by Pascale Bonnefoy M. (Lea el artículo original en español aquí)
- READ MORE: The silence of the cemetery
- READ MORE: Patio 29 Register
- READ MORE: Military courts: Execute first, judge later
The case of Santos Víctor Manuel Romeo González, a 33-year-old accountant, brings together several of the inconsistencies between the records of the Servicio Médico Legal (SML) and the General Cemetery of Santiago. The autopsy performed by Dr. Alfredo Vargas determined his date of death as September 18, the same day he was admitted as a John Doe to the morgue. In an official letter dated September 18, the Registro Civil confirmed to the SML that the fingerprints taken from that NN the day before -that is, before his death- corresponded to Romeo González.
Then, according to the SML files, his body was removed by his brother on October 9 and taken to the Metropolitan Cemetery. However, the Rettig Report states that his relatives were later informed at the SML that Romeo González had been buried in the General Cemetery, which, according to the same report, they later verified, so it was impossible that he had been removed by his brother.
In the General Cemetery register, meanwhile, Romeo González appears arriving 10 days after his supposed departure from the SML to the Metropolitan Cemetery, on October 18. Even more: the Book of Locations of the cemetery indicates that he was cremated that same day.
Make them fit
Not only were bodies buried two or three to a box, but they also mutilated the bodies to make them fit. This was the case of Ricardo Pardo Tobar, former instructor of the Peldehue Parachute School and later a member of the MIR. He had been arrested and executed in the National Stadium on October 10 and sent by the morgue itself to the General Cemetery eight days later. He was buried in Patio 29, but his family did not learn of this until March of the following year.[1]
Pardo’s wife, María Isabel Núñez, learned through a co-worker that he had been executed the same day of his arrest and left at the morgue. There she was given his wedding ring and identity card, and was told to go and pick him up at Patio 29 of the General Cemetery. Together with relatives and co-workers, María Isabel Núñez bought a niche in the cemetery to place him in, and an army officer took her to grave 2512 of Patio 29, where he had been inscribed with his full name when he arrived, without anyone knowing it.
Pardo’s widow says that the officer passed a shovel to one of the relatives and he dug until he found a small trough. Tobar’s body was cut in three: at the torso, navel and knees. It was the only way he could fit. The military man told the widow that because Pardo had belonged to the Armed Forces, he was allowed to be buried alone. In many other cases, they were leaving three bodies together. She fainted.
[1] The above account of Ricardo Pardo is based on interviews with his widow, María Isabel Núñez, and other family members conducted by this author in 2005.
READ MORE:
- Investigation Overview: The Bureaucracy of Death – Executions in Chile 1973
- Inside the Instituto Médico Legal (I): Bodies at dawn
- Inside the Instituto Médico Legal (II): “Cursory autopsies”
- Inside the Instituto Médico Legal (III): From the morgue to the cemetery
- Political Executions: 150 new cases?
- Crossed identities and bodies without names at the Registro Civil
- The black hole of the military prosecutors’ offices
- Military Courts: Execute first, judge second
- Wartime Tribunals: Absolute authority
- The silence of the cemetery
- The strange case of the two Luis Curivils
- Victor Jara and Littré Quiroga
- Bodies floating in the Mapocho River
- Allende suicide: Forensic reports July 19, 2011
