37 years old, married, agricultural worker, forcibly disappeared in September 1973 in Panguipulli. Sergio Gervasio Rodríguez Villanueva, a member of the Christian Democratic Party and president of the Releco Union in the town of Neltume, disappeared in the days immediately following September 11, 1973, in Panguipulli, where he was participating in an expanded assembly of union leaders.

According to his family's account, prior to that date, he had had several conflicts with local estate owners due to his work as a union leader in Releco. After his disappearance, his relatives searched for him in prisons, detention centers, and morgues in the area; however, all efforts made to locate him, both in Panguipulli and in Valdivia, were unsuccessful.

On September 18, 1973, Carabineros officers raided his workplace and detained and interrogated several workers with beatings to force them to provide the whereabouts of the Union President. Considering the evidence gathered and the investigation conducted by this Corporation, the Superior Council reached the conviction that Sergio Gervasio Rodríguez Villanueva was detained by State agents and disappeared while being held in that status.

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

Source: (Corporation Report)

In the spring of 1998, a group of young Christian Democrats, including José Valencia Castañeda, broke the party's lethargy—and even more so, the oblivion and omission—by installing a bronze memorial plaque at their party's headquarters on the Alameda near La Moneda.

The plaque listed the names of Christian Democratic Party (PDC) militants who were victims of the civil-military dictatorship that devastated Chile for seventeen long years. Among them are the most well-known, such as President Eduardo Frei Montalva, murdered by a group of agents from Pinochet's political police through poisons injected into his body following a simple operation he had undergone.

He died in January 1982 in a clinic in Providencia. Also included is the DC youth leader Mario Martínez, who was found drowned with a backpack on his back on a beach in Las Rocas de Santo Domingo in the middle of winter in August 1986.

The leader had reported that he felt pursued and threatened due to his youth political work. The third most well-known is the 49-year-old transport worker Mario Fernández López, who was detained for his party work in Ovalle in October 1984 by agents of the CNI, Pinochet's political police.

He was taken to La Serena, tortured in a facility belonging to this sinister entity, and died at the hospital where he arrived in agony. The confessed murderer of the ANEF president, Tucapel Jiménez, Army Major Carlos Herrera, is detained and prosecuted for this crime.

Why write a book? José Valencia points out that "it was an initiative they had longed to realize for years, and it served to bring justice to Christian Democratic men and women who were victims of political executions or who, to this day, remain in the painful condition of being forcibly disappeared." They were anonymous grassroots militants from the union, student, peasant, and professional worlds, whose names until then remained practically unknown to the bulk of the DC membership and party leadership, forgotten by the fluctuations and demands of short-term politics, constantly pressured by the management of successive elections, the administration of power, and the exercise of governmental responsibility. Valencia asserts that "Their names, however, were carried in the hearts of their families, friends, and fellow travelers, like an undying fire kept alive in the folds of memory, of their memories." Valencia Castañeda is the author of the book “La Placa. Mucho más que un trozo de metal” (The Plaque: Much More Than a Piece of Metal). He is a journalist, designer, and illustrator. He has been a member of the Christian Democratic Party since he was 15; in 1987, he was a victim of political imprisonment, and his case is recorded in the Valech Commission report. In his first work, the author recalls for Cambio21 the history of the plaque that contains the names of 16 people linked to the DC who lost their lives at the hands of State agents during the dark period of the civil-military dictatorship. When did this initiative begin? It was conceived in 1998; I had party responsibilities as a national councilor for the Christian Democratic Youth. It was a year marked by demonstrations, as after handing over command of the Army, Pinochet was sworn in before the National Congress as a senator-for-life, just as the 1980 Constitution established. It was one of the authoritarian enclaves with which the old regime intended to maintain its unacceptable guardianship over the newly recovered Chilean democracy. In that context, we decided to recognize our fallen comrades, of course in the sense of demanding truth and justice for them and their families. That is how we installed a plaque at the party headquarters with the names of the DC victims of the civil-military dictatorship. How many cases are there? Today, we still do not know how many there are. But currently, we have counted 16 victims among the disappeared and/or those subject to political executions who were linked to the DC through membership or proximity, although the plaque originally considered only 14. The official bodies that addressed the matter during democracy could not access precise information due to the perpetrators' pacts of silence and the well-founded fear of the families. We did not have those certainties in 1998 either, which is why I put the phrase on the plaque: “a tribute to the Christian Democrats who gave their lives for justice and freedom, to those mentioned here, to those whose names we never knew, and to those who day by day dedicate their lives to the defense and promotion of human rights.” The plaque also has former President Frei Montalva inscribed... Indeed, his name is incorporated; he was one of the two people added in 2017. When the plaque was originally created, there was no judicial certainty that Mr. Eduardo was also part of this sad list. There was legal and technical-forensic work that made it possible to establish the truth and identify the culprits. In that sense, it is important to recognize the enormous effort made by the family of former President Frei Ruíz Tagle, especially the work of his sister and daughter of Frei Montalva, Carmen, to achieve results in an investigation that, by all appearances and from the beginning, pointed to the participation of third parties in his death and specifically members of the intelligence agencies of Pinochet's dictatorship. How did the idea of writing a book arise and why now? The installation and re-installation of the plaque involved a process of gathering information that provided the basis to begin writing this short history, which also deals with the context and how the JDC of that time decided to create this testimony. I considered it important to do so to rescue the memory of the victims, just now, when there have been serious human rights violations due to police repression, where State terrorism, which today appears by mutilating or blinding protesters and keeping the youth of the social revolt imprisoned, evokes when the dictatorship detained and forcibly disappeared people, or when it carried out political executions in fake confrontations. These are the DC members who were murdered by the Dictatorship 1. Eduardo Frei Montalva, Political Assassination. 2. Guillermo Amador Álvarez Cañas, Political Execution. 3. José Emiliano Balboa Benítez, Forcibly Disappeared. 4. Sonia De Las Mercedes Bustos Reyes, Forcibly Disappeared. 5. Hernán Horacio Castillo Calcagni, Political Execution. 6. Gustavo Efraín Domínguez Jara, Forcibly Disappeared. 7. Tomás Rogelio Domínguez Jara, Forcibly Disappeared. 8. Mario Gilberto Fernández López, Political Assassination. 9. Mario Daniel Martínez Rodríguez, Political Assassination. 10. Juan Guillermo Navarrete Solar, Political Execution. 11. Juan Segundo Palma Arévalo, Political Execution. 12. Roberto Romualdo Romero Reyes, Political Execution. 13. Sergio Orlando Verdugo Herrera, Political Execution. 14. Juan Antonio Villaseñor Jara, Political Execution. 15. Sergio Gervasio Rodríguez Villanueva, Forcibly Disappeared. 16. Fernando David Becerra Julio, Political Execution.

Source: CAMBIO21.CL 17/12/2020

Date: 17-12-2020

Dozens of supporters arrived at the party's national headquarters at Alameda 1460 to participate in the ceremony of replacing the party plaque that pays tribute to 16 Christian Democrats who lost their lives during the struggle against the civil-military dictatorship.

The activity was attended by our presidential candidate, Carolina Goic, and relatives of the victims, among whom comrade Carmen Frei and Lali Rodríguez, mother of Mario Martínez, stood out. The event was led by the PDC National Board. “The symbolism of this activity is that we have incorporated the figure of President Eduardo Frei Montalva as one of the victims of the Christian Democrats who died during the dictatorship, in this case clearly, judging by the accusation of Judge Alejandro Madrid, as part of an assassination by people from the dictatorship's security apparatus,” stated the acting president of the Christian Democratic Party, Matías Walker. In her speech, our presidential candidate took the opportunity to reiterate her call to break the pacts of silence that exist within the Army: “We must reiterate the call, so that there can be an effective reconciliation; so that we can close the wounds of Chile's soul, the existing information must be handed over, so that that truth allows for justice for many families of the forcibly disappeared.” This is an initiative that arose in 1998 when Osvaldo Badenier, the current vice president of the party, was president of the Christian Democratic Youth; he began a project for a memorial plaque for all the Christian Democratic comrades who were victims of the civil-military dictatorship. The plaque was placed in the central hall of the national headquarters on the right side of the entrance to the second floor.

Source: PDC.CL 27/9/2017

Date: 27-09-2017