Date of Birth: 07/27/47, 27 years old at the time of her detention; Spanish nationality, born in France. Address: Calle Tiros, Villa Japón, Las Rejas, Santiago. Marital Status: Single, 8 months pregnant.

Occupation: Former Electrical Engineering student, Universidad Técnica del Estado. Political Affiliation: Socialist Party; former employee of the Instituto Chileno Vietnamita; assistant to the Mademsa and Cristalerías Chile unions. Date of Detention: June 20, 1975.

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, an engineering student at the Universidad Técnica del Estado and a Socialist militant, who was eight months pregnant, was detained around June 20, 1975, in the Las Rejas neighborhood by agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).

Although there are no direct witnesses to her apprehension, there is evidence to deduce that it occurred at her home and, possibly, alongside Ricardo Lagos Salinas, with whom she shared the house and her Socialist militancy.

At the time of her detention, the victim was 8 months pregnant. Both the victim and Ricardo Lagos remain forcibly disappeared. The fate of the child she was expecting is unknown.

Juan Carlos Ruiz, also a Socialist, stated that in November 1974, after being released from detention, he made contact with Michelle Peña when she and Ricardo Lagos were living in a boarding house on Calle Tocornal.

Subsequently, in 1975, the witness took on liaison duties between Exequiel Ponce, then the top leader of the Party, and leaders Ricardo Lagos, Carlos Lorca, and Michelle Peña, all of whom are currently forcibly disappeared after having been detained by the DINA.

In March 1975, he located the house on Calle Tiros where Lagos and the victim were living—a residence used for storing documents, housing a photographic workshop, and serving as a meeting point with Ponce. At that time, the declarant notes, there was a great deal of insecurity, as mid-level Socialist leaders had already been detained.

Thus, Michelle's pregnancy caused alarm. According to the witness, she was taken to medical check-ups under constantly changing aliases.

Around June 21, 1975, Juan Carlos Ruiz went to the victim's home and entered without noticing that the warning signal previously agreed upon with Ricardo Lagos—an open window—was present. Inside, there was great disorder; mattresses were slashed and belongings were scattered, with clear signs of a raid. The declarant estimated that Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Peña had been detained there.

Subsequently, on July 1, 1975, when Socialist militant Héctor Eduardo Riffo was being held in the sector known as "La Torre" at Villa Grimaldi—a secret DINA detention and torture center—he heard two detained women being brought into a neighboring cabin.

He heard their voices and recognized Michelle's, whom he knew previously. Regarding the other person, he heard agents call her "Gina." This witness had been detained on June 24, 1975, while arriving at a meeting with Ricardo Lagos, whom DINA agents were bringing in as a detainee.

The detention and disappearance of the victim are part of a DINA operation against Socialist Party leaders, members of the Political Commission, and their liaisons and couriers, carried out in June and early July 1975.

This operation included the detentions of Ricardo Lagos, Exequiel Ponce, Mireya Rodríguez, Carlos Lorca, Modesta Carolina Wiff, and the victim. In July, Rosa Soliz Poveda and Sara Donoso Palacios, who worked in the party alongside Modesta Carolina Wiff, were also detained.

All of them remain forcibly disappeared. For her part, Michelle Peña had been sought since 1974. In September of that year, civilians identifying themselves as military personnel arrived at the home of Gregoria Peña, located at Gálvez 143, asking for the victim. Upon not finding her, they kept the place under surveillance for about 15 days.

Michelle Peña has remained disappeared since she was seen at Villa Grimaldi in June 1975. Although she was more than 8 months pregnant, it has never been possible to verify if her child was born.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On July 8, 1975, Gregoria Peña—a relative of the victim—filed a recurso de amparo (writ of habeas corpus) for Michelle at the Santiago Court of Appeals, registered under No. 827-75. With only a response from the Minister of the Interior and Division General Raúl Benavides Escobar denying the detention of the person in question (July 1975), the filing was rejected on August 8, 1975.

On August 29, 1975, a new amparo was filed for the victim at the Court Martial, registered under No. 128-75, with Gregoria Peña stating she had learned that her sister might be in the Santiago Military Hospital under the name "NN" due to her pregnancy.

After Minister Raúl Benavides denied the detention, the Court Martial declared itself incompetent to hear the appeal and sent the records to the Santiago Court of Appeals. It registered them under No. 1217-75 (September 25, 1975), and on September 26 of the same year, it rejected the appeal, sending the documents to the corresponding Criminal Court.

On October 1, 1975, the 6th Criminal Court of Santiago opened case No. 92.461. During its processing, the Military Hospital was requested to report whether a pregnant woman had been admitted between June 25 and August 2, 1975, and if her identity had been established.

The effort did not yield the expected results. The hospital sent the file of a patient who was later determined to have thrown herself in front of a vehicle, which did not correspond to Michelle Peña.

On July 14, 1976, the summary was closed and the case was temporarily dismissed. The Santiago Court of Appeals approved the resolution on October 29 of the same year.

On July 10, 1975, a complaint for the illegal detention of Michelle Peña was filed at the 5th Criminal Court, registered under No. 100.753. During its processing, the Minister of the Interior and Division General, Raúl Benavides Escobar, denied the victim's detention (July 22, 1975).

For his part, Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa, Executive Secretary of Detainees (SENDET), informed the court that he lacked information regarding Michelle Peña (July 1975). Colonel Hernán Brantes Martínez, of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), stated that the victim had not been detained by them. "Unable to advance further in the investigation of this case," the summary was closed on October 30, 1975, and the case was temporarily dismissed.

On January 19, 1976, the Court of Appeals approved the resolution.

Additionally, the family presented the case to international organizations in order to obtain an answer regarding the victim's whereabouts. The information was delivered to the International Commission of Jurists and the Human Rights Commission, among others.

On August 1, 1978, Michelle Peña's relatives went to the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago, along with the families of 70 forcibly disappeared persons, to file a criminal complaint for kidnapping against General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, Marcelo Luis Manuel Moren Brito, and Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, an Army Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel, respectively.

The judge declared himself incompetent and referred the case to the Military Justice system, which assigned it to the 2nd Military Prosecutor's Office of Santiago. The case was registered under No. 553-78.

In said process, 4 volumes from the investigation into forcibly disappeared persons by Minister Servando Jordán were reviewed, which contained evidence of the DINA's actions, its agents, and secret detention centers.

In this case, the former Director of the DINA, General Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, testified by official letter, stating, among other things, that Villa Grimaldi was indeed a DINA facility where some detainees were held in transit, and that the Santa Lucía Clinic was a hospital facility for DINA officials.

Regarding the agents, he stated that Laureani, Wenderoth, Krassnoff, and Moren were DINA analysts, and that Osvaldo Romo Mena was an informant for an agent and that he did not know his current whereabouts.

Without any investigative steps being taken for four years, on November 20, 1989, Army Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Ibarra Chamorro, Military Prosecutor General, requested the application of the Amnesty Decree Law (D.L. 2.191) for this case, because the process had the exclusive purpose of investigating alleged crimes occurring between September 11, 1973, and March 10, 1978, and because, during the 10 years of processing, it had not been possible to "determine the responsibility of any person." On November 30, 1989, the request was accepted by the 2nd Military Court, which dismissed the case totally and definitively—even though it was still in the summary stage—due to "the criminal liability of the persons allegedly accused of the reported acts being extinguished." The plaintiffs appealed this resolution to the Court Martial, which confirmed the ruling in January 1992. A complaint was then filed with the Supreme Court of Justice, which, as of December 1992, had not yet issued its resolution.

(Full details of this complaint are in the case of Eduardo Alarcón Jara, detained on July 30, 1974). Romo Mena was arrested in July 1992 in Brazil and expelled from that country in November of that year; upon his arrival in Chile, he was detained. As of December of that year, he had been charged in six cases of forcibly disappeared persons.

Among other things, Romo has acknowledged his status as a DINA agent, his participation in detention operations, and his involvement in the interrogation of detainees at DINA detention centers. He has also provided information regarding his departure from the country in 1975, as he was being summoned by several courts handling cases of forcibly disappeared persons.

The DINA had not only intervened in the decision to leave the country but had also provided him with the means to do so, including facilitating false identity documents for him and his family.

Source: Corporation report

Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido received first-instance sentences for the qualified kidnapping of 11 members of the Socialist Party Central Committee in 1975.

Among the victims are Michelle Peña Herreros, who was pregnant at the time of her detention, and Carlos Lorca Tobar, considered the political mentor of Michelle Bachelet.

Six former members of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) were sentenced by visiting judge Miguel Vázquez Plaza in the case regarding the disappearance of 11 members of the Socialist Party Central Committee at the hands of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship's repressive organ.

In his resolution, the magistrate sentenced Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo, Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos, Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González, Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, and Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido for the crime of qualified kidnapping to prison terms ranging from 12 to 20 years for events that occurred on various dates in 1975 in the Metropolitan Region.

All those convicted, except for Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, are being held at the Punta Peuco prison. Additionally, the judge ordered the acquittal of agent Jorge Madariaga Acevedo.

In the civil aspect, the ruling accepted the claims filed, ordering the State of Chile to pay compensation of $80 million and $150 million to the victims' families.

Michelle Peña and Carlos Lorca

During the investigation stage, the visiting judge established that the detentions of the PS Central Committee members began on March 4, 1975, with the capture of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, and continued until the final days of December, when DINA agents arrested Jaime Eugenio López Arellano.

Among the victims are Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, pregnant at the time of her detention, who was detained between June 20 and 25 in the Villa Las Rejas sector and taken to the Villa Grimaldi facility, the last place where the militants were seen alive.

Another detainee was Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, considered the political mentor of former President Michelle Bachelet. He was captured on June 25, 1975, by DINA agents on Calle Maule, in the commune of Santiago, and also taken to Villa Grimaldi.

Details of the sentences

Those convicted for these events are

Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann to 20 years of effective imprisonment as a co-author of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

Rolf Gonzalo Wenderoth Pozo and Manuel Andrés Carevic Cubillos must serve 18 years in prison as co-authors of the qualified kidnappings of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Adolfo Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda, Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios, and Jaime Eugenio López Arellano.

Gerardo Ernesto Urrich González was sentenced by the judge to 16 years of effective imprisonment as a co-author of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, Carlos Enrique Lorca Tobar, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Rosa Elvira Soliz Poveda, Sara de Lourdes Donoso Palacios, and Jaime Eugenio López Arellano.

Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko must serve 15 years and one day in prison as the author of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio; and Juvenal Alfonso Piña Garrido, 12 years in prison as a co-author of the qualified kidnappings of Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, Ricardo Ernesto Lagos Salinas, Mireya Herminia Rodríguez Díaz, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

Source: elmostrador.cl, December 18, 2018 Date: 12-18-2018

In a ruling that was already anticipated, the plenary of Supreme Court ministers determined that only four of the eight judges with exclusive dedication will continue in this status, and the remaining ones will form a court with preferential dedication.

Based on the information gathered by the highest court, it was determined that the 1st Civil Court of San Bernardo, led by Judge Cecilia Flores; the 8th Criminal Court of Santiago, with María Ines Collins; the 9th Criminal Court of Santiago with Raquel Lermanda; and the 10th Criminal Court with Juan Antonio Poblete will remain as exclusive judges.

Additionally, the 4th Criminal Court of San Miguel, led by María Teresa Díaz, will maintain the same status, although only for a period of one month.

In the case of the 1st Criminal Court of Santiago, the 5th Criminal Court of Santiago, the 1st Criminal Court of Arica, the Court of Letters of María Elena, the 1st and 2nd Criminal Courts of Valparaíso, the 1st Civil Court of Chillán, the 1st Criminal Court of Chillán, the 1st Criminal Court of Talcahuano, the Court of Letters of Pucón, and the 2nd Criminal Court of Valdivia, they will join the existing group of preferential judges.

The most difficult situation is faced by the judges of the 3rd Criminal Court of Santiago, Mario Carroza; the 3rd Criminal Court of San Miguel, María Teresa Díaz; and the Court of Letters of Santa Bárbara, Loreto Jara, who will henceforth become preferential judges.

But the Supreme Court also ordered the 10th Criminal Court to annex the relevant proceedings to the cases it is already processing in order to advance the investigation; however, it provided no further details in this regard.

All exclusive and preferential judges must report on their management after one month and will be evaluated again by the superior court.

Regarding the details of the cases, the process for the death of Juan Luis Rivera Matus, case file 107.716-9, will begin to be handled preferentially by the head of the 1st Criminal Court of Santiago, Joaquín Billard, who will also process case file 107.254.

In the case of the 5th Criminal Court, it will hear case file 167.716-16, titled "Disappeared from La Moneda," which was already under preferential status.

In the 1st and 4th Courts of Arica, case files 51925 and 13.322-A, respectively, will be heard.

In María Elena, case 31-91 will be investigated preferentially, while in the 1st Criminal Court of Valparaíso, the case of British priest Michael Woodward, case file 140.454, will be heard.

In the 2nd Criminal Court of Valparaíso, case file 127.298-1 will be heard. In Chillán, meanwhile, the 1st Civil Court will hear case 11.599, which according to FASIC does not correspond to a human rights process, whereas in the 1st Criminal Court of the same city, the disappearance of Ernesto Torres Guzmán, case file 70.927-6, will be investigated.

In the case of Talcahuano, case file 24.776 is added as preferential; in Pucón, case file 4.473; and in Valdivia, case file 75.858.

Conversely, the cases regarding the disappearance of Daniel Reyes Piña, Leopoldo Muñoz Andrade, Víctor Morales Mazuela, and Víctor Cárdenas Valderrama, which were being processed by the 3rd Criminal Court of San Miguel, will be negatively affected by the Supreme Court's ruling, as they will now have preferential status.

In any case, it works in their favor that indictments have already been issued in the cases of Morales and Cárdenas.

In the 3rd Criminal Court of Santiago, the disappearance at the hands of the DINA of Iván Carreño Aguilero and the deaths of Luis Moraga Cruz, Juan Orellana Catalán, and Ricardo Weibel Navarrete, who perished at the hands of the Comando Conjunto, will now be preferential cases. This court also handles the process for the disappearance of former GAP member Domingo Blanco Tarres.

In the case of Santa Bárbara, the investigation into the cases of Luis Bastias Sandoval, Luis Cid Cid, Cristino Cid Fuentealba, José Molina Quezada, José Pinto, Raimundo Salaza, Segundo Soto, and Gabriel Viveros, who disappeared in the first days of the Military Coup, is affected.

In the 10th Criminal Court of Santiago, four cases reported to the Dialogue Table by the Armed Forces are being investigated: the 1975 disappearances of Ricardo Lagos Salinas, Carlos Lorca Tobar, Michelle Peña Herreros, and Exequiel Ponce Vicencio.

Source: primeralinea.cl, April 23, 2002 Date: 04-23-2002

Michelle, 27 years old, a PS militant and third-year Engineering student at the Universidad Técnica del Estado. She was more than 8 months pregnant on the day of her detention, June 20, 1975, by DINA agents, along with her partner Ricardo Lagos Salinas, a member of the PS Political Commission, who is also a forcibly disappeared person.

They were taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture center. In June of the same year, they informed her mother, Mrs. Gregoria Peña, that she had been taken to the FACH Hospital or the Military Hospital to give birth.

It has never been proven if her child was born alive, nor has the whereabouts of Michelle and Ricardo been established. During the process, a sergeant and nurse who worked at the former Santa Lucía Clinic testified: "Towards the end of June '75, a woman arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic in an advanced state of pregnancy, about to give birth.

I remember she was attended to by a doctor who could have been Leyton, Fantuzzi, Bravo, or Muñoz, the doctors of the DINA Health Brigade who were at the clinic that day." Michelle was returned to Villa Grimaldi, where they continued to torture her. In her cell at Villa Grimaldi, Michelle wrote: "I was here. Michelle Peña. August 1975."

Source: memoriasantalucia162.cl, undated

These lines are dedicated to honoring my dear friend Michelle Peña, an electrical engineering student at the Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE), a prominent Socialist militant and student leader, who has been a forcibly disappeared person, eight months pregnant, since June 1975.

Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros was born on July 26, 1947, in Toulouse, France. The daughter of a Spanish Civil War exile, she held both French and Spanish nationalities. She was registered as the daughter of her grandparents, Gabriel Peña and Micaela Herreros.

Her mother, Gregoria Peña Herreros, was 15 years old at the time of her pregnancy. Her father, Roger Icart, was two years older, the son of a wealthy French family. Since both were minors, the Icart family opposed their marriage. Gregoria and Roger lived in the town of Lezat sur Leze, and the young woman moved to Toulouse, where her daughter was born.

Michelle grew up believing her mother was her older sister. She arrived in Chile in 1951, and it was not until she was five years old that the truth of her origin was revealed to her. Her childhood and adolescence were spent in a circle of Spanish refugees who spoke of the Civil War (1936-1939) and sang the songs of the Republic, which she learned and sang with enthusiasm.

She completed her primary education in a public school and her secondary education at Liceo de Niñas No. 1, Javiera Carrera, where she was active in student organization, serving as a class representative and organizer of the first student convention to create the statutes for the Student Center.

She also participated in organizing the first Liceo Song Festival. During this period, she became very close friends with Patricia Abarzúa and Aileen Griffith, who shared her enthusiasm.

In 1967, she entered the Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE), Antofagasta campus, to study electrical engineering. The following year, she moved to Santiago to continue her studies in the same field.

She was a militant in the Socialist Youth (JS), where she immediately stood out. In the words of her mother, Michelle was "cheerful, intelligent, especially skilled and quick with mathematics... but she preferred to read, listen to music, and play the guitar." She was "tall, sturdy, fair-skinned, with very large, expressive brown eyes and a firm gaze, and a turned-up nose.

She spoke with her hands and gestures; she was very argumentative and would not stay silent in the face of social injustice."

As a consequence of these virtues, and unusually, at the end of her first year of studies in Santiago, she was designated as a candidate for student delegate to the Honorable University Council of the UTE, representing the Execution Engineering students from the nine university campuses: Antofagasta, Copiapó, La Serena, Santiago, Talca, Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, and Punta Arenas.

The University Reform movement had made great strides at the UTE: in October 1967, a Reform Commission with student participation had been established, the first in Chile, and in August 1968, we had elected Enrique Kirberg, a Communist militant and Reform candidate, as rector in a full assembly of professors and students.

It was under these circumstances that I met Michelle, as I was her opponent, representing the Communist Youth (JJCC, the "Jota"), in those elections. I knew her by sight, as well as her high school friend, Patricia Abarzúa. Paty was also a JS militant and had entered the UTE in 1967. Towards the end of 1968, I established closer contact with both.

At some point, Michelle approached me with a question: "I don't know the provincial campuses. Do you know them?" As a leader of the Jota at the UTE, I had visited most of the campuses and was aware of the progress of the Reform in each one.

I offered to give her this information, which she welcomed. We went to one of the study rooms at the School of Industrial Engineers, and there I shared my view of the situation campus by campus. We met twice. Michelle wrote down everything I told her and asked very good questions. From time to time, we exchanged jokes. From then on, a very sincere and affectionate friendship was forged.

A few days later, she came to look for me at the apartment where I was studying and, with a bright smile, said: "Would it be too bold to propose that we go campus by campus together presenting our candidacies to the students?"

Her proposal surprised me as a great demonstration of trust, but I had to answer: "I would love to do what you propose, but there is a problem: I am not going to campaign. In most of the campuses, they know me, and in others, the Jota will do the work of making my candidacy known through posters and other means."

Michelle seemed surprised by my answer, but she accepted it without issue. Well, the election took place. In Santiago, where she was highly valued, she received a high number of votes, but the same did not happen in the provincial campuses.

She was the first to congratulate me on my victory, and our friendship was well-established. From then on, we greeted each other with a hug and a kiss on the cheek and talked affectionately every time we met in the endless corridors and ancient nooks of the UTE campus.

In 1969, a major student event took place: the 7th Congress of the UTE Student Federation (FEUT), held at the Antofagasta campus, in which 2,000 students from all campuses participated. It was a massive crusade to discuss the most transcendent problems at the university, national, and global levels, enriched by a cultural occupation of the city of Antofagasta, where the UTE student body presented their musical, theater, and dance groups, student circuses, muralist brigades, etc., and where we were welcomed by the city's mayor, Germán Miric.

Michelle and I were delegates to the congress, and since it was known that we were friends, we were tasked with "coordinating" actions between the Socialist and Communist youth in order to minimize the problems that sometimes arose between the two organizations.

Although it was clear that the unity of the left and the possible conquest of a popular government (which would be achieved the following year with Allende's candidacy) had the Socialist-Communist unity as its backbone, there was a rivalry between the two youth organizations that occasionally took on touches of sectarianism on both sides.

I do not remember to what extent the "coordination" was official, but Michelle and I fulfilled it religiously, and we met daily to talk about problems that arose in the commissions and to propose measures to resolve them. I never saw sectarian attitudes in her.

The following year (1970), Michelle led an effort to ensure that the JS would win the presidency of the Student Center of the Trades Grade (technical secondary education dependent on the UTE), which culminated successfully when Socialist militant Juan Carlos Ruiz defeated Hugo Munizaga, the JJCC candidate.

After the coup d'état, both leaders were political prisoners in the Chacabuco concentration camp.

In 1969, I became a full-time professor at the UTE, which meant I began to see Michelle less frequently, and from the end of 1970, I lost all contact with her. This was due both to my new professional dedication and to the fact that she began to spend a greater fraction of her time on extra-university activities.

During her student years, Michelle worked at the Chilean-Vietnamese Cultural Institute and the Chilean-Czechoslovakian Cultural Institute, and also supported the Mademsa union and served as secretary to the administrator of Cristalerías Chile. Her political and work dedication made it impossible for her to finish her studies at the UTE.

In March 1973, Michelle and her friends Patricia Abarzúa and Marisol Bravo, all Socialist militants, went on a vacation trip to Northern Chile, which left many anecdotes, which they enjoyed to the fullest, and which marked a sort of farewell to the normality of the lives of the three young women, which would be profoundly altered a few months later by the coup d'état.

On September 11, '73, Michelle was at her job at Cristalerías Chile. In the months that followed, with the savage dictatorial repression unleashed, some of her close friends warned her that, as a recognized activist, she was in danger of death and proposed that she take advantage of her French and Spanish nationalities to go into exile in Europe.

She refused, arguing that the dictatorship was so aberrant that it could not last long.

Starting in February 1974, Michelle began a journey of survival in the underground. She lived in several safe houses with different people, without me being able to establish with certainty the times, the sequence, or other details.

• House on Calle Nueva Uno, Paradero 24 of the Gran Avenida, which belonged to an aunt of Michelle's. There, she reportedly met Socialist leader Ricardo Lagos Salinas, whose family had gone into exile in Germany. They shared that house with Patricia Abarzúa, Marisol Bravo, and Carlos Lorca for about a year. Lagos Salinas and Carlos Lorca were high-ranking PS leaders.
• Apartment in the Villa Olímpica, with Lagos Salinas, for two months.
• Boarding house at Tocornal 557, with Lagos Salinas.
• House on Calle Santa Laura, Plaza Chacabuco, belonging to a brother of Paty Abarzúa. Michelle was in this house several times.
• House of Aileen Griffith (Luis Zegers 772, Las Condes), with Lagos Salinas. By then, Michelle was already in an advanced state of pregnancy (1975).
• House at Tiros 122, Villa Japón (Las Rejas), where Michelle was reportedly detained in June 1975.

Various testimonies suggest that the person who took care of Michelle's security in the period prior to her detention was Juan Carlos Ruiz, who was in charge of finding her safe houses and also arranging her transport from one place to another.

Subsequently, Michelle's mother, Gregoria, stated that her house had been under surveillance since 1974 by plainclothes agents looking for her daughter. Shortly before Michelle's detention, her mother met with her at the Drugstore in Providencia, noting her advanced state of pregnancy.

During that meeting, she pressured her to seek asylum in the French embassy, but Michelle refused. In June '75, Gregoria received an anonymous call telling her, "Your daughter has fallen." It is assumed that this communication came from State agents.

On June 22, Juan Carlos Ruiz, crying, told Marisol Bravo that he had gone to the house in Villa Japón and found everything destroyed, a sign that Michelle, and perhaps others, had been detained. Marisol called Gregoria that night, giving her the news.

From witness accounts, it is known that Lagos Salinas and Michelle were taken to Villa Grimaldi and tortured. Gregoria received information that her daughter had been admitted to the Military Hospital and that she was asking for clothes and books. Later, they told her that she had been transferred to the Air Force Hospital, which had a maternity ward; they also mentioned the Santa Lucía Clinic.

A person, who is assumed to have been a nurse at the Military Hospital, called Gregoria to tell her that Michelle's son had been born and was a boy. Another version originated from a MIR militant, who stated that, at the beginning of July 1975, she saw Michelle at Villa Grimaldi, who, between sobs, reportedly told her that the child she was expecting had died due to the torture she had suffered.

Gregoria, relatives, and friends began the painful path of multiple efforts and legal procedures seeking to find Michelle's whereabouts and, later, to identify her torturers and victimizers and demand justice. It should be noted that when Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London, one of the victims included in Judge Garzón's arrest warrant was Michelle, who appeared as a French citizen.

The Socialist Party has honored her memory in various ways, as have her UTE colleagues.

Dear Michelle: I will keep your memory forever, and I have the great and emotional honor of having known your friendship and your affection. I would like to hug you with all the love and admiration I felt and feel for you. May these lines modestly contribute to treasuring the memory of your brilliant life.

by Luis Cifuentes Seves _ Acknowledgments: To Patricia Abarzúa, Marisol Bravo, and Aileen Griffith for their contributions to this article. Any error or omission is my sole responsibility. Santiago de Chile, January 7, 2022 Crónica Digital

Source: cronicadigital.cl, January 7, 2022 Date: 01-07-2022

Memorial to be Installed in Honor of Leaders Kidnapped and Disappeared by the DINA

Despite the certainty that their families and friends had, it was only at the end of 2018 that the Chilean justice system confirmed, in Judge Miguel Vásquez's ruling, that it was State agents who kidnapped and disappeared ten of the top leaders of the Socialist Party, who made up the clandestine leadership of the PS: port and CUT leader Ezequiel Ponce, leader Ricardo Lagos Salinas, deputy for Valdivia Carlos Lorca Tobar, civil engineer Ariel Mancilla Ramírez, social worker Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Rosa Solíz, Sara Donoso, and Michelle Peña Herreros.

As a way to honor their memory, this Saturday, March 23, a memorial plaque will be installed at the Villa Grimaldi Peace Park, in a public act open to the entire community.

The honorees were held at Villa Grimaldi, after which several were transferred to Colonia Dignidad, where they were reportedly murdered at the end of 1977, and their remains were disposed of and thrown into the watercourses that cross that place.

"These are heroes and heroines of the People with solid intellectual training and extensive political experience, tenacious defenders of the revolutionary process of the Popular Unity who did not hesitate to resist the dictatorship from September 11 itself and who were soon capable of drawing a political line that would allow guiding action in such difficult circumstances and giving a strategic perspective to the struggles of the resistance," said Jaime Lorca, president of the Memory and Future Training Center and brother of Carlos Lorca.

Proof of this strategic deployment, Lorca highlighted, is the "March Document," drafted in the summer of 1974 and published that same month. This text proposes a strategy of struggle for democracy, with a socialist perspective, while affirming the need to seek the broadest alliance in defense of life, against State terrorism, and for the defense of political and social rights.

Source: adprensa.cl, 3/18/2019 Date: 03-18-2019

The ceremony, which will take place in the Aula Magna this Friday (the 6th), is one of the most symbolic activities that our University will carry out within the framework of the program commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Coup d'État.

Following this first presentation of diplomas, a commemorative plaque will be unveiled in the courtyard of the former Escuela de Artes y Oficios, bearing the names of the victims.

This Friday, September 6, at 11:30 a.m., in a solemn ceremony, our University will grant, by grace and in a posthumous and symbolic manner, professional university degrees to 39 students who were forcibly disappeared or victims of political executions during the military dictatorship.

Emilio Daroch, president of the Corporación Solidaria UTE-Usach and organizer of this initiative, explained that this University was a place where the dictatorship applied violence with the greatest force over the years, especially at its inception on September 11, 1973, and until the end of the 1980s.

This initiative gains meaning as a way to provide redress to individuals who, during their time as students in the university community, suffered the consequences of the dictatorship, such as the emblematic cases of Gregorio Mimica in 1973 and the student leader Mario Martínez, who was murdered in the late 1980s.

Mimica was detained in September 1973 along with more than a thousand people during the raid on the UTE. They were taken to the former Estadio Chile (now Víctor Jara) and he was released shortly thereafter, but when he arrived home, he was immediately detained again by a military patrol that took him back to the Escuela de Artes y Oficios, where he was interrogated.

His whereabouts remained unknown for 37 years until his remains were found in Patio 29 of the Cementerio General in April 2011. The story of Mario Martínez’s death, by contrast, occurred 13 years after the Coup d'État, when he was Secretary of Finance for the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Santiago and was investigating the presence of dictatorship security agents infiltrated on campus.

On August 4, 1986, his body was found on the coast of Santo Domingo.

“Undoubtedly, a wound is reopened,” maintains Daroch, but “there remains a feeling that a little justice is being done. We feel deeply moved to present these symbolic degrees and to show that this dream could be fulfilled.”

At the ceremony, it will be their relatives who receive the diplomas. “We were in constant contact with the families of some of the disappeared colleagues, but there were two or three cases where we could not find anyone,” lamented Emilio Daroch, who explained that this Friday’s event will be the first presentation of degrees, as there are records of other victims of political execution or forced disappearance during the period. “This process has not closed; these are the cases that could be verified, but there is still a need to look closely and search for information that in many cases was not found at the University. We hope to hold another graduation ceremony like this one in the future.”

The list of students who will receive their degrees posthumously is composed of Rafael Araneda Yévenes, Jorge Aravena Mardones, Jaime Buzzio Lorca, Ricardo Campos Cáceres, Claudio Contreras Hernández, Renzo Contreras Jorquera, Juan Elías Cortés Alruiz, Manuel Cortéz Joo, Alfonso Díaz Briones, Antonio Elizondo Ormaechea, Óscar Fuentes Fernández, Luis González Mella, Francisco González Ortiz, Patricio Guarategua Quinteros, René Lucero Muñoz, Zacarías Machuca Muñoz, Rafael Madrid Gálvez, Juan Bosco Maino Canales, Adolfo Mancilla Ramírez, Agustín Martínez Meza, Mario Martínez Rodríguez, Gregorio Mimiça Argote, Eugenio Montti Cordero, Leopoldo Muñoz Andrade, Ramón Núñez Espinoza, Eduardo Ojeda Disselkoen, Fernando Olivares Mori, Pedro Oyarzún Zamorano, Michelle Peña Herreros, José Peña Maltés, José Manuel Ramírez Rosales, Enrique Reyes Manríquez, Hugo Ríos Videla, Ricardo Rioseco Montoya, Carlos Santibáñez Romero, Carlos Terán de la Jara, Jaime Vásquez Sáenz, Jecas Nehgme Cristi, and Francisco Viera Ovalle.

The event, which will be presided over by Rector Juan Manuel Zolezzi, will take place in the University’s Aula Magna on Friday the 6th at 11:30 a.m. Subsequently, a commemorative plaque will be unveiled in the courtyard of the former Escuela de Artes y Oficios.

Source: usach.cl 16/3/2017

Date: 03-16-2017

Increasing to 205. Two new lawsuits against Pinochet

One of the lawsuits aims to clarify the fate and whereabouts of Michelle Peña’s child, since according to Army data, the woman, who was eight months pregnant, was murdered two months after her detention.

Lawyer Sergio Concha filed a new lawsuit before the Santiago Court of Appeals against the former de facto ruler, Augusto Pinochet, for the crimes of kidnapping and illicit association in the case of Patricio Urbina Chamorro and his wife, Angeles Alvarez Cárdenas.

The accusatory document extends to the military regime’s security agents Manuel Contreras, Fernando Labriani, Osvaldo Romo, Marcelo Moren, and Raúl Iturriaga.

Source: latercera.cl, January 10, 2001

Date: 01-10-2001

Court ratifies conviction of five former DINA agents for the kidnapping and disappearance of the clandestine leadership of the Socialist Party during the dictatorship

The chamber presided over by Justice Jenny Book Reyes and composed of Justices Verónica Sabaj Escudero and Paula Rodríguez Fondón ratified the ruling issued by the judge investigating human rights cases, Miguel Vázquez, regarding the kidnapping and disappearance of eleven socialist militants between March and December 1975.

The Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ratified the first-instance ruling and sentenced former agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, Manuel Carevic Cubillos, and Juvenal Piña to 15 years and one day of imprisonment as authors of the aggravated kidnapping of eleven former leaders of the Socialist Party and members of the party’s clandestine leadership, events that occurred in 1975.

In this way, the Chamber, presided over by Justice Jenny Book Reyes and composed of Justices Verónica Sabaj Escudero and Paula Rodríguez Fondón, confirmed the ruling issued by the judge investigating human rights cases, Miguel Vásquez, in 2018, but applied, in some cases, the mitigating factor of an irreproachable prior record, reducing the sentences of Iturriaga Neumann from 20 to 15 years; Rolf Wenderoth Pozo, who had a 18-year sentence, and Manuel Carevic, whose sentence was reduced by one year, from 16 to 15.

Meanwhile, Miguel Krassnoff’s sentence remained the same, and Juvenal Piña’s was increased from 12 to 15 years.

The ruling also confirms the dismissals of Manuel Contreras, Marcelo Moren Brito, Basclay Zapata, Osvaldo Romo, Gerardo Urrich, Jorge Germán Barriga, Eugenio Fieldhouse, and Jorge Madariaga due to their deaths. All had been prosecuted in the case for their participation in the events.

For Nelson Caucoto, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the case, “a long-standing judicial investigation is beginning to conclude. Unfortunately, without finding the bodies of the victims, which demonstrates the brutal effectiveness of the forced disappearance employed by the DINA.

This criminal process demonstrates the harshest face of the policy of extermination developed by the dictatorship,” he maintained. In the lawyer’s opinion, “the important thing is that the Court of Appeals did not apply the partial statute of limitations, which allowed the sentences of Judge Miguel Vásquez to be maintained in general terms.” Despite this, the lawyer added, “we have doubts about the reduction of sentences after accepting the mitigating factor of an irreproachable prior record; we believe it was not appropriate.” According to the investigation, this involves the kidnapping and disappearance of eleven young socialist militants, whose ages ranged between 24 and 39. The events reportedly took place between March and December 1975, dates during which the DINA brutally repressed the clandestine leadership of the PS following the Coup d'État, which was composed of Exequiel Ponce Vicencio, Carlos Lorca Tobar—who was a sitting deputy at the time of his disappearance—Ricardo Lagos Salinas, Adolfo Mancilla Ramírez, and Jaime López Arellano. Their liaisons, Michelle Peña Herreros, Mireya Rodríguez Díaz, Modesta Carolina Wiff Sepúlveda, Rosa Solíz Poveda, Sara Donoso Palacios, and the former director of the State Railways, Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, were also detained. It should be noted that for this case, Judge Vásquez, in the course of his investigation, took statements from a hundred former militants of the party, including former President Michelle Bachelet, who was detained at Villa Grimaldi.

Source: elciudadano.com 2021

Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros

Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros, along with her republican family, arrived in Chile from Spain, fleeing Francoism and the deprivation caused by the Second World War. On February 4, 1939, her mother, Gregoria Peña, crossed the Pyrenees with other relatives, all active militants of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

The Civil War had ended, and those who had fought to defend the Republic were escaping in desperation across the mountains. Between the last weeks of January and the beginning of February of that year alone, nearly 500,000 Spaniards crossed the Pyrenees passes toward France.

Fleeing an uncertain fate, the republicans placed their hope in the neighboring country, a land with a tradition of asylum and a cradle of the Rights of Man. But the French authorities had made no provisions for this, even though the republican defeat was imminent.

For this reason, Gregoria—like thousands of other Spaniards—spent entire days and nights in the open, enduring cold and hunger, waiting for her turn to cross the border. On the other side, refugee camps awaited them, followed by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Living conditions in those camps would be especially harsh for the Spanish republicans: they were often nothing more than barren beaches without significant shelter from the cold, lacking hygiene measures, medicine, or potable water.

This is how Gregoria lived her first days as a refugee on French soil, until she managed to move to Toulouse. At the age of 16, she became pregnant by a young French soldier who was unwilling to acknowledge his daughter or give her his surname.

Michelle, the daughter of Gregoria and that French conscript, was born in Toulouse on July 27, 1947. In 1952, Gregoria decided to travel to Chile with Michelle and the girl’s grandparents to reunite with one of her aunts and her husband, who years earlier had managed to board the Winnipeg, the ship that brought dozens of Spanish families fleeing persecution and Francoist prisons.

Michelle Peña Herreros.

Michelle grew up surrounded by Spanish refugees, hearing stories of the Civil War, republican songs, and absorbing the ideals of justice and equality that that peculiar family environment transmitted to her.

Of that girl, who also sang “Ay Carmela” at the top of her lungs, Gregoria remembers her love for reading and music, her cheerful character, and how fussy she was at mealtimes. Gregoria adds that Michelle “would threaten to vomit and she would do it.” She also remembers that “she was intelligent, especially skilled and quick with mathematics, but lazy when it came to studying.

Instead, she preferred to read, listen to music, and play the guitar.” According to her mother, Michelle was “tall, sturdy, fair-skinned, with very large, expressive brown eyes and a firm gaze, and a turned-up nose.

She spoke with her hands and gestures; she was very argumentative and would not stay silent in the face of social injustices. She had a cheerful and friendly character, fiery and passionate, even though she easily abandoned what she started. She smoked one cigarette after another and was extremely generous. She had had three boyfriends, all of them poorer and more needy than she was.”

She always lived in Santiago. She completed her secondary education at the Liceo Nº 1 de Niñas, where she became very close to Aileen Griffith. Griffith retains a vivid memory of those years in secondary school: “Michelle and I met in 1965, when I was in the fourth year and she was in the fifth year of humanities.

The context of our friendship arose from the warmth of our affinities and social concerns. I remember we became friends while participating in the activities of the Student Center, while we tried to draft—which we did—a regulation that would allow students to exercise the right to strike.” The young friends stopped seeing each other after leaving the liceo.

Aileen went to the Pedagógico of the Universidad de Chile in Valparaíso, and Michelle, at her mother’s request, left to study at the Antofagasta campus of the Universidad de Chile.

In 1968, Michelle and Aileen reunited. Aileen remembers that “that time, in the framework of some events for the Prague Spring, I traveled from Valparaíso to Santiago with a comrade from the JJCC, the organization in which I was a militant, because we were organizing a Czech film festival.

We went to an office of the Czechoslovak Embassy on Calle San Antonio, rang the bell, and to my great surprise, Michelle opened the door. She was working there, I don’t know if through her militancy or as a paid employee, but she immediately provided us with the films we were looking for. It was a precious reunion.”

That same year, Michelle’s mathematical vocation had led her to return to Santiago to prepare for her entry into Electrical Engineering, which she did in March 1969 at the Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE).

Meanwhile, she actively collaborated with the cultural activities of the embassies of Vietnam and Czechoslovakia. During the Popular Unity government, Michelle alternated her studies with work at the Instituto Chileno–Vietnamita de Cultura—where she served as a librarian—and as secretary of the union at Cristalerías Chile, in the Vicuña Mackenna industrial belt.

She also collaborated on several initiatives of the Instituto de Estudios Sociales de América Latina (INESAL), a type of think tank and political training center linked to the PS, where she would meet the young leader Ricardo Lagos Salinas.

Clandestine Militant

After the coup, Michelle joined the work of the PS in the underground, actively collaborating in the networks and support groups that protected former deputy Carlos Lorca and the young leader Ricardo Lagos Salinas, who were part of the PS leadership in the underground.

Soon, Michelle began to be sought by the repressive organs of the Military Junta. Her mother remembers that unidentified individuals in civilian clothes monitored the soda fountain she kept in front of the Military Prosecutor’s building on Calle Gálvez (today Zenteno) Nº 143, where the newspaper Clarín had previously operated, daily and at all hours.

Their evident purpose was to capture Michelle and those who might eventually accompany her. The first time was in September 1974. The agents identified themselves as military personnel and asked for the young woman. Not finding her, they spent about fifteen days monitoring the place.

Michelle, however, had moved to a small apartment in the Barrio Bellas Artes before the coup, which she was also forced to abandon when she had to go underground.

After spending a few months in an apartment on Avenida República, Michelle moved to a small house on Calle Nueva Uno, at the 24th stop of the Gran Avenida. Lorca and Lagos Salinas would soon come to hide in that place, and occasionally Víctor Zerega, a young economics student from the Universidad de Chile who had left his studies in the last year to dedicate himself fully to union organization.

Zerega was also part of the clandestine leadership of the PS and was intensely sought by the security services.

Months later, Mónica Hizaut, a young socialist militant, received the task of hiding two PS members who were closely pursued by the repression for a few days. Without thinking twice, she convinced her mother to take in the persecuted individuals at their apartment in the Villa Olímpica, in Ñuñoa.

Mónica did not know it then, but those young people, who ultimately stayed in her home for two months, were Ricardo Lagos Salinas and Michelle herself. Mónica remembers that Michelle “went out to make contacts, wrote reports, reviewed the press, and typed documents.” The young high school student of that time cannot forget that Michelle also read her poems and fables in French and that, on more than one occasion, she asked her to wash her hair with chamomile.

Towards the beginning of 1975, the living conditions of the militants who challenged the dictatorship from the shadows were dramatic. The lack of resources and safe houses began to trigger a series of significant arrests.

Among them was the disappearance of Ariel Mancilla, a young civil engineer and personal friend of Michelle. Eduardo Muñoz, the high school student who managed to get Mónica to host Michelle and Lagos Salinas in her apartment, had been murdered in the middle of the previous year.

Eight months pregnant, she was detained by the DINA on June 20, 1975, along with Ricardo Lagos Salinas, at a house on Calle Tiros 122 in Villa Japón, in the Las Rejas sector. Her detention and disappearance were part of the DINA’s operation against the Political Commission of the Socialist Party in the underground, as well as its liaisons and couriers, in June and early July 1975.

Ten or twelve days before her kidnapping, her mother managed to meet with her. The meeting took place at the Drugstore in Providencia. Gregoria had not seen Michelle for six months. Gregoria remembers that they spoke for barely an hour: “It was when I found out that she was very close to being a mother. ‘How could you get pregnant?’ I reproached her.

I tried to convince her to seek asylum at the French Embassy (Michelle had French nationality). We had already done all the paperwork, but she did not accept. She thought the dictatorship could not last too long.”

Without yet knowing about her daughter’s capture, Gregoria remembers that in mid-June, “a man came to my business who made a purchase and then told me that I looked a lot like a pregnant girl who was being held under DINA surveillance at the Military Hospital.

The man added that he worked at that facility. I doubted it, but in the end, I told him, pretending it was out of pure humanity, if he could ask that girl to send me a note, to see if I could help her with something.

Three days later, the man returned to my shop with a handwritten note in which the girl asked for some clothes and some books, among them Les Fables de La Fontaine—The Fables of La Fontaine—a book she had read many times and which was her favorite.

It was a coded signal to tell me that she was in the hands of the DINA.” Despite this, in multiple inquiries, the Military Hospital denied that any woman with Michelle’s characteristics had been admitted to the medical facility on those dates.

The Fall

Before Michelle’s capture, Aileen Griffith, her old friend from the Liceo 1 era, received an unexpected visit at her home on Luis Zegers with Martín de Zamora: It was May 1975, and upon opening the door, she found Juan Carlos Ruiz, an old friend from her university years. “'Guatón' Ruiz was collaborating with the clandestine leaders of the PS and asked us if we could receive a couple of comrades who had to change their place of residence for security reasons.

Without the slightest doubt and proud to help, we immediately said yes,” Aileen remembers. Her surprise would be great when, the next day, the doorbell of her home rang and for the second time she found Michelle, accompanied by Ricardo Lagos Salinas.

Aileen remembers that Michelle “was wearing a blue jumper, she was pregnant, she was about 7 months pregnant, her belly was big. We hugged, one of those hugs that stay stuck to your bones forever.”

Aileen still clearly remembers the days Michelle and Lagos Salinas spent in her home: “It was sunny, warm; I took care of her like a daughter, I was able to pamper her, she could sunbathe in the garden, it must have been autumn, I don’t remember, I made her delicious meals to cherish her, to feed her child, we talked a lot, but what I remember most was the feeling of protection and containment that we gave each other.

It was a gift for me, the most precious one.”

One afternoon, upon returning from a short walk with one of her children, the young couple she had hidden for days was no longer there. For security reasons, they had been moved to a house in the Las Rejas sector.

That night, Aileen had a nightmare that would prove premonitory: “I woke up very agitated, I saw Michelle at the foot of my bed screaming at me to help her, she was covered in blood, I woke my husband, I cried a lot, but a lot.”

Days later, the doorbell of her house rang again: “it was our friend, Juan Carlos Ruiz, he was very distressed, devastated. He told us that he had gone to see Michelle and Ricardo at the place where they had moved, where he found everything beastly ransacked and they were no longer there…”

Journalist Gladys Díaz Armijo, a former political prisoner of the MIR, later declared that on July 2, 1975, she found Michelle Peña and Carolina Wiff at Villa Grimaldi: “They left me sitting on a bench in the garden for hours.

Around noon, they told me to go eat something and they made me go into another patio where there was a table with 3 plates; they led two women there (…) They made them sit next to me. I spoke to them, they were suspicious and remained silent; one was darker, with short hair; the other was very fair-skinned, with a turned-up nose.

I explained who I was and they gave me names that I perceived were random. Both were emaciated, sad, and fearful, especially the fair-skinned one. They talked among themselves as if ignoring me; they must have thought I was an informant; besides, they couldn’t see me.

They talked about Julio, they said that Julio (another of the political names used by Carlos Lorca) was very ill, that he complained continuously, and that the other one, who I suppose was Exequiel Ponce, was somewhat better.

I insisted, I told them it was important that they give me their names because I would surely return to Tres Álamos and I could report on them, that I didn’t want to know anything more than their names.

Then one, the dark-haired one with short hair, told me her name was Carolina and the other Michelle; they didn’t tell me their surnames. Then they continued ignoring me and talking among themselves; one commented that the guards had given her Julio’s clothes, full of blood, and that they had to wash them.

At that moment the guards hurriedly came to look for me. I didn’t see them again.” And she added: “Four or five days later, while I was at Tres Álamos, several political prisoners were interrogated by a person from the Comité Pro Paz, I don’t know if he was a lawyer, who had entered during visiting hours and brought several photos of men and women hidden.

I recognized the prisoners I had seen at Villa Grimaldi. I gave him their names, he gave me their surnames.”

Vicente Álvarez, a 1st Sergeant and Army nurse attached to the DINA Health Brigade—the team of doctors and nurses that, led by Dr. Werner Zhangelinni, operated in the Santa Lucía and London clinics, both in downtown Santiago—stated in a police declaration made on June 6, 2005, that “towards the end of June (’75), a woman arrived at the Santa Lucía Clinic, in an advanced state of pregnancy, about to give birth.

I remember she was attended to by a doctor who could have been Leyton, Fantuzzi, Bravo, or Muñoz, the doctors of the DINA Health Brigade who were at the clinic that day.”

After that visit to the DINA clinic, Michelle was returned to Villa Grimaldi, where Contreras’s henchmen continued to torture her.

A young MIR militant—in a sworn statement made on January 9, 2002, in Santiago—stated that she had been detained by the DINA at the end of June 1975, while traveling by bus between the cities of Concepción and Chillán.

After being held for a few days at Colonia Dignidad and the Talca Regiment, she was transferred to Villa Grimaldi around July 3 of that year. When she woke from her lethargy—she had been drugged before arriving in Santiago—she noticed the heartbreaking moans and cries of a young woman who was in her same cell.

The young woman gave her name, confessed that the child she was expecting had died due to the brutal torture, and that they had just brought her back from the “clinic” to which they took her after the abortion caused by her torturers’ punishment. It was Michelle Peña.

Her mother remembers that they searched for her for an entire year: “They told us that she had gone with another man or abroad. I never found anyone who treated me with dignity. We were searching like a blind person bumping into a wall.”

At the time of her detention, Michelle was 31 years old.

Source: pschile.cl undated

Place of birth, Spain, later registered in TOULOUSE, FRANCE

Michelle Peña Herreros. Place of birth Spain, later registered in TOULOUSE, FRANCE. Registration carried out in accordance with Art. 12 of Law 11.987 for Resident Foreigners, Civil Registry Office, Recoleta, Santiago, Chile.

Daughter of a Spanish exile from the Civil War, she held both French and Spanish nationalities. She was registered as the daughter of her grandparents, Gabriel Peña and Micaela Herreros. Her mother, Gregoria Peña Herreros, was 15 years old at the time of her pregnancy.

Her father, Roger Icart, was two years older, the son of a well-to-do French family. Given that both were minors, the Icart family opposed their marriage. Gregoria and Roger lived in the town of Lezat sur Leze and the young woman moved to Toulouse, where her daughter was born.

Michelle grew up believing that her mother was her older sister. She arrived in Chile in 1951 and only at five years of age was the truth of her origin revealed to her. Her childhood and adolescence passed in a circle of Spanish refugees who spoke of the Civil War (1936-1939) and sang the songs of the Republic, which she learned and sang with enthusiasm.

She completed her primary education at a public school and her secondary education at the Liceo de Niñas No. 1, Javiera Carrera, where she was active in student organization, as a class representative and organizer of the first student convention to create the statutes of the Student Center.

She also participated in the organization of the first Liceo Song Festival. During this period, she became very close friends with Patricia Abarzúa and Aileen Griffith, who shared her enthusiasm.

In 1967, she entered the Universidad Técnica del Estado (UTE), Antofagasta campus, to study electrical engineering. The following year, she moved to Santiago to continue her studies in the same field.

She was a militant in the Socialist Youth (JS), where she immediately stood out. In her mother’s words, Michelle was “cheerful, intelligent, especially skilled and quick with mathematics… but she preferred to read, listen to music, and play the guitar.” She was “tall, sturdy, fair-skinned, with very large, expressive brown eyes and a firm gaze, and a turned-up nose.

She spoke with her hands and gestures; she was very argumentative and would not stay silent in the face of social injustices.”

As a consequence of these virtues and in an unusual manner, at the end of her first year of studies in Santiago, she was designated a candidate for student delegate to the Honorable University Council of the UTE, representing the Execution Engineering students of the nine university campuses: Antofagasta, Copiapó, La Serena, Santiago, Talca, Concepción, Temuco, Valdivia, and Punta Arenas.

The movement for University Reform had made great progress at the UTE: in October 1967, a Reform Commission with student participation had been constituted, the first in Chile, and in August 1968, we had elected Enrique Kirberg, a communist militant and candidate of the Reform, as rector in a full assembly of professors and students.

It was in these circumstances that I met Michelle, given that I was her opponent, representing the Communist Youth (JJCC, the Jota), in those elections. I knew her by sight, as well as her high school friend, Patricia Abarzúa. Paty was also a JS militant and had entered the UTE in 1967. Towards the end of 1968, I established closer contact with both.

At some point, Michelle approached me with a question: “I don’t know the provincial campuses. Do you know them?” As a leader of the Jota at the UTE, I had had the opportunity to visit most of the campuses and was aware of the progress of the Reform in each of them.

I then offered to give her this information, which she welcomed. We went to one of the study rooms of the School of Industrial Engineers and there I shared my view of the situation campus by campus. We met twice. Michelle wrote down everything I told her and asked very good questions. From time to time, we exchanged jokes. From then on, a very sincere friendship of great affection was forged.

A few days later, she came to look for me at the apartment where I was studying and, with a bright smile, said: “Would it be too bold to propose that we go campus by campus together presenting our candidacies to the students?”

Her proposal surprised me as a great demonstration of trust, but I had to answer: “I would love to do what you propose, but there is a problem: I am not going to campaign. In most of the campuses they know me, and in others, the Jota will do the work of making my candidacy known through posters and other means.”

Michelle seemed astonished at my answer, but she accepted it without a problem. Well, the election was held. In Santiago, where she was highly valued, she obtained a high vote, but the same did not happen in the provincial campuses.

She was the first to congratulate me on my victory, and our friendship was well established. From then on, we greeted each other with a hug and a kiss on the cheek and talked affectionately every time we met in the endless corridors and old nooks of the UTE campus.

In 1969, a great student event took place: the 7th Congress of the UTE Student Federation (FEUT), held at the Antofagasta campus, in which 2,000 students from all campuses participated. It was a massive crusade to discuss the most transcendent issues at the university, national, and global levels, enriched by a cultural occupation of the city of Antofagasta in which the UTE student body presented their musical, theater, and dance groups, student circuses, muralist brigades, etc., and where we were welcomed by the city’s mayor, Germán Miric.

Michelle and I were delegates to the congress and, as it was known that we were friends, we were tasked with the work of “coordinating” actions between the socialist and communist youth in order to minimize the problems that sometimes arose between both organizations.

Although it was clear that the unity of the left and the possible conquest of a popular government (which would be achieved the following year with Allende’s candidacy) had the socialist-communist unity as its backbone, a rivalry existed between both youth organizations that from time to time acquired touches of sectarianism on both sides.

I do not remember to what extent the “coordination” had an official character, but Michelle and I fulfilled it religiously and we met daily to talk about problems that arose in the commissions and to propose measures to resolve them. I never saw sectarian attitudes in her.

The following year (1970), Michelle led an effort to ensure that the JS won the presidency of the Student Center of the Trades Grade (technical secondary education dependent on the UTE), which culminated successfully when the socialist militant Juan Carlos Ruiz prevailed over Hugo Munizaga, the candidate of the JJCC.

After the coup d’état, both leaders were political prisoners in the Chacabuco concentration camp.

In 1969, I became a full-time professor at the UTE, which meant that I began to see Michelle less frequently, and from the end of 1970, I lost all contact with her. This was due both to my new professional dedication and to the fact that she began to spend a greater fraction of her time on extra-university activities.

During her student years, Michelle worked at the Chilean-Vietnamese Institute of Culture and the Chilean-Czechoslovak Institute of Culture, and also supporting the Mademsa union and as secretary to the interventor of Cristalerías Chile. Her political and work dedication made it impossible for her to finish her studies at the UTE.

In March 1973, Michelle and her friends Patricia Abarzúa and Marisol Bravo, all socialist militants, undertook a vacation trip to Northern Chile, which left many anecdotes, which they enjoyed to the fullest, and which marked a sort of farewell to the normality of the lives of the three young women, which a few months later would be profoundly altered by the coup d’état.

On September 11, 1973, Michelle was at her job at Cristalerías Chile. In the months that followed, with the savage dictatorial repression unleashed, some of her close friends warned her that, in her condition as a recognized activist, she was in danger of death and proposed that she take advantage of her French and Spanish nationalities to go into exile in Europe.

She refused, arguing that the dictatorship was so aberrant that it could not last long.

Starting in February 1974, Michelle began a journey of survival in the underground. She lived in several safe houses with different people, without me having been able to establish with certainty the times, the sequence, or other details.

House on Calle Nueva Uno, 24th stop of the Gran Avenida, which belonged to an aunt of Michelle. There she would have met the socialist leader Ricardo Lagos Salinas, whose family had gone into exile in Germany.

They shared that house with Patricia Abarzúa, Marisol Bravo, and Carlos Lorca for nearly a year. Lagos Salinas and Carlos Lorca were high-ranking leaders of the PS. Apartment in the Villa Olímpica, together with Lagos Salinas, for two months.

Boarding house at Tocornal 557 together with Lagos Salinas. House on Calle Santa Laura, Plaza Chacabuco, belonging to a brother of Paty Abarzúa. Michelle was in this house several times. House of Aileen Griffith (Luis Zegers 772, Las Condes), with Lagos Salinas.

By then, Michelle was already in an advanced state of pregnancy (1975). House at Tiros 122, Villa Japón (Las Rejas), where Michelle was allegedly detained in June 1975.

Various testimonies suggest that the person who took care of Michelle’s security in the period prior to her detention was Juan Carlos Ruiz, who was in charge of finding her safe houses and also obtaining transport for her from one place to another.

Subsequently, Michelle’s mother, Gregoria, declared that her house had been monitored since 1974 by plainclothes agents looking for her daughter. Shortly before Michelle’s detention, her mother met with her at the Drugstore in Providencia, noticing her advanced state of pregnancy.

During that meeting, she pressured her to seek asylum at the French embassy, but Michelle refused. In June 1975, Gregoria received an anonymous call telling her “your daughter has fallen.” It is assumed that this communication came from State agents.

On June 22, Juan Carlos Ruiz, crying, told Marisol Bravo that he had gone to the house in Villa Japón and had found everything destroyed, a sign that Michelle, and perhaps other people, had been detained. Marisol called Gregoria that night, giving her the news.

From witness accounts, it is known that Lagos Salinas and Michelle were taken to Villa Grimaldi and tortured. Gregoria received information that her daughter had been admitted to the Military Hospital and that she was asking for clothes and books.

Later, they informed her that she had been transferred to the Air Force Hospital, which had a Maternity ward; they also mentioned the Santa Lucía Clinic.

A person, who is assumed to have been a nurse at the Military Hospital, called Gregoria to tell her that Michelle’s son had been born and was a boy. Another version originated from a MIR militant, who declared that, at the beginning of July 1975, she saw Michelle at Villa Grimaldi, who between sobs had told her that the child she was expecting had died due to the torture suffered.

Gregoria, relatives, and friends began the painful path of multiple efforts and legal procedures seeking to find Michelle’s whereabouts and, later, to identify her torturers and victimizers and demand justice. It should be noted that when Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London, one of the victims included in Judge Garzón’s arrest warrant was Michelle, who appeared as a French citizen.

The Socialist Party has honored her memory in various ways, as have her comrades from the UTE.

Dear Michelle: I will keep your memory forever, and I have the great and emotional honor of having known your friendship and your affection. I would like to hug you with all the love and admiration I felt and feel for you. May these lines contribute modestly to treasuring the memory of your brilliant life.

Acknowledgments: To Patricia Abarzúa, Marisol Bravo, and Aileen Griffith for their contributions to this article. Any error or omission is my exclusive responsibility.

Source: Civil Registry Birth Certificate Chile - cronicadigital.cl