Common elements in the massacres of Santa Bárbara, Mulchén, Laja-San Rosendo, Lonquén, and Chihuio. Sites of Memory. Common elements in the selective massacres of peasants in various parts of the country during the time of the dictatorship.

A threat, a warning that signaled the paths to be followed by Pinochet, uniformed personnel, representatives of Patria y Libertad, and owners of factories or large estates united to systematically eliminate hundreds of workers and peasants in the first days after the Civic-Military Coup d'État.

Chronology of horror: Executions by firing squad in the first days of the coup, September and October 1973. Laja and San Rosendo . 19 people who presented themselves at the Laja Carabineros Station were taken to the outskirts of the city and executed, buried clandestinely in the middle of a field at the “Fundo San Juan”; it was September of the year 1973.

Workers from the Paper Mill and State Railways, students, and two teachers were riddled with bullets, tied with wire, defenseless and innocent, executed by firing squad and buried after receiving instructions, food, and alcohol provided by executives of the paper company.

The Visiting Minister of the Court of Appeals of Concepción has issued a sentence against 14 retired Carabineros and three former civilian employees of the CMPC. According to the unanimous ruling of March 15, 2018, the Court of Appeals of Concepción prosecuted three bosses and a driver from the paper company belonging to the Matte Group as accomplices to homicide; the company informed on them and provided vehicles and drivers under the charge of a civilian, the farmer Peter Wilkens.

Civilians and Carabineros united in a brutal extermination. The former Carabineros accused as co-perpetrators of aggravated homicide: Alberto Juan Fernández Michell, Lisandro Alberto Martínez García, Luis Antonio León Godoy, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utrera, Gabriel Washington González Salazar, Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Nelson Casanova Salgado, and the officer (R) René Urrutia, identified as the author of the crime of illegal inhumation of the 19 people.

Civilians: Pedro Jarpa, former head of security at CMPC, accomplice to homicide, and Alejandro Aguilera, former executive of the CMPC. Santa Bárbara. The disappearance and subsequent execution of 28 peasants from the localities of Santa Bárbara and Quilaco in the Biobío Region, in the year 1973, follows the same patterns of executions in the area; denunciations by bosses and support from Carabineros ended the lives of locals.

The proceedings carried out by Minister Raquel Lermanda until May 2013 resulted in sentences for 17 former uniformed personnel and 11 civilians who appear as responsible for the detentions and disappearances.

Among the victims are: José Rafael Zúñiga Aceldini, José Secundino Zúñiga Aceldini, José Gilberto Araneda, Juan de Dios Rubio Llancao, Julio Rubio Llancao, José María Tranamil Pereira, José Guillermo Purrán Treca, José Domingo Godoy Acuña, Julio César Godoy Godoy, Desiderio Aguilera Solís, José Nazario Godoy Acuña, Manuel Salamanca Mella, José Mariano Godoy Acuña, Miguel Cuevas Pincheira, Juan de Dios Fuentes Lizama, Juan Francisco Fuentes Lizama, Elba Burgos Sáez, Sebastián Hernaldo Campos Díaz, Aliro Oporto Durán, Sergio D’Apollonio Petermann.

Mulchén Disappearance of 18 peasants from the commune, an event that occurred in the first days of October 1973, during the reprisal and punishment actions carried out by uniformed personnel and civilians in the area.

The murders were committed in operations carried out during that month. The peasants were taken prisoner and executed in three different places in the mountain area of Mulchén. The executions by firing squad were recorded at the El Morro estate, located 50 kilometers inland from Mulchén, at the El Carmen-Maitenes estate, located 80 kilometers away, and at the Pemehue estate, situated in the high mountains, more than 100 kilometers from the city.

The 18 murdered peasants were: the brothers Alejandro Albornoz González (48 years old), Alberto Albornoz González (41), Felidor Exequiel Albornoz González (33), Guillermo José Albornoz González (32), Daniel Alfonso Albornoz González (28), and a son of Alejandro named Miguel del Carmen Albornoz Acuña (20); Luis Alberto Godoy Sandoval (23); José Fernando Gutiérrez Asencio (25); Juan de Dios Laubra Brevis (26); Juan de Dios Roa Riquelme (35); the brothers José Lorenzo Rubilar Gutiérrez (33), José Liborio Rubilar Gutiérrez (28), Florencio Rubilar Gutiérrez (24); Gerónimo Humberto Sandoval Medina (22); Domingo Sepúlveda Castillo (29); Edmundo José Vidal Aedo (20); Celsio Nicasio Vivanco Carrasco (26) and José Florencio Yáñez Durán (34). Minister Carlos Aldana of the Court of Appeals of Concepción has notified nine former military personnel prosecuted for the crimes of homicide and cover-up of 18 peasants executed in 1973. The prosecuted individuals are: Julio Reyes Garrido, José Puga Pascual, José Iturriaga Valenzuela, Jaime Müller Aviles, Julio Fuentes Chavarriga, Luis Palacios Torres, Juan Cares Molina, Juan Carlos Balboa Ortega and Jaime García Zamorano. Chihuio On October 9, 1973, army groups from the Cazadores and Maturana regiments of Valdivia executed 18 peasants in the "Baños de Chihuio" sector, in the southern part of the Panguipulli forestry complex. In the days following the Coup d'État, the administration house of the “Chihuio” Estate (Valdivia), owned by Américo González, became an extermination center. The estate is located in the foothills, almost 300 km from Valdivia. Peasants from Futrono, Llifén, Curriño, Arquilhue, and Chabranco were taken from their homes or workplaces to this location after being detained by soldiers belonging to the Fourth Army Division, under the command of General Héctor Bravo Muñoz, and supported by civilians from the locality. The soldiers had arrived at the different localities with lists in hand. The 18 peasants remained forcibly disappeared for more than 17 years. It is known that their bodies were illegally exhumed in 1979 (probably by members of the army or the CNI). Subsequently, in 1990, and after long work by Human Rights groups, only part of their remains were found.

Victims

Carlos Acuña Inostroza; Orlando Barriga Soto; José Cortez Díaz; Rubén Durán Zúñiga; Luis Ferrada Sandoval; Eliecer Freire Caamaño; Narciso García Cancino; Juan González Delgado; Daniel Méndez Méndez; Fernando Mora Gutiérrez; Sebastián Mora Osses; Segundo Pedreros Ferreira; Rosendo Rebolledo Méndez; Ricardo Ruiz Rodríguez; Carlos Salinas Flores; Manuel Sepúlveda Rebolledo; Rubén Vargas Quezada; Andrés Silva Silva.

Lonquén A shocking discovery was made in 1978 at the Lonquén kilns: the remains of 15 peasants from Isla de Maipo had been found, locals who had disappeared on October 7, 1973. It is the case with the greatest media impact, where the Vicariate of Solidarity played an important role in making the case known, under the direction of Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez.

Proceedings: In 2018, the Supreme Court issued a sentence against 6 Carabineros for aggravated kidnapping and simple kidnapping in the case known as the “Lonquén Kilns.” Tour of the memorials Activity organized by the PRAIS Users Council and the Department of Human Rights, Municipality of Concepción.

The memorials of Mulchén, Santa Bárbara, Laja, and San Rosendo emerge silently in the middle of the cities to remember and commemorate the Forcibly Disappeared during the Dictatorship.

Source: laventanaciudadana.cl, November 26, 2018

Between September 13 and 16, 1973, 19 people were detained in the localities of Laja and San Rosendo. Six years later, their bodies appeared in a clandestine grave in the Yumbel cemetery. It was one of the shocking cases of human rights violations that occurred in the Bío Bío region and which is still remembered. "I want to see my dad, Jack Gutiérrez," demanded Mirta to Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez at the Laja Police Station that September 13, 1973. "There is no Gutiérrez detained here," the official replied. "I know he is here and I want to see him," she insisted. "Yes, he is here," Rodríguez finally admitted, "but he is not leaving here alive." "Why did you detain him? Is he accused of killing someone or something like that?" "That's my business. I know what I have to do with all these people I have here," the sergeant replied arrogantly. "I don't guarantee that this one is going to leave here alive," he emphasized. Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 45 years old, had been detained on September 13, 1973, when he was leaving the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones in Laja after finishing his workday. The event occurred at 4:30 PM. Gutiérrez, along with Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, were walking toward their homes when they were intercepted by a patrol under the command of Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez, who took them in an Army jeep to the local station. A neighbor alerted Rosa Soto, Jack Gutiérrez's spouse, who immediately went to the police unit, where Sergeant Rodríguez himself confirmed the detention. She was able to give him clothes she had brought, and at night she returned with food. She did this every day until the 18th. That day, Mrs. Rosa arrived early to leave breakfast for her husband, but she soon realized that the station's facilities were empty and that an official named Montoya was washing the walls and floors. "It seemed to me that the water coming from inside had blood in it, because it was reddish, like when you wash a brick. A chill went through my whole body." "Where is my husband?" she asked the Carabinero, who would not look her in the face. "They took them to Los Angeles," he replied, still turning his back to her. "And where in Los Angeles are they going to leave them?" "At the Regiment," was all he told her. On the way out, Rosa Soto met another woman who confirmed to her that there was no one inside and that, according to the Carabineros, all the detainees had been taken to Los Angeles. She boarded the 1:00 PM bus, and at the Regiment, she saw the list of people they had received, but none of the detainees from Laja appeared on it. "They must have taken them to the jail," they told her. But they were not there either. "They must be at the stadium, and if they are, you will see them from afar because it is small," they assured her. Before her bus left, Mrs. Rosa went to the stadium. She did not see her husband or any of the acquaintances she had seen at the Laja station. She returned to Los Angeles several times without achieving anything. She even sent clothes for her husband to Isla Quiriquina, but eight days later they sent them back. "We went south, to Chillán, to Santiago, we went to ask in many places, but no, they were not there... In those days, rumors were already spreading here that they had killed them..." In San Rosendo, a neighboring town separated by a railway bridge, something similar was being experienced. Between September 13 and 16, 19 people were detained in San Rosendo and Laja. Six were apprehended in the first locality, but all arrived at the Laja station, where they remained until the 17th. From the 18th on, their trail disappeared. The stories followed one another with chilling similarity: Florinda Riquelme Concha related the case of her brother, Federico Riquelme Concha, 38 years old, married, union leader, worker at the Laja Paper Mill: "On September 13, 1973, the moment my brother was leaving his work at the Laja Paper Mill, he was detained by a Carabinero patrol under the command of Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez. During the afternoon, my sister-in-law Selva Valdebenito went to notify us of my brother's detention and that he was at the Laja station, where she visited him on September 14, 15, and 16. On the 16th, Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez gave her some of my brother's belongings because he was going to be transferred to the Los Angeles Regiment. On the 17th, when she visited him again, she was informed that my brother had been taken to the Los Angeles Regiment that day. From that moment on, I accompanied my sister-in-law to the different places where there were concentration camps for political prisoners, without obtaining any information about his whereabouts." Ruth del Carmen Medina Neira went through something similar with her husband Luis Araneda Reyes, 43 years old, a railway engineer residing in San Rosendo: "On September 15, 1973, at about 3:30 PM, he was detained at the door of our house by Laja Carabinero personnel accompanied by Corporal Castillo, stationed in San Rosendo, and under the command of Lieutenant Fernández Mitchel, from Laja. They took him to the San Rosendo station and then to Laja along with five other detainees, among whom were Juan Acuña and Dagoberto Garfias. On the 17th, I personally went to leave lunch for him in Laja, accompanied by my brother-in-law and my eldest son. We talked with him for quite a while there, and he informed us that in the afternoon they would be taken to Los Angeles. He was very agitated; he had a heart condition, and the night before they had had to take him out to the patio to get air three times. On that occasion, there were about thirty other detainees, mostly people known from Laja. On the 18th, when I went to see him, they informed me that they had taken them to Los Angeles, and since then I have had no news of him." SECRET INVESTIGATION In mid-1977, social worker Nelly Henríquez told lawyer Martita Wörner (both worked in the Social Service department of the Archbishopric of Concepción) that she had sufficient evidence to state that at least twenty people who had been detained in the localities of Laja and San Rosendo in mid-September '73 were untraceable. She told her that there were some testimonies indicating that these people had been executed. That was how both professionals decided to investigate the matter, and for several weeks, on Sundays, they traveled to the area to make contact with the relatives. They did so without telling anyone. The matter was not without risk. Sometimes they traveled with a colleague who took them in his small car. But on other occasions, the most numerous, they did so by train. Then, they would get off in San Rosendo and cross the railway bridge to Laja. Many times they did so during strong storms of wind and rain. It was a task of great secrecy and required much patience. They spoke with the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, and managed to get him to lend them a place in the parish to meet with the relatives, mainly women. They did so under the pretext of talking about some topics, and thus they were able, slowly, to gain the trust they needed to advance the investigation. But since it was a small town, it did not take long for it to be known that these two women arriving from Concepción were up to something. The Carabineros soon realized that something was happening when the relatives of the detainees began to attend the parish regularly, every weekend. The surveillance they were subjected to did not intimidate them. After more than eight months of secret trips and when they had already contacted 19 relatives whose information was in their possession, they decided to speak with Jorge Barudi, then director of the Department of Social Service of the Archbishopric of Concepción. "When we told him," recalled Martita Wörner, "at first he threw a tremendous tantrum because it had been a matter too bold and intrepid. But he was as interested or more than we were in the subject, and quickly the tantrum turned into action, and we prepared for the lawsuit that had to be presented before the courts." Thus, on July 24, 1979, before the Laja Criminal Court, María Inés Herrera Zapata, Ximena Lamana Abarzúa, Ana Luisa Rebolledo Pino, Marta Parada Véjar, Marta Elena Herrera Rojas, Graciela Sandoval Esparza, Berta Elena Contreras Silva, Alma Celeste Garfias Gatica, Ruth Medina Villagra, Rosa Edith Barriga Pérez, Zoila Jara Lizama, Flor María Hernández Villablanca, Rosa Silva Sanhueza, Selva Valdebenito Bris, Laura Zorrilla Rubio, and María Avello Espinoza filed a criminal complaint against Alberto Fernández Mitchel, Laja Carabinero lieutenant at the time of the crime, Evaristo Garcés, Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, Carabinero sergeant, Juan Muñoz, Carabinero corporal, and the officials Carlos Fritz, Leoncio Olivares, Gercio Saavedra, Luis León, Mario Cerda, Juan Oviedo, Pedro Parra Utreras, José San Martín, and others with the surnames Otárola, González, and Montoya, "all with legal domicile at the Laja station at that time, and those others who appear responsible as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups of the crimes of kidnapping and aggravated homicide" of Fernando Grandón Galvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Luis Antonio Acuña Concha, Mario Jara Jara, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, and Manuel Becerra Avello. To them were added Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Alfonso Macaya Barrales, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez. INVESTIGATION BEGINS Filed under roll 2.770 "Kidnapping crime of Fernando Grandón and others," the judge of Laja, Lupercio Fuentes, issued orders to various civil and armed institutions to clarify the facts. On August 8, 1979, he sent an order to the Los Angeles Investigation Prefecture to investigate what had happened. The first inquiries were not easy. No one seemed to know the victims, and the consulted agencies—Carabineros, Army—denied having issued detention orders against them. Even the Minister of the Interior at the time, Sergio Fernández, was consulted: "The inquiry of that court would concern the alleged detention of the named individuals by Laja Carabinero personnel between September 11 and 17, 1973... Regarding this matter, it is my duty to express to Your Honor that, having reviewed the lists of persons detained in accordance with the power of the State of Siege in force at that time, the indicated citizens do not appear, nor is there any record of any order or resolution having been issued against them." VISITING MINISTER In view of the fact that the investigation was progressing slowly and that there was evidence that would clearly reveal where the remains of the 19 people who until then appeared as disappeared had been buried, the Department of Social Service of the Archbishopric of Concepción decided on a new action. Relying on an agreement of the Plenary of the Supreme Court of March 21, 1979, which ordered the appointment of Extraordinary Visiting Ministers in five departments of the country, specifically mentioning the Court of Appeals of Concepción, on August 7 of that year, it was requested that a minister of special rank investigate the situation of the detained and disappeared from Laja and San Rosendo. Fifteen days later, the Penquista appellate court, meeting extraordinarily, presided over by Minister Víctor Hernández Rioseco and with the attendance of Carlos Cerda Medina, Enrique Tapia Witing, Eleodoro Ortiz Sepúlveda, Luis Rodríguez Salvo, and Ana Espinosa Daroch, "took note of the request for the appointment of a Visiting Minister made by Mr. Jorge Barudi Videla, executive secretary of the Department of Social Service of the Archbishopric of Concepción, and agreed to appoint Minister José Martínez Gaensly to take cognizance of and rule on the process roll No. 2.770 of the Laja Court of Letters for the kidnapping and homicide of Fernando Grandón Galvez and others." With the evidence that had already been accumulated in the process, Minister Martínez Gaensly appeared at the Laja Court of Letters to fulfill his duty. It was necessary to ratify the sworn statements and summon many people to testify, including relatives, witnesses, and Carabinero officials mentioned in the complaints. One of the aspects the minister wanted to clarify was where the Carabineros alluded to in the complaint were. For this, he requested the information that was provided to him by the Prefect of Bío Bío, Lieutenant Colonel Osvaldo Leyton Grob. THE CLANDESTINE GRAVE By then, it was beginning to become more evident that the detainees had been executed and that their bodies had been buried clandestinely somewhere near Laja, from where they were exhumed to then be transferred, also illegally, to the Yumbel Cemetery. Anonymous voices began to provide data that were added to the process: it was said that in the area near the El Dorado estate, one night the sound of bullets was heard. That in that same place, remains of clothing and industrial footwear were found. Of many people, it had been heard...

...discussing the clandestine burial in the Yumbel cemetery. More precisely, a neighbor reported that he was able to verify, at the gate of the Yumbel graveyard, truck tracks that had skirted its walls on the south side, where there was no fence, to position itself against the east wall.

In that place, the traces became more noticeable; there were even pieces of towing cables and an industrial shoe. Toward the end of September, the Visiting Judge heard the statements of some of the carabineros who appeared as the perpetrators of the arrests in Laja and San Rosendo.

Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade, a second corporal, 31 years old, who had been serving at the Laja Precinct since 1971, declared on September 26, 1979: “On most occasions, it was my duty to intervene in the patrols for the arrest of political activists on the occasion of the military pronouncement, in such a way that I do not remember the names of those people who were arrested; I only knew the mayor, José Arcadio Fica, the teacher Rubén Campos, and Oscar Sanhueza Contreras, with whom I was a classmate, and even his mother asked me about him, and I could not give her an answer because I did not see him at the barracks. Regarding the arrests that were made, the intention was to keep them for the minimum time in the unit given the little space we had, and for that reason, they were quickly sent to Los Angeles, either through the mobile patrols that came from there, from the Army, or through the minibus that the Paper Mill [Papelera] had placed at our disposal... Regarding the detainees who are said to have been executed on the way to Los Angeles, I have only learned of it through comments in newspapers and from people, but I also do not know if they were transported by military personnel or carabineros.”

THE EXHUMATION

It was not necessary to dig much. At a little over a meter deep, the remains began to appear: bones and skulls, as well as remains of clothing, shoes, belts, and even an identity card. It was the morning of Tuesday, October 2, 1979.

At 11:00 a.m., the Visiting Judge, José Martínez Gaensly, had arrived at the Old Cemetery of Yumbel. Few people accompanied him. The proceeding he was going to carry out was of such importance that the less it was publicized, the greater the guarantee could be of achieving a good result.

For this reason, only the forensic doctor, César Reyes, the priest Pedro Campos, the Investigations commissioner of Los Angeles, Homero Urzúa, and the titular secretary of the Yumbel Court of Letters, Jorge Urrutia, were notified.

Advisory personnel and cemetery staff also attended. Through the central aisle of the cemetery, the group reached the back of it, to the wall that separates it from the outside. Attached to that wall, on the right side and five meters from the end of the path, is the tomb of the Patrito-Ghiotti family.

Between this and the path, the excavation of a pit two meters wide by three long and one meter deep was begun. – “We really sweated a lot. We were digging the pit for almost three hours,” recounted José Ricardo Morales, 52, a gravedigger at the cemetery who, along with two other workers provided by the Parish, participated in that task.

As the excavation progressed, human remains corresponding to 18 people appeared. 17 complete skulls were also found, some even with hair on their heads, according to the record drawn up on the occasion. “Subsequently, Dr.

Reyes proceeded to classify the long bones of the human body, especially the femurs, managing to find the pairs belonging to 18 people. After the previous classification, all the remains found there were gathered, packing them in plastic and cardboard bags, being sent to the Legal Medical Institute of Concepción for their rigorous examination.” At 1:15 p.m., the proceeding had ended.

“THANK YOU MY GOD!”

Berta Elena Contreras, 54, waited with relative calm in a small office of the Laja Court for the arrival of the Visiting Judge. There were other women in the place. It was 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, October 3.

Some journalists were already hovering around the premises. With a voice broken by emotion, Mrs. Berta spoke: “When I found out that the bodies had been found, I felt I don’t know what. Perhaps because of the fact that I am very linked to the church and I always go, I could only say with emotion: Thank you my God!

Glory to God for having allowed my son to appear!...” The memory of what happened in Lonquén loomed heavily among the relatives from Laja and San Rosendo. In November 1978, an anonymous informant had denounced to the Catholic Church the existence of a clandestine burial in some ovens in the town of Lonquén, about 14 kilometers from Talagante, in the province of Santiago.

Once the report was verified, on December 1, the presentation was made to the Supreme Court, which instructed the Court of Appeals to appoint a Visiting Judge. The designation fell to magistrate Adolfo Bañados.

The remains were exhumed, and in February 1979, relatives of the forcibly disappeared from Isla de Maipo began the identification. It was determined that the bodies belonged to 15 people who had been arrested by carabineros from Isla de Maipo on October 7, 1973.

However, the tragedy continued until the end. While the relatives were waiting for the coffins for a mass at the Recoleta Franciscana Church in Santiago, the military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar had given the order for the remains to be buried in a mass grave in the Isla de Maipo Cemetery.

In Laja and San Rosendo, no one wanted the same thing to happen. For this reason, as soon as they learned of the exhumation of 18 bodies in the Yumbel Cemetery, the relatives began to arrive at the Laja Court so that the Visiting Judge would give them the official version.

“I RECOGNIZED HIM!”

At 11:15 a.m. on Friday, October 5, numerous relatives were waiting at the Legal Medical Institute of Concepción for the moment they would enter to identify the remains exhumed from Yumbel. There was pain, weeping, hysteria, emotion... – “I recognized him!

There is my Choti! I touched his little head. He had all his gold teeth. For God’s sake, sir, why is this injustice so great!? I want them to give him to me... they have to give him to me,” cried Rosa Barriga, inconsolable, the wife of Juan Acuña Concha, a railroad engineer in San Rosendo. – “I immediately found his striped green pants and a piece of his wool coat.

They have to give me his bones, they cannot keep them. Let them punish the guilty,” said Graciela Sandoval between sobs, who, supported by other people, claimed to have recognized her husband, Luis Armando Ulloa.

Because of his teeth with two gold fillings and part of his pants, Flor María Hernández managed to identify her husband, Juan Villarroel. Marta Herrera found her son Juan Carlos Herrera’s silver crucifix.

While efforts continued to fully identify the remains of the 18 exhumed bodies, Judge Martínez moved forward with the investigation. It was necessary to continue investigating. The body of one of the forcibly disappeared persons reported in the complaint was still missing.

In that effort, Judge Martínez continued taking statements from witnesses and people who could provide any background information that would help the process. The confrontations had already begun, and in parallel, Judge Martínez carried out an ocular inspection of the “San Juan” estate.

At 2:30 p.m., he moved to the place in the company of the acting secretary, the lawyers Martita Wörner and Fernando Saldaña, as well as the forensic doctor César Reyes and the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, and some church volunteers equipped with work tools.

The objective was to carry out a search and excavations. “Upon extracting a certain amount of sand, a man’s shoe appeared, so the excavation continued in that place. As it went deeper, three shoes of different types appeared, disassembled, and a brown boot with a red nylon sock.

A white fiber bag used to transport soda or lime was seen; at a little over half a meter deep, a layer of lime appeared, then an empty pisco bottle in good condition and another broken one. This pit extended about three meters long more or less, like a trench.” The proceeding continued in another sector of the property.

After lifting some branches from an old pine operation, the earth was removed, and pieces of blue fabric appeared that could correspond to a shirt. A pocket comb and buttons, possibly from a coat, and a plastic wallet without documents were also found. “As we continued digging, we came across a safety-type boot with a long yellow sock.

Upon examining it, the doctor noticed that it contained bones inside. With extreme care, we proceeded to enlarge the pit, and the body of a person appeared. The exhumation was ordered, and once on the surface, the doctor proceeded to examine the remains, which corresponded to a male, more or less 30 years old, with a complete set of teeth in good condition.

Before removing the body, it was verified that it was tied at the feet with wire and another was at the level of the knees; furthermore, it was face down...” Ten meters from the semi-erased path of the property, and following the direction of the two previous pits, a mound was removed on which a large amount of lime grains could be seen.

At a shallow depth, a human bone appeared, apparently corresponding to a forearm. Buttons, a pocket comb, four pairs of shoes, and a pair of optical glasses with a brown frame were also found. The order was given to take the remains and items found to the Legal Medical Institute of Santiago, and shortly after 6:30 p.m., the proceeding was concluded.

The discovery was quickly known by the press, which the next day reported extensively on the event: “In Laja, 19th body appeared tied with wires,” headlined La Tercera on October 19.

MULTITUDINOUS FUNERAL

Between November 13 and 19, the forensic doctor César Reyes submitted the autopsy reports of the 19 bodies found, with the positive identification of all of them. The skulls of five of them, corresponding to Oscar Sanhueza, Juan Acuña, Luis Ulloa, Wilson Muñoz, and Heraldo Muñoz, showed projectile holes.

Another nine showed some type of fracture and corresponded to Jorge Lamana, Federico Riquelme, Manuel Becerra, Mario Jara, Fernando Grandón, Rubén Campos, Alfonso Macaya, Juan Jara, and Raúl Urra. The remaining five bodies did not show traumatic alterations and corresponded to Dagoberto Garfias, Juan Villarroel, Luis Araneda, Jorge Zorrilla, and Jack Gutiérrez.

Once the identification stage was completed, at the end of November, Judge Martínez ordered the release of the bodies to the relatives. The funeral was set for Tuesday, November 27, after a mass that would be officiated at 10:00 a.m. at the San José Parish in Concepción.

But the fear that the remains would not be delivered or that attempts would be made to make them disappear was strong. In the Association of Relatives of the Forcibly Disappeared, the concern meant that its members were willing to form a permanent guard at the doors of the morgue until the remains were delivered.

It was not necessary, Ester Araneda would remember almost twenty years later. “Dr. César Reyes and also Judge Martínez guaranteed us that there would be no problems, and that is how it was.” “We have arrived today at this house of prayer to pray with hope together with you, mothers, wives, children, relatives of these beings so dear to whom we have today—at least—the comfort of giving a Christian burial and before whom we will be able to deposit the offering of a simple flower, an expression of our love and our pain...

We have come to ask that all the anguish and suffering of these six long and painful years not be sterile...” Before a full temple, the words of the Auxiliary Bishop, Monsignor Alejandro Goic, resonated strong and emotional.

At 10:00 a.m., the 19 coffins had left the Legal Medical Institute and in a caravan of more than fifteen blocks were taken to the San José Church for the farewell liturgy, before their final burial in the Laja Cemetery.

The journey was slow. Accompanied by shouts, silence, and much pain. In the parish, twenty-five priests were waiting. Shortly after 11:00, the mass began. There was much emotion in the venue, which became narrow to receive those who wanted to accompany the relatives of the executed from Laja and San Rosendo in their pain.

At the end of the mass, there was applause and the National Anthem was sung. The procession then began its long journey to Laja. There, at 4:45 p.m., the parish priest Félix Eicher officiated the last mass.

After the mass in Laja, the procession with five hearses and hundreds of people headed to the Cemetery. The afternoon was falling and the heat was declining. It was already close to 8:00 p.m. On its way to the graveyard, the column stopped in front of the Carabineros Sub-precinct.

There were no incidents. Only one young woman walked to the police unit and shouted “murderers!” The coffins were buried in a large tomb, over which a three-meter-high cross was placed, with the word “Peace” at the top and an inscription where a verse by Pablo Neruda can be read: “Although the steps touch/ this site for a thousand years/ they will not erase the blood/ of those who fell here/ and the hour will not be extinguished/ in which you fell/ although thousands of voices/ cross this silence...”

INCOMPETENCE AND DISMISSAL

And what had been so much commented on and, in some way, also feared, occurred on March 18 when Judge José Martínez Gaensly declared himself incompetent to continue hearing case file 2.770, because from the reports and statements accumulated during the process, he was able to conclude that in the facts reported in the complaints, “the carabineros officials of the Laja Precinct, former lieutenant Alberto Fernández Mitchel, Evaristo Garcés Rubilar, Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, Juan Muñoz Cuevas, Nelson Casanova Delgado, Luis León Godoy, Carlos Fritz Gómez, Gerson Saavedra Renike, Gabriel González Salazar, Juan Oviedo Riquelme, Anselmo San Martín Navarrete, Lisandro Martínez García, José Otárola Sanhueza, Samuel Vidal Riquelme, Florencio Olivares Dade, Pedro Parra Utreras, Sergio Castillo Basaúl (from San Rosendo), and the civilian Israel Ormeño, who were serving in said police unit in the month of September 1973, had an immediate and direct participation...” for which, and according to the provisions of Article 1 of the Code of Military Justice, “I declare myself incompetent to continue hearing this process, and it must, consequently, be sent to the 1st Military Prosecutor’s Office of Los Angeles, as it corresponds to its jurisdiction.” Because it was offensive to the rights of the party she represented, the lawyer Martita Wörner appealed the resolution of Judge Martínez on March 24. Four days later, the military court accepted the declined competence and ordered that the investigation continue, restoring the case to the summary stage. For those purposes, it appointed as ad-hoc prosecutor the Carabineros Colonel (J) Gustavo Villagrán and as secretary the Army Major (J) Alejandro Abuter Campos, assigning the case file number 323-80. The Third Military Court of Concepción did not take long to decree the dismissal of the case. It did so on June 9, 1980, after knowing and approving the 16-80 ruling of May 20, issued by the ad-hoc prosecutor. After acknowledging that the 19 people mentioned in the complaint were arrested in the days following the military coup and that after remaining in the Laja Precinct, their bodies were buried in the “San Juan” estate, and although the precise cause of their deaths could not be determined, “they would have been the product of acts of third parties, with which the criminal figure of homicide would be typified,” the truth is that according to the military court, “in the process, there are not sufficient legal indications that allow for the individualization of the possible authors, accomplices, or cover-ups of the aforementioned deaths.” Consistent with the above—the ruling continues— “the police officials of the Laja Precinct, the one from the San Rosendo Precinct, and the civilian Israel Ormeño Stuardo were not charged as defendants or subjected to the process as authors, accomplices, or cover-ups for the investigated facts.” For this reason, and invoking the Amnesty Law established in Decree Law No. 2.191 of 1978, the Military Court dismissed the thirteen officials and one civilian totally and definitively “because their eventual criminal responsibilities in the investigated facts were extinguished by being favored by the amnesty...” The response of Judge Martínez to the appeal presented by the plaintiff regarding his declaration of incompetence was somewhat more bureaucratic. Only on August 4 did he resolve the request, indicating that “it is not of those that cause irreparable and serious harm and, also keeping in mind the state of the case and the provisions of Article 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, there is no place to grant the appeal... Return the background information to the Military Justice.” Finally, and despite the appeal presented by the plaintiff, on December 3, 1981, the Martial Court confirmed the resolution of the Third Military Court of Concepción, definitively dismissing the case.

Source: TribunaldelBioBio.cl, September 21, 2004

Voluntary Declaration: SAMUEL FRANCISCO VIDAL RIQUELME

"Days after the arrest of these people, we were notified that we had to be at the barracks at night; once the aforementioned arrived, which corresponded to almost all the personnel, and taking advantage of the curfew hours, we were ordered to drink pisco in abundant quantity.

I remember that we were in uniform inside the Precinct; no one understood the reason for the summons, until after a while of having drunk, Lieutenant ALBERTO FERNANDEZ MICHELL ordered us to take out the detainees, load them onto a CMPC bus—I do not remember the driver.

Personally, it was my turn to guard the inside of the bus, for which I carried a Sig rifle. I highlight that the detainees were tied by their hands with hemp cords. Immediately after, we took the highway; in command of the caravan was Lieutenant FERNANDEZ, I believe accompanied by a farm owner named PETER WILKES, who was a German from the area.

All my colleagues whom I mentioned earlier also went, except for MUÑOZ and OVIEDO, who stayed on guard, although they knew at least that the detainees had been taken out of the cells. We continued the journey, for which we took the highway in the direction of the Parales bridge, taking the road toward Route 5 through the Yumbel sector.

We stopped past a curve, and in this place, we passed the firebreak road and arrived at a forest. The vehicles stopped, they made us drink again, and they handed us shovels, and we began to dig. I say we began because we were all there: FERNANDEZ, LEON, GARCES, RODRIGUEZ, SAN MARTIN, OTAROLA, OLIVARES, CASANOVA, CAMPOS, GONZALEZ, SAAVEDRA, and some others I do not remember, but from the Precinct, we were all there except for those who were on guard.

I remember that we all made the hole, except for the officer and the most senior ones, RODRIGUEZ and GARCES; the rest of us helped in this task. As it was sand, it was not difficult to dig. Finally, we made a trench about 2 to 3 meters long by approximately 1.5 meters deep.

Then we brought down the detainees, we put them on their knees near the trench, and then we proceeded to shoot. We all shot; when I say all, I include Lieutenant FERNANDEZ. Moreover, I remember very well when GONZALEZ argued strongly with CASANOVA, since the latter did not want to shoot; it was so much that I intervened and told GONZALEZ that if he did anything to CASANOVA, I was going to shoot him.

The tension was so high that we were all very agitated; nevertheless, we still put the detainees to death, who were shot in the back. Some fell directly into the pit; others, after they had passed away, had to be pushed so that they would fall, or we would take them and throw them into the pit.

They were left one on top of the other. Then we covered them with the same sand and headed toward Laja. We arrived at the Precinct and, once there, we continued drinking, including the Lieutenant, and it was in this place when the guard personnel became aware of what had happened, an occasion in which the Officer said that we should all keep quiet.

Immediately after, everything was carried out normally, although when the relatives went, they were told that the detainees had been transferred to the Los Angeles regiment."

Source: Judiciary, April 14, 2011

Unpublished confessions link CMPC to the massacre of 19 workers in Laja

It was a hunt. In September 1973, the Carabineros of the Laja police station apprehended 14 workers from the Paper Mill and the Railways, two high school students, and two teachers, whom they took to the Fundo San Juan, where they executed them and buried them clandestinely.

All the police officers had consumed copious amounts of pisco sent to them by the CMPC, which also provided vehicles for the death caravan led by the farmer Peter Wilkens. Despite the desperate search by their families, the pact of silence regarding what happened that night was maintained until August of last year.

“Since it was sand, it wasn’t difficult to dig. We made a trench 2 to 3 meters long by 1.5 meters deep. Then we took the 19 detainees out of the vehicles. We made some kneel in front of the trench; we left the others standing.

They were in front of us, with their backs to us. I remember very well when the Carabinero Gabriel González argued strongly with Nelson Casanova, because the latter did not want to shoot. It was so intense that I stepped in and told González that if he did anything to Casanova, I would shoot him with the Sig rifle I had in my hand.

The tension was so high. We were all very agitated, but still, when the officer gave the order, we proceeded to shoot. We all shot, and when I say all, I include Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell. We shot them in the back.

Some fell directly into the pit. Others, already dead, we had to push so they would fall, or we grabbed them and threw them into the pit. They ended up one on top of the other. Then we covered them with the same sand and some branches and headed toward Laja.

When we arrived at the police station, we continued drinking the pisco and the beverages the lieutenant had brought from the CMPC paper mill canteen. Only then did those who had remained on guard duty know what had happened. Fernández gave the order to keep silent. After that, everything continued as if nothing had happened.”

1st Corporal (ret.) Samuel Vidal Riquelme was the first to break the pact. For 38 years, he kept the secret of what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973, to the 19 workers whom he and his companions from the Laja police station had apprehended in that town and San Rosendo during the previous five days, only to put them in a small dungeon, torture them, and then, that night, execute them clandestinely in a forest near the Perales Bridge, at the Fundo San Juan.

The first time Vidal spoke about what happened that night was in 1979, when the Archbishopric of Concepción filed a complaint against the Carabineros of the police station, and the then-visiting judge of the Concepción Court of Appeals, José Martínez Gaensly, interviewed him.

But that time, he said the same thing as his 15 companions from the Laja station: that the prisoners had been taken to the Los Ángeles Regiment. Martínez asked the military personnel of that regiment about the 19 workers, but they claimed they had never entered there.

He then spoke with the Carabineros again. Although they changed their version, they all said the same thing: that they had put them on a bus provided by the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) and that on the way to Los Ángeles, they had handed them over to a “phantom patrol” of military personnel. That they had lost track of them since then.

Martínez’s inquiries served a purpose: it was discovered that the bodies were in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parish Cemetery. They had been taken there in October 1973, without anyone knowing, after they were removed from the hole where they had been buried following a report by a farmer to the Yumbel Carabineros that his dogs were gnawing on human remains.

The report reached the local Court of Greater Quantities, but Judge Corina Mera ordered it to be kept in the safe. It was never investigated.

Without knowing how the bodies had reached the cemetery or who had executed them, the remains were identified and handed over to their families, who had searched for them relentlessly for six years. In March 1980, Martínez declared himself incompetent and referred the case to the Ad Hoc Military Prosecutor’s Office of Concepción.

Within three months, the case was dismissed, and at the end of 1981, the Supreme Court ratified the dismissal. That was the extent of justice.

27 years later, the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) and the Law 19.123 Continuation Program of the Ministry of the Interior requested the reopening of the case from the Concepción Court of Appeals.

After reviewing the records, Judge Carlos Aldana annulled the resolution that had definitively dismissed the accused Carabineros and the ratification of that ruling by the Supreme Court. Thus, the summary and the investigation were reopened under case file 27-2010.

CIPER had access to the statements and documents of that investigation. Among them is the confession of Corporal Samuel Vidal on June 14, 2011, before the Investigative Police (PDI). From then on, details began to emerge one by one about the fate of the 19 workers whom he and his companions murdered in the back in the early hours of September 18, 1973.

Thus, the capture operations were revealed, as well as the execution in an open field and the support and financing provided for their extermination by an important local businessman and, especially, the local CMPC, a company presided over at that time by former President Jorge Alessandri and whose main shareholder was the businessman Eliodoro Matte Ossa.

The oath that the Carabineros of the Laja station made in November 1973 at the Perales Bridge, when their officer in charge, Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell, was being transferred to Antofagasta, had been broken: “That if anyone opened their mouth, they had to be taken out by the companions themselves.”

9/15/73: HUNT IN SAN ROSENDO

Railway machinist Luis Alberto Araneda went at noon to the San Rosendo Engine House to see if he was on the “schedule.” It was what he did every day when he was not scheduled to travel the previous day.

When he arrived, he saw through his thick black-rimmed glasses the paper indicating the itinerary of the trains that would depart that day. He looked for his name, but it did not appear among those scheduled to travel that Saturday, September 15, 1973. Then he began the walk back to his home in the Quinta Ferroviaria neighborhood.

-“Go back to work, the Carabineros are looking for you, for you and Juan Acuña,” his neighbor Eusebio Suárez told him, worried, when he saw him arrive.

But Luis Alberto did not listen to him. He replied that his machine was in the workshop, so he had nothing to do there that day. Besides, if they were looking for him, he had no reason to worry. The day before, he had arrived from a trip to the south, and as soon as he learned that the Carabineros required militants and union leaders to present themselves, Luis Alberto went to the San Rosendo police post.

There, they asked for his details. On a piece of paper, they wrote his name, his RUT, that he was 43 years old, that he was a militant of the Socialist Party (PS), that he presided over the Supply and Price Board (JAP), and that he was a union leader of the Santiago Watt Federation of State Railways.

Afterward, they told him he could leave. Luis Alberto returned home and did not think about it anymore, not even when Eusebio told him the next day on the street that they were looking for him, that just a few minutes earlier a police patrol from Laja had asked about him and that he had told them where he lived.

When he was about to reach his home, his wife saw him coming through the window in his striped gray jacket, brown pants, black shoes, and glasses of the same color. She also saw how six or seven Carabineros with helmets blocked his path, raised their rifles, and aimed at him just as he was about to open the gate.

Luis Alberto froze. She did not think twice and ran out, screaming at the police to at least let her say goodbye. Luis Alberto, who already had his hands tied behind his back, told her to take the money and his watch from his pocket. She did so. Then she watched as they took him away. It was shortly before 4:00 PM. The hunt in San Rosendo had just begun.

Since the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández came from Laja and did not know who they were supposed to detain, Carabinero Sergio Castillo Basaul, from the San Rosendo post, served as their guide.

There was no formal list or arrest warrants: the order that came from the Los Ángeles Police Station was to detain all the leaders of the Unidad Popular (UP). If Castillo, who knew them, said that any of the neighbors should be detained, they were immediately aimed at, tied up, and taken away.

Juan Antonio Acuña, 33 years old, three children, also a machinist and union leader of the Railway union, was next on the list. They went to look for him at his house an hour later, when he was about to sit down to have tea with his family.

The same patrol that had arrived on foot from Laja broke in by force and took him out at gunpoint. Then it was the turn of the employee of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), Dagoberto Garfias, 23 years old.

He was followed by Mario Jara (21), who was at home with his mother and grandmother; Raúl Urra (23), who was also at his home; and the director of School 45 in San Rosendo, Óscar Sanhueza (23).

They were all taken to the San Rosendo Plaza, where another detainee was waiting for them: Jorge Zorrilla, a 25-year-old mining worker who worked in Argentina and was spending his vacation in Chile. He, like Luis Alberto Araneda, presented himself voluntarily to the Carabineros.

They immediately arrested him, and when the others arrived, the patrol tied them up and took them on foot across the pedestrian bridge that connected San Rosendo with Laja. On the other side, a bus was waiting for them, one of the many courtesies of the CMPC to the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell, the officer in charge of the Laja police station.

Once on the bus, they took them away.

9/11/73: THE FIRST ORDERS

Although he was the first to be detained, Lieutenant (ret.) Fernández Michell was the last of the members of the Laja police station to testify before the Court. On August 16 of last year, he was arrested in Iquique, where he worked as an instructor at a driving school.

And when the next day he broke the pact of silence that he himself had proposed after the execution, he started from the beginning:

“I was at my residence provided by the CMPC when I received the news of the Military Coup. I had arrived at the Laja police station in mid-1973 as a substitute lieutenant, and since there was no officer, I remained as chief.

I was 22 years old. By September 11, I was the police authority, and as soon as I learned of the Coup, while waiting for orders, I called for the mobilization of all Carabineros. That was coordinated by Sergeant Major Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, who followed me in command.”

“That same morning, I received the order from the Los Ángeles Headquarters to detain all government authorities, sub-delegates, and the mayor. The action was carried out without problems, and after detaining them at our unit, they were transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment in buses provided by the Paper Mill, because I already had many people in the barracks.

Days later, my superior in Los Ángeles, Commissioner Aroldo Solari Sanhueza, ordered me to begin detaining all the activists in the commune. Since the CMPC had a chemical plant, the activists could take it over and act against us.

That was the intelligence information I received from the military. One of those days, Army Colonel Alfredo Rehern Pulido arrived to reiterate the order. I ordered Sergeants Garcés and Rodríguez to proceed with the personnel to carry out that task, because they knew those people better.”

Since Salvador Allende assumed the presidency in 1970, the CMPC was on the list of companies that the government intended to expropriate. For this reason, on the same day of the Coup, a patrol commanded by Fernández Michell went to the plant that the Paper Mill had—and still has—in Laja.

It was 4:00 PM when the nearly 300 employees leaving their shift encountered Fernández, Garcés, Rodríguez, and other members of the police station. They made them form lines. The patrol had in their hands a list that the plant superintendent, Carlos Ferrer, and the personnel chief, Humberto Garrido, had prepared: those were the “activists.”

Those who appeared on the list were separated and taken, beaten and aimed at with rifles, to the adjacent building, where the company’s clinic operated. There, they beat them again. Afterward, they put them into CMPC vehicles and took them to the barracks.

All of them were later transferred, in the same bus of the Matte Group company, to Los Ángeles. Among them was Eduardo Cuevas, a maintenance mechanic at the Paper Mill and a MIR militant who voluntarily joined the reconstruction of the scene carried out by Judge Aldana on August 18 of last year.

Before they took him away, Fernández grabbed him and showed him to his coworkers still formed in the line: “Look at him for the last time!” he shouted at them.

After a little more than a year and three months in detention and torture centers, and after passing through a War Council, Eduardo Cuevas was seen again. A “luck” that those who were hunted in the following days did not have.

9/13 and 9/14/73: THE FALL OF THE STUDENT AND THE WORKERS

The first thing the patrol led that day by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos did was to go to the Train Station. On the platform, Manuel Becerra was saying goodbye to his mother, his grandmother, his brother, and his cousin.

It was 8:00 AM, and in just a few minutes, the train that would take him back to Curacautín, where he was attending high school at the Industrial School, would depart. He was about to board when the Carabineros grabbed him.

Amidst the screams of his relatives, Manuel Becerra was beaten and taken out of the station, put into the jeep that the CMPC had granted them for their mobilization, and taken to the Laja police station. It was September 13, 1973. Manuel was 18 years old.

In a matter of minutes, they notified his father, who worked at the Transportes Cóndor offices. As soon as he found out, he asked his boss to speak with the Carabineros and arrange for his release. He went to the police station and spoke with the guard on duty, but they told him they had already registered his detention in the corresponding books.

Later, they would tell his father that he had been detained because he “was a militant with the MIRistas.” Manuel had already been detained before, during the campaign for the 1973 parliamentary elections, for painting MIR slogans in Laja along with other friends. The young man remained detained.

The next on the list was Luis Armando Ulloa, 41 years old, married, five children, a militant of the Communist Party (PC) and a lumber worker at the Barraca Burgos in Laja, where they went to look for him.

It was 8:30 AM. Since his eldest son worked with him, the first thing his coworkers did was notify him as soon as he arrived, because just when they took him, he was not there. He ran to his house and notified his mother, who was still recovering from her last childbirth. They could not do anything to get him out either.

That afternoon, the Carabineros returned to the CMPC. As soon as he stepped outside the plant, Juan de Dios Villarroel was kidnapped by Rodríguez’s patrol. He was 34 years old, had four children, and the bad luck of working at a company that drew up a blacklist with the names of its own employees.

On that same list were his coworkers Jack Gutiérrez, a MAPU militant; Heraldo Muñoz, from the PS; and Federico Riquelme. They were all taken to the police station, where the fruit and vegetable merchant and municipal councilor, Alfonso Macaya, who arrived voluntarily after hearing on a local radio station that they were looking for him, joined them.

They let him go the next day, but on September 15, they went to look for him again at his in-laws' house. He never returned.

On September 14, Rodríguez went out to the streets again in the CMPC jeep. He did not have to go far, because the two men who joined the group of political detainees that day were found leaving their work at the paper mill. One was Wilson Muñoz. The other was Fernando Grandón, who at 34 years old already had eight children.

9/16 and 9/17/73: THE SMALL POLICE STATION

Most likely, the Laja police station never had as many visitors as it did those days. By the night of September 15, 1973, in the dungeon of that building at Las Viñas No. 104, which Fernández remembers as “two large shacks to which some additions had been made,” there were 17 people detained: to the seven brought from San Rosendo and the nine kidnapped in Laja, the director of the CMPC Industrial Union, Jorge Lamana, who presented himself at the station voluntarily, had been added that afternoon.

Since the detentions began, their parents, siblings, and children went to visit them with the authorization of the officer in charge of the facility. Fernando Grandón’s wife arrived the same day he was detained to see him for the first time.

When she saw him, she noticed he was scared, but without injuries. Luis Armando Ulloa’s eldest daughter also went to see him, and when she found him in the middle of the group, she realized that his hair had been cut with scissors.

But the worst part was suffered by those from San Rosendo. All of them had bruises, scratches, and dog bites. Jorge Zorrilla, the miner detained during his vacation, told one of the detainees' relatives that they had also been made to sit on the pica (a torture device).

On September 16, the last two members of the group arrived at the cell. Juan Carlos Jara, 17 years old, was grabbed by Pedro Rodríguez’s patrol when he was fighting with other young people in the street. Rubén Campos, director of the Consolidated School of Laja, was taken from his house, and from there, he went straight to the dungeon.

Until September 17, visits to the prisoners continued. In the mornings, almost all the relatives arrived with freshly made breakfast and clean clothes. Later, they brought them lunch, and at night, dinner.

They were also visited by the parish priest of Laja, Father Félix Eicher, who had naively accompanied some of those who presented themselves voluntarily to the police station so that they could “fix their problems.” And every time they went, they tried to convince the Carabineros to release them.

The prisoners told them to be calm, that they would soon be out of there. On the night before the national holidays, Lieutenant Fernández Michell received an order.

“I was having dinner in the dining room when Sergeant Garcés told me that Major Solari, the commissioner of Los Ángeles, was on the phone. He was very upset with me because I had sent many people to the regiment without asking him.

I had done it because of space issues. I was scared that he was angry, because I had gotten married without the permission of my superiors and was expecting my first daughter, so I had to do whatever he told me; otherwise, I risked another sanction.

He asked me how many detainees I had in the unit. I told him there were 19 people. He gave me the order to ‘eliminate them.’ He told me that if I didn’t do it, I would have to face the consequences. Then he hung up. I immediately called Garcés and Rodríguez and told them to get the personnel ready.”

9/18/73: MASSACRE IN THE FOREST

The men who followed Fernández in the chain of command made a few calls and in just minutes obtained ropes, wires, shovels, vehicles, and even a remote place where they could carry out the massacre. They had carbines and rifles for all the station’s personnel. Also, the alcohol that the CMPC gave them. The plan to kill the 19 was already underway.

“When they called us to the barracks, the curfew had already begun. Upon arriving, they gathered us in a room we used as a dining room and ordered us to drink pisco in large quantities. Almost all the members of the Laja police station were there, from Lieutenant Fernández Michell on down.

Those who did not arrive at the barracks would join us later. After drinking, Lieutenant Fernández told us to take the 19 detainees out of the station’s dungeons. We tied their hands behind their backs with hemp and hay bale wire, took them outside, and put them on the CMPC bus.

I had to guard the inside of the bus. That’s why I carried my Sig rifle in my hands. We took the road toward Los Ángeles. At the front of the caravan, in a jeep, were Fernández, Garcés, and Peter Wilkens, a German farmer from the area.”

Until Corporal Samuel Vidal testified in June 2011, Wilkens’s name never appeared in the investigation. After him, Fernández and several Carabineros ratified his participation in the massacre that night.

Before that, it was not known that Garcés had called him, that he had accompanied Fernández in the CMPC jeep that led the caravan, or that after the Perales Bridge, after a curve on the road between Laja and Los Ángeles, it was he who told him to turn right and stop 300 meters further on, in a clearing next to a pine forest.

Since only the Carabineros who were there that night and swore silence knew that Wilkens had been there, no one connected the fact when, in 1985, a 19-year-old named Arturo Arriagada, with no criminal record, entered his farm in Laja, killed his butler, entered his room, and shot him with a shotgun.

Afterward, he put the bodies in his van and buried them on the side of the road, very close to where they had buried the Laja and San Rosendo detainees that night.

According to a report published by Contacto when the death penalty was about to be abolished in Chile in 2001, Arriagada was sentenced to life imprisonment and, by then, due to his good behavior, had been incorporated into the Education and Work Center (CET) of Concepción.

For his criminal act, justice did work. Wilkens, on the other hand, died without anyone questioning him for having been an accomplice and having guided and observed as a group of police officers executed 19 workers in the early hours of September 18, 1973, at the Fundo San Juan. A night that 2nd Sergeant (ret.) Pedro Parra remembers very well:

“There were no military personnel or DINA agents; it was just us from the police station, minus the three who stayed on guard. When we stopped, the truck was very close to some bushes. The night was clear and there was a moon, but the vehicle lights were used anyway.

With the fight between Gabriel González and Nelson Casanova, I finally realized the weight of what was happening. Everything was already decided. Lieutenant Fernández Michell didn’t say anything; he was just one more in the group.

The detainees were in front of us with their hands tied. I had a Mauser carbine. When Fernández gave the order, we all aimed at the detainees who had been assigned to us. None of them complained or said anything. Then they gave the order to shoot. We all did it.”

9/18/73: AFTER THE MASSACRE

The bodies remained underground. The group of Carabineros got into the vehicles and returned to the Laja barracks. Everyone remembers that it was a strange moment, that no one dared to say anything. When they arrived, they drank what was left of the pisco they had consumed before leaving.

And right there, they agreed that no one would say anything, that if anyone spoke, they would suffer the same fate as those they had just murdered.

On the morning of that day, Gloria Urra got up early, prepared breakfast, and as in previous days, went to the police station to see her brother Raúl. She expected to meet all the detainees and their families, sit with them, and share the food.

But the dungeon was empty. Now that they were cleaning it, it looked much bigger. Hilda Bravo, the wife of the fruit merchant Alfonso Macaya, had not been allowed to see him when they locked him up two days earlier, so that morning she expected to meet her husband.

But they told her the same thing they told the mothers, wives, siblings, and children of the 19 workers who were there until the night before: that they had been transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

The relatives grouped together and set off to look for them. At the Los Ángeles Regiment, they did not find them. They went through the jail, the IANSA gymnasium; nothing. Afterward, some went to Concepción and asked at the Regional Stadium, on Quiriquina Island, in Talcahuano; their names did not appear on the prisoner lists.

Days passed, and the desperate search was repeated again and again in Chillán, in Linares. It was like that for weeks, for years. Many spent their savings traveling through different cities in the country, searching and asking without answers. They went through Temuco until they reached Santiago. Everything was useless: the 19 had vanished.

Two days after the massacre, Father Félix Eicher accompanied the CMPC worker, Luis Sáez, to Los Ángeles, according to his statement before Judge Carlos Aldana, “so that those from Laja wouldn’t do anything to him.” In the previous days, they had raided his house twice looking for him, but they hadn’t found him. “Just as Macaya turned himself in, tell your husband to do the same,” Sergeant Rodríguez had allegedly told his wife.

The priest convinced him to turn himself in on September 20, 1973. That same day, he was detained. Six years later, when they found the other 19 in the Yumbel cemetery—where they had been taken clandestinely by Fernández and his men—the remains of Luis Sáez appeared at the Fundo San Juan.

THE TRIAL OF THE LAJA EXECUTIONERS

Although 38 years had passed, many of the Carabineros who worked at the Laja police station in September 1973 tried in 2011 to maintain their oath of silence regarding what happened in the early hours of September 18 of that year. 1st Sergeant (ret.) Gabriel González, for example, claimed before the PDI that he knew nothing about the 19 disappeared and that he only participated in some detentions.

He said nothing about his fight with Nelson Casanova that early morning just before shooting them in the back. And Casanova himself, who according to the testimonies resisted shooting, declared: “At that time, there was a very good relationship with the CMPC workers, so I was not aware that employees of that company had been detained.”

It was the testimonies of those who did decide to confess that allowed visiting judge Carlos Aldana to issue an arrest warrant in August 2011 for the 14 officials still alive who participated in the detentions and the execution of the workers murdered at the Fundo San Juan.

After that, everyone began to talk. On the 18th of that month, Aldana carried out the reconstruction of the scene with all the detainees regarding the chain of events that ended the lives of the 19 workers.

It was a key, dramatic day. After that, there were no more doubts: after four days, the judge prosecuted nine of the Carabineros for homicide and one for concealment. Three others, those who stayed on guard duty that night, were dismissed. Despite the crudeness of the crimes, today they are all free.

The following is the list of all the Carabineros involved and what happened to them:

1.- Alberto Juan Fernández Michell: Lieutenant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the officer in charge of the Laja police station and the person responsible for executing the orders that came from Los Ángeles.

He ordered and participated in the detentions and the execution at the Fundo San Juan. He was called to retire from the institution in 1979, citing “lack of vocation.” He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide. When everyone else obtained provisional release, he remained detained for being the responsible officer. His defense appealed, and he was released after paying a bail of $300,000.

2.- Evaristo Garcés Rubilar: He was a non-commissioned officer of Ca...

Carabineros and the second-in-command at the Laja Police Station, which is why he played a key role in organizing the arrests and the massacre of the 19 at the Fundo San Juan. He secured the location for the clandestine execution and contacted the German farmer Peter Wilkens. He died on December 25, 1987, at the age of 60, due to a vascular accident caused by diabetes.

3.- Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos : Carabineros Sergeant. He was in charge of several of the arrests and played a leading role in managing the execution. He was married, and some time after what happened that night, he became part of the DINA. He died on December 22, 2002, at the Dipreca Hospital due to metastatic gastric cancer that caused multi-organ failure. He was 64 years old.

4.- Lisandro Alberto Martínez García : 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. Although he initially declared that he had not participated in the massacre because he was working in the station's records office at the time, he eventually admitted his participation: "We were all carrying rifles and we fired," he said.

He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional bail of $300,000.

5.- Luis Antonio León Godoy : 2nd Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. At first, he said that it had been the military who stopped by the police station and took the 19 detainees. Later, he changed his version: "When my sub-officer Garcés gave the order, we all had to fire," he noted. He was prosecuted as the perpetrator of homicide and was released on provisional bail after paying $300,000.

6.- José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza : Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. In his statements, he claimed that he had not participated and that he was not there on the night of the massacre. But during the reconstruction of the scene, he admitted to having been there.

His role was to stay in the CMPC jeep the entire time, illuminating what was happening in front of him. He saw everything, but he did not pull the trigger. He was prosecuted for covering up a homicide and, after paying a bail of $100,000, he obtained his provisional release.

7.- Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike : 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was one of the first to provide a statement and acknowledge what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973. That night, he joined the caravan when they were about to arrive at the Fundo San Juan. He was prosecuted for homicide and obtained his provisional release after paying a bail of $300,000.

8.- Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade : 2nd Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He also acknowledged his participation starting from September 11, 1973. "Those were difficult days, we slept very little," he said. He is one of those prosecuted for homicide and, after paying the $300,000 bail, he was released on provisional bail.

9.- Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras : 2nd Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. As soon as he was interrogated, he recounted in detail what happened that night. He was also prosecuted for homicide and has been on provisional release since he paid his $300,000 bail.

10.- Gabriel Washington González Salazar : 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the man who got into a fight before firing, although when it was his turn to testify, he said it had been the military. Later, he acknowledged his participation. They were prosecuted for homicide and today he is free.

11.- Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme : 1st Corporal (ret.) of Carabineros. He was the first to break the pact of silence. His testimony was key to clarifying what happened to the 19 workers in Laja. He was prosecuted for homicide and also obtained his release after paying the $300,000 bail.

12.- Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila : He belonged to the Carabineros for 30 years. In his first statement, he only said that after September 11, the Laja Police Station moved to the CMPC facilities. Later, he added that he was there that night and that he fired when ordered to, but that he did not aim at the bodies. He is one of those prosecuted for homicide and today enjoys provisional release.

13.- Nelson Casanova Salgado : 1st Sergeant (ret.) of Carabineros. He had said that he had never participated in an operation to detain CMPC workers, but his participation was proven. Also prosecuted for homicide, he is free today after paying the bail.

14.- Luis Muñoz Cuevas : 1st Corporal (ret.) of Carabineros. Since he stayed on guard duty at the station that night, Judge Aldana dismissed the investigation against him.

15.- Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete : Sub-officer (ret.) of Carabineros. His mission that night was to stop traffic in the hospital area so the caravan could pass. Afterward, he returned to the station and stayed there all night. He is one of the three Carabineros who were dismissed from the case.

16.- Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme : Sub-officer (ret.) of Carabineros. He also stayed on guard duty at the Laja Police Station that night, which is why he was dismissed from the case.

17.- Sergio Castillo Basaul : Carabineros Sub-officer. Although he did not participate in the execution, he played an active role in guiding the arrests in San Rosendo, as he worked in that town and knew its inhabitants. He died on September 16, 2005, due to massive digestive hemorrhage, esophageal varices, and Laennec's cirrhosis, which is caused by alcoholism.

LUIS SÁEZ: THE 20TH VICTIM EXECUTED

The first time the Carabineros from the Laja Police Station went to look for Luis Sáez Espinoza (37 years old) at his home in the Población Mario Medina, it was September 11, 1973, at 10:00. In addition to being an employee at the CMPC, Sáez was a union leader and a member of the MAPU.

For this reason, as soon as he learned of the Coup, he went into hiding. Since he was not there when the Carabineros arrived, they raided his house in front of his wife, Rosa Ibaca, and their children.

Three hours later, the patrol commanded by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos returned in the jeep that the Matte Group company had provided them, with helmets and long-barreled weapons. They raided his home again, but this time they took Rosa.

Pointing their rifles at her, they took her to some neighbors, and since no one knew where Luis was, they left her there. The scene was repeated the next day.

On September 14, Sergeant Rodríguez arrived again to look for Luis and, for the third time, did not find him. That was the day he gave his wife the message: that he should turn himself in as Alfonso Macaya had done the day before.

Minutes later, some social workers from the company arrived to see how the family was doing and promised to speak with Lieutenant Fernández Michell so that they would not raid that house again. The children were traumatized.

Six days later, the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, went to speak with the woman. He told her that he knew where Luis was and that he wanted to speak with her. The priest took her in his truck. When they met, she told him that he had to turn himself in.

Luis was afraid; he knew his life was in danger, that only two days earlier the group of 19 detainees had disappeared without a trace. So that nothing would happen to him, the priest convinced him to go to Los Ángeles and not to the Laja Police Station.

He agreed. That same day, September 20, 1973, shortly before the curfew, they went in the priest's truck to the Los Ángeles Prefecture. Luis got out of the vehicle, presented himself, and was detained there. The priest Eicher was a witness.

The next day, the same priest notified Sergeant Rodríguez that Luis had already turned himself in.

Rosa went to leave him clothes and food at the Red Cross office, but everything was returned to her because Luis was not in any detention center. His wife searched for him for years with the help of the priest and the Bishop of Los Ángeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, but to no avail. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis.

The search continued until 1979, when the investigation led by the visiting judge José Martínez led to the whereabouts of those executed in Laja and San Rosendo, but not to their perpetrators. While the others had been taken to the Yumbel Parochial Cemetery, Luis's remains appeared buried clandestinely in the same place where the massacre was carried out, at the Fundo San Juan, next to a CMPC pine forest.

He had a bullet hole and was tied with wire.

In the documents to which CIPER had access, Police Report No. 988 of March 15, 2011, is mentioned. According to that document, his direct relatives were asked, but they said that his remains were never handed over to them, which is why Luis Sáez Espinoza is still a forcibly disappeared person.

Source: ciper.cl, January 13, 2012

Former Carabineros prosecuted for illegal inhumation of political executions

A group of former Carabineros who served at the Laja police station were prosecuted as co-perpetrators of the crime of illegal inhumation of 19 political executions after September 11, 1973. The investigation is part of the Laja-San Rosendo case, investigated by the visiting judge for Human Rights of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, as stated in a statement by the Judiciary.

Evidence gathered by the investigation proved that between September 13 and 17 of that year, officials from that unit arrested 19 people in both communes located in the current Biobío Region. The detainees were murdered by gunfire, face down and with their hands tied, at the Fundo San Juan in Yumbel.

Subsequently, they buried them in a 60-centimeter-deep pit, covered with a layer of lime and dirt. Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme, Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Alberto Juan Fernández Michell, Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Lisandro Alberto Martínez García, Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme, Luis Antonio León Godoy, Gabriel Washington González Salazar, and Nelson Casanova Salgado are already being prosecuted for qualified homicide.

The former uniformed officers have now been prosecuted for the illegal inhumation of the 19 victims, along with Héctor Orlando Rivera Rojas and René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta. The political executions in this case are Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales. The victims' remains were found in October 1973 and buried in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parochial Cemetery, without autopsies being performed and without the corresponding sanitary authorization and judicial order.

Source: emol.cl, January 21, 2014

Former Carabineros prosecuted for illegal inhumation of political executions

The bodies were discovered in October 1973 in Yumbel and buried without a judicial order. The detainees were murdered by gunfire. Subsequently, they buried them in a 60-centimeter-deep pit, covered with a layer of lime and dirt.

A group of former Carabineros who served at the Laja police station were prosecuted as co-perpetrators of the crime of illegal inhumation of 19 political executions after September 11, 1973. The investigation is part of the Laja-San Rosendo case, investigated by the visiting judge for Human Rights of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, as stated in a statement by the Judiciary.

Evidence gathered by the investigation proved that between September 13 and 17 of that year, officials from that unit arrested 19 people in both communes located in the current Biobío Region. The detainees were murdered by gunfire, face down and with their hands tied, at the Fundo San Juan in Yumbel.

Subsequently, they buried them in a 60-centimeter-deep pit, covered with a layer of lime and dirt. Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme, Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Alberto Juan Fernández Michell, Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Lisandro Alberto Martínez García, Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme, Luis Antonio León Godoy, Gabriel Washington González Salazar, and Nelson Casanova Salgado are already being prosecuted for qualified homicide.

The former uniformed officers have now been prosecuted for the illegal inhumation of the 19 victims, along with Héctor Orlando Rivera Rojas and René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta. The political executions in this case are Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Oscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales. The victims' remains were found in October 1973 and buried in a mass grave at the Yumbel Parochial Cemetery, without autopsies being performed and without the corresponding sanitary authorization and judicial order.

Source: emol.cl, January 21, 2015

Matte Group company involved in crimes against Human Rights in 1973

A former uniformed officer mentioned in the case broke the pact of silence that prevailed in a case that showed coordination between the police, companies, the justice system, and the government to commit and cover up crimes against humanity.

One of the companies allegedly handed over a "blacklist" to the Carabineros. One week after the Coup d'état in Chile , on September 11, 1973, the " Laja Massacre " occurred, when a picket of Carabineros murdered 19 people from the towns of San Rosendo and Laja, in the VIII region.

This event was kept secret for more than forty years, but now it has shown progress. There are 10 people prosecuted, and the collusion between a private company, police, government, and the Justice system for the violation of Human Rights is revealed.

The former Carabinero Samuel Vidal , in an interview with En La Mira, of Chilevisión, broke the pact of silence. " For the first time, I am going to give an interview, I am going to tell my truth. In 1973, I was serving at the Laja Police Station.

I was about 22 years old ," indicated Vidal, adding that "sometimes we would stand guard or go out as an escort for a superior. For the Coup d'état, they came to look for me at my home." In that context, the former police officer indicated that "they made us take an oath that we could not tell anyone about this.

There were two civilians and there were 13 of us Carabineros . They told us that whoever broke the pact of silence would have problems, their family or oneself." " I joined the Carabineros by vocation and not to be a murderer.

I ask the relatives for forgiveness. I will abide by what the justice system says (...) I felt sadness, bitterness, and I thought why was I involved in this ," indicated the former Carabinero. A former truck driver, Sebastián Cifuentes , adds that upon seeing the place where the workers were murdered, "one suspected that people were killed there, but what happened the next day was worse, since it was filled with company officials." On September 11, 1973, the 16 Carabineros of the Laja police station were quartered, by order of Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell .

The two sub-officers in charge under him were Major Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos . That same day, from their superiors in Los Ángeles, they received orders to detain all the authorities of the recently deposed government, as well as their delegates and the mayor of Laja.

In that vein, a patrol detained a group of workers from the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) plant, owned by the Matte family, one of the most important business groups in Chile . When that day ended, they were ordered to form up and were detained based on a blacklist that was made by Carlos Ferrer, superintendent of the plant, and the personnel manager Humberto Garrido .

The detainees were taken to the Los Ángeles Regiment. Then, Manuel Becerra was detained at the Laja train station , where he was saying goodbye to his mother to return to Curacautín. There he attended industrial school and his guilt was "being from the MIR." Shortly after, the communist worker Luis Armando Ulloa was detained at the Burgos lumber yard.

He was 41 years old, married, and had 5 children. On September 13, at the exit of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones, Juan de Dios Villarroel , Jack Gutiérrez (from the MAPU), Heraldo Muñoz, from the Socialist Party of Chile (PS), and Federico Riquelme were detained.

They were taken by Carabineros to the police station, where Alfonso Macaya, a councilman of the commune, also arrived, having presented himself voluntarily after being summoned by Radio. On September 14, they detained Wilson Muñoz and Fernando Grandón at the exit of the Company, and seven other people were detained the following day.

Then they detained Luis Alberto Araneda , who was a leader of the Santiago Watt Federation union of the State Railways company , a PS militant, and president of the Supply and Price Board. The same patrol arrived at the house of Juan Antonio Acuña , who was also a train driver and leader of the railway union.

Also detained were the CMPC worker Dagoberto Garfias, Mario Jara, Raúl Urra, and the director of the School 45 of San Rosendo , Óscar Sanhueza, 23 years old. The detainees were taken first to the plaza of San Rosendo, where Jorge Zorrilla , a 25-year-old worker who voluntarily presented himself, was also detained.

All those mentioned crossed the pedestrian bridge of the Laja River on foot, and in a minibus, belonging to the Company, they were taken to the Carabineros police station in the same sector . The director of the CMPC Industrial union, Jorge Lamana, remained detained at the station upon presenting himself voluntarily.

On September 16, Juan Carlos Jara arrived as a detainee, due to a street fight, and the director of the Consolidated School of Laja, Rubén Campos. On September 18, at dawn, a minibus with the 19 detainees , in addition to other vehicles with all the Carabineros of the station, except for three who remained on guard duty, advanced in the direction of Los Ángeles along the southern sector of the Laja River.

They crossed the Perales Bridge and, guided by the farmer Peter Wilkens, arrived at a clearing in the pine forest about 300 meters from the road, inside the Fundo San Juan. There, they dug a pit about a meter and a half deep with some shovels.

All the detainees were taken down there. After arguments, the order was given to fire on these people. All the uniformed officers fired. The bodies that did not fall into the pit were dragged. Everyone was covered with sand.

They placed some branches over the disturbed earth and, upon returning to Laja and starting to drink, they swore again not to say a word about what happened, and whoever broke that deal would share the fate of the detainees .

Shortly after, on September 20, the CMPC worker Luis Sáez , a union leader and MAPU militant, presented himself to the Carabineros. His body appeared six years later near where the other 19 detainees were executed.

In October 1973, a farmer notified the Carabineros of Yumbel, 20 kilometers north of Laja, that his dogs had found human remains. The official report was sent to the Court of Letters of that commune, but Judge Corina Mera ordered it to be hidden and it was never investigated.

Lieutenant Fernández secretly exhumed the bodies and ordered them to be buried in the Yumbel parochial cemetery . Already in 2010, the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Persons (AFEP) and the Ministry of the Interior, through its Law 19,123 Continuation program, requested the reopening of the case from the Concepción Court of Appeals.

Judge Carlos Aldana reviewed the background and reopened the case. Of the 17 Carabineros of the station, three died, and the others who were on guard duty were dismissed from the case. The other 11 are being prosecuted for the crime, among whom is the officer who is accused as the perpetrator of the homicide.

All those prosecuted are on conditional release while the trial lasts. The relatives of Political Executions of the VIII region demand the resignation of the Supreme Court minister, Rosa Egnem , because they claim she has responsibility in this case.

The person who was the commissioner of Yumbel, Héctor Rivera , handed over the information about the crimes to Judge Corina Mera , who allegedly referred the case to her secretary, the lawyer Rosa Egnem , since the former had begun to use her medical leave.

Egnem then acted as a substitute and—they claim— kept the report on illegal inhumation in the court's safe and allegedly even altered judicial records. With this, the relatives of the disappeared revived the questioning of the role of Egnem, today a minister of the Supreme Court.

Fresia Ponce , niece of one of the victims, Alfonso Macaya, indicated that " she is not supposed to have any reason to be in that position when she did nothing about everything that was happening and saw the facts that were occurring at that moment when they found the bodies in Yumbel.

We want those people to show their faces and tell the truth and really say what happened, why they didn't continue with the whole process ."

Source: eldinamo.cl, August 20, 2015

Laja-San Rosendo Massacre: Indictment issued against Carabineros and CMPC paper mill officials for 19 homicides

This Tuesday, the visiting judge for Human Rights violation cases of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, issued an indictment against former members of the Carabineros and former officials of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) of Laja, for the crimes of qualified homicide and illegal inhumation of 19 workers and peasants, perpetrated in September 1973, in the case known as the "Laja-San Rosendo Massacre." In the resolution (case roll 27-2010), Judge Aldana accused the former Carabineros officer, Alberto Juan Fernández Michel, and the former Carabineros: Lisandro Alberto Martínez García, Luis Antonio León Godoy, Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Gabriel Washington González Salazar, Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, and Nelson Casanova Salgado, as co-perpetrators of the qualified homicides of the 19 victims of the criminal repressive act: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya Barrales. Likewise, he accused the also former police officials José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, Manuel Cerda Robledo, and Anselmo de Carmen San Martín Navarrete as accomplices to the same crimes to the detriment of the aforementioned persons. In addition, the former Carabineros officer René Urrutia Elgueta was indicated as the perpetrator of the crime of illegal inhumation of the 19 victims. CMPC Officials Last March, the Penquista Court ruled the prosecution of four former civilian officials of the CMPC for their implication and participation in the crimes. This decision by the Court forced Aldana to issue an indictment against three of these officials of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), despite the fact that he had initially refused to even prosecute these civilian repressors. Now, Judge Aldana has accused the former head of security of the company, Pedro Jarpa Foerster, as an accomplice to the crimes of homicide of seven victims: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jack Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Heraldo Muñoz Muñoz, Raúl Urra Parada, Federico Riquelme Concha, Juan Villarroel Espinoza, and Wilson Muñoz Rodríguez. Meanwhile, he held Alejandro Lionel Aguilera Covarrubias (former CMPC executive) and Rodolfo Román Román (former driver) responsible as accomplices to the 19 qualified homicides. In the investigation stage, the visiting judge managed to determine that between September 13 and 17, 1973, in the communes of Laja and San Rosendo, the 19 aforementioned victims were detained by personnel of the Laja Carabineros Police Station, without a competent judicial or administrative order, and transferred to the aforementioned police unit from the CMPC and other companies and rural sectors of the area. The aforementioned victims were placed in the cells of the indicated police unit, remaining in them until the night of September 17, 1973, when they were taken out by the uniformed personnel and loaded into CMPC vehicles, to be, supposedly, transferred to the Regiment of the city of Los Ángeles; however, while they were traveling along Route Q-90, at the height of the Perales Bridge, the caravan entered a side road, going into the so-called Fundo San Juan, in the commune of Yumbel, where the Carabineros personnel of the Laja Police Station, who were armed with rifles and carbines, made them get out of the vehicles, forcing them to lie on the ground, side by side, face down and with their hands tied, with the police officials proceeding to position themselves behind them, at which moment the officer in charge to one side, who was armed with his revolver, gave the order to fire, which was carried out by the uniformed officers present, positioned in the firing line, impacting the bodies of the detainees with bullets, causing them injuries that resulted in their death. Subsequently, the same police officers, armed with shovels they carried for that purpose, dug a 60-centimeter-deep pit where they threw the bodies, which they covered with a layer of dirt. Once this operation was finished, they returned to the Laja Police Station, keeping silent about what had happened. Days later, Carabineros officials returned to the sector to cover the bodies with lime, of the type used at the CMPC, which had allegedly been provided by company officials. At the end of October 1973, dogs in the sector found human remains, a fact noticed by a person who was passing through that place, who reported it to the Carabineros of Yumbel. Faced with this report, the commissioner Héctor Rivera Rojas ordered the then officer of orders, Lieutenant René Luis Alberto Urrutia Elgueta, to go to the scene, who ratified the finding to the commissioner to, finally, transfer the remains directly to the parochial cemetery for their burial in a mass grave, which Urrutia carried out using a trailer pulled by a tractor, during the night, while the curfew was in effect. This procedure was carried out without performing the required autopsies on the bodies found and they were inhumed without obtaining the corresponding sanitary authorization, nor the competent judicial order. In this case, the plenary stage is now open, after which Judge Aldana must issue a sentence.

Source: resumen.cl, November 13, 2018

New president of the Electoral Qualification Court hid information about the Laja Massacre

In 1978, the now-Supreme Court Justice Rosa Egnem admitted that she concealed key information regarding the Laja massacre: the execution of 19 people, perpetrated by civilians and Carabineros. At the time, she worked at a court in Yumbel, and despite this episode, she continued to ascend until reaching the highest court.

Now, she will add a new distinction: on January 31, she will assume the presidency of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal (TRICEL). In that position, she will have to oversee the constitutional plebiscite.

On January 7, a sentence was handed down for the Laja crimes, 46 years later. Only Carabineros were sentenced, and nothing was said about the role of the executives of the CMPC Laja Plant, an emblematic company of the Matte Group.

One week after the coup d'état, in the early hours of September 18, 1973, 19 men—workers from the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), railway workers, teachers, and two students—were murdered and surreptitiously buried on a private field in Laja, in the Biobío Region.

For more than 40 years, there was impunity for their perpetrators and whispers about what happened to the victims. A silence that reveals the collusion that existed to hide crimes against humanity between private enterprise, politicians, police, and, certainly, different echelons of the Chilean justice system.

The protection for the murderers and their accomplices reached a milestone just one month after what became known as the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre. In October 1973, a local farmer found mutilated bodies of some of the victims and reported it to the justice system.

But his complaint was hidden in a safe and under lock and key by the lawyer Rosa Egnem, then secretary to Judge Corina Mera of the Yumbel Court of Greater Quantities.

Rosa Egnem Rosa Egnem is today a Supreme Court Justice. Her act of omission and manipulation of judicial records meant that the widows and children of all those murdered continued for six years to search for their loved ones.

In contrast, Egnem, who confessed to her crime in 1978 without receiving any sanction from the Concepción Court of Appeals, went on to become a judge and continued to ascend in her judicial career.

Despite her record, on January 31, Justice Rosa Egnem will assume the presidency of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal, which must oversee the decisive plebiscite on a new Constitution on April 26.

The conviction for the Laja and San Rosendo crimes was just handed down this January 7 by the Minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana. Only Carabineros were convicted. Not a word about the leading role that the executives of the Laja Plant of the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), owned by the Matte Group, had in the qualified homicides.

Just as in the recent multi-million dollar toilet paper collusion fraud organized by the CMPC, its owners will not pay with prison time. The only one who was questioned by the justice system was the businessman Roberto Izquierdo Menéndez, who in September 1973 was the manager of the CMPC, owner of Forestal Mininco, which in turn owned the San Juan estate where the bodies of the 19 executed prisoners were illegally buried.

Roberto Izquierdo

Roberto Izquierdo Menéndez had to acknowledge that he did have knowledge of the Laja and San Rosendo massacre, although today he remembers nothing. He is currently a councilor of the Sofofa and one of the most powerful businessmen in the country.

And his power makes itself felt. From the presidency of Alimar, and despite having been investigated for the illegal payments to politics that he made through the southern fishing association (ASIPES), to which he belongs, and after it was confirmed in courts and in CIPER that the Fisheries Law voted on by Congress was tailored to the fishing companies and their illegal payments, in January of last year he launched a scathing attack against the government.

Facing the new Fisheries Law that is meant to replace the one obtained through bribes, Izquierdo Menéndez accused "expropriation" and reiterated: "Obviously yes. If the authority changes the conditions, they have to compensate us because they are acquired rights."

Izquierdo Menéndez knows about impunity. Two of his brothers, Diego and Julio Izquierdo Menéndez, participated in the assassination of General René Schneider in October 1970, executed by an extreme right-wing group to prevent Salvador Allende from assuming the presidency.

They were never prosecuted: despite all the judicial evidence demonstrating their participation, they enjoyed the impunity provided to them by the military regime.

THE COLLUSION RULING

Forty-six years had to pass for the families of the victims of Laja and San Rosendo to obtain some justice.

On January 7, the extraordinary visiting minister Carlos Aldana, of the Concepción Court of Appeals, sentenced nine retired Carabineros for their responsibility in 19 crimes of qualified homicide. Only one of them, the former Carabineros officer Alberto Juan Fernández Michell, received a life sentence as the perpetrator of the qualified homicides of: Fernando Grandón Gálvez, Jorge Andrés Lamana Abarzúa, Rubén Antonio Campos López, Juan Carlos Jara Herrera, Raúl Urra Parada, Luis Armando Ulloa Valenzuela, Óscar Omar Sanhueza Contreras, Dagoberto Enrique Garfias Gatica, Luis Alberto del Carmen Araneda Reyes, Juan Antonio Acuña Concha, Juan de Dios Villarroel Espinoza, Heraldo del Carmen Muñoz Muñoz, Federico Riquelme Concha, Jorge Lautaro Zorrilla Rubio, Manuel Mario Becerra Avello, Jack Eduardo Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mario Jara Jara, Wilson Gamadiel Muñoz Rodríguez, and Alfonso Segundo Macaya.

The story that Minister Aldana began to unravel in 2010, when the reopening of the case that had been dismissed was ordered, began to be written in the early hours of September 11, 1973, when Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell ordered the 16 Carabineros of the Laja Precinct under his command to report to the barracks.

That same day, he received an order from Los Ángeles: to detain all officials and political authorities of the Unidad Popular government.

Why were there a group of workers from the Compañía Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) plant, whose owner was and is the Matte Group, among the detainees? Because its executives and the main farmers in the area were the ones who ordered the Carabineros on which people to detain and even murder, according to lists that were drawn up on September 11 itself or that had been prepared in advance.

A similar situation was repeated in other regions of the country.

A part of the sequence of the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre was reported by CIPER on January 13, 2012, just one year after the trial was reopened due to new evidence provided by the Association of Families of Political Executions of the Biobío Region. Without their action, this crime, like so many others, would remain in impunity. And now it is completed with the recent ruling by Minister Aldana.

9/15/73: HUNT IN SAN ROSENDO

Railway machinist Luis Alberto Araneda went at noon to the San Rosendo Engine House to see if he was on the "schedule." It was what he did every day when he was not scheduled to travel the previous day.

When he arrived, he saw through his thick, black-rimmed glasses the paper indicating the itinerary of the trains that would leave that Saturday, September 15, 1973. He looked for his name, and since it did not appear among those who had to travel, he returned to his home in the Quinta Ferroviaria neighborhood.

– "Go back to work, the Carabineros are looking for you, for you and Juan Acuña," his neighbor Eusebio Suárez told him, worried, when he saw him arrive.

But Luis Alberto replied that his machine was in the workshop, that he had nothing to do there. And that, if they were looking for him, he had no reason to worry: the day before, he had arrived from a trip to the south, and as soon as he learned that the Carabineros required militants and union leaders to present themselves, Luis Alberto went to the San Rosendo station.

There, they asked for his details. On a piece of paper, they wrote his name, his RUT, that he was 43 years old, that he was a militant of the Socialist Party (PS), that he presided over the Supply and Price Board (JAP), and that he was a union leader of the Santiago Watt Federation of State Railways.

Afterward, they told him he could leave. Luis Alberto returned home and did not think about it again, not even when the next day Eusebio told him in the street that just a few minutes earlier a police patrol from Laja had asked about him and that he had told them where he lived.

When he was about to reach his home, his wife saw him coming through the window in his gray striped jacket, brown pants, black shoes, and glasses of the same color. She also saw how six or seven Carabineros with helmets blocked his path and pointed their rifles at him just as he was about to open the gate.

Luis Alberto froze. She did not think twice and ran out, screaming at the police to let her, at least, say goodbye. Luis Alberto, who already had his hands tied behind his back, told her to take the money and his watch from his pocket. She did so and watched as they took him away. It was shortly before 4:00 PM. The hunt in San Rosendo had just begun.

Since the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Alberto Fernández came from Laja and did not know who they were supposed to detain, the Carabinero Sergio Castillo Basaul, from the San Rosendo station, served as their guide. If Castillo said that any of the neighbors should be detained, they immediately pointed at them, tied them up, and took them away.

Juan Antonio Acuña, 33 years old, three children, also a machinist and railway leader, was the next on the list. They took him at gunpoint from his house, just as he was about to sit down to have tea with his family.

Then it was the turn of the CMPC employee, Dagoberto Garfias, 23 years old. He was followed by Mario Jara (21), who was at home with his mother and grandmother; Raúl Urra (23), who was also at his home; and the director of School 45 of San Rosendo, Óscar Sanhueza (23).

They were all taken to the San Rosendo Plaza, where another detainee was waiting for them: Jorge Zorrilla, a 25-year-old mine worker who worked in Argentina and was spending his vacation in Chile. He, like Luis Alberto Araneda, presented himself voluntarily to the Carabineros.

They immediately arrested him, and when the others arrived, the patrol tied them up and took them on foot across the pedestrian bridge that connected San Rosendo with Laja. On the other side, a minibus was waiting for them, one of the many courtesies of the CMPC to the patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell, the officer in charge of the Laja Precinct.

They put them on the bus and took them away.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAPER MILL

Since Salvador Allende assumed the presidency in 1970, the company that held the monopoly on paper production in Chile, the CMPC, was on the list of more than one hundred companies that the government intended to nationalize.

The battle to prevent its expropriation involved all business associations and the right wing of the country, and marked a milestone. Its board of directors was headed by former president Jorge Alessandri and its main shareholder Eliodoro Matte Ossa (in 1976 he was succeeded by his son, Eliodoro Matte Larraín), who received such powerful support that it allowed the Matte Group to retain the company.

Due to the importance that the CMPC had for the coup plotters, on September 11 itself, a patrol commanded by Lieutenant Fernández Michell arrived at the Paper Mill plant in Laja. It was 4:00 PM when the nearly 300 employees leaving their shift encountered Fernández, the two non-commissioned officers who seconded him – Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos – and other Carabineros from the Laja Precinct.

They made them form lines. The patrol had a list that the plant superintendent Carlos Ferrer and the personnel chief Humberto Garrido had prepared: the "activists."

Those who appeared on the list were separated and taken, beaten and at gunpoint, to the adjacent building where the company's clinic operated. There, they were beaten again before being loaded into CMPC vehicles and transported to the precinct and to Los Ángeles.

In the group was Eduardo Cuevas, a maintenance mechanic at the Paper Mill and a militant of the MIR. Before they took him away, Lieutenant Fernández grabbed him and showed him to his coworkers still formed in the line: "Look at him for the last time!" he shouted at them. This is how Cuevas himself remembered it in the reconstruction of the scene ordered by Minister Aldana on August 18, 2011.

After more than a year and three months in detention and torture centers, and after going through a War Council, Eduardo Cuevas returned to life. Those who were hunted in the following days would follow a very different path.

9/13 and 9/14/73: THE FALL OF THE STUDENT AND THE WORKERS The first thing the patrol led that day by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos did was go to the Train Station. On the platform, Manuel Becerra was saying goodbye to his mother, grandmother, brother, and cousin.

It was 8:00 AM and in just minutes the train that would take him back to Curacautín, where he was studying secondary education at the Industrial School, would leave. He was about to board when the Carabineros grabbed him.

Amidst the screams of his relatives, Manuel Becerra was taken beaten from the station, loaded into the jeep that the CMPC executives had given them for their mobilization, and taken to the Laja Precinct. It was September 13, 1973. Manuel was 18 years old.

In a matter of minutes, they notified his father, who worked at Transportes Cóndor. He asked his boss to speak with the Carabineros and arrange for his son's release, and then went to the Precinct himself.

There, he spoke with the guard on duty. They told him that they had already registered his detention in the corresponding books. Later, they would tell him that his son had been detained because he "was a militant with the Miristas." Manuel had already been detained during the 1973 parliamentary election campaign for painting MIR slogans in Laja with some friends.

The next on the list was Luis Armando Ulloa, 41 years old, married, five children, a militant of the Communist Party (PC) and a lumber worker at the Barraca Burgos in Laja, where they went to look for him.

It was 8:30 AM. Since his eldest son worked with him, the first thing his coworkers did was notify him, because just when they took him away, he was not there. He ran to his house and notified his mother, still recovering from her last childbirth. They could not do anything to get him out of the precinct either.

That afternoon, the Carabineros returned to the CMPC. As soon as Juan de Dios Villarroel set foot outside the plant, he was kidnapped by Rodríguez's patrol. He was 34 years old, had four children, and the misfortune of working for a company that drew up a blacklist with the names of its own employees.

On that same list were his coworkers Jack Gutiérrez, a MAPU militant; Heraldo Muñoz, from the PS; and Federico Riquelme. They were all taken to the Laja Precinct, where the fruit and vegetable merchant and municipal councilor, Alfonso Macaya, joined them, having arrived voluntarily after hearing on a local radio station that they were looking for him.

They let him go free the next day, but on September 15, they arrived again to detain him, this time at his in-laws' house. He never returned.

On September 14, Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos went out to the streets again in the CMPC jeep. He did not have to go far, because at the exit of the paper mill, just as they were leaving their workday, he detained the two men he was looking for: Wilson Muñoz and Fernando Grandón, who at 34 years old already had eight children.

9/16 and 9/17/73: THE SMALL PRECINCT It is very likely that the Laja Precinct had never been as visited as it was in those days. Parents, wives, brothers, and children of the detainees arrived to see them with the authorization of the officer in charge.

Fernando Grandón's wife arrived the same day he was detained to see him for the first time. She saw him frightened, but without injuries. Luis Armando Ulloa's eldest daughter also went to see him and noticed that his hair had been cut with scissors.

But the worst part was suffered by those from San Rosendo: they all had bruises, scratches, and dog bites. Jorge Zorrilla, the miner detained while on vacation, told one of the detainees' relatives that they had also been made to sit on the "pica" (a torture device).

By the night of September 15, 1973, in the cell of that makeshift construction at Las Viñas No. 104, there were 17 people detained: to the seven they brought from San Rosendo and the nine they kidnapped in Laja, the director of the CMPC Industrial Union, Jorge Lamana, who presented himself voluntarily, was added that afternoon.

On September 16, the last two members of the group arrived at the cell. Juan Carlos Jara (17 years old) was grabbed by Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez's patrol when he was fighting with other young people in the street. Rubén Campos, director of the Consolidada School of Laja, was taken from his house.

Until September 17, visits to the prisoners continued. In the mornings, almost all the relatives arrived with breakfast and clean clothes. Later, they brought them lunch, and at night, dinner. The parish priest of Laja, Father Félix Eicher, also visited them, who naively accompanied some of those who presented themselves voluntarily to the Precinct so that they could "fix their problems." And every time he went, he told the prisoners to be calm, that they would soon be out of there.

On the night of the eve of the national holidays, Lieutenant Fernández Michell received an order. Thirty-eight years later, he would confess to a court part of what happened that night: "I was having dinner in the dining room when non-commissioned officer Garcés told me that Major Solari, the commissioner of Los Ángeles, was on the phone.

He was very upset with me because I had sent many people to the regiment without asking him. I had done it because of a space issue. I was scared that he was angry, because I had gotten married without permission from my superiors and was expecting my first daughter, so I had to do whatever he told me, otherwise I risked another sanction.

He asked me how many detainees I had in the unit. I told him 19 people. He gave me the order to 'eliminate them.' He told me that if I didn't do it, I would have to face the consequences. Then he hung up. I immediately called Garcés and Rodríguez and told them to get the personnel ready."

9/18/73: SLAUGHTER IN THE FOREST

The two police officers who followed Fernández in the chain of command made a few calls and in just minutes obtained ropes, wires, shovels, vehicles, and even a remote place where they could carry out the massacre. They had carbines and rifles for all the precinct officials. Also alcohol. Everything was provided by the CMPC. The plan to murder the 19 was already underway.

It would be one of the Carabineros who participated in the massacre and who kept silent for 38 years who would be the first to break the oath of silence taken on September 18, 1973.

Samuel Vidal gathered his courage

"When they called us to the barracks, the curfew had already begun. Upon arriving, they gathered us in a room we used as a dining room and ordered us to drink pisco in large quantities. Almost all the members of the Laja Precinct were there, from Lieutenant Fernández Michell downwards.

Those who did not arrive at the barracks would join us later. After drinking, Lieutenant Fernández told us to take the 19 detainees out of the precinct cells. We tied their hands behind their backs with hemp and hay bale wire, took them outside, and loaded them onto the CMPC bus.

I had to guard the inside of the bus. That's why I had my Sig rifle in my hands. We took the highway toward Los Ángeles. At the front of the caravan, in a jeep, were Fernández, Garcés, and Peter Wilkens, a German farmer in the area."

Until Corporal Samuel Vidal testified in June 2011, Wilkens' name never appeared in the investigation. Later, former Lieutenant Fernández and several Carabineros ratified his participation in that night's massacre.

That was how the truth was learned: that non-commissioned officer Evaristo Garcés Rubilar called him, that Wilkens accompanied Fernández in the CMPC jeep that led the caravan, and that, after the Perales bridge, after a curve in the road that connects Laja and Los Ángeles, it was Peter Wilkens who told him to turn right and stop 300 meters further on, in a clearing next to a pine forest.

In 1985, Arturo Arriagada, a 19-year-old youth with no criminal record, entered Peter Wilkens' estate in Laja and killed his butler. Then he entered Wilkens' room and shot him with a shotgun. Afterward, he loaded the bodies into his van and buried them on the side of the road, very close to where, twelve years earlier, they had buried the prisoners from Laja and San Rosendo.

Since only the Carabineros who were there that night and swore silence knew that Wilkens had been there, no one connected the events.

According to a report by Contacto, when the death penalty was about to be abolished in Chile in 2001, Arriagada was sentenced to life imprisonment, and by then, due to his good behavior, he had been incorporated into the Concepción Center for Education and Work (CET).

For his criminal act, the justice system did work. Wilkens, on the other hand, died without being questioned for having been an accomplice and having guided and observed how a group of police officers executed 19 workers in the early hours of September 18, 1973, at the San Juan Estate.

A night that 1st Corporal (ret.) Samuel Vidal Riquelme remembered very well on June 14, 2011, when he was the first to break the pact of silence: "Since it was sand, it wasn't difficult to dig. We made a trench 2 to 3 meters long by 1.5 deep.

Then we took the 19 detainees out of the vehicles. We made some kneel in front of the trench; we left the others standing. They were in front of us, with their backs to us. I remember very well when the Carabinero Gabriel González argued strongly with Nelson Casanova, because the latter did not want to shoot.

It was so much that I intervened and told González that if he did anything to Casanova, I would shoot him with the Sig rifle I had in my hand. The tension was so high. We were all very agitated, but still, when the officer gave the order, we fired. We all fired, including Lieutenant Alberto Fernández Michell. We shot them in the back."

After Vidal, 2nd Sergeant (ret.) Pedro Parra also decided to remember and speak: "There were no military personnel or DINA agents; it was just us from the Precinct, except for the three who stayed on guard.

When we stopped, the truck was very close to some bushes. The night was clear and there was a moon, but the vehicle lights were still used. With the fight between Gabriel González and Nelson Casanova, I finally realized the weight of what was happening.

Everything was already decided. Lieutenant Fernández Michell didn't say anything; he was just one more of the group. The detainees were in front of us with their hands tied. I had a Mauser carbine. When Fernández gave the order, we all aimed at the detainees who had been assigned to us. None of them complained or said anything. They gave the order to fire. We all did it."

Corporal Samuel Vidal continued remembering:

"Some fell directly into the pit. Others, already dead, we had to push so they would fall, or we grabbed them and threw them into the pit. They were left one on top of the other. Then we covered them with the same sand and some branches and headed toward Laja.

When we arrived at the Precinct, we continued drinking the pisco and drinks that the lieutenant had brought from the CMPC paper mill casino. Only then did those who stayed on guard know what had happened. Fernández gave the order to keep silent. Afterward, everything continued as if nothing had happened."

Days later, Carabineros officials returned to the area to cover the bodies with lime, the kind used at the CMPC plant, which had allegedly been provided to the police by officials of the same company. This was established by Minister Carlos Aldana in his ruling.

9/18/73: AFTER THE MASSACRE

On the morning of that September 18, Gloria Urra got up early, prepared breakfast, and went to the Laja Precinct to see her brother Raúl. But the cell was empty. Now that they were cleaning it, it looked much larger.

Hilda Bravo, the wife of the fruit merchant Alfonso Macaya, had not been allowed to see him when they locked him up two days earlier, so that morning she hoped to finally hug her husband. But they told her the same thing they told the mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the 19 workers who were there until the night before: they had been transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment.

The relatives grouped together and set off to look for them. At the Los Ángeles Regiment, they did not find them. They went through the jail and the IANSA gymnasium; nothing. Afterward, some went to Concepción and asked at the Regional Stadium, on Quiriquina Island, in Talcahuano; their names did not appear on the lists of prisoners.

Days passed, and the desperate search was repeated over and over again in Chillán, in Linares. That was how it was for weeks, for years. Many spent their savings traveling to different cities in the country, searching and asking. They did not get a single answer. They went through Temuco until they reached Santiago. Everything was useless: the 19 had vanished.

THE COMPLICIT ROLE OF ROSA EGNEM

Of what happened in October 1973, a month after the massacre, the families of the 19 disappeared prisoners knew nothing. When a local farmer notified the Yumbel Carabineros, 20 kilometers from Laja, that his dogs had found human remains, the conspiracy of silence had other actors here.

The report was sent to Judge Corina Mera, of the Yumbel Court. But since the judge was on medical leave, the court secretary received it: the lawyer Rosa Egnem, who in 1979 was accused by the victims' families of having kept the report on illegal inhumation in the court's safe and even subsequently of having erased it, altering judicial records.

But those who were informed of the farmer's discovery were his victimizers. Because the truth is that, in that same month of October and in complete secrecy, Lieutenant Fernández secretly exhumed the bodies and ordered them buried in the Yumbel Parish Cemetery.

It was in that year, '79, that the circle of protection for those involved in the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre was deployed again.

Because the pressure from the families of the 19, with the support of the Archbishopric of Concepción, which in 1979 filed a complaint against the Carabineros of the Laja Precinct, opened a door. The Concepción Court appointed José Martínez Gaensly as visiting minister.

It would be the first time that Corporal Samuel Vidal would be compelled to remember what happened on the night of September 18, 1973.

Vidal testified the same thing as his 15 companions from the Laja Precinct: the prisoners had been taken to the Los Ángeles Regiment. Minister Martínez asked the military personnel of that regiment about the 19 workers.

They assured him that they never entered there. Then, Minister Martínez did something unusual for the terror that reigned at the time: he questioned the Laja Carabineros again. Although they added details, everyone said the same thing: they had put them on a minibus provided by the CMPC and, on the way to Los Ángeles, they had handed them over to a "military patrol."

The investigation by Minister José Martínez opened a second door: it was learned that the bodies were in a mass grave in the Yumbel Parish Cemetery. That they had been taken there in October 1973, without anyone knowing, when they were taken out of the hole where they had been buried after a farmer reported to the Yumbel Carabineros that his dogs were gnawing on human remains.

The report with the complaint arrived at the Court of Greater Quantities of the town, where the court secretary, the lawyer Rosa Egnem, hid it in the safe. It was never investigated.

Without any echelon of the justice system assuming how they had arrived...

not who had executed the 19 bodies, nor who had taken them to the cemetery. In 1979, the remains were identified and handed over to their families, who had searched for them relentlessly for six years.

A new victim would be added to the 19 prisoners: the CMPC worker, Luis Sáez, who had gone missing on September 20 and whose remains appeared at the Fundo San Juan, the same place where the 19 from Laja and San Rosendo had been illegally buried.

And that was all, because in March 1980, Martínez declared himself incompetent and referred the records to the Ad Hoc Military Prosecutor's Office of Concepción. Within three months, the case was dismissed, and at the end of 1981, the Supreme Court ratified the dismissal. That was the end of the reach of justice for the 19 murdered men of Laja and San Rosendo.

Rosa Egnem was appointed judge and continued her path to the top of the judiciary without obstacles; the carabineros of the station continued their lives without anyone questioning them again. Roberto Izquierdo Menéndez continued doing business and being a respectable businessman.

None of them ever believed that the truth would resurface 27 years after the massacre, thanks to the persistence of the victims' families.

In 2010, the Association of Relatives of Political Executions (AFEP) and the Program for the Continuation of Law 19.123, of the Ministry of the Interior, requested the reopening of the case from the Concepción Court of Appeals.

It was then that Minister Carlos Aldana annulled the resolution that had definitively dismissed the carabineros and the ratification of that ruling by the Supreme Court. Thus, the summary and investigation were reopened (Case File 27-2010).

The time had come to unravel several mysteries.

OTHER MURDERS

Although he was the first to be detained, Lieutenant (ret.) Fernández Michell was the last of the members of the Laja station to testify. On August 16, 2011, he was arrested in Iquique, where he worked as an instructor at a driving school. And when he broke the pact of silence the following day, he started from the beginning:

“I was at my home—which was provided to me by the CMPC—when I received the news of the Military Coup. I had arrived at the Laja station in mid-1973 as a substitute sub-lieutenant, and since there was no officer, I remained in charge.

I was 22 years old. By September 11, I was the police authority, and as soon as I learned of the Coup, while waiting for orders, I called for the mobilization of all carabineros. This was coordinated by Sub-Officer Major Evaristo Garcés Rubilar and Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos, who were next in command under me.”

“That same morning, I received the order from the Los Ángeles headquarters to detain all government authorities, sub-delegates, and the mayor. The action was carried out without problems, and after detaining them in our unit, they were transferred to the Los Ángeles Regiment in buses provided by the Paper Company, because I already had many people in the barracks.

Days later, my superior in Los Ángeles, Commissioner Aroldo Solari Sanhueza, ordered me to begin detaining all the activists in the commune. Since the CMPC had a chemical plant, the activists could take it over and act against us.”

“That was the information that reached me from military intelligence. One of those days, Army Colonel Alfredo Rerhern Pulido arrived to reiterate the order. I ordered Sub-Officers Garcés and Rodríguez to proceed with the personnel to carry out that task, because they knew those people better.”

Colonel Rerhern left a lethal trail during those months in the area, always linked to other murders of leaders of important companies: he participated in the kidnapping and homicide of 23 employees and workers of the El Toro and El Abanico hydroelectric plants of Endesa, in Los Ángeles.

All of them were executed between late 1973 and early 1974. The remains of some of them were found at the La Mona estate, which after the Coup d'État was bought by Forestal Mininco of the CMPC of the Matte Group. The sentence for this case was signed by visiting judge Jorge Zepeda in November 2010.

It was in those same days of Judge Zepeda's sentence that Carlos Aldana reopened the trial for the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre. By then, of the 17 carabineros who made up the Laja station in September 1973, three had died and another three would have to be dismissed as they did not participate in the executions, having remained on guard duty at the station.

It remained to be determined what role the other 11 police officers played.

But there were other participations in the 19 qualified homicides that had remained in the shadows. Especially that of the CMPC executives and the role played by Judge Rosa Egnem. Was the accusation made by the victims' families about the concealment of the police report regarding the illegal exhumation false? Because if it were true, how had she not been sanctioned?

The relatives of the executed knew they had not lied. But another four years would have to pass for the official truth to emerge, when in September 2015 Minister Carlos Aldana asked for her statement in relation to her testimony before Minister José Martínez.

By then, Rosa Egnem was already a Supreme Court justice: she was appointed in 2006, during the government of Michelle Bachelet. Her 1978 statement reads:

«Miss Mera (Corina Mera, presiding judge of the Yumbel Higher Court in September 1973) returned to her duties and the first thing I did was hand her the report…, but she told me ‘just leave it in the safe and don't take it out of there.’ But in the meantime, I had entered that report into the entry log without consulting her, and when she ordered me to keep it stored, I told her that I had entered it… She said to me ‘what will happen when they ask (from the Concepción Court of Appeals) for an account of the status of the case?’ I got scared and erased it from the entry log…, but I also remember that later I went back and placed the same entry in the same place where I had erased it…, because I regretted having erased it before…».

When Milton Juica, then a Supreme Court justice, was consulted about these facts, he stated:

-Regarding Judge Corina Mera of Yumbel, a disciplinary sanction was applied to her for these facts. And to the secretary of that time, the current justice Rosa Egnem, in the first instance, a sanction was also applied, which the Supreme Court left without effect, and she did not receive disciplinary sanctions, as the judge who was responsible for that tribunal (in 1973) did.

Indeed, the sanction against Rosa Egnem was issued by the Concepción Court of Appeals in 1978, which was reviewed and revoked by the Supreme Court that same year.

When in 2015 Justice Juica spoke about this delicate matter, he took the opportunity to pay tribute to Minister José Martínez Gaensly, of the Concepción Court, who tried to advance the truth of the 19 qualified homicides:

«I have incidental knowledge, because I do not know the case. But regarding that terrible event in which 19 people were executed by firing squad, an investigation was carried out by a minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals who had the virtue of recovering the bodies, performing all the corresponding forensic examinations, and made significant progress in this matter until the case ended up being absorbed by the military justice system, dismissed, and amnestied».

Last December 16, Justice Rosa del Carmen Egnem Salgado was appointed president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal, a position she will assume on January 31. It was as if she had prepared for this important role.

And this is because at the end of February 2018, she herself asked to move from the Third Chamber (which sees constitutional matters) to the First Chamber, to replace Justice Patricio Valdés, who was also the president of the Electoral Qualification Tribunal and retired.

Rosa Egnem has the support of the new president of the Supreme Court, Guillermo Silva, to whom the Laja and San Rosendo Massacre and the impunity of crimes against humanity in that region are not unknown.

Silva served as secretary of the First Civil Court of Los Ángeles at the time and in August 1974 assumed the position of judge of Mulchén, where the murders were even more brutal than in Laja. In 1980, he was appointed judge of the 2nd Civil Court of Concepción and it fell to him to oversee the case regarding the death by self-immolation of Sebastián Acevedo Becerra.

A death that would make history, but not because of the role played by the current president of the Supreme Court.

THE TRIAL OF THE LAJA EXECUTIONERS

38 years had passed, and many of the carabineros who served at the Laja station in September 1973 tried in 2011 to maintain their oath of silence regarding what happened in the early hours of September 18 of that year.

It was the testimonies of those who did decide to confess that allowed Minister Carlos Aldana, in August 2011, to order the arrest of the 14 officials still alive who participated in the detentions and the execution of the workers murdered at the Fundo San Juan.

Afterward, everyone spoke. On August 18, 2011, Aldana carried out the reconstruction of the scene with all the detainees regarding the chain of events that ended the lives of the 19 workers. It was a key, dramatic day.

Afterward, the minister prosecuted nine of the carabineros for homicide and one for concealment. Three others, those who remained on guard duty that night, were dismissed. Despite the brutality of the crimes, until January 7, the day Aldana issued the sentences, everyone was free.

1.- Lieutenant (ret.) Alberto Juan Fernández Michell: Officer in charge of the Laja station and responsible for executing the orders that came from Los Ángeles. He ordered and participated in the detentions and the execution at the Fundo San Juan.

He was called to retire from the institution in 1979 for “lack of vocation.” He was prosecuted as the author of homicide and sentenced to prison. His defense appealed and he was released after paying a bail of $300,000. On January 7, he was sentenced by Aldana to life imprisonment.

2.- Sub-Officer Evaristo Garcés Rubilar: Second in command at the Laja station. He played a key role in organizing the detentions and the slaughter of the 19 at the Fundo San Juan. He obtained the location for the clandestine execution and contacted the German farmer Peter Wilkens. He died on December 25, 1987, at age 60, from a vascular accident resulting from diabetes.

3.- Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos: He was in charge of several of the detentions and had a leading role in managing the execution. Shortly after the massacre, he joined the DINA. He died on December 22, 2002, at the Dipreca Hospital from metastatic gastric cancer that caused multiple organ failure. He was 64 years old.

4.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Lisandro Alberto Martínez García: He was prosecuted as the author of homicide and was released on provisional liberty with a bail of $300,000.

5.- Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Luis Antonio León Godoy: “When my sub-officer Garcés gave the order, we all had to shoot,” he confessed. Prosecuted as the author of homicide, he was released on provisional liberty after paying a bail of $300,000.

6.- Sergeant (ret.) José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza: In the reconstruction of the scene, he confessed his participation, being in the CMPC jeep the whole time, illuminating what was happening. He saw everything, but did not pull the trigger.

Prosecuted for concealment of homicide, he obtained his release after paying a bail of $100,000. On January 7, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, with the benefit of supervised release, as an accessory.

7.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike: One of the first to acknowledge what happened in the early hours of September 18, 1973. He joined the caravan when they were already arriving at the Fundo San Juan. Prosecuted for homicide, he obtained his release after paying a bail of $300,000. On January 7, he was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as an author.

8.- Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Florencio Osvaldo Olivares Dade: He acknowledged his participation, saying: “They were difficult days, we slept little.” Prosecuted for homicide and after paying $300,000 bail, he was released on provisional liberty.

9.- Sergeant 2nd Class (ret.) Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras: He confessed details of the massacre. Prosecuted for homicide, he had been on provisional liberty since paying $300,000 bail. Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as an author of the homicides.

10.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Gabriel Washington González Salazar: After denying any participation, he had to acknowledge his role in the homicides. He is free.

11.- Corporal 1st Class (ret.) Samuel Francisco Vidal Riquelme: The first to break the pact of silence. His testimony was key to clarifying what happened to the 19 victims in Laja. Prosecuted for homicide, he also obtained his release after paying the $300,000 bail.

12.- Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila: He belonged to the Carabineros for 30 years. In his first statement, he said that after September 11, the Laja station moved to CMPC facilities. Later he confessed that he shot when ordered to do so. Prosecuted for homicide and on provisional liberty, on January 7 he was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison as an author.

13.- Sergeant 1st Class (ret.) Nelson Casanova Salgado: He denied his participation, but it was proven in the investigation. Prosecuted for homicide, he was free after paying bail. Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as an author.

14.- Corporal 1st Class (ret.) Luis Muñoz Cuevas: As he remained on guard duty at the barracks that night, Minister Aldana dismissed his case.

15.- Sub-Officer (ret.) Anselmo del Carmen San Martín Navarrete: His mission that night was to stop traffic in the hospital area so the caravan could pass. Afterward, he returned to the station. He was dismissed. On January 7, Aldana sentenced him to 5 years and one day in prison as an accessory to the 19 qualified homicides.

16.- Sub-Officer (ret.) Juan de Dios Oviedo Riquelme: He also remained on guard duty at the Laja station that night, for which he was dismissed.

17.- Sub-Officer Sergio Castillo Basaul: He did not participate in the firing squad, but his role was decisive in guiding the detentions in San Rosendo. He died on September 16, 2005, from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, esophageal varices, and Laennec's cirrhosis, which is caused by alcoholism.

LUIS SÁEZ: THE 20TH VICTIM EXECUTED

The first time the carabineros of the Laja station went to look for Luis Sáez Espinoza (37 years old) at his home in the Mario Medina neighborhood was on September 11, 1973, at 10:00 AM. Sáez was an employee and union leader of the CMPC, as well as a militant of the MAPU.

As soon as he learned of the Coup, he went into hiding. Since he was not there when the carabineros arrived, they raided his house in front of his wife, Rosa Ibaca, and his children. Three hours later, the patrol under the command of Sergeant Pedro Rodríguez Ceballos returned in the jeep that the Matte Group company had provided them, with helmets and long weapons.

They raided his home again, but this time they detained Rosa. Pointing their rifles at her, they took her to some neighbors, and since no one knew where Luis was, they left her there. The next day the scene was repeated.

On September 14, Sergeant Rodríguez arrived again to look for Luis and, for the third time, did not find him. That day he gave his wife the message: that he should turn himself in as Alfonso Macaya had done the day before.

Minutes later, social workers from the company arrived to see how the family was doing and promised to speak with Lieutenant Fernández Michell so they would not raid that house anymore. The children were traumatized.

Six days later, the parish priest of Laja, Félix Eicher, went to speak with the woman. He told her he knew where Luis was and that he wanted to speak with her. The priest took her in his truck. When they met, she told him he had to turn himself in.

Luis was afraid; he knew his life was in danger, that just two days earlier the group of 19 detainees had disappeared without a trace. So that nothing would happen to him, the priest convinced him to go to Los Ángeles and not to the Laja station.

He agreed. That same day, September 20, 1973, shortly before the curfew, they went in the priest's truck to the Los Ángeles Prefecture. Luis got out of the vehicle, presented himself, and was detained there. Priest Eicher was a witness.

The next day, the same priest notified Sergeant Rodríguez that Luis had already turned himself in.

Rosa went to leave him clothes and food at the Red Cross office, but everything was returned to her because Luis was not in any detention center. His wife searched for him for years with the help of the priest and the bishop of Los Ángeles, Orozimbo Fuenzalida, but nothing. Nothing more was ever heard of Luis.

The search extended until 1979, when the investigation led by visiting judge José Martínez led to the whereabouts of those executed in Laja and San Rosendo, but not to their perpetrators. While the others had been taken to the Yumbel Parish Cemetery, Luis's remains appeared buried clandestinely in the same place where the massacre took place, at the Fundo San Juan, next to a CMPC pine forest.

He had a bullet hole and was tied with wire.

Source: ciperchile.cl, January 17, 2020

Relatives of the San Rosendo massacre value the Supreme Court ruling that confirmed sentences for responsible carabineros

“It is said and sometimes repeated that delayed justice is not justice, but we, always with a look toward the future, sincere and without a spirit of revenge, can say that ‘justice, even if late, is also justice when it arrives,’” the families of the 19 people executed at the hands of Carabineros de Chile officials one week after the 1973 coup d'état stated in a statement.

On March 1, 2024, the Supreme Court released the final ruling regarding the cassation appeals filed by both the plaintiffs and the defendants against the ruling of the Concepción Court of Appeals from August 2021.

In summary, the Supreme Court maintained almost in its entirety what was resolved at the time by the Concepción Court, maintaining the sentences of the direct material executors of the 19 homicides of Laja and San Rosendo residents that occurred in the early hours of September 18, 1973, and whose perpetrators were former uniformed officers of the Laja Carabineros station at that time.

Indeed, it was resolved to maintain: the life imprisonment sentence regarding former carabinero lieutenant Alberto Juan Fernández Michell; the sentence of 15 years and one day of major imprisonment in its maximum degree regarding former carabineros Gerson Nilo Saavedra Reinike, Pedro del Carmen Parra Utreras, Víctor Manuel Campos Dávila, Nelson Casanova Salgado, José Jacinto Otárola Sanhueza, Mario Sebastián Montoya Burgos, and Manuel Enrique Cerda Robledo, all named as authors of the 19 qualified homicides.

Finally, the sentence of 5 years of major imprisonment in its minimum degree regarding former carabinero Anselmo del Carmen San Martin Navarrete was maintained.

It must also be considered that, at the time, regarding four other former carabineros, Luis León Godoy, Lisandro Martínez García, Gabriel González Salazar, and Samuel Vidal Riquelme, uniformed officers who had been temporarily dismissed by the investigating minister of the case, Carlos Aldana Fuentes, due to alleged insanity, what was resolved by the Concepción Court in its August 2021 ruling is maintained, in the sense that it was not appropriate to favor them with such a procedural decision and, instead, it was ordered to continue the trial against them by a non-disqualified judge, also foreseeing condemnatory sentences for each one with penalties similar to those mentioned above.

In turn, the Supreme Court ruling ended up acquitting Pedro Jarpa Foester of criminal responsibility regarding the homicides, considering that the mentioned crimes were not attributable to him due to the lack of intent or eventual intent in his actions.

However, the same Court takes charge of the criminal reproach that the conduct displayed by him deserved on the occasion of the detentions and kidnappings of former CMPC Laja Plant workers, mainly his actions consisting of the direct identification of the people who were being detained and kidnapped by carabineros at the exit of CMPC shifts.

Finally, regarding the CMPC company and its relationship and link to the investigated criminal acts, the relatives pointed out that "our conviction is reinforced that said paper company and its agents effectively allowed, encouraged, and facilitated the consummation of the criminal design, as irrefutably stated in the investigation of Minister Carlos Aldana, in the considerations taken into account by the Concepción Court, and in the reflections and considerations adopted in the Supreme Court ruling—supply of vehicles, lime to cover the victims' bodies, ownership or possession of the property where the victims were sacrificed, provision of drivers from the company itself, etc.—".

In summary, the Supreme Court maintained almost in its entirety what was resolved at the time by the Concepción Court, maintaining the sentences of the direct material executors of the 19 homicides of Laja and San Rosendo residents that occurred in the early hours of September 18, 1973, and whose perpetrators were former uniformed officers of the Laja Carabineros station at that time.

In that sense, they point out that "remember in this regard that, at the time, a definitive dismissal was issued for CMPC executive Carlos Ferrer Gómez and management driver Rodolfo Román Román, due to the death of these individuals, considering that they had previously been prosecuted.

Regarding Lionel Alejandro Aguilera Covarrubias, the Supreme Court ruling did not innovate what was ruled by the Concepción Court."

Conclusions

In their statement, the relatives maintain that "we are putting an end to a long and, why not say it, often exhausting, tiring, cruel, and certainly painful path that from its beginning saw practically 51 years pass in anticipation of this final moment from the judicial and human point of view. This is the reality and the time we had to face."

In this regard, they stated that "it is said and sometimes repeated that delayed justice is not justice, but we, always with a look toward the future, sincere and without a spirit of revenge, can say that ‘justice, even if late, is also justice when it arrives.’ This path, initiated before the Courts immediately after the detention and disappearance of our relatives in September 1973, began with the presentation of the first writs of amparo in search of knowing their whereabouts, the 'Where are they?'.

Appeals that, as happened in similar cases throughout the country, were rejected by the Courts of Justice."

"Subsequently, in 1979 and with the extraordinary and invaluable support of the Social Department of the Archbishopric of Concepción, the first criminal complaints were filed against those responsible for these mournful events, with the investigation being assumed by the courageous Minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, an example of human and legal strength, Mr.

José Martínez Gaensly. To him and the lawyers Martita Worner, Jorge Barudi, Fernando Saldaña, among others, our eternal recognition and respect," they recounted.

"Having finished this path, in the legal and human sense, we can express our peace of mind for what we did, for the paths we opened, for the truths we denounced, for the relevance we granted at the national level to this cause, which has been and will be the best tribute of memory and dignity for our parents, spouses, siblings, and children, who saw their lives vilely cut short in the early hours of a September 18, 1973."

Regarding this, they described that "the brief and valuable investigation of Minister Martínez Gaensly would conclude with the location of our relatives' bodies, their identification and handover for their dignified burial, and with his declaration of incompetence, given that the responsibility of the carabineros of the former Laja station appeared clearly in the facts, which is why he had to transfer the process to the Military justice system, which proceeded almost immediately and without any investigation to apply the Amnesty Law, dismissing the case without making any responsibility effective for the uniformed authors of the facts."

Thus, "once democracy was recovered in our country, an tireless process began to obtain justice for so many human rights violations that occurred during the dictatorial stage. This is how cases like ours, in 2010, were reopened, with the responsibility for their investigation being given to the minister of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Mr.

Carlos Aldana Fuentes, who only in 2018 issued a condemnatory sentence in the first instance regarding the uniformed officers involved."

"Subsequently, the final sentence issued by Minister Mr. Aldana was appealed, with the Concepción Court of Appeals accepting a large part of our claims, substantially increasing the sentences imposed on the former uniformed officers, also condemning Pedro Jarpa Foester, a former employee of the CMPC Laja Plant, and also substantially increasing the civil indemnity reparations granted to the relatives," they assert.

"Having finished this path, in the legal and human sense, we can express our peace of mind for what we did, for the paths we opened, for the truths we denounced, for the relevance we granted at the national level to this cause, which has been and will be the best tribute of memory and dignity for our Parents, Spouses, Siblings, and Children, who saw their lives vilely cut short in the early hours of a September 18, 1973," they recounted.

Source: interferencia.cl, March 4, 2024

Justice reopens Laja San Rosendo case and orders four dismissed former carabineros to stand trial

The justice system reopened the Laja San Rosendo case regarding four former members of the Carabineros who had been dismissed due to alleged mental incapacity.

The objective of this unusual measure, considering that it is a case already closed, is to determine the sentences that the former uniformed officers should serve.

Captured former carabinero convicted of human rights violations in the Laja and San Rosendo massacre case.

It was a year ago when the Supreme Court issued the final ruling in this, one of the most emblematic cases of human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, convicting 9 former members of the Carabineros for the homicides of 19 workers from the paper company and the Railways.

In the sentence, however, the dismissal of four former uniformed officers was revoked, regarding whom mental problems had been proven that prevented them from being brought to trial; these are Lisandro Martínez, Luis León, Gabriel González, and Samuel Vidal, regarding whom the case was reopened, according to the resolution of the new visiting minister, Waldemar Koch.

Lawyer Patricio Robles, for some plaintiff families in the Laja San Rosendo case, explained that even before the dismissal was issued, there were doubts about the real mental situation of the accused.

Among the victims' relatives, there is peace of mind and satisfaction with the measure, because, as spokesperson Gloria Urra said, it allows justice to advance, and above all—she stressed—when it comes to people who managed to avoid a conviction with psychiatric records.

In the resolution ordering the sentences to be issued against the former carabineros, Judge Koch, however, asks as a prior measure that the Legal Medical Service carry out new psychiatric evaluations.

In this regard, Emilio Araneda, son of one of the victims of the Laja San Rosendo massacre, criticized that the courts avoid issuing sentences through means outside the Judiciary.

It will be the Legal Medical Service of Los Ángeles that will set the mental examinations for the accused, before the visiting minister decides whether to bring them to trial or eventually dismiss the case again.

by Manuel Cabrera Ruiz

Source: biobiochile.cl, March 14, 2025