17 years old, single, street vendor, forcibly disappeared on January 14, 1979, in Concepción. Santos David Melgarejo Rojas disappeared that day in Concepción after being detained by Carabineros officers and held at the Second Carabineros Precinct of that city.

According to statements by eyewitnesses and information obtained from the judicial process regarding the report of a presumed mishap, Santos Melgarejo was detained at 4:00 a.m. on January 14, 1979, by a Carabineros patrol in the vicinity of a bus stop located within the Agüita de la Perdiz neighborhood where he lived.

There was an arrest warrant against him in a case involving injuries. The complainant who was the victim of these injuries was taken on Monday the 15th to the Second Carabineros Precinct of Concepción to identify Santos Melgarejo as his aggressor.

According to what he later declared, he saw him in very poor physical condition. On January 25, 1979, a report of a presumed mishap was filed with the Second Criminal Court of Concepción. The investigation contains statements from the arresting Carabineros officers in which they acknowledge the detention of the minor and claim he was released at noon on January 14 because there were no charges against him.

Furthermore, several witnesses declared that the Carabineros officers beat the detainee at the time of the apprehension, causing him injuries. Although Santos Melgarejo was not located, the Court temporarily dismissed the case, and the I.

Court of Appeals of Concepción approved the requested temporary dismissal, archiving the records. Considering the gathered evidence and the investigation conducted, the Superior Council reached the conviction that Santos David Melgarejo Rojas was detained by State agents and disappeared while being held in that capacity at a police station.

By virtue of this, he was declared a victim of human rights violations.

Source: (Corporation Report)

After 11:00 p.m. on September 28, 1973, Jorge Narváez Salamanca, a 15-year-old third-year high school student at the Mulchén Lyceum and a militant of the FER, the student branch of the MIR, was kidnapped.

The mob that arrived at his home kicked down the front door and held his mother at gunpoint with a machine gun. In that group were civilians and Carabineros, who took the minor from his home; to this day, there is no information regarding his whereabouts.

The mother of Jorge Narváez Salamanca and other witnesses managed to identify among the kidnappers young people from the Mulchén Lyceum itself, such as José Horacio Pacheco Padilla, José Pacheco Padilla (19 years old), Carlos Campos Pérez (18 years old), Rolf During Pholer (19 years old), Alberto Raúl Antonio Tirapegui Silva (20 years old), and Eduardo Antonio Bopp Negrete.

All of them were part of a group of civilians that operated in that commune alongside Carabineros after the Military Coup of September 11, 1973. It was common to see them outside the police station with police personnel, among whom was Lieutenant Jorge Maturana Concha.

Four days before his kidnapping and disappearance, specifically on September 24, Jorge Narváez had been detained for a few hours after being apprehended by Carabineros inside his high school, following a complaint by young people belonging to the far-right paramilitary group Patria y Libertad, some of whom participated in his detention days later.

It should be noted that Lieutenant Jorge Maturana Concha and the young Carlos Campos Pérez are also identified as responsible for the arrest and disappearance of Gabriel Valentín Lara Espinoza, 18 years old, a student at the same Mulchén Lyceum.

The event occurred on September 22, 1973, under circumstances similar to those recounted in the case of Jorge Narváez, with whom he shared political militancy within the FER, the student organization of the MIR.

The case of Jorge Narváez Salamanca is one of the 40 cases of infants and/or adolescents who were forcibly disappeared in Chile; 8 of these cases belong to the Biobío region and are registered in the reports of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig Report).

In addition to these 40 disappeared minors, this same Rettig Report identifies 150 children and adolescents who were victims of political execution during the 17 years the military dictatorship lasted, seven of them in Biobío.

The subsequent report on political imprisonment and torture (Valech Commission) was able to identify at least 102 infants and adolescents who were detained or kidnapped by State security agencies during the dictatorship.

Furthermore, the same document accounts for fifteen pregnant women who were executed or disappeared, whose children's whereabouts remain unknown. For the case of Jorge Narváez Salamanca, there are open proceedings against civilians and former Carabineros officials, with first-instance sentences.

Other detained and disappeared minors from the Biobío region: Segundo Enrique Cabezas Pérez : He was 14 years old when he was detained along with his older brother, José Hugo, a 22-year-old agricultural worker.

They were detained in their home, located in the El Tránsito neighborhood of Los Ángeles, by Investigative Police personnel on October 5, 1973. Aliro Segundo Oporto Duran : He disappeared on November 7, 1973, at 17 years of age, in the Ralco sector, then a commune of Santa Bárbara.

That day, his family had traveled to Los Ángeles to pick up his father, who was being released after having been detained on September 11, 1973. In the mid-afternoon, Carabineros entered the home of Aliro Oporto, where only he, two of his siblings, and a neighbor were present.

Terrified, the young man fled through the back door of the house, being struck by shots fired by one of the uniformed officers. That was the last time he was seen alive. His body was not found. Víctor Adolfo Ulloa Pino : He was 16 years old when he was detained on September 18, 1973, along with his brother, Juan Eladio, at their home located at 521 Valdivia Street in Los Ángeles.

They were taken to the Police Station of the same city, interrogated by Captain Fabres, and sent the same day to the Los Ángeles Regiment. According to testimony provided 17 years later by a witness who in September 1973 was a conscript at the Los Ángeles Regiment, the Ulloa Pino brothers were kept locked up in miserable conditions in a small guardhouse inside the military compound for approximately 15 days, and were subsequently taken from the place to an unknown destination.

On October 15, 2004, after subjecting bone fragments found in 1990 at the La Mona estate, near Los Ángeles, to DNA testing, the justice system determined that two of them contained the DNA of the Ulloa Pino brothers.

Santos David Melgarejo Rojas, 17 years old, street vendor, was detained by Carabineros from the Second Precinct of Concepción on January 14, 1979, in the Agüita de la Perdiz neighborhood. Erika del Carmen Riquelme Briones: She was 17 years old and was detained upon arriving from the city of Talca, along with her brother, by police officers from the Carabineros outpost in the Zañartu neighborhood.

A person who was detained with them and who was released the following day notified their mother of the event, but the detention of her children was denied to her. Juan Antonio Riquelme Briones: He was 14 years old when he was detained.

They were coming from Talca along with his sister Erika; they were detained by police officers from the Carabineros outpost in the Zañartu neighborhood. A person who was detained with them and who was released the following day notified their mother of the event, but the detention of her children was denied to her.

Source: resumen.cl, October 12, 2023

Date: 10-12-2023

Breaking the silence: Children and adolescents executed during the dictatorship

Many, upon reading even just the title, will think and write: "How much longer with the dictatorship!", "Aren't you tired of making money off this little topic?" However, reading the pages of the book “Breaking the silence, of children and adolescents who were political executions during the civil-military dictatorship 1973-1990” allows one to understand why for so many people and families, it is so difficult to overcome these pains, these tragedies, these traumas.

Breaking the silence The book gathers information on 190 children and adolescents between the ages of two and eighteen who were murdered during that period (1973-1990). These are crimes that occurred under very different circumstances and for very diverse motivations.

From brutal, premeditated executions motivated by political hatred or other types of grudges, to shots and bursts fired indiscriminately and criminally. Some are murders committed in broad daylight, in front of many witnesses; others were executed in such a way that they could not be discovered.

All are murders carried out arbitrarily, without accusations, trials, or convictions. They are expressions of the brutal abuse of power that the dictatorship deployed to repress and establish a regime of terror.

The victims, almost always, are the weakest, the most vulnerable. There are even cases where one can only think of the prevailing brutality as a form of domination. Ultimately, these murders are displays of cowardice. “Breaking the silence, of children and adolescents who were political executions during the civil-military dictatorship 1973-1990” Association of Relatives of Political Executed Persons Presentation: AFEP Alicia Lira Matus Presentation: Faride Zerán Chelech Presentation: Culture, Memory and Human Rights Unit, Mincap: Francia Jamett Pizarro Presentation: Human Rights Chair, University of Chile

Source: BIOBIOCHILE.CL 4/23/2023

Date: 04-23-2023