Lawyer in emblematic cases such as the Degollados case and the crime of Víctor Jara, he described a mechanism to collect new information that allows determining the whereabouts of the victims of forced disappearance of the dictatorship.
Nelson Caucoto, lawyer in emblematic cases such as the Degollados case and the crime of Víctor Jara, was the second guest at Dialogues for Memory. The conversation is part of the series developed by the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) to learn about the work of those who protected the guarantees of the people during the dictatorship.
Regarding the National Search Plan launched by the government, Caucoto indicated that “information is disseminated in Chilean society. There is a lot of information to collect. You have to go for it. In that sense, I think you have to go to the agents. And among the agents, you have to go to the conscripts and you have to go to Punta Peuco,” he noted during his presentation.
The series developed by the INDH already included presentations by the head of the National Television Documentation Department, Amira Arratia; the director of the Secret National Security Archive, Peter Kornbluh; and the journalist author of “The Years of the Condor”, John Dinges.
The National Search Plan, launched in September, has the purpose of establishing the circumstances of the disappearance and death of victims of forced disappearance and their whereabouts. Some of its objectives are to reconstruct the trajectories of the victims, and locate, recover, identify and return the remains of the victims.
Lawyer Caucoto recalled a strategy that he promoted when he worked at the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “I have a theory about searching for missing persons. We sometimes use it: you have to go to the agents. Not that the agents come to us. The agents have advanced in age. Someone who is 30 years old is not the same as someone who is 50 or someone who is 60 years old. It is different”.
“Something softens inside you. Something tells you that you are reaching the end of your life and it is important that if you have information, you give it to help other people. This is something biological. The people are not the same. Do you think that the one who was 30 years old is the same guy as the one who is 70 years old? No,” she reflected.
Testimony in La Firma case
Caucoto exemplified with the testimonies given by Carlos Pascua Arellano, who in his capacity as a police officer worked at the Dieciocho Street barracks. In that place was La Firma, a site that first served for operations of the Joint Command and then of Dicomcar. He recalled that two people went to see the uniformed man at his house.
“’You are from the Human Rights. Come in. I’ve been waiting for you for 20 years. I have something here and I am distraught,’ he told them and continued. ‘I am at the end of my life. I have been out of the institution for many years. The only contact I have is the check I receive through a cash register. I have information. I’m Larry, who was at the Eighteenth Street Barracks. The Firm. He was the person who controlled the house. All the detainees passed through me. I know what happened to many detainees and what I get out of taking them to the grave,’” Caucoto said.
Caucoto remembers Víctor Jara case
“The passage of time has its effects,” the lawyer said during his story. “All these people are in their last years and it is true that their hearts are softening. I don’t think it will happen with Krasnoff or Iturriaga. One has to get to Punta Peuco. If you want to know what happened to the missing people, what you have to study is a formula. “If they provide verifiable information that there are remains of people in certain places, we will have to see what benefits can be given to them,” he said.
Furthermore, he indicated that “the information is disseminated in Chilean society. It is distributed from Arica to Punta Arenas, between these old agents, these old banners, and those who were then young banners, the conscripts. They were controlled until a certain time. I say this because of the Víctor Jara case. All the conscripts were from the western area of Santiago and every month they had a barbecue and signed a pact not to speak. But those conscripts are 60 years old. They once controlled them, but now no one controls them. There are many who have information. We have to reach them, not wait for them to reach us,” he concluded.
