By Maxine Lowy, for Memoria y Justicia
June 2006

Paine, a small rural community south of Santiago where 70 people were arrested and made to disappear between September and November 1973, was key in confirming the existence of unmarked graves in Patio 29 section of the General Cemetery in Santiago. And it was Paine that, two decades later, cast the initial shadow of a doubt regarding the identities of bodies recovered from Patio 29.

One day in early March 2005, Rebeca Escobedo received an order to appear before the Eighth Criminal Court of Santiago. Escobedo was stunned when the judge charged that the body she had buried in Huelquen cemetery near Paine and had mourned the past 11 years was not that of her husband Patricio Duque. In 1994 the governmental Forensic Medical Service (Servicio Medico Legal, SML) had identified one of the set of remains buried in Patio 29 as her husband Patricio, who was 25 years old when police took him from their home in the night of October 16, 1973.

Escobedo informed Santiago Appellate Court judge Sergio Muñoz, who rapidly ordered the exhumation of the Huelquen tomb and DNA testing that confirmed the body indeed did not correspond to Patricio Duque. Muñoz subsequently ordered the exhumation, for the second time, of the other 95 remains recovered from Patio 29 in 1991 that family members had at last given proper funerals after positive identifications by SML forensic staff. Having confirmed the suspicions of the Association of Families of the Disappeared regarding the questionable veracity of identifications, Judge Munoz broadened the inquest, resulting in the report that in April 2006 questioned the identities of 75 remains recovered from Patio 29 in the early 90s.

Yet, were it not for the existence of a case filed in 1982 for some of the disappeared of Paine, it is likely that none of the bodies of Patio 29 would ever have been recovered.

The military dictatorship policy of extermination and disappearance also comprised the establishment of sections within cemeteries, where unidentified graves were marked NN, for No Nombre (No Name). With corpses piling up in the aisles of the governmental Forensic Medical Institute in the weeks after the September 11, 1973 coup, coroners introduced what they called "economic autopsies" ("las autopsias económicas"), abbreviated autopsy reports that omitted distinctive characteristics of the bodies that might assist identification at a later date. The negligence, if not complicity, of the Office of Vital Records (Registro Civil), at the time located in the same building as the SML, in failing to take fingerprints from the bodies also played a role in creating disappeared persons.

Bodies unidentified and unclaimed were buried in unmarked graves as NN (No Name, No Nombre) in General Cemetery of Santiago, a block away from the SML. During the first three months after the coup, an estimated 200 to 300 unidentified bodies were secretly buried in various sections of the cemetery, including Patio 29. In the early 1980s anonymous gravediggers informed the Vicaria of Solidarity that bodies were being illicitly removed from NN graves.

Attorney Nelson Caucoto represents Rebeca Escobedo of Paine as well as half the families of the 48 victims alleged to have been mistakenly identified. "With no information," he says, "the doors were closed on the possibility of identifying those bodies at a later date. Neither the Forensic Medical Institute staff nor the Cemetery, which were controlled by the dictatorship, made a real effort to identify bodies. In addition to the negligence of the coroners, employees of the Vital Records Office that shared the same building as the FML, were also negligent, because many of the dead, future disappeared persons, had fingerprints they easily could have traced."

In 1979 priest Ignacio Otuzar, director of the Vicaria de Solidaridad, reported that illegal burials had been conducted in the Patio 29 section of the General Cemetery in Santiago, and people from Paine were believed to have been buried there. The Vicar provided Judge Alberto Espejo with a set of files the Catholic human rights defense office has compiled on the disappeared persons of Paine, "information that should have been included in the autopsy reports," Caucoto explains.

Since the earliest arrests denied by the military and civilian apparatus of the dictatorship that converted a prisoner into a disappeared person, the Vicaria had gathered most precise information on each case. Records, today preserved by the Archive and Documentation Center of the Vicaria, contain the hair color, height, eye color, dental records and distinctive characteristics such as scars. The records also note the shoes and clothing the person wore when last seen alive, and whether he or she wore a ring.

Judge Espejo took photographs of Patio 29, made a map indicating the location of each of the NN graves, and requested the autopsy reports of people who had been buried there.

"We must recognize the judge worked meticulously to compare Patio 29 autopsies with the records provided by the Vicaria. In the process of comparing records, he found six cases that coincided with the characteristics of people from Paine. For example, he had an autopsy report for a 20 year old male who was 1 meter 55cm tall and a Vicaria file for a man of the same height. Or a file described missing teeth and the autopsy cited the same characteristic. In another case both the file and autopsy described boots and green socks. In all, the judge was able to ascertain six cases that coincided," recalls Caucoto.

On the basis of this information, Judge Espejo ordered authorities not to touch Patio 29.

At the time Caucoto thought the judge would exhume Patio 29 or at least those six graves. "It makes no sense to go to the trouble to make a map and compare all those records it you are not going to develop a larger inquest. We can only speculate what happened when Judge Espejo prepared to exhume those graves. But the judge suddenly declared himself incompetent to carry on the case."

Before recusing himself, Judge Espejo was issued an order not to exhume, cremate, move or transfer any of the bodies buried in Patio 29. Were it not for that order, none of the remains would have been saved.

"When he removed himself from the case, the first thing I did," recalls Caucoto, "was to go to the Military Court and ask the Military Prosecutor to uphold the order not to move Patio 29. The Military Prosecutor accepted, as did the Martial Court, [the highest instance in the military justice system]. With that order in hand, I ask for the only procedure possible: to exhume Patio 29. However, the Military Court denied my request."

From a distance in time, Caucoto has acquired a more clear understanding about why Judge Espejo stopped the case halfway. "It would have been absurd to exhume Patio 29 during dictatorship. It would have been world news and an international scandal. Of course, the dictatorship could not permit that. Undoubtedly, the judge was pressured and realized the case could not prosper in those years."

Still, Caucoto has his doubts about what happened later. Even with the existence of that order, which newspapers reported, the attorney began to receive calls from anonymous cemetery workers informing him that graves were being removed. After receiving numerous such calls, he complained to the Military Prosecutor, who inquired at the cemetery. The cemetery director acknowledged that some graves had been moved, pointing out that the order only said not to move any NN graves. "My doubt is what graves did they move?! The cemetery director justified his action by saying the NN amounted to 120 bodies. So, they made all the rest disappear!"

In fact, in the early 90s when the Forensic Anthropology Group exhumed Patio 29, they uncovered 120, not the 200 buried there following the coup.

Caucoto adds, "When we seek responsibilities for Patio 29, I think it is shortsighted to look for identification mistakes. We have to find out who was responsible for making the bodies disappear, who created Patio 29, who failed to identify the bodies, who failed to take fingerprints, and who made sure not to leave records that could have identified someone years later."

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