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The
Black Book of Chilean Justice is banned in Chile.
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The Ceremonial Routine
In those days, a neighbor
close to the children of Minister Rafael Retamal visited the minister’s
house on the street of the Talaveras, in Nunoa. The magistrate
was wearing his ever-present beret and was at ease with the visitor,
who opposed the military regime and who could not resist the temptation
to ask the magistrate what his position was on the matter.
“You have to give
the military time so they can fulfill their promises,” answered
Retamal with energy. “The time period shouldn’t be longer
than five years, though.”
Retamal, openly Catholic
and anti-Marxist, held beliefs similar to the [centrist] Christian
Democratic Party. His house, where he lived with a big family,
was illuminated at night by helicopters going up and down the
city. That was a protective measure.
Meanwhile, the Ministers
of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, recently reinstated to their
positions, started to receive dozens of appeals from people that
had been made to disappear, detained or executed for not having
respected the martial curfew.
During the first months
after the coup d’état, this Court ordered some ministers
to investigate the many detention cases. One of those ministers
was Rubén Galecio, who, following the Court of Appeals order,
worked at least four times in detention centers. He went to investigations
at the premises of the Air Force and on two occasions to the Estadio
Chile. He was always barred from getting into those places and
got no answer when he demanded to know the status of prisoners
whose families were appealing. The military shielded themselves
under the special laws that governed martial law to refuse to
release any information. That seemed to be accepted by the executive.
Many protested against
the behavior of the military. The affected magistrates protested
to the High Court, which responded by filing the complaints without
further investigation. Unlike the government of Salvador Allende
[who was thrown out of power in the 1973 coup], the Court did
not show any sign of rebellion against the military dictatorship.
The first appeals were rejected, saying that it was not possible
to prove the presence of detainees in the military buildings.
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Alejandra
Matus fled her native Chile after a judge banned her book
about corruption in the country's judiciary.
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In January 1974, José
Cánovas was appointed president of the Court of Appeals of
Santiago. The Minister felt overwhelmed by the appeals brought
by lawyers of the Association of Human Rights (Eugenio Velasco,
Jaime Castillo); the Comite Pro Paz (predecessor of the Vicaria
and Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez) and the Service for Justice
and Peace (Serpaj).
Cánovas, a minister
with a longstanding career, thought that some people were abusing
their right to appeal but also realized that the government was
not taking these legal demands seriously.
When the situation
turned difficult, Cánovas obtained the consent of the plenary
and asked the Minister of Interior, General César Bonilla,
for an audience. Bonilla reminded the minister of the special
dispositions that govern this type of appeal: the duties of the
executive and the vice and abuses committed by the new military
authorities.
Bonilla looked truly
surprised. In front of the magistrate, he ordered his advisers
to deal with the cases as soon as possible. The Ministry dealt
with 300 delayed cases. Unfortunately, Bonilla’s attitude
wasn’t followed by his successors, nor did the High Court
back the concerns of its subordinates.
Though a special office
to deal with theses cases was set up by the Court of Appeals of
Santiago, the appeals continued to get rejected overwhelmingly.
Eventually, the Court of Appeals stopped assigning magistrates
to investigate the actions of the military and limited itself
to sending cases to other institutions. It got to be a sort of
routine, the same way that the daily trips of the High Court’s
ministers to the Tribunal Palace in an army bus had became a routine.
First Anniversary
On December 29, 1973
the High Court celebrated its 150th anniversary with a ceremony
and party at the Palace of Justice in Santiago, at which 13 ministers
from the new authorities, headed by General Augusto Pinochet,
cheered the occasion.
| “Eventually,
the Court of Appeals stopped assigning magistrates to investigate
the actions of the military.” |
On March 1, 1974, practically
the same cast congregated again to listen to the inaugural address
of the judiciary year. It was a Friday. The country was still
under martial law. The detention of members of the political opposition
had become widespread and now word-of-mouth news about disappearances
was more and more urgent.
On the second floor
of the Palace of Justice were the first minister of justice of
the military regime, Gonzalo Prieto, his undersecretary, Max Silva
the president of the College of Lawyers, Alejandro Silva Bascuñán,
the president of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, José Cánovas
and all the magistrates in charge. Only one foreigner was present:
the president of the High Court of Hanover, Helmut Kovold, who
had been “specially invited.”
In the plenary room,
Urrutia Manzano read his address. It was published the following
day by El Mercurio newspaper under the headline: “Supreme
Court president talks tough.” Manzano warned his listeners
that that some of his comments included “personal opinions.”
Here is an example:
“After
the events of December 11, 1973 [i.e. the coup that brought Pinochet
to power], to which I will refer later, I can emphatically assure
you that the Courts under our jurisdiction have acted according
to the rule of law, that the administrative authority which rules
Chile has followed our resolutions and that we respect our judges
as they deserve. It gives me enormous satisfaction to be able
to say that.”
The memory of the Marxist
government [of former President Salvador Allende] was still alive
for Manzano. To him, that government “had lost the legitimacy
it had obtained through its election to the National Congress
as a result of its constant mistakes and open and repeated violation
of the rule of law, in both its wording and spirit.”
| A
government official claimed that most of the “disappeared”
in Chile had been released. |
He defended the new
regime against the accusations of human rights violations, noting
what happened on August 6, 1970, just before Allende took power.
A group of lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to take the necessary
measures to avoid abuses and mistreatment of those processed in
police buildings and prisons. The Court had investigated the accusations
and, in less than 20 days, taken a good number of petitions. Nevertheless,
according to Urrutia, the main signatories were appointed to high
positions in the government and forgot about the complaints.
What was happening
at that moment in Chile was not as severe as some have claimed:
“Many
of the detainees, who were jailed as a result of the laws in place
during the state of siege, have been set free. Others are in the
legal process of ordinary or military tribunals, and as for those
that are still detained by virtue of the martial law in place,
we are making an effort to improve their well-being and to clarify,
as soon as possible, their participation in illegal activities.
We hope that with this effort we will soon end the affected families’
distress.”
The president of the
High Court also noted that he had gotten a visit from two delegates
of Amnesty International. The visitors expressed their concern
for the judiciary’s indifference to denunciations against
human rights violations, in particular for the High Court’s
decision to abandon its supervision of the War Council that had
ordered the execution of so many people.
Urrutia said that he
explained to the delegates how “inflated” their concerns
were. If executions had taken place, they were justified in the
current legal framework in Chile at the moment and those executions
were in full harmony with “international agreements on human
rights.” The minister regretted that the Amnesty report did
not include his opinions: “They prefer to believe anonymous
rumors or biased slogans.” Human rights, he added, are “respected
in our motherland.”
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