After indicting eight former army officers for the qualified homicide of Víctor Jara Martínez, committed on September 16, 1973, at the then-named Estadio Chile, Judge Miguel Vásquez Plaza is focused on discerning whether the military acted on their own initiative or received a superior order to kill the renowned folklorist and theater director.

In this case, the magistrate must identify the person or persons responsible for that order and prosecute them as intellectual authors of the crime.

The magistrate’s suspicions point in two directions. First, toward an intelligence body housed within the Ministry of Defense, whose operational command was under Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo—the same man who, a few weeks later, would assume the role of deputy director of the DINA under the orders of Colonel Manuel Contreras.

Evidence gathered in various judicial proceedings indicates that Espinoza was likely in charge of deciding which individuals were to be executed immediately, without any judicial procedure, at the detention centers in Santiago managed by the Army’s Administrative Support Command.

A second likely scenario is that the officers accused as material authors and accomplices to the murder of Víctor Jara at the Estadio Chile obeyed a direct order issued from the Tejas Verdes School of Engineers, a unit to which several of them belonged and which was directed at that time by Colonel Manuel Contreras.

Judge Vásquez Plaza charged officers Hugo Hernán Sánchez Marmonti and Pedro Pablo Barrientos Núñez as authors. Jorge Eduardo Smith Gumucio, Roberto Federico Souper Onfray, Raúl Aníbal Jofré González, Edwin Armando Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Edgardo Hasse Mazzei, and Ernesto Luis Berth-ke Wulf were prosecuted as accomplices.

In the case of Sánchez Marmonti, the magistrate indicated he was indicted as an author because he was second in the chain of command at the Estadio Chile, given that the chief at the time was Colonel César Manrique, who was prosecuted for the homicide but passed away in 2009.

The minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals has well-founded presumptions that Barrientos Núñez was the material author of the shots that caused Jara’s death. He issued an international arrest warrant against him and initiated the procedures for an extradition request to the United States, the country where he is currently based.

The proceedings still need to precisely determine the role played by each of the accomplices, and the number of material authors could eventually increase. This is the case, for example, with Major (ret.) Jorge Eduardo Smith Gumucio, whom several declarants accuse of having played a leading role in the torture and death of Jara.

One of the witnesses, conscript José Paredes Márquez, a bodyguard for Lieutenant Barrientos, driven by remorse, recounted years later to a former Tejas Verdes officer that Víctor Jara was "almost torn apart by the blows he received.

His ribs were broken. And his fingers were swollen." Paredes recounted that Second Lieutenant Jorge Smith had taken pains to strike the singer's fingers on both hands. "So you learn to play the guitar better, you communist son of a bitch," he would repeat, stuttering, while using the grip of his Llama revolver, held by the barrel, to hammer the folklorist's fingers.

Paredes, who was performing his military service at Tejas Verdes since April 1973, was assigned to the first section of the Second Combat Company and traveled to Santiago along with a considerable contingent from his unit to support the military coup of September 11, 1973.

That day, they initially took positions at the War Arsenals and were later sent to a checkpoint on the road to Melipilla. On Wednesday the 12th, they were assigned to the Universidad Técnica del Estado to support troops from the Arica Regiment of La Serena, who were surrounding the facilities of what is now the Universidad de Santiago.

On September 15, the Tejas Verdes contingent arrived at the Estadio Chile, where there were also soldiers from the Armored Regiment No. 2 of Santiago, the Esmeralda Regiment of Antofagasta, and the Maipo Regiment of Valparaíso.

José Paredes declared that on September 16, Lieutenant Barrientos came looking for him and ordered him to head to the basement area. There, he was posted as a guard in a locker room while five or six officers, in combat gear, wrote down on papers the information they were asking a detainee who was sitting in front of a desk.

Around 7:00 PM—Paredes added—Lieutenants Barrientos and Smith arrived and called him over along with conscript Francisco Quiroz. They were bringing a detainee they identified as Víctor Jara and were insulting him for being a communist. They left him in that locker room, guarded by Quiroz.

After 9:00 PM, Jorge Smith reappeared, this time with Nelson Haase, according to Paredes' testimony. Smith began playing Russian roulette with the detainees. Suddenly, he put Víctor Jara against the wall, spun the cylinder of the revolver, and fired, the victim falling to the floor; then, he ordered Quiroz and him to fire a burst from their SIG rifles into the body.

Minutes later, Barrientos and another officer joined in, continuing to fire, shot by shot, at the singer's corpse with a SIG rifle.

The autopsy report for Víctor Jara revealed two shots to the right temple, 16 entry wounds and 12 exit wounds of different sizes in the thorax; in the abdomen, he had six bullet entry wounds and four exit wounds; the right upper extremity showed two bullet wounds; in the lower extremities, another 18 bullet entry wounds and 14 exit wounds.

In total, the discharges amounted to 44 projectiles of 7.65 caliber, the ammunition of the SIG rifle used.

THE MEN OF TEJAS VERDES

The two companies of the Tejas Verdes School of Engineers sent to the capital traveled under the command of the school's deputy director, Lieutenant Colonel Alejandro Rodríguez Fainé, seconded by Captains Germán Montero Valenzuela and Eugenio Videla Valdebenito.

The lieutenants of that force were Orlando Carter Cuadra, son-in-law of Colonel Manuel Contreras, who reached the rank of general and later directed the Military Museum; Jorge Garcés Von Hohelstein, married to the sister of the now-Major (ret.) Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who is serving a long sentence at the Punta Peuco prison for the murders of union leader Tucapel Jiménez and carpenter Juan Alegría Mondaca; and Nelson Haase Mazzei.

Among the second lieutenants who made up both companies were Pedro Barrientos, a tactical diver married to the daughter of a Marine Corps officer, and Rodrigo Rodríguez Fuchslocher, who died in mid-1974 in a military truck rollover near the Peldehue military base while participating in a counter-guerrilla course.

Colonel Manuel Contreras assumed command of the School of Engineers at the end of 1972, a position he shared with the Intelligence classes he taught at the War Academy in the capital. There, together with other colonels and some captains, they began to design an intelligence apparatus that would allow them to confront, when the time came, the paramilitary structures of the Left that supported the Unidad Popular government.

At the School of Engineers, Contreras had as his deputy director Lieutenant Colonel Rodríguez Fainé (deceased), a great-great-grandson of Manuel Rodríguez Herdoyza; as Secretary of Studies, Major Jorge Núñez Magallanes; and as commander of the Instruction battalion, a major nicknamed "El topo" López.

In March 1974, Colonel Contreras left command of the School of Engineers and moved to Santiago with the secret ambition of directing the War Academy and the nascent DINA. He could not do both and chose to install himself at the DINA central headquarters on Calle Belgrado, a few meters from Plaza Italia, to focus exclusively on repressive tasks.

He was replaced in the direction of the Tejas Verdes school by Colonel Manuel de la Fuente.

THE GENERATION OF '62

Captain Luis Germán Montero belongs to the generation of second lieutenants who graduated from the Military School in 1962, whose first seniority corresponds to Ricardo Izurieta Caffarena, successor to Augusto Pinochet in the Army General Command starting in March 1998.

Also ascribed to that class are some second lieutenants who would later play prominent roles in the repression that followed the 1973 military coup, among them José Zara Holger, Federico Wenderoth Pozo, Gerardo Urrich González, Antonio Palomo Contreras, and Luis Polanco Gallardo.

Others from that same generation reached the high command and became officers very close to General Pinochet, such as Sergio Moreno Saravia and Eugenio Covarrubias Valenzuela. The latter became head of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE). He was prosecuted for the murder in Uruguay of the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos.

Captain Montero, for his part, along with several classmates from his promotion, appears in the trial for the murder of General Carlos Prats, testifying in favor of the accused José Zara Holger, one of those responsible for the homicide of the former commander-in-chief, perpetrated in Buenos Aires in September 1974.

LIEUTENANT HAASE

The now-Colonel (ret.) Nelson Haase is from the first generation of second lieutenants who graduated in 1967 from the Military School, which had two graduating classes. Among his classmates are several notorious human rights violators from the early years of the dictatorship, such as officers Cristoph Willeke and Miguel Krassnoff.

Also belonging to that generation are Colonel (ret.) Carlos Carreño, kidnapped by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front in 1988, and the former mayor of Providencia, Cristián Labbé, in addition to other officers now in retirement.

Belonging to the Engineers branch, Haase was head of one of the DINA units, the Ongolmo Brigade, and later was part of the Sociedad Pedro Diet Lobos, a commercial front for the DINA. In the early 1980s, he was in command of the Military Labor Corps unit in Chaitén, where he was scrupulously concerned that his subordinate officers had capes for ceremonies, which were back in use by Pinochet, but which few bothered to acquire because it was an especially expensive garment.

Some officers also remember him for his pretensions as a seducer of his subordinates' spouses, a characteristic that, apparently, influenced his discharge in the mid-80s.

"QUENO" VIDELA

Captain Eugenio Videla Valdebenito was, from the end of 1972, the aide to Colonel Manuel Contreras at the School of Engineers. A paratrooper, tactical diver, and "black beret," he was also a first cousin of the DINA chief's ex-spouse, María Teresa Valdebenito Stevenson.

In 1994, with the rank of general, he became a military judge in Santiago and commander of the powerful II Army Division, based in the capital. In those functions, he was one of the most ardent defenders of Contreras when the latter was convicted and imprisoned for the crime of Orlando Letelier.

In command of one of the companies of the School of Engineers that were in Santiago in September 1973, Captain Videla was reportedly the direct superior of Lieutenant Nelson Haase.

Pedro Pablo Barrientos, meanwhile—for now one of the two indicated by Judge Vásquez as material authors of Víctor Jara's death—left Tejas Verdes assigned to the engineers' regiment in Chuquicamata. From Chuqui, he was discharged from the army along with the commander of that unit, the now-deceased Colonel Sergio Delfín Gajardo Munizaga.

Both officers were pocketing funds intended to pay the conscript soldiers.

BOX

The wide smile, I was impressed by his smile, which I have not forgotten. I don't know what it meant: defiance or mockery of his jailers? Inner peace? Perhaps. The light of a lamp at the Estadio Chile illuminated his face.

We recognized him perfectly. He seemed to be fine; he looked calm. We were a long Indian file of men walking with our hands on the napes of our necks, pointed at by rifles. We passed by his side on our way to the refrigerated trucks that would transport us—almost suffocating us—to the Estadio Nacional.

Víctor Jara had been separated from the rest of the prisoners and was smiling, hands behind his back, a light on his face. He didn't seem to feel fear. That night we didn't know where they were taking us.

We thought it was to our deaths. We were hundreds of frightened men mentally caressing the silhouettes of our wives and children. Maybe Víctor Jara was smiling for us. A silent song of encouragement, perhaps. We never saw him again.

Source: Punto Final, January 11, 2013

direct orders from the President of the Republic. In the middle of the dialogue, Manríquez said that we were ‘recoverable.’ An officer intervened in the conversation, stating that he had been imprisoned until September 11 due to the events known as the ‘Tanquetazo,’ as was the situation of other officers, he said.

As we expressed to Manríquez our concern regarding the repeated thefts we had been subjected to, he said he would take charge. We handed him our money, and he gave Alfredo Cabrera a card showing his usual workplace: the Army’s Administrative Support Command, located on Alameda near Portugal.

He told us to go there later to retrieve the money and that he would return it to us. And that is indeed what happened when we regained our freedom. Once the conversation ended, Manríquez ordered that they bring us food and give us some mattresses to sleep on, following the officers' complaints.

We fell asleep. After some time, which I cannot specify, I was awakened by Souper, an officer of thin build, short stature, and a very refined face. He said that we had to go up to the bleachers because we were in danger there… We understood immediately: we had already experienced the interrogation.

Once they took us up to the bleachers, we were placed on the north side, where a selected group of prisoners was located. Víctor Jara was also there. He was alone, with no one around him, in the upper part, near a transmission booth.

Hours earlier, when we were still in the basement, I had spotted him in a locker room. His face was very well known. He was in very bad shape, beaten, and with one eye practically closed. My companions and I decided to go see him to find out what he needed.

His face was swollen from the beatings and one eye was closed, it seems the right one. He could not move his hands; they appeared fractured, swollen, and covered in sores. We remained with Víctor for about an hour or two until we were taken down to the court to be transferred to the Estadio Nacional” (40) .

Technical draftsman Guillermo Orrego was a witness to another event that illustrates what Víctor Jara and the more than five thousand prisoners at the Estadio Chile were living through during those hours: “On one occasion, a soldier sent me to the infirmary with another detainee who had a nervous breakdown and who worked at Textil Progreso.

In the infirmary, as well as in the foyer that leads to the stadium entrance, perpendicular to the Alameda, I could see several people lying on the floor who were not moving. There could have been around 20.

Some were covered with white sheets, but all were bloodied. I heard some moans. No one was guarding them. The officers in charge were from the Army; they wore olive-green uniforms with maroon-colored berets.

The soldier in charge of the facility was an officer who must have been between 40 and 50 years old, with a mustache and somewhat corpulent, whom I later recognized in the press as an officer with the surname Manríquez.

There were other officers, more than 20, who stood out because they gave orders and imposed themselves with their commanding voices. Some of them wore black berets and others a type of olive-green peaked cap.

I remember with greater certainty an officer with a black beret, a thick black mustache, and dark complexion, who fired a burst from a submachine gun into the air, and another who called himself ‘The Prince,’ since when he addressed the prisoners he had no need to use microphones: he said he had a ‘prince’s voice.’ He was a tall officer, of medium build, very fair complexion, no mustache, with straight blond hair.

I do not remember him wearing a beret or a peaked cap. He carried a nunchaku with which he hit the detainees, being especially cruel and vulgar in his treatment” (41) . As the judicial investigation progressed and when Commander Mario Manríquez could no longer continue denying the deaths at the Estadio Chile, nor that he was the officer in command, he stated: “At the moment I established myself at the Stadium, I called my hierarchical superior at the CAE, Colonel Martínez, by phone, and informed him that Intelligence personnel were operating in the stadium basement, belonging to the four branches of the Armed Forces. He ordered me to let them function, as they were performing important work considering the state of the country… I have the internal certainty that the Intelligence people in the basement also removed prisoners and took them out of the stadium, since they had their own vehicles and there was no control over them: they obeyed only their institutional commands. I remember that one of the young lieutenants from the Armored Regiment always walked around with a nunchaku. The use of a weapon like a nunchaku is not part of Army training” (42) . “There was a lieutenant with Germanic features, wearing a maroon beret, who was very crazy and beat the detainees a lot. The soldiers and corporals themselves were worried about him, as his reaction was unpredictable. No one approved of his actions, but as he was an officer, no one said anything to him. Even the commander, Colonel Manríquez, did not know what to do with him. The conscripts called him ‘The Prince,’” recounts a soldier in the case file. It took the young student Lelia years to get the voice and hands of “The Prince” off her: “I was at the Estadio Chile until September 18. During those days I suffered multiple humiliations, sexual assaults, and torture during interrogation sessions. The interrogations were held in the stadium’s locker rooms and bathrooms, and the interrogators changed. Among them, I remember one they called ‘The Prince,’ who tortured me on several occasions” (43) . One of the prisoners at the Estadio Chile complements the accounts and describes ‘The Prince’: “Tall and blond, with an orange handkerchief around his neck. He boasted in a powerful voice that now these Marxists would have to pay for having held him prisoner on June 29 [the day of the ‘Tanquetazo’].” And yes, precisely at the Estadio Chile was a group of the officers who led the rebellion of the Armored Regiment No. 2. They had been assigned to the prison camp as soon as they were released on the 11th itself, as they were being prosecuted for the crime of military insurrection. It is interesting to contrast the witnesses' statements regarding the physical description of “The Prince” with the one made by the then-lieutenant and today Brigadier (R) and prosperous businessman Raúl Jofre, of the officers he claimed accompanied him at the Estadio Chile: Edwin Dimter, Rodrigo Fuschloger, and Luis Bethke Wulf (44) . Jofré, also a protagonist of the Armored Regiment No. 2 rebellion, said: “Edwin Dimter was thin, tall, fair-skinned, blond, and with a powerful, strong voice. He must have been one meter eighty-five centimeters tall, and I don’t think he wore a maroon beret; he must have worn a peaked cap. Luis Bethke, of the Infantry branch, was stocky, a little shorter than Dimter, fair-skinned, blond hair, and with a strong tone of voice. Rodrigo Rodríguez Fushlocher was tall, one meter ninety centimeters, had been a national basketball player, had dark brown hair, and was not fair-skinned… I remember these officers because Rodríguez Fuschloger, Bethke, and I slept in the same room at the stadium.” Brigadier (R) Raúl Jofré (45) , who did not recall before the court that there were machine guns positioned in the upper part of the Estadio Chile, did gather his memory and stated: “The officer who may correspond to these traits is Edwin Dimter (46) , with whom I served for a year in the Armored Regiment, but we always had a strictly professional relationship and were not friends. Dimter’s personality was that of a person difficult to deal with, very intelligent, but with poor judgment, and he had a great physical presence. I am not very clear about what activities he carried out at the Estadio Chile” (47) . In the proceedings, Dimter denied any relationship with ‘The Prince.’ He said that while he was at the Estadio Chile he wore “combat gear: regulation blue-gray parka and as headgear the regulation peaked cap. I did not wear a beret.” And he would repeat: “I am not the officer who has been described, nor did I mistreat or cause the death of any prisoner at the Estadio Chile.” And he would then elaborate on other officers who could correspond to those characteristics: “A lieutenant less senior than I, with the surname Rodríguez Fuschlocher, who was from Concepción and a basketball player, taller than I, of athletic build and light brown hair. Likewise, there were two other officers who had German surnames: Lieutenant Bethke, who was about my height, thin, and with light hair. The other officer was a lieutenant more senior than I, with the surname Haase [he refers to Nelson Haase (48) , from Tejas Verdes, who was indeed at the Estadio Chile], of the Engineers branch, who was in Santiago for medical treatment at the Military Hospital for an illness related to mental health, according to what he told me” (49) . But conscript C.A., from the Tejas Verdes contingent, did see Lieutenant Edwin Dimter (50) torture and murder a prisoner: a young man whom he describes as “well-dressed and with the appearance of coming from a family of good economic standing, who claimed to be an Architecture student.” Dimter had arrived with a sketchbook that belonged to the young man and accused him of “making plans of military installations.” The conscript was a witness to how Dimter interrogated him in German, only to then murder him “with a shot to his head with a SIG rifle.” C.A. remembered the scene that followed and which remained etched in his mind: “The young man’s brain matter splattered onto the wall… Then, Lieutenant Dimter took the Seiko brand watch that the young man was wearing on his wrist and handed it to Commander Manríquez, saying: ‘It’s a war trophy!’” An incident that occurred around September 14 shocked the Tejas Verdes conscripts. Almost everyone remembers it: “When I was on duty, I was relieved by another conscript and was heading to the hallway of the galleries when I heard a gunshot and went to where it had occurred, observing that soldier M. had shot a young man who had lunged at him, leaving the soldier in a very bad state of mind,” recalls conscript C.E. The author of the shot also recounted it: “Approximately on September 15, around 20:00, a detainee who had been heavily beaten by other officials tried to take my SIG rifle, struggling with him as he tried to take it from me. Instinctively, a shot went off, hitting him in the chest or stomach. I was taken toward the exit by a group of Army officials of different ranks. The head of the facility, Colonel Manríquez, even arrived and pointed out to me that what I had done was fine, since the detainee could have taken the rifle from me and it would have been a greater evil.” Víctor does not return home Joan Jara anxiously awaited her husband’s return. But Víctor Jara did not return on September 12. Together with her daughters, she tried to follow the course of events from their home. Until in the afternoon, the television gave her the news that the Technical University had been taken by the military and that “a large number of extremists had been detained.” On Thursday the 13th, she learned that professors and students from the UTE had been taken to the Estadio Chile. That same afternoon she received a call: “At 16:30 a young man called on the phone. He told me that he had been at the Estadio Chile, that he had been able to leave, and that he had a message for me from Víctor. The last message Víctor sent me was to have courage, to take care of the girls, that he thought he was not going to be able to leave the stadium, that he was thinking of us… We were locked in the house without knowing what to do, without information.” Joan Jara never lied. Each of her testimonies always adhered to the truth. Years later, that last person who conveyed her husband’s message would appear: Hugo González González “I was detained on September 12 on the public thoroughfare due to the curfew and taken to the Estadio Chile. On September 13, I met Víctor Jara in a kind of hallway, to the side of the court. He was alone and sitting, without military custody, with physical signs of having been beaten severely, those on his face being the most noticeable wounds. I approached to speak with him. He told me that he had been detained at the Technical University and that he had been recognized at the stadium by the commander of the facility: a soldier with a mustache, somewhat stocky, with black hair and middle-aged. That this soldier had separated him from the other detainees, being subsequently subjected to physical duress by the same officer. Víctor Jara indicated to me that he was threatened by the commander of the Estadio Chile, without specifying what type of threat. And he requested that I call his spouse, Joan Turner, in order to communicate to her where her Renault was, which he had left parked in the vicinity of the Technical University. I was released on September 14, 1973. I do not know if Víctor Jara was still in the place where I saw him, since after our first meeting I only spotted him one more time, in the same place, without being able to specify the exact day. After being released, I fulfilled what I had promised Víctor Jara and gave his message to Joan Turner. I called her from a public phone that was on the Alameda to the number Víctor Jara indicated to me. I told Mrs. Turner the location of the Renault and she asked me about Víctor’s state. I replied that he was fine… (51) ”. The threat that Víctor Jara received and that Hugo González kept in his memory had another witness: Wolfgang Tirado, then a prisoner at the Estadio Chile: “On the morning of September 13, I was able to change my location in the Estadio Chile and approach the fences where the release procedures were taking place. There I saw Víctor Jara again. I noticed that he was talking to an Army officer who had recognized him. I saw that they pushed him and kicked him. I remember that the officer made a gesture with his hand across his neck, indicating to Víctor that he would cut his head off. The officer ordered two soldiers to take him aside. It was at that moment that they kicked him and hit him with the butts of their rifles. I did not see Víctor again after that” (52) . Architect Miguel Lawner also saw Víctor Jara on September 13. Lawner, who was the main executive of the Urban Improvement Corporation (CORMU), had been detained in his office, where he remained together with other workers of the same entity until September 12. He was taken to the Estadio Chile and left there thanks to the intervention of General Arturo Viveros, due to the relationship established between both through an agreement signed between the Army and CORMU. Lawner would manage to leave the Estadio Chile alive to be sent, just like the rector of the Technical University, Enrique Kirberg, as a prisoner to Isla Dawson. He never imagined that the episode of his meeting with General Viveros during those days at the Estadio Chile would be important for identifying the commander of the Estadio Chile 30 years later. This is what Miguel Lawner recounted in the proceedings: “Upon returning to the access hall to the stadium, carrying the mattresses, on a staircase with an iron handrail, about 6 or 7 meters away, I could observe Víctor Jara. He was alone. Soldiers were guarding him in the vicinity, so I approached, being able to appreciate that he was very beaten and tortured, despite which he remained standing. What I remember is that it must have been very late. That September 13, 1973, was the last time I was able to see Víctor Jara alive” (53) . Boris Navia: “On Thursday the 13th, in the afternoon, there was a great commotion in the stadium upon the arrival of several buses bringing residents from La Legua. It was said that they had resisted the military forces with weapons. There were dead people, some very badly wounded, and others taken to the basements. There was a temporary forgetting of Víctor Jara’s existence. And then, the professors and officials of the UTE who were closely watching Víctor’s fate took advantage of that moment to drag him to the galleries and try to make him one more of the prisoners. He was looking with only one eye, since the other was totally swollen. We cleaned the blood from his face and a carpenter from the UTE gave him his jacket to keep him warm. In our attempt to disguise his figure, someone provided us with a nail clipper and with great care we began to cut his curly hair, which was so characteristic. A soldier gave him a raw egg. He said he would eat it as the peasants of Lonquén did: he pierced it at the bottom and then sucked it. Víctor was revived. Despite his wounds, he shared his fears regarding his family and his friends.” Carlos Orellana: “On Thursday the 13th, I met Víctor Jara when the military began to organize the prisoners into groups. His face was very mistreated, swollen, and there was blood on his face and clothes. His hands were very swollen and he could only move them with great difficulty. He told us that he had been beaten for a large part of the night by the same officer from the entrance. And he told us that this officer recognized him and was the brother of a man with whom he had had an altercation two or three years earlier at the Saint George’s College in Santiago, where he had sung ‘Preguntas por Puerto Montt,’ leading to an incident with some students, among them the officer’s brother and one of the sons of the minister alluded to in the song [Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, who was Minister of the Interior under President Eduardo Frei Montalva and who was assassinated by an extremist commando on June 8, 1971]. The officer had evoked this event during the course of the night… Víctor remained with us for two or two and a half days.” Orellana’s account is corroborated by another prisoner: “On Thursday the 13th, when Víctor Jara finally went up to the bleachers, together with Carlos Orellana and other detainees, we treated his wounds as best we could. We took turns going to the bathroom and wetting our handkerchiefs with which we made compresses to calm the swelling. On Friday the 14th, around 11:00 in the morning, a relative sent me some cookies and a small jar of jam with a sergeant. The cookies were easy to distribute, but how to distribute the jam? It occurred to us that each one had the right to put their finger in the jar, turn it around, and take it out to suck it… I seem to see Víctor’s finger today dripping with jam… He was much better: his lips and his face had gone down a little in swelling.” It is difficult for any conscript or officer who was at the Estadio Chile during those days in September to speak about Víctor Jara. Everyone knows he was one of the prisoners, but they remain silent. It would seem that, over the years, the secret that has surrounded his death, imposed by the Army, has permeated each of the men. But there is also guilt. Much guilt and memories of all those men and women who died there, whose identity and number are unknown. But in those days of 1973, what prevailed was total impunity. Because the greater power was held by the officers and soldiers who accessed the facility where the detainees were interrogated. There, where a few days later, according to the most reliable judicial testimonies, officers from the Army War Academy arrived. The then-second lieutenant Pedro Rodríguez Bustos, who participated in the assault on the UTE and whose unit was later assigned as reinforcement to the Tacna Regiment, recounts: “I remember that on September 16 or 17, it was my turn to go to the Estadio Chile for the second time, where I was able to verify that the conditions of the prisoners were bad; it was noticeable that they were tired people, although I cannot assure that they had been beaten. On this occasion, I verified that the situation at the stadium had changed. The guard of the same continued to be Army personnel, from the Tacna Regiment, but those in charge of the interrogations inside the stadium and of checking the detainees were personnel from the Intelligence area of the Santiago Army Garrison, with reinforcement from students of the Second and Third Year of the War Academy, with the rank of major and lieutenant colonel, with the mission of directing the interrogations.” Among those officers from the War Academy who arrived at the Estadio Chile to reinforce the interrogation teams, two names are repeated: Major Hernán Chacón Soto, then a first-year student at the academy, and Víctor Echeverría Henríquez, from the second year. The latter, who retired as a colonel, would later be seen at Villa Grimaldi, one of the DINA’s main secret prisons (his daughter would later be Undersecretary of the Navy in the Ministry of Defense of Michelle Bachelet’s government, 2006-2010, but would not be able to assume the position of Undersecretary of the Armed Forces in 2014 after other accusations of torture against her father were made public). Colonel (R) Juan Jara Quintana, who was also stationed at the Estadio Chile during those days, recounted: “There were also at the Estadio Chile about 40 officers from the Army War Academy, from the First and Second year, who worked a four-hour shift and were relieved by their own companions since the academy was very close to them: at García Reyes and Alameda. Among those who worked in the control of the entry of detainees at the Estadio Chile, I remember the officers Rubén Burgos Vargas, Víctor Echeverría Henríquez (who was my second commander in the Rancagua Regiment in Arica at the end of 1980), Sergio Urrutia Francke, Patricio Vásquez Donoso, and Hernán Chacón Soto, among others” (54) . Jara’s testimony was expanded by another of the War Academy officers who would be assigned to the Estadio Chile: officer Alejandro González Samohod, who became an important general of the military regime. González acknowledged having been at the stadium and also stated that he had met his War Academy classmate, Richard Quass, there: “Days before September 11, being a student of Strategic Leadership, Third Year, at the War Academy, I was assigned as a member of the general headquarters of the commander of the Military Forces of the Metropolitan Region, under the command of General Sergio Arellano Stark. During the 10 days that I served there, I had to perform functions at the Estadio Chile for about three, since I was sent to collaborate in the security of the facility, without direct contact with the detainees.” Raúl Jofré would corroborate the role of the War Academy officers in the installation of the prison camps when he declared: “It was at lunchtime on September 12, when my Colonel Oscar Coddou, at that time head of a General Headquarters of the Garrison Command and professor at the War Academy, sent me to reinforce the Estadio Chile, which was being created as a provisional detention center pending the Estadio Nacional.” Jofré would also say that among the interrogators there was “a reserve officer of the Navy, with the surname Prieto [Daniel Prieto Vidal, who currently presents himself as an ‘international affairs consultant,’ declared on October 26, 2007. He has a long history in Navy Intelligence].” “At the access door to the stadium court, precisely on the northeast side, was the access to the basement. At that door, there was an officer in Army dress uniform, who ordered the different prisoners to be brought. In this basement, the detainees were interrogated. It was a closed sector with only one access. On one occasion, out of curiosity, I tried to go down to that sector, but another soldier indicated that he did not recommend it, since they had recently killed someone and it was full of blood. From the outside, the shots could not be heard. In this place, there was personnel very likely from Army Intelligence,” says conscript C.E. Conscript M.C. remembers: “The interrogations were carried out in a basement that was located on the ground floor where the locker rooms were. We did not have access to this place, but the officers did, among them, Rodrigo Rodríguez and Jorge Smith, in addition to civilians and other Army officers. To be taken to this place, the detainees were commonly taken from the galleries by the soldiers who guarded that sector. They returned in very bad condition… On one occasion, at night, I could not specify the date, while on sentry duty in the gallery located in front of the entrance, which had a small view of the door to the interrogation room that led toward the stadium exit, I observed that they were taking out several bodies, almost naked. They were loaded into an ambulance, which left in an unknown direction. It was a common comment that from that place, at night, they took the corpses out of the basement. From comments by the soldiers themselves, it was known that Víctor Jara was being held in the stadium, but I do not know in what place. One day, around 14:00, another conscript indicated to me that Víctor Jara had died… I did not want to ask any more.” Conscript C.E.: “At the stadium, I was in charge of guarding the foreigners, about 60, among them, two Mexicans who were in the hall in poor physical condition. On one occasion, it could be between September 13 or 14, in the afternoon, an officer with a maroon beret of the armored specialty sent me to guard two detainees whom he himself told me were Mexicans. After approximately twenty minutes, he signaled me to accompany him together with the detainees, leading me toward the exterior, precisely to Bascuñan Guerrero street, where a machine gun was stationed. The lieutenant told me to leave the detainees on the way and that he would take them ‘for a walk,’ and he headed toward the machine gun. It was the term used to indicate that they would be executed. A few minutes later I heard the burst, presuming that they were killed. It was common to hear it fire, mainly at night. The dead were thrown into the excavation for the Metro works, which were collected by an ambulance that passed by daily, which I could see from a distance: a white vehicle like a hospital one. It was rumored that the lieutenant who gave me the order to guard those two Mexicans was the same one who had crashed his tank into the doors of the Ministry of Defense for the ‘Tanquetazo.’ He stood out from the rest of the officers because he wore a maroon beret.” “Taking for a walk.” An expression that to this day makes many of the soldiers who passed through the Estadio Chile shudder. For the majority, it means execution. But also, where the execution would proceed. Conscript G.M. says it short and direct: “The phrase meant that the detainees were going to be executed either on the street that led toward the Alameda or in the basement.” “It meant that the detainees were going to be executed on the street toward the Alameda,” says soldier M.T. The bleachers of the Estadio Chile were filling up with prisoners. The bathrooms collapsed; there was no water or food. Many came from the factories of the industrial belts. Manuel Bustos, who in September 1973 was a Christian Democratic union leader and president of the union of the intervened textile industry Sumar, also saw Víctor Jara: “In the morning [of September 11] we held an assembly at Sumar to repudiate the Coup. In my shift, there were about a thousand workers and I maintained that we should leave. But since many did not manage to get very far because there was no public transportation, they returned to the factory seeking refuge. As president of the union, I decided to stay in the factory with about 300 people who did not manage to leave when the curfew was announced. On the 12th, around 6 in the morning, the military arrived in trucks. They threw us all to the ground and began to beat us. I tried to explain to them, but I received more blows. I was detained together with about 150 workers. They took us out with our hands on our necks and at gunpoint took us to the Estadio Chile. I remember that very close to me they killed a worker. I never knew his name, but the image remained etched in my mind. Military personnel passed through the hallways and with a submachine gun one hit him in the face. The man shouted ‘Fascist!’ at him and they shot him. He was right next to me. Two companions from Sumar went crazy because of what they saw. One has already died and the other is wandering around out there… I spotted Víctor Jara from afar.” The arrival of the new prisoners has other witnesses. Like the protagonists of the peculiar shipments that would begin to leave from the Tacna Regiment in the direction of the Estadio Chile. To the Tacna, they had taken the prisoners who survived the attack on La Moneda, to whom very soon would be added, just as the coup-plotting war command—also formed by officers of the Army War Academy—had established, hundreds of other prisoners coming from the industrial belts. The order was that only the La Moneda prisoners should remain at the Tacna. Shortly after, they would be assassinated in Peldehue. Second Lieutenant Iván Herrera López, of the Tacna Regiment, participated in those summary executions. He received the order from the regiment commander, Joaquín Ramírez Pineda, to transfer the La Moneda prisoners to Peldehue, together with reserve Second Lieutenant Castillo. The one who received the prisoners at that military training camp was Lieutenant Julio Vandorsee Cerda, of the Artillery branch (55) . The one who certified the deaths at the site itself, to then inform the heads of the Coup’s General Staff, was Major Pedro Espinoza, of the same General Staff Intelligence group. The now-Brigadier (R) stated: “The only thing I had to perform in an extraordinary manner in September 1973 was that on the 12th I was ordered, by General Nicanor Díaz, to go to the Garrison Command, where I would be given a document to be taken to the commander of the Tacna Regiment. I went to the office of the assistant to General [Herman] Brady, commander of the Garrison, who gave me a sealed envelope that I transported to the Tacna Regiment and delivered to the second commander with the surname Fernández. I told him, also by instructions of General Díaz Estrada, that he had to release all the Investigations personnel. I must add that the following day I received the order from the same general to witness the execution of the La Moneda detainees, with the obligation to report the result upon my return” (56) . It was not, however, the only execution of prisoners to which Pedro Espinoza was linked during those days. According to the author’s investigation, on September 14 he arrived at the sixth precinct, located on San Francisco street, to take away members of the GAP and the son of Mirya Contreras, the secretary and companion of Salvador Allende, who were detained on the morning of the 11th at the doors of La Moneda. All of them were assassinated and later dumped on some street in Santiago. (57) The rest of the detainees at the Tacna were taken to the Estadio Chile, with exceptions that still remain to be clarified. The Army civil servant Eliseo Cornejo, who transported some of those shipments, recounts: “I was a driver of a bus, a truck, and a jeep assigned to the Logistics Battery of the Tacna Regiment. And it was my turn to drive detainees who were in the regiment’s boxes… I think many of them came from the industrial belt, especially I remember Madeco and the textile factories Hirmas and Sumar. There were also other people detained for curfew. On that occasion, I drove the bus with approximately 60 people, being escorted by two jeeps with regiment personnel, an officer, and permanent staff. All the vehicles parked on Unión Latinoamericana street and, escorted by two conscripts, the detainees were made to get off and advance through the passageway through which one enters the stadium, distant about 100 meters. As a driver, it was my turn to make about three trips to the Estadio Chile driving the same bus and transporting detainees” (58) . Soldier C.A. acknowledged having seen Víctor Jara at the Estadio Chile. And he stated that he had crossed paths with him on September 14 between 17:00 and 18:00 “in the hall sector, east hallway, upon returning from patrol, when I was in the company of my section commander, Rodrigo Rodríguez Fuschloger.” And he adds that later he saw a person in civilian clothes call him “for an interrogation.” C.A. also saw Litre Quiroga, who had been the Director of Prisons of the Allende government, at the same stadium. Conscript G.B., of the Tejas Verdes contingent, was a direct witness to how Lieutenant Edwin Dimter interrogated Litre Quiroga: “In wandering through the hallways I saw many people killed… One day, in the morning hours, while on guard in the sector of the east entrance hallway that overlooks the court, I saw Lieutenant Dimter who, together with his group of escorts, mentioned the name of Litre Quiroga. The detainee was together with seven other people lying face down with their hands on their necks. Dimter proceeded to hit them both with his foot and with rifle butts on their bodies… After midnight and while on guard on the roof of the facility, in the northwest corner, I saw when Litre Quiroga and the other seven people were leaving toward the street. They were walking, one after another, along Arturo Godoy street, in a westerly direction, where there were soldiers arranged in two rows, leaving the middle free and a jeep, apparently armored, with a Rheinmetall (59) in its rear part. When the detainees passed, they began to shoot at them, then everyone left, leaving the bodies lying on the ground… I identified Litre Quiroga clearly, since I knew him when they interrogated him at the stadium. And I know there were seven because afterward I counted them and certified that they were dead… After a few minutes, a large, white, thermal truck, freezer type, arrived with military personnel. They loaded the bodies and took them away.” Soldier G.M. of Tejas Verdes: “Two or three days after we arrived, I was ordered to guard a detainee who was later commented to be Litre Quiroga, Director of Prisons, who was in the entrance hall and whom the soldiers who passed by hit. I was in his custody for the entire shift, which was taken over by another soldier whose name I do not remember.” Conscript R.A.: “From comments by the conscripts, I learned that inside the stadium was the Director of Prisons (today Gendarmería), Mr. Litre Quiroga, who had pulled the fingernails off General Roberto Viaux Marambio for the ‘Tacnazo’ [insurrection that Viaux led during the Frei Montalva government]. He was characteristic, because he was big and fat. I do not remember the date, but it must have been between September 14 or 15, at the moment I was changing shifts, I observed Litre Quiroga in the access hall, who was lying on the floor, in poor physical condition, but alive. I am certain of this because he was moaning a lot. I did not observe anyone else around him. As the days went by, I did not see him again nor did I know what happened to him.” Carlos Orellana: “On Saturday the 15th, while in the bleachers, a soldier came to look for Víctor Jara. This distressed us a lot. That same day, in the afternoon, a prisoner came to tell me that Víctor Jara wanted to speak to me. I went to the urinals, managing to pass in front of the office where he was detained. As I passed, I signaled for him to follow me. He met me in the urinals under the guard of a soldier, who stayed at the

at the door. At that moment, Víctor was very weak; he walked with great difficulty. His nose was broken. His face was even more swollen. His shirt was covered in blood. He spoke with difficulty. He told me that he had been beaten again.

What he mainly wanted to tell me was that, in his opinion, a spy had infiltrated our group. Indeed, when he was being interrogated, he warned a university employee who was speaking very freely with the military, and he wanted to warn us of this fact.

The soldier put an end to the conversation. I never saw him again. When we were leaving for the Estadio Nacional, a Brazilian man told us he had seen him the night before, in the basement, lying on the floor. He could no longer speak. He had blood on his stomach.”

César Fernández: “There was another group also separated from the rest of the detainees, in the upper part of the south gallery. Both groups had been separated because they were well-known individuals.

I recognized Osiel Núñez there, president of the UTE Student Federation, and a journalist and professor whose name I do not recall, who hosted a very famous quiz show on radio and television [Mario Céspedes].

Víctor Jara stayed with our group for approximately one full day. A reorganization of the prisoners into groups then took place for the purpose of being transferred to the Estadio Nacional. And under those circumstances, a couple of hours before our group left, three or four soldiers came to look for Víctor Jara, beat him, and took him away to an unknown destination.”

(60)

Another prisoner recounts: “On the afternoon of Friday the 14th, they made us form groups of about 200 to be transferred to the Estadio Nacional. Víctor remained in my group. He wrote a poem on a small piece of paper that he titled Somos cinco mil (We Are Five Thousand).

I later learned that the poem made it to the outside, but with a different title. The original that Víctor wrote was given to a comrade who continues to live in Chile and who hid it in one of his socks, where it was discovered by the military during the interrogation they subjected him to in the infamous velodrome of the Estadio Nacional.

Our group was the third-to-last to leave for the Estadio Nacional on Friday the 14th, around 22:00. About two hours earlier, a patrol came to look for Víctor and, amidst beatings and insults, they pulled him away from us.

When our group left the Estadio Chile, through a side passageway, I spotted Víctor in the entrance hall of the stadium. He was on the floor and bleeding… It was the last time I saw him. Víctor did not arrive at the Estadio Nacional that night. Neither that night nor in the following days…”

Lawyer Hugo Pavez: “On Friday, September 14, we were taken up to the bleachers, and there, a few meters away, I saw Víctor Jara, who had half of his face very bruised and swollen as a result of the beatings he had received.

He was sitting and not speaking. When they placed us in the bleachers, they ordered us to register, and then they were taken out of the stadium in different groups. The group I was in was the last to register.

I saw Víctor again the next day when we were lined up on the field, about to board a bus that took us to the Estadio Nacional. The Estadio Chile was already practically empty. Only a small group remained, among whom were Víctor Jara and Danilo Bartulín, a doctor on Salvador Allende’s staff.”

(61)

Boris Navia Pérez: “On the night of Friday the 14th, we were about to board the buses that were taking people to the Estadio Nacional. Víctor was with my group. However, a final order made us turn back, and we returned to the gallery where we spent the night.

On the morning of Saturday, September 15, some prisoners were released, and we all began to write small notes addressed to our families to inform them that we were alive, hoping that some of the lucky ones could carry our letters.

Víctor asked me for pencil and paper and began to write what we all thought was a note for Joan, his wife. At that moment, he was sitting between Professor Carlos Orellana and me, when suddenly two soldiers approached; one hit him hard in the back with the butt of his rifle, and the other grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him to the upper part of the stadium.

Víctor dropped the pencil and paper, and could barely take a few steps between his captors. That same Saturday, at 14:00, they took us out of the Estadio Chile, and in the foyer, we witnessed a Dantesque spectacle: 40 or 50 corpses laid out at the entrance, almost all stained white by the plaster that was in the basements, which were under repair at that time.

Among those bodies was that of Litre Quiroga, Director of Prisons, and our dear Víctor Jara. His body was lying on its side; we could see his face and his clothes stained with blood… Upon arriving at the Estadio Nacional, beaten, tortured, and saddened by Víctor’s death, we realized that the paper and pencil he asked me for at the Estadio Chile were not intended for writing a letter, but rather gave life to the final expression of his song and poetry, as he wrote his last poem.”

UTE Engineering student Erika Osorio: “I saw Víctor Jara again on Friday, September 15, when I was taken down to the basement for the second time for interrogation. When they took me out, an officer ordered the soldier guarding me to take me to where the UTE group was, which remained in the same basement, since they were going to kill us all.

I was able to see, at the end of a kind of hallway in that sector, several dead people. Their corpses were piled on top of each other. Others were still alive, but all showed signs of physical abuse or wounds.

Among these people was Víctor Jara. He was sitting on the floor, looking toward the ground. His face was very wounded, and especially his hands, which were bloodied. At the insistence of the soldier who was escorting me, I was fortunately able to be returned to the bleachers of the Estadio Chile, being released the next day along with a group of women who came from the Cerrillos Industrial Belt.”

(62)

Forty years after the coup d'état, secret compartments of what happened on that September 11, 1973, are still being opened. Because there were other troops assigned to the Estadio Chile besides those known until now.

This is the precise case of the contingent that arrived from Antofagasta, from the “Esmeralda” Regiment. Colonel (Ret.) Juan Quintana was a lieutenant and second-in-command of the Second Rifle Company of that regiment at that date, a unit in charge of Captain Jorge Ramón Durand González, which also included Second Lieutenants José Luis Contreras Mora, Fernando Daguerrasar Franzani, and Rolando López Álamos.

That group of soldiers who came from Antofagasta would be one of the last to withdraw from the Estadio Chile. A window that opens up new witnesses.

Colonel (Ret.) Quintana recounted

“We left Antofagasta at 00:00 hours, arriving at 4:00 hours at the Cerrillos Group 10, with a total of 160 men. Once in Cerrillos, at about 7:00 hours, we were transported by bus to the Estadio Militar, located on Rondizzoni [today the Army Non-Commissioned Officers’ Country Club], meeting there with a force of 6,500 men from all over Chile.

The First Rifle Company of the ‘Esmeralda’ Regiment was ordered to embark for Santiago 24 hours earlier, coming under the command of Lieutenant Alexander Hananías Barrios… On the 15th, at about 8:00, by order of Captain Durand, the entire company had to head to the Estadio Chile, where we were received by Commander Mario Manríquez Bravo, who pointed out to us, along with Captain Durand, that there were a total of 5,500 detainees in the facility who came mainly from the companies of the Cerrillos Belt and that our mission was the custody of all the detainees distributed solely in the stands and on the field… I have absolute certainty that in addition to the students of the War Academy, there were the 1st and 2nd courses of Adjutant Aspirants from the Telecommunications School at the Estadio Chile. But the First Rifle Company of the ‘Esmeralda,’ in charge of Lieutenant Hananías, did not set foot in the Estadio Chile since they were tasked with establishing themselves at La Moneda after the military uprising. We were at the Estadio Chile as the entire Second Company, from 8:00 on Saturday the 15th until 9:00 on Sunday the 16th, when the total transfer of the 5,500 political prisoners to the Estadio Nacional began. Those who carried out the interrogations in the basement of the facility or the locker rooms were Lieutenants Edwin Dimter and Raúl Jofré, among others… I met Litre Quiroga, Director General of Prisons, inside the stadium, whom I saw next to about 30 extremist detainees in a hall at the entrance of the facility, called Patio Siberia. They were all tied by their hands and feet, face down on the floor. Litre Quiroga was wearing a dark gray suit with white stripes; he was in poor physical condition, and I lost track of him during the transfer to the Estadio Nacional. When our company arrived at the Estadio Chile, the War Academy courses were already there, and we were the last to arrive and the last to leave.”

(63)

Osiel Núñez: “On Saturday the 15th, I was isolated from the rest of the detainees, along with a Uruguayan couple and an Argentine man with a shaved head who was finally executed, according to a soldier’s version.

At approximately 19:00, a line of prisoners was formed in front of a side door on the right. In that line, I distinguished, among 20 or 30 other prisoners, Carlos Naudón, Mario Céspedes, Danilo Bartulín, and Víctor Jara.

Moments before leaving, a young officer, fair-skinned, almost blond, with a commanding voice, passed by and pulled Danilo Bartulín and Víctor Jara out of the line. He placed Víctor in an adjoining room, and we were made to leave.

Víctor smiled at me… We were transferred to the Estadio Nacional, where they set up a locker room for the so-called ‘big fish.’ Bartulín arrived at this locker room, so Víctor must have been left alone.”

That was the last time Víctor Jara was seen alive.

The last link

It was a day in May 2009 when the man who had been a conscript from Tejas Verdes, José Paredes Vásquez, made up his mind. Paredes was assigned to the Estadio Chile and for 36 years kept the secret of what he experienced there, until he went to a judge and revealed what he saw one day in the basements: Víctor Jara and Litre Quiroga were thrown against the wall.

Behind the prisoners, Paredes saw Lieutenant Nelson Haase and the second lieutenant in charge of the conscripts arrive. This was part of his account before the justice system:

“Lieutenant Jorge Smith began to play Russian roulette with a revolver he was carrying. He approached Víctor Jara, who was standing, looking at the wall, with his hands behind his back, so Smith spun the cylinder of the revolver, closed it, aimed at Víctor Jara’s head, in the right parietal region, and fired.

After receiving the shot, Víctor Jara fell to the floor, to the side. He began to convulse on the floor, and Lieutenant Smith ordered me to finish him off on the ground… When this was happening, the other detainees who were in the place, among whom was Litre Quiroga, were cornered, remaining silent.

After the shots, other officers arrived at the locker room to see if we uniformed men were okay. After this, Lieutenant Smith called for an ambulance on the radio, and a stretcher-bearer arrived after a short while, who gave us a brown plastic bag with camouflage, so we proceeded to put Víctor Jara’s corpse in the bag and loaded it onto the stretcher, to then be removed from the place, ignoring what they would do with the corpse…”

Smith and Nelson Haase, along with other officers, allegedly murdered the other prisoners who were inside the locker room, among whom was Litre Quiroga. According to the autopsy protocol, the singer-songwriter’s body had approximately 44 bullet impacts. Quiroga’s indicates 38 projectile impacts.

José Paredes would later say that he invented everything. Because he is fanciful. Other officers would say that he was a thief, which contrasts with the service record of Paredes’s employers, the son of a Carabineros non-commissioned officer.

And many have reiterated that Paredes did not travel to Santiago with the Tejas Verdes contingent and that he was never at the Estadio Chile. Nothing fits. Not only because Paredes’s account is consistent with the more than one hundred accumulated testimonies of how and who interrogated, tortured, and murdered people inside the Estadio Chile.

As fanciful as Paredes might be, it is difficult to believe that his imagination would recreate such a level of detail of what happened there. Because the most important thing is that there are at least three other testimonies that certify that José Paredes did indeed travel to Santiago from Tejas Verdes and was at the Estadio Nacional.

Víctor Jara’s corpse was dumped on a street in Renca on the morning of Sunday, September 16. The autopsy report, signed by Dr. Exequiel Jiménez Ferry, indicates that Víctor Jara was 1.67 meters tall and weighed 66 kilos. “In the right parietal region, there are two bullet entry holes.

In the thoracic region, 16 bullet entry holes and 12 exit holes of different sizes. In the abdomen, there are 6 bullet entry holes and 4 exit holes. In the right upper extremity, there are 2 transfixing bullet wounds. In the lower extremities, there are 18 bullet entry holes and 14 exit holes. Cause of death: multiple bullet wounds.”

To this day, the trial to identify the men who tortured and killed Víctor Jara remains open. One of its covers reads: “It is established that in the last group that remained at the Estadio Chile and in which Víctor Jara was found, there were also Manuel Cabieses, Laureano León (Undersecretary of Social Security), Waldo Suárez, Darío Pérez, Adriana Vásquez, and Danilo Bartulín.”

(64)

The War Academy and the DINA

In September 1973, Manuel Contreras obtained Pinochet’s consent for his great obsession: the organization of a new intelligence structure to begin the anti-subversive struggle. And it would be he who would command it.

The DINA had been born, and its first headquarters would be the War Academy, an institution he would very soon direct. In fact, the first service commissions of the officers chosen by Contreras to integrate the high command of the secret organization bear the label “assigned to the War Academy”: Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, Gustavo Abarzúa (65), and Rolf Wenderoth (66), all of them students of the academy.

Until today, it was not known that high-ranking officers of the War Academy participated in the teams of interrogators and torturers at the Estadio Chile. Perhaps that is a key that explains why the Army refused for more than 35 years to hand over the rosters of those who were assigned to the Estadio Chile and their commanders, which were requested on countless occasions by various judges.

The same happened with the list of students who were at the War Academy in 1973.

That persistent obstruction of justice by the Army, which continues to this day, takes on another meaning when it is revealed that the protected names were part of what was the military elite in 1973. Because from September of that year, they were the ones who would maintain control of the State for the next 17 years.

That generation, strategically located at the War Academy, would have the greatest power ever deployed in the history of the military regime. Of its students, 28 became generals and occupied the highest positions in the State and the institution.

And another 14 officers led the secret services, either in the DINA or in the CNI (see roster). Therein lies, in part, the origin of the secrecy surrounding who murdered Víctor Jara, Litre Quiroga, and all those who died and were brutally tortured at the Estadio Chile.

NOTES

(1) Álvaro Puga was the first Undersecretary General of Government, until June 1976, and was a member of the DINA’s Psychological Operations Department. His actions in those years appear in several of the DINA documents found by the author in the Judicial Archive of Argentina and which belonged to Enrique Arancibia Clavel. Part of his judicial statement of September 21, 2007.

(2) Roberto Guillar was the official announcer of the coup on September 11. He was a member of CONARA and in 1976 was Undersecretary of War. In 1981, he directed the COAP (Presidential Advisory Council), which later became the Presidential General Staff.

In 1980, he was appointed by Pinochet as Minister Secretary General of the Presidency, from where he was involved in serious short circuits with the Catholic Church. From 1979 to 1982, he was director of the Telephone Company.

Minister of Housing in 1982 and 1983. Intendant of Santiago in 1984, and Military Attaché in the United States until 1986. In 1985, he was promoted to major general, and in 1987, he assumed the Logistics Directorate of the Army. In 1988, he retired and was appointed by Pinochet as Consul General in Los Angeles.

(3) Enrique Morel Donoso was promoted to general in 1974 and ceased to be Pinochet’s aide-de-camp. In 1977, he was the military chief of the Santiago State of Emergency Zone. He was president of Soquimich, and in 1979 he left his position to Julio Ponce Lerou, Pinochet’s son-in-law.

In 1981, he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to all of Chile’s diplomatic missions abroad. In 1982, he was president of Codelco and director of the State Bank (1982-1989). He was rector of the University of Chile for a few months. In 1986, he was promoted to major general, and in 1989 he replaced Pedro Ewing in the Dire

Border and Limits Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His brother Alejandro was the Zonal Chief in Angol as of September 11, 1973, and later an operative for the CNI. He was also general manager of Chilectra and the appointed mayor of Ñuñoa, in addition to serving as Chile’s Military Attaché in Honduras and Guatemala. (4) At the time of his departure with the Caravan of Death, as Arellano’s second-in-command, Arredondo had already been informed by Pinochet of his next assignment: director of the Cavalry School, a gift for someone known for his passion for horses.

But he never severed ties with the DINA, carrying out secret functions abroad, mainly in Brazil (where he was a military attaché) and the United States. In 1976, he would make an important trip to Iran with Manuel Contreras, alongside arms dealer Gerhard Mertins and a Brazilian general.

He was prosecuted for the crimes of Arellano’s delegation, being the second-in-command, and for the execution of 9 people in Quillota, whom they made appear as having died in a confrontation. (5) General Arturo Vivero was the first Minister of Housing of the dictatorship. (6) Son-in-law of Manuel Contreras. (7) Statement by conscript R.A., dated January 14, 2009.

He began his military service on April 2, 1973, until April 1975, the date on which he returned to civilian life. (8) C.A.P. testified on January 30, 2009. In his case and others similar to it, the decision was made to use only the initials of the conscripts, as they were in some way forced to carry out specific missions. (9) Statement dated April 20, 2007, by Frigate Captain (Ret.) Guillermo Segundo González Salvo. (10) Marcelo Moren, in 1973, was a major assigned to the Arica Regiment in La Serena and joined the DINA in September, to which he belonged until 1977.

He was the second-in-command of Villa Grimaldi and chief of the DINA’s "Caupolicán" Brigade. In 1976, he carried out a mission in Brazil, where the main training center for DINA personnel was located. From 1977 until 1981, while a colonel, he was assigned to the Army General Command.

From ’81 to ’84, he was in the Arica Garrison, and from ’84 to ’85, he was in the Army General Staff. He retired in 1985. He has been prosecuted and convicted on multiple occasions for his responsibility in the forced disappearance of persons and is serving a sentence in a military prison. (11) Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper Onfray assumed command of Armored Regiment No. 2 on January 14, 1970.

On January 3, 1972, he was appointed on a service commission to travel to Cuba as a guest of that country's government for a total of 17 days to observe military maneuvers. On June 29, 1973, he moved to the General Command of the Santiago Military Garrison.

On October 23, 1973, he moved to the Army Troop Command, and on January 1, 1974, he was promoted to colonel. On December 2, 1974, he was assigned to the General Directorate of Recruitment and Statistics of the Armed Forces.

He retired on May 2, 1978. (12) Major (Ret.) Sergio Rocha Aros was assigned to Armored Regiment No. 1 “Granaderos” in 1974 and did not retire until June 30, 1990. (13) Colonel (Ret.) Mario Garay Martínez has the following service record in the Army: “November 24, 1972, assigned to Armored Regiment No. 2; February 5, 1975, lieutenant, assigned to the Antofagasta Armored School; between March 1 and June 30, 1976, to the Army Intelligence School, until 1978; In 1979, extra-institutional commission to the Army General Command (which means he was sent to the CNI), until 1988; February 16, 1990, to the DINE. He retired on July 31, 1991. (14) Captain (Ret.) René Eduardo López Rivera has the following service record in the Army: “In April 1973, to Armored Regiment No. 2; December 24, 1973, assigned to the U.S. to ‘carry out activities determined by the Army from December 15 to 27, 1973; September 7, 1978, service commission to Seville; May 28, 1991, ceased to belong to the Army as of March 29, 1981, due to death.” (15) On November 8, 2004, Raúl Aníbal Jofré González testified. (16) Colonel (Ret.) Antonio Roberto Bustamante Aguilar has the following service record: “January 1976, Army Intelligence Directorate, until 1979; 1980, service commissions to Panama and London; 1981, to South Africa; in 1982, Army Intelligence Corps; April 1983, service commission to Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Korea, and China. He retired in April 2000. (17) Colonel (Ret.) Antonio Roberto Bustamante Aguilar testified on November 9, 2004 (55 years old) and stated that he had been assigned to the CAJSI in Santiago until January 17, 1974, when he was assigned to the Batuco Ammunition and Explosives Depot.” (18) Lieutenant (Ret.) Edwin Armando Dimter Bianchi testified on November 10, 2004. (19) On November 9, 2004, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Mario José Garay Martínez (57 years old) testified. (20) The same Major Enrique Cruz Laugier would be the one to support the eviction of the Yarur factory on Calle Club Hípico hours later. (21) Iván Herrera was one of the officers who executed the survivors of La Moneda in Peldehue, after they were taken out of the Tacna Regiment. He confessed this to the court 30 years later. (22) Account that appears in his book: Y todavía no olvido (And I Still Haven't Forgotten). (23) On October 9, 2001, Mario Aguirre Sánchez, then a leader of the UTE Student Federation and later a businessman, testified. He remained a prisoner at the Estadio Nacional until November 1973, when it was closed. “I was released along with 12 other companions, saving us from being taken to the Chacabuco Prisoner Camp.” (24) Juan Manuel Ferrari Ramírez testified on August 12, 2008. (25) David Miguel González Toro, Army Major (Ret.) of the Intendance, testified on March 25, 2009, and stated that he had been at the Estadio Chile for “five to six days, until the transfer of detainees to the Estadio Nacional took place.” (26) Manuel Isidoro Chaura Pavez, a conscript from Tejas Verdes, testified on January 28, 2009; he was assigned to the Second Combat Company, in charge of Captain Luis Montero Valenzuela, Third Section, in charge of Lieutenant Rodrigo Rodríguez Fuschloger. He was discharged in mid-1975. (27) Army Second Lieutenant Rodrigo Rodríguez Fuschloger died in Santiago on March 15, 1974, in an accident. (28) Osiel Núñez testified in the trial for the death of Víctor Jara on several occasions. This account is part of his statement before the Rettig Report, on January 18, 1991. (29) Second Lieutenant (Ret.) Pedro Rodríguez Bustos testified on April 4, 2002, and belonged to the Operations group of the “Arica” Regiment of La Serena. (30) Fernando Polanco testified on January 29, 2008, when he was 66 years old. (31) Carlos Orellana, who was an editor in exile for Revista Araucaria and later a renowned editor at Editorial Planeta, testified via rogatory commission from France for the trial in Chile on September 11, 1979. He was detained at the Estadio Chile from September 12 to 17, 1973, and then at the Estadio Nacional until October 25, 1973. (32) Osiel Núñez remained for a month at the Estadio Nacional and from there went to the Public Jail, accused of being the organizer of the armed resistance at the UTE. He was detained there for two years. He was dismissed and transferred to Tres Álamos, where he remained for three months. He was placed under house arrest until he obtained authorization to leave the country. He returned to Chile in 1982. (33) Lawyer Boris Navia Pérez was the head of the Department of Personnel and Appointments of the Universidad Técnica del Estado; in that capacity, he knew Professor Víctor Jara well. He was also detained at the UTE and taken as a prisoner to the Estadio Chile. He testified on October 23, 2001. (34) Commander Mario Manríquez, now deceased, served for 10 years as Security Manager of ENTEL. (35) Also the identities of 31 conscripts, 9 corporals, and 4 sergeants who were with him in those functions at the Estadio Chile. (36) Enrique Kirberg was finally taken to the Isla Dawson Prisoner Camp with the main leaders of the Unidad Popular. He died on April 22, 1992, of hepatic coma. All his testimonies are part of an extensive interview conducted by the author. (37) Ricardo Iturra was a professor and official at the UTE; he met Víctor Jara in 1970 at the UTE while performing his work, when Jara arrived as a theater director and singer and he was the director of the Permanent Education Program. He testified via rogatory commission from Paris on September 3, 1979, for the trial in Chile regarding the death of Víctor Jara. (38) Cesar Fernández Carrasco testified via rogatory commission from Germany; he was a professor at the UTE, where he was on September 11. (39) Julia Fuentes testified on July 19, 2003. In her statement, she also said: “When the Estadio Chile was vacated, they sent me to Tres Álamos (another Prisoner Camp), still as a cook. I remember having worked for Conrado Pacheco Cárdenas and for a major with the surname Salgado.” (40) Julio Guillermo Del Río Navarrete, an engineer, 60 years old, testified on January 11, 2005. He was one of the prisoners who identified Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko as “The Prince.” He was released from the Estadio Nacional on October 2, 1973, along with the rest of his companions, except for six of them who were transferred to the Investigations police. For many of them, life changed forever. His testimony has been corroborated by the author with two other people who were prisoners with him. (41) On April 24, 2008, Guillermo Orrego Valdebenito (59 years old) testified. (42) Statement from March 31, 2006. (43) On December 28, 2007, Lelia testified; she identified the officer Edwin Dimter in photos as “The Prince.” She recounted the event that allowed her to be released: “On one occasion, a group of the same soldiers who had come from La Serena arrived at the stadium—the same ones to whom the carabineros had handed us over at the UTE—at least the sergeant, who told us that when answering the roll call the next morning, we should indicate that we were detained for a curfew violation. Thus, they would set us free. And that is what happened.” (44) Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Luis Bethke Wulf, in September 1973, was an Infantry lieutenant in the No. 2 “Maipo” Regiment of Valparaíso. During the Unidad Popular, his family suffered the expropriation of their lands. He retired in 1985. He testified on February 1, 2005. (45) Brigadier (Ret.) Raúl Aníbal Jofré González has the following service record: “In 1970, paratrooper course at the Paratrooper School, and he was a lieutenant on January 1, 1971. January 1972, to Armored Regiment No. 2. March 1, 1974, correspondence course ‘Basic Application for Subaltern Officers’ until May 31, ’74; September 7, ’74, service commission to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria; October 14, ’74, extraordinary course ‘Advanced Application for Subaltern Armored Officers,’ until October 31, ’74, at the Armored School (Antofagasta); January 1, ’75, captain; March 6, ’75, complements Supreme Decree, assigned to the Armored School (Santiago). He retired on April 30, 1998. (46) The best and most comprehensive profile of the officer Edwin Dimter has been an investigation by journalist Pascale Bonnefoy, published in 2006. (47) On November 8, 2004, Raúl Aníbal Jofré González testified. When the prisoners from the Estadio Chile were transferred to the Estadio Nacional, he would be the assistant to the commander of the new Prisoner Camp, Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa. (48) Colonel (Ret.) Nelson Edgardo Haase Mazzei, in September 1973, held the rank of lieutenant and served as assistant to the deputy director of the Tejas Verdes Engineer School in San Antonio, whose director was Colonel Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda. In 1976, he was promoted to captain and moved to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). In 1990, he retired with the rank of colonel. He testified on January 27, 2005; he was 58 years old. (49) Lieutenant (Ret.) Edwin Armando Dimter Bianchi testified on November 10, 2004. (50) Lieutenant Edwin Dimter Bianchi has the following service record in the Army: “On January 21, 1972, assigned as a second lieutenant to Armored Regiment No. 2 in Santiago; on January 10, 1974, he was named lieutenant and moved to Armored Regiment No. 1 ‘Granadero’ in Iquique; a year later he returned to Santiago, to Armored Regiment No. 2. On December 31, 1976, he was granted absolute retirement. (51) Hugo González González testified on June 17, 2008. (52) Wolfgang Tirado testified via rogatory commission on March 11, 1980. He knew Víctor Jara well because “we worked in the same department at the UTE: he in the Music section and I in the Film section.” (53) Architect Miguel Lawner testified on August 31, 2004. (54) Colonel (Ret.) Juan Jara Quintana, who retired in 1994, testified on August 1, 2013. (55) What Second Lieutenant Herrera saw and did caused him great shock. He retired as a captain in 1983. He testified on May 30, 2002. (56) Statement by Pedro Espinoza on January 10, 2008. (57) A witness to that retirement was the then-major of the Carabineros, Jorge Retamal Berríos. (58) On February 6, 2007, Eliseo Cornejo (64 years old) testified. (59) A powerful floor-mounted machine gun weighing 11 or more kilos, with a range of 1,300 meters, with a belt of 50 rounds as a magazine. (60) On March 2, 2006, César Leonel Fernández Carrasco, who was a professor at the UTE and a member of its Superior Council, testified. (61) Extracted from the judicial statement of Hugo Pavez on October 15, 2002, who was detained at CORFO and taken to the Estadio Chile. (62) On May 14, 2008, Erika Osorio, a UTE engineering student who was detained and taken to the Estadio Chile, testified. (63) Colonel (Ret.) Juan Quintana testified on August 1, 2013. He retired in 1994. (64) Danilo Bartulín, Salvador Allende’s doctor, was released when La Moneda was burning, at 16:00 on September 11, 1973, along with doctors Oscar Soto, Patricio Arroyo, Alejandro Cuevas, Hernán Ruiz, Víctor Oñate, and José Quiroga. Later, he was detained again and taken to the Estadio Chile and then to the Estadio Nacional. (65) Gustavo Abarzúa, an artilleryman, was the study secretary for the DINA and from there moved to the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE); later he was a Military Attaché in Uruguay and returned to the DINE, where he was in 1984, as a colonel. He reached the rank of general in 1987, being named chief of the DINE. From there, in March 1988, he threatened a new September 11. In 1989, he also held the directorship of the CNI. In March ’90, during the restructuring for the transfer of power, he continued as director of the DINE, but in October he retired. He was linked to the La Cutufa scandal, an illegal financial firm that was formed within the Army and which ended in unsolved homicides. He was prosecuted for having given the order to assassinate the leader Jecar Neghme in 1989, according to the confession of one of his perpetrators, but the Supreme Court acquitted him in 2009. (66) Colonel (Ret.) Rolf Wenderoth, an engineer, was part of the DINA high command as deputy director of Internal Intelligence. In 1995, he was chief of Villa Grimaldi. He was later assigned to the CNI. In 1986, he participated in the creation of a special anti-subversive unit. In 1987, he was a Military Attaché in the Federal Republic of Germany, and upon his return in 1989, he retired. He was sentenced to 5 years and 1 day for the death of Manuel Cotez Joo in 1975. He has been prosecuted on several occasions for his participation in the forced disappearance of persons and has invariably requested that the Amnesty Law be applied.

Source: ciper.cl, April 13, 2014

The Justice System identified the alleged murderers of Víctor Jara 39 years after his death

They are Pedro Barrientos Nuñez, known as ‘The Prince,’ and Hugo Sánchez Marmonti. Six other former military officers were prosecuted as accomplices. The Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the international capture of Barrientos—who allegedly shot the singer-songwriter—as he currently lives in the United States.

The Justice system determined that Pedro Barrientos Nuñez, known as ‘The Prince,’ and Hugo Sánchez Marmonti were the material authors of the death of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, who was executed on September 16, 1973, at the then-Estadio Chile.

This was stated by the visiting minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Miguel Vázquez Plaza, who also prosecuted six other former military officers as accomplices to qualified homicide. They are: Roberto Souper Onfray; Raúl Jofré González; Edwin Dimter Bianchi; Nelson Hasse Mazzei; Luis Bethke Wulf; and Jorge Smith Gumucio, who must serve their sentences in the No. 1 Military Police Battalion.

The magistrate ordered the international capture of Barrientos, who lives in the United States. This Army officer is allegedly the one who shot the singer. According to the resolution, "between September 13 and 16, 1973, interrogations took place inside the then-Estadio Chile, without them following prior judicial or administrative procedures, some of which were carried out by personnel from the second military prosecutor's office of the time, during which Víctor Jara was interrogated." Found by the CHV program En la Mira, Barrientos said in the United States that he was never at the Estadio Chile during the coup and that, therefore, he did not kill Víctor Jara. "I was never at the Estadio Chile, I have nothing to hide. I did not kill Víctor Jara, and that can be corroborated by the officers who were there," he stated.

Source: El Mercurio, December 28, 2012