PART THREE
Chapter Three (C)

August 1977 through March 1990 (continued)

3. PEOPLE KILLED IN MASS PROTESTS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
   
   
   1. OVERVIEW
      
      The Commission examined 141 cases in which people were killed in connection with the major political demonstrations that began in 1983. Most of these cases took place between 1983 and 1985 during the National Protests. In the course of the investigation it was clear that these people lost their lives in highly complex circumstances. Because they have common features these deaths can be distinguished from other cases presented to the Commission and can be examined as a group. First, these deaths occurred in the context of political demonstrations in which different sectors of the population were involved in a variety of ways, as were the various forces that were protecting public order. The role played by government officials and the organizers of the demonstrations must also be taken into account. Second, the overall political character of these events was not necessarily manifested in particular incidents: often those killed were not involved in a demonstration, or were government agents who were maintaining public order as part of their normal duties.
      
      This section of the report offers an overall description of the political demonstrations and the manner in which the victims were killed. As a rule, they are presented in chronological order.
      
      
      1. Mass political protests and demonstrations
         
         This report does not pretend to offer an exhaustive analysis or historical presentation of the National Protests and other demonstrations which took place during this period. Nonetheless, some brief description would seem to be in order to make it clear why those killed under such circumstances may be regarded as victims of human rights violations or victims of political violence in a broader sense.
         
         a.1) Anti-government forces and activities
         

         There were no large scale expressions of anti-government opposition until 1983, when the National Protests began with organizing and demonstrating that was more or less synchronized. Large segments of the population were involved throughout the country, particularly in the larger cities.
         
         The first National Protest was held May 11, 1983. The Confederation of Copper Workers (CTC) issued a call in the following words: "Our problem is that we need not one law more or one law less, or one sort of change or another in what now exists. It is deeper and goes to the heart of things: our problem is an economic, social, cultural, and political system that has us all bound tight and is squeezing us, one that is at odds with our peculiar character as Chileans and workers, one that has tried to strangle us with weapons like fear and repression, so as to squeeze us tighter and tighter. We have no feeling for this system; it is not in accord with our way of life, because it was imposed on us by force and deceit." The statement invited people to protest "against an economic, social, and political system that has plunged our country into the deepest crisis in its history." The document insisted that the protest had to be nonviolent, and urged the following actions: keeping children home from school, buying nothing whatsoever, banging pots inside houses at 8 p.m., and turning off lights and all electrical devices in houses and buildings for five minutes beginning at 9:30 p.m.
         
         National Protests and other demonstrations were held from then onward. There were nationwide organizing efforts and also numerous actions whose scope was more restricted or involved particular sectors or locations. The mass demonstrations revolved around the fourteen National Protests (1983 to 1985). Broadly-based organizing and demonstrations, strikes, protest days, and stoppages continued with some frequency until the National General Strike on July 2 and 3, 1986. In the following years demonstrations were less intense and less well organized.
         
         The first calls were issued by union organizations. Later various political movements took on that role. Those issuing the call continually shifted and regrouped throughout this period. The instructions given emphasized that discontent was to be expressed peacefully. Economic and social demands were added to the primary demand which was political: ending the present government and returning immediately to democracy. Thus, for example, in 1983 opposition political leaders urged that there be a great national consensus around demands such as the following: voluntary resignation by the current rulers, establishing a provisional government, holding elections for a constituent assembly, an emergency economic plan, immediate restoration of social and political rights, and so forth. Observing that protests were expanding and becoming more massive that same year, and "legitimately invoking the right of petition" they asked "that the president of the republic give up his rule over the nation."
         
         Discontent was expressed in relatively uniform ways and people adhered to the proposals made in the calls to the first National Protests. Subsequently, even in 1983, demands gradually came to vary from sector to sector. Among the forms of peaceful protest most commonly employed to one degree or another were strikes, sitins, assemblies, marches, work slowdowns, delays, honking horns, banging pots and pans, staying away from school, cutting back on bus service, and closing stores. It is not the Commission's role or within its ability to clarify to what extent some of these actions were voluntary or whether in fact the overall context of the demonstrations made them compulsory.
         
         The strategy and political activity of far left groups was often out of line with the peaceful nature of the convocations, inasmuch as they advocated the armed route toward overthrowing the government. The organizers of the National Protests refused to deal with these sectors. The left groups, however, participated in those protests, and they brought in forms of expression that entailed disturbing public order. They also attacked the police and private citizens who did not join the demonstrations. Gradually the instructions and tactics used by these groups prompted people into violent actions, especially in shantytowns. Their programmatic statements, backed up by amply attested actions, proved that the use of violence was often planned ahead.
         
         Starting in 1982, the Communist party adopted a "policy of popular rebellion" which was based on "developing and preparing mass armed struggle, starting with tiny destabilizing actions and extending all the way to armed conflict if that is necessary." The Communist party sought to overthrow the military regime by creating a climate of ungovernability. Other groups besides the party were also striving to create such a climate. Starting in December 1983 the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front maintained that "the people's violence is legitimate" and that "all modes of struggle must be used, including those that take the path of violence." One of the aims of their strategy was "to raise the spirits of the people by calling them to action," especially through blackouts, barricades, and street battles during days of protest or demonstrations. The MAPU Lautaro urged an insurrectionary mobilization of the masses in order to "gradually take over the country, to seize Chile; starting in the people's territories...until gradually reaching a culmination in the seizure of power." This movement advocated "the idea of a people in arms," an "unconventional guerrilla force," with an "effective firepower in what is basically an urban operation, which provides mass combat with the ability to strike hard." Its basis is to be "the multiplication of homemade weaponry."
         
         The MIR also did mass work, especially in shantytowns, aimed at developing an insurrectionary strategy. "We understand this popular war as the combined development of all forms of mass struggle, from the use of active nonviolence passing through direct and disruptive mobilizing, all the way to the development of violent armed struggle." In 1985 a MIR leader stated, "We have shown that we can sabotage many railroad lines. We have derailed dozens of trains. We have attacked the electrical power system and knocked over numerous high voltage lines. We have also carried out actions to punish agents of repression. We have set ambushes. We have also conducted actions to harass police stations."
         
         Among the expressions that to some extent entailed disturbing public order and sometimes led to acts of political violence, whose impact varied in intensity, the following should be mentioned:
         
         

         • Occupations of university main administration buildings which sometimes ended in acts of violence. The most serious situations took place when government forces stepped in with tear gas, vehicles mounted with fire hoses, and anti-riot weapons, in order to subdue the students who were destroying property, halting traffic, and throwing rocks at official forces.
           
           
         • Clashes with government forces in the center of the city and particularly in outlying areas. Throwing rocks at police vehicles was common practice. Sometimes molotov cocktails were thrown, and in some places there were even gun battles.
           
           
         • Erecting barricades and bonfires with rubber tires in order to prevent police from passing. Trenches were sometimes dug across streets into shantytowns for that same purpose. Starting with the fourth National Protest, barricades and bonfires spread throughout the shantytowns. New kinds of violence appeared, such as sprinkling car oil and grease on the streets and setting them on fire with torches when military vehicles came by, thus turning the streets into carpets of fire.
           
           
         • Cutting off electricity. Partial blackouts were common. Sometimes blackouts affected several regions for a long time. They were set off by blowing up high voltage towers or throwing chains across electric power lines. A member of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front told this Commission that the purpose of cutting off electricity was to help demonstrators and protect shantytown dwellers: "The aim of the blackouts was to hinder repression in shantytowns." In fact, however, darkness both made violent disturbance of public order easier and encouraged excesses on the part of government agents. Innocent victims suffered the consequences.
           
           
         • Acts of sabotage or attacks on different objectives seen as connected to authority, as well as on those who did not join the demonstrations to express discontent.
           
           

         Stores were attacked, robbed, and looted-especially if they stayed open. Bus terminals were attacked, and stones were thrown at public transportation vehicles which were also set on fire. Traffic lights and street lights were destroyed. Homemade wire devices for puncturing tires [miguelitos] were strewn in the streets. Fire stations, public places (open areas, offices of CEMA-Chile [government sponsored mothers' groups in poor areas]), metro stations, church properties, public bus garages, and public toilets were set on fire, robbed, or looted, or rocks were thrown at them. State-run companies suffered violent attacks. Bomb explosions were a common occurrence. The offices and barracks of the police and investigative police were attacked. Police vehicles were stoned. Molotov cocktails were thrown at police busses.
         
         Such actions took place primarily at night and in outlying areas, as has been noted. During the day in most of the capital and the country the situation was relatively calm. Actions by the most extreme groups never came to the point of paralyzing the country.
         

         a.2) Government response to the protests
         

         The government made it clear that it always had a firm intention of preventing political demonstrations from destabilizing it or deflecting it from its planned constitutional course. Referring to acts of violence, one government official said, "I have ordered that all the measures contemplated in our legislation be adopted in order to punish harshly the perpetrators, accomplices, and instigators and to set an example." On another occasion, a government official said before the fourth National Protest, "They had better be careful, because I am not going to give an inch! Let them be assured that Santiago is covered with eighteen thousand men who have strict orders to be tough."
         
         The government used various measures for dealing with the protests. The following may be mentioned:
         
         

         • Invoking states of constitutional exception. The "state of danger of disturbance of internal peace" which made it possible to utilize the measures listed in Transitory Article 24 of the Constitution, was in effect during that period. The same was true of the "state of emergency," except for some occasional periods of when it was suspended. On some occasions the "state of siege" was decreed. A nighttime curfew was sometimes imposed.
           
           
         • The organizers were blamed for the excesses of violence that accompanied the demonstrations. The Interior Ministry brought legal action against labor and political leaders who issued the call for days of demonstrations and accused them of committing the crimes mentioned in the State Security Law. This law was changed, and in order to deal with this new situation, a new crime was defined: "Those who without permission encourage or invite people to collective public actions in streets, plazas, and other public places and those who promote or incite to demonstrations of any other nature or who permit or encourage the disturbance of public tranquility commit a crime against public order" (Law No. 12927, on State Security, Article 6, letter i). That provision was added by means of Law. No. 18256, dated October 27, 1983.
           
           
         • A number of restrictions on the exercise of freedom of information were decreed, ranging from prohibiting some stations from broadcasting news to prior censorship over some written media.
           
           
         • Social and political leaders who had not been directly involved in such acts of violence were arrested. Sometimes they were sent into internal exile in various places in the country, and some were expelled from the country. These were administrative measures whose adoption was justified by invoking the various states of exception that were in force.
           
           
         • Massive search operations were carried out in shantytowns, starting with the first one which took place May 14, 1983. Military forces, and those of the police, the investigative police, and civilians conducted sweeps in large sectors of the southern part of Santiago through shantytowns in the districts of San Miguel, La Cisterna, and La Granja. The operation began after midnight on the 13th when the area was cordoned off. At 5:00 a.m. simultaneously throughout the area, a call went out over loudspeakers warning all the males over 14 to get up, and telling them they would be picked up at their front doors. Women and children were to remain inside. Government forces violently forced their way into many houses and took objects that they regarded as subversive. The men were led on foot or in vehicles to nearby soccer fields in each shantytown where their documents were examined. Some were beaten, and the overall treatment was abusive and violent. The operation lasted all day. As their documents were checked, they were either released or taken to police facilities. Later on such sweeps reoccurred either before or after National Protests.
           
           
         • CNI agents raided and searched offices of political and labor movements.
           
           
         • Usually police and military were involved in controlling public order. Army personnel usually guarded areas of special importance such as traffic circles, bridges, underpasses, and roads leading into the capital. On some occasions the government stepped in to take total control over the city, particularly during the fourth National Protest on August 11-12, 1983, and the National Strike held July 2-3, 1986. Army forces were especially harsh since they fired their weapons and did not have police experience in maintaining public order. Referring to those who were killed during the fourth Protest, when officials claimed that eighteen thousand soldiers were controlling the capital, one government official said, "People were killed during the protest demonstrations solely because army troops had to react when they were attacked." The Democratic Alliance, however, put the blame on the "head of state who is solely responsible for what happened."
           
           
         • In operations to control public order, the police made use of tear gas and water cannons mounted on trucks. They also arrested demonstrators, who were then often beaten and mistreated, and sometimes tortured. Sometimes they used anti-riot weapons and fired buckshot and pellets. When they came into the shantytowns, the police and army used their weapons, especially in the evening and at night. Investigative police and CNI agents were less involved. In certain limited areas members of the air force and navy were sometimes involved. Government agents took action against nonviolent forms of expression as well as against those that were violent.
           

         a.3) Actions by private citizens against demonstrators
         

         During protest days armed private citizens took action against those who were protesting especially in the evening and at night. The Commission determined that it had to examine a particular situation in which some private citizens killed people in the context of mass political demonstrations. Even though the circumstances were unclear, different types of situations can be distinguished.
         
         Some private citizens deliberately shot at people for political reasons. These were generally civilians shooting from a moving unlicensed vehicle or from a vehicle used for public transportation. In such cases the nature of the political motivation of the perpetrators usually cannot be determined. While it is not out of the question that these might be actions committed by subversive groups aimed at making the demonstrations more violent, in some cases the Commission has had indications that these were individuals who supported the government in power. Indeed, the forces responsible for maintaining order were apparently sometimes aware of them or in complicity with them. The fact that the perpetrators often drove around at night during curfew in areas where the police were on patrol supports the conclusion that they had ties to government agents.
         
         However, on some occasions private citizens killed someone in self-defense or to defend their property. What they did is not regarded as violating human rights when it has all the features of proportionality and the like to make it legitimate. However, such persons may be regarded as victims of political violence in a more general sense as long as they are not proven to be among the perpetrators of the unjust attack that prompted legitimate self-defense.
         
         

         a.4) Conclusion
         
         

         Some sectors of the opposition tried to keep mass demonstrations within peaceful bounds, while others took advantage of the convocations to carry out actions against public order with a greater or lesser degree of violence. Similarly, the actions of the government and its supporters sometimes remained within the bounds of political action that was lawful in terms of existing legislation, and on other occasions both government agents and private citizens committed abuses or assaulted fundamental human rights in their actions against mass demonstrations.
         
         Certainly for the most part the protest demonstrations were peaceful. Nevertheless, there were expressions of violence, especially in outlying shantytowns during the evening and at night. The efforts of social and political leaders to preserve the peaceful character of the demonstrations began to be overwhelmed starting in 1984, and hence the level of violence and disorderly conduct gradually increased. Likewise the measures the government took and the manner in which the government forces acted in order to prevent the disturbance of public order were often excessive. The climate of social confrontation intensified, and the most vulnerable sectors of society suffered the consequences. As the demonstrations increasingly lost their peaceful character and it became clearer that they were not being effective in bringing about their political objective, their impact diminished, especially after July 1986.
         

      2. Criteria for conviction
         
         As we have noted with regard to all human rights violations examined, the Commission carried out an investigation in order to ascertain the facts and basic circumstances required in order to come to a conviction about who was indeed a victim of such violations. Thus in all cases the fact and manner of death was verified through autopsies and/or a death certificates. The circumstances of death were established through statements by witnesses that the Commission itself took or through testimonies and written accounts gathered from court cases, human rights organizations, or the press. In those cases in which such accounts point to involvement by government agents or persons working for them, this Commission sent an official request to the particular institution to send the available documentation. With rare exceptions, the answers did not provide additional information on such cases.
         
         It was difficult for the Commission to come to a precise conviction about what had happened in all cases, due to the diversity of the kinds of death, the overall context of a disturbance of public order, and the confusion surrounding many situations. Hence here as in other chapters, the Commission made a distinction between victims of human rights violations and people who were killed as a result of the situation of political violence (that is, who suffered the fatal consequences of the clash between the two contending political forces). The former category includes deaths by execution or by the use of undue force by government agents, and deaths caused by politically motivated private citizens. When, however, the use of what could be regarded as justified or proportionate force by government agents caused the unforeseeable death of innocent people, the Commission regarded those killed as victims of the situation of political violence at that time. Such was sometimes the case when people were killed by tear gas canisters; when it could not be reasonably presumed that excessive force had been used; when a private citizen who was not politically motivated caused a death in which there was some relationship to the surrounding violence, as in cases of legitimate self-defense in which it is not clear that the person killed was at fault; when it could not be determined that government agents had committed the action or even when the cause of death could not be determined but it seemed to be connected to the surrounding violence. Sometimes because of the difficulty in proving exactly which of these situations was the case, the Commission did not come to a consensus on whether a person's human rights had been violated or whether he or she was simply a victim of the situation of political violence.
         
         In weighing items in order to come to a conclusion, a distinction was made between deaths inflicted by government agents and those inflicted by private citizens. The main problem connected with the involvement of government agents was that matters became very complex during the demonstrations. Some actions did indeed disturb public order; the rights of other citizens were affected; and in extreme cases, violent clashes took place. In such circumstances, government forces were not simply acting politically, but were carrying out their institutional duties. This Commission cannot overlook the fact that the law charges these institutions with maintaining public order and that their operations and use of force to attain those ends are inherently justified.
         
         Therefore, when government agents were involved, it was necessary to make an evaluation to establish whether the use of force had been proportional to the aim of carrying out the institution's purpose of maintaining public order. To that end the Commission took into account evidence on how government agents acted during the protests in addition to testimony on how they acted in each individual case. Knowledge of the normal procedure-such as whether guns were used more or less frequently and indiscriminately-entered into the consideration of most cases in determining whether the action of government agents had been disproportionate.
         
         Where private citizens were responsible for death, it has been necessary to establish a presumption that they were politically motivated. Usually the Commission came to the conviction that a politically motivated human rights violation had taken place, unless there was evidence suggesting other motives or that the use of force had been justified. Such was rarely the case when private citizens were involved. In such cases overall testimony on actions by private citizens have been taken into account, with regard to both attacks on demonstrators and terrorist actions that could harm people indiscriminately (such as setting off bombs or knocking down power lines).
         
         Elsewhere we have referred to ties between the actions of private citizens and government agents, or we have said that these private citizens supported the government in power. The Commission believes that it was very difficult either to affirm or rule out such ties in each and every case. When there are indications of such ties, however, they are noted.
         
         Finally, it should be noted that in establishing whether a person's human rights had been violated, the Commission felt it did not need to establish the degree of individual responsibility on the part of the perpetrators. On that point it takes no position whatsoever.
         
         
      3. The victims
         
         The Commission has come to the conviction that 131 persons died as victims of grave human rights violations or as victims of the situation of political violence surrounding mass demonstrations. Those killed included people whom the perpetrators had not picked beforehand; people who were not being pursued either for who they were, for their political activity, or for particular personal relationships. Children and old people, youth and adults, men and women, participants in protests and people uninvolved, were all among those who lost their lives. The only thing they had in common was that they were caught up in a situation of intense political confrontation. It was the poorer people in the cities who bore the brunt, especially those living in the shantytowns in outlying areas of the capital. Most of those killed were young males.
         
         They were killed in a variety of ways. Most were killed by wounds from bullets, pellets, or buckshot. Some died of knife wounds; suffocation; inhaling tear gas; being hit by a tear gas canister; burns; beatings; electrocution caused by attacks on power lines; rocks thrown; and explosive devices placed in a public thoroughfare.
         
         We now offer systematic information on each individual victim in a schematic account, arranged according to the chronological order of the various demonstrations.
         
         

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Posted by USIP Library on: October 4 2002
Source: Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation
(Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), vol. II/II, Part Three, Chapter Three (C), 712-721.
Note: Digitized and posted by permission of the University of Notre Dame Press, February 22, 2000.