Occupation : Worker at the Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. (Soquimich), Pedro de Valdivia Nitrate Office. Political Affiliation : Socialist Party, Youth Leader. President of the Industrial Union of SOQUIMICH, Pedro de Valdivia Office. Date of Detention : September 12, 1973

REPRESSIVE SITUATION

Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza, a union leader at the Pedro de Valdivia Nitrate Office and a Socialist militant, was detained on September 12, 1973. Throughout September 11, insistent radio calls were broadcast to all leaders of leftist parties and the Unidad Popular government, ordering them to report to the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-station; the victim's name was among those whose presence was required.

For this reason, Vitalio Mutarello Soza, a Socialist leader and father of three, voluntarily reported to that facility on September 12, 1973, around 10:00 AM. His whereabouts have been unknown since that time.

On September 13, Sonia Aros, the victim's spouse, went to the police station to inquire about him. There, she was attended to by Carabineros Captain Gerardo René Maluje Abraham, who told her that the victim had not reported to that unit and that there was an "order to kill him" anywhere in the country where he might be found.

From then on, all efforts to locate him proved futile. Sonia Aros searched prisons, police stations, and hospitals. She was unable to learn anything about him. Only on December 19, 1974, did she receive a response from Brigadier General Rolando Garay Cifuentes, Chief of the State of Siege Zone and Intendant of the II Region.

In a letter signed by him, it was asserted that Vitalio Mutarello "did indeed report to the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-station on December 12, 1973, around noon. Subsequently, he was released, with a verbal order that he remain under house arrest." It further stated that "subsequently, along with the detention of Jorge Cerda Albarracín, the detention of Vitalio Mutarello Soza was also ordered, an order that could not be carried out as said person could not be found anywhere." General Garay added that he believed "Mutarello managed to escape the country due to the knowledge and fear of being tried."

Furthermore, witnesses provided information to Sonia Aros stating they had seen the victim detained in the cells of the Pedro de Valdivia Carabineros Sub-station. She even managed to find out that on September 13, 1973, Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza had been taken out of the police facility, badly wounded and wrapped in a blanket, in a green pickup truck that headed toward the Pampa, along the road leading to Antofagasta.

The circumstances of Mutarello Soza's disappearance could be linked to the fact that two people with whom he shared the leadership of the Socialist Party in the locality—Jorge Cerda Albarracín and Carlos Quiroga Rojas—were executed by firing squad on September 20, 1973, after being detained by the same police forces of Pedro de Valdivia.

JUDICIAL AND/OR ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS

On November 26, 1973, Sonia Aros Montenegro filed a report of "Presumed Misfortune" (Presunta Desgracia) regarding her husband's disappearance at the Criminal Court of Pedro de Valdivia, which was registered under No. 335-73.

Given the situation in the country at the time and the fact that she had to conduct proceedings before the same police authorities who had detained her husband, she chose only to report that the victim had left his home on September 12, 1973, without saying where he was going, and that she had not heard from him again.

During the short time the proceedings lasted, the judge issued an order for the Carabineros of the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-station to investigate. On December 7, 1973, they informed the Court that they had not obtained any information that would allow for the location of the victim, adding that "there is a possibility that the aforementioned person (Vitalio Mutarello) is in hiding by order of the Party, waiting to engage in guerrilla actions, or that he may have gone abroad for this same reason." The investigation was carried out by Sub-officer Arturo Contreras Tamayo and signed by Captain and Sub-prefect Gerardo René Maluje Abraham and Lieutenant Osvaldo Aniceto Muñoz Sanhueza. On that occasion, not a single mention was made of the fact that Vitalio Mutarello Soza had been detained and held in the very same Sub-station where they were located. The case was closed and dismissed—without any other proceedings being carried out—on January 25, 1974, because "the existence of any crime was not proven." The Antofagasta Court of Appeals confirmed the resolution of the Pedro de Valdivia Court on January 31 of the same year.

In November 1979, Sonia Aros filed a criminal complaint for kidnapping, serious injury, and possible qualified homicide regarding Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza at the Criminal Court of Pedro de Valdivia.

The filing named Carabineros Captain Gerardo René Maluje Abraham, Lieutenant Osvaldo Aniceto Muñoz Sanhueza, Sub-officer Arturo Contreras Tamayo, and the Carabineros staff of the Pedro de Valdivia office as responsible for the commission of the aforementioned crimes.

The Court was requested to summon the Carabineros and witnesses who had allegedly seen Mutarello held in the Sub-station, pointing out the contradiction between the Carabineros' official report dated December 7, 1973, and the letter from General Rolando Garay Cifuentes, which stated that Vitalio Mutarello had indeed reported to the Carabineros of the Pedro de Valdivia office on September 12, 1973, and had been detained.

Despite all the evidence, Carabineros Gerardo René Maluje, Osvaldo Aniceto Muñoz, and Arturo Contreras denied, in their respective statements before the Court, the detention of the victim, stating that it was not true that he had turned himself in and/or entered the police facility. The contradictions were evident.

Although there is no further information related to this complaint, it has become clear that Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza was detained and that his ultimate fate has yet to be clarified.

Source: Corporation report

The highest court rejected the appeal for cassation filed against the sentence that convicted retired Carabineros sub-officer Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo to 3 years and one day in prison, with the benefit of intensive supervised release, as an accomplice to the crime of qualified kidnapping of union leader Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza.

The crime was committed starting in September 1973, at the Pedro de Valdivia nitrate office, commune of María Elena, province of Tocopilla, current Antofagasta Region.

In a unanimous ruling (case file 23.156-2019), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of ministers Haroldo Brito, Jorge Dahm, Leopoldo Llanos, María Teresa Letelier, and acting lawyer Ricardo Abuauad—ruled out any error of law in the challenged sentence, issued by the Santiago Court of Appeals, which confirmed the resolution convicting Contreras Tamayo as an accomplice to the crime, ruling out that he had direct participation in the events.

"Regarding the first ground for cassation in substance asserted by the appellant, and as this Court has already held in a sentence issued in case file No. 34.392-2016, of March 21, 2019, it is necessary to point out that, having established no violation of the rules governing evidence, the facts established by the lower court judges are unalterable—in the case at hand, those related to the degree of participation attributed to the defendant Contreras Tamayo—from which it is inferred that the allegations of the plaintiff must be analyzed in light of such factual hypotheses, as it is not permissible for this Supreme Court, on the occasion of studying the proposed ground for annulment, to attempt a new assessment of such evidence and establish facts different from those determined by the lower court," the ruling maintains.

"In this sense, and having determined as a fact of the case that the accused Contreras Tamayo did not have direct participation in the events, but rather cooperated in their execution through prior or simultaneous acts, the conclusion reached in the ruling under review—regarding his degree of participation—is correct, thereby ruling out the existence of the error of law denounced by the plaintiff in his first section of cassation in substance," it adds.

In the appealed sentence, the Santiago Court of Appeals held the following facts as proven, established in the first instance by visiting minister Mario Carroza:

"1°.- That in September 1973, after the military coup, in the Province of Tocopilla, the Carabineros Prefecture decided to establish a Military Prosecutor's Office in the area and grant it the support of Carabineros Intelligence officials to carry out its work, with these becoming the repressive apparatus for militants or sympathizers of the left.

In fulfillment of their duties, they initiated operations aimed at carrying out raids and detaining people to lock them in the police unit's cells and interrogate them under torture, who were then mostly transferred to the city of Antofagasta or subjected to War Councils, where some were sentenced to death and others executed without prior trial;

2°.- That this modus operandi was recurrent throughout the Province of Tocopilla and those units that were under the control of the Prefecture and the jurisdiction of the Military Prosecutor's Office, one of them being the María Elena Police Station, which in turn had under its command the Pedro de Valdivia Camp Sub-station, the latter under the command of Captain Gerardo Maluje Abraham and as second-in-command Lieutenant Osvaldo Aniceto Muñoz Sanhueza, in addition to other sub-officers who were in charge of the Carabineros of the Sub-station, such as Sergeant 1st Class Arturo Contreras Tamayo, who replicated in their jurisdiction the same repressive techniques of the Prefecture, as they raided, detained, locked up, and interrogated under torture people politically linked to the previous Government, and who in this case, several of them corresponded to people who provided services to the Pedro de Valdivia Nitrate Office of the Soquimich Company;

3°.- That coupled with the above, the Head of the unit had an active participation in this political repression, as he was in charge of making calls through the media for union leaders of the Company to surrender voluntarily and provide statements before them; faced with this request and in the belief that those State agents who directed the police unit at the time were upright and reliable in their investiture as authorities of the area, since they had the duty to ensure the safety of the entire population, Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza decided to report voluntarily on September 12 or 15, 1973, being President of the Union of Workers of the Nitrate Office;

4°.- That regarding this voluntary surrender of Vitalio Mutarello to the police authorities of the Carabineros Sub-station, as well as his reception and detention in the guardroom of the police unit, there were numerous witnesses and it was recognized by the authorities themselves, but contrary to the assumptions that caused him to report, those who had the duty of his custody and to guarantee his fundamental rights did not do so, because from that day on, there is no further news of his whereabouts and his death could not be established either."

In the civil aspect, the sentence ordering the state to pay a total compensation of $130,000,000 (one hundred and thirty million pesos) for moral damages to the victim's relatives was confirmed.

Source: pjud.cl, October 15, 2021

Date: 10-15-2021

Childhood in dictatorship: Building reparation through memory

Nine, five, and three were the ages of Vitalio Mutarello Soza’s children at the time of his forced disappearance in September 1973. Not knowing where his body is or why they did it did not stop his family from remaining firm in their demand for truth and in keeping his legacy alive, regardless of the passing years—a fact that currently unites them with thousands of other children who, despite the differences in their personal histories, share one common element: having grown up in a context marked by state violence.

These stories represent those cases whose lives had to be rebuilt and who today, through culture, education, art, and journalism, rise with more strength than ever.

160 kilometers from Antofagasta—the capital of the second region—lies Pedro de Valdivia, a nitrate office opened in 1931 that, three decades later in 1965, passed into the hands of the Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (Soquimich), employing more than 10,000 men and strengthening the town’s economy and social life.

Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza is one of those men. At 28 years old, he works as a laborer to provide his wife, Sonia Aros, and their three children—Giovanna, Marcelo, and Fabiola—with everything they might need, and his strong political convictions have made him a leader of the Socialist Youth and president of the SQM Industrial Union for three consecutive years.

The Chilean civil-military dictatorship begins, and the country is shaken: from the universities in the capital, through the communes and rural localities, the indigenous peoples in the far south, to the vast pampa where Vitalio works daily.

An authoritarian system is established, and with it, the prohibition of any type of opposition citizen organization that might prevent "restoring order" to Chile, a task entrusted to the Armed Forces by their supreme leader, the commander-in-chief of the Army, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

In the case of Pedro de Valdivia, it was the Carabineros who were the institution in charge of carrying out that task, and they were also the ones who, starting that same September 11, began, through insistent radio calls, to immediately demand the presence of Vitalio and other comrades at the town’s sub-precinct.

The official version states that Vitalio presented himself voluntarily on September 12, 1973, at around 10:00 a.m., and while that story is true, it lacks a detail recounted by his own family. Upon realizing the complex situation that had been unleashed in the town and that Vitalio—due to his participation in a leftist party—was now considered an enemy, he was protected by his comrades, who decided to hide him at the SQM plant.

However, from the outside, they received terrible news: Sonia and her three children were being held hostage until he appeared. The identity of the person who invented that macabre rumor remains unknown to this day, but what is known is Vitalio’s reaction: upon learning of that alleged fact, he decided to turn himself in to protect his family.

Thus, the day after the coup d'état, Vitalio presented himself at the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-precinct to resolve the misunderstanding, unaware of the intentions of Captain Gerardo René Maluje Abraham and Sub-officer Arturo Contreras Tamayo, who in 2017 were sentenced for the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Vitalio, and who to this day keep the secret of what happened to him after his detention.

That same day, while Sonia waited for her husband to return, there were also three children longing for his return.

Fabiola, the youngest of the siblings, was only three years old when Vitalio disappeared, but through the stories her family tells her, she manages to create images of the father who was taken from her. "We were a happy family; my mom dedicated herself to her children and my dad was the one who provided everything in the house.

He was an affectionate, intelligent man, and very loved by his party, and that cost him dearly."

Knowing nothing of Vitalio, Sonia went to the sub-precinct on September 13 to ask for information about her husband's whereabouts. There, she was attended to by the Carabineros captain, Gerardo Maluje, who denied having seen him the day before and even warned her that if she found him, he would be killed.

Sonia went around the town asking where her husband was, without imagining what would come days later. "My mom was kicked out of town with all of us. We had to come to Antofagasta, to a house my dad had bought in Villa Frei, but people wouldn't talk to her because everyone knew she was the wife of a union leader who had disappeared. My mom lived in great loneliness."

"Later she had to start working; she would peel fish and had to leave us alone at night with my grandmother. In the end, she had to put us in a children's home because the mortgage had to be paid and they still hadn't granted my dad’s presumptive death, so she put us in there to be able to work, and the abandonment was total," adds the youngest of the three siblings.

After filing a complaint for alleged disappearance at the Pedro de Valdivia Criminal Court on November 26, 1973, Sonia had to wait until December 19, 1974, to receive a response from the authorities, who, through a letter signed by the intendant of the II Region and head of the State of Siege zone, Brigadier General Rolando Garay Cifuentes, acknowledged that her husband had presented himself at the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-precinct on September 12, 1973.

However, the letter only referred to the fact that Vitalio had been placed under house arrest and that they had not heard from him since, believing he had fled the country. Nevertheless, inmates who had been with him and had been released told her some time later that they had seen him for the last time on September 13, 1973, in the sub-precinct’s cells, wounded and loaded onto a green truck heading toward the pampa.

Back in Antofagasta, the only alternative was to try to continue with their lives. For years, the girls remained in the children's home, which separated them from Marcelo, who grew up alone in a boarding school. "It was a very sad, very segregated childhood. 'Don't hang out with her because her dad is a communist,' other parents would tell my classmates.

I lacked school supplies, no one would lend me anything. I went with just the bare minimum. I was isolated," recounts Fabiola, who still has vivid memories of the taunts from the caretakers at the home. "When Pinochet appeared on TV, they would say, 'Look, your dad,' and I was little, I didn't understand, so I would run to the TV to see if it was him.

Back then I was 4 or 5 years old, and even though time was passing and I didn't know until that moment that he was a forcibly disappeared person, I never forgot that I had a dad and that I didn't see him again."

Fabiola was in the home until she was 8, and although the years helped her understand, it was only in 1990, with the discovery of the bodies in Pisagua, that she understood that her own story was connected to those of those families. "That’s when I understood that there were indeed deaths, that there were indeed human rights violations, that there was indeed torture.

That was when I started asking myself what had happened to my dad."

"The State has abandoned us"

With total clarity regarding the events experienced by Vitalio, Fabiola joined her mother and siblings in the search for his body, conducting expeditions in the pampa and contacting anyone who might have information about her father. In 1993, they received the negatives of a photograph taken two years earlier.

On April 5, 1991, two men conducting mining explorations in front of María Elena found a corpse. Not knowing what to do, they called the Carabineros, who arrived at the scene with Judge Carmen Luz Monroy de la Fuente, the Legal Medical Service, and two officials from the María Elena Museum, among them Claudio Castellón, an archaeologist and heritage expert. "Upon arriving at the site, they lifted the body and the judge told Claudio, who was the director of the museum, to take a photo, give it to her, and not do any further tracking." Claudio kept the negatives and, upon finding Giovanna years later, gave her this evidence. "When we developed the photos, it was very shocking; the body was whole and still had remains," recalls Fabiola.

Her mother and sister met with the judge to find out the results of the reports on the body that Claudio had given her, along with the expert report carried out in Antofagasta by the forensic doctor, Jacqueline Blanchard; however, the judge ruled out any similarity to Vitalio.

Despite that, some time later they obtained the forensic doctor's report from the Ministry of the Interior, and that was when they realized that the information did not match. "The corpse was not only similar, but it fit the age of the body, 28 years; date of death in '73; wide rib cage; height; sex; and teeth. Everything matched."

What happened to the body? In Antofagasta, they extracted samples of viscera and one of the fingers to analyze the fingerprint, which were sent to Santiago. Once there, they said that the deceased had never been issued an ID card and that the samples had been lost in a fire. The body also disappeared.

"The only thing we had left was the photo of the corpse."

Fabiola remembers the attempts—again failed—to reach the truth. "No one answers us, they make us feel like we are surplus, and in a certain way, the State has abandoned us." The minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza, made his inquiries, which implied constant trips by the family from Santiago to Antofagasta, and vice versa, without results. "The Legal Medical Service did not become a party, a thorough investigation was not carried out; the judge was summoned to give her testimony; they didn't ask her about what my sister told her regarding the similarity to the body, they only asked her what had happened, and she referred to the discovery of the corpse, arguing that she didn't remember much anymore. That was her statement and they didn't inquire any further. According to them, the body is in the Antofagasta Cemetery, but there is nothing concrete."

Where was he? What had they done with him? Why did they do it?

These are perhaps the most frequent unanswered questions that thousands of sons and daughters like Fabiola ask themselves 45 years after the dictatorship began. But how do the stories of these people rebuild themselves?

From September 11 itself, children were pushed into the background. In many cases, they had to grow up without really understanding what was happening and, in so many others, resign themselves to the new context that was presented to them.

However, time passed: they grew up, developed, and despite the wounds, they found a way to bring the best of their past into the present. They, today more than ever, have something to say.

Childhood, through other eyes

More than 1,300 kilometers south of Antofagasta, specifically in the city of Santiago, is Evelyn Gahona Muñoz. She is 48 years old, has a brother named Yuri whom everyone knows as "Yuro," is a primary school teacher, and although she works in Algarrobo, she travels to the capital every weekend.

Evelyn loves to embroider and dance; she participates in a collective called "Cueca Sola" that carries out social interventions not only related to human rights but also to the LGBT community, women victims of violence, the Mapuche people, and more.

Like teaching, dancing is her therapy, her moment of connection with Alonso, the father she lost at age 7 after he was kidnapped on a public street on September 8, 1975, and who, along with her brother, her paternal grandfather, and the PIDEE Foundation (Protection of Childhood Damaged by States of Emergency), are a key piece of her childhood. "For me, PIDEE was an instance where I would meet with children who had the same reality as me, therefore we could speak the same language, be able to tell the other what was happening to us without fear.

There we had moments to play, to laugh, to feel a little freer."

Evelyn and Yuro joined the foundation when they were 9 and 10 years old respectively; they participated in workshops held every Saturday, and despite the difficult moment they were in, Evelyn is aware that thanks to them, she is capable of facing the loss of her father today. "It is complex to get back up after a traumatic process.

I still have images of the raids on my house, but at PIDEE I had a psychologist, a doctor, and educators who taught us to cope with this issue. If we hadn't had that support, I don't know how I would have functioned."

A romantic separation, joined with what was experienced in childhood, triggered a severe depression. At that moment, she questioned the decisions Alonso had made that led him to be persecuted by the repressive forces. "At some point, I felt anger toward him; I wasn't capable of understanding why he didn't think of us, but through dance, I have been understanding that with his political stance, he wasn't only thinking of my brother and me, but also of his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and all the generations that were coming ahead.

At that moment, I began to understand Alonso, more than as a dad, as a citizen of a town and a nation. That’s when I started to heal," she adds.

Although her father remains disappeared and there are no those responsible for his kidnapping serving sentences, Evelyn also found in Pedagogy a work tool and an activity that unites her with her father and reminds her of the days when he taught the children of his neighborhood. "Since I was little, I knew I wanted to teach, but when they told me that he also did it, I understood that carrying social service rooted in your skin is something that is definitely related to my dad."

Currently, Evelyn works with children and young people, committed to passing on history to new generations through education, so that events like those experienced during 17 years in Chile never happen again. "As teachers, we cannot play dumb with the subject.

There is a reason we are educators; it is our job for students to be more conscious, reflective, but also critical. Now there are many young people who don't care about these issues, and that is precisely what I want to change."

Nothing lasts forever, not even fear

Not all children experienced the loss directly like Fabiola or Evelyn, but many of them, such as Sandra Piñeiro Fuenzalida, had traumatic experiences to deal with. Experiencing the change in life and poverty is a memory that she has now transformed into an ability to adapt to everything.

"How did I get to the subject of childhood in dictatorship? Because I am also one of the damaged ones." Sandra has dedicated her life to education and childhood. She is a History teacher and a graphic designer by profession.

For years, she has worked on issues of memory and human rights, and through the plastic exhibition "Fragments of memories: we were not alone," she unites photographs from the era with autobiographical accounts of those who were children and adolescents during the dictatorship, generating spaces that allow both her and the participants of her project to reconstruct collective history through individual memories.

Behind the outstanding professional she is today, she recognizes the existence of a girl raised with fear, led by her own experiences to investigate the social repercussions of having grown up in a repressive context. "With the 40 years of the coup, an outburst of memories is produced, a moment in which, based on my own needs for memory, I observe the generational damage caused by the dictatorship, and I decide to do something."

In 2013, she began to investigate the secondary student movement and its resistance against the regime; one contact led to another, and suddenly she had conducted around 130 interviews with people from Santiago and San Antonio between 2014 and 2016.

Subsequently, she gave them photographs from the era so that they could select those that best represented their experiences. That was how she mounted the exhibition that toured the country during 2017 and that, through cubes and crosses, graphs moments, sensations, and statements that have allowed her to draw clear conclusions about the implications of growing up under a context of state violence. "I wanted to visualize how that social and political subject was built, who lives their entire childhood in a time of dictatorship and systematic genocidal practices, and who modifies their entire formation of values and ethics, turning it into a framework of violence."

The research allowed her to draw clear conclusions, stating, for example, that there are generational differences in the way of carrying the loss and in the needs for memory. "If you talk to a person who is a child of, or is a direct victim, no matter how much they have repaired the trauma, the mark is indelible and there is a pain that is always lived.

But by having a third generation that did not live the impact, it has a different mark." The resignifications and, therefore, the consequences in actions, social and political prominence, are different, she adds.

She is also emphatic on another point: the importance of modifying the vision that reparation policies have caused at a generational level. "By qualifying only some people as direct victims and others not, reparation policies reduce the mark of memory and the traumatic mark—understood as a high negative impact—also causing the generation of children, or the second generation, to live in pain and not in reparation.

On the contrary, the system of relationships recognizes direct victims but also understands that we are all affected."

For Sandra, it is fundamental to work openly, creating platforms that promote reflection and memory. "I am from the same generation, I am part of that group. So the question is, despite what happened, what can we do today?

What did we learn from all that? It is important to talk about what happened to us, what is happening to us, and in conclusion, what we are going to do. Talking is therapeutic, it links us socially and politically. Talking is a reparatory act, both for those who lived it and for one who generates the instance."

Truth, vocation, and social commitment

Just as Sandra mentions, it is common to hear that with the 40 years of the coup, a process of social "uncovering" began, generated from the desire of the people themselves to speak openly about their experiences and to place the terrible events that happened years ago in the spotlight.

In the midst of that process of change was Gabriela García Bustos, a journalist who at that time worked for Paula magazine, looking for the theme of her report with which said media would commemorate the 40 years of the regime.

Born in '82, and with more than a decade practicing journalism, Gabriela decided to delve into the invisible marks of the dictatorship, and it was in that context that she encountered an angle rarely touched upon regarding it: childhood.

Her connection to the subject is undeniable, as her own grandfather was a victim of torture in the two detention centers where he was held. Despite that, Gabriela recognizes that the emphasis is different. "Although my grandfather did not refer in detail to what had happened to him, I grew up hearing about the importance of keeping alive memories and events that, in my opinion, remain current to this day," she relates.

Having decided on the topic, she was joined as a co-author by fellow journalist Alejandra Carmona, beginning a meticulous investigation that started with the reports of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech) and the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig), in which they found names and ID numbers (RUT) of some children who had been tortured. "The challenge was to be able to embody those RUTs, give them a heart, soul, and body, and know who was behind those numbers and what had become of them 40 years later," adds Gabriela.

Then they decided to contact the group Ex-Minor Victims of Political Imprisonment and Torture of Valparaíso and visit them to propose the idea. To their surprise, what they expected would be a meeting with a few was actually a meeting with dozens of children, now turned into adults. "It was very surprising because we understood that it was a sign that indicated the desire to speak, as well as the possibility of listening to these people and dimensioning the importance of the subject we were getting involved with."

After that first meeting, several others followed where the journalists got to know the stories in detail and determined what they would do with each one of them. The first thing was to opt for the stories of those who were the youngest at the time; that way, there would be no possible arguments to justify what happened to the victims.

Secondly, to focus the accounts from the present, thereby demonstrating that "the effects of the dictatorship on childhood are not a thing of the past, but have consequences in the present, and not only in the victims of the attacks on human rights but also in those who follow them: their children and grandchildren."

Finally, the in-depth report "40 Years After the Coup: The Violated Children" was published, which, in addition to causing a great impact at the national level, earned Paula magazine a nomination for the Gabriel García Márquez Award, granted by the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano.

The successful reception from the people allowed her to experience once again the gratification of working fully convinced of her ideals and the contributions that her career allows her to make to society, but it also allows her to be critical about it. "Lawsuits were filed regarding that report, meetings between family members were produced, and conversations within those nuclei that had not been generated in 40 years.

So yes, I believe this work produced things that were important to raise, but I also believe that this report is a grain of sand to contribute to that conversation that is still pending, which is much deeper and which involves us all as a society," adds Gabriela.

Third generation: resignifying the loss

At the moment the Armed Forces of our country decided to use violence and persecution as a measure of order, they never imagined the depth of the damage they would cause to the children who witnessed scenes like those.

However, they also did not take into account that decades later, those children would be ready to speak up for their parents, siblings, and even to heal their own wounds. Just like Fabiola, Evelyn, Sandra, and Gabriela, Gianinna Tello Mutarello—Vitalio’s granddaughter—is like so many other grandchildren of the dictatorship, the living proof of the fruitless attempt to silence ideals with abuses.

Despite having been born in '84, Gianinna—daughter of Giovanna and the oldest of Vitalio’s grandchildren—grew up with memories totally different from those of her mother and aunt: the demonstrations in favor of the "No," the rainbow, the banners, and the colors that were slowly resurfacing in Chile.

Many years of pain had already passed, so her family preferred not to tell her the story of Vitalio, and only with time was she able to understand that the trips to the pampa that her mother and uncles made constituted a crucial element of a time in their lives.

When the time came to study a career, Gianinna decided to train as a commercial engineer, but over time she began to perceive in herself skills that she would later recognize in her grandfather, working as a personal development facilitator and Gestalt therapist, thus giving life to the "In My Shoes" project, which through culture and the arts, has allowed her to find a way to contribute to education and, in turn, pay homage to Vitalio and all those people who were directly affected by the dictatorship.

Staying in sadness was not an alternative, so in a fusion of disciplines and aptitudes, she decided to create the "In My Shoes" project in 2016, giving life to two more chapters of this idea. "Caldera in My Shoes" was the first phase, a documentary that highlighted tourist places in said city, and which, due to the good work done, gave rise to "Antofa in My Shoes," which in 2017 finally turned into "Antofa in My Shoes: The Route of Memory."

The last part of this project is the reformulation of the initial idea, unifying themes of memory, art, and culture, having a tool that allows her to pass on history to new generations. "The idea is to tell the passage of the Caravan of Death through the Antofagasta Region; considering the cities of Calama, Tocopilla, and the regional capital, in addition to incorporating detention centers, such as those located in Pedro de Valdivia, María Elena, and Chacabuco," explains Gianinna.

Since it emerged in 2017, The Route of Memory has obtained important advances, such as the application of the project to the National Fund for Cultural Development and the Arts, FONDART, and the union of the contents of said project to the History and Citizen Education subjects of some establishments in Antofagasta.

Achievements that are due both to the effort of Gianinna and that of the team that supports her, composed of actor Johan Lobos Mutarello—Gianinna’s cousin and Fabiola’s son—a group of audiovisualists, and former political prisoners who with this experience pass from being "victims" to "carriers of history," teaching students what happened in the region, as well as their own experiences of those years.

In this way, Gianinna has been able to know her own history, understanding so many things that she once wondered about. "By not knowing him or receiving such direct information about him, I had to imagine and deduce what his qualities were, but some time ago I realized that he had something that made him different, that he possessed a different leadership, and there I understood that they could have killed the body but not his name, because he had a lot of roots." This allowed her to draw a conclusion that is what motivates her to continue. "Despite everything, his image, more than death, brings life."

Although The Route of Memory keeps her busy, she always has time for two fundamental things in her life: the guitar and her family, the latter being those with whom she joins in the participation of groups related to human rights, making Vitalio’s name resurface in a new context of love and resilience.

Fabiola, her aunt, is another of the members of the family group who, always accompanied by her children, has been able to give a new meaning to what happened years ago. "It’s true, it happened to us; we lost my dad, but we stood up again."

Despite having experienced the loss of her brother and her mother years ago, Fabiola feels more determined than ever not to let suffering become a protagonist of her memories. Now she has three people to honor who encourage her not to lower her arms and to see, from hope, the way to continue working so that their life experiences are not lost.

Finally, what remains? This past September 11, another year of the coup d'état was fulfilled, and with it, we remember that history bleeds, hurts, but also heals. History continues, it does not end, and on the contrary, it is tirelessly reconstructed.

Every time Sandra takes her art to the country and the world, every time Evelyn stands in front of her students and educates, every time Gabriela looks for a way to contribute to the truth in a new reporting topic, or every time Gianinna, together with her aunt Fabiola, narrates the story of Vitalio, his comrades, and how he gave his life for his own.

With them and so many others, history continues without stopping. And in the end, history is built by all of us: those who left, those who remain, and those who are coming.

History is transmitted. History is infinite. History continues.

Source: eldesconcierto.cl, November 27, 2018

Date: 27-10-2018

Anef inaugurates memorial remembering its victims

President Michelle Bachelet, together with other authorities and leaders of human rights organizations, inaugurated a reminder that is at the entrance of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (Anef), immortalizing 380 names of its members who fell during the dictatorship.

Within the framework of the commemoration of the 41 years of the 1973 coup d'état, the Anef inaugurated the reminder in homage to the public employees who were victims of the dictatorship.

The memorial has the names of the 380 forcibly disappeared and political executions victims engraved on bronze plaques, public employees from various sectors who, according to what was reported by the Ministry of the Interior, were victims of the dictatorial regime.

The President of the Republic, Michelle Bachelet, attended the occasion and stated that "a solid community cannot be built without taking charge of the violence that fractured our society and ended the lives of wonderful people, like those who receive our homage today," the President stated in her speech.

"With this memorial, we close a debt of the Anef to the State workers," added Bachelet. "We need that justice to be soon, and we need, for that to be possible, that those who have relevant information, whether civilians or military, provide it," and she urged the Justice system to work to find the truth.

The president of the Anef, Raúl de la Puente, recalled that his organization "was one of the sectors most hit during this dark period."

The leader also recalled the struggle of some of those honored, such as Jorge Peña Hen, Reinalda Pereira, Carlos Prats, and the president's father, Alberto Bachelet.

The ceremony was attended by the representatives of the Association of Relatives of Forcibly Disappeared Persons, Lorena Pizarro, and of Political Executions, Alicia Lira; together with the Minister of Labor, Javiera Blanco; the Minister of Mining, Aurora Williams; the president of the CUT, Bárbara Figueroa; the Undersecretary of Labor, Francisco Díaz; Joan Jara, widow of Víctor Jara; the parliamentarians Tucapel Jiménez, Maya Fernández, Lautaro Carmona, Hugo Gutiérrez, and Claudio Arriagada; in addition to social and union leaders.

Source: Prensa Anef.

Source: villagrimaldi.cl, September 3, 2014

Date: 03-09-2014

Two former Carabineros sentenced for the kidnapping of a nitrate leader in 1973 in the Antofagasta Region

Gerardo René Maluje Abraham and Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo received between 5 and 3 years in prison for the kidnapping of Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza in the town of Pedro de Valdivia.

Gerardo René Maluje Abraham and Arturo Óscar Contreras Tamayo were sentenced to terms of 5 years and one day and 3 years and one day, respectively, by the ruling issued by the minister on extraordinary visit of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza.

According to what was published today by the newspaper La Estrella de Antofagasta, the conviction of these two retired members of the Carabineros is due to the crime of aggravated kidnapping of Vitalio Orlando Mutarello Soza in 1973, specifically in the town of Pedro de Valdivia in the Antofagasta Region.

According to the investigation, Minister Carroza managed to establish "that after September 11, 1973, the authorities began to carry out a radio campaign so that the leaders of leftist parties would present themselves voluntarily at the Pedro de Valdivia sub-precinct.

In those calls, the name of Vitalio Mutarello appeared, a union leader of the nitrate plant and a socialist militant. He went to the police unit on September 12, a place where he remained detained for a period of 2 or 3 days and from which his trail is completely lost."

Subsequently, according to the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, where they recount the link of two detainees by the Carabineros of Pedro de Valdivia "with the victim Vitalio Mutarello Soza, who allegedly died as a result of the torture to which he was subjected in the Pedro de Valdivia Sub-precinct and his body was allegedly left in the pampa approximately on September 12, 1973."

Source: soychile.cl, January 30, 2017

Clarification sent to the email of Hernán Mutarello Acuña

Along with greeting you, I would like to express my need to let you know that in the background information that appears on the page, there is an error in the marital status background of my grandfather Vitalio Mutarello Soza, since it expresses the existence of only three children, which is an error of omission since my father Hernán Mutarello Acuña is a child conceived out of wedlock by Vitalio Mutarello, therefore, he is not the son of Sonia Aros and, therefore, I understand why he does not appear considered as such on the website.

For this reason, I am sending this email so that this error is corrected and the data is updated.

My name is Yeimy Mutarello Wuillans, daughter of Hernán Mutarello Acuña and granddaughter of Vitalio Mutarello Soza.

I attach birth certificates, both of my grandfather and my father, so that you have the certainty that what is written above is a truthful event.

Waiting for a prompt response, I bid you farewell, thanking you in advance.

Source: La Serena, October 30, 2009

Date: 30-10-2009