20 years old, single, forcibly disappeared on September 11, 1973, in Santiago. Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati disappeared that day around 8:40 hours, in the vicinity of the La Moneda Palace, after being detained by Carabineros.

According to witness statements, Pedro Garcés had been a member of President Salvador Allende's Presidential Guard (GAP) since August 1973, and was serving at the El Cañaveral presidential residence under the orders of Domingo Blanco Tarrés.

On the day of the coup d'état, a group of GAP members who were in charge of guarding the presidential residences of Tomás Moro and El Cañaveral, among whom was Pedro Garcés, headed toward the Presidential Palace in the morning with the intention of entering it, but they were detained by a contingent of Carabineros and taken to the Intendencia de Santiago facility.

Since then, his fate and whereabouts remain unknown. The case of Domingo Blanco Tarrés was declared with conviction by the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation as a victim of human rights violations in the capacity of a forcibly disappeared person.

In consideration of the background information gathered in the Corporation's investigation, the Superior Council reached the conviction that Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati disappeared while being held deprived of liberty by State agents. For this reason, it declared him a victim of human rights violations.

Source: (Corporation Report)

The book "Breaking the silence of children and adolescents who were political executions during the 1973-1990 civil-military dictatorship" incorporates testimonies, photographs, letters, and other documents that families and friends provided or wrote specifically for publication.

The book was produced by the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) with the support of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, through the Culture, Memory, and Human Rights Unit, and the Human Rights Chair of the University of Chile.

The publication, based primarily on the Report of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (1991) and the Report of the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (1996), seeks to reconstruct each of the victims' lives and stories in a comprehensive and careful manner.

During the investigation, the archive of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions was accessed, where documents that families have preserved over the years are kept. Illustrations by Álvaro Gómez were also included. The creation process was a complex challenge that involved combining delicacy, respect, and methodological rigor to state a painful and inescapable truth in this work.

Source: Cultura.gob.cl 20/4/2023

Date: 04-20-2023

SML handed over the remains of three escorts of former President Allende to their families

They are Carlos Alfonso Cruz Zavala, Oscar Marambio Araya, and Juan Pedro Garcés Portigliati.

The identification process for the three GAP members concluded 39 years later. The Medical Legal Service (SML) handed over to their families this Friday the remains of three members of the escort team of the late President Salvador Allende, who were found dead after being detained during the 1973 coup d'état and whose identification process concluded 39 years later.

They are Carlos Alfonso Cruz Zavala, who was 29 years old at the time of his detention; Oscar Marambio Araya, 25; and Juan Pedro Garcés Portigliati, 20, all of them socialist militants and members of the GAP, the group of friends of President Allende, according to an SML statement.

The three were detained on September 11, 1973, in the surroundings of the La Moneda Palace. The body of the first one appeared a few days later, but the other two remained disappeared for several years.

Their remains were found in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago, where in 1991 more than 100 remains of forcibly disappeared persons, buried there by the dictatorship, were found in mass graves, all of them in graves marked as "NN" (unidentified).

The majority were identified by SML experts, but in 2006 it was reported that there were significant errors in the recognition, and since then, exhaustive work began to rectify the mistake. With these three victims, there are now 46 who have been correctly identified out of a total of 124 from Patio 29.

Source: cooperativa.cl 17/2/2012

Date: 02-17-2012

Justice orders compensation for families of Salvador Allende's escorts murdered and disappeared after the assault on La Moneda

The ruling stated that crimes against humanity are imprescriptible and increased the compensation amount that the mothers, spouses, and children of the victims must receive. In total, the State must pay 1.225 billion pesos.

The Santiago Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution ordering the treasury to compensate the families of the forcibly disappeared Domingo Bartolomé Blanco Tarrés and José Belisario Carreño Calderón; and of those illegally executed: Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Carlos Alfonso Cruz Zavala, Luis Alfredo Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Óscar Osvaldo Marambio Araya, Edmundo Enrique Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Osvaldo Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Andrés María Ropert Contreras, members of the so-called "Group of Personal Friends" (GAP) of President Salvador Allende, detained on September 11, 1973, in the vicinity of the La Moneda Palace. In a unanimous ruling, the Second Chamber of the appellate court—composed of ministers Omar Astudillo, María Soledad Melo, and Maritza Villadangos—confirmed the State's responsibility in the execution of crimes against humanity perpetrated by its agents, but decreed the acquittal of retired Air Force General Vicente Rodríguez Bustos, solely due to the fact that he passed away after the first-instance ruling; and of retired Carabineros General Patricio de la Fuente Ibar, due to a lack of evidence of participation in the events. Regarding the civil aspect, the ruling agrees that, as in the criminal sphere, crimes against humanity are imprescriptible and increased the compensation amount that the mothers, spouses, and children of the victims must receive, while lowering it for siblings and nephews, meaning the State must pay a total of $1,225,000,000 (one billion two hundred twenty-five million pesos) for moral damages. "Regarding the exception of the statute of limitations for civil action, the truth is that it is imprescriptible, as jurisprudence has repeatedly declared. It must be remembered that the criminal offenses that have given rise to this civil liability correspond to crimes against humanity, so the right to reparation for the families of the victims of this type of illicit act also finds its foundation in the general principles of International Human Rights Law and in the regulations of international treaties ratified by our country, which oblige the State of Chile to recognize and protect the right to full reparation, by virtue of the provisions of the second paragraph of Article 5 and Article 6 of the Political Constitution of the Republic," the ruling maintains. The resolution adds that "such being the case, if it is considered that the criminal action for this type of attack on human dignity is imprescriptible, it is not coherent to maintain at the same time that the civil compensation action can be extinguished by the statute of limitations, through the application of internal civil law, since that would mean contradicting the will expressed by international Human Rights regulations, which are part of the national legal system by provision of the second paragraph of Article 5 of the Fundamental Charter. Furthermore, if criminal liability is imprescriptible, the civil liability of the State—which stems from those same facts—must follow the same fate, that is to say, it is not extinguished by the passage of time, as it is accessory and dependent on the criminal liability of a State agent, which is declared in this ruling." Mapocho River and Patio 29 In the first-instance ruling, issued by the minister on extraordinary visit for human rights violation cases of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, the following facts were established: "1.- That during the presidential term of President Salvador Allende Gossens, a security device was formed, composed of young, armed men with paramilitary training in some cases, known as the GAP or 'Group of Personal Friends of the President,' and that this group included, among others, José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, Domingo Blanco Tarrés, the latter being one of the heads of this device, and Enrique Ropert Contreras, who at the time was a university student and son of Miria Contreras, private secretary to President Allende; 2.- That in the early hours of September 11, 1973, the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, and of the Air Force, Gustavo Leigh Guzmán; the Admiral of the Navy, José Toribio Merino Castro, and the General of Carabineros of Chile, César Mendoza Durán, proceeded to carry out a Coup d'État against the Government of the then-President Salvador Allende Gossens, as a result of which the head of state, who was at the presidential residence on Tomás Moro street, moved accompanied by a group of his escorts and Carabineros to the La Moneda Palace; 3.- That aware of these events, the head of the GAP, Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who was at the Cañaveral presidential residence, decided to move along with members of said group, identified in the first section, accompanied by the President's Secretary Miria Contreras Bell and her sons Max and Enrique Ropert Contreras, to the Tomás Moro residence to meet with President Allende; but upon arriving, they learned that he had already left the place bound for the La Moneda Palace, so Blanco Tarrés, along with his other escorts, traveled in a pickup truck from Tomás Moro to that place; Miria Contreras and her son Enrique Ropert Contreras did the same in a 'Renoleta' (Renault 4), with Max Ropert Contreras remaining at Tomás Moro; 4.- That upon arriving in the city center and entering via Morandé street, near the La Moneda vehicle parking lots, Blanco Tarrés along with José Belisario Carreño Calderón, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría, got out armed, but were discovered and ordered to surrender their weapons by a contingent of Carabineros belonging to the mobile group directed by an Officer who belonged to the Prefecture located in the Intendencia de Santiago; due to this incident, Miria Contreras Bell, who arrived at the moment the detention occurred, asked her son Enrique Ropert Contreras to find out what had happened, but upon doing so, he also became detained by the Police Forces, and Miria Contreras could not prevent it, so she decided to escape toward La Moneda. All members of President Allende's personal guard, along with Enrique Ropert Contreras, were taken to the facilities of the police prefecture inside the Intendencia, without interventions from the Presidential Palace and the Director of Carabineros at that time succeeding in obtaining their release. The group was taken to the Intendencia, where they remained for a few hours, being subsequently loaded by order of Colonel Carlos Hinrichsen González, head of the mobile group, onto a Carabineros bus and taken to the 6th Police Station of Santiago, a police unit where Pedro Espinoza Bravo arrived first to speak with Commissioner Jorge Retamal Berríos, for the purpose of taking the detainees with him, which was denied due to the lack of a written order, with an Air Force Intelligence Major arriving later at the Station, armed with a written order from a War Council, who is the one who finally proceeds to take this group of detainees with him, before they were placed at the disposal of the Justice system; 5.- That all or part of this group of prisoners was transferred on September 12 or 13, 1973, to the Central Headquarters of the Investigative Police, a place where they were subjected to interrogations, among whom it is known with certainty was Domingo Blanco Tarrés, who was admitted to the Public Jail on September 15, 1973, by orders of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office; from there he was taken out on several occasions and brought to the Prosecutor's Office, where he was subjected to torture, interrogations, and confrontations with other members of the GAP, and he left the penitentiary facility on September 19, according to Gendarmerie records, by order of the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office, with all traces of him being lost from that date, and his whereabouts currently unknown; 6.- That, on the other hand, the remains of José Belisario Carreño Calderón, which were initially identified as belonging to said person when found on September 19, 1973, at the Bulnes bridge, were subsequently ruled out according to DNA testing, so from the date he was transferred to the 6th Carabineros Station and removed by the Air Force Intelligence Officer, nothing more was known about his whereabouts; 7.- That, in turn, the bodies of Enrique Ropert Contreras, Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, and William Ramírez Barría were found on September 19, 1973, on the banks of the Mapocho River, in the Bulnes Bridge sector, and admitted on September 20, 1973, to the then-Medical Legal Institute, as accounted for by their autopsy protocols and body reception records; 8.- That, in relation to Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, in the case files, it is duly accredited that his body entered the Medical Legal Institute, without any autopsy report or body reception record existing for him, with this victim being among those identified by DNA tests performed subsequently on remains found in Patio 29; 9.- That, to date, and according to the information provided to the case, the following victims are identified by DNA tests performed in foreign laboratories on bone remains found in the mass grave of Patio 29 of the General Cemetery: Carlos Cruz Zavalla, Luis Gamboa Pizarro, Pedro Juan Garcés Portigliati, Óscar Marambio Araya, Edmundo Montero Salazar, Jorge Osvaldo Orrego González, William Ramírez Barría, and Enrique Ropert Contreras; 10.- That in accordance with the autopsy of the time and burial records, it is established that the remains of Gonzalo Mario Jorquera Leyton were recognized and handed over to his family in the days following the occurrence of the events," the investigation concludes.

Source: elciudadano.com 2021

Patio 29 Behind the Iron Cross (BOOK)

Patio 29 used to be destined for the burial of the indigent, psychiatric patients, and people who died without being identified (NN). However, between September 1973 and January 1974, its graves were used to hide victims of repression as NN.

Javiera Bustamante and Stephan Ruderer reconstruct the painful history of the place, using testimonies from the families of the forcibly disappeared, letters, documents, and other sources. The book also accounts for the arduous process of identification and handing over of the bodies, as well as the irregularities that characterized these proceedings.

The powerful photographs that illustrate the volume were taken by visual artist Mara Daruich. Bustamante, Javiera; Ruderer, Stephan

Source: ocholibros.cl undated