2023-08-06 08:00:39
Of the more than five thousand detainees who were taken to the Chile Stadium in Santiago -today the Víctor Jara Stadium- after the coup d’état of September 11, 1973 led by General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), there were two, the Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara (40) and the lawyer Littré Quiroga Carvajal (33), general director of the Prison Service of the ousted socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), who spent the last hours of their lives together. In agony, isolated from the other prisoners in a dressing room, for at least three days they suffered kicks as well as punches and gun butts, according to dozens of testimonies in the judicial file that the Supreme Court reviewed a week ago, which is preparing to issue the final ruling, 50 years after their murders.
According to the judicial investigation, at the Chile Stadium both were identified by the military as “prisoners of a certain public connotation.” In the case of Víctor Jara, “the attacks had as their main incentive artistic, cultural and political activity, closely linked to the recently overthrown government,” says the ruling that has reached the Supreme Court for review. Littré Quiroga’s captors accused him of the “alleged fact”, which was never proven, “of having been responsible for the imprisonment and mistreatment suffered by Army General Roberto Viaux.” In 1969, during the government of the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), Viaux led an attempted military uprising, in a barracks in the Tacna Regiment known as the Tacnazo.
The perpetrators of the murders of Jara and Quiroga, Judge Miguel Vásquez has established, There are seven ex-military officers convicted in 2021 in the second instance and that now they are trying to reverse their sentences. “These victims were being killed slowly, day by day. In the end, the bullets were simply an ornament, because they were on their way to death, ”the lawyer Nelson Caucoto, who has represented both families for more than 20 years, said in his last plea. He was referring to the way they were murdered: the singer-songwriter had 56 bone fractures and 44 bullets in his body, while Quiroga had 47 fractures and 23 bullets.
Their corpses were thrown, together, on a vacant lot near the railway line, in the vicinity of the Metropolitan Cemetery, on September 16, 1973.
Facade of the Littré Quiroga National Directorate Building. courtesy
The one from Caucoto has been a heated plea, lasting more than an hour, which reveals the years it has taken the two causes, together, to reach their final phase. In the case of Víctor Jara, the first lawsuit was filed in 1978 and, in Quiroga’s, in 1987, still during the dictatorship. His brother René Quiroga (77) tells EL PAÍS that it was his mother, Mercedes Carvajal, who filed it. In a press conference 36 years ago, which was recorded in some media at the time, she said: “I am still waiting for an answer. I want justice and that the guilty be punished. I will never understand why he was murdered.” However, within a week the courts closed the case.
The processes of Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga were reactivated only after 1998, after the arrest of Pinochet in London, which caused a change in the criteria of the Chilean courts. The reconstruction of the last days of the two communist militants has been done by the ex-prisoners themselves. In the case of Quiroga, a massive man almost two meters tall (1.92), they have stated that they never saw him standing up, that since he arrived at the stadium they kicked him to the ground, that he could not speak. But an ex-conscript has also testified, whom Caucoto quoted before the judges: “He said: ‘we all knew in the State of Chile that Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga were going to end up dead.'”
Today, on the eve of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the coup, the name of Quiroga has been released by the Gendarmerie (the former Prison Service), which has proposed that a section of Rosas street, where the institutional building is located, in Santiago center, renamed Littré Quiroga Carvajal, a decision that will be made next week by a committee of the municipality of Santiago. “It is an act of memory that promotes reflection on the non-repetition of serious human rights violations. He is an institutional martyr, ”says Sebastián Urra Palma, director of the Gendarmerie.
In 2014, the Gendarmerie baptized his building with his name, while last June, the Supreme Court awarded him the posthumous title of lawyerin a ceremony in which it was also awarded to José Tohá, the father of Carolina Tohá, Interior Minister of the left-wing president Gabriel Boric.
Littré Quiroga was arrested on the night of September 11, 1973, precisely, in the Rosas street building. Strictly speaking, he should not go, since he was on medical leave. But, on the morning of that cloudy Tuesday, after the bombing of La Moneda, when he heard on the radio that a military faction was forcing him to appear together with several supporters of the Popular Unity at the Defense Ministry, he put on his suit and tie. and went to work. He first let his collaborators leave, then he made a call to Defense, advising that, the next day, he would show up. But a police patrol ordered him to turn himself in and transferred him to the 2nd Armored Regiment in Santiago. Two days later he was taken to the Chile Stadium.
In his office, Quiroga wrote three letters: to his wife Silvia, to his mother, and to their three young children. “Little children: behave yourself and eat all the food. Study hard and help your mom. Dad won’t be able to see them maybe until when. Don’t watch so much television and behave accordingly, like good children. Chaíto and don’t forget his daddy. Congratulations, Littré Quiroga C”.
Letter from Littré Quiroga. COURTESY GENDARMERÍA DE CHILE
René Quiroga remembers that the guatón, as he affectionately calls his older brother, never hid his militancy, even in the days before the coup, when the country’s climate was agitated. So much so, he recalls, that he always carried El Siglo, the party newspaper, under his arm, and that’s how he walked down the street. “He had a saying: shout out,” he says.
On Tuesday, September 11, René Quiroga also heard on the radio that his brother had to appear before a military party. Despite the curfew, the next day he went to the Ministry of Defense to ask for him. “There were a lot of people. And nobody knew anything, ”he recalls. The uncertainty was broken by a phone call, when they informed him that Littré’s body was in the Legal Medical Institute (IML). By a fortuitous event, a former colleague from the Prison Service saw him.
René called another of the brothers, Bolívar, the second of the Quiroga family. Both went to the IML. Bolívar recognized it. He was shattered by the blows; I did not dare to enter, ”he says. From there they took him out in a coffin, on a cart. They buried him in the Mexico patio of the General Cemetery. It was a small funeral, with no more than five people.
The official version of the military regime, from 1974, indicated that the director of Prisons “was killed by habitual criminals.”
In 1993, Littré’s remains were transferred to the Gendarmerie mausoleum, at the request of his brother René. A yellowish clipping from a newspaper of the time gives an account of that moment: “The deceased director of the Gendarmerie is rehabilitated.”
It is one of the various pieces of news that René Quiroga has treasured since the first lawsuit was filed, 36 years ago, and that shows how his mother and brothers have insisted over time. Today, 50 years after the crime, René Quiroga says: “Not because a Supreme Court ruling will come, the sentence will be extinguished.”
Littré Quiroga in a file image. COURTESY
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