were concentration camps for political prisoners, without obtaining any information on his whereabouts.”

Ruth del Carmen Medina Neira went through something similar with her husband Luis Araneda Reyes, 43, a railway engineer residing in San Rosendo: “On September 15, 1973, at about 3:30 p.m., he was detained at the door of our house by Carabineros personnel from Laja, accompanied by Corporal Castillo, stationed in San Rosendo, and under the command of Lieutenant Fernández Mitchel from Laja.

They took him to the San Rosendo police station and then to Laja, along with five other detainees, including Juan Acuña and Dagoberto Garfias. On the 17th, I personally went to drop off lunch in Laja, accompanied by my brother-in-law and my eldest son.

We talked with him for quite a while there, and he informed us that in the afternoon they would be taken to Los Angeles. He was very agitated; he was a heart patient, and the previous night they had had to take him out to the patio three times to get air.

On that occasion, there were about thirty other detainees, mostly people known from Laja. On the 18th, when I went to see him, I was informed that they had been taken to Los Angeles, and since then I have had no news of him.”

SECRET INVESTIGATION

In mid-1977, social worker Nelly Henríquez told lawyer Martita Wörner (both worked in the Social Service department of the Archbishopric of Concepción) that she had sufficient information to state that at least twenty people who had been detained in the towns of Laja and San Rosendo in mid-September 1973 were missing.

She told her that there were some testimonies indicating that these people had been executed. That is how both professionals decided to investigate the matter, and for several weeks, on Sundays, they traveled to the area to make contact with the families.

They did so without telling anyone. The matter was not without risk. Sometimes they traveled with a colleague who took them in his small Citroën car. But on other occasions, more frequently, they did so by train.

They would get off in San Rosendo and cross the railway bridge to Laja. Many times they did so during strong wind and rain storms. It was a task of great secrecy that required much patience. They spoke with the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, and managed to get him to lend them a place in the parish to meet with the relatives, mainly women.

They did so under the pretext of talking about some issues, and thus they were able, slowly, to gain the trust they needed to advance the investigation. But since it was a small town, it did not take long for it to become known that these two women arriving from Concepción were up to something.

The Carabineros soon realized that something was happening when the relatives of the detainees began to attend the parish regularly, every weekend. The surveillance they were subjected to did not intimidate them.

After more than eight months of secret trips, and when they had already contacted 19 relatives whose information was in their possession, they decided to speak with Jorge Barudi, then director of the Social Service Department of the Archbishopric of Concepción. “When we told him,” Martita Wörner recalled, “he first threw a tremendous tantrum because it had been a matter that was too bold and intrepid.

But he was as interested as, or more interested than, we were in the subject, and quickly the tantrum turned into action, and we prepared for the lawsuit that had to be filed before the courts.”

Thus, on July 24, 1979, before the Laja Criminal Court, María Inés Herrera Zapata, Ximena Lamana Abarzúa, Ana Luisa Rebolledo Pino, Marta Parada Véjar, Marta Elena Herrera Rojas, Graciela Sandoval Esparza, Berta Elena Contreras Silva, Alma Celeste Garfias Gatica, Ruth Medina Villagra, Rosa Edith Barriga Pérez, Zoila Jara Lizama, Flor María Hernández Villablanca, Rosa Silva Sanhueza, Selva Valdebenito Bris, Laura Zorrilla Rubio, and María Avello Espinoza filed a criminal complaint against Alberto Fernández Mitchel, Carabineros lieutenant in Laja at the time of the crime; Evaristo Garcés; Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, Carabineros sergeant; Juan Muñoz, Carabineros corporal; and officers Carlos Fritz, Leoncio Olivares, Gercio Saavedra, Luis León, Mario Cerda, Juan Oviedo, Pedro Parra Utreras, José San Martín, and others surnamed Otárola, González, and Montoya, “all with legal domicile at the Laja police station at that time, and those others who appear responsible as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups of the crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide” of Fernando Grandón Galvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Luis Antonio Acuña Concha, Mario Jara Jara, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, and Manuel Becerra Avello. To them were added Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Alfonso Macaya Barrales, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez.

THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

Filed under case number 2,770, “Kidnapping of Fernando Grandón and others,” the judge of Laja, Lupercio Fuentes, issued orders to various civil and military institutions to clarify the facts. On August 8, 1979, he sent an order to the Los Angeles Investigations Prefecture to investigate what had happened.

The first inquiries were not easy. No one seemed to know the victims, and the agencies consulted—Carabineros, Army—denied having issued detention orders against them. Even the Minister of the Interior at the time, Sergio Fernández, was consulted: “The inquiry from that court would concern the alleged detention of the named individuals by Carabineros personnel from Laja between September 11 and 17, 1973...

Regarding this matter, it is my duty to inform Your Honor that, having reviewed the lists of persons detained in accordance with the powers of the State of Siege in force at that time, the indicated citizens do not appear, nor is there any record of any order or resolution having been issued against them.”

VISITING MINISTER

Given that the investigation was progressing slowly and that there was information that would clearly reveal where the remains of the 19 people who until then appeared as forcibly disappeared had been buried, the Social Service Department of the Archbishopric of Concepción decided on a new action.

Relying on an agreement of the Plenary of the Supreme Court of March 21, 1979, which ordered the appointment of Extraordinary Visiting Ministers in five departments of the country, specifically mentioning the Concepción Court of Appeals, on August 7 of that year, it was requested that a minister of special rank investigate the situation of the forcibly disappeared detainees of Laja and San Rosendo.

Fifteen days later, the Concepción appellate court, meeting in an extraordinary session, presided over by Minister Víctor Hernández Rioseco and with the attendance of Carlos Cerda Medina, Enrique Tapia Witing, Eleodoro Ortiz Sepúlveda, Luis Rodríguez Salvo, and Ana Espinosa Daroch, “took note of the request for the appointment of a Visiting Minister made by Mr.

Jorge Barudi Videla, executive secretary of the Social Service Department of the Archbishopric of Concepción, and agreed to appoint Minister José Martínez Gaensly to take cognizance of and rule on the process case No. 2,770 of the Laja Court of Letters for the kidnapping and homicide of Fernando Grandón Galvez and others.”

With the information that had already been accumulated in the case, Minister Martínez Gaensly appeared at the Laja Court of Letters to fulfill his duty. It was necessary to ratify the sworn statements and summon many people to testify, including relatives, witnesses, and Carabineros officers mentioned in the complaints.

One of the aspects the minister wanted to clarify was where the Carabineros alluded to in the complaint were. For this, he requested the information, which was provided to him by the Prefect of Bío Bío, Lieutenant Colonel Osvaldo Leyton Grob.

THE CLANDESTINE GRAVE

By then, it was becoming more evident that the detainees had been executed and that their bodies had been buried clandestinely somewhere near Laja, from where they were exhumed to then be transferred, also illegally, to the Yumbel Cemetery.

Anonymous voices began to provide data that were added to the case: it was said that in the area near the El Dorado estate, one night the sound of bullets was heard. That in that same place, remains of clothing and industrial footwear were found.

Many people had heard talk of the clandestine burial in the Yumbel cemetery. More precisely, a neighbor reported that he was able to verify at the gate of the Yumbel cemetery tracks of a truck that had skirted its walls on the south side, where there was no fence, to position itself at the east wall.

In that place, the traces became more noticeable; there were even pieces of towing cables and an industrial shoe. Toward the end of September, the Visiting Minister heard the statements of some of the Carabineros who appeared as authors of the detentions in Laja and San Rosendo.

Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade, second corporal, 31, who had been serving at the Laja police station since 1971, declared on September 26, 1979: “On most occasions, I had to intervene in the patrols for the detention of political activists on the occasion of the military pronouncement, so I do not remember the names of those people who were detained; I only knew the mayor, José Arcadio Fica, the teacher Rubén Campos, and Oscar Sanhueza Contreras, with whom I was a classmate, and even his mother asked me about him, and I could not give her an answer because I did not see him at the barracks.

Regarding the detentions that were made, the attempt was to keep them for the minimum time in the unit given the little space we had, and that is why they were sent quickly to Los Angeles, either through the flying patrols that came from there, from the Army, and through the minibus that the Paper Mill had placed at our disposal...

Regarding the detainees who are said to have been executed on the way to Los Angeles, I have only learned of it through comments in newspapers and from people, but I also do not know if they were transported by military or Carabineros.”

THE EXHUMATION

It was not necessary to dig much. At a little more than a meter deep, the bones began to appear: bones and skulls, as well as remains of clothing, shoes, belts, and even an identity card. It was the morning of Tuesday, October 2, 1979.

At 11:00 a.m., Visiting Minister José Martínez Gaensly had arrived at the Old Cemetery of Yumbel. Few people accompanied him. The procedure he was going to carry out was of such importance that the less it was publicized, the greater the guarantee of achieving a good result.

For this reason, only the forensic doctor, César Reyes; the priest Pedro Campos; the Los Angeles Investigations commissioner, Homero Urzúa; and the titular secretary of the Yumbel Court of Letters, Jorge Urrutia, were notified.

Advisory personnel and cemetery staff also attended. Through the central aisle of the cemetery, the group reached the back of it, to the wall that separates it from the outside. Attached to that wall, on the right side and five meters from the end of the path, is the tomb of the Patrito-Ghiotti family.

Between this and the path, the excavation of a grave two meters wide by three long and one meter deep began. “We really sweated a lot. We were digging the pit for almost three hours,” recounted José Ricardo Morales, 52, a gravedigger at the cemetery who, along with two other workers provided by the Parish, participated in that task.

As the excavation progressed, human remains corresponding to 18 people appeared. 17 complete skulls were also found, some even with hair on the head, as recorded in the minutes drawn up on the occasion. “Subsequently, Dr.

Reyes proceeded to classify the long bones of the human body, especially the femurs, managing to find the pairs belonging to 18 people. After the previous classification, all the remains found there were stored, packed in plastic and cardboard bags, and sent to the Legal Medical Institute of Concepción for the required examination.” At 1:15 p.m., the procedure had ended.

“THANK YOU, MY GOD!”

Berta Elena Contreras, 54, was waiting with relative calm in a small office of the Laja Court for the arrival of the Visiting Minister. There were other women in the place. It was 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, October 3.

Some journalists were already hovering around the premises. With a voice broken by emotion, Mrs. Berta spoke: “When I found out that the bodies had been found, I felt I don’t know what. Perhaps because I am very linked to the church and I always go, I could only say with emotion: Thank you, my God!

Glory to God for having allowed my son to appear!...” The memory of what happened in Lonquén loomed large among the relatives from Laja and San Rosendo. In November 1978, an anonymous informant had reported to the Catholic Church the existence of a clandestine burial in some ovens in the town of Lonquén, about 14 kilometers from Talagante, in the province of Santiago.

Once the report was verified, on December 1, the presentation was made to the Supreme Court, which instructed the Court of Appeals to appoint a Visiting Minister. The appointment fell to magistrate Adolfo Bañados.

The remains were exhumed, and in February 1979, relatives of the forcibly disappeared detainees of Isla de Maipo began the identification. It was determined that the bodies belonged to 15 people who had been detained by Carabineros from Isla de Maipo on October 7, 1973.

However, the tragedy continued until the end. While the relatives were waiting for the coffins for a mass at the Recoleta Franciscana Church in Santiago, military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar had given the order for the remains to be buried in a mass grave in the Isla de Maipo Cemetery.

In Laja and San Rosendo, no one wanted the same thing to happen. For this reason, as soon as they learned of the exhumation of 18 bodies in the Yumbel Cemetery, the relatives began to arrive at the Laja Court so that the Visiting Minister would give them the official version.

“I RECOGNIZED HIM!”

At 11:15 a.m. on Friday, October 5, numerous relatives were waiting at the Legal Medical Institute of Concepción for the moment they would enter to identify the remains exhumed from Yumbel. There was pain, crying, hysteria, emotion... “I recognized him!

There is my Choti! I touched his little head. He had all gold teeth. My God, sir, why is this injustice so great!? I want them to give him to me... they have to give him to me,” cried Rosa Barriga, wife of Juan Acuña Concha, a railway engineer in San Rosendo, inconsolably. “I immediately found his striped green pants and a piece of his wool jacket.

They have to give me his bones; they cannot keep them. Let them punish the guilty,” said Graciela Sandoval between sobs, who, supported by other people, claimed to have recognized her husband, Luis Armando Ulloa.

By his teeth with two gold fillings and part of his pants, Flor María Hernández managed to identify her husband, Juan Villarroel. Marta Herrera found the silver crucifix of her son, Juan Carlos Herrera.

While efforts continued to fully identify the remains of the 18 exhumed bodies, Minister Martínez moved forward with the investigation. It was necessary to continue investigating. The body of one of the forcibly disappeared detainees reported in the complaint remained to be found.

In that effort, Minister Martínez continued taking statements from witnesses and people who could provide any information that would help the case. The confrontations had already begun, and in parallel, Minister Martínez carried out an ocular inspection of the “San Juan” estate.

At 2:30 p.m., he moved to the place in the company of the acting secretary, lawyers Martita Wörner and Fernando Saldaña, as well as forensic doctor César Reyes and the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, and some church volunteers equipped with work tools.

The objective was to carry out a search and excavations. “Upon extracting a certain amount of sand, a man’s shoe appeared, so the excavation continued in that place. As we went deeper, three shoes of different types appeared, disassembled, and a brown boot with a red nylon sock.

A white fiber bag used to transport soda or lime was seen; a little more than half a meter deep, a layer of lime was seen, then an empty pisco bottle in good condition and another broken one. This grave extended about three meters long, more or less, like a trench.” The procedure continued in another sector of the property.

After lifting some branches from an old pine operation, the earth was removed, and pieces of blue fabric appeared that could correspond to a shirt. A pocket comb was also found, buttons possibly from a jacket, a plastic wallet without documents. “As we continued digging, we came across a safety boot-type shoe with a long yellow sock.

Upon examining it, the doctor noticed that it contained bones inside. With extreme care, we proceeded to enlarge the grave, and the corpse of a person appeared. The exhumation was ordered, and once on the surface, the doctor proceeded to examine the remains, which corresponded to a male, more or less 30 years old, with a complete and well-preserved set of teeth.

Before removing the body, it was verified that it was tied at the feet with a wire and another was at the level of the knees; furthermore, it was face down...” Ten meters from the semi-erased path of the property, and following the direction of the two previous graves, a mound was removed on which a large amount of lime grains could be seen.

At a shallow depth, a human bone appeared, apparently corresponding to a forearm. Buttons, a pocket comb, four pairs of shoes, and a pair of optical glasses with a brown frame were also found. The order was given to take the bones and items found to the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago, and shortly after six-thirty in the evening, the procedure was concluded.

The discovery was quickly known by the press, which the following day reported extensively on the event: “In Laja, 19th corpse appeared tied with wires,” headlined La Tercera on October 19.

MULTITUDINOUS FUNERAL

Between November 13 and 19, forensic doctor César Reyes submitted the autopsy reports of the 19 bodies found, with the positive identification of all of them. The skulls of five of them, corresponding to Oscar Sanhueza, Juan Acuña, Luis Ulloa, Wilson Muñoz, and Heraldo Muñoz, showed projectile holes.

Nine others showed some type of fracture and corresponded to Jorge Lamana, Federico Riquelme, Manuel Becerra, Mario Jara, Fernando Grandón, Rubén Campos, Alfonso Macaya, Juan Jara, and Raúl Urra. The remaining five bodies did not show traumatic alterations and corresponded to Dagoberto Garfias, Juan Villarroel, Luis Araneda, Jorge Zorrilla, and Jack Gutiérrez.

Once the identification stage was completed, at the end of November, Minister Martínez ordered the delivery of the bodies to the relatives. The funeral was set for Tuesday, November 27, after a mass that would be officiated at 10:00 a.m. at the San José Parish in Concepción.

But the fear that the remains would not be delivered or that attempts would be made to make them disappear was strong. In the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, the concern meant that its members were willing to form a permanent guard at the doors of the morgue until the bones were delivered.

It was not necessary, Ester Araneda would recall almost twenty years later. “Dr. César Reyes and also Minister Martínez guaranteed us that there would be no problems, and so it was.” “We have arrived today at this house of prayer to pray with hope together with you, mothers, wives, children, relatives of these beings so dear to whom today we have—at least—the consolation of giving a Christian burial and before whom we will be able to deposit the offering of a simple flower, an expression of our love and our pain...

We have come to ask that all the anguish and suffering of these six long and painful years not be sterile...” Before a packed temple, the words of the Auxiliary Bishop, Monsignor Alejandro Goic, resonated strong and emotional.

At 10:00 a.m., the 19 coffins had left the Legal Medical Institute and, in a caravan of more than fifteen blocks, were taken to the San José Church for the farewell liturgy, before their final burial in the Laja Cemetery.

The journey was slow. Accompanied by shouts, silence, and much pain. In the parish, twenty-five priests were waiting. Shortly after 11:00, the mass began. There was much emotion in the venue, which became too small to receive those who wanted to accompany the relatives of the executed from Laja and San Rosendo in their pain.

At the end of the mass, there was applause, and the National Anthem was sung. The procession then began its long journey to Laja. There, at 4:45 p.m., parish priest Félix Eicher officiated the last mass.

After the mass in Laja, the procession with five hearses and hundreds of people headed to the Cemetery. The afternoon was falling, and the heat was declining. It was already nearly 8:00 p.m. On its way to the cemetery, the column stopped in front of the Carabineros Sub-station.

There were no incidents. Only one young woman walked to the police unit and shouted “Murderers!” The coffins were buried in a large tomb, over which a three-meter-high cross was placed, with the word “Peace” at the top and an inscription where a verse by Pablo Neruda is read: “Although the steps touch/ this place for a thousand years/ they will not erase the blood/ of those who fell here/ and the hour will not be extinguished/ in which you fell/ although thousands of voices/ cross this silence...”

INCOMPETENCE AND DISMISSAL

And what had been so much commented on and, in some way, also feared, occurred on March 18, when Minister José Martínez Gaensly declared himself incompetent to continue hearing case number 2,770, because from the reports and statements accumulated during the process, he was able to conclude that in the facts reported in the complaints, “the Carabineros officers of the Laja police station—former lieutenant Alberto Fernández Mitchel, Evaristo Garcés Rubilar, Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, Juan Muñoz Cuevas, Nelson Casanova Delgado, Luis León Godoy, Carlos Fritz Gómez, Gerson Saavedra Renike, Gabriel González Salazar, Juan Oviedo Riquelme, Anselmo San Martín Navarrete, Lisandro Martínez García, José Otárola Sanhueza, Samuel Vidal Riquelme, Florencio Olivares Dade, Pedro Parra Utreras, Sergio Castillo Basaúl (from San Rosendo), and the civilian Israel Ormeño—who were serving in said police unit in the month of September 1973, had an immediate and direct participation...” for which, and according to the provisions of Article 1 of the Code of Military Justice, “I declare myself incompetent to continue hearing this process, and it must, consequently, be sent to the 1st Military Prosecutor’s Office of Los Angeles, as it corresponds to its jurisdiction.” Because it was detrimental to the rights of the party he represented, lawyer Martita Wörner appealed the resolution of Minister Martínez on March 24. Four days later, the military court accepted the declined jurisdiction and ordered that the investigation continue, restoring the case to the summary stage. For those purposes, it appointed Colonel (J) of Carabineros Gustavo Villagrán as ad-hoc prosecutor and Major (J) of the Army Alejandro Abuter Campos as secretary, assigning the case number 323-80.

The Third Military Court of Concepción did not take long to decree the dismissal of the case. It did so on June 9, 1980, after knowing and approving the 16-80 ruling of May 20, issued by the ad-hoc prosecutor.

After acknowledging that the 19 people mentioned in the complaint were detained in the days following the military coup and that after remaining at the Laja police station, their bodies were buried in the “San Juan” estate, and although the precise cause of their deaths could not be determined, “they would have been the product of acts of third parties, with which the criminal figure of homicide would be typified,” the truth is that according to the military court, “in the process, there are no sufficient legal indications that allow for the individualization of the possible authors, accomplices, or cover-ups of the referred deaths.” Consistent with the above—the ruling continues— “the police officers of the Laja police station, the one from the San Rosendo police station, and the civilian Israel Ormeño Stuardo were not charged or subjected to process as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups for the investigated facts.” Therefore, and invoking the Amnesty Law established in Decree Law No. 2,191 of 1978, the Military Court dismissed the thirteen officers and one civilian totally and definitively “because their eventual criminal responsibilities in the investigated facts have been extinguished by favoring them with the amnesty...”

The response of Minister Martínez to the appeal filed by the plaintiff regarding his declaration of incompetence was somewhat more procedural. Only on August 4 did he resolve the request, indicating that “it is not of those that cause irreparable and serious grievance and, also keeping in mind the state of the case and the provisions of Article 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, there is no place to grant the appeal...

Return the records to the Military Justice.” Finally, and despite the appeal filed by the plaintiff, on December 3, 1981, the Martial Court confirmed the resolution of the Third Military Court of Concepción, definitively dismissing the case.

Source: TribunaldelBioBio.cl, September 21, 2004

Voluntary Declaration: SAMUEL FRANCISCO VIDAL RIQUELME

“A few days after the detention of these people, we were notified that we had to be at the barracks at night; once the aforementioned arrived, which corresponded to almost all the personnel, and taking advantage of the curfew hours, we were ordered to drink pisco in abundant quantity.

I remember that we were in uniform inside the police station; no one understood the reason for the summons, until after a while of having drunk, Lieutenant ALBERTO FERNANDEZ MICHELL ordered us to take out the detainees, put them on a CMPC bus—I don’t remember the driver.

Personally, I had to guard the inside of the bus, for which I carried a Sig rifle. I highlight that the detainees were tied by their hands with hemp cords. Immediately after, we took the highway; the caravan was led by Lieutenant FERNANDEZ, I think accompanied by a farm owner named PETER WILKES, who was a German from the area.

Likewise, all my colleagues I mentioned earlier went, except for MUÑOZ and OVIEDO, who stayed on guard, although they knew at least that the detainees had been taken out of the cells.

We continued the route, for which we took the highway in the direction of the Parales bridge, taking the road toward Route 5 through the Yumbel sector. We stopped past a curve, and in this place, we passed the firebreak road and arrived at a forest.

The vehicles stopped; they made us drink again, and they handed us shovels, and we began to dig. I say we began because we were all there: FERNANDEZ, LEON, GARCES, RODRIGUEZ, SAN MARTIN, OTAROLA, OLIVARES, CASANOVA, CAMPOS, GONZALEZ, SAAVEDRA, and some I don’t remember, but from the police station, we were all there except those who were on guard.

I remember that we all made the hole, except for the officer and the most senior ones, RODRIGUEZ and GARCES; the rest of us helped in this task. Since it was sand, it was not difficult to dig. Finally, we made a trench about 2 to 3 meters long by 1.5 meters deep approximately.

Then we lowered the detainees, we put them on their knees near the trench, and then we proceeded to shoot. We all shot; when I say all, I include Lieutenant FERNANDEZ. What’s more, I remember very well when GONZALEZ argued strongly with CASANOVA, since the latter did not want to shoot. It was so much that I intervened and told GONZALEZ that if he did anything to CASANOVA, I was going to shoot him.

The tension was so high that we were all very agitated; however, we still put the detainees to death, who were shot in the back. Some fell directly into the pit; others, after they had died, had to be pushed so they would fall, or we would take them and throw them into the pit.

They were left one on top of the other. Then we covered them with the same sand and headed toward Laja. We arrived at the police station, and once there, we continued drinking, including the Lieutenant, and it was in this place that the guard personnel became aware of what had happened, an occasion on which the Officer said that we should all keep quiet.

Immediately after, everything was carried out normally, although when the relatives went, they were told that the detainees had been transferred to the Los Angeles regiment.”

Source: Judiciary, April 14, 2011

Unpublished confessions link CMPC to the massacre of 19 workers in Laja

It was a hunt. In September 1973, the Carabineros of the Laja police station apprehended 14 workers from the Paper Mill and the Railways, two high school students, and two teachers, whom they took to the Fundo San Juan, where they executed them and buried them clandestinely.

All the police officers had been drinking copious amounts of pisco sent to them by the CMPC, which also provided vehicles for the death caravan led by the farmer Peter Wilkens. Despite the desperate search by their families, the pact of silence regarding what happened that night was maintained until August of last year.

“Since it was sand, it wasn’t difficult to dig. We made a trench 2 to 3 meters long by 1.5 meters deep. Then we took the 19 detainees out of the vehicles. We made some kneel in front of the trench; we left the others standing.

They were in front of us, with their backs to us. I remember very well when the Carabinero Gabriel González argued strongly with Nelson Casanova, because the latter did not want to shoot. It was so intense that I stepped in and told González that if he did anything to Casanova, I would shoot him with the Sig rifle I had in my hand.

The tension was so high. We were all very agitated, but still, when the officer gave the order, we proceeded to shoot. We all shot, and when I say all, I include Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell. We shot them in the back.

Some fell directly into the pit. Others, already dead, we had to push so they would fall, or we grabbed them and threw them into the pit. They ended up one on top of the other. Then we covered them with the same sand and some branches and headed toward Laja.

When we arrived at the police station, we continued drinking the pisco and the beverages the lieutenant had brought from the CMPC paper mill’s canteen. Only then did those who had remained on guard duty know what had happened. Fernández gave the order to remain silent. After that, everything continued as if nothing had happened.”

Retired Corporal 1st Class Samuel Vidal Riquelme was the first to break the pact. For 38 years, he kept the secret of what happened on the dawn of September 18, 1973, to the 19 workers whom he and his colleagues from the Laja police station had apprehended in that town and San Rosendo during the previous five days, only to put them in a small dungeon, torture them, and later, that night, execute them clandestinely in a forest near the Perales Bridge, at the Fundo San Juan.

The first time Vidal spoke about what happened that night was in 1979, when the Archbishopric of Concepción filed a complaint against the Carabineros of the police station, and the then-visiting judge of the Concepción Court of Appeals, José Martínez Gaensly, interviewed him.

But that time, he said the same thing as his 15 colleagues from the Laja police station: that the prisoners had been taken to the Los Ángeles Regiment. Martínez asked the military personnel of that regiment about the 19 workers, but they claimed they had never entered there.

He then spoke with the Carabineros again. Although they changed their version, they all said the same thing: that they had put them on a bus provided by the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) and that on the way to Los Ángeles, they had handed them over to a “ghost patrol” of military personnel. That they had lost track of them since then.

Martínez’s inquiries served a purpose: it was discovered that the bodies were in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parish Cemetery. They had been taken there in October 1973, without anyone knowing, after they were removed from the hole where they had been buried following a report by a farmer to the Yumbel Carabineros that his dogs were gnawing on human remains.

The report reached the local Court of Greater Quantities, but Judge Corina Mera ordered it to be kept in the safe. It was never investigated.

Without knowing how the bodies had arrived at the cemetery or who had executed them, the remains were identified and handed over to their families, who had searched for them relentlessly for six years.

In March 1980, Martínez declared himself incompetent and referred the case to the Ad Hoc Military Prosecutor’s Office of Concepción. Within three months, the case was dismissed, and at the end of 1981, the Supreme Court ratified the dismissal. That was the extent of the justice served.

27 years later, the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) and the Law 19.123 Continuation Program of the Ministry of the Interior requested the reopening of the case from the Concepción Court of Appeals.

After reviewing the records, Judge Carlos Aldana annulled the resolution that had definitively dismissed the accused Carabineros and the ratification of that ruling by the Supreme Court. Thus, the summary and the investigation were reopened under case file 27-2010.

CIPER had access to the statements and documents of that investigation. Among them is the confession of Corporal Samuel Vidal on June 14, 2011, before the Investigative Police (PDI). From then on, details began to emerge one by one regarding the fate of the 19 workers whom he and his colleagues murdered in the back on the dawn of September 18, 1973.

This is how the capture operations, the execution in an open field, and the support and financing provided for their extermination by an important local businessman and, especially, the local CMPC—a company presided over at that time by former President Jorge Alessandri and whose main shareholder was businessman Eliodoro Matte Ossa—became known.

The oath that the Carabineros of the Laja police station took in November 1973 at the Perales Bridge, when their officer in charge, Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell, was being reassigned to Antofagasta, had been broken: “That if anyone opened their mouth, they had to be ‘taken out’ by the colleagues themselves.”

15/9/73: HUNT IN SAN ROSENDO

Railway machinist Luis Alberto Araneda went at noon to the San Rosendo Engine House to see if he was on the “schedule.” It was what he did every day when he was not scheduled to travel the previous day.

When he arrived, he saw through his thick, black-rimmed glasses the paper indicating the itinerary of the trains that would depart that day. He looked for his name, but it did not appear among those scheduled to travel that Saturday, September 15, 1973. He then began the walk back to his home in the Quinta Ferroviaria neighborhood.

-Go back to work, the Carabineros are looking for you, for you and Juan Acuña –his neighbor Eusebio Suárez told him, worried, when he saw him arrive.

But Luis Alberto did not listen to him. He replied that his machine was at the workshop, so he had nothing to do there that day. Besides, if they were looking for him, he had no reason to worry. The day before, he had arrived from a trip to the south, and as soon as he learned that the Carabineros required militants and union leaders to present themselves, Luis Alberto went to the San Rosendo police post.

There, they asked for his details. On a piece of paper, they wrote his name, his RUT, that he was 43 years old, that he was a militant of the Socialist Party (PS), that he presided over the Supply and Price Board (JAP), and that he was a union leader of the Santiago Watt Federation of State Railways.

Afterward, they told him he could leave. Luis Alberto returned home and did not think about it anymore, not even when Eusebio told him the next day on the street that they were looking for him, that just a few minutes earlier a police patrol from Laja had asked him about him and that he had told them where he lived.

When he was about to reach his home, his wife saw him coming through the window in his striped gray jacket, brown pants, black shoes, and glasses of the same color. She also saw how six or seven Carabineros with helmets blocked his path, raised their rifles, and aimed at him just as he was about to open the gate.

Luis Alberto froze. She did not think twice and ran out, screaming at the police to at least let her say goodbye. Luis Alberto, who already had his hands tied behind his back, told her to take the money and his watch out of his pocket. She did so. Then she watched as they took him away. It was shortly before 4:00 PM. The hunt in San Rosendo had just begun.

Since the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández came from Laja and did not know whom they were supposed to detain, Carabinero Sergio Castillo Basaul, from the San Rosendo post, served as their guide.

There was no formal list or arrest warrants: the order that came from the Los Ángeles Police Station was to detain all the leaders of the Unidad Popular (UP). If Castillo, who knew them, said that any of the neighbors should be detained, they immediately aimed at him, tied him up, and took him away.

Juan Antonio Acuña, 33 years old, three children, also a machinist and leader of the Railway union, was the next on the list. They went to look for him at his house an hour later, when he was about to sit down to have tea with his family.

The same patrol that had arrived on foot from Laja broke in by force and took him out at gunpoint. Then it was the turn of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) employee, Dagoberto Garfias, 23 years old.

He was followed by Mario Jara (21), who was at home with his mother and grandmother; Raúl Urra (23), who was also at his residence; and the director of School 45 of San Rosendo, Óscar Sanhueza (23).

They were all taken to the San Rosendo Plaza, where another detainee was waiting for them: Jorge Zorrilla, a 25-year-old mining worker who worked in Argentina and was spending his vacation in Chile. He, like Luis Alberto Araneda, presented himself voluntarily to the Carabineros.

They immediately apprehended him, and when the others arrived, the patrol tied them up and took them on foot across the pedestrian bridge that connected San Rosendo with Laja. On the other side, a bus was waiting for them, one of the many courtesies of the CMPC to the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell, the officer in charge of the Laja police station.

Once on the bus, they took them away.

11/9/73: THE FIRST ORDERS

Although he was the first to be detained, retired Lieutenant Fernández Michell was the last of the members of the Laja police station to testify before the Court. On August 16 of last year, he was arrested in Iquique, where he worked as an instructor at a driving school.

And when the next day he broke the pact of silence that he himself had proposed after the execution, he started from the beginning:

“I was at my residence provided by the CMPC when I received the news of the Military Coup. I had arrived at the Laja police station in mid-1973 as a substitute second lieutenant, and since there was no officer, I remained as chief.

I was 22 years old. By September 11, I was the police authority, and as soon as I learned of the Coup, while waiting for orders, I called for the mobilization of all Carabineros. That was coordinated by Sub-officer Major Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, who followed me in command.”

“That same morning, I received the order from the Los Ángeles Headquarters to detain all government authorities, sub-delegates, and the mayor. The action was carried out without problems, and after detaining them at our unit, they were transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment in buses provided by the Paper Mill, because I already had many people in the barracks.

Days later, my superior in Los Ángeles, Commissioner Aroldo Solari Sanhueza, ordered me to begin detaining all the activists in the commune. Since the CMPC had a chemical plant, the activists could take it over and act against us.

That was the information that reached me from military intelligence. One of those days, Army Colonel Alfredo Rehern Pulido arrived to reiterate the order. I ordered Sub-officers Garcés and Rodríguez to proceed with the personnel to carry out that task, because they knew those people better.”

Since Salvador Allende assumed the presidency in 1970, the CMPC was on the list of companies that the government intended to expropriate. For this reason, on the same day of the Coup, a patrol commanded by Fernández Michell went to the plant that the Paper Mill had—and still has—in Laja.

It was 4:00 PM when the nearly 300 employees leaving their shift encountered Fernández, Garcés, Rodríguez, and other members of the police station. They made them form lines. The patrol had in their hands a list that the plant superintendent, Carlos Ferrer, and the personnel chief, Humberto Garrido, had prepared: those were the “activists.”

Those who appeared on the list were separated and taken, beaten and at gunpoint, to the adjacent building, where the company’s polyclinic operated. There, they beat them again. Afterward, they put them into CMPC vehicles and took them to the barracks.

All of them were later transferred, in the same bus from the Matte Group company, to Los Ángeles. Among them was Eduardo Cuevas, a maintenance mechanic at the Paper Mill and a MIR militant who voluntarily joined the reconstruction of the scene carried out by Judge Aldana on August 18 of last year.

Before they took him away, Fernández grabbed him and showed him to his coworkers still formed in the line: “Look at him for the last time!” he shouted at them.

After a little more than a year and three months in detention and torture centers, and after passing through a War Council, Eduardo Cuevas was seen again. A “luck” that those who were hunted in the following days did not have.

13 and 14/9/73: THE FALL OF THE STUDENT AND THE WORKERS

The first thing the patrol led that day by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos did was to go to the Train Station. On the platform, Manuel Becerra was saying goodbye to his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and his cousin.

It was 8:00 AM, and in just a few minutes, the train that would take him back to Curacautín, where he was studying secondary education at the Industrial School, would depart. He was about to board when the Carabineros grabbed him.

Amidst the screams of his relatives, Manuel Becerra was dragged out of the station, put into the jeep that the CMPC had granted them for their mobility, and taken to the Laja police station. It was September 13, 1973. Manuel was 18 years old.

In a matter of minutes, they notified his father, who worked at the Transportes Cóndor offices. As soon as he found out, he asked his boss to speak with the Carabineros and arrange for his release. He went to the police station and spoke with the guard on duty, but they told him they had already registered his detention in the corresponding books.

Later, they would tell his father that he had been detained because “he was a militant with the Miristas.” Manuel had already been detained before, during the campaign for the 1973 parliamentary elections, for painting MIR slogans in Laja along with other friends. The young man remained detained.

The next on the list was Luis Armando Ulloa, 41 years old, married, five children, a militant of the Communist Party (PC) and a lumber worker at the Barraca Burgos in Laja, where they went to look for him.

It was 8:30 AM. Since his eldest son worked with him, the first thing his colleagues did was notify him as soon as he arrived, because just when they took him, he was not there. He ran to his house and notified his mother, who was still recovering from her last childbirth. They could not do anything to get him out either.

That afternoon, the Carabineros returned to the CMPC. As soon as he stepped outside the plant, Juan de Dios Villarroel was kidnapped by Rodríguez’s patrol. He was 34 years old, had four children, and the misfortune of working at a company that created a blacklist with the names of its own employees.

On that same list were his coworkers Jack Gutiérrez, a MAPU militant; Heraldo Muñoz, from the PS; and Federico Riquelme. They were all taken to the police station, where the fruit and vegetable merchant and municipal councilor, Alfonso Macaya, who arrived voluntarily after hearing on a local radio station that they were looking for him, joined them.

They released him the next day, but on September 15, they went to look for him again at his in-laws’ house. He never returned.

On September 14, Rodríguez went out to the streets again in the CMPC jeep. He did not have to go far, because the two men who joined the group of political detainees that day were found leaving their work at the paper mill. One was Wilson Muñoz. The other was Fernando Grandón, who at 34 years old already had eight children.

16 and 17/9/73: THE SMALL POLICE STATION

Most likely, the Laja police station never had as many visitors as it did during those days. By the night of September 15, 1973, in the dungeon of that structure at Las Viñas No. 104, which Fernández remembers as “two large temporary sheds to which some additions had been made,” there were 17 people detained: to the seven they brought from San Rosendo and the nine they kidnapped in Laja, the director of the CMPC Industrial Union, Jorge Lamana, who presented himself at the police station voluntarily, had been added that afternoon.

Since the detentions began, their parents, siblings, and children went to visit them with the authorization of the officer in charge of the facility. Fernando Grandón’s wife arrived the same day he was detained to see him for the first time.

When she saw him, she noticed he was scared, but without injuries. Luis Armando Ulloa’s eldest daughter also went to see him, and when she found him in the middle of the group, she realized they had cut his hair with scissors.

But the worst part was suffered by those from San Rosendo. All of them had bruises, scratches, and dog bites. Jorge Zorrilla, the miner detained during his vacation, told one of the detainees’ relatives that they had also been forced to sit on the pica (a torture device).

On September 16, the last two members of the group arrived at the cell. Juan Carlos Jara, 17 years old, was grabbed by Pedro Rodríguez’s patrol while he was fighting with other young people in the street. Rubén Campos, director of the Consolidada School of Laja, was taken from his house, and from there, he went straight to the dungeon.

Until September 17, visits to the prisoners continued. In the mornings, almost all the relatives arrived with freshly made breakfast and clean clothes. Later, they brought them...

lunch and dinner at night. The parish priest of Laja, Father Félix Eicher, also visited them; he had naively accompanied some of those who voluntarily presented themselves at the police station so that they could “sort out their problems.” And every time they went, they tried to convince the carabineros to release them.

The prisoners told them to stay calm, that they would be out of there soon. On the eve of the national holidays, Lieutenant Fernández Michell received an order.

“I was having dinner in the dining room when Sub-officer Garcés told me that Major Solari, the commissioner of Los Ángeles, was on the phone. He was very annoyed with me because I had sent many people to the regiment without asking him.

I had done it because of space issues. I was scared that he was angry, because I had gotten married without the permission of my superiors and was expecting my first daughter, so I had to do whatever he told me, otherwise I risked another sanction.

He asked me how many detainees I had in the unit. I told him there were 19 people. He gave me the order to “eliminate them.” He told me that if I didn’t do it, I would have to face the consequences. Then he hung up. I immediately called Garcés and Rodríguez and told them to get the personnel ready.”

18/9/73: MASSACRE IN THE FOREST

The men who followed Fernández in the chain of command made a few calls and in just minutes obtained ropes, wires, shovels, vehicles, and even a remote place to carry out the massacre. They had carbines and rifles for all the officers of the police station. Also the alcohol provided to them by the CMPC. The plan to kill the 19 was already underway.

“When they called us to the barracks, the curfew had already begun. Upon arriving, they gathered us in a room we used as a dining hall and ordered us to drink a large amount of pisco. Almost all the members of the Laja police station were there, from Lieutenant Fernández Michell on down.

Those who did not arrive at the barracks would join us later. After drinking, Lieutenant Fernández told us to take the 19 detainees out of the police station cells. We tied their hands behind their backs with hemp and hay-bale wire, took them outside, and loaded them onto the CMPC bus.

I had to guard the inside of the bus. That is why I was holding my Sig rifle in my hands. We took the road toward Los Ángeles. Leading the caravan in a jeep were Fernández, Garcés, and Peter Wilkens, a German farmer from the area.”

Until Corporal Samuel Vidal testified in June 2011, Wilkens’ name never appeared in the investigation. After him, Fernández and several carabineros confirmed his participation in that night’s massacre.

Before that, it was not known that Garcés had called him, that he had accompanied Fernández in the CMPC jeep leading the caravan, or that after passing the Perales Bridge, after a curve on the road between Laja and Los Ángeles, it was he who told him to turn right and stop 300 meters further on, in a clearing next to a pine forest.

Since only the carabineros who were there that night and swore silence knew that Wilkens had been there, no one connected the event when, in 1985, a 19-year-old named Arturo Arriagada, with no criminal record, entered his estate in Laja, killed his butler, entered his room, and shot him with a shotgun.

Later, he loaded the bodies into his van and buried them on the side of the road, very close to where they had buried the detainees from Laja and San Rosendo that night.

According to a report published by Contacto when the death penalty was about to be abolished in Chile in 2001, Arriagada was sentenced to life imprisonment and by then, due to his good behavior, had been incorporated into the Work and Education Center (CET) of Concepción.

For his criminal act, justice did work. Wilkens, on the other hand, died without anyone questioning him for having been an accomplice and for having guided and observed as a group of police officers executed 19 workers by firing squad in the early hours of September 18, 1973, at the San Juan Estate. A night that 2nd Sergeant (ret.) Pedro Parra remembers very well:

“There were no soldiers or DINA agents; it was just us from the police station, except for the three who stayed on guard. When we stopped, the truck was very close to some bushes. The night was clear and there was a moon, but the vehicle lights were used anyway.

With the fight between Gabriel González and Nelson Casanova, I finally realized the weight of what was happening. Everything was already decided. Lieutenant Fernández Michell said nothing; he was just one more of the group.

The detainees were in front of us with their hands tied. I had a Mauser carbine. When Fernández gave the order, we all aimed at the detainees who had been assigned to us. None of them complained or said anything. Then they gave the order to fire. We all did it.”

18/9/73: AFTER THE MASSACRE

The bodies remained underground. The group of carabineros got into the vehicles and returned to the Laja barracks. Everyone remembers that it was a strange moment, that no one dared to say anything. When they arrived, they drank what was left of the pisco they had consumed before leaving.

And right there, they agreed that no one would say anything, that if anyone spoke, they would suffer the same fate as those they had just murdered.

On the morning of that day, Gloria Urra got up early, prepared breakfast, and as in previous days, went to the police station to see her brother Raúl. She hoped to meet all the detainees and their families, sit with them, and share food.

But the cell was empty. Now that they were cleaning it, it looked much larger. Hilda Bravo, the wife of fruit merchant Alfonso Macaya, had not been allowed to see him when he was locked up two days earlier, so that morning she hoped to meet her husband.

But they told her the same thing they told the mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the 19 workers who were there until the previous night: that they had been transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

The relatives grouped together and set out to look for them. At the Los Ángeles Regiment, they did not find them. They went through the jail, the IANSA gymnasium; nothing. Later, some went to Concepción and asked at the Regional Stadium, on Quiriquina Island, in Talcahuano; their names did not appear on the prisoner lists.

Days passed and the desperate search was repeated over and over in Chillán, in Linares. It was like that for weeks, for years. Many spent their savings traveling through different cities in the country, searching and asking without answers. They went through Temuco until they reached Santiago. Everything was useless: the 19 had vanished.

Two days after the massacre, the priest Félix Eicher accompanied the CMPC worker, Luis Sáez, to Los Ángeles, according to his statement before Judge Carlos Aldana, “so that the ones from Laja wouldn’t do anything to him.” In the previous days, they had raided his house twice looking for him, but had not found him. “Just as Macaya turned himself in, tell your husband to do the same,” Sergeant Rodríguez had allegedly told his wife.

The priest convinced him to turn himself in on September 20, 1973. That same day he was detained. Six years later, when they found the other 19 in the Yumbel cemetery—where they had been taken clandestinely by Fernández and his men—the remains of Luis Sáez appeared at the San Juan Estate.

THE TRIAL OF THE LAJA EXECUTIONERS

Although 38 years had passed, many of the carabineros who worked at the Laja police station in September 1973 tried in 2011 to maintain their oath of silence regarding what happened in the early hours of September 18 of that year. 1st Sergeant (ret.) Gabriel González, for example, assured the PDI that he knew nothing about the 19 forcibly disappeared and that he only participated in some arrests.

He said nothing about his fight with Nelson Casanova that early morning just before shooting them in the back. And Casanova himself, who according to testimonies resisted shooting, declared: “At that time there was a very good relationship with the CMPC workers, so I had no knowledge that employees of that company had been detained.”

It was the testimonies of those who did decide to confess that allowed the visiting judge Carlos Aldana to issue an arrest warrant in August 2011 for the 14 officials still alive who participated in the arrests and the execution of the workers murdered at the San Juan Estate.

After that, everyone started talking. On the 18th of that month, Aldana carried out the reconstruction of the scene with all the detainees, detailing the chain of events that ended the lives of the 19 workers.

It was a key, dramatic day. After that, there were no more doubts: after four days, the judge indicted nine of the carabineros for homicide and one for concealment. Three others, those who stayed on guard that night, were dismissed. Despite the brutality of the crimes, today everyone is free.

The following is the list of all the carabineros involved and what happened to them:

1.- Alberto Juan Fernández Michell: Lieutenant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the officer in charge of the Laja police station and the person responsible for executing the orders that came from Los Ángeles.

He ordered and participated in the arrests and the execution at the San Juan Estate. He was called to retire from the institution in 1979, citing “lack of vocation.” He was indicted as the perpetrator of homicide. When everyone else obtained provisional release, he remained detained for being the responsible officer. His defense appealed and he was released after paying a bail of $300,000.

2.- Evaristo Garcés Rubilar: He was a Sub-officer of Carabineros and second in command at the Laja police station, so he played a key role in organizing the arrests and the massacre of the 19 at the San Juan Estate. He obtained the place for the clandestine execution and contacted the German farmer Peter Wilkens. He died on December 25, 1987, at age 60, due to a stroke caused by diabetes.

3.- Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos: Sergeant of Carabineros. He was in charge of several of the arrests and had a leading role in managing the execution. He was married and some time after what happened that night, he became part of the DINA. He died on December 22, 2002, at the Dipreca Hospital from metastatic gastric cancer that caused multi-organ failure. He was 64 years old.

4.- Lisandro Alberto Martínez García: 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. Although he initially claimed not to have participated in the massacre because at that time he worked in the barracks’ records office, he ended up accepting his participation: “We all carried rifles and we fired,” he said.

He was indicted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional release with a bail of $300,000.

5.- Luis Antonio León Godoy: 2nd Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. At first, he said that it had been the military who stopped by the police station and took the 19 detainees. Later he changed his version: “When my sub-officer Garcés gave the order, we all had to fire,” he noted. He was indicted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional release after paying a bail of $300,000.

6.- José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza: Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. In his statements, he assured that he had not participated and that he was not there on the night of the massacre. But in the reconstruction of the scene, he admitted to having been there.

His role was to be in the CMPC jeep the whole time, illuminating what was happening in front of him. He saw everything, but he did not pull the trigger. He was indicted for concealment of homicide and after paying a bail of $100,000, he obtained his provisional release.

7.- Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike: 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was one of the first to provide a statement and acknowledge what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973. That night he joined the caravan when they were about to arrive at the San Juan Estate. He was indicted for homicide and obtained his provisional release after paying a bail of $300,000.

8.- Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade: 2nd Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He also acknowledged his participation since September 11, 1973. “They were difficult days, we slept little,” he said. He is one of those indicted for homicide and after paying the $300,000 bail, he was released on provisional release.

9.- Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras: 2nd Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. As soon as he was interrogated, he recounted in detail what happened that night. He was also indicted for homicide and has been on provisional release since he paid his $300,000 bail.

10.- Gabriel Washington González Salazar: 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the man who fought before shooting, although when it was his turn to testify, he said it had been the military. Later he acknowledged his participation. He was indicted for homicide and today he is free.

11.- Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme: 1st Corporal (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the first to break the pact of silence. His testimony was key to clarifying what happened to the 19 workers in Laja. He was indicted for homicide and also obtained his release after paying the $300,000 bail.

12.- Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila: He belonged to the Carabineros for 30 years. In his first statement, he only said that after September 11, the Laja police station moved to CMPC facilities. Later he added that he was there that night and that he fired when ordered, but that he did not aim at the bodies. He is one of those indicted for homicide and today enjoys provisional release.

13.- Nelson Casanova Salgado: 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He had said that he had never participated in an operation to detain CMPC workers, but his participation was proven. Also indicted for homicide, he is free today after paying the bail.

14.- Luis Muñoz Cuevas: 1st Corporal (ret.) of Carabineros. Since he stayed on guard at the barracks that night, Judge Aldana dismissed him from the investigation.

15.- Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete: Sub-officer (ret.) of Carabineros. His mission that night was to stop traffic in the hospital area so the caravan could pass. Later he returned to the police station and stayed there all night. He is one of the three carabineros dismissed.

16.- Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme: Sub-officer (ret.) of Carabineros. He also stayed on guard at the Laja police station that night, so he was dismissed.

17.- Sergio Castillo Basaul: Sub-officer of Carabineros. Although he did not participate in the execution, he had an active role in guiding the arrests in San Rosendo, since he worked in that town and knew its inhabitants. He died on September 16, 2005, from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, esophageal varices, and Laennec’s cirrhosis, which is caused by alcoholism.

LUIS SÁEZ: THE 20TH VICTIM OF THE FIRING SQUAD

The first time the carabineros of the Laja police station went to look for Luis Sáez Espinoza (37 years old) at his home in the Mario Medina neighborhood, it was September 11, 1973, at 10:00. In addition to being an employee at the CMPC, Sáez was a union leader and a member of the MAPU.

For this reason, as soon as he learned of the Coup, he went into hiding. Since he was not there when the carabineros arrived, they raided his house in front of his wife, Rosa Ibaca, and his children. Three hours later, the patrol led by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos returned in the jeep that the Matte Group company had provided them, with helmets and long weapons.

They raided his home again, but this time they took Rosa. Pointing their rifles at her, they took her to some neighbors, and since no one knew where Luis was, they left her there. The next day the scene was repeated.

On September 14, Sergeant Rodríguez arrived again to look for Luis and for the third time, he did not find him. That was the day he gave his wife the message: that he should turn himself in as Alfonso Macaya had done the day before.

Minutes later, some social workers from the company arrived to see how the family was doing and promised to speak with Lieutenant Fernández Michell so they would not raid that house anymore. The children were traumatized.

Six days later, the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, went to speak with the woman. He told her he knew where Luis was and that he wanted to speak with her. The priest took her in his truck. When they met, she told him he had to turn himself in.

Luis was afraid; he knew his life was in danger, that just two days earlier the group of 19 detainees had disappeared without a trace. So that nothing would happen to him, the priest convinced him to go to Los Ángeles and not to the Laja police station.

He accepted. That same day, September 20, 1973, shortly before the curfew, they went in the priest’s truck to the Los Ángeles Prefecture. Luis got out of the vehicle, presented himself, and was detained there. Father Eicher was a witness.

The next day, the same priest notified Sergeant Rodríguez that Luis had already turned himself in.

Rosa went to leave him clothes and food at the Red Cross office, but everything was returned to her because Luis was not in any detention center. His wife searched for him for years with the help of the priest and the Bishop of Los Ángeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, but nothing. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis.

The search extended until 1979, when the investigation led by visiting judge José Martínez led to the whereabouts of those executed in Laja and San Rosendo, but not their victimizers. While the others had been taken to the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, the remains of Luis appeared buried clandestinely in the same place where the massacre took place, at the San Juan Estate, next to a CMPC pine forest.

He had a bullet hole and was tied with wire.

In the documents to which CIPER had access, Police Report No. 988 of March 15, 2011, appears. According to that document, his direct relatives were asked, but they said that his remains were never returned to them, so Luis Sáez Espinoza is still a forcibly disappeared person.

Source: ciper.cl, January 13, 2012

Laja-San Rosendo Massacre: Indictment issued against carabineros and CMPC paper company officials for 19 homicides

This Tuesday, the minister visiting for human rights violation cases at the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, issued an indictment against former members of the Carabineros and former officials of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) in Laja, for the crimes of qualified homicide and illegal inhumation of 19 workers and peasants, perpetrated in September 1973, in the case known as the “Laja-San Rosendo Massacre.”

In the resolution (case file 27-2010), Minister Aldana indicted the former Carabineros officer, Alberto Juan Fernández Michel, and the former Carabineros: Lisandro Alberto Martínez García, Luis Antonio León Godoy, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Gabriel Washington González Salazar, Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, and Nelson Casanova Salgado, as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicides of the 19 victims of this criminal repressive act: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales.

Likewise, he indicted the former police officials José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, Manuel Cerda Robledo, and Anselmo de Carmen San Martín Navarrete as accessories to the same crimes against the aforementioned persons.

Additionally, the former Carabineros officer René Urrutia Elgueta was charged as the perpetrator of the crime of illegal inhumation of the 19 victims.

CMPC Officials

Last March, the Concepción Court ordered the prosecution of four former civilian officials of the CMPC for their involvement and participation in the crimes. This decision by the Court forced Aldana to issue an indictment against three of these officials from the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), despite the fact that he had initially refused to even prosecute these civilian repressors.

Now, Minister Aldana has indicted the company’s former head of security, Pedro Jarpa Foerster, as an accomplice to the homicides of seven victims: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jack Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, Raúl Urra Parada, Federico Riquelme Concha, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez.

Meanwhile, Alejandro Lionel Aguilera Covarrubias (former CMPC executive) and Rodolfo Román Román (former driver) were held responsible as accomplices to all 19 qualified homicides.

During the investigation phase, the visiting minister determined that between September 13 and 17, 1973, in the communes of Laja and San Rosendo, the 19 aforementioned victims were detained by personnel from the Laja Carabineros Station, without a judicial order or competent administrative authority, and were transferred to the aforementioned police unit from the CMPC and other companies and rural sectors in the area.

The victims were placed in the cells of the aforementioned police unit, remaining there until the night of September 17, 1973, at which time they were removed by uniformed personnel and loaded into CMPC vehicles, supposedly to be transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

However, while traveling along Route Q-90, near the Perales Bridge, the convoy turned onto a side road, entering the so-called Fundo San Juan in the commune of Yumbel, where the Carabineros personnel from the Laja Station, armed with rifles and carbines, forced them to descend from the vehicles, compelling them to lie on the ground, side by side, face down and with their hands tied.

The police officers then positioned themselves behind them, at which point the officer in charge, standing to the side and armed with his revolver, gave the order to fire. This was carried out by the uniformed officers present, who were positioned in a firing line, striking the bodies of the detainees with bullets and causing injuries that resulted in their deaths.

Subsequently, the same police officers, equipped with shovels they had brought for this purpose, dug a 60-centimeter-deep trench where they threw the bodies, covering them with a layer of earth. Once this operation was completed, they returned to the Laja Station, maintaining silence regarding what had occurred.

Days later, Carabineros officials returned to the area to cover the bodies with lime, the type used at the CMPC, which had allegedly been provided by company officials.

In late October 1973, dogs in the area found human remains, a fact noticed by a person passing through the area, who reported it to the Yumbel Carabineros. Following this report, Commissioner Héctor Rivera Rojas ordered the then-officer of orders, Lieutenant René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta, to go to the site.

Urrutia confirmed the discovery to the commissioner and ultimately transported the remains directly to the parish cemetery for burial in a common grave, a task Urrutia carried out using a trailer pulled by a tractor during the night, while a curfew was in effect.

This procedure was carried out without performing the required autopsies on the bodies found, and they were inhumed without obtaining the corresponding sanitary authorization or the competent judicial order.

The plenary stage of this case is now open, after which Minister Aldana must issue a sentence.

Source: resumen.cl, November 13, 2018

...of Yumbel in September 1973) returned to her duties and the first thing I did was hand her the report…, but she told me ‘just leave it in the safe and don’t take it out of there.’ But in the meantime, I had entered that report into the entry log without consulting her, and when she ordered me to keep it stored away, I told her that I had entered it… She said to me ‘what will happen when they ask (from the Concepción Court of Appeals) for an account of the status of the case?’.

I got scared and erased it from the entry log…, but I also remember that later I went back and placed the same entry in the same place where I had erased it…, because I regretted having erased it before…».

When Milton Juica, then a Supreme Court minister, was asked about these events, he stated:

-Regarding the judge Corina Mera of Yumbel, a disciplinary sanction was applied to her for these events. And to the secretary of that time, the current minister Rosa Egnem, in a first instance, a sanction was also applied which the Supreme Court rendered void, and she did not receive disciplinary sanctions, unlike the judge who was responsible for that court (in 1973).

Indeed, the sanction against Rosa Egnem was issued by the Concepción Court of Appeals in 1978, which was reviewed and revoked by the Supreme Court that same year.

When Minister Juica spoke about this delicate matter in 2015, he took the opportunity to pay tribute to Minister José Martínez Gaensly, of the Concepción Court, who attempted to advance the truth regarding the 19 qualified homicides: «I have incidental knowledge, because I am not familiar with the case.

But regarding that terrible event in which 19 people were executed by firing squad, an investigation was carried out by a minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals who had the virtue of recovering the bodies, performing all the corresponding forensic examinations, and made significant progress in this matter until the case ended up being absorbed by the military justice system, dismissed, and amnestied».

On December 16th, Minister Rosa del Carmen Egnem Salgado was appointed president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal, a position she will assume on January 31st. It was as if she had prepared for this important role.

This is because at the end of February 2018, it was she herself who requested to move from the Third Chamber (which handles constitutional matters) to the First Chamber, to replace Minister Patricio Valdés, who was also the president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal and retired.

Rosa Egnem has the support of the new president of the Supreme Court, Guillermo Silva, to whom the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre and the impunity of crimes against humanity in that region are not unknown.

Silva served as secretary of the First Civil Court of Los Ángeles at the time, and in August 1974, he assumed the role of judge in Mulchén, where the murders were even bloodier than in Laja. In 1980, he was appointed judge of the 2nd Civil Court of Concepción and it fell to him to oversee the case regarding the death by immolation of Sebastián Acevedo Becerra.

A death that would make history, but not because of the role played by the current president of the Supreme Court.

THE TRIAL OF THE LAJA EXECUTIONERS

38 years had passed, and many of the Carabineros who served at the Laja Station in September 1973 attempted in 2011 to maintain their oath of silence regarding what happened in the early hours of September 18th of that year.

It was the testimonies of those who did decide to confess that allowed Minister Carlos Aldana, in August 2011, to order the arrest of the 14 officials still alive who participated in the detentions and the execution of the workers murdered at the Fundo San Juan.

Afterward, they all spoke. On August 18, 2011, Aldana conducted a reconstruction of the scene with all the detainees, detailing the chain of events that ended the lives of the 19 workers. It was a key, dramatic day.

Afterward, the minister prosecuted nine of the Carabineros for homicide and one for concealment. Three others, those who remained on guard duty that night, were dismissed. Despite the brutality of the crimes, until January 7th, the day Aldana issued the sentences, everyone was free.

1.- Lieutenant (r) Alberto Juan Fernández Michell: Officer in charge of the Laja Station and responsible for executing the orders that came from Los Ángeles. He ordered and participated in the detentions and the execution at the Fundo San Juan.

He was called to retire from the institution in 1979 for “lack of vocation.” He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide and sentenced to prison. His defense appealed and he was released after paying a bail of $300,000. On January 7th, he was sentenced by Aldana to life imprisonment.

2.- Sub-officer Evaristo Garcés Rubilar: Second in command at the Laja Station. He played a key role in organizing the detentions and the slaughter of the 19 at the Fundo San Juan. He secured the location for the clandestine execution and contacted the German farmer Peter Wilkens. He died on December 25, 1987, at age 60, due to a vascular accident resulting from diabetes.

3.- Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos: He was in charge of several of the detentions and had a leading role in managing the execution. Shortly after the massacre, he joined the DINA. He died on December 22, 2002, at the Dipreca Hospital from metastatic gastric cancer that caused multi-organ failure. He was 64 years old.

4.- Sergeant 1st Class (r) Lisandro Alberto Martínez García: He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional liberty with a bail of $300,000.

5.- Sergeant 2nd Class (r) Luis Antonio León Godoy: “When my sub-officer Garcés gave the order, we all had to shoot,” he confessed. Prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide, he was released on provisional liberty after paying a bail of $300,000.

6.- Sergeant (r) José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza: During the reconstruction of the scene, he confessed his participation, stating he was in the CMPC jeep the whole time, illuminating what was happening. He saw everything, but did not pull the trigger.

Prosecuted for concealment of homicide, he obtained his freedom after paying a bail of $100,000. On January 7th, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, as an accessory after the fact.

7.- Sergeant 1st Class (r) Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike: One of the first to acknowledge what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973. He joined the caravan when they were already arriving at the Fundo San Juan. Prosecuted for homicide, he obtained his freedom after paying a bail of $300,000. On January 7th, he was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator.

8.- Sergeant 2nd Class (r) Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade: He acknowledged his participation, saying: “They were difficult days, we slept little.” Prosecuted for homicide, and after paying $300,000 in bail, he was released on provisional liberty.

9.- Sergeant 2nd Class (r) Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras: He confessed details of the massacre. Prosecuted for homicide, he had been on provisional liberty since paying $300,000 in bail. Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator of the homicides.

10.- Sergeant 1st Class (r) Gabriel Washington González Salazar: After denying any participation, he had to acknowledge his role in the homicides. He is free.

11.- Corporal 1st Class (r) Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme: The first to break the pact of silence. His testimony was key to clarifying what happened to the 19 victims in Laja. Prosecuted for homicide, he also obtained his freedom after paying the $300,000 bail.

12.- Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila: He belonged to the Carabineros for 30 years. In his first statement, he said that after September 11th, the Laja Station moved to CMPC facilities. Later, he confessed that he shot when ordered to do so. Prosecuted for homicide and on provisional liberty, on January 7th he was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator.

13.- Sergeant 1st Class (r) Nelson Casanova Salgado: He denied his participation, but it was proven during the investigation. Prosecuted for homicide, he was free after paying bail. Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as a perpetrator.

14.- Corporal 1st Class (r) Luis Muñoz Cuevas: Since he remained on guard duty at the barracks that night, Minister Aldana dismissed his case.

15.- Sub-officer (r) Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete: His mission that night was to stop traffic in the hospital area so the caravan could pass. Afterward, he returned to the Station. His case was dismissed. On January 7th, Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as an accessory after the fact to the 19 qualified homicides.

16.- Sub-officer (r) Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme: He also remained on guard duty at the Laja Station that night, so his case was dismissed.

17.- Sub-officer Sergio Castillo Basaul: He did not participate in the execution, but his role was decisive in guiding the detentions in San Rosendo. He died on September 16, 2005, from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, esophageal varices, and Laennec's cirrhosis, which is caused by alcoholism.

LUIS SÁEZ: THE 20TH VICTIM EXECUTED

The first time the Carabineros from the Laja Station went to look for Luis Sáez Espinoza (37 years old) at his home in the Mario Medina neighborhood was on September 11, 1973, at 10:00 AM. Sáez was an employee and union leader at the CMPC, as well as a member of the MAPU.

As soon as he learned of the Coup, he went into hiding. Since he was not there when the Carabineros arrived, they raided his house in front of his wife, Rosa Ibaca, and their children. Three hours later, the patrol under the command of Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos returned in the jeep that the Matte Group company had provided them, with helmets and long weapons.

They raided his home again, but this time they arrested Rosa. Pointing their rifles at her, they took her to some neighbors, and since no one knew where Luis was, they left her there. The next day, the scene was repeated.

On September 14th, Sergeant Rodríguez arrived again to look for Luis and, for the third time, did not find him. That day, he gave his wife a message: that he should turn himself in, just as Alfonso Macaya had done the day before.

Minutes later, social workers from the company arrived to see how the family was doing and promised to speak with Lieutenant Fernández Michell so they would not raid that house again. The children were traumatized.

Six days later, the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, went to speak with the woman. He told her he knew where Luis was and that he wanted to speak with her. The priest took her in his truck. When they met, she told him he had to turn himself in.

Luis was afraid; he knew his life was in danger, that only two days earlier the group of 19 detainees had disappeared without a trace. So that nothing would happen to him, the priest convinced him to go to Los Ángeles and not to the Laja Station.

He agreed. That same day, September 20, 1973, shortly before the curfew, they went in the priest's truck to the Los Ángeles Prefecture. Luis got out of the vehicle, presented himself, and was detained there. Priest Eicher was a witness.

The next day, the same priest notified Sergeant Rodríguez that Luis had already turned himself in.

Rosa went to leave him clothes and food at the Red Cross office, but everything was returned to her because Luis was not in any detention center. His wife searched for him for years with the help of the priest and the bishop of Los Ángeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, but nothing. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis.

The search extended until 1979, when the investigation led by the visiting minister José Martínez led to the whereabouts of those executed in Laja and San Rosendo, but not their perpetrators. While the others had been taken to the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, Luis's remains appeared buried clandestinely in the same place where the massacre took place, at the Fundo San Juan, next to a CMPC pine forest.

He had a bullet hole and was tied with wire.

Source: ciperchile.cl, January 17, 2020

Laja and San Rosendo: Supreme Court sentences Carabineros (r) for the homicides of forestry workers

In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence convicting José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, and Nelson Casanova Salgado to 15 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of 19 counts of qualified homicide.

The Supreme Court convicted a group of retired Carabineros for their responsibility in the qualified homicides of forestry workers Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales. These crimes were perpetrated in September 1973 in the communes of Laja and San Rosendo, Biobío Region.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 82.317-2021), the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court—composed of Justice Manuel Antonio Valderrama, Justices María Soledad Melo and María Loreto Gutiérrez, and ad hoc attorneys Pía Tavolari and Ricardo Abuauad—partially invalidated the contested sentence issued by the Court of Appeals of Concepción regarding the conviction of civilian Pedro Luis Jarpa Foerster to 5 years and one day of imprisonment as an accomplice to the homicides of Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jack Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, Raúl Urra Parada, Federico Riquelme Concha, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez, and consequently decreed his acquittal, as the responsibility attributed to him in the crimes was not proven.

In all other respects, the Supreme Court maintained the sentence convicting José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, and Nelson Casanova Salgado to 15 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of the 19 qualified homicides.

Meanwhile, Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, as an accessory after the fact to the crimes.

The ruling established an error of law in determining the responsibility of Jarpa Foerster. "As detailed in Article 541 No. 9 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, this ground for nullity applies when the judgment has not been drafted in the form prescribed by law, in which case the appellant bases it on two numerals (5th and 6th) of Article 500 of the Code of Criminal Procedure," the ruling states.

The resolution adds: "In this case, as an initial matter, it should be noted that the defendant Jarpa was acquitted at first instance of his participation in the tragic events, a decision that was reversed by one of the chambers of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, which considered the existence of testimonies that allow him to be seen in acts of cooperation, highlighting the statements of Mr.

Osvaldo Burgos, a junior employee at the polyclinic of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones, who claimed to have seen how Jarpa pointed out the workers and handed them over to the Carabineros, also seeing how one was beaten and Sergeant Rodríguez said, 'look at him well because you will not see him again,' which, in their judgment, allowed them to conclude that he carried out acts of cooperation prior to the perpetration of the homicides of the seven people detailed, facilitating their identification and detention, acting at least with eventual intent, keeping in mind the context in which these detentions occurred, carried out by police officers acting without any judicial order, with the country in a state of siege following the military coup of September 11, 1973, which led them to conclude that he could not have failed to project or represent to himself that the identification he made of the workers, supposedly opposed to the new de facto regime, would end in their death."

For the Criminal Chamber: "(...) on this topic, it should be mentioned that Article 16 of the Penal Code indicates that accomplices are those who, not being included in the previous article, cooperate in the execution of the act by prior or simultaneous acts.

That is, from its reading, one can well distinguish a kind of criterion of subsidiarity regarding the degree of participation and, certainly, knowledge of the author's actions, to which follows an aspect of temporality in the facts that constitute participation, being, in the case of complicity, the execution of acts of cooperation prior to or simultaneous with the illicit act."

"In this vein, the truth is that the analysis of the conduct displayed by the accomplice requires a subjective aspect. The accomplice must know that their actions have the quality of serving as assistance to the punishable result and that, in this case, the appellate judges base it on an eventual intent constructed on the basis of the context of the detentions—the state of siege in which the country found itself—which were executed by police who did not have a judicial order for such purposes," the ruling adds.

"In this sense," it elaborates, "contrasted with the established facts, the truth is that it lacks support because it is not preceded by sound reasoning. Moreover, it reveals an insurmountable deficiency that contradicts the remaining conclusions upon which the other decisions rest.

Indeed, as read in the ruling, the measure to kill the detainees was adopted after Lieutenant Fernández received a phone call from his superior, who ordered him not to send any more detainees to Los Ángeles and resolved to eliminate the 19 detainees who were housed in his station.

Until then, not even the apprehenders were aware of that tragic fate, since the initial intention was to transfer them to the Los Ángeles Regiment, as had happened previously with another group of detainees, in such a way that the volitional element attributed to the defendant Jarpa is not effective and the acts executed, while reproachable on another level, do not reach the level of penal relevance and do not merit criminal punishment such as that applied to him, the pointed evidence being insufficient to support the decision."

"In such reasoning, the ruling being analyzed, in this regard, has not been drafted in the form prescribed by law, considering that it lacks the considerations by virtue of which the facts attributed to the defendant Jarpa are proven, and it is for this reason that the protest raised will be upheld in the terms that will be indicated in the operative part," it concludes.

Execution Order

In the base ruling, the extraordinary visiting judge of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, established the following facts:

"A.- That on September 11, 1973, the day the constitutional government was overthrown and a Military Junta assumed power, declaring a state of siege throughout the country, Army Colonel and Commander of the Regiment based in Los Ángeles, Alfredo Rehren Pulido, was appointed as zone chief in the Bío Bío province.

He instructed the chief of the Laja Carabineros station, Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell, to detain political leaders of organizations in the sector with leftist ideas who were opposed to the military regime and to send them to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

As he had recently arrived and did not know the people in the sector, he entrusted the task to non-commissioned officers Garcés and Rodríguez, who had been in the area for several years. They compiled a list of those people they considered dangerous and, together with a picket of Carabineros commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell himself, between September 13 and 17, 1973, they went to the CMPC plant in Laja and met with Pedro Jarpa Foerster, head of the plant's security personnel, asking him to indicate who the union leaders were.

He complied, pointing out some of them while the workers were in line to register their departure from the company, facilitating their identification. By order of the aforementioned officer, they detained Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jack Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, Raúl Urra Parada, Federico Riquelme Concha, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez, who were transported in vehicles to the police unit in Laja, located at 104 Las Viñas Street in the same city.

Among the vehicles used was a Land Rover jeep owned by CMPC, driven by company driver Osvaldo Vásquez Vásquez, who had been authorized to loan the vehicle and the driver by his direct supervisor, Luis Eduardo Castillo (deceased), head of the garage, to provide services to the station, as requested by the aforementioned lieutenant.

Likewise, in the same period, they detained Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Gárfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Mario Jara Jara, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Bárrales at their homes.

Also, during that period, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa and Rubén Antonio Campos López presented themselves voluntarily at the station, the former accompanied by priest Félix Eicher Bongartz, and they were also detained.

All were placed in the cells of the aforementioned police unit without any legal or judicial order authorizing it, remaining in that situation until the night of September 17, 1973, during which time most were visited by their relatives, who brought them food and clothing.

The initial intention was to transfer them to the Los Ángeles Regiment, as had happened previously with another group of detainees.

B.- However, on September 17, 1973, Lieutenant Fernández received a phone call from his superior, Carabineros Major Aroldo Solari Sanhueza, commissioner of the First Precinct of Los Ángeles, ordering him not to send any more detainees to Los Ángeles and, upon being asked what to do with the 19 he had in his station, he told him to eliminate them.

He then instructed Sergeant Major Garcés and Sergeant Rodríguez to prepare the detainees, which they did on the night of that day, loading them onto a ¾-ton truck with an olive-green canvas cover, driven by a police officer and guarded by armed Carabineros who traveled in a green pickup truck owned by the Laja Municipality and in a beige Renault Ika jeep from the Government Sub-delegation, accompanied by civilian Peter Wilkens (deceased), who guided the caravan along Route Q-90.

At the Perales bridge, they deviated from this route and entered a side road, heading into a pine forest located on the San Juan estate in the commune of Yumbel. The caravan stopped, and Lieutenant Fernández Michell ordered the personnel under his command to make the detainees descend from the truck.

They were completely defenseless and with their hands tied, and he forced them to lie on the ground, face down, at the edge of a depression in the terrain. While they were illuminated by the headlights of the caravan's vehicles, he ordered the police officers to position themselves in front of them and, drawing his revolver, gave the order to shoot them, which was carried out by the Carabineros positioned on the firing line, firing their weapons and hitting the victims with multiple ballistic impacts in their bodies, causing the death of all the detainees on the spot.

Then, the same police officers, equipped with shovels they carried for that purpose, dug a pit approximately 60 cm deep, where they threw the bodies, which they covered with earth and some branches. Once this execution operation was finished, they returned to the Laja station, remaining silent about what had happened, even though the relatives of the executed victims wandered through detention centers in the region, pleading to know the whereabouts and fate of their loved ones.

Days after the very serious event mentioned above occurred, some Carabineros from the Laja station learned that some people had found human remains unearthed by dogs from the place where the 19 detainees had been buried, upon which Lieutenant Fernández Michell ordered officials under his command to accompany him to the place where the bodies had been buried in order to bury them deeper, which they did, taking the opportunity to cover them with lime—which they had obtained from the CMPC company—to avoid them being discovered.

C.- Approximately one month after these events occurred, at the end of October 1973, dogs in the area again unearthed human remains at the San Juan estate, which was noticed by a person passing through that place, who reported it to the Yumbel Carabineros.

They informed their chief, Commissioner Héctor Orlando Rivera Rojas (deceased), who ordered the then-officer of orders, Lieutenant René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta, to go to the site to verify the report.

Upon confirming the veracity of the facts, he communicated it to the commissioner, who ordered him to go to the site with the medical director of the Yumbel Hospital and personnel from the Laja station to exhume them and perform autopsies.

But since the doctor raised objections, estimating that he did not have the appropriate facilities at the Hospital, the commissioner ordered him to go talk to the local judge, Miss Corina Mera. The doctor reiterated the impossibility of receiving the bodies at the aforementioned facility for health reasons, and the magistrate agreed that the bodies be transferred directly to the parish cemetery for burial in a common grave, which the aforementioned officer of orders, Mr.

Urrutia, carried out using a trailer pulled by a tractor, during the night, while the curfew was in effect. Likewise, the commissioner ordered the Laja station to make the police report accounting for the event, signed by him and delivered to the court.

D.- This procedure was carried out without performing the required autopsies on the bodies found and they were buried without obtaining the corresponding sanitary authorization, nor the competent judicial order."

Source: Judiciary, March 2, 2024

Relatives of San Rosendo massacre value Supreme Court ruling confirming convictions of responsible Carabineros

"It is said and sometimes repeated that delayed justice is not justice, but we, always looking toward the future, sincere and without a spirit of revenge, can say that 'justice, even if late, is also justice when it arrives,'" the families of the 19 people executed at the hands of Carabineros de Chile officials one week after the 1973 coup d'état stated in a press release.

On March 1, 2024, the Supreme Court released the final ruling regarding the cassation appeals filed by both the plaintiffs and the defendants against the August 2021 ruling of the Court of Appeals of Concepción.

In summary, the Supreme Court maintained almost in its entirety what was resolved by the Court of Concepción, upholding the convictions of the direct material executors of the 19 homicides of residents of Laja and San Rosendo that occurred in the early hours of September 18, 1973, and whose perpetrators were former uniformed officers of the Laja Carabineros station at that time.

Indeed, it was resolved to maintain: the sentence of life imprisonment for former Carabineros Lieutenant Alberto Juan Fernández Michell; the sentence of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree for former Carabineros Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Nelson Casanova Salgado, José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, and Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, all named as authors of the 19 qualified homicides.

Finally, the sentence of 5 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree was maintained for former Carabinero Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete.

It should also be considered that, regarding four other former Carabineros—Luis León Godoy, Lisandro Martínez García, Gabriel González Salazar, and Samuel Vidal Riquelme—who had been temporarily dismissed by the investigating judge of the case, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, due to alleged dementia, the resolution of the Court of Concepción in its August 2021 ruling is maintained, in that it was not appropriate to favor them with that procedural decision and, instead, it was ordered to continue the trial against them by a non-disqualified judge, with similar convictions expected for each.

In turn, the Supreme Court ruling ended up acquitting Pedro Jarpa Foerster of criminal responsibility regarding the homicides, estimating that the mentioned crimes were not imputable to him due to the lack of intent or eventual intent in his actions.

This is despite the fact that the same Court addresses the criminal reproach deserved by the conduct displayed by him on the occasion of the detentions and kidnappings of former workers of the CMPC Laja Plant, mainly his actions consisting of the direct identification of the people who were being detained and kidnapped by Carabineros at the end of their shifts at CMPC.

Finally, regarding the CMPC company and its relationship and link to the investigated criminal acts, the relatives pointed out that "our conviction is reinforced that said paper company and its agents effectively permitted, encouraged, and facilitated the consummation of the criminal design, as irrefutably stated in the investigation of Judge Carlos Aldana, in the considerations taken into account by the Court of Concepción, and in the reflections and considerations adopted in the Supreme Court ruling—supply of vehicles, lime to cover the victims' bodies, ownership or possession of the property where the victims were sacrificed, provision of drivers from the company itself, etc."

In summary, the Supreme Court maintained almost in its entirety what was resolved by the Court of Concepción, upholding the convictions of the direct material executors of the 19 homicides of residents of Laja and San Rosendo that occurred in the early hours of September 18, 1973, and whose perpetrators were former uniformed officers of the Laja Carabineros station at that time.

In that sense, they point out that "remember in this regard that, at the time, a definitive dismissal was issued for CMPC executive Carlos Ferrer Gómez and management driver Rodolfo Román Román, due to their deaths, considering that they had previously been prosecuted.

Regarding Lionel Alejandro Aguilera Covarrubias, the Supreme Court ruling did not innovate what was ruled by the Court of Concepción."

Conclusions

In their statement, the relatives maintain that "we are putting an end to a long and, why not say it, often exhausting, fatiguing, cruel, and certainly painful path that from its beginning saw practically 51 years pass in anticipation of this final moment from the judicial and human point of view. This is the reality and the time we had to face."

In this regard, they stated that "it is said and sometimes repeated that delayed justice is not justice, but we, always looking toward the future, sincere and without a spirit of revenge, can say that 'justice, even if late, is also justice when it arrives.' This path, initiated before the Courts immediately after the detention and forced disappearance of our relatives in September 1973, began with the filing of the first writs of amparo in search of knowing their whereabouts, the 'Where are they?'.

All of which, as happened in similar cases throughout the country, were rejected by the Courts of Justice."

"Subsequently, in 1979 and with the extraordinary and invaluable support of the Social Department of the Archbishopric of Concepción, the first criminal complaints were filed against those responsible for these tragic events, with the investigation being assumed by the courageous Judge of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, an example of human and legal strength, Mr.

José Martínez Gaensly. To him and the lawyers Martita Worner, Jorge Barudi, Fernando Saldaña, among others, our eternal recognition and respect," they recounted.

"Having finished this path, in the legal and human sense, we can express our peace of mind for what we did, for the paths we opened, for the truths we denounced, for the relevance we granted at the national level to this cause, which has been and will be the best tribute of memory and dignity for our parents, spouses, brothers, and children, who saw their lives vilely cut short in the early hours of a September 18, 1973."

Regarding this, they described that "the brief and valuable investigation of Judge Martínez Gaensly would conclude with the location of the bodies of our relatives, their identification and delivery for their dignified burial, and with his declaration of incompetence, given that the responsibility of the Carabineros of the former Laja station appeared clearly in the facts, which is why he had to transfer the process to the Military Justice, which, practically immediately and without any investigation, proceeded to apply the Amnesty Law, dismissing the case without making any of the uniformed authors of the facts effective."

Thus, "once democracy was recovered in our country, an tireless process began to obtain justice for so many human rights violations that occurred during the dictatorial stage. This is how cases like ours, in 2010, were reopened, with the responsibility for their investigation being given to the Judge of the Court of Appeals of Concepción, Mr.

Carlos Aldana Fuentes, who only in 2018 issued a conviction at first instance regarding the uniformed officers involved."

"Subsequently, the final sentence issued by Judge Aldana was appealed, with the Court of Appeals of Concepción accepting a large part of our claims, substantially increasing the sentences imposed on the former uniformed officers, also convicting Pedro Jarpa Foerster, a former employee of the CMPC Laja Plant, and substantially increasing the civil indemnity reparations granted to the relatives," they assert.

"Having finished this path, in the legal and human sense, we can express our peace of mind for what we did, for the paths we opened, for the truths we denounced, for the relevance we granted at the national level to this cause, which has been and will be the best tribute of memory and dignity for our Parents, Spouses, Brothers, and Children, who saw their lives vilely cut short in the early hours of a September 18, 1973," they recounted.

Source: interferencia.cl, March 4, 2024

Controversy over expert report conducted by Jacqueline van Rysselberghe: What did the SML say?

The former senator and former president of the UDI, who now works as a psychiatrist at the Legal Medical Service (SML) of Concepción, carried out an expert report on a person convicted of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship.

Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, former senator and former president of the UDI who was hired last April as a psychiatrist by the Legal Medical Service (SML) of Concepción, carried out an expert report on the person convicted in the San Rosendo-Laja case in the Biobío region, José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, for crimes against humanity during the dictatorship.

The situation has generated controversy, as it had initially been stated that the former senator did not intervene in human rights cases and the report could allow Otárola to leave prison to serve the rest of his sentence at home.

Now, the SML has ordered an administrative summary to clarify why the task was assigned to van Rysselberghe.

What did the SML say?

The National Directorate of the SML declared this Wednesday through a statement that "as was informed at the time, the professional was hired with the purpose of carrying out only expert reports considered as 'gaps' between 2018 and 2022 for criminal cases. Expert reports linked to human rights violations during the dictatorship do not correspond to said Gap Plan."

"For this reason, this National Directorate has instructed the carrying out of an administrative summary to clarify the reasons why this expert report was assigned to the aforementioned professional, and to determine the possible responsibilities in this situation," the document adds.

Finally, the agency announced that "as of this date, the Directorate of the Service has determined that all cases of human rights violations, and the expert reports requested, be coordinated from the central level of the institution, through the Medical Sub-directorate."

Source: t13.cl, May 29, 2024

Legal Medical Service orders summary following controversial expert report conducted by Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe

The Legal Medical Service (SML) announced the application of an administrative summary to investigate the assignment of the expert report conducted by psychiatrist Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe in the case of José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, a former sergeant convicted for the San Rosendo-Laja massacre.

Furthermore, it was noted that from now on, all these cases will be managed centrally by the Medical Sub-directorate to avoid errors and ensure the correct administration of justice.

The Legal Medical Service (SML) has issued an official statement announcing an administrative summary to investigate the assignment of the expert report conducted by psychiatrist Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe in the case of José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, a former sergeant convicted for the San Rosendo-Laja massacre during the dictatorship in Chile.

This decision was made in response to the criticism arising from the psychiatric report conducted by the former senator that could influence the sentence of Otárola Sanhueza.

According to the SML statement, the professional was hired to carry out expert reports considered as "gaps" between 2018 and 2022, specifically for criminal cases and not for human rights violations during the dictatorship.

In this sense, the National Directorate of the SML has indicated that the administrative investigation will seek to clarify the reasons behind the assignment of this expert report to Van Rysselberghe and determine the corresponding responsibilities, in a process that is key to ensuring transparency and the correct administration of justice in cases of human rights violations.

Additionally, the SML has decided that, from now on, all cases related to human rights violations will be coordinated centrally through the Medical Sub-directorate. This measure aims to avoid future errors and ensure that expert reports are assigned to professionals adequately trained for these cases.

Source: fastcheck.cl, May 29, 2024