Until now, it was believed that the first forcibly disappeared persons found had been riddled with bullets by Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo station before being thrown into the Lonquén kilns. However, international experts confirmed to the families that the cause of death—according to the traces on the remains of the 15 peasants—was due to blunt force trauma.

There has never been an event in Isla de Maipo as horrendous as the murder of the 15 peasants at the hands of Carabineros from the station that existed in the commune in 1973. Today, the pain that has remained with the victims' families for almost 35 years has become more intense after learning another major detail of the history: they were not murdered by gunfire, but were simply beaten to death, only to be thrown later into the lime kilns in Lonquén.

Only 517 bone fragments of the 15 victims were saved from disappearing forever and were identified following anthropological and dental analyses by a group of international experts convened by the Government.

It was the Spanish expert Francisco Echeverría who carried out the detailed follow-up of all the forensic work on these remains, as part of an Executive program to rectify the identification errors of the remains found in the early nineties in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago.

Echeverría met with the families of the 15 victims and, through tears, told them of the discovery that made the Lonquén episode even more dramatic. "With complete certainty, I can state today that the remains we have separated and examined correspond to those of the 15 victims who were found in 1978, and it was established that the cause of death corresponds to a violent, homicidal death.

There are no bullet impact injuries; these are blunt force traumatic injuries. Death was caused by beatings." According to the expert, the old report from the Legal Medical Service did not establish this fundamental fact.

Until now, the relatives were convinced that their loved ones, although they had suffered beatings at the Isla de Maipo station, were ultimately riddled with bullets before being thrown into the Lonquén lime kilns.

In these lime kilns, the bodies of Sergio Maureira Lillo and his four sons, Rodolfo Antonio, Sergio Miguel, Segundo Armando, and José Manuel, were found; as well as Óscar Hernández Flores and his brothers Carlo and Nelson; Enrique Astudillo Álvarez and his two sons, Omar and Ramón; and the young men Miguel Brant, Iván Ordóñez, José Herrera, and Manuel Navarro, aged between 17 and 51.

The discovery was made due to a peasant's confession to a priest. The kilns were two old nine-meter-high chimneys once used for the preparation of lime, located inside the El Triunfador agricultural cooperative, about 14 kilometers from the city of Talagante.

The official version to justify the Lonquén crime was that once detained at the Isla de Maipo station, one of the peasants confessed that weapons were hidden in some kilns at the abandoned Lonquén mine.

That alone was enough for them to transport the prisoners, who, according to the same explanation, attacked the police, resulting in everyone being killed in an armed confrontation. Curiously, no Carabinero was injured.

At the beginning of April 1979, the visiting judge Adolfo Bañados declared himself incompetent, and the case process passed to the military justice system. On July 2, the military prosecutor issued an indictment against Captain Lautaro Castro Mendoza and Carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, Jacinto Torres González, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, and Justo Romo Peralta as the perpetrators of the death of the 15 Lonquén victims.

However, on August 16, the Amnesty Law was applied to them; they were set free, and the case was dismissed. This resolution was confirmed by the Martial Court on October 22, 1979. Forensic work on the bone remains continues, so the inauguration of a memorial on October 4 at the Parish Cemetery of Isla de Maipo to remember the 15 peasants will only be a symbolic act.

Operation "Retiro de Televisores" (Removal of Television Sets) The discovery of the bodies of the 15 peasants at the end of 1978 was an alert for Pinochet, who determined, with an encrypted message decrypted by each regiment, the so-called Operation Retiro de Televisores, as the Army itself internally called it.

The order was clear: exhume the bodies of murdered prisoners and throw them into the sea. The means? Helicopters from the Army Aviation Command and the Chilean Air Force, which collaborated, for example, in the case of the 26 bodies in Calama, victims of the Caravan of Death.

In various proceedings, there are statements from non-commissioned officers, now retired, who acknowledge having held in their hands the cryptogram sent from the Army General Command ordering the reporting of clandestine graves in order to "clean them up." The discovery of the Lonquén victims put an end to the concealment of the truth about the forcibly disappeared, which had been a permanent policy of the dictatorship. "This has been etched into us.

The relatives do not sleep thinking about what they suffered at the hands of their executioners. For me, it has been very hard to know this just recently. We talked about it at home, and it has been even more painful.

It reopens our wounds and adds more suffering to what we have already carried for 35 years. At least now we will be able to give them a dignified burial, but this will be etched into us for the rest of our lives," Corina Maureira told LND through tears.

For Isla de Maipo councilman Emilio Astudillo, what was revealed "surprised us bitterly after knowing how people who wore the Carabinero uniform could be so cruel to our relatives and brutally beat them to death.

That is more shocking. It hurts the soul and the heart more to know how they were really murdered." Councilman Astudillo was 16 years old in '73. He had to assume the responsibility of becoming the head of the household and taking care of his mother and younger siblings after being left without his father and his other older brothers, Ramón and Omar.

Furthermore, he had to endure the burden of searching for them for five years in concentration camps with the hope of finding them alive. "Only those who live through it can realize the psychological damage it causes to a person and their family.

Only with the discovery of the victims in the Lonquén kilns in '78 did we have some peace and closure, because we knew it was them." The memorial The relatives of the Lonquén victims say they wanted to build a memorial to deposit the remains of their loved ones that have already been identified in the country; but so that what happened with the remains from Patio 29—where the bodies were wrongly delivered to their families—does not happen again, both they and the Government opted for samples of the victims' bodies to be sent to a laboratory in Texas, where, within a year, the results will certify if they are indeed their relatives, who were murdered and thrown into the Lonquén kilns, subsequently exhumed from the mass grave in Isla de Maipo, and transferred to the Legal Medical Service in Santiago. In 2006, the relatives achieved the exhumation and hoped that after two years they would be able to have their relatives' remains to bury them. But reality has placed them in another scenario, and they will have to wait one more year. For this reason, they decided to inaugurate the memorial anyway on October 4, an act that will be attended by Government authorities and human rights organizations. "We must not forget that the Lonquén victims were the first discovery of forcibly disappeared persons in the country, when the dictatorship denied that they existed. Even in the United Nations, the legal existence of our relatives was unknown. The former ambassador to the UN in those years, Sergio Diez, said that our companions had no legal existence or had gone abroad of their own free will. So, the Lonquén discovery marked a before and after regarding the forcibly disappeared in Chile," maintains Emilio Astudillo. The memorial will, however, contain 17 graves, because the relatives chose to include the names of Juan de Dios Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo, killed in September '73 at the Naltagua bridge by the same police officers from the Isla de Maipo station. Nelson Caucoto, plaintiff lawyer: "We will ask for state reparation" Margarita Herreros was the first judge in charge of the case after its reopening upon the filing of the complaint by Isla de Maipo councilman Emilio Astudillo. However, she was there for a short time, as she was appointed as a member of the Supreme Court. Since then, the case has passed through the hands of several judges. Some did not even manage to read the entire file. Today, the process is in the hands of Judge Marta Hantke at the San Miguel Court of Appeals, and without major proceedings, awaiting the conclusion of the identification stage with the results of the samples sent to Texas. For the lawyer of the victims' families, Nelson Caucoto, "the most important thing of all is that the definitive dismissal that existed in the case was reversed, which has allowed progress in the stage of accurate identification of the remains. Once that concludes and they are delivered to their families, we will give an impetus to the criminal process and take the corresponding actions to summon those involved in the homicides to testify. In due course, we will also ask for reparation from the Chilean State." Lautaro Castro Mendoza, the lieutenant in charge of the Isla de Maipo Carabinero station in October '73, was notified three weeks ago of a first-instance sentence in another case for the crime of Juan de Dios Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo, two social leaders from Isla de Maipo detained in September '73. Castro was sentenced to 20 years in prison, 10 for each victim.

Source: lanacion.cl, September 28, 2008

Indictments issued following investigation into "Lonquén Kilns" case

The San Miguel Court of Appeals issued an indictment in the investigation into the kidnapping and qualified homicide of 15 people, detained in October 1973, whose remains were illegally buried and found in 1979 in the Lonquén Kilns.

Judge Adriana Sootovia determined that retired Carabineros Pablo Ñancupil Raquileo, Marcelo Ivan Castro Mendoza, Juan José Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, David Coliqueo Peralta, Justo Romo Peralta, and Jacinto Torres González are responsible for various crimes of kidnapping and qualified homicide.

While serving as officers at the Isla de Maipo station, they detained Rodolfo Maureira Muñoz, Sergio Maureira Muñoz, Segundo Maureira Muñoz, José Manuel Maureira Muñoz, Sergio Maureira Lillo, Carlos Hernández Flores, Nélson Hernández Flores, Óscar Hernández Flores, Enrique Astudillo Álvarez, Omar Astudillo Rojas, Ramón Astudillo Rojas, Miguel Brant Benavente, Iván Ordoñez Lama, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, and Manuel Navarro Salinas. "On October 7, 1973, four young men who were in the plaza of Isla de Maipo were detained by Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo station and taken there, with no news of their whereabouts, until through a complaint that the Catholic Church learned of at the end of 1978, it was established that their remains had been buried in the Lonquén kilns, with the subsequent identification of only three of them. That same day, at night, Carabineros officers from the aforementioned station, who were traveling in a pickup truck owned by the owner of the Nahuayan vineyard, detained eleven people belonging to three families from the sector at their respective homes, and they were subsequently taken to said station, without their relatives being able to have news of them, until as a result of the anonymous complaint that the Catholic Church learned of at the end of 1978, it was established that they had been buried in the Lonquén kilns, with the remains of these eleven victims being identified later," the ruling indicates.

Source: 24horas.cl, November 27, 2014

Seven Carabineros convicted for a case of forcibly disappeared persons in Chile

The Chilean justice system today convicted seven retired Carabineros for the crimes of kidnapping and homicide of fifteen people in a town near Santiago in October 1973, whom they murdered and buried in kilns in the town of Lonquén.

According to judicial sources, the visiting judge (special judge) for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, sentenced Marcelo Castro Mendoza to 20 years in prison for his responsibility as the perpetrator of qualified kidnapping.

Castro Mendoza, known as Lautaro, had already been sentenced in 2008 to ten years in prison for the disappearance of two other residents of Isla de Maipo, Juan de Dios Salinas and Guillermo Bustamante Sotelo, who, after being detained on September 14, 1973, by the Carabineros, were riddled with bullets and their bodies thrown into the Maipo River.

Judge Cifuentes also sentenced David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro to 15 years in prison as perpetrators of qualified kidnapping.

In addition, Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was sentenced to 15 terms of 60 days in prison as the perpetrator of simple kidnapping. Among the victims, all neighbors of the area, were five members of the same family and four adolescents detained in the town square, two of them for apparently smoking marijuana.

The discovery of the bodies was possible due to an anonymous tip received at the end of 1978 by the Vicariate of Solidarity, an organization created by the Chilean Catholic Church to defend human rights and the victims of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

The trial was paralyzed for many years in the Military Justice system, which gave credence to the Carabineros' version that while they were transporting the prisoners to Santiago, by superior order, they were ambushed on the road, resulting in the death of all the detainees, whose bodies they placed in the Lonquén kilns "out of fear." In the civil aspect, the State was ordered to pay a total sum of 5,540,000,000 pesos (about 8.2 million dollars) to the victims' families, according to the distribution of amounts explained in the ruling.

Source: laconexionusa.com, September 12, 2016

Lonquén: Judge issues indictment against seven retired Carabineros for their responsibility in the crimes

The minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Adriana Sootovia, issued an indictment in the investigation into the kidnapping and qualified homicide of 15 residents of the town of Isla de Maipo, detained in October 1973, whose remains were illegally buried and found in 1979 in the Lonquén Kilns.

The magistrate held 7 retired Carabineros officers responsible for the crimes of qualified kidnapping and qualified homicide of: Rodolfo Maureira Muñoz, Sergio Maureira Muñoz, Segundo Maureira Muñoz, José Manuel Maureira Muñoz, Sergio Maureira Lillo, Carlos Hernández Flores, Nélson Hernández Flores, Óscar Hernández Flores, Enrique Astudillo Álvarez, Omar Astudillo Rojas, Ramón Astudillo Rojas, Miguel Brant Benavente, Iván Ordoñez Lama, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, and Manuel Navarro Salinas.

The magistrate determined that the then-officers of the Isla de Maipo Carabinero station, Pablo Ñancupil Raquileo, Marcelo Ivan Castro Mendoza, Juan José Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, David Coliqueo Peralta, Justo Romo Peralta, and Jacinto Torres González, are responsible for various crimes of kidnapping and homicide.

According to Sootovia's investigation, it was determined that "on October 7, 1973, four young men who were in the plaza of Isla de Maipo were detained by Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo station and taken there, with no news of their whereabouts, until through a complaint that the Catholic Church learned of at the end of 1978, it was established that their remains had been buried in the Lonquén kilns, with the subsequent identification of only three of them." The investigation also establishes that "that same day, at night, Carabineros officers from the aforementioned station, who were traveling in a pickup truck owned by the owner of the Nahuayan vineyard, detained eleven people belonging to three families from the sector at their respective homes, and they were subsequently taken to said station, without their relatives being able to have news of them, until as a result of the anonymous complaint that the Catholic Church learned of at the end of 1978, it was established that they had been buried in the Lonquén kilns, with the remains of these eleven victims being identified later."

Source: emol.com, November 26, 2014

Eight Carabineros convicted for the kidnapping and murder of 15 peasants in the "Lonquén Kilns" case

In a historic moment for victims of human rights violations during the dictatorship, the visiting judge of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, convicted 7 retired officers of the Carabineros de Chile for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified kidnapping and simple kidnapping committed against 15 people from the town of Isla de Maipo, events that occurred in October 1973 and whose remains were found in 1978 in kilns in the town of Lonquén.

Thus, in the case known as the "Lonquén Kilns," Judge Cifuentes convicted as perpetrators of the crimes of qualified kidnapping of 15 people: Marcelo (Lautaro) Iván Castro Mendoza to a sentence of 20 years in prison for his responsibility as the perpetrator of qualified kidnapping.

David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro to a sentence of 15 years in prison as perpetrators of qualified kidnapping.

In addition, Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was convicted to 15 sentences of 60 days in prison as the perpetrator of simple kidnapping. On October 7, 1973, the following were detained by Carabineros: Enrique René Astudillo Álvarez, Omar Enrique Astudillo Rojas, Ramón Osvaldo Astudillo Rojas, Miguel Ángel Arturo Brant Bustamante, Carlos Segundo Hernández Flores, Nelson Hernández Flores, Oscar Nibaldo Hernández Flores, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, Sergio Adrián Maureira Lillo, José Manuel Maureira Muñoz, Rodolfo Antonio Maureira Muñoz, Segundo Armando Maureira Muñoz, Sergio Miguel Maureira Muñoz, Manuel Jesús Navarro Salinas, and Iván Gerardo Ordóñez Lama. In the early morning hours, the prisoners were tied by their hands, taken from the Isla de Maipo station in a truck, and brought to the town of Lonquén, a few meters from some lime kilns, where a picket of Carabineros officers from the Isla de Maipo station, under the command of Lieutenant Lautaro Castro Mendoza, shot them, causing their deaths, and then threw their bodies inside the kilns in order to hide them. The remains were only found on November 30, 1978, when a peasant from Lonquén went to the offices of the Vicariate of Solidarity and reported the discovery of human remains in a lime mine. That day, a commission coordinated by Vicar Alberto Precht arrived at the mine, composed of Enrique Alvear, the auxiliary bishop of Santiago; Vicar Precht and Javier Egaña, Executive Secretary of the Vicariate; the chief lawyer of the Vicariate, Alejandro González; lawyer Máximo Pacheco Gómez; the director of the magazine Qué Pasa, Jaime Martínez; and the deputy director of the magazine Hoy, Abraham Santibáñez. The discovery of the remains of the fifteen forcibly disappeared persons represented, for the first time, material evidence of the extermination of those who were being sought by their relatives, and the possibility that they would not appear alive. The site was declared a national monument on January 19, 1996, and subsequently, in 2005, the State definitively acquired the 6.5-hectare area in which this historical site is located.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, September 12, 2016

Lonquén Case: Carabineros sentenced to 15 years must serve their sentence in Colina I

Five retired Carabineros were convicted for the qualified homicide of 15 people during the dictatorship in Isla de Maipo. The visiting judge for human rights violation cases of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes, ordered the incarceration of the former officers, who must serve their sentence in Colina I.

David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The incarceration order was issued today, Friday the 27th, for the qualified homicides committed on October 7, 1973.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, July 27, 2018

Lonquén Case: End to 45 Years of Impunity

The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that condemned six retired Carabineros de Chile officers to lengthy prison terms for their responsibility in the crimes of aggravated kidnapping and simple kidnapping committed against 15 people from the town of Isla de Maipo. These events occurred in October 1973, and the victims' remains were found in 1978 in kilns in the town of Lonquén.

These same police officers had previously benefited from the 1980 amnesty law. However, a tenacious battle led by human rights lawyers, primarily Nelson Caucoto, succeeded first in having the case removed from military jurisdiction, and later, after a prolonged and intense struggle, achieved this historic ruling, which puts an end to 45 years of impunity.

The case was particularly shocking at the time of the events, as it was the first time the veracity of the reports from the families of the forcibly disappeared was proven, and also because it was the first time the 1978 Amnesty Decree Law was applied.

Thus, in a split decision (docket 30.170-2017), the Second Chamber of the high court—composed of ministers Milton Juica, Lamberto Cisternas, Ricardo Blanco, Andrea Muñoz, and Manuel Antonio Valderrama—rejected an appeal and confirmed the sentence of Judge Marianela Cifuentes, which condemned former non-commissioned officers and carabineros David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro to 15 years and one day in prison, and former captain Marcelo Castro Mendoza to 20 years and one day, as perpetrators of aggravated kidnapping.

Likewise, Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was sentenced to 11 terms of 60 days in prison as the perpetrator of simple kidnapping.

The investigation by Judge Cifuentes established that:

«1. On October 7, 1973, while the young men Miguel Ángel Arturo Brant Bustamante, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, Manuel Jesús Navarro Salinas, and Iván Gerardo Ordóñez Lama were in the Plaza of Isla de Maipo, they were unlawfully detained by carabineros officers and subsequently taken to the Isla de Maipo police station. 2.

That same day, after 10:00 PM, carabineros officers from the Isla de Maipo station arrived at the home of Sergio Adrián Maureira Lillo, inside the Naguayán estate, detained him unlawfully, and placed him in a pickup truck. 3.

Moments later, the same carabineros officers from the Isla de Maipo station went to the property at Calle La Ballica No. 12, also inside the Naguayán estate, where they unlawfully detained Carlos Segundo Hernández Flores, Nelson Hernández Flores, Oscar Nibaldo Hernández Flores, and Ignacio del Carmen Vergara Guajardo, whom they placed in the aforementioned truck. 4.

Then, the police officers went to the homes of brothers Rodolfo Antonio Maureira Muñoz and Sergio Miguel Maureira Muñoz and detained them unlawfully in the presence of their respective spouses, Elicea del Carmen Navarrete Sepúlveda and Hilda María Sepúlveda Garrido, transporting them in the aforementioned vehicle to the Isla de Maipo police station. 5.

Half an hour later, the same police officers returned to the Maureira family home on the Naguayán estate and unlawfully detained José Manuel Maureira Muñoz and Segundo Armando Maureira Muñoz, whom they took to the Isla de Maipo police station. 6.

That same night, carabineros officers from the Isla de Maipo station unlawfully detained Enrique Astudillo Álvarez and his sons Omar Astudillo Rojas and Ramón Astudillo Rojas at their home inside the Naguayán estate. 7.

Once at the police unit, the detainees were kept locked up, interrogated, and subjected to physical abuse. 8. In the early hours of the morning, Enrique René Astudillo Álvarez, Omar Enrique Astudillo Rojas, Ramón Osvaldo Astudillo Rojas, Miguel Ángel Arturo Brant Bustamante, Carlos Segundo Hernández Flores, Nelson Hernández Flores, Oscar Nibaldo Hernández Flores, José Manuel Herrera Villegas, Sergio Adrián Maureira Lillo, José Manuel Maureira Muñoz, Rodolfo Antonio Maureira Muñoz, Segundo Armando Maureira Muñoz, Sergio Miguel Maureira Muñoz, Manuel Jesús Navarro Salinas, and Iván Gerardo Ordóñez Lama had their hands tied, were taken from the police unit in a truck, and were brought to the town of Lonquén, a few meters from some lime kilns, where a squad of carabineros officers from the Isla de Maipo station, under the command of Lieutenant Lautaro Castro Mendoza, shot them, causing their deaths, and then threw their bodies inside the kilns in order to hide them.»

Regarding civil liability, the court confirmed the sentence ordering the State to pay a total indemnity of $2,050,000,000 (two billion fifty million pesos) to the victims' families.

The decision was adopted with the dissenting votes of Minister Blanco and Minister Muñoz.

Source: reddigital.cl, June 22, 2018

Lonquén Case: Five criminals ordered to enter Colina I. Cambio21 provides chilling details

Perhaps this case is the one that opened the reality regarding the existence of the forcibly disappeared. Until that moment, the right-wing press spoke of "alleged" cases. After the discovery in Lonquén, the "alleged" became a lacerating reality. They had been cruelly murdered.

The judge in charge of the extraordinary investigation for human rights violations at the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes Alarcón, ordered this Friday the entry into the Colina I Penitentiary Compliance Center for five of the seven retired Carabineros de Chile officers condemned for their responsibility in the crimes of aggravated homicide committed on October 7, 1973, against 15 people in the town of Isla de Maipo.

In June of this year, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence issued by Judge Cifuentes, which condemned David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro, among others, to 15 years of major imprisonment in its medium degree as perpetrators of the crimes of aggravated homicide.

Detained, tortured, and buried alive

According to the judge's investigation, 15 people were detained on October 7, 1973. Eleven of the murdered peasants were taken from inside the Naguayán estate in Isla de Maipo, while the remaining four were detained in the plaza of the same town.

According to the sentence, "On October 7, 1973, four young men who were in the Plaza of Isla de Maipo were detained by Carabineros from the Isla de Maipo station and taken there, with no news of their whereabouts until, through a report received by the Catholic Church in late 1978, it was established that their remains had been buried in the Lonquén kilns, with only three of them subsequently being identified."

That same day, the 7th, in the evening hours, "members of the Carabineros from the aforementioned station, who were traveling in a pickup truck owned by the owner of the Nahuayan vineyard, detained eleven people belonging to three families from the area at their respective homes, subsequently taking them to said station, with their families unable to receive any news of them, until, following an anonymous report received by the Catholic Church in late 1978, it was established that they had been buried in the Lonquén kilns, with the remains of these eleven victims being identified later."

There was no trial, much less justice

In this way, the magistrate in charge of the case accounts for the kidnappings and subsequent executions and illegal burials of these compatriots. Murdered without trial, without charges against them, and some of them were not even left-wing militants. Moreover, even minors were victims of the murderous hatred of those who felt they held absolute power.

The existence of the remains in that abandoned mine in Lonquén had reached the Vicariate of Solidarity through the report of a peasant from the area who had discovered them by chance. First, they sought to verify the information in silence; then, caution was maintained to prevent agents of the repressive organs from attempting to hide the fact.

It was ordered that a commission of professionals go to the site and, with the utmost secrecy, verify the fact.

The commission was composed of Enrique Alvear, who was auxiliary bishop of Santiago; Vicar Precht, who directed the Vicariate; lawyer Javier Luis Egaña, who was also Executive Secretary of the Vicariate; the chief lawyer of the Vicariate, Alejandro González; the lawyer, former minister, and ambassador Máximo Pacheco Gómez; and the then-director of Qué Pasa magazine, Jaime Martínez, and the deputy director of Hoy magazine, Abraham Santibáñez, who had the painful mission of confirming that they were human remains.

The kilns were located inside an agricultural cooperative, El Triunfador, no more than 14 kilometers from the city of Talagante. They were two old chimneys about nine meters high, which had previously been used for the preparation of lime. The solitude of the place had been a silent witness to the martyrdom of those 15 people.

Heartbreaking scenes

"Pieces of yellowish skulls, with traces of scalp; loose, black hair; torn clothes in which one can recognize blue jeans, a man's sweater"... This is how the former deputy director of Hoy magazine, Abraham Santibáñez, described what he had been able to witness on November 30, 1978, while the remains of the executed were being recovered from inside the kilns where they had been buried... some were thrown there alive.

According to various testimonies, lawyer González removed part of the rubble and entered through the vault. He tried to clear the way starting from the base of the kiln toward the upper part, at ground level; suddenly, a human thorax fell on him.

Upon observing closely, he was able to verify that the chimney of the kiln was covered by a mixture of iron and materials that hid a combination of bones, clothing, lime, and stones.

Lawyer Máximo Pacheco would try to describe what he observed in an interview: "We began to open the kiln from below and suddenly a skull came out. And then, a bone, another bone, and another bone. I thought I was going to faint. Never in my life had I seen such a thing."

"There was a metal grate, like that of a bed frame, that had remained crossed over our heads, and on it, yellowish skulls could be seen, with remains of hair, scraps of clothing, long bones," Abraham Santibáñez would later recount. The description of what was found there exceeds all imagination and does not allow for its reproduction, due to how hellish it was.

The report

The first task had been achieved: to verify that they were indeed human remains and that the news would not be leaked, as they already had the experience of the Cuesta de Chada in 1974, where, upon the discovery of nearly 20 bodies being leaked, the DINA proceeded to remove them from the site before the Vicariate arrived. The second task, no less complicated, was coming: to file the report.

On December 1, 1978, high-ranking leaders of the Vicariate of Solidarity headed toward the Supreme Court. They were accompanied by lawyer Máximo Pacheco and Bishop Alvear, who had been witnesses to the findings.

Once at the Supreme Court, they were received by the president at that time, Israel Bórquez, the same man who some time before had declared he was "fed up" with the reports about the forcibly disappeared.

Máximo Pacheco would later recount: "He told us: 'Do you think that if you dig a hole in your garden and a bone comes out, it is enough to come and bother the Supreme Court?' I told him: 'Sir, that is not the case.

And this report is not to you, but to the Court, and I would like you to present it.'" Despite Bórquez's annoyance, the report reached the Plenary of the Supreme Court, which ordered the Judge of Talagante to initiate the investigation.

Pain and hopelessness

Once the fact was known, the families of the thousands of people who remained disappeared in the country, who harbored some hope that their loved ones were still alive, suffered a strong blow. This event, which shook all of Chile, was the first approach to the truth. They had murdered them.

Inside the Vicariate, moments of anguish were lived. Each of the families of the forcibly disappeared who arrived at the place—and there were many—thought they could be their loved ones. The same anxiety was experienced by the hundreds who arrived at Lonquén itself to verify if it was their relatives.

"The Lonquén case was the first brutality that was discovered, the first effectively disastrous situation that the families of the forcibly disappeared lived through. On one hand, there was the possibility of finding them in those kilns, but on the other hand, it was devastating for us," Gabriela Zúñiga, leader of the Association of the Forcibly Disappeared, points out to Cambio21.

The evidence that they had executed them and the way they had done it hit not only the families of those who had been found. It also tormented the families of those who had not yet appeared. "The effects for the dictatorship resulted in terms of public impact being minor, as there was neither Cambio21 nor other independent media, so it did not have the dissemination that the case deserved," the Association leader pointed out.

The dramatic recognition

It was initially unknown who they were, but their number (15), the proximity to Isla de Maipo, and a receipt found in one of the pockets of a pair of pants gave the first clues. They were the forcibly disappeared from Isla de Maipo.

Only at the beginning of 1979 were the families informed, after cross-referencing with the precarious files existing on the disappeared. They had to go to the Morgue of Isla de Maipo of that time to try to identify the remains of their relatives. Given the conditions of the bodies, they could only do so by recognizing the clothing they were wearing on the day of their disappearance.

The bodies were destroyed; there was evidence of gunshot wounds; however, in many cases, they did not have the consequence of death, so it was possible to determine judicially that most of them were alive at the moment they were thrown, tied with wires, inside the kiln and covered with lime and rubble. Almost all of them died from blows or asphyxiation.

Amnesty and "Removal of Televisions"

The judicial report put the dictatorship on alert. If the places where the political executions were buried and those whose detention was denied, but who had been murdered, continued to be discovered, it would become a serious international problem for Pinochet, who until that date claimed, with great support from the press that was unconditional to him, that the forcibly disappeared did not exist.

Much less the abuses or torture.

On the other hand, if the bodies were discovered, the authors of the crimes would end up being discovered, and that would cause serious problems in the armed forces and security agencies. Dictatorships are sustained on the security of impunity for those who do the dirty work of eliminating opponents.

If they are untouchable, they will continue to be loyal and execute the dictator's orders, whatever they may be.

Thus, two measures were quickly adopted. The first, Pinochet personally ordered the plan known as "Removal of Televisions," which consisted of removing the bodies that were buried illegally in secret and moving them to other sites or throwing them into the sea, in his case.

In that way, any evidence of the events would be erased. The other measure adopted sought impunity. The Amnesty Law was enacted in 1978. That ensured that torturers and murderers in the service of the regime would not be prosecuted for their crimes. In fact, the same ones who are today being condemned and ordered to serve sentences by the Courts enjoyed the benefit of amnesty for a time.

A chilling scream

Kidnapping them, torturing them, executing them with blows, and burying some alive until asphyxiation was not enough. The last act of bestiality was still missing. By that time, Minister Adolfo Bañados was in charge of the case, but for a short time, as he had to declare himself incompetent and pass the background information to the military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar, who ended up applying the amnesty and releasing those whom Bañados had managed to prosecute.

That same prosecutor later gave the order to release one body, that of Sergio Maureira.

Thousands of people gathered at the Recoleta Franciscana church to hold a vigil for the remains. It was September 14, 1979. They did not give them the bodies. The desperation among the families and attendees at the church was moving; heartbreaking screams and cries were heard, clamoring for their loved ones. Fainting spells followed one after another.

The night before, officials from the Legal Medical Institute, which was under military intervention, had removed the bodies and had mixed the bones, throwing them into a common grave in the Isla de Maipo cemetery. The body of Sergio Maureira, the only one officially identified by the prosecutor's office, was buried in a coffin in a dirt grave.

For lawyer and former ambassador Javier Luis Egaña, "It was an unspeakable evil, of a profound contempt for human dignity. A thing of that magnitude required consultation at the highest levels. It was a decision taken coldly," he concluded. The kilns were later dynamited by the new owner and their access closed.

Today, more than forty years later, justice is being done, or at least something like it.

Five have been condemned and will have to serve, unless the government benefits them, fulfilling the electoral agreement with the "military family" and releases them.

Source: cambio21.cl, July 27, 2018

Lonquén: The Carabineros massacre of 15 peasants

On October 7, 1973, at 9:45 PM, a group of eleven peasants from the town of Isla de Maipo was detained by Carabineros officers. The police did not carry arrest or search warrants for the homes of those people.

Numerous witnesses saw how they were beaten and loaded into a white pickup truck owned by the owner of the Naguayán Estate—where the houses of the three families were located—and how they were tied up and laid face down on the floor of the vehicle.

They were the agricultural workers: Enrique Astudillo Álvarez (51 years old), Omar Astudillo Rojas (20), Ramón Astudillo Rojas (27), Carlos Hernández Flores (39), Nelson Hernández Flores (32), Oscar Hernández Flores (30), Sergio Maureira Lillo (46), José Maureira Muñoz (26), Rodolfo Maureira Muñoz (22), Segundo Maureira Muñoz (24), and Sergio Maureira Muñoz (27).

The Carabineros officers stood on their backs. They paraded through the streets of the town to intimidate the entire population. Finally, they were taken to the police station.

The same fate befell four young men who had been detained that same day in the town plaza: Miguel Brant Bustamante (22 years old), Manuel Navarro Salinas (20), Iván Ordóñez Lama (17), and José Herrera Villegas (17).

The families were deceived by government authorities. They were informed that the detainees had been transferred to the National Stadium in the capital. The relatives filed a recurso de amparo (habeas corpus) in 1974.

When the local authorities were questioned by the courts, they merely stated that "everyone had been transferred on October 8, 1973, to the National Stadium." This was completely false.

The SENDET (National Service for Detainees) indicated contradictorily that it "did not have, and had never had, information about them."

Sergio Diez—today a senator for National Renewal—and at that time a delegate of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to the OAS, lied in 1975 before the whole world, saying that: "these people had no legal existence," while other "Lonquén detainees had been admitted to the Legal Medical Institute in October 1973."

On November 29, 1978, an informant gave the Catholic Church the details of the exact place where the ill-fated remains of the peasants and young men were: some lime kilns in the town of Lonquén, 14 kilometers from the town of Talagante.

The Vicar of Solidarity, Cristián Precht, and the Bishop of Santiago, Enrique Alvear, decided to verify the information by going to the place together with journalists—Jaime Martínez (Qué Pasa) and Abraham Santibáñez (Revista Hoy)—and lawyers Máximo Pacheco (PDC) and Alejandro González.

The press reported: "In an old stone construction, about twelve meters high, attached to the slope of a hill, inside which there are two silos of two and a half meters, were the corpses (...) In the other, covered with stones from above and with an exit in its lower part, also walled up, were human remains, a skull, torn clothes (...)".

It was a precise and painful blow to the conscience of thousands of Chileans. An open wound until today, unspeakable. An image of pain and human misery, of horror without limit and brutality that the history of humanity will remember forever.

Nothing could Pinochet and his lackeys do to hide the horrendous crime. The bishop informed Israel Bórquez, president of the Supreme Court and collaborator of the regime, who sent the background information to the Talagante Court. Judge Juana Godoy was appointed to initiate the investigation.

In December 1978, the remains were sent to the Legal Medical Institute. The plenary of the Supreme Court appointed Judge Adolfo Bañados as the visiting minister, who ordered autopsies and ballistic examinations to be carried out and gathered the proceedings in which the disappearance of persons or alleged misfortune had been reported. He interrogated the families of the "disappeared" peasants.

The police officers involved: Lautaro Castro Mendoza—head of the Isla de Maipo station—and carabineros Juan Villegas Navarro, Félix Sagredo Aravena, Manuel Muñoz Rencoret, Jacinto Torres González, David Coliqueo Fuentealba, José Belmar Sepúlveda, and Justo Romo Peralta, gave the version before the courts that they had "taken the detainees, who were highly dangerous, to the Lonquén kilns in order to unearth the weaponry they had hidden, and that then—at the site—they had suffered an armed attack by unknown persons, with the peasants being killed by the gunfire.

Fearing reprisals, they had decided to hide the bodies in the abandoned kilns."

In April 1979, Minister Bañados had to declare himself incompetent due to the prevailing legislation that grants immunity to uniformed personnel and hands over criminal cases in which they are involved to the hands of Military Justice.

However, before leaving the case, he established the responsibility of these police officers in the events. His resolution says: "The version (...) to try to explain the death of their prisoners, not only contradicts the merit of the case file in multiple aspects and details, in particular, of course, regarding the number of victims, but it is intrinsically implausible (...) in none of the remains were signs of perforations, fractures, or other types of traces that could be related to projectiles from firearms impacting a living organism proven, so the death of the fifteen people must be attributed to other causes."

The process then passed into the hands of the "Second Military Court," which charged the Carabineros officers as "perpetrators of the crime of unnecessary violence causing death." After a short procedure, the case was definitively dismissed through the Amnesty Law enacted by Pinochet, legislation to which the eight carabineros had requested to be subject.

Subsequently, the "Court Martial" confirmed that resolution.

The murderer Lautaro Castro was promoted to the rank of Captain.

One year after the bodies of the peasants and young men were found, the remains were handed over to their families. The bodies were transported by officials of the Legal Medical Institute to Isla de Maipo and buried immediately—except for Sergio Maureira Lillo—to avoid the presence of their families, depositing them in a common grave.

The families, aggrieved once again by the military authorities, filed a complaint with the Court Martial—which was forced to accept it—against military prosecutor Gonzalo Salazar Sweet for "fault and abuse committed by not complying with the order to hand over the bodies." He was given a written censure.

In January 1980, the Supreme Court decided to set it aside, considering that the prosecutor "did not commit any fault. It was the judges themselves who imposed it on him who indicated the procedure he used."

A report was filed again with the justice system for the death of the Isla de Maipo peasants. This case was carried by visiting minister Héctor Solís, who could not continue his investigation. The minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Marianela Cifuentes, continued the investigation, finishing it on September 12, 2016, when she issued a first-instance sentence.

The minister condemned the 7 carabineros who detained the fifteen peasants; the former carabineros were condemned for the crime of aggravated kidnapping: Lautaro Castro Mendoza, head of the patrol, to the penalty of 20 years in prison for his responsibility as a perpetrator.

David Coliqueo Fuentealba, Justo Ignacio Romo Peralta, Félix Héctor Sagredo Aravena, Jacinto Torres González, and Juan José Villegas Navarro were condemned to the penalty of 15 years in prison. Pablo Ñancupil Raguileo was condemned to 900 days in prison.

The case went to the second instance, the San Miguel Court of Appeals, on May 16, 2017, which confirmed the sentence. On June 16, 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence that condemned 6 former carabineros, given that the head of the carabineros, Lautaro Castro, died before the conviction.

On February 18, 2010, the acting visiting minister of the San Miguel Court of Appeals, Héctor Solís, announced the identification of 13 of the 15 bodies, whose remains were found in 1978, finally allowing the burial to take place, with the removal of the bones from the Legal Medical Service on March 26.

On March 27, a public wake was held in the Civic Courtyard of the Isla de Maipo Municipality, and on Sunday the 28th, the solemn burial of the victims in the Isla de Maipo Parish Cemetery took place.

The Lonquén Kilns were demolished to erase all traces and footprints of memory, to definitively impose oblivion.

By Arnaldo Pérez Guerra

Source: prensaopal.cl, October 7, 2020