At the end of 1976, during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), a case of human rights violations had a particular impact on Chilean society. The military regime that overthrew the socialist President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) with the coup of September 11, 1973, the 50th anniversary of which Chile celebrates this Monday, has arrested eleven members of the secret leadership of the Communist Party and two militants of the far-left revolutionaries Left movement (MIR). Among those arrested was Reinalda Pereira, who was five months pregnant. The trace of his fate and that of the others was lost. Some of them are still missing.
The case that emerged from these events, known as the Case of the 13, became one of the most symbolic events of the Pinochet dictatorship. Not only because of its brutality, but also because it made it possible for the first time to recognize the systematic method of state repression and led to the criminal prosecution of 40 officers from various branches of the armed forces in 1986. Among them was the former air force general and member of the coup junta, Gustavo Leigh.
The person who issued the indictment was Judge Carlos Cerda (80 years old, Santiago), known in the South American country for being one of the few members of the judiciary who dared to condemn the torture, execution and disappearances of to examine people during the dictatorship. In Chile, more than 27,000 people were victims of arrests and arrests after the coup, and 1,469 disappeared.
Cerda, who received his doctorate from the universities of Leuven (Switzerland) and Sorbonne (Paris), was harshly punished by his superiors for refusing to close human rights cases: it took him more than 30 years until he was appointed minister of the Supreme Court in 2014 . But when he retired in 2018, he walked away from the courthouse and was applauded for his courage and contributions to the law. He was, among other things, the judge who managed to distort the amnesty law passed in 1978, which guaranteed the immunity of the guilty. And in 2007, already in democracy, he ordered the arrest of Augusto Pinochet’s family – including his wife Lucía Hiriart – as part of the so-called Riggs case, which investigated the dictator’s embezzlement of public funds during the 17 years of his rule . Regime.
Today, this warm-hearted man, who once wanted to be a priest, lives in a country house surrounded by almond trees on the outskirts of Santiago. He suffered from serious health problems that made it difficult for him to speak out, but he remains alert to national affairs and has not lost his intellectual acumen. A few days before the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the coup, sitting under a tree in his garden, he says that despite all efforts, Chilean society is still far from paying off its debts to the victims of the dictatorship and appeals to the state to check the files in detail to get new data. It also prompts him to be stricter with those who might have information.
“The armed forces did not want to reveal the truth, so I believe the method is to force them to hand over all the information. They are part of the state, they have a duty to do so, and if that is not possible, we must turn to the International Criminal Court. “There is no amnesty or statute of limitations in matters against humanity,” he said, stressing that investigations should also focus on civilians involved in crimes of this kind.
“They are just as guilty as the military, because the level of complicity remains impressive to this day, and we have not dealt with it with the severity that the circumstances require,” he says.
The loneliness of a judge
On the day of the coup, Cerda left his home in the eastern part of the Chilean capital early. She lived near the residence of Salvador Allende, which was attacked on Tomás Moro Street, in the municipality of Las Condes, and felt the noise of the bombs that fell on her. Alarmed, he made his way to the Palace of Justice, where he was then rapporteur for the Santiago Court of Appeal. He met a hundred officers, but the soldiers quickly forced her to leave with a white handkerchief in her hand, put her on buses and took her to a square downtown, where they left her face down on the cobblestones for several hours . Then they took some of them with them, without Cerda knowing why, and left the rest in their homes.
“You could feel the shots and there was an atmosphere of tension, but no one knew what was going to happen, that the people who were being abducted could disappear,” he says.
It wouldn’t be long before he realized the reality. Relatives of prisoners repeatedly came to the court to appeal for Amparo. An office was even opened for the reception. And every day Cerda saw them refusing to give them information. “A protection complaint was received in the first instance by the Court of Appeal, the report was requested from the Ministry of the Interior and they responded almost automatically with a line: “There is no information available.” So every day,” he remembers.
Between 1973 and 1983, 5,400 habeas corpus petitions were filed in Chile, of which only 10 were accepted. When asked how he sees the new phase that the Chilean judiciary began with the coup after 50 years have passed since then, he describes the uprising as “an absolute collapse of the rule of law.” “In the judiciary there was a strong position against anything that was not a dictatorship. Supreme Court ministers identified ideologically with General Augusto Pinochet and his entire government and placed great emphasis on maintaining discipline. So there was a general fear that was internalized in the institution and the judges submitted to the hierarchy. There was a lack of courage, the judge was submissive and that institutionally meant meekness. There I was left alone with some of them,” he remembers.
In 1973, Cerda was not yet a judge, but he met in secret meetings with some judges who shared his concerns, where they vented and looked for ways to adapt to the circumstances. After his appointment as Minister of the Court of Appeal, his commitment to justice was even greater.
Carlos Cerda.Cristobal Venegas (© CRISTOBAL VENEGAS)
“I felt that I needed to be a judge more than ever, because the job of a judge is to protect the person and their essential rights. I never had any doubts, no matter what the risk,” he says.
And there were risks.
It was a coincidence that the case of the 13 fell into Cerda’s hands in 1983. His predecessors had not investigated the case and, in an attempt to close the case, had produced immigration certificates purporting to show that the detainees had left for Argentina. First, the judge personally went to the various train stations leading to the border crossing through which they supposedly departed to examine the route maps; He noticed that the names didn’t appear. He then sued four investigators for falsifying public documents, although the appeals court overturned the arrest warrant.
“The judicial system in Chile has been completely intervened,” he says.
But he continued and discovered the existence of a secret intelligence group called Joint Command, which included, among others, members of the air force, carabineros and civilians from the right-wing extremist movement Patria y Libertad. The group was responsible for the disappearances of more than 30 people and had several torture centers.
In 1986, Cerda ordered the prosecution of 40 people, the vast majority of them members of the armed forces, for unlawful deprivation of liberty and illicit association. To achieve this, he had conducted hundreds of interrogations involving more than 100 people, not without cost. They put serious obstacles in his way, for example when he had to interrogate a general on a military site and they had him evacuated due to a bomb warning. On several occasions, they entered and ransacked his office and home. He received threatening phone calls; They followed him and photographed him; and they even went so far as to plant a bomb in his car, which fortunately exploded one day when he didn’t use it as usual. During these years he changed actuary twice when he realized that data from his investigations were being passed on to the armed forces high command. When she finally found a trustworthy person, they threatened to kidnap her and her mother-in-law had to hide her in her house.
No to the amnesty law
After clearing the 40 uniformed men, the armed forces tried to stop Cerda’s advance. To this end, the Supreme Court ordered that it dismiss the case using the dictatorship-sponsored amnesty law, which granted immunity to all those involved in crimes between September 11, 1973 and March 1978. But the judge refused, saying the amnesty violated the Code of Criminal Procedure, which stated that a case cannot be closed until the investigation has been completed. This argument was used again and again by human rights lawyers until 1998, when it fell into disuse.
The Supreme Court did not tolerate Cerda’s rebellion. He was suspended for several months and his salary was cut in half. The judge, who has seven children, stood his ground. They then tried to deport him. He was saved thanks to an invitation from Harvard University to spend some time doing research on their campus. Nevertheless, his career was cut short.
“The Senate of the Republic, the Parliament, did not accept that I reached the Supreme Court earlier, which meant that I would not become president either. I wanted to contribute to better justice; that is the big task. And of course that was cut,” he says.
The judge answers the question of whether he expected more from the judiciary with the end of the dictatorship, recalling that “the dictator was retained as senator-designate and the same ministers remained.” Suddenly, [algunos jueces] It was clear to us that the investigation into human rights violations had to be generalized. When you’re done [del recambio] As the number of ministers began to pass resolutions based on existing international law, the fear receded. And at that moment it became clear that the judges were unable to break down the wall of truth. Despite its good intentions, the judiciary has not been able to be effective and we lack it. We still have more than a thousand missing, it’s barbaric.”
Daniela Mohor W She is a journalist and co-author of “The Search.”