In 1982, the trade union movement was persecuted by a clandestine picket of uniformed personnel who attacked protesters and reporters at rallies. Although the hardest blow that year was the death of Tucapel Jiménez at the hands of the Army.

In December 1981, Army Captain Carlos Herrera Jiménez, attached to the CNI, received orders to transfer to the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), commanded by General Álvarez Scoglia.

Herrera, whom his classmates at the Military School had nicknamed “Boccacio” due to his prominent lips, joined the Army Intelligence Corps (CIE), the executive group of that Directorate, under the command of Major Víctor Pinto Pérez, to carry out a “special operation.”

All the data collected by the CNI on Tucapel Jiménez filled a folder that, at the beginning of 1982, reached the hands of Captain Carlos Herrera, along with the order to kidnap and eliminate the union leader.

“Boccacio” set up in the Counter-Espionage Unit, dependent on the CIE’s Counter-Intelligence section, located at Avenida Echenique 5995, in the commune of La Reina, known by the military as “Cuartel Coihueco,” at that time under the command of Hernán Ramírez Hald. Sporadically, he also occupied offices at the DINE headquarters on Calle García Reyes, very close to the Barrio Brasil.

In mid-February, the final decisions were made. Three men would act directly: “Boccacio” and Army non-commissioned officers Manuel Contreras Donaire (“Felipe”) and Miguel Letelier Verdugo (“Marcos”).

The operation would be carried out in two vehicles painted as standard taxis, and they would also have the support of several agents and collaborators. Another team, known as the Special Support Unit, commanded by officer Juan Carlos Arriagada Echeverría, was in charge of obtaining the weapons, which arrived on February 24, one day before the date chosen to carry out the task.

On the morning of Thursday, February 25, 1982, the CIE’s special task force followed Tucapel Jiménez when he left his house in his taxi heading toward the Panamericana Norte. Surprisingly, at a corner, Luis Rolando Pino, a Carabineros sergeant and nephew of the union leader, signaled for him to stop, a moment that Captain Herrera and one of the non-commissioned officers took advantage of to board the vehicle and force the president of the ANEF to take the road leading from Renca to Lampa, in the northwestern zone of Santiago.

Shortly before reaching the intersection to Noviciado, they ordered him to stop.

Carlos Herrera then fired the .22 caliber Dan Wesson revolver that had been given to him the day before. Five bullets struck the right side of Tucapel Jiménez’s head. Seeing that the victim was still alive, “Bocaccio” held him with one hand and with the other inflicted three stab wounds on his neck.

They immediately proceeded to clean the car and stole various items and documents from the victim, including the taximeter, a flashlight, a wristwatch, a comb, his identity card, and his driver’s license.

The special mission was accomplished.

The two non-commissioned officers were assigned to other military units in remote regions of the national territory, and Captain Carlos Herrera remained at the DINE.

On March 1, 1982, the Santiago Court of Appeals appointed Judge Sergio Valenzuela Patiño as a visiting minister to investigate the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez.

At the end of that year, the Army high command ordered the transfer of Captain Herrera Jiménez to Coihaique, a measure that “Bocaccio” resisted complying with. He went to ask for help from his old friend Álvaro Corbalán and recounted in detail the behind-the-scenes of the ANEF president’s crime.

Corbalán took Herrera before General Humberto Gordon, who already knew the details of the operation and reassured “Bocaccio” by offering him a return to the CNI, but in an operational position in Viña del Mar.

Minutes after Captain Herrera left, Gordon ordered Corbalán to accompany him to La Moneda to meet alone with Pinochet. Upon leaving that meeting, the head of the CNI commented to Corbalán, who was waiting for him in a hallway: “Tell Herrera that the president sends his recognition, that he congratulates him, and that he will keep him in mind for the future.”

In May 1983, while Carlos Herrera Jiménez was already the operational head of the CNI in the Fifth Region, based in Viña del Mar, General Gordon informed his direct superior, Corvette Captain Sergio Echeverría Villarroel, that Herrera would be dedicated for a week to a special operation in Valparaíso, under the command of Álvaro Corbalán.

Two months later, in July 1983, an unemployed and alcoholic carpenter, identified as Juan Alegría Mundaca, was found dead in his humble home located on a hill in Valparaíso.

Alegría Mundaca had deep cuts on his wrists that had caused him to bleed to death. Next to him was found a letter in which he confessed to the homicide of Jiménez, stating that he had only wanted to assault and rob him.

The autopsy, however, revealed that it was impossible for the carpenter to have committed suicide in that manner. The deep incisions made on his forearms had severed the tendons. The forensic doctor was categorical: Alegría Mundaca could have cut one wrist, but never both.

Several years after the homicides of Jiménez and Alegría, Héctor Alarcón Nohra, former head of the CNI’s Regional Division, apparently repentant, gave priest Miguel Ortega an anonymous note with the names of the five men from a security service who had participated in the murder of Alegría Mundaca.

Officers from the Homicide Brigade managed to establish that on the night of July 20, 1983, one of Álvaro Corbalán’s trusted men in the CNI, Captain (ret.) Francisco Zúñiga, toured the police stations of Viña del Mar in search of a suitable victim: a man no one would care about, poor, without personality or character, who was easily influenced and lived alone.

Thus, in the middle of the street, he found Juan Alegría Mundaca, an alcoholic who had just been released from prison. Zúñiga asked for his name and address. He then put him in a car and took him to a remote house in the upper sector of what is now the commune of Concón.

There, Zúñiga and other conspirators held him for two days, trying to convince him first and force him later to confess as the murderer of Tucapel Jiménez. The carpenter repeatedly refused to cooperate, and the CNI men had to resort to Osvaldo Pincetti, nicknamed ‘‘Doctor Storm’’ or simply ‘‘Doc,’’ to obtain a false written confession.

Pincetti, a strange mix of charlatan and hypnotist, tried to make the carpenter fall into a trance, but he continued to resist.

Finally, they opted to give him large quantities of liquor, presumably pisco, until they managed to break him when he was in an advanced state of intoxication.

Alegría Mundaca then wrote in his own hand an undated letter in which he confessed to the crime of Tucapel Jiménez and announced that he was committing suicide motivated by remorse.

On the morning of Saturday, July 21, Álvaro Corbalán, Carlos Herrera, Armando Cabrera Aguilar, and another agent, nicknamed ‘‘Zanahoria’’ (Carrot) because of his red hair, went to check Alegría’s home. They verified that no one was living there and prepared the scene to carry out the final act of the macabre plan.

The confident CNI agents did not realize that in the hills of Valparaíso, many eyes watch strangers, especially if they have an appearance like theirs, which made the neighbors’ skin crawl—the same neighbors who, almost ten years later, would not hesitate to identify them in the presence of Judge Sergio Valenzuela Patiño.

On Sunday, July 22, it was raining torrentially. Completely drunk, the carpenter Alegría Mundaca was left on his bed. Beside him were the five CNI men. Herrera placed the date on the letter: July 22, 1983.

Francisco Zúñiga then approached and, with a sharp pocketknife, cut the two wrists of the unfortunate alcoholic almost to the bone. The deep incisions destroyed the tendons that allow for the movement of the fingers and the ability to grasp objects.

That excess was one of the pieces of evidence that later allowed the detectives of the Homicide Brigade to establish that the carpenter’s death was not a suicide.

At the crime scene, other clues were also found that helped the police become convinced of the homicide. The carpenter’s bed was positioned in a way that the victim, according to his relatives, would never have placed it; and the pencil found next to the letter left by Alegría was of a different ink color than that used to write the note.

Judge Valenzuela Patiño investigated the murders of Tucapel Jiménez and Juan Alegría for 17 years. However, despite the enormous progress made, out of fear or apathy, he never dared to advance resolutely in the case; it seemed more like the only thing he wanted was to close it and relegate it to the judicial archives.

On April 12, 1999, the Supreme Court finally decided to remove him from the case and appointed Judge Sergio Muñoz Gajardo in his place. The new magistrate personally assumed the direction of the investigations and, in a task that will remain in the annals of Chilean justice, just three years later, on August 5, 2002, after accumulating 24 volumes, seven reserved notebooks, and 60 added notebooks, he issued his first sentence for the crime of Tucapel Jiménez:

• Carlos Alberto Fernando Herrera Jiménez, Major (ret.) assigned in 1982 to the CIE Counter-Espionage Unit, as author, to the penalty of life imprisonment.
• Ramsés Arturo Álvarez Sgolia, General (ret.), former director of the DINE, as author, to the penalty of ten years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree.
• Víctor Raúl Pinto Pérez, Colonel (ret.), former commander of the CIE Counter-Espionage Unit, as author, to the penalty of eight years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree.
• Francisco Maximiliano Ferrer Lima, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.), former commander of the CIE Counter-Espionage Unit, as author, to the penalty of eight years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree.
• Miguel Segundo Letelier Verdugo, former CIE non-commissioned officer, as author, to the penalty of six years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree.
• Juan Carlos Arriagada Echeverría, Captain (ret.), former head of the CIE Special Support Unit, as accomplice, to the penalty of three years of minor imprisonment in its medium degree.
• Jorge Luis León Alessandrini, former dentist of the CIE Dental Health Department, as accomplice, to the penalty of three years of minor imprisonment in its medium degree.
• Hernán Ramírez Hald, Brigadier General (ret.), former head of CIE Counter-Intelligence, as accessory after the fact, to the penalty of 800 days of minor imprisonment in its medium degree.
• Hernán Ramírez Rurange, Brigadier General (ret.), former director of the DINE, as accessory after the fact, to the penalty of 800 days of minor imprisonment in its medium degree.
• Juan Fernando Alfredo Torres Silva, General (ret.), former Army Auditor General, as accessory after the fact, to the penalty of 800 days of minor imprisonment in its medium degree.
• Enrique Gabriel Ibarra Chamorro, Colonel (ret.), former head of Department IV of the Army General Audit, as accessory after the fact, to the penalty of 541 days of minor imprisonment in its medium degree.

Almost two years earlier, on July 19, 2002, the Third Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals had annulled a sentence by Judge Valenzuela Patiño and, in the second instance, had sentenced defendants Carlos Herrera Jiménez, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla, and Armando Cabrera Aguilar to life imprisonment for the murder of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca.

It also applied a penalty of ten years of imprisonment to Osvaldo Pincetti Gac.

The “Gurkhas” come out to beat people in the streets

In December 1982, a union rally was called at Plaza Artesanos, next to the Vega Central, at the beginning of the Recoleta neighborhood, immediately north of the Mapocho River. At six in the evening, when several dozen people had already gathered, in the presence of reporters and foreign press correspondents, about 50 men suddenly appeared wearing parkas, sneakers, and jeans, carrying clubs, chains, brass knuckles, sticks, and other blunt objects.

They moved with previously coordinated movements and began to beat anyone in their path, choosing journalists and photographers as their preferred targets. Some photojournalists managed to capture several of them and escaped the scene in a hurry.

The beating was fast and brutal. Reporters from Radio Chilena and Radio Cooperativa, and from the magazines Hoy and Análisis, among others, fell to the ground covered in blood while their colleagues tried to help them leave the area. In a few minutes, the aggressors disappeared into the confusion of those present.

The repressive picket was led by Carabineros Captain Francisco Zúñiga, the same man who would cut the wrists of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mundaca a few months later. Zúñiga had been attached since the beginning of April 1982 to the Carabineros Communications Directorate (Dicomcar), but from there he was sent on a service commission to the CNI, under the direct orders of Álvaro Corbalán, who tasked him with forming and training a street shock group, composed of members of the different branches of the Armed Forces and both police forces.

The group had various roles in the arrest of isolated groups and debuted “officially” in December 1982. Then, on May 1, 1983, it made a new public appearance—even more brutal—at the Labor Day commemorative act organized by the National Trade Union Coordinator, presided over by Manuel Bustos, at Plaza Artesanos.

The so-called “Gurkhas” by the press, in allusion to the fierce Nepalese fighters who fought for Great Britain in the Falklands War, acted with the total permissiveness of the Carabineros stationed at the site, led by two men, one fat and bearded and the other solid, tall, and well-groomed.

The group, commanded by Captain Zúñiga, trained in the vicinity of the Los Cerrillos airport and in the courtyards of various police stations in Santiago. The photographs published by the press allowed for the identification of several of them: two Carabineros corporals, Guido Fernández Taiba and Ricardo Rivas Baeza; Fernando Yau, an international police official; and Manuel Varela Mendoza, a CNI agent.

The vehicles they used had license plates corresponding to various municipalities in Santiago and the provinces.

The assaulted protesters were also able to identify several young, well-dressed women who mingled with the attendees and acted as informants. When asked about this, government authorities denied the existence of any paramilitary organization.

The director of Carabineros, General César Mendoza, declared: “Those are rumors, and how are you going to believe rumors! They are just rumors, gossip! That is in the imagination, nothing more. If we knew they existed, we would pursue them.”

Francisco Daniel Zúñiga Acevedo, the leader of the “Gurkhas,” was born in Valparaíso in 1949. From a young age, he was inclined toward adventure and showed great curiosity about the criminal world. In 1969, he entered as an aspirant to the Carabineros School.

In December 1970, he received his officer rank in a ceremony led by Dr. Salvador Allende, who had just assumed the presidency of the country.

His first assignment was at the Las Condes Police Station, where he became familiar with the incipient terrorist operations of Patria y Libertad. In October 1973, after the military coup, the Supreme Court sent Carabineros a list of drug traffickers who were to be arrested.

The director of the uniformed police, General César Mendoza, chose one of those he considered among his best men—the then-Major Luis Fontaine Manríquez—to command a new special group dedicated to fighting the drug mafia in Chile.

Thus, the OS-7 was born, whose first members traveled to Washington to be trained by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Among its members were Francisco Zúñiga and Luis Correa, both later members of the CNI.

In February 1974, Zúñiga joined the Carabineros Department of Order and Security, where he remained for two years, until in 1976 he was transferred to the staff of the Tarapacá Prefecture, and in October 1977 he was reassigned to drug and narcotics control in Iquique.

That same year, a military prosecutor in Arica charged him for his responsibility in the death of an alleged trafficker who died due to Zúñiga’s torture. He was also involved in another violent episode that had young Víctor Eduardo Monzalve as its protagonist, for which he was accused of homicide and sentenced by the Arica Court of Appeals to a ten-year penalty.

The case reached Santiago, and in a ruling written by Hugo Rosende himself, Pinochet’s former Minister of Justice, the Supreme Court set him free and without any charges. Despite this, the officer was promoted to captain and received a commendation in August 1979 for an investigation that culminated in the arrest of an important cocaine trafficker.

The first “Gurkha” identified by the courts of justice was Manuel Reinaldo Varela Mendoza, an Army captain, 32 years old, married, a member of the CNI, who was recognized by a classmate from a high school in the south.

The second “Gurkha” recognized was Army Captain Norman Jeldes Aguilar, whom Judge Dobra Luksic, head of the Third Criminal Court of Santiago, charged on June 13, 1985, with minor injuries; he was assigned at that time to an armored regiment in Copiapó.

Around those days, Francisco Zúñiga was also identified as the leader of the group. The CNI and the Army, meanwhile, asserted that none of their members were at Plaza Artesanos on the day of the aggression. Colonel Roberto Schmied, for the CNI, stated in an official letter that on that date “all personnel of that organization were confined to barracks.”

At the end of 1990, in a long interview granted to journalist Francisco Poblete in the newspaper La Época, Zúñiga acknowledged his intervention in the beating: “I participated because in the Carabineros one learns techniques and tactics of crowd control, which is part of police activity.”

Source: interferencia.cl, May 7, 2020