Víctor Humberto Vega Riquelme, single, 24 years old, a communist militant, was detained by agents of the so-called Comando Conjunto Antisubversivo (Anti-Subversive Joint Command) on January 3, 1976, on a public street; his fate or whereabouts have remained unknown since then.

Following the Military Coup, the victim left the country under asylum, heading to the German Democratic Republic, where he resided until April 1975, the date on which he returned to the country clandestinely.

Until December 1975, he lived in the home of a relative, to whom he expressed his concern during those days that fellow party members were having security problems. For that reason, he moved to the home of a maternal uncle, who stated in a sworn affidavit provided before a Notary Public: "on January 3, 1976, near 17:30 hours, Víctor received a phone call.

I was present; his responses were limited to saying 'yes,' 'no,' etc. After hanging up, he picked up a book and told me calmly that they had him in their sights and that he had to move. He left with what he was wearing: gray corduroy pants, a green vest tied around his waist, and a light-colored, short-sleeved striped shirt.

He gave me a hug and walked away along Calle Independencia. After that, I never saw him again nor heard from him..."

Through information gathered over time, it has been established that Víctor Vega was detained precisely on that day, January 3, at the intersection of Avenida Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins and General Velásquez, along with two other communist militants, Jaime Estay Reyno and Isabel Stange, who were subsequently released.

For his part, Mr. Héctor Rodrigo Jorquera Chellew, a civil engineer, recounted in a sworn affidavit provided before a Notary Public that he met Víctor Vega at the end of November 1975 and formed a friendship with him.

He states that on approximately January 1 or 2, 1976, Vega called him to arrange a meeting on a public street for that same day around 18:00 hours. During that meeting, Víctor Vega informed him that a Communist Youth militant known as "El Fanta"—whom the declarant did not know, and who later collaborated with the government's security services—had been detained, and that the situation was becoming very dangerous, adding that he feared for his personal safety.

The identity of "El Fanta" was Miguel Estay Reyno, the brother of Jaime Estay, who was detained alongside Vega.

Héctor Jorquera adds in his testimony that in the early hours of January 4, 1976, around 06:00 in the morning, his house was raided by a group of twelve heavily armed men who entered violently from all four sides.

They were holding Víctor Vega as a detainee; he was handcuffed and in poor physical condition. It should be noted that the witness later recognized, from photos that appeared in the press, the head of the kidnapping group—whom the others called "papi"—as security agent Roberto Fuentes Morrison, alias "El Wally." The notarial testimony of Héctor Jorquera continues in the following terms: ..."Once handcuffed, I was put into a beige Citroen AK-6 model van with varnished wooden side panels, in which Víctor Vega was lying face down, handcuffed and blindfolded, a situation in which I also traveled.

After a more or less short trip, we arrived at a central location, but one with very little movement—as if it were a dead-end street—where I was transferred to another vehicle and I did not see Víctor Vega again.

Over the blindfold, I managed to see the upper part of a light gray building stuccoed with marble dust, with balconies featuring balustrades (like those that crown La Moneda, without being that building); from my subsequent travels, I believe I recognized that dead-end street that existed on Vicuña Mackenna called General Bueras, which has been totally transformed in recent years."

The witness continues by relating that from that last location, he was taken to another facility after a journey of more or less 30 minutes, which he locates on the Panamericana Norte, near Lampa. They passed through a gate and, after a dirt road, entered a wooden structure resembling warehouses, where he was taken to an upper room covered in tongue-and-groove wood.

There, he was subjected to severe torture and interrogations, amidst accusations of "treason to the fatherland." The declarant indicates that during the period he remained in that secret place of confinement and torture, he could perceive that it was a one-story building with a C-shaped floor plan formed by three galleries that left an interior courtyard; 25 cells were distributed along those galleries, a detail easy to obtain since they forced the detainees to count off from inside the cells every morning.

He remained alone in the last cell, number 25. The place appeared newly finished, in stuccoed masonry. He adds that from under the blindfold, he was able to see the boots and the green uniform of the personnel who brought them food and accompanied them to the bathrooms.

Finally, in the early hours of January 8, the witness Héctor Jorquera was released, being taken out in an Austin Mini; later, he was transferred to a white Fiat 600, which drove around the city several times before abandoning him in the vicinity of his parents' house.

It should be noted that eyewitnesses to the detention of the young Jorquera indicated some of the license plates of the vehicles that participated in the operation: white Austin Mini, plate JV40; white Citroen van, plate MC 437.

Likewise, in the recurso de amparo (writ of habeas corpus) filed on his behalf at the time of the detention, express mention is made of the fact that the captors were holding the young Vega Riquelme.

For his part, former detainee Luciano Mallea Correa, in a sworn affidavit provided before a Notary Public in the city of Melbourne, Australia, states that he was detained on September 30, 1976, by agents of the so-called Comando Conjunto and taken to a secret detention center, where he was interrogated about his political activities.

Miguel Estay Reyno, alias "El Fanta," a former Communist Youth militant turned collaborator with the Comando Conjunto, participated in said interrogation. He adds in his account that at one point they mentioned a person whom his friends knew as "Vitoco" (named Víctor Vega), whom the interrogators accused of being a KGB agent and claimed had tried to escape when he was detained.

The witness indicates that many days later, when they showed him some files of Communist Youth militants, he saw the file of the victim, with a front and profile photo, which corresponded to the photos of the people who had been detained. The witness states that in the accounts his captors gave of Víctor Vega, they commented that he had died.

The truth is that, to this date, the relatives of Víctor Vega Riquelme remain unaware of the fate he met at the hands of his captors. He was an only child; his mother passed away in 1986 and his father in 1990.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On July 25, 1990, Julia Patricia Soto Riquelme, the victim's first cousin, filed a complaint for "presumed misfortune" (disappearance) before the 25th Criminal Court of Santiago, in which various investigative steps were requested: an official letter to the Ministry of the Interior to request information regarding the detentions of Isabel Stange and Jaime Estay, witnesses to the victim's detention; a request to the Municipality of Santiago for information regarding the license plates noted during the detention of Héctor Jorquera; and a request to review the file held before the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago regarding the kidnapping of Héctor Jorquera. As of December 1992, said case, which was being processed under docket number 25530-1, was in the summary stage with pending proceedings.

Source: Corporation report

Víctor Mattig Guzmán was convicted for the torture and disappearances that occurred at the Air War Academy, while Raúl Rojas Nieto was serving a sentence for his participation in the Comando Conjunto. by Cristián Meza This Friday it was made known that President Sebastián Piñera, through the Ministry of Justice, pardoned two inmates at Punta Peuco who were convicted of human rights violations.

Lawyer Raúl Meza, a defender of crimes against humanity, declared that "it seems to us that it is a very powerful signal that the government of Sebastián Piñera is giving. We believe that the time for justice has arrived, and not for vengeance." "We hope that the President of the Republic, Sebastián Piñera, fulfills his presidential campaign commitments to the military family, and hopefully many more presidential pardons will come," he highlighted to Radio Biobío.

Conversely, the president of the Association of Relatives of Political Executions, Alicia Lira, questioned that "by disregarding international conventions and treaties, Sebastián Piñera pardoned them. That goes against all the principles of the struggle that the relatives of victims have waged so that there is truth and justice, and here, only taking advantage of the health crisis, in a cowardly and hidden way, the President pardons these two criminals," she declared.

But who were the two beneficiaries of the pardon? Víctor Manuel Mattig The retired Air Force squadron commander, Víctor Manuel Mattig Guzmán, 81 years old, was sentenced to 5 years and one day for the aggravated kidnapping of José Luis Baeza Cruces, an event that occurred on July 9, 1974, in addition to torture committed at the Air War Academy.

For his part, in 2019 he received a sentence of 3 years and one day, with the benefit of supervised release, in his capacity as an accomplice to the torture suffered by Patricio Mario Rivera Cornejo and Ramón Daniel Pavez Casanova at the El Bosque Air Base.

According to the ruling of the First Court of Appeals of Santiago, Rivera Cornejo was "subjected to 'interrogations with electricity on the genitals and tongue, and in particular they caused him marks by tracing the sign of the Unidad Popular on his back with a yatagan,' in addition to several mock executions." Along with this, he was prosecuted for genocidal illicit association for the illegal detentions, torture, and disappearances that occurred at the Air War Academy, reported Memoria Viva. "It is justified that in the year 1974, a group of individuals organized to work in a coordinated manner in the persecution of people who might hold Marxist ideology or extra-party leftist activism, with the object of exterminating these social groups, criminally attacking their members or followers," maintains the ruling of the sixth chamber of the capital's appellate court. Mattig, who is hospitalized at the FACh (Air Force) Hospital, only entered Punta Peuco to serve his sentence in 2018. Raúl Rojas Nieto The retired Army colonel, Raúl Rojas Nieto, also known as "El Pichi" and a member of the Comando Conjunto, was sentenced along with Alvaro Corbalán to a 7-year prison term for his participation in the aggravated kidnapping of the communist militant Víctor Vega Riquelme, whose trail was lost at the Remo Cero torture center in Colina. The 84-year-old former officer was also an agent of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), where he was in contact with Lenin Guardia, who provided intelligence services to the government of Patricio Aylwin and was a paid informant for the military institution. Guardia indicated to him that the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front was planning to assassinate Jaime Guzmán, as noted by Juan Cristóbal Peña, author of Jóvenes Pistoleros. Rojas Nieto is hospitalized at the Military Hospital and only set foot in the Punta Peuco prison in 2017.

Source: eldinamo.cl, August 1, 2020

Date: 08-01-2020

Miguel Estay, El Fanta: The reasons of an executioner

His nickname brings to mind death, brutality, and above all, betrayal. Miguel Estay Reyno, alias “El Fanta,” sentenced to life imprisonment for the Degollados Case, is part of the most painful and delicate area of human rights violations: that of left-wing militants who became persecutors; those who were tortured and ended up torturing. Here, he attempts to explain why he did what he did.

How does a man come to betray his friends, to become the executioner of his comrades? The question circles in the mind of Manuel Guerrero Antequera like a great obsession. His father, Manuel Guerrero Cevallos, was slit-throated alongside José Manuel Parada and Santiago Nattino in 1984.

Miguel Estay Reyno, El Fanta—a man who was a friend of the family and a comrade of his father in the Communist Party—participated in the murder. How could he do it?

Estay Reyno is serving a life sentence for that crime and has been imprisoned for 12 years. Gray hairs appear in his closely cropped hair, and the bags under his eyes reveal the passage of time, but he keeps in shape through an intense exercise routine and soccer matches twice a week with what he calls the “Under-60” group of prisoners at Punta Peuco.

He speaks slowly, without grand gestures. And although he addresses ferocious chapters of his life, he appears as rational as he was when he was part of those chosen by the Communist Party for secret intelligence activity.

This man, who seems calm and cerebral, collaborated with the Comando Conjunto and the Dicomcar, witnessed torture, turned in his comrades, and was one of the last faces Manuel Guerrero the elder saw before being murdered.

“I have a desire to see him face to face, to look him in the eyes. I don’t know why I have the idea that in his eyes I can still see some glimmer of what my dad saw at that moment. I believe that if we meet, seeing me as an adult, Manuel Guerrero as well, I will manage to see something in those eyes.

I want him to tell me his extrajudicial truth, his version of the facts. I want to try to understand the ununderstandable,” says Guerrero today. (SEE BOX)

Estay knows that beyond judicial responsibilities, he has a pending moral explanation for his actions. Here, he attempts an answer.

My comrades or me

It is December 1975, and Estay has been captured and tortured by the Comando Conjunto. He was turned in by René Basoa, his superior in the Communist Party’s intelligence apparatus. Shortly after, his brother Jaime, his sister-in-law Isabel Stange, and his friend Víctor Vega Riquelme also fall.

They are detained when they arrive at a meeting with Estay, which turns out to be a trap. Today his relatives are alive, but Víctor Vega remains forcibly disappeared.

For those who stood up to the dictatorship in those years, it is clear that Estay had begun to be part of the chain of denunciations and betrayals; that he had even set a trap for his brother. They put him on a blacklist.

Estay says today that he is not guilty of the detention of his relatives or the death of Vega, and he shows a ruling by Judge Graciela Gómez that exonerates him from those events. On the contrary, he claims to have sent his brother a message not to go to any meeting with him.

-Why did my brother arrive at a meeting he should never have reached…? I have no explanation- he says, recalling the episode. Then he adds: “My brother’s situation is the trigger for everything that happens to me. It forces me to make a decision under immense duress.”

It can be understood that you collaborated to save your brother and sister-in-law. But over time, you began to do it with great conviction.

-No one is touched by a magic wand and transformed overnight. It is a process. But if I had made a different decision, today I would be one more forcibly disappeared person. I would not have had the opportunity to have my family, to have accompanied many of the people I love during all these years, and most likely I would be judged in a completely different way. But I made a choice.

Was the choice “my comrades or me”?

-Yes. And that was the conception with which the security services worked. I chose, and the truth is that I have paid dearly for my decision. I am not saying it was a good choice. It was only the possible choice, which is very different. And I don’t know if anyone can dare to judge a choice for life so harshly…

“If I had made a different decision, today I would be one more forcibly disappeared person. I would not have had the opportunity to have my family, and most likely I would be judged in a completely different way. But I made a choice.”

-Along the way, I began to meet other people, with other ideas, and I began to adopt them. The truth is that, like an important part of Chileans, I believed in the stamp that the military government managed to impose, fundamentally in economic terms.

And since I also had a certain degree of specialization in the area of intelligence, a relatively natural link was formed with people from the services, due to the interest they might have had in that knowledge. I must admit that by 1984 or 1985, when I got into this section (Dicomcar), I had a significant degree of affinity with the vision of the military government.

Those do not seem like sufficient reasons to participate in operations…

-It is much more complex. People were dying… What I mean is that if today it were examined with true justice, in light of international conventions against torture, the elements of pressure that are present in my decision, I could not be judged.

On the other hand, towards the end of 1976, I was already on a PC blacklist. And that established a very different playing field for me. It meant not only the impossibility of returning to the same thing, but also a personal stance that moves further and further away from the previous one.

But how did you go to the opposite extreme?

-I had an ideological formation, a mold with which I moved. That mold, in a way, became a kind of necessity. And in the conditions I was in, it was much easier to change to another model than to reject all models, because that leaves many things in the world without explanation.

Did your brother understand that he and his partner are at the origin of what you did?

-He never wanted to understand. Jaime continues to be a militant in the PC. He is in Mexico; I don’t have much of a relationship with him.

Did you have the opportunity to explain it to him?

-Not personally. But now, through a third party, I sent him the ruling, which is quite substantive.

What do you expect to happen?

I have no intention of him changing his stance, but I do want to establish my truth, and with a judicial ruling.

Martyrology

You were turned in by your friend and PC leader, René Basoa…

-I was sought out, accompanied by my captors, by a person who I very much regret is not alive. But I could not say that he turned me in voluntarily. I would be ignoring the effect of torture… On the other hand, my detention was not the result of one person’s information.

There was a sum of factors. One of the things that is still handled with great caution is how much information was provided by those who disappeared or those who were tortured and later regained their freedom.

I believe many survivors have not been sincere about their own actions. In the Valech Commission, for example, it was evidenced that people who did not provide information are rather scarce. Of course, they cannot be blamed with the same responsibility as someone who does it voluntarily.

But I insist, all the people of my characteristics and my generation who did not establish a form of collaboration are today part of the forcibly disappeared.

How do you live after having turned in many people who disappeared?

Painfully… I have acknowledged my responsibility in the identification of a number of PC militants… One tries to justify oneself. That is always present… And that leads me back to the substantive question: whether all of that justifies the need to be a forcibly disappeared person… Some were able to make the voluntary choice of martyrdom… But endorsing or supporting that seems ethically dubious to me.

You later participated in the Dicomcar and in the throat-slitting of Santiago Nattino, José Manuel Parada, and Manuel Guerrero. You have never asked for forgiveness regarding those murders.

-One must be cautious about that. I have discussed this with Father Fernando Montes, who has had the immense generosity of accompanying me many times. The key is how we establish the way in which we ask for forgiveness.

For some, something between that person and God might be enough. I want you to understand that there is no single way to ask for forgiveness. For example, I availed myself of the Law of Effective Repentance, the way that justice established to be able to collaborate with the cases, something so deeply felt by the victims’ families.

That was highly questioned at the time. Many saw this as a form of opportunism. And I guarantee you that if there is anything I can be repentant for, it is having availed myself of that law, because it meant for me, by popular vote of my fellow defendants, 6 years in Colina II and isolation.

Assuming the truth—as Carlos Herrera and others have assumed it—means a real problem. It is not easy, I guarantee it.

Manuel Guerrero

In recent times, Estay Reyno has cultivated an unusual relationship with Nelson Caucoto and Héctor Salazar, two of the plaintiff lawyers in the Degollados Case. Both host the program “Hablando en voz alta” on radio Tierra, and Estay listens to them and sends them his comments.

“It’s not that everyone at Punta Peuco is a fan of Salazar and Caucoto,” says the former agent. But he acknowledges that the program keeps them up to date on the trials.

It was precisely Caucoto and Salazar who informed him that Manuel Guerrero Antequera wanted to meet him.

What was your relationship with Manuel Guerrero? His son says you were at his house and played with him…

-I met him in 1969, when I joined the Communist Youth. He had a leadership rank and I was just another militant. I began to have some responsibilities and I saw him daily in various activities, but we never had that degree of closeness. I don’t remember ever being at his house. I knew his wife perfectly well, but I insist, I don’t think there was a degree of friendship. Yes, a closeness.

Manuel Guerrero the son wants to talk to you.

-In August 2006, I received through a third party a request from Manuel Guerrero Antequera to visit me here. Understanding that it is a very difficult situation for him and for me, I agreed immediately. But the authorization has not materialized. I have been told that he is still thinking about this alternative. I have the most absolute willingness to receive him.

Surely he is going to ask you why they killed his father. How do you answer that to a son?

-It is immensely difficult to be able to answer something like that… I hope to be able to answer him something that is as close to the truth as possible and that he can, in some way, understand it. But I have to deliver the answer to him.

The family believes that one reason why Guerrero was murdered is an account he wrote in 1976 in which he identifies you as one of the men who tortured him during his first kidnapping.

-I have not read the testimony. I have indeed found a multitude of testimonies with those same characteristics. People who have tried to identify me and that would not correspond with my actions.

How do you justify those murders today in the eyes of society?

It is impossible to be able to justify those kinds of things today… Nothing and no one can justify the deaths that occurred.

Are you referring to all the deaths?

Absolutely all the deaths. It is not about hiding behind the biggest ones while being the smallest in the class, but I have had 15 years in prison, I have lost absolutely everything, and I believe there are many responsibilities that have never been assumed.

Obviously, this did not start on September 11, 1973, nor did it start because of the bad mood of some general who that day had the idea of seizing power. There were many things beforehand, an exacerbation of spirits, an over-ideologization everywhere.

You were in the most extreme position of both sides.

Yes. I am like the character from “La Hora 25”: always choosing poorly. It is part of the ill-advised decisions I have made my whole life. I have been wrong almost always.

What has been the worst?

Undoubtedly, having participated in taking a person’s life. In any condition, it is a very bad thing.

Twelve years with Romo

You say that in these 15 years you have lost everything…

-They have been hard, difficult years. The hardest thing has been the distance from my family.

Was your marital breakup after the conviction?

-Yes, of course. It is quite clear that it is part of all this…

Who are your close associates here in Punta Peuco?

-I have a very great closeness with the Carabineros non-commissioned officer Armando Cabrera. I also had a lot of closeness with Osvaldo Romo. He was my neighbor in the cell block, and I spent a lot of time with him in Colina. In total, we spent 12 years together. On many occasions, it was my turn to report his medical emergencies, to assist him because he was highly dependent.

What was your relationship with Romo like?

-At that time, he was an elderly diabetic, hypertensive, with the seven plagues, incapable of moving or standing on his feet. He did, however, retain a good long-term memory. And he could even be entertaining.

He had many stories, although I cannot verify that all of them were true… On a dozen occasions, I saw him very close to death. On one occasion, they took him away in agony. I have had a reunion with the Catholic faith, which is why I believe there were enough judges who judged him, so I was not among them.

Did he bequeath all his belongings to you?

-No, the truth is that he lived very poorly in his last years. There were entire years in which he had no visitors. He lived very affected by the situation of his family in Brazil, who were undocumented.

He received some things from the charity of religious organizations, especially from someone who was always very close and continues to be: Sister Yolanda. She loved him dearly. Osvaldo’s grandchildren came from Brazil the Saturday after his death.

When I went to greet them, they told me that there were many things they were not going to take and that they wanted to leave them to me. I thanked them. A part was donated to another place; others were kept by me and others who needed them.

What did you feel when you saw his funeral?

-We had discussed it several times… He had a very clear concept that he was approaching his end. A couple of years ago, a cardiologist at the Barros Luco hospital gave him up for dead. From that point on, we discussed the possibility that his remains could be disposed of and that the family could, in turn, cremate him.

He was a pariah of society, and the most physical manifestation is that a funeral had never been seen so…

-So abandoned. I think he expected it. The real funeral was the second one: it was the people who cared about Osvaldo Romo. His grandchildren, this lady who visited him, a couple of religious people, no more. In the 12 years I have been here, I never met other relatives who visited him. Some friends would show up from time to time…

Father Montes said that he came to a university graduation of yours.

-Yes, while in Colina, I took a diploma in Behavioral Management techniques from the Universidad Católica del Norte. It lasted several semesters, and the university had the generosity to hold a ceremony for me here at Punta Peuco.

And Father Fernando, whom I love immensely, had the generosity to accompany me. Before that, I had to take the aptitude test (and he shows the certificate: verbal 745, mathematics 679, history and geography 749).

It would have been enough for almost any degree.

-Yes… I did my thesis work on autism… (he has an autistic son).

The PAA and the diploma speak of an attitude toward confinement; what is your daily life like?

-One of the things one must avoid is asking oneself what I am going to do today. I follow more or less the same routine: I get up very early, I have breakfast at 5:30, I listen to the news; I am quite a fanatic about that.

In the afternoon, I dedicate myself to reading. I have a lot of different interests. We have the intention of organizing a library at Punta Peuco and a literary workshop. The release from confinement is at 8 in the morning.

At that time, I start physical activities. I do a lot of gymnastics, weights, I run. And now they authorized us to play some soccer matches twice a week. It’s the Under-60 group, more or less.

Other people’s guilt

Although he is sentenced to life imprisonment, Estay Reyno is not willing to bear the guilt of others. For this reason, during the last visit to Punta Peuco by the president of the Court of Appeals, Cornelio Villarroel, Estay asked him to study his incrimination in the kidnapping of Reinalda Pereira—who was 3 months pregnant—and Edrás Pinto.

The investigation by Minister Víctor Montiglio in the so-called Conferencia Case brought other responsible parties to light. Estay asks that they de-amnesty him and judge him. “There is a demonstration of my non-participation in those two cases, with there even being people who have confessed,” he argues.

You are sentenced to life imprisonment; why does it matter to you to prove your innocence in those cases?

-Today there is an effort to judicially fix all these situations as close to the truth as possible. Therefore, it is also important to discriminate between the guilty and the not guilty. I do not see why I should bear facts that do not correspond to me.

Do you think that by clarifying those cases they could pardon you?

-To be very honest, I do not think there is political space. I requested it in ’97, asking for the commutation of the sentence for that of expulsion to Paraguay. It took them 7 years to tell me “no.” But I do believe that establishing the truth is important.

Today there is a mass of accumulated information that did not exist when these trials started, and it was easier to stick with those who created fewer problems. But thanks to the judges with exclusive dedication, a series of characters began to appear who were quite protected by the institutions.

It began to seem meaningless to the judges that very minor characters had had the responsibilities, commands, and possibilities for action that were attributed to them.

In the Degollados Case, how high up do you delimit the responsibilities?

-I have the conviction that there was intellectual authorship by the superiors, but I do not have the evidence. Other people would have to speak, those who did have access to those meetings. Today, the truth has already been established: that not a leaf moved without the knowledge of the leadership of the institutions.

But for a long time, there was a clear intentionality to silence it with counterintelligence teams and departments.

BOX 1

Testimony of Manuel Guerrero Antequera: “In a very perverse and painful way, El Fanta is almost a relative”

The father of Manuel Guerrero was one of the three slit-throated victims of 1985, a case for which Miguel Estay Reyno is serving a life sentence. But the Guerrero family has lived with the ghost of El Fanta since 1976, when Manuel Guerrero Cevallos recognized him as his torturer.

El Fanta is a character who causes me many contradictions. On one hand, he is one of my father’s murderers, in a way one of the intellectual and also material authors of his throat-slitting. He was there both at the moment when they had him as a forcibly disappeared person in ’76 and participated in his tortures—recognized by my father—as well as in ’85, when he participated in the moment they slit his throat.

But El Fanta is also for me a former militant of the Communist Youth of Chile, who was a companion and comrade of my father, of José Weibel, of Ricardo Weibel, of a series of young communists of that generation, and therefore this human being awakens a very great anguish in me: what were the conditions and possibilities that made a communist militant, a young Chilean, able to become from one day to the next not only someone who spoke under torture, which would be something absolutely normal or human, but also an informer, one more murderer.

El Fanta for me is a character who strangely causes me rejection and at the same time a perverse fascination. It is like ominous, evil itself, but it is a familiar face, who was once a friend, who once had me very close when I was a child. Under that face of normality appears all the evil that we as human beings are also in a position to carry out.

I am convinced that both the tortured and the torturers are victims who are in differential positions regarding social and political conditions, a certain way of being of Chilean society, savage, which allowed the explosion of fascist practice in Chile, of the annihilation of the other.

They are differential victims because some were turned into torturers and others were turned into the objects to be tortured. However, we are talking about people who played soccer together, ate barbecues together, which is the case of El Fanta.

Therefore, for me, El Fanta is also a victim, but like every human being, he had the opportunity to say no, to at least bite his tongue and die. He always had the option, as so many other people did, not to become not only informers, but torturers themselves. Because of that lack of courage, of decision, and his direct responsibility in the crimes, he has to serve the sentences in full.

For many years I have lived with the ghost of El Fanta, a ghost that has been present since my childhood. After my father survived the tortures of the Comando Conjunto and we went into exile, I accompanied him to recovery sessions following the electric shocks they gave him.

I lived his torture very closely through him, and he is a character who was present in my father’s stories, oral and also written. He left testimony of this familiar voice that also participated in the torture, who had been a former comrade and who was now part of the “fascist hordes,” as he said.

El Fanta spoke to him directly, telling him that he knew my mother, Vero, Manolito; he spoke to him about our entire family structure, about details that only someone very trusted could know. That was one of the moments when my father was completely disarmed, more than by the physical violence.

Therefore, this ghost was always present, and then it reappears in ’84 and ’85 in the stories of El Papudo (Andrés Valenzuela, an agent who deserted), which are published and which my father knew. There it is known again that El Fanta was present in different instances.

He is someone who has crossed my life, and I have a desire to see him face to face, now imprisoned. To look him in the eyes because he was one of the last people who saw my father alive. I don’t know why I have the idea that in El Fanta’s eyes I can still see some glimmer of what my dad looked at at that moment.

I believe that if we meet, seeing me as an adult, Manuel Guerrero as well, I will manage to see something in those eyes. I want him to tell me his extrajudicial truth, his version of the facts. I want to try to understand the ununderstandable.

Perhaps it doesn’t make much sense, but El Fanta in a way also constitutes me. In a very perverse and painful way, he is almost a relative, and it hurts me, El Fanta makes me angry.

At the moment when the lawyers proposed my request to meet with him, he agreed immediately. El Fanta is willing, and I believe he is waiting for me to go see him at Punta Peuco. I believe there are truths that are not in the judicial realm but in human everyday life.

They are very material truths, and I believe something can emerge in that meeting. I don’t know exactly what, but at least to know what happened to him himself, because he had the privilege of being there in the last minutes of my father’s life. Therefore, for me, even being his murderer, he is a close person.

BOX 2

“El Wally” and Basoa: the funerals of “El Fanta”

In 1982, fear paralyzed Miguel Estay after the death of his friend René Basoa, with whom he shared duties in the Comando Conjunto and who was a former comrade of the PC. So much so that he did not dare to go to his funeral.

Years later, he reproached himself for his cowardice and decided it would not happen again. That is why, when in 1989 Roberto Fuentes Morrison, “El Wally,” was riddled with bullets at the door of his house—just like Basoa—he came from Paraguay, where he had taken refuge with a false passport provided precisely by the deceased. He arrived late, but he visited the grave.

Both dead men are key in the life of “El Fanta.” René Basoa was his superior in the PC’s intelligence apparatus; together they went underground, and he was the one who turned him in to the Comando Conjunto in December 1975, after being tortured. Then both headed the blacklist of communists identified as Pinochet’s agents.

In 1982, Basoa was murdered, and although for a long time it was thought to be an execution—which triggered Estay’s terror—the investigation into the murder of Tucapel Jiménez shed other light. At that time, Basoa was working with Estay’s uncle, the importer of the weapon with which the union leader was killed.

The revolver was delivered on consignment to the Armería Italiana, and Basoa played a confusing role with the receipt that proved its origin. “It’s on the DINE account, it’s that simple,” concludes Estay.

His relationship with Fuentes Morrison arose after his captivity in 1975 in the Comando Conjunto. The FACh agent recruited him as a collaborator until in 1984 he joined the ranks of the Dicomcar. Under his wing, he felt protected. “There were elements of his personality that I found attractive. He had a great capacity for making friends and gave me a lot of confidence,” says Estay.

Source: ciper.cl, January 2, 2017

Date: 01-02-2017