The
YouTube
portrayal
above
is
a
vivid
account
of
the
events
which
left
unknown
numbers
of
summarily
executed
Chileans
tossed
in
dark copper mines. This
video tells much of the indirect
America involvement in the military coup which overthrew socialist
President Salvador Allende in 1973.
Copiapó, where the
33 miners were rescued in October, 2010, was one area where Chile's
military carried out summary executions -- then often hid the bodies.
Ironically it was an American driller from Afghanistan who helped make
the rescue -- where American policy had once consigned thousands to
their deaths.
Conservative but
philathropic
President Sebastián
Piñera noted his nation had
symbolically emerged into the
light.
The wealthy Harvard educated academic/businessman turned politician
pledged tighter safety controls to protect the nation's miners. He
has
pledged
to help move Chile's labor standards from those of a "third
world" past to those of a modern "first world" nation.
The mine
rescue is testament to how far Chile has come toward more modern unity
from its polarized Cold War past.
For years stricken
relatives of those killed by the military had searched
the mines, caves, and
rivers for bones.
Relatives were often barred from
viewing bodies buried in
cemeteries. To cover their tracks, the military often later
disinterred bodies and dumped them in unknown locations.
This process of
arbitrary
execution triggered by a roving delegation of military dispatched from
the capital city of Santigo has been labelled the "Caravan
of
Death."
Thousands succumbed to execution and torture in the years of Augusto Pinochet
(1973-1990). That was the price for the September 11,
1973 American backed overthrow of democratically elected
Cuban/Soviet backed socialist
President Salvador
Allende.
That overthrow confirmed the contention of
Fidel Castro and the
Soviets that socialism could not come to power by peaceful means --
unless the forces of the Left first abandoned the constitution and used
violence to disarm the enemies waiting to overthrow it.
The tragedy of Chile became one foundation of President Jimmy Carter's
enshrinement of human rights protection as a major part of U.S. policy
with the establishment of an Office of Human Rights
Reporting in the State Department. Chile became an important
milestone in the evolution of how overseas human rights
are viewed in the U.S.
Documents
released in 2000 have revealed the indirect and direct
involvement of the CIA in the repression following the coup. For more
disclosures on American involvement in the overthrow of Allende,
see these documents which also bear on the execution by the military of
American journalist Charles Horman.
Chile
had become a battleground between the American CIA and the Soviet KGB.
Horman was the subject of the 1982 film Missing, directed by Costa Gavras and
starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. Chilean investigators re-enacted
Horman's execution in May, 2002, as reported with a predictable slant
on this World
Socialist Web Site.
Charles Horman was not the first or last
American journalist to be killed after becoming caught up in murky
plots and intelligence operations. It seems unlikely that U.S.
authorities knowingly encouraged his execution after the military coup.
However he appears to have uncovered evidence of U.S./Chilean military
cooperation in the planning of the coup. U.S. officials may have
indirectly or unknowingly encouraged his execution in Santiago's National
Stadium.
The execution of
Horman was part of the same pattern that led to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in
Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. An ambitious, idealistic but somewhat naive
journalist ventures into or is lured into unpredictable "enemy
territory." He is then killed either to silence him or to
publicly make a political point. With Horman the Chilean military
sought desperately to hide their crime.
The Muslim extremists who killed the Jewish Pearl wanted it
publicized to make a point, so they released video of his death. Horman
became a forgotten footnote. Pearl a much sung hero.
Daniel
Pearl
Long before Horman and Pearl
was George Polk,
the
35
year
old CBS reporter found floating in Greek waters in 1948
with a bullet in the back of the head. Every spring for the past
45 years, the
most distinguished names in journalism have gathered in New York City
for the George W. Polk Awards, commemorating this American reporter
murdered during the Greek civil war.
Polk had made enemies on all sides by writing critically of Greek
communists, the Greek right wing government fighting the communists and
the American government which supplied arms to the Greek government.
Who killed him and why? Was it revenge or because he "knew too
much?" The question is still debated.
UNESCO had compiled a useful
list by country of more recently assassinated journalists.
Click here
for an exhaustive survey of the Charles Horman execution and the
investigations
and litigation which followed. The mystery surrounding his death
remains.
According
to
various
reports
and
investigations
1,200–3,200
people
were
killed,
up
to
80,000
were interned, and up to 30,000 were tortured by his
regime, including women and children .
******
A
Truth
and
Reconciliation
Commission documented much of the 1970's Chile killings in the
early Nineties. But the trauma of the "missing" is still etched on this
now
recovering nation. Efforts to uncover what happened and prosecute those
responsible have continued.
The commission estimated 1068 executed in one way or another, with
another 957 "disappeared."
It must be remembered that large scale executions, assassinations,
massacres and other violence have been the hallmarks of civil war and
revolution in many Latin American nations. Political executions in
Castro's Cuba from 1959 on have numbered anywhere between 3,000
and 12,000, depending on the source's orientation. Executions
declined in the 1970's, with a moratorium established in 2001.
Amnesty International's 1985 annual report concluded that in El Salvador
many of the 70,000 people killed in the preceding five years had been
murdered, by pro-American government forces, who openly dumped the
mutilated corpses, in an apparent effort, to terrorize the
population. Massacres and political killings were frequent in the
1980's in both Guatemala and Nicaragua.
For an historic treatment of Spanish influence on human rights
atrocities in Latin America see Jamie Garcia-Rodriguez, Spain in the Americas:
Human Rights and Guerrilla War.
Francisco Goya: "The Third of May"
We
can see that the killings in the area of mine rescue back in 1973 were
relatively few in number, compared to the overall national scene.
A roving delegation of military from Santiago visited a variety of
localities, and apparently ordered the killings.
This is one small
chapter in a broader story repeated from time to time in the nations of
the world.
Now we have the paradox
of
the current
Chilean president, a conservative, working to contribute to a kind of
closure -- after an initial stage of healing in the national
investigation cited below.
(Taken from the Report
of
the
Chilean National Commission on Truth and
Reconciliation,
May
1990 to
February 1991)
Downloadable in PDF
from U.S
Institute of Peace
http://www.usip.org/resources/truth-commission-chile-90
I) Regional
Overview
(see below for details on killings in area of mine rescue.)
These executions, which took
place
in October 1973 are treated
in greater detail in the
parts of
this chapter dealing with the
various regions. However the
overall toll is seventy-two people
killed: four executions in
Cauquenes (October 4), fifteen in La
Serena (October 16),
thirteen in
Copiapó (October 17), fourteen
in Antofagasta (October 19),
and
twenty-six in Calama (October
19).
We should now consider the
relationship between the high level
delegation from Santiago and
these
executions. The delegation
was physically present in
all
these cities and at these times. The
reason given for all these
executions was that they were killed
"while trying to escape"
with the
exception of Antofagasta, where
in some instances war
tribunals
were seemingly invented to
hide the truth and to make
the
relevant documentation formally
correct. Finally, all the
executions were selective: the victims
were members of the
Socialist and
Communist parties and of
the MIR, with the accent on
the
first. Forty of the seventy-two
persons executed were
Socialists.
From these coincidences, one
may
conclude that it is very likely
that members of the
delegation
were involved in those five
groups of executions.
However, the
Commission has not been
able to come to the
conviction
that they were involved in
Cauquenes. In this instance
there
is no concrete proof of their
involvement, the relatively
low
number of victims is out of line
with the much higher number
of
executions elsewhere, and the
delegation spent only a few
hours
at Cauquenes.
On the other hand, the
Commission
has come closer to being
fully convinced that they
were
involved in the killings explained
as a response to an escape
attempt
in Copiapó (although it has
not quite reached complete
certainty).
The events in Copiapó
are
as similar to those in La Serena,
Antofagasta, or Calama as two
drops
of water.
It is unlikely that whoever among the local officials in
Copiapó was
physically responsible for the crimes
acted without orders from
above.
It is unlikely that the local
commander would give such an
order
if there were present a
superior who possessed
delegated
maximum powers or
officers in the delegation
who
could act in representation of that
superior or who themselves
had the
same level of power as his.
However, the available
evidence
makes it unlikely that members
of the delegation in fact
were
involved on the night of October 16
in Copiapó although
the
possibility that those locally involved
may have been prompted by
them
cannot be entirely discounted.
II) Detailed
examination of executions
in Altacama desert,
specifically
area
of
mine
disaster
Copiapo:
This section presents
nineteen
cases of human rights violations
that took place in the
Atacama
Region between September 11
and the end of 1973. All of
them
ended in death and in all cases
the Commission came to the
conviction that the government
was responsible for the
actions of
its agents or people working
for them. On September 11
the
commander of the regiment at
Copiapó took charge
of the
Third Region, which now covers the
provinces of
Chañaral,
Copiapó and Huasco, and he acted as
operational commander.
The new authorities brought
the
zone under control immediately
and without any resistance.
Except
for a case that will be
described below, it was not
until
mid-October that anyone was
killed for political reasons
or
for the sake of public order. There
were no military casualties
and
the Commission did not learn of
any incident during this
period
that might be characterized as an
armed clash or one in which
the
armed forces were attacked.
According to the document
titled
"Situation of the Country No. 7"
issued by the Ministry of
National
Defense on September 15,
1973, the situation in
Atacama was
one "of calm with everything
under control. Casualties:
there
have been no military
casualties; one civilian
killed
and 123 prisoners." All indications
are that the authorities had
complete control over the province
as soon as they took power.
In the cases of human rights
violations examined by the
Commission, the victims had
ties
to the previous government.
They were people known to be
politically active in a leftist party or
movement, primarily the
Socialist
party, and to a lesser extent
the MIR and the Communist
party.
Only one of those persons
killed was not politically
involved. Generally speaking, these
people had regional or
national
political positions or served as
managers in state
enterprises, or
were leaders in student,
labor, or neighborhood
organizations. All were males, and most
were young, between twenty
and
thirty years old.
The arrests were also
selective
and were concentrated in the
city of Copiapó,
although
in smaller towns police also held
some officials from the
previous
government under arrest in
their stations. In
Copiapó,
which was then the provincial capital
of Atacama, people were
generally
first picked up by the police
and then taken to the jail.
In
jail they could receive visitors and as
far as this Commission was
able to
determine, they were not
subject to mistreatment or
violence. While they were being held
in detention, the prisoners
were
taken to the regiment at
Copiapó for
interrogation.
The fact that a person was taken to
the military base in this
manner
was sometimes in effect the
beginning of being brought
to
trial. People were never held at the
regiment for more than a
week.
During this time prisoners were
kept in solitary
confinement, or
at least they were not allowed to
receive visits from their
relatives. At the regiment headquarters
they were commonly subjected
to
torture and other unlawful
mistreatment.
No prisoner was executed
before
October 17, the date when a
military delegation from
Santiago
arrived at Copiapó. Sixteen
prisoners were killed that
day and
the next. In the explanations
provided by military
authorities,
thirteen were shot to death
because they tried to run
away and
three were executed in
compliance with a sentence
issued
by a war tribunal. The
Commission finds neither of
these
accounts plausible or
justified.
The authorities acknowledged
all
the deaths in the region and
there were no cases of
people who
disappeared after arrest.
Nevertheless, as a rule the
relatives were unable to bury their
loved ones, and in some
cases they
did not find out the exact
location of their graves.
Thus in
Copiapó the bodies of the
thirteen who were killed in
the
supposed escape attempt on
October 17 were not turned
over;
the official communique
indicated that they had been
buried in the city cemetery, but the
families were not told where
they
had been buried. Only in 1990,
partly as a result of a
judicial
petition on the part of this
Commission, was it possible
to
determine where they were
buried and to have them
exhumed.
After being identified, the bodies were handed
over to the
families so that they couldprovide them with a dignified
burial. Those who were executed by a decision of a war
tribunal
were buried in the local cemetery by official order,
and were then
transferred to burial sites
unknown to their
families to this
day.
Elsewhere in the region,
the attitude of local authorities
in this
regard varied, as will be noted in each case.
III)
Here
are
those
killed:
Cases of grave human rights
violations in the Atacama Region
Copiapó
On October 17, 1973, during
the
early morning hours, thirteen
people who were being held
prisoner were executed.
Winston Dwight CABELLO
BRAVO, 28,
a commercial
engineer who was the
regional head
of ODEPLAN (National
Planning Office) and active
in the
Socialist party. He was
arrested on September 12, at
the
governorship and transferred
to the regiment at
Copiapó
(now called the Captain Rafael
Torreblanca Regiment).
Agapito del Carmen CARVAJAL
GONZALEZ, 32, a government
official who was active in
the
Socialist party. He was arrested at
his home and taken to the
Copiapó Regiment.
Fernando CARVAJAL GONZALEZ,
30, an
office worker who
was active in the Socialist
party.
He was arrested on September
22 at his home and taken to
the
Copiapó Regiment and then to
the local jail.
Manuel Roberto CORTAZAR
HERNANDEZ,
20, a high school
student and leader who was a
MIR
activist. He reported to the
military authorities after
being
summoned by a military decree
on September 17, 1973. He
was held
prisoner in the Copiapó
jail, and was taken to the
regiment on October 2.
Alfonso Ambrosio GAMBOA
FARIAS,
35, a teacher who was
manager of Radio Atacama and
active in the Socialist party.
Police arrested him at his
home on
September 15, and took him
to the prison at
Copiapó.
Raúl del Carmen
GUARDIA
OLIVARES, 23, a government
official who was active in
the
Socialist party.
Raúl Leopoldo de
Jesús LARRAVIDE LOPEZ, 21, a student of
engineering and mining at
the
Copiapó campus of the State
Technical University who was
a MIR
activist. He was arrested on
September 12, 1973 on the
university grounds and was taken to
the Copiapó Regiment.
In
late September he was transferred to
the local prison.
Edwin Ricardo MANCILLA HESS,
21, a
student of pedagogy at
the normal school who was
president of the student center and
regional secretary of the
MIR.
Police and investigative police
arrested him at his home on
October 15 and took him to the
prison in Copiapó and
then
to the regiment.
Adolfo Mario PALLERAS
NORAMBUENA,
27, a merchant who
was a neighborhood leader
and a
MIR activist. Summoned by
the authorities in a
military
decree, he decided not to present
himself. He was arrested by
police
on October 15, and taken to
the Copiapó Regiment
and
later transferred to the prison.
Jaime Iván SIERRA
CASTILLO,
27, a radio announcer who
was active in the Socialist
party.
Investigative police arrested him
at his home on September 20
and
took him to their
headquarters. From there he
was
transferred to the Copiapó
Regiment.
Atilio Ernesto UGARTE
GUTIERREZ,
24, a student of mining
engineering at the
Copiapó
campus of the State Technical
University who was a MIR
activist.
He was arrested October 14
at the residence hall where
he
lived and was taken to the
Copiapó Regiment.
Néstor Leonello
VINCENTI
CARTAGENA, 33, a teacher who
was the regional secretary
of the
Socialist party. He was
arrested by troops and taken
to
the Copiapó Regiment.
Pedro Emilio PEREZ FLORES,
29, a
mining engineer and
professor at the
Copiapó
campus of the State Technical
University who was a
government
representative at the Elisa de
Bordo mining plant and a
Socialist
party leader. He was
arrested September 25, 1973
at his
home, which was then
searched by investigative
police,
who took him to the Copiapó
prison.
The Commission has been able
to
verify that several of these
people were subjected to
torture
and other unlawful
mistreatment.
Through an official
communiqué published in the newspaper
Atacama on October 18, 1973,
the
commander of the zone
under state of siege stated
that
the thirteen people on the list
had been killed. He added
that an
escape plan had been
discovered among the
prisoners at
Copiapó. In view of the
insecurity and overcrowding
of the
prison, the military
prosecutor's office had
proceeded
to "send a group of the more
dangerous people who were
being
tried in the military justice
system to the La Serena
prison."
The official communiqué goes on to say that they had been
taken
in a regiment truck which
developed an electrical
problem
just before getting to the top of Cuesta Cardones.
"Taking advantage
of the fact that the driver
and his assistant
were trying to
deal with the mechanical failure,
the prisoners suddenly took
advantage of a careless moment by
one of the guards, and
jumped to
the ground and started to run
toward the brush. Even
though the
guards yelled 'Halt' several
times and even shot into the
air
to frighten them, they did not
stop".
The report continues, "in
view of
this situation, they
proceeded to shoot at the
fugitives, wounding thirteen of them
and they died on the spot."
A number of documents such
as
death certificates and
cemetery registration have
confirmed the date and time of their
death. The fact that they
left the
prison has also been duly
attested. After they were
killed,
their bodies remained inside a
truck at the Copiapó
Regiment and were buried at the local
cemetery by troops in a
common
grave between the end of the
day on October 17 and early
on the
18th. Not even the families
were informed exactly where
they
were buried. Only on July 31,
1990, as the result of a
judicial
request made by the
Commission, were the remains
of
these thirteen people
exhumed. After being
identified,
they were turned over to their
relatives for final burial.
This Commission rejects the
official account that the persons
listed had to be killed to
prevent
them from escaping in view of
the following circumstances:
* The thirteen victims had
been
chosen for transfer to La
Serena because they were
dangerous, as that official account
indicates, and thus
presumably
they were under heavy military
guard in a well prepared
operation; hence if the vehicle had
developed a mechanical
problem
that guard would have been
sufficient to prevent them
from
even getting to the point of
running into the brush.
* This Commission also finds
it
unlikely that a heavily
armed military patrol would
have
found that the only way of
recapturing thirteen
prisoners
fleeing into the desert would have
been to kill them. The
physical
condition of some of the
prisoners after a number of
days
of imprisonment reinforces
this point. The Commission
also
received several consistent
circumstantial witness
reports
indicating the types of torture to
which many of them had been
subjected.
* It does not seem very
likely
that in order to crush an
escape attempt by thirteen
prisoners it should be necessary to
kill all of them on the spot.
* The fact that their
families
were not allowed to view their
bodies suggests that an
effort was
made to conceal matters.
* The state of the remains
when
they were exhumed
indicates that these people
were
executed in a situation in which
they were utterly under the
control and at the mercy of the
soldiers, and that is quite
inconsistent with the official account.
The remains of several of
them
were mutilated, but showed no
bullet wounds and had
obviously
been cut with knives.
In view of the foregoing the
Commission came to the
conviction that these
thirteen
persons were executed without any
justification by government
agents, thereby gravely violating their
human rights. The Commission
has
heard a variety of
competent testimonies about
the
individual or individuals
presumed to have been
involved in
planning and executing
these grave actions, but it
has
not been able to come to a
conviction on the matter of
who
was responsible, nor is that its
proper role, and hence it
takes no
position on the matter.
On October 18, 1973, the
following
were shot by firing squad:
Benito TAPIA TAPIA, 32, an
office
worker at Cobresal who was
a national leader of the
Confederation of Copper Workers and a
member of the central
committee of
the Young Socialists. He
was arrested September 17,
1973
and taken to the prison in
Copiapó and from
there to
the regiment headquarters in the city.
Ricardo Hugo GARCIA POSADA,
43, a
commercial engineer
and general manager at
Cobresal
who was active in the
Communist party. On
September 12
he reported to the
authorities in Potrerillos
and was
held under arrest at the
management office of the
company.
On September 14 he was
taken to the Copiapó
prison
and then to the regimental
headquarters.
Maguindo CASTILLO ANDRADE,
40, an
office worker at
Cobresal who was active in
the
Socialist party. On September
12 he reported to the
authorities
in Potrerillos after having been
summoned to do so by a
military
edict, and was then released.
Soldiers arrested him at his
home
September 15 and paraded
him through the streets in
the
center of El Salvador gesticulating
at him as the head of "Plan
Z." He
was then taken to the
Copiapó police
station. The
day before these people were shot
to death, soldiers who were
part
of a military delegation from
Santiago ransacked their
homes.
On October 18, the wives of
these
prisoners received a
memorandum attributed to the
secretary of the war tribunal,
although it bore neither his
name
nor his signature. It stated that
their spouses had been
executed
that same day at 4:00 a.m. by
virtue of war tribunal No.
3, and
that the sentence had been
approved by the honorable
governing junta.
The document makes no
reference to the trial or sentence nor
does it indicate
the accusations. The same
memorandum
indicated that theremains
were
to
be
buried
in
the
local
cemetery
at
7:00
p.m.
and
that only five persons would be
allowed to be present. Troops buried them in the local
cemetery.
Family members were allowed to enter the
cemetery only
after
the burial was over.
At some point in the
following
years, the remains were moved to
another burial site without
the
knowledge or the permission of
the families. The judicial
investigation carried out in July 1990
noted that their bodies were
not
in the place where they had
originally been buried.
Their
burial site is still unknown.
Despite what is said in the
memorandum to the relatives,
consistent and trustworthy
evidence lead this Commission to
conclude that military
authorities
in the region decided to
execute these people, that
the
delegation from Santiago
approved of the decision,
and that
there was no war tribunal or
due process. The following
considerations in particular support
that conclusion:
* Despite
repeated requests made to the
competent institutions,
it has not
been possible to obtain
documents from the trial.
* The families of those shot
were
previously told that they
were to be put on trial, and
hence
they sought legal assistance,
and the lawyer maintained
continual contact with the military
prosecutor assigned to the
case.
However, neither this defense
lawyer nor the family
members were
told that a war tribunal was
to take place on October 17.
* The Commission received
several
testimonies from
people, including members of
the
military, who were unaware of
any war tribunal.
* If in fact these people
were put
on trial in some fashion,
that trial did not satisfy
even
the minimal requirements for a
defense of those put on
trial:
their defense lawyer was not
involved and no
consideration was
given to the previous
blamelessness of their
conduct,
which for at least one of those
executed was reliably
established
at the moment of execution.
The only evidence of the
accusations against them is what
appeared in the newspaper
Atacama
on October 20, 1973,
indicating that they were
accused
of inciting to violence and
attempting to paralyze the
Cobresal mining operation. In this
regard, it should be kept in
mind
that these three were
imprisoned from the first
few days
after September 11, and
therefore they could hardly
have
committed any crime in
wartime.
In view of the foregoing,
this
Commission has come to the
conviction that these three
persons were executed without any
judicial proceeding by
government
agents who thus gravely
violated their right to due
process and their right to life.
Other Places in the Region
On September 11, 1973,
Javier
Edgardo VALDIVIA ARTAYA, a
worker in the El Algarrobo
mine of
the Acero del Pacífico
company, was killed. He was
shot
by civilians who by order of
the military were guarding
the
Vallenar water tanks. They have
declared that they had to
use
their weapons to prevent Javier
Edgardo Valdivia from trying
to
poison the city water tanks.
The Commission has examined
the
court record used as evidence
on these events and has
received
many consistent witness
accounts enabling it to come
to
the conclusion that these
civilians shot him without
any
action or provocation on his part
that would justify such a
measure.
His attitude does not seem to
have been of a kind to
arouse
suspicion; even if such were the
case, however, these
civilians
could have stopped him or
prevented any action on his
part
since he was on foot and
unarmed. For these reasons
this
Commission holds the
conviction that Javier
Edgardo
Valdivia's human rights were
violated by civilians who
were
acting on behalf of government
agents.
On October 24, 1973,
Florencio
VARGAS DIAZ, 65, the former
mayor of Diego de Almagro
who was
an active Socialist, died at
the police station there. He
had
been arrested by police from
that station the previous
day. His
relatives, who visited him the
day of his arrest, say that
he
showed no signs of emotional
disturbance nor of having
been
mistreated. On October 24 his
body was left at the morgue
and
his family was told that he had
hung himself from the bars
of his
jail cell with his shirt. The
death certificate states
that the
cause of death was "asphyxiation
by hanging as from a
suicide."
This Commission finds the story
that he committed suicide
implausible, and in fact holds the
conviction that the death of
Florencio Vargas entailed a violation
of his basic rights by
government
agents. The following points
support that conviction:
* The nature of the cell in
which
he was being held, which
his relatives observed when
they
visited him, made suicide by
hanging practically
impossible
since the only place from which
he could have hung were some
bars
in the windows which were
less than a meter and a half
high,
and the way they were
attached to the wall made
such an
operation unlikely.
* The Commission has also
heard
credible accounts
indicating that Florencio
Vargas
was found dead with his jacket
on, and that fact is hard to
explain if he hung himself with his
shirt.
* Since Vargas was
imprisoned and
in the custody of
personnel from that police
station, and if suicide is ruled out as
implausible, his death could
only
have been the work of a
member of the police on duty
there.
On December 14, 1973, Juan
LOPEZ
TORRES, a miner and
former mayor of Vallenar who
was
an active member of the
Communist party, was killed
by
local police. He had been
summoned by a military
decree
issued by the operational
commander in Vallenar, and
hence
he tried to cross over into
Argentina immediately after
September 11. According to the
official account provided in
Military Decree No. 39 by the
commander issued on December
14,
1973, López Torres is
said to have been killed
that day
at a place called Mina La
Restauradora as he was
trying to
run away from a police patrol
which was under orders to
capture
him. The account claimed
that López Torres was
armed
and had already run away from
that same patrol once before
on
September 12.
This Commission finds the
explanation that Juan López was
killed while trying to
escape of
little worth for presumably a patrol
ordered to capture a
fugitive is
normally able to apprehend such
a person alive if he or she
does
not resist, as indeed was the
case in this instance.
Reinforcing this conclusion
is the
fact that the
authorities
had Juan
López buried at the Huasco Bajocemetery, and they
set a period of
three years during which his
remains could not be
exhumed. Had
the official account been
true, it is not clear why
such a
measure preventing an
examination to see the
wounds
which had caused his death
should have been taken. This
Commission has come to the
conviction that Juan
López
was executed by government agents
in total disregard for the
law and
that this action was a violation
of his human rights.
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