ERNESTO GALLARDO ZÁRATE (38 years old) ⚡️Arauco, 1973⚡️Adult with mental disability. No militancy.
Ernesto was in Arauco Prison serving a sentence for the crime of arson. On September 24 he had a psychiatric decompensation and assaulted the prison guards. The prison warden requested help from the Carabineros. The police and several gendarmes used their firearms, hitting Ernesto, who subsequently died.
HUGO ENRIQUE ALFARO CASTRO (43 years old) ⚡️Tocopilla, 1975⚡️ Teacher, mining engineer and blind person. Socialist.
On January 27, 1975, while on vacation in Tocopilla, his house was surrounded by carabineros and he was arrested along with other people. They were accused of holding a clandestine meeting to conspire against the Government. Officially it was reported that Hugo had hanged himself inside one of the police station cells. However, a witness declared that he saw, while he was being detained, two people dragging him and heard one of them ask what they were doing now, to which the other replied that they had to “just change his diagnosis”.
The physical analysis carried out in the hospital to which he was sent later confirmed to the family that he had clear signs of torture, including the application of electricity. For this reason, it has been concluded that he died as a result of the torture received by Carabineros agents.
In the commune of Pudahuel, the Hugo Alfaro Recording and Integration Center for the Blind was created in his memory.
JORGE MIGUEL SALAS PARADISI (25 years old) ⚡️Santiago, 1973⚡️ Mathematics student with disability. No militancy
Six people were arrested in the early morning of October 16, 1973 from different apartments in the San Borja Towers by Army personnel. At the time of the arrest, his parents explained that he was suffering from severe depression and that, as a result of medication, he was in a state of recurrent lethargy. This made it difficult to wake him up, but he was still captured. The detainees were taken to the Yucatan Barracks (Londres 38), then to the Casa de la Cultura de Barrancas, and later to the area around the Lo Prado tunnel. At the place they were ordered to flee, simulating an escape, at which time they were killed by machine gun fire.
The bodies were found on October 17, 1973, which initiated an internal investigation in the Army who concluded that it had been a “military error” and proceeded to present the condolences of the Government Junta. However, the Chilean Government later reported that it was a group of people who tried to escape by jumping over a guard post, and sentries on guard duty shot them dead. These versions were dismissed in successive trials as they were evidently contradictory, since the people did not know each other, except for a married couple. On the other hand, one of the people was pregnant and Jorge -due to his health condition- could hardly have escaped.
In 2017, the University of Chile awarded his posthumous and symbolic degree to Jorge Salas Paradisi of Pedagogy in Mathematics.
JUAN FIDEL VALENCIA LÓPEZ (34 years old) ⚡️Viña del Mar, 1973⚡️Adulto with intellectual disability. No militancy.
On December 1, 1973, in the vicinity of the CIMSA company in El Salto, Viña del Mar, Juan is arrested by a military patrol of the Coraceros Regiment of Viña del Mar. Frightened, he fled the place and was shot with a rifle on several occasions. He died on the spot.
LUIS ARTURO NAVARRO PEÑA (46 years old) ⚡️Santiago, 1973 ⚡️ Worker and deaf person, without militancy.
Luis was a deaf worker who, on September 12, 1973, left his home in the San Joaquín district. He was on his way to buy bread when the police patrolling the area ordered him to stop. When he did not listen to the order, he was shot and killed instantly.
LUIS ENRIQUE PÉREZ BALBONTÍN (22 years old) ⚡La Pintana, 1973⚡ Newspaper salesman with physical disability. No militancy.
On October 15, 1973, Luis was attending to his newspaper kiosk in the Pablo de Rokha neighborhood of La Pintana, when he was detained by carabineros from the San Rafael police station, while they were looking for information to arrest people on a list. When he was taken to the police station, it was found that he had total muscular atrophy in both legs, as well as the use of orthopedic shoes and crutches to move around. The following day, his body was abandoned in a plot of land in Nos, with gunshot wounds to the skull and abdomen. His death occurred while he was deprived of his liberty.
NELSON JOSÉ MÁRQUEZ AGUSTO (31 years old) ⚡ Pisagua, 1974 ⚡Fisherman with cognitive impairment due to torture. Communist militant.
Nelson was arrested in the city of Iquique. He worked in the merchant navy, for which he was falsely accused of smuggling and drug trafficking. He was transferred to the Pisagua prison camp, where he spent 4 months under permanent torture. His mental state rapidly declined, so that his cognitive impairment became permanent. In such conditions, the military force decided to leave him unguarded in the field located in front of the prison, which allowed him to make an escape attempt to the Caleta Pisagua dock. The escape was discovered, he was recaptured and brutally beaten. Nelson was returned to prison, to be taken to the beach a couple of hours later, where he was finally shot in front of 40 prisoners as part of a collective punishment. The version given by the military indicated that his death was due to suicide. However, his body was found with his hands tied, blindfolded and shot in the clandestine grave of Pisagua in 1990.
LUIS HUMBERTO FUENTES FUENTES (47 years old) ⚡ Quinta Normal, 1973⚡ Retired and blind person without militancy.
Luis was a blind person. Widowed at a young age, he lived with his son in the Nueva Matucana neighborhood in Quinta Normal. He was killed by a bullet during the curfew of November 4, 1973. His son testified that the shot was fired by individuals wearing helmets from a moving van, while Luis was on the sidewalk in front of his home. He died at home. For years, his death was not investigated as the complaint was not accredited.
PEDRO PURÍSIMO BARRIA ORDOÑEZ (22 years old) ⚡️Panguipulli, 1973⚡️ Student of typing with physical disability. Militant of the MIR and MCR.
As a child, Pedro suffered from Poliomyelitis which led him to live with a permanent physical disability and to use crutches to get around. At the age of 22, he was studying typing and was a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (MCR). He carried out literacy work with the families of the workers of the Panguipulli Timber and Forestry Complex. He was arrested on September 12, 1973 at the Complex along with eleven other workers, who were taken to the Valdivia Public Jail. There he was subjected to a war council, whose legality did not exist, being falsely accused of assaulting the Retén Neltume and sentenced to death along with the other detainees. What witnesses have assured is that the workers together with Pedro were demonstrating for the Carabineros not to join the coup d’état that took place the day before.
