Santiago Edmundo Araya Cabrera, 28 years old, single, traveling salesman, member of the MIR, was arrested on November 29, 1976, on a public street by DINA agents. Between November 29 and December 20, 1976, thirteen people were arrested: eleven of them belonging to the Communist Party, some of whom were members of its Central Committee, and two to the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

The procedures used to arrest them share similarities, particularly in the fact that their arrests were carried out on public streets, except in one case, and it is notable that the bulk of the arrests took place on December 15, 1976, affecting seven people on that day alone.

Another common note in their situations was the information officially provided by the military government, to the effect that practically all of them had registered exits from Chile to Argentina between the end of December 1976 or the beginning of January 1977.

The falsity of this version was later established judicially. The other characteristic common to all these people is that they remain forcibly disappeared to this day. They are: Santiago Edmundo Araya Cabrera, arrested on November 29, 1976; Armando Portilla, arrested on December 9, 1976; Fernando Alfredo Navarro Allende, arrested on December 13, 1976; Lincoyán Yalú Berríos Cataldo, Horacio Cepeda Marinkovic, Luis Segundo Lazo Santander, Juan Fernando Ortiz Letelier, Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza, Waldo Ulises Pizarro Molina, Héctor Véliz Ramírez, all of them arrested on December 15, 1976; Lizandro Tucapel Cruz Díaz, Carlos Patricio Durán González, both arrested on December 18, 1976; and Edras de las Mercedes Pinto Arroyo, arrested on December 20, 1976. On November 29, 1976, Santiago Edmundo Araya Cabrera, a former student leader and member of the MIR, left his home bound for the Vega Central in Santiago to buy merchandise that he packaged and then sold, intending to return immediately to his home where he performed that packaging work. The victim was arrested on a public street and his whereabouts remain unknown to this day. Previously, in August of that same year, 1976, at the height of the 27th stop of Gran Avenida, the victim, Mario Maureira Vásquez, and Juan Carrasco were intercepted by an off-duty Carabineros officer who asked them to identify themselves. Santiago Araya and Juan Carrasco did so, handing over their identity cards, which were never returned to them, while Mario Maureira did not carry identification. The off-duty police officer threatened to take them to a Carabineros unit, and when he searched Maureira, he found a weapon, with the latter claiming it was not loaded, which the officer confirmed. When the officer was asking a taxi driver for cooperation to call the nearest police station or a patrol car, Maureira attempted to flee, and the officer chased after him, firing shots until he subdued him; in the meantime, Santiago Araya and Juan Carrasco took the opportunity to leave the scene. Regarding the events that occurred, both Santiago Araya and Juan Carrasco provided sworn statements recording what they had experienced, which served to establish facts in relation to the arrest and subsequent disappearance of Mario Maureira. Furthermore, after the incident that culminated in Maureira's arrest, individuals identifying themselves as being from the Carabineros Intelligence Service arrived at the home of Araya and Carrasco. Upon not finding them, they instructed family members that they should appear before the Carabineros as soon as possible to be interrogated regarding Maureira's whereabouts; additionally, their residences remained under surveillance by stationary guards for about ten days. Also, as recorded in a sworn statement by Norma Cabrera Ibarra, the victim's mother, she received information from a detainee held by the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) that his interrogations focused fundamentally on the background information he had regarding Santiago Araya. On the other hand, the Chilean government reported in criminal case file 2-77, handled by a Minister in Extraordinary Visit (mentioned later), that Santiago Araya had left Chile bound for Argentina through the Los Libertadores pass on December 22, 1976. Indeed, in the documentation regarding this matter that appeared in the process known as the "Roadmap," the victim's name appeared, stating that he left the country on that date, bound for Mendoza, and that he did so "on foot." In that same roadmap, three other people were mentioned as also leaving on foot, on the same date and with the same destination. It is worth noting that in that same document, an identity card number was recorded for Santiago Araya that was not his own, and when the records were requested based solely on the identity card numbers indicated for both the victim and the other three travelers on foot, the Civil Registry and Identification Service reported that the number indicated for the victim corresponded to a female who, when she testified in the process, stated that she had not traveled on that date; another identity card number corresponded to another person who also declared that they had not traveled to Argentina; meanwhile, the only other person mentioned whose identity number did match also declared that they had not traveled to Argentina; finally, regarding the other ID number, it was reported that it was not possible to provide information since no person with those details appeared registered in the General Archive of that Civil Registry and Identification Service. It is also noted that the official of the Investigative Police who judicially admitted to having filled out that roadmap in which these irregularities were found, in the same case file 2-77, turned out to be charged with the crime of falsification of a public instrument and the illegitimate deprivation of liberty of Reinalda Pereira Plaza, one of the thirteen forcibly disappeared persons from the end of 1976. This was the official Federico Infante Lillo, who in one of his judicial statements noted: "...I totally rule out the possibility that forgery could be committed in the documents in question (referring to the roadmaps), since they are instruments prepared based on the documentation presented by passengers at the time of their control and which, subsequently, go to the archive... every person who appears in the records, that is to say in the roadmaps or passenger lists, is because they have personally presented themselves for control by International Police, presenting their identity documentation...". To this day, Santiago Araya Cabrera remains disappeared.

Judicial and/or Administrative Actions

On December 3, 1976, the victim's father, Mr. César Araya Araya, filed a writ of amparo (habeas corpus) before the Santiago Court of Appeals in his son's favor, stating that on that day, November 29 of the same year, his son had left for the Vega Central to buy merchandise, intending to return immediately to his home; that he had carried out various efforts to find his whereabouts; and that the circumstance of having learned that a person detained by the DINA had been asked about his son, while being shown a photograph of him, gave him the certainty that he was also detained by the DINA, since that agency was looking for him; as well as the fact that Santiago Araya had made a sworn statement about what he knew of the arrest of the now-disappeared Mario Maureira Vásquez, whose last known status was that he was in the power of the DINA. Due to these circumstances, the petitioner for amparo in favor of the victim requested that a report be required from both the Minister of the Interior and the DINA, a request to which the aforementioned Court did not accede. Twenty days after the filing of the appeal (case file 1060-76 bis), the Ministry of the Interior reported that the victim "is not being held by order of this Ministry." On December 27, the amparo was rejected by that Tribunal, and it was ordered that the records be sent to the Criminal Court so that the possible commission of a crime in the disappearance of Santiago Araya could be investigated. The ruling was issued by Ministers José Cánovas, Eduardo Avello, and the acting lawyer Alberto Novoa. The ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, which confirmed it without further ado in a sentence issued by Ministers Israel Bórquez, Luis Maldonado, Manuel Rivas, and the acting lawyers Enrique Urrutia and Román de Amesti, on December 30, 1976. Ultimately, the case of the disappearance of Santiago Araya was investigated in case file 2-77, along with others of the thirteen disappeared persons. After the respective amparo appeals were rejected, the victims' families requested the Supreme Court to appoint a Minister in Visit to focus on the 13 disappeared persons already named. The Court granted the request but limited the scope of the investigation to only 8 of the cases. Shortly after the investigation began, two more were included. Among these first 8 was the case of Santiago Edmundo Araya Cabrera. The processing of this case lasted nearly 13 years and accumulated 21 volumes with more than 9,000 pages, and the investigation was in the hands of different Ministers. The highest Court of the Republic ordered the Santiago Court of Appeals to make such an appointment, which fell to Minister Mr. Guastavino, who, after requesting a report from the Ministry of the Interior—which reported that the victims had abandoned the country through a mountain pass toward the Argentine Republic—dismissed the case. This resolution was revoked by the Santiago Court of Appeals, as it was on the second occasion when a new closure of the summary proceedings was decreed. Subsequently, Minister Carlos Letelier Bobadilla came to substitute for Minister Guastavino, closing the summary proceedings in August 1978, "unable to advance in the investigation." That resolution was challenged by the lawyers, who pointed out to the Minister that he could indeed advance in the investigation, as there were pending proceedings requested and because other proceedings would arise from the state of the case. Thus, Minister Letelier left his own resolution without effect, decreeing new proceedings. Later, upon resuming his functions, Minister Guastavino decreed a definitive dismissal by application of Decree Law 2191 in December 1980. The Court of Appeals, this time, revoked the resolution to close the summary proceedings, and the Minister in Visit himself left the decreed dismissal without effect, due to the omission of a legal formality. In this way, the processing continued. By 1983, Minister Carlos Cerda Fernández took charge of continuing the investigation into the "case of the thirteen," and he ordered hundreds of proceedings, consisting of summonses of people, recognition of places and people, expert reports, review of criminal files, and the dispatch of official letters requesting reports from State services, branches of the Armed Forces, private institutions, and others of vital importance. In sum, he received nearly 200 testimonies from eyewitnesses to the arrests of the victims and their confinement in clandestine facilities. Among these testimonies were also those of members of the Armed Forces who participated in Intelligence Services, as well as officials of the Carabineros and Investigative Police, and some civilians who collaborated with the security services, as is the case of Otto Trujillo and Miguel Estay Reyno (El Fanta). At this stage, the statement of the first-class soldier of the Chilean Air Force, Andrés Valenzuela Morales, who deserted from that institution in 1984, was obtained. Through his statement, he provided accounts and data that, in the mid-70s, a so-called "Joint Command" or "Antisubversive Joint Command" began to operate, integrated by members of the different branches of the Armed Forces and Order, plus some civilians who belonged to leftist parties and who, after being detained by Intelligence services and subjected to pressure and/or extortion, became collaborators. At this level of investigation, Minister Carlos Cerda managed to establish valuable and clarifying data regarding other cases of human rights violations, some of them involving the disappearance of persons, even ordering the referral of some parts of the "case of the thirteen" to other Courts that were hearing criminal cases regarding them. During the processing that he was responsible for substantiating, Minister Carlos Cerda issued 43 indictments: in September 1983, against two Investigative Police officials for the crimes of falsification of a public instrument (the roadmap that accounted for the departure from the country) and the illegitimate deprivation of liberty of Reinalda Pereira Plaza and Edras Pinto Arroyo; and, in September 1985, against Miguel Estay Reyno (El Fanta) as an accomplice in the crimes of illegitimate deprivation of liberty of Reinalda Pereira Plaza and Edras Pinto Arroyo. On August 14, 1986, the Minister issued 40 indictments against an equal number of people, among whom was the former member of the Military Junta, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh, other Generals, Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of the Carabineros, the Chilean Air Force and Navy, detectives of the Investigative Police, and some civilians. Some of the uniformed personnel were in active service and others were retired at that date. Four of these 40 accused filed a complaint regarding the non-application of the amnesty law, and the Santiago Court of Appeals, on September 10, 1986, left the indictments without effect, not only for the four accused who appealed but also including, by official order, the other 36 accused. This ruling was confirmed by the Supreme Court on October 6 of the same year. Faced with such a resolution, Minister Cerda decided to suspend its compliance and present a document to the Supreme Court substantiating the reasons for his determination. Upon learning of this situation, the Supreme Court in Plenary Session, on October 8, 1986, resolved to apply a disciplinary measure of suspension from office for two months, with half pay, to Minister Carlos Cerda Figueroa. Judge Manuel Silva Ibañez was appointed as a substitute, who, on October 23, 1986, applying the Amnesty Decree Law, definitively dismissed case file 2-77. The victims' families appealed, and the Court of Appeals confirmed Judge Silva's ruling on June 10, 1987. Faced with this situation, appeals for cassation on form and substance were filed before the Supreme Court, a Tribunal that, in a sentence dated August 11, 1989, confirmed the definitive dismissal due to amnesty of case file 2-77, which was investigating the fate of Santiago Edmundo Araya Cabrera following his arrest. For better background on case file 2-77, which investigates the fate of the forcibly disappeared persons of 1976, see the file for Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza, arrested on December 15, 1976.

Source: Corporation report

Born: 07/28/48, 28 years old, Single, Traveling salesman, Former President of the Student Center of the Superior Institute of Commerce No. 2 of Santiago; Member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

He was arrested on November 29, 1976, on a public street by DINA agents. Between November 29 and December 20, 1976, thirteen people were arrested: eleven of them belonging to the Communist Party, some of whom were members of its Central Committee, and two to the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

The procedures used to arrest them share similarities, particularly in the fact that their arrests were carried out on public streets, except in one case, and it is notable that the bulk of the arrests took place on December 15, 1976, affecting seven people on that day alone.

Another common note in their situations was the information officially provided by the military government, to the effect that practically all of them had registered exits from Chile to Argentina between the end of December 1976 or the beginning of January 1977.

The falsity of this version was later established judicially. The other characteristic common to all these people is that to this date they are... --JUAN RODRIGO MAC LEOD TREUER, was arrested on November 30, 1974, together with his mother-in-law --MARIA JULIETA RAMIREZ GALLEGOS, 65 years old, married, 2 children Forcibly Disappeared, November 30, 1974, No political affiliation Housewife, detained inside the Tres Alamos Prisoner Camp when both were visiting the wife and daughter of María Julieta, María Antonieta Castro Ramirez (a member of the MIR), and her brother Oscar Emilio Castro Ramirez, who had been detained in that facility since the middle of that same month, being released subsequently. That day, María Julieta was bringing her daughter a bag of cosmetics which contained inside some microfilms of MIR documents, which she was unaware of. After being arrested, both were handed over to DINA personnel in the presence of the Head of the Tres Alamos Camp, Conrado Pacheco, and were held incommunicado in the Cuatro Alamos facility, where María Antonieta was located. Ana María Vallejo, wife of Oscar Castro, who had also come for the visit, also witnessed this arrest. The same day, Juan Rodrigo, his spouse, and his mother-in-law were transferred to the DINA interrogation facility known as Villa Grimaldi. His spouse María Antonieta Castro and his brother-in-law Oscar Castro regained their freedom months later, but he and his mother-in-law María Julieta Ramirez Gallegos have remained disappeared ever since. Mac Leod was seen in good physical condition and was taken out of Villa Grimaldi around December 23, 1974, along with a group of prisoners, all of whom are likewise disappeared. ---DENRIO MAX ALVAREZ OLIVARES, 17 years old, student and university leader, communist militant. Arrested on December 3, 1973, along with other people. Together with them, several other leftist militants were arrested who were later released. They were taken to the Central Headquarters of the Investigative Police, then to the Public Jail, and finally to the Buin Regiment to be interrogated. In this place, the trail of the detainees was lost, and their lifeless bodies appeared at the Legal Medical Institute. The autopsy protocol for Alvarez indicates the cause of death as "gunshot wound," and the death certificate for Pacheco indicates "thoracic gunshot wounds (3) and craniocerebral (1)."

---GASTON EDUARDO CIFUENTES NORAMBUENA

Born 01/28/49; 25 years old, Married, 2 children, Merchant, member of the Socialist Party, was arrested by plainclothes personnel on December 3, 1974, around 15:00 hours, at his workplace, a family-owned auto accessories business located at Calle Brasil 52-A in Santiago, which was raided by the agents.

In the shop were the victim, his brothers Heriberto and José Efraín, the secretary, a supplier, and a customer. At the indicated time, a young woman entered the place who, as described by Durán, seemed drugged or drunk and asked for Gastón Cifuentes; the secretary replied that he was not there.

The woman left, and immediately about nine armed civilians burst into the premises and went directly to the office where the brothers and the secretary were having lunch, while asking for Gastón. The latter, believing it was a robbery, indicated the place where the money was; however, the agents ignored him and indicated that it was a raid.

Gastón was handcuffed and immediately taken out of the business, being put into a white private vehicle in which they took him to an unknown destination. ----GREGORIO PALMA DONOSO, 21 years old, high school graduate from the Liceo Salesiano Manuel Arriarán.

The aggravated kidnapping was perpetrated on December 3, 1974, in the commune of Macul, when the young man was intercepted by DINA agents at the intersection of Avenida Macul and Calle Los Olmos. After being arrested, Palma Donoso was taken to the clandestine detention center of Villa Grimaldi, where he was last seen.

Arrested in Santiago on a public street. ----EDGARDO ORLANDO LOYOLA CID, single, 19 years old. He was a welder's assistant and a member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). Forcibly disappeared. Santiago, December 1974. He was arrested in Santiago on December 3, 1974, at his home, by State agents. Edgardo Loyola has remained disappeared since that date.

Source: facebook.com colectivo contra el olvido

Fulfilling the verbal commitment made to the families of the victims of Cuesta Barriga, the government, through the Human Rights Program, requested that Minister Héctor Carreño instruct a summary investigation into the case of the disappearance of thirteen communist leaders in 1976 and investigate the background information that would demonstrate that there was a removal of remains at that location.

If the Program's request is accepted, a new front of investigation will be opened, since the mandate granted by the Supreme Court to Héctor Carreño and Amanda Valdovinos—in charge of the search for twenty bodies at Fuerte Arteaga—was extremely restrictive from the moment it designated them as special judges, as it only commissioned them to confirm the veracity of the information from the Dialogue Table and find the bodies that were supposedly at those coordinates, but said nothing about clarifying the circumstances of the disappearances being investigated.

Thus, ten months after this resolution, there has only been progress in terms of finding bones. In fact, since the investigation began on January 9 in the shaft of the Los Bronces mine, located at kilometer 12 of the Cuesta Barriga, the process has been clouded by the limitations imposed by the highest court.

According to the families of the Cuesta Barriga victims, one cannot pretend to find bodies, identify them, and then leave the case abandoned. They assert that every judge must have as their main mission truth and justice and, on that level, determine who were the culprits of the 1976 crimes and who removed their bodies.

Therefore, they anticipate that if the Program's presentation fails, they will file lawsuits to determine the removal of their relatives' remains, which they assert was carried out, with 90 percent certainty, in 1987.

The 1987 removal A fundamental piece for investigating the removal of remains will be the information provided by two witnesses to the Investigative Police and the court itself, who declared that in 1987, Army trucks traveled through the area and carried out operations, moving bundles.

This thesis gains strength because the expert reports from the Legal Medical Service have determined that the bodies were exhumed between five to ten years after their burial, which is evidenced by the fact that the remains that remained in the mine correspond to those that fall freely when moved and do not present the fractures typical of a corpse that is not in an advanced process of decomposition.

If one adds to this that the former Admiral Jorge Arancibia himself, when he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, confirmed that the information about remains in Cuesta Barriga was provided by his institution, the possibilities that Judge Carreño will initiate an investigation in that area once again place members of the Armed Forces as the main suspects.

For the victims' families, this background information is so overwhelming that it warrants requesting the Army to report on this work and partially break the secrecy that the Dialogue Table offered to the people who provided this data, since in their opinion, they would have some participation in the crime of exhumation and removal of bodies.

Among the family members, there is a belief that the entirety of the remains of their parents and siblings will never be found, as they point out that after removing the remains, the habitual practice was to dynamite or destroy them, and it is very unlikely that operations to throw bodies into the sea were carried out during that period.

Slow identification While the families of the disappeared wait with hope for the result of the proceeding requested by the Program, the Legal Medical Service began the long task of establishing the identity of the bones, which, according to the agency, would correspond to at least ten people.

The 200 pieces found have only allowed for certainty of the identity of two people to date: Horacio Cepeda and Fernando Ortiz, thanks to the comparison of dental pieces with X-rays that their families kept, although their remains will have to be evaluated like all the others with DNA tests, an investigation that will last at least a year.

This, despite the fact that the families hope that the process will be shorter than expected, considering that groups of common bones were checked to facilitate the expert reports. The report of the Dialogue Table only records that the bodies of Lincoyán Yalu Berríos Cataldo, Horacio Cepeda Marinkovic, Luis Segundo Lazo Santander, Fernando Alfredo Navarro Allendes, Juan Fernando Ortíz Letelier, and Héctor Véliz Ramírez, all of them arrested on December 13, 1976, would be in the Cuesta.

But human rights groups and the Rettig Commission Report add the names of Santiago Edmundo Araya Cabrera (arrested on November 29, 1976), Armando Portilla (arrested on December 9, 1976), Reinalda del Carmen Pereira Plaza and Waldo Ulises Pizarro Molina, arrested in the operation of December 13, 1976; Lizandro Tucapel Cruz Díaz and Carlos Patricio Durán González, both arrested on December 18, 1976; and Edras de las Mercedes Pinto Arroyo, arrested on December 20, 1976.

To date, forensic reports have established "approximations" to the identities of Héctor Véliz, Alfredo Navarro, Luis Lazo, and Lincoyán Berríos, as their medical records present significant correspondences with the bone pieces examined at the Legal Medical Service. Lizandro Cruz and Carlos Durán are also mentioned as being among the victims of the Communist Party.

Source: Primera Linea, October 18, 2001

Date: 10-18-2001