D.O.B.: 13 06 55, 18 years old at the time of detention Address: San Antonio 357, Hotel Sao Paulo, Santiago Marital Status: Single Occupation: Economics student, U. Católica de Santiago Political Affiliation: No known political affiliation Date of Detention: September 15, 1973

Name: RAMIRO CARLOS GONZALES GONZALES ID: 7.423.354 6 / 139.284 Arica D.O.B.: 20 03 55, 18 years old at the time of detention Address: San Antonio 357, Hotel Sao Paulo, Santiago Marital Status: Single Occupation: Medicine student, U. de Chile Santiago Political Affiliation: No known political affiliation Date of Detention: September 15, 1973

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Enrique Antonio Saavedra González, 18 years old, of Bolivian nationality, a student at the School of Economics of the Universidad de Chile, and his cousin Ramiro Carlos Gonzáles Gonzáles, 18 years old, Chilean, a Medicine student at the U. de Chile, were forcibly disappeared on September 15, 1973.

On that day, the young men left the Hotel Sao Paulo, where they were residing, for the purpose of buying food after a 4-day curfew. Since that date, their whereabouts and the circumstances surrounding their disappearance remain unknown.

This version is confirmed by the Administrator of the Hotel Sao Paulo, also of Bolivian nationality, Dorbeo Hanssen Torrico, who declared to the Investigations police: "Indeed, in 1973, for a period of approximately one month, the young men Ramiro Gonzáles and Antonio Saavedra were staying there; they were recommended to me by their mothers.

I must add that the last time I saw these boys was on September 15, 1973, the date on which, at approximately 4:00 PM, they went out for a walk in the vicinity of the Hotel and never returned. I do not know what may have happened to them, as I never heard from them again, and I informed their mothers of this situation."

Another witness, José Morales Pereira, who also worked at the hotel as a messenger, adds: "On September 11, 1973, these young men were at the Hotel. Everyone in the Hotel spent 4 days without leaving. On September 15, 1973, between 2:30 PM and 3:00 PM, I saw these young men go out to the street; they spoke with me before leaving.

When they left, they left everything at the Hotel. I advised them not to go out yet because it was dangerous, but they did not listen. I never saw them again. Some time later, the parents of these boys arrived at the Hotel to find out where they might be, but they had no positive results. These young men were always together; they did not get involved with anyone."

Indeed, their relatives did not learn of the disappearance immediately. After the events of September 11, 1973, they tried to communicate with their sons by telephone, but communications were interrupted.

It was only a week after the disappearance occurred that they contacted people at the Hotel. They traveled to Santiago and began making inquiries to locate their sons. They made contact with their Embassy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Red Cross, and visited various detention centers. They also published notices in the national press in October and December 1973.

They also went to the Estadio Nacional, where a staff member, who claimed to belong to the International Red Cross, told them that the affected individuals were detained there and that they should send them clothing. She added that she had seen their names in handwritten notes.

Subsequently, the judicial investigation determined that the person mentioned as an International Red Cross employee had not worked there and was not registered in the Identification Cabinet, nor in the College of Nurses and Nursing Assistants.

This information contradicts the response received by the parents from the Minister of the Interior, General Oscar Bonilla B., who, on July 9, 1974, responded "that he had carried out an exhaustive investigation and interrogation of persons, with the purpose of providing a complete answer."

In this response, it is stated "that Ms. Edith Bravo Tudezca, a nurse, was interviewed, who, while collaborating at the Estadio Nacional, had indicated to the parents that they were detained. The note adds that the aforementioned nurse based this on a non-official, handwritten note."

Finally, it concludes by adding "that it has been impossible to determine their current location and it only remains that they may have left the country under other names. Otherwise, and if they are not in Chile under assumed names, there would be no other possibility than that these young men were victims of some type of attack by terrorists who have caused considerable casualties among innocent civilians and military personnel."

During the investigation, it was not possible to determine which authority held the lists of detainees who passed through said sports facility, which was used as a place of detention. Thus, the Minister of Defense, through the Minister of the Interior at the time, responded to the requests of the investigating judge that in the first months of the military government, there were no official lists of detainees.

They added that transitory lists were prepared for logistical and merely administrative purposes. It is also asserted that the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI) had some of these lists. Subsequently, the CNI denied having these lists in its possession.

Likewise, it was verified by the U. Católica and U. de Chile that both young men attended classes regularly during the first semester, thus not finishing their academic year.

Ramiro Gonzáles was born in Arica in 1955. Because his parents were of Bolivian nationality, he always lived in that country. In 1973, he wanted to obtain Chilean citizenship and came to study in Santiago, along with his cousin Enrique Saavedra.

Despite the multiple efforts made by their relatives, the whereabouts of the victims remain unknown to this day.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On April 7, 1975, a Writ of Amparo (Habeas Corpus) was filed on behalf of both victims before the Santiago Court of Appeals. The processing of said appeal is unknown as there is no copy of the respective file.

On December 14, 1978, the respective mothers of the detained young men, Norma González de González and Enriqueta González de Saavedra, both of Bolivian nationality, filed a complaint for kidnapping before the First Criminal Court of Santiago, which was registered under No. 113.160-V.

Once the complaint was filed, it was accepted for processing, and orders were issued to notify the Identification Cabinet, the Ministry of the Interior, the Visiting Judge Adolfo Bañados (who investigated the discovery of bodies in Lonquén), hospitals, International Police, and the U. Católica.

On December 28 of the same year, the Minister of the Interior at the time, Sergio Fernández Fernández, responded that both young men did not appear on the list of detainees. Equally negative reports were received from the consulted Health Services, the Department of Immigration and International Police, and the Legal Medical Institute, among others.

In April 1979, following a presentation by the Bishops to the President of the Supreme Court and the Minister of the Interior, which detailed the situation of a group of forcibly disappeared persons, the full Supreme Court appointed Judge Servando Jordán to carry out the investigation of forcibly disappeared persons corresponding to the Department of Santiago.

The Extraordinary Visit began in the month of April. Indeed, on the 4th of that month, the case was sent to Judge Servando Jordán, who continued the investigation and ordered new official letters to the Ministry of the Interior, hospitals, U. de Chile, and U.

Católica. During the course of the proceedings, witnesses who last saw the young men before they disappeared testified, and responses arrived from different services, which again provided no information on the whereabouts of the victims.

On April 3, 1980, their mothers filed a criminal complaint for the crime of kidnapping, which was joined to the case. Regarding said complaint, the Judge did not accept the request of the plaintiffs to ask the Ministry of Defense for the list of detainees at the Estadio Nacional starting from September 11.

The argument for the rejection was that the Minister of the Interior had already responded that the detention was not recorded and "it is the Minister of the Interior who centralizes all information related to detainees."

Eleven days after the complaint was filed, the judge declared the summary phase closed; the plaintiffs appealed due to pending investigative steps to find the whereabouts of the victims.

The Court of Appeals revoked the Judge's resolution and ordered that the investigative steps be carried out. The case was returned to the summary phase.

Information on detainees at the Estadio Nacional was requested from different offices. Thus, at the end of June 1980, the Minister of the Interior, Sergio Fernández F., responded that there was no national list of detainees in the possession of the National Defense General Staff.

He added in his response: "it has been possible to determine that during the first months of the current government, some unofficial transitory lists were prepared that contained the names of detainees for logistical and merely administrative purposes.

The Central Nacional de Informaciones had some of these lists, which in turn were transferred to the computer system it uses, for internal information purposes, without having an official character." This response was reaffirmed by the Minister of National Defense at the time, Lieutenant General Raúl Benavides Escobar.

Subsequent and new official responses from the same Minister of the Interior, requesting information from the Central Nacional de Informaciones regarding who held the list of detainees at the Estadio Nacional during 1973, stated: "the Directorate of said Central has stated that it does not have the list in question in its possession and does not know who might possess it at present."

On July 14 of the same year, the Investigating Judge declared the summary phase closed, and on September 10, he temporarily dismissed the case, a resolution that was confirmed by the Supreme Court.

In January 1991, the Rettig Report forwarded the background information to the Duty Court in San Felipe. Upon reviewing the entry logs of the two courts of law in this city, said official letter did not appear. Likewise, the entry log in the 1st Criminal Court was reviewed, which yielded negative results.

It should be noted that although both families reside in Bolivia, their mothers have regularly traveled to Chile in search of an answer regarding the fate of their sons.

The anthropometric data of Enrique Saavedra González and Ramiro Gonzáles Gonzáles were attached to case 4449-AF of the 22nd Criminal Court of Santiago for the crime of illegal burial, in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery, of unidentified persons who died between September and December 1973.

The Investigating Judge of the case ordered the excavation of 108 graves in September 1991. From there, 125 bodies were exhumed and sent to the Legal Medical Institute. Currently (late 1992), the expert identification reports are awaited.

Source: Corporation report

On Tuesday, September 11, 1973, the Chilean people woke up to a coup. Personnel from the three branches of the Armed Forces, joined by the Carabineros, attacked President Salvador Allende, who, after resisting with arms in hand for hours, died in the La Moneda Palace after midday.

During the thousand days of the Unidad Popular (UP) government, tens of thousands of political refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean flocked to the country to experience firsthand "the Chilean path to socialism," an unprecedented experiment. The hundreds of Bolivians who were forced to leave their country after Hugo Banzer's coup in August 1971 were no exception.

This article is the result of an editorial alliance between the Chilean newspaper Resumen and the magazine Correo del Alba, and is dedicated to addressing the life stories of the six young Bolivians executed by the Pinochet dictatorship.

Ramiro Carlos Gonzales Gonzales and Enrique Antonio Saavedra Gonzales

Born on March 20, 1955, in the city of Arica, Ramiro adopted Bolivian nationality from childhood, through his paternal line.

At 18, he was studying Medicine at the Universidad de Chile, and was detained on Saturday, September 15, in Santiago, along with his cousin Enrique Antonio Saavedra Gonzales, born on June 13, 1955, an Economics student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica.

Single and without political affiliation, according to the Corporation Report, both "disappeared on September 15. That day, the young men left the Hotel São Paulo, where they resided, for the purpose of buying food, after four days of curfew. Since that date, their whereabouts and the circumstances surrounding their disappearance remain unknown."

In the investigation to reconstruct the facts, Dorbeo Hanssen Torrico, the hotel administrator, testified: "Indeed, in 1973, for a period of approximately one month, the young men Ramiro Gonzáles and Antonio Saavedra were staying there; they were recommended to me by their mothers.

I must add that the last time I saw these boys was on September 15, 1973, the date on which, at approximately 4:00 PM, they went out for a walk in the vicinity of the Hotel and never returned. I do not know what may have happened to them, as I never heard from them again, and I informed their mothers of this situation."

After their disappearance, the mothers of these young men traveled to Chile and managed their search before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Red Cross; for years, there was speculation about their time in the Estadio Nacional detention and torture center.

Between the 70s and 80s, they did the same before the Santiago Court of Appeals, the Ministry of Defense, and many other public institutions, without any success.

At the end of 1994, their remains were identified after being exhumed from a mass grave in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery in Santiago, and were repatriated by their relatives in 1996.

Donato Quispe Choque

28 years old, with no known political activity, he worked as a textile worker and delegate of the Spinning section of the Sumar Factory, then part of the Vicuña Mackenna Industrial Belt.

According to the Rettig Report, "this industry had been raided previously on September 12 by Army personnel, who took control of the company [Sumar]. On September 23, the majority of the workers appeared at their workplace, obeying a call from the new authorities.

As the workers arrived at the company, they were formed into lines and those considered the most dangerous were separated according to lists that the military consulted."

Donato was detained, along with about twenty colleagues, at his workplace on Sunday, September 23, and was murdered that same day.

His body was found on public property, on the General San Martín highway, from where it was taken to the Legal Medical Institute. The autopsy of Donato and his companions—blindfolded and with multiple bullet wounds—showed that they had been executed by State agents.

In 2008, his body was identified in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago and repatriated to Bolivia.

Luis Busch Morales

Agronomist engineer, member of the Socialist Party, 36 years old.

He was detained by the Carabineros Intelligence Service (Sicar) on Friday, October 5, 1973. Immediately, he was transferred to the Río Loa police station, dependent on the First Carabineros Precinct, and then to the Calama Public Jail.

Together with two other socialist militants—Francisco Valdivia and Andrés Rojas—he was subjected to a War Council that allegedly took place on Saturday, October 6, at the Calama Regiment No. 15.

Accused of carrying out a sabotage attempt at the Dupont explosives plant of the Enaex company, he was executed in the Cerro Topater sector, on the outskirts of the northern city.

According to the Corporation Report: "the executions were carried out on the same day the Council allegedly took place, and the remains of the executed were not handed over to their relatives until two years later, when they were indicated the place where they were buried and were allowed to exhume them."

In March 2023, the visiting judge of the La Serena Court of Appeals, Vicente Hormazábal, sentenced former Army officer Adolfo Born Pineda to 10 years and one day of effective prison for the murders of Busch, Valdivia, and Rojas.

In his final report, he sentenced: "the murder of Messrs. Francisco Gabriel Valdivia Valdivia, Luis Busch Morales, and Andrés Rojas Marambio was executed by the perpetrators with treachery, that is, with certainty, dealing with three people who were detained by Carabineros Sicar officials, who, having been previously taken to other detention centers and interrogated with the application of torture, were transferred on October 6, 1973, to the Calama Regiment No. 15 and, that same day, in the afternoon, at approximately 6:30 PM, the three people were shot at the Topater hill in Calama, in a context after the military coup in which the military forces had total and absolute control of the country. [...] That, regarding those qualified homicides, furthermore, it must be considered that from the background information brought to the case, some elements flow to determine what the true reasons were for detaining Valdivia, Rojas, and Busch by the Carabineros officials, and although they tried to link them to a ridiculous terrorist plan, the truth is that it is clear that it was political reasons that motivated the perpetrators to kill the victims, which constitutes crimes against humanity."

Jorge Ignacio Soto Quiroga

28 years old, a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) of Bolivia, this young lawyer and postgraduate student at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) went into exile in Chile.

He was detained along with his wife, Ruth Miriam Canelas Luján, his friend Homero Bustos Quiroga, and his cousin Medardo Navia Quiroga—both sociology students—by personnel of the Army Engineers Command, who illegally broke into his home located at Calle Sazié No. 2104, where they interrogated them and subjected them to physical torture.

After their detention, the latter three people were taken to the Army Engineers Command, at the intersection of República and Sazié streets, and then to the Estadio Nacional, a facility from which, as the days went by, they were released.

Jorge Soto Quiroga, for his part, was also held at the Army Engineers Command, from where he was thrown into the void from a rooftop on Wednesday, September 26.

Although the Army informed the family of an alleged suicide, in 2011 the Presidential Advisory Commission for the Qualification of Forcibly Disappeared Persons, Political Executions, and Victims of Political Imprisonment and Torture concluded that it was a murder by State agents.

In April 2022, the visiting judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Paola Plaza, proceeded to charge retired military officer José Enrique Contreras Pacheco with the crime of qualified kidnapping. The indictment document indicated: "while at the disposal of his captors, Jorge Soto Quiroga was led to the rooftop of the building, at a height approximately equivalent to a four-story property, where there were no protection elements or security measures of any kind.

From that place, he fell, dying instantly as a result of cranioencephalic and thoraco-abdominal trauma."

On Wednesday, March 29 of this year, the Chilean Foreign Minister, Alberto van Klaveren, participated in a tribute to Jorge Soto and Jorge Ríos held by Flacso in Santiago. There, the authority expressed: "it is an honor (to represent Chile at the event), but on an occasion like this, it is a duty to do so.

And an extremely sad duty because it means recognizing the responsibility of a State, which we represent, in the face of this horrific situation that occurred starting on September 11 and whose victims from the sister Republic of Bolivia we are commemorating today."

Jorge Ríos Dalenz

Born on July 25, 1941, in Cochabamba, he was 32 years old at the time of Pinochet's coup. He was a dentist, former leader of the Bolivian University Confederation (CUB), and one of the emblematic founders of the MIR of Bolivia; he had evaded the Banzer dictatorship after the 1971 coup to take refuge in Santiago, Chile.

At the time of his death, he was pursuing postgraduate studies in Political Science at Flacso.

Detained by a Military Patrol on Thursday, September 13, in front of his spouse and two children, in his apartment on Calle Seminario in the Providencia commune. One of his children recounted to Wilson García Mérida ("A Cochabambino in the hands of Pinochet.

Struggle, passion, and death of Jorge Ríos Dalenz"): "my brother Jorge Eduardo and I were playing soccer in the hallway of our apartment when we saw the soldiers arrive. They went up to the floor and were shouting my father's name, looking for him.

A soldier asked me if I knew where the weapons that my dad supposedly hid in the house were. That day, Susy Requena was visiting us, who hid us in our bedroom and read us a story while they detained my father. They took him down and put him in a jeep without a hood; I watched him sitting from a window and he made a gesture saying goodbye with his hands. It was the last time I saw him."

Murdered at 9:00 PM the following day, according to the Corporation Report, his body was found on public property with "multiple bullet wounds, cranioencephalic, cervical, thoracic, abdominal, and extremity wounds with exit points," as noted in the Legal Medical Institute report.

Rosario Galindo, his widow, years later narrated the details of the search for her husband's body, which bore clear signs of torture, at the aforementioned Institute on September 16: "it was Sunday, about four days after my husband's disappearance.

My children and I were invited to lunch by a relative and we agreed to meet him in a park near our apartment. When we were about to leave, Carmen Pereira came bringing us the news. Tonchi Marincovic had told her that a Chilean doctor, a friend of his, saw Jorge's body at the Legal Medical Institute.

I hurried to leave my children with a friend and went quickly to the morgue. I was about to faint. At the Legal Medical Institute, there were thousands of bodies piled up in several rooms. Thousands. There were young people, old people, women.

I found my husband among that pile of dead, with a bruised face, although he was recognizable. He had the same clothes on from the day they took him, a white shirt all stained with blood. He had a fractured collarbone and the knees of his pants were torn, with his knees exposed."

His body was recovered, cremated, and repatriated by his family.

Months after that September 11, a survivor of the tragedy, René Zavaleta Mercado, reflected: "they took his [Allende's] body out wrapped in a Bolivian poncho. Persecuted also, like a cursed race, by Pinochet's Chile, we wanted to see in it an intact symbol of the fraternity of the revolutionaries of Bolivia and Chile."

Source: resumen.cl, September 7, 2023 Date: 09-07-2023

Memoriaviva accessed the death certificate of Mr. Ramiro Carlos Gonzáles Gonzáles, which is dated October 24, 1973, and also highlighting that his surname is Gonzáles with an S. FOLIO: 500652594317 Verification Code: c4f363d798b4 Civil Registry and Identification Service.

Source: registrocivil.cl

Today I found your page by chance, and while reviewing the list of Disappeared, I found the case of ENRIQUE ANTONIO SAAVEDRA GONZALEZ and RAMIRO CARLOS GONZALES GONZALES, two Bolivian students who disappeared during Pinochet's coup.

I was a Bolivian student in Chile and a schoolmate of both, so I know the case closely. I want to tell you that approximately in '96 they managed to find the bodies of both and they were repatriated to Bolivia, where they now rest in peace.

I will try to communicate with the family (they reside in La Paz and I in Cochabamba) so that they can complete and publish the tragedy that was the search and how they managed to find their sons. Congratulations for maintaining a space where the world and new generations can learn about the atrocities that were lived under that regime of terror. Sincerely.

Source: Roberto Goytia, October 12, 2010 Date: 10-12-2010

Testimonies, photographs, letters, and other documents that families and friends delivered or wrote especially to be published are incorporated into the book "Breaking the Silence of Children and Adolescents Politically Executed During the Civic-Military Dictatorship 1973-1990," which was produced by the Association of Relatives of Politically Executed Persons (AFEP) with the support of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, through the Culture, Memory, and Human Rights Unit, and the Human Rights Chair of the Universidad de Chile.

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

During the investigation, access was gained to the archive of the Association of Relatives of Politically Executed Persons, where documents that families have preserved over the years are kept. Illustrations by Álvaro Gómez were also included.

The creation process was a complex challenge that involved combining delicacy, respect, and methodological rigor to state in this work a painful and inescapable truth.

Source: Cultura.gob.cl, April 20, 2023 Date: 04-20-2023

CHILE: Remains of Three Foreigners Disappeared Identified

The remains of a Uruguayan citizen and two Bolivians, disappeared in Chile since the 1973 military coup, were identified among the remains of 11 people buried in a mass grave in the General Cemetery of Santiago.

The Social Aid Foundation of the Christian Churches (FASIC) specified on Friday that it concerns the Uruguayan artisan Arazati Lopez Lopez and the Bolivian students Ramiro Gonzalez Gonzalez and Enrique Saavedra Gonzalez.

The humanitarian organization established contacts with the respective consulates, as well as with the relatives of the victims, for the probable repatriation of the remains.

This is the first time that the remains of foreigners disappeared after the coup d'état have been identified among the hundred bodies exhumed in 1992 from Patio 29, a mass grave in the General Cemetery.

Establishing the identity of the remains has been a difficult and prolonged task, due to the long time of burial, which determined that the State made special contributions to finance the work and hire advice from experts from other countries.

Arazati Lopez, an artisan who was 33 years old at the time, had been missing since September 14, 1973, the date on which he was detained by agents who raided a boarding house in Santiago where he lived with other Uruguayans.

Ramiro Gonzalez, 18 years old, who had Chilean-Bolivian nationality, and his cousin Enrique Saavedra, Bolivian, of the same age, were apprehended on September 15, 1973, in the capital hotel where they were staying.

Gonzalez was a Medicine student at the Universidad de Chile, while Saavedra was pursuing an Economics degree at the Universidad Católica.

The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, issued in 1991, listed 52 foreigners among the 2,279 victims of human rights violations in Chile during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-90).

The list, which includes murdered and disappeared persons, registers three Uruguayans, three Bolivians, and one Chilean-Bolivian.

FASIC reported that among the 11 remains identified by experts from the Legal Medical Institute are also the remains of three people who disappeared since their detention at the La Moneda presidential palace on the same day of the coup.

They are Manuel Castro and Luis Rodriguez, members of Allende's security escort, and Hector Pincheira, an advisor to the Presidency.

Also identified were the remains of the peasants Josa Castro, Luis Gaete, and Luis Lazo, detained three days after the coup by military personnel in Paine, an agricultural town near Santiago.

The list of victims of forced disappearances whose remains were identified is completed with the student Pedro Perez, who was only 15 years old at the time of his detention, and Luis Gutierrez, a neighborhood leader.

FASIC lawyers highlighted that Gutierrez, 29, survived a firing squad on September 30, 1973, and was transferred to a hospital, where he was kidnapped by a military patrol. (FIN/IPS/ggr/ff/hr/94)

Source: ipsnoticias.net, November 19, 1994 Date: 11-19-1994