His family and friends called him "Pancho." He was a construction worker, a trade he had learned from his father. He worked in the neighborhood alongside his neighbors to achieve the construction of housing, a daycare center, the neighborhood commission, and a more just and solidary society. "Pancho" was 23 years old at the time of his disappearance.

He belonged to the Catholic youth group of the Santa Teresa Church in the Sapere neighborhood (Neuquén), where he did social work, and he was a militant in the Neighborhood Commission alongside Celestino Aigo, Orlando Cancio, and Javier Seminario Ramos.

On August 12, 1976, around one o'clock, a group of armed people traveling in unidentified vehicles broke into his home on Calle Alderete s/n° in the Sapere neighborhood and illegally detained him, taking him to an uncertain destination.

From that moment on, nothing more was known about his whereabouts. The testimony of his mother, Feliciana Alcapán, in the trial against the genocidaires was fundamental for the imprisonment of the military and police executioners who participated in the detentions and kidnappings of her sons, Juan and Pancho.

Hopefully, from another plane, Feliciana is reunited with her children and continues to provide us with strength so that, as a society, we continue fighting until the end, just as we have always done, for the trial and punishment of the guilty.

During the efforts made by his relatives at the VI BIM Command, they interviewed Major Farías Barrera, who at first denied that he was being held, only to later admit that José Francisco was fine, that he had not been found guilty, and that they might not see him again because his superiors wanted to send him to Bahía Blanca.

In the La Escuelita II trial, Commissioner Alejandro Rojas recalled having participated in an operation in which they were looking for a certain Pichulman and his brother Victorino Pichulman (h), who said he had learned of his detention in Bahía Blanca and Rawson through the newspapers.

Mario Alberto Gómez Arenas and Luis Alberto Farías Barrera are co-perpetrators of the crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty aggravated by violence and a duration exceeding one month, and Jorge Héctor Di Pasquale was declared a secondary participant.

Source: Confederación Mapuche de Neuquén

"I do not believe my children are dead. They were taken alive and they must return alive." Feliciana Alcapán de Pichulmán is now 84 years old, and since the early morning of August 12, 1976, when a group of uniformed, armed men with their faces covered broke into her home in the Sapere neighborhood, she never saw José Francisco again, whose case is being heard in the trial.

In January of the following year, another of her sons, Juan Raúl Pichulman, was kidnapped in J.J. Gómez; she never saw him again either. This case will be heard in a future trial. Regarding both, the family not only never saw them again but also never received any news from any source.

Yesterday afternoon, upon concluding her testimony, she thanked the tribunal for having listened to her account, because "now I have more hope for my children." She moved the large audience in the room—which had been full in the morning—when she said: "It is terrible to have two disappeared children...".

She alluded to her religious beliefs and, in that sense, said that "I pray for my disappeared children, but also for the others; I also make myself a mother to them." She highlighted that religious practices have helped her face the drama of the loss of her loved ones. "It has strengthened me, it gave me comfort, and I no longer cry, but I continue asking for them every day," she remarked.

The woman recounted that for months she made pilgrimages to the Army Command headquarters, where she was received by the now-accused, Major Luis Alberto Farías Barrera, who denied that the military had any responsibility for her son's kidnapping. "I was not afraid of him; I went to ask for my son because they had taken him, until one day he told me that my son had not been found guilty," she recounted, but he remained disappeared.

Juan Alberto Manque Ñanculef, brother-in-law of Celestino Aigo, also testified; his case was debated on Wednesday and he is another of the disappeared in this segment of cases under debate. He reiterated data provided by other relatives of Aigo at the time of his kidnapping and, upon questioning by defense attorney Hernán Corigliano, denied having given his testimony during the investigation, even disowning the signature registered on the document that is part of the file.

Source: rionegro.com.ar 8/6/2012

At the ceremony held at the Plaza República de Chile, next to our country's embassy in Buenos Aires, a memorial was inaugurated last Tuesday, September 5, in memory of the 101 Chilean men and women murdered and forcibly disappeared in Argentina.

After the military coup of September 11, 1973, many Chileans sought refuge in Argentina. It was the easiest place to access for the vast majority, both for social and union leaders and for leftist militants.

However, the situation in Argentina was complex, as with the arrival to power of Estela Martínez, widow of Perón (July 1, 1974), and her advisor, the sinister José López Rega, the Peronist government suffered a violent right-wing turn, which would include the appearance of death squads that anticipated the work that the Videla dictatorship would later carry out more intensely.

Argentina did not end up being a safe refuge for the Chileans who were escaping state terrorism, much less for the leftist militants who intended to build a rearguard in Argentina for resistance against the military dictatorship in Chile.

The number of Chileans disappeared and/or executed in Argentina is extremely high; there are at least 101 people, who today have a memorial that remembers them. It should be noted that the design of this memorial was carried out ad honorem by the Argentine architect Susana Coloma, who is the daughter of a Chilean forcibly disappeared person and an Argentine forcibly disappeared person.

The authorities announced the installation of a commemorative plaque in honor of the Argentine men and women disappeared and executed in Chile after the military coup, which will take place next Monday, September 11, in Santiago.

Source: resumen.cl 8/9/2023

The spearhead of the judicial accusation in Spain against those responsible for the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina is the so-called Operation Condor: the coordination and cooperation established by the security services of these countries—and of Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Brazil—to persecute opponents of the military dictatorships.

In Buenos Aires—where Chilean, Uruguayan, Bolivian, and Paraguayan exiles had fled—numerous criminal actions were carried out within the framework of Operation Condor, even before it was formally created.

In the Argentine capital, for example, the former commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army, Carlos Prats, and his wife were murdered; as were the former president of Bolivia, General Juan José Torres; the Uruguayan parliamentarians Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz; and numerous citizens of the Southern Cone countries, in addition to Spaniards, Italians, Swedes, Swiss, French, etc.

In almost all cases, in addition to the Argentine security services, secret agents from the other Operation Condor countries intervened, with absolute disregard for borders, extraterritoriality norms, and extradition procedures.

Among the cases of Chilean victims cited by Judge Baltasar Garzón's accusation is the engineer Edgardo Enríquez Espinosa, a member of the MIR political commission and brother of Miguel, the leader of that movement.

He was arrested in 1976 along with the Brazilian citizen Regina Marcondes and the Argentine Patricio Biedma (also disappeared), and handed over to the DINA. It is believed that Edgardo Enríquez was finally murdered at Colonia Dignidad.

His case was also presented to the French courts by Marco Antonio Enríquez, his older brother, a university professor in France. Another case raised by Judge Garzón's accusation is that of Jorge Fuentes Alarcón, former president of the Federation of Students of Concepción and a leader of the MIR.

He was detained in Asunción, Paraguay, along with Amílcar Santucho, brother of Roberto, leader of the Argentine ERP. Jorge Fuentes was handed over to the DINA, which finally made him disappear in Chile.

There are numerous witnesses to the horrible treatment he received in DINA detention centers. Likewise, among the victims of Operation Condor, Guillermo Beausire Alonso, a Chilean-British citizen, must be included; he was detained at Ezeiza airport while traveling to Europe. His case (see pages 12 and 13) was presented to the British tribunal by his sister, Juana Francisca Beausire.

VICTIMS OF OPERATION CONDOR

Invoking Operation Condor, the DINA obtained cooperation, especially from Argentina but also from Bolivia and other countries, to murder numerous Chileans. The same fate befell many Argentines linked to solidarity with Chile or who were, simply, relatives or friends of persecuted Chileans.

The following cases, duly verified, are part of Judge Garzón's accusation: 1) On April 3, 1976, Luis Gonzalo Muñoz Velásquez, former secretary of the San Bernardo Section of the PS; Juan Humberto Hernández Zazpe, former president of the Federation of Industrial and Technical Students (Feitech); and Manuel Jesús Tamayo Martínez, a sociologist who worked with the members of his party's central committee, acting as a "liaison" between Carlos Lorca, Ricardo Lagos (also murdered), and another socialist faction, were detained along with other Chileans on a public street in Mendoza.

The three had arrived in Argentina in 1974, leaving Chile where they were persecuted for political reasons. They worked together at the Modernflood company in Mendoza and were in charge of reorganizing a socialist coordinating body, participating in activities of the so-called "consensus commission" of the PS.

Joint forces of the Argentine Federal Police and DINA agents participated in the operation. The three were transported by land from Mendoza to Villa Grimaldi. 2) On July 2, 1976, the agricultural accountant Julio del Tránsito Valladares Caroca was detained in La Paz, Bolivia.

He was handed over, along with other Chileans, by the Bolivian authorities to the Chilean authorities at the Charaña border on November 13, 1976, the date on which his trail was lost. The Ministry of the Interior of Bolivia acknowledged the detention of the affected person, although when requested by the tribunal, it refused to provide the identities of the agents who detained him for "exclusive security reasons." 3) In the early morning of July 16, 1976, members of the Argentine army detained the married couple Guillermo Tamburini and María Cecilia Magnet Ferrero in their apartment on Calle Córdoba in Buenos Aires. He was a doctor of Argentine nationality, a militant of the MIR, who had lived in Chile for several years and had fled the repression unleashed after September 11, 1973. She was a Chilean MAPU militant and sociologist who had arrived in Buenos Aires at the end of 1973. During the detention, Guillermo Tamburini was wounded by gunfire. 4) On July 27, 1976, 25 days after arriving in Argentina, Luis Enrique Elgueta Díaz was detained along with his partner and her sister, both of Argentine nationality. He had taken refuge in that country after having been expelled from the University of Chile's School of Music due to his known participation in the MIR. Before traveling, he left a friend with the address of a relative where he would stay in the Argentine capital. His friend, Sergio Fuenzalida, was detained in Santiago by the DINA on June 28, 1976, along with six other people, all of whom are disappeared. The Rettig Report establishes that the victim, intensely sought in Chile after the DINA operation that annihilated his group of friends in Santiago, was placed at the disposal of DINA agents in Buenos Aires. 5) In July 1976, Miguel Iván Orellana Castro, 27, a MIR militant who was exiled in Cuba, disappeared. The disappearance occurred when the victim was in Buenos Aires clandestinely on a trip to Chile. 6) On September 24, 1976, the governess Rachel Elizabeth Venegas Illanes, a MIR militant, was detained in the center of Buenos Aires. Since that moment, nothing more has been known of her. She had been prosecuted by the Victoria Military Prosecutor's Office and sentenced to long-term house arrest, after which she left Chile. While in Buenos Aires, she obtained a visa to travel to Holland a few days before her detention. 7) In July 1976, Patricio Biedma Schadewaldt, a MIR militant linked to the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta, which had been detected by security agencies, was detained. Of Argentine nationality but with residence in Chile since 1968, married to Luz Lagarrigue, with three children, the sociologist Patricio Biedma returned to Argentina due to the political persecution to which he was subjected in Chile. He maintained his political activity within the MIR, working alongside Edgardo Enríquez, a member of the political commission. It has been proven that Biedma was detained in a "sweep-type" search in July 1976 in Buenos Aires and taken to several facilities, among them "Automotores Orletti," which depended on the SIDE—a security agency with which the DINA maintained close relations. In that facility, he was interrogated by a Chilean military officer, which is confirmed by several testimonies from Argentine detainees. 8) On April 6, 1977, the former director of Aeronautics of the FACH, Jorge Sagauta Herrera, 51, was detained by Argentine security forces at the home of a friend of his in Buenos Aires. Upon finding a list of Chilean political prisoners on him, he was taken by the agents who made him disappear. 9) On May 16, 1977, the Chilean-Swiss student Alexei Vladimir Jaccard Siegler was arrested in Buenos Aires; he had arrived in that country the day before, on a stopover of a trip that was to continue to Chile the following day. According to information, Alexei Jaccard was carrying money for the PC of Chile. In the same operation, Ricardo Ignacio Ramírez Herrera, in charge of organization and finances of the Communist Party of Chile in Buenos Aires, and Héctor Heraldo Velásquez Mardones, also a Chilean communist militant, were detained. The Chilean and Argentine agents captured the three Chilean citizens and five Argentines, members of the Committee of Solidarity with Chile in Argentina who were sheltering the detainees, on the same day. All eight are disappeared. Alexei Jaccard was detained on a public street and taken to an Argentine Federal Police facility where he was interrogated and then transferred to the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (ESMA) in Buenos Aires. 10) On May 23, 1977, Humberto Cordano López, a nurse and member of the PC who was exiled in Comodoro Rivadavia, was detained. A member of the Argentine Committee of Solidarity with Chile in that province, Humberto Cordano had made efforts on behalf of Chilean detainees, as a result of which he was notoriously followed by DINA agents in that Argentine city. 11) On January 10, 1978, Guido Arturo Saavedra Inostroza, a student at the University of Buenos Aires and an employee at Textil Gloria, was detained. The young university student had left Chile after having been detained at the Federico Santa María University in Valparaíso. 12) In 1978, the Chileans Raúl Tapia Hernández, Jaime Nury Riquelme Gangas, and Luis Espinoza González, exiles who worked in Argentina, were detained and disappeared. 13) In April 1978, Carlos Patricio Rojas Campos, a communist militant, disappeared; he had been persecuted in Calama and Tocopilla until 1977, when he took refuge in Buenos Aires. 14) On July 26, 1978, Cristina Magdalena Carreño Araya, a communist militant, disappeared in Argentina. She had arrived in that country from Hungary at the beginning of that month. On the 24th of that month, she revealed to the CEAS office—a Catholic Church agency that worked in coordination with the UNHCR in the Federal Capital—that she felt persecuted and requested refugee status. 15) On January 27, 1979, Oscar Orlando Oyarzún Manzo, a PC militant who had been a refugee in Argentina since 1974, was kidnapped by plainclothes agents and killed in the vicinity of Buenos Aires. 16) On February 19, 1981, José Alejandro Campos Cifuentes, a nursing student, and Luis Quinchavil Suárez, a former Mapuche leader—both MIR militants—were detained by gendarmes at the Chilean-Argentine border in the Paimun sector; they were attempting to return to Chile clandestinely to join a guerrilla project in the southern zone. Likewise, these eleven Chileans were detained in Argentina and remain disappeared:

• Nelson Martín Cabello Pérez, 23, detained on April 9, 1976, in La Plata, along with his wife and brother-in-law.
• Oscar Julián Urra Ferrarese, 24, detained on May 22, 1976, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, along with his wife. Argentine Aeronautics personnel participated in the operation. The couple was taken to the Campo de Mayo prison and from there transferred to the Magdalena military prison. Their trail is lost there.
• Rafael Antonio Ferrada, 49, detained on August 3, 1976, at his home in San Martín, Buenos Aires province.
• José Francisco Pichulman Alcapan, 20, detained on August 12, 1976, at his home in Neuquén by a group of military personnel. He was last seen by a guard at the Río Mayo facility.
• Juan Raúl Pichulman Alcapan, 24, detained on January 27, 1977, at his home in the town of J.J. Gómez in Río Negro by a group of 20 to 30 people who claimed to belong to the "joint forces."
• Nelson Flores Ugarte, 28, detained on February 18, 1977, at his home in Buenos Aires by a group of armed individuals.
• María Isabel Navarrete, 24, was detained on May 17, 1977, upon leaving the Faculty of Medicine in La Plata.
• Reinaldo Miguel Pinto Rubio, 23, detained on June 19, 1977, in Buenos Aires. He resisted the kidnapping but was shot and taken to the Claypole Police Station.
• María Angélica Pinto Rubio, 21, last seen in Buenos Aires on February 10, 1977. Apparently, her detention was linked to that of her brother Reinaldo.
• Jose Luis de la Maza Asquet, 27, detained on November 1, 1977, in Tucumán.
• Juan Adolfo Coloma Machuca, detained on December 11, 1978, in Buenos Aires, along with his wife. He was seen at the El Olimpo prison camp in Argentina at the end of 1979.
• Luis Adolfo Jaramillo, 42, disappeared on November 26 in Quilmes.
• José Heriberto del Carmen Leal Sanhueza, 25, single, university student, disappeared probably in Córdoba.
• Luis Guillermo Guzmán Osorio, of Chilean nationality, disappeared in Argentina and appears registered in the lists of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights of that country.
• Enrique Lomas Pontigo, disappeared on May 24 in Buenos Aires.
• Luis Arnaldo Zaragoza Olivares, employee, detained in Argentina on August 17.
• Gaspar Medina Medina, 42, detained on September 9 in Futaleufú.
• René Alejandro Moscoso Espinoza, photoengraver, detained at the GRAFFA S.A. factory in Buenos Aires.
• Salvador Cubillos Maturana, detained on November 10 in Buenos Aires, and disappeared.
• Nora Mardikiand, Argentine, married to the Chilean Nelson Cabello, remains disappeared.
• Susana Ossola, Argentine citizen, married to the Chilean Oscar Urra and pregnant at the time of the detention, remains disappeared to date.
• Clara Haydeeé Fernández, Argentine, married to the Chilean Luis Elgueta, remains disappeared.
• Cecilia María Fernández, Argentine, sister-in-law of the Chilean Luis Elgueta, disappeared since the same date as him.
• Esteban Badell, Argentine, married to the Chilean M. Eliana Acosta, remains disappeared since the same date as her.
• Julio Badell, brother of the previous one, remains disappeared since the same date as her.

YEAR 1977

• Carmen Angélica Delard Cabezas; María Eugenia Escobar Silva; Daniel Tapia Contardo, 26; Hernán Leopoldo Caballero, 26; Gastón Riquelme Cifuentes; Norma Riquelme Cifuentes; Hernán Artemio Rojas Fajardo, bricklayer, detained in Mar del Plata

YEAR 1978

• Luis Alfredo Espinoza González, 25, detained in Mendoza; Eduardo Kurt Fuentes; Ester Elena Jiménez Torrealba; Rafael Eduardo Ulloa Sánchez; Rubén Gómez Quezada, journalist, detained in Salta; Susana Larubia, detained in Buenos Aires

YEAR 1979

• Juan Antonio Rodríguez, detained in Mar del Plata; Sylvia Lilian Almendras Zapata; Santiago Pedro Astelarra; Yolanda Barría Santana; Omar José Ojeda Mera; Mario Juan Villa Colombo; Ricardo Lancelot Carvajal Vargas; Gary Nelson Olomos Guzmán; José Fernando Fanjul Mallea; Silvia Teresa Marambio Silva; Angel Manuel Martínez Fernández; Luisa Aurora Arredondo Fernández

Source: ww.rrojasdatabank.info

The story of a Mapuche man disappeared by the Videla dictatorship: José Francisco Pichulman

His family and friends called him "Pancho." He was a construction worker, a trade he had learned from his father. He worked in the neighborhood alongside his neighbors to achieve the construction of housing, a daycare center, the neighborhood commission, and a more just and solidary society. "Pancho" was 23 years old at the time of his disappearance.

He belonged to the Catholic youth group of the Santa Teresa Church in the Sapere neighborhood (Neuquén), where he did social work, and he was a militant in the Neighborhood Commission alongside Celestino Aigo, Orlando Cancio, and Javier Seminario Ramos.

On August 12, 1976, around one o'clock, a group of armed people traveling in unidentified vehicles broke into his home on Calle Alderete s/n° in the Sapere neighborhood and illegally detained him, taking him to an uncertain destination.

From that moment on, nothing more was known about his whereabouts. The testimony of his mother, Feliciana Alcapán, in the trial against the genocidaires was fundamental for the imprisonment of the military and police executioners who participated in the detentions and kidnappings of her sons, Juan and Pancho.

Hopefully, from another plane, Feliciana is reunited with her children and continues to provide us with strength so that, as a society, we continue fighting until the end, just as we have always done, for the trial and punishment of the guilty.

During the efforts made by his relatives at the VI BIM Command, they interviewed Major Farías Barrera, who at first denied that he was being held, only to later admit that José Francisco was fine, that he had not been found guilty, and that they might not see him again because his superiors wanted to send him to Bahía Blanca.

In the La Escuelita II trial, Commissioner Alejandro Rojas recalled having participated in an operation in which they were looking for a certain Pichulman and his brother Victorino Pichulman, who said he had learned of his detention in Bahía Blanca and Rawson through the newspapers.

Mario Alberto Gómez Arenas and Luis Alberto Farías Barrera are co-perpetrators of the crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty aggravated by violence and a duration exceeding one month, and Jorge Héctor Di Pasquale was declared a secondary participant.

Source: elextremosur.com 28/3/2022