Retired Chilean Army brigadier Hernán Carlos Chacón Soto, one of the seven officers sentenced this Monday by the Supreme Court to 25 years in prison for his participation in the torture and murder of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga in 1973, committed suicide this Tuesday moments before he was to be arrested and transferred to the Puntateuco prison to begin serving his sentence.
According to the local press, the 86-year-old officer told the security forces that were at his home to arrest him that he had to take medicine and took advantage of the moment to take his own life.
The defendant’s defense maintained throughout the long process that the brigadier was, in those days of brutal repression after the coup led by Augusto Pinochet and other senior commanders, a simple Army major who only fulfilled the function of guarding the external perimeter of the Stadium. Chile, a closed sports venue where nearly 5,000 people detained as of September 11 were overcrowded and where Jara was murdered five days later.
Chacón Soto was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of the singer-songwriter and prison director Littré Quiroga Carvajal along with Raúl Jofré González, Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Haase Mazzei, Ernesto Bethke Wulf and Juan Jara Quintana. They must serve 15 years and one day in prison as perpetrators of the homicides, and ten years and one day for the kidnappings. In addition, Rolando Melo Silva will serve five years and one day for having covered up the homicides, and three years and one day for having covered up the kidnappings.
“The facts outlined (…) are real, since they occurred in a certain place and time and are proven, legally accredited through the evidence,” said the high court in a unanimous ruling.
On the other hand, the Public Treasury must pay each of the plaintiffs, spouse and children of Quiroga Carvajal, 150 million Chilean pesos (just over 160,000 euros), while its brothers must compensate them with 80 million pesos (86,400 euro). He must also pay 150 million pesos to Jara’s widow and children.
The final sentence comes just 15 days before the commemoration in Chile of the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état and in the midst of strong social polarization due to the official account of the events of September 11, 1973 and the subsequent years of the dictatorship. The Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero, has indicated after hearing the ruling that “judicial sentences have a remedial role.”
That of Jara, a member of the communist party and collaborator of the Popular Unity Government of former socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), was one of the most relevant cases that the Chilean justice system had pending closure.
A reference to the New Chilean Song, the artist was transferred and tortured in the Chile Stadium, where more than 5,000 prisoners were locked up, and his body was found near the Metropolitan Cemetery on September 16, 1973 and clandestinely buried two days later.
In December 2009, the Chilean justice system ordered the exhumation of his remains, which, 36 years after his death, were buried in an official and massive tribute in which then-President Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010 and 2014-2018) participated.
The regime of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) lasted 17 years and left more than 40,000 victims, including those executed, detained-disappeared, political prisoners, and tortured, and more than 3,200 opponents died at the hands of State agents.
