Sergeant First Napoleon Ricardo Hauiquiñir I was in a laboratory in NeuquenHis other job besides being a nurse in the provincial police, when the phone rang. “Do you know how to ride a horse?” Asked Commissioner Inspector Fuenzalida without hesitation. “No,” replied the warrant officer. “He is going to have to learn, we are going to Varvarco“Said the boss. “And what are we going to do?” He tried to know. “You are going to find out,” was the answer on the other end of the line.
A week later he learned that the mission was no less rescue the remains of agent Juan Domingo Cifuentes, killed in the winter of 1934 when I was following a group of smugglers in the Neuquén North.
Two shopkeepers who found him on the banks of a stream in the Cajon del Alto Mallín had buried him in the plateau slope Only accessible after riding single file down dangerous slopes and fording rivers of thaw.
In those times of tnational erritorio without GendarmeríaThe agent’s job was to take care of the El Tranquero natural border crossing, one of the gaps where merchandise and riders came and went with their horses and pack mules. I was alone there since spring. He had to return to the Andacollo police station before the great winter snowfall.
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According to those who investigated the case, the last thing that was known before the Castillo and Jorquera stalls found him dead from a bullet to the head was that he followed a group of about eight members who entered from Chile. Her remains remained 55 years in the mountains.
Chief Warrant Officer Juan Evangelista Romero, who was five years old when she saw her neighbor Cifuentes hug her children in Tricao Malal in farewell before leaving for his last mission, he pleaded with his bosses for the rescue operation. Finally, the time to go looking for him had arrived.
That Wednesday, March 1, 1989, at 4 in the morning, the team was ready to leave in two vehicles. Fuenzalida, who had relatives in Varvarco, was in command.
Among those who supported him was Hauiquiñir, who in addition to being a nurse was Histology Technician and in his other job, he learned every laboratory day with his teacher, the pathologist Rafael Scuteri. “I think that was why they chose me,” he says.
Corporal Fernando Navarro (driver), agent Ismael Maripil (photographer), agent Nicolás Páez (driver) and retired sergeant Guillermo Sepúlveda also left the game.
On their journey to the north of the province, at noon they were in Chos Malal and a little later in Andacollo, presented as “another town lost in a valley that looks like a postcard painted by the hand of God” in the detailed writing where he narrated the whole adventure.
In Andacollo he was waiting for them to join the expedition andl sergeant first Miguel Ángel Olave, who had already recognized the terrain in February and had everything ready to go with his comrades to the grave of Cifuentes on the mountain. He had arrived on horseback from Pichi Neuquén, in the southwest.
After passing through Las Ovejas, they continued on route 43 and at four in the afternoon they were in Varvarco, where they were received by Corporal Cisterna and Agent Aguilera.
They were divided between the detachment, the first aid room and the family houses of the small town to sleep and at six in the morning on Thursday, March 2, they started up again.
At 9:30 they were at Domuyo hot springs, where they left one of the vehicles and continued in the van, loaded with mounts and implements, about 100 kilometers more to the summer station of Norberto Valdez and his goats, cows and yeguarizos. There the road ended.
“He already knew we were going, so he was waiting for us with the horsesRecalls Sergeant-First Olave. “We were proud to go rescue a comrade and eager to do so,” he adds. There was added gift Francisco Anicasio Vázquez, a field laborer and baqueano from that territory, who knew how to take care of the agent’s grave, put a cross on it and light candles and lanterns for him. Everyone calls him Don Nicasio.
The person in charge of choosing the horse for the nurse, who had no experience in horseback riding, had to make his debut in a risky little spot between mountains and precipices, was Olave, expert on the subject. He looked at the ones there, took a short turn with one and came back. “This is for you, it is good and tame. Release the reins that will take you, “he said.
“I did not know how to ride a horse. I entrusted myself to all the saints and went up. We went in single file through the little garden. On one side was the mountain and on the other the precipice. If the horse missed you did not tell the story. At first it trembled from top to bottom, but then it subsided … “
First Sergeant Nurse Napoleon Ricardo Hauiquiñir
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Right away, together with the inspector inspector Fuenzalida and the people at the post, they saddled the horses and gave advice to the group before leaving. “It was like a theory class. I entrusted myself to all the saints and got on. At first it trembled from top to bottom, but later it subsided, ”recalls Hauiquiñir.
Every detail of the mission remains in his memory, as in that of Olave, who on that distant March 2, 1989, from time to time approached him to ask how they were going to him and the photographer Maripil, the other debutant in this matter of riding.
“On one side was the mountain and on the other the precipice, if the horse missed you went down and did not count it,” recalls the nurse. They went up and down slopes in single file, forded rivers and streams, and crossed plateaus until around noon they reached the stone mound under which Cifuentes was buried, Olave recounted.
The wind had knocked down the cross, which was among the stones. They took turns digging and were initially disappointed that when they reached the five and a half feet they had found nothing: going back empty-handed was a scary possibility.
They continued digging, a few inches below: after 55 years of snowfall, storms and thaws, the stones could have moved on the slope of the plateau. That extreme cold kept the soil moist and preserved the remains.
“That was how we found a boot and the first bone,” Olave recalls. The nurse cleaned it and deposited it on a black mortuary bag, where he placed the others until completing the skeleton, although to access the torso they had to dig a tunnel. Everyone was amazed at the good state of preservation.
“Where the projectile came from, the skull was missing a small part, as if it were a small cap, shall we say. But we search and find it. It was just the right size when the nurse put it in its place “
First Sergeant Miguel Ángel Olave.
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In addition to the boots, they also found part of the blue trousers and shirt that the earth had darkened, the buttons, the belt and the epaulet. His gun was missing.
“The skull had a bullet impact with an entrance hole in the left parietal and an exit in the right parietal with an explosion,” wrote the nurse Hauiquiñir in his report.
Sergeant First Olave observed another detail that impressed them: “Where the projectile came from, the skull was missing a small part, as if it were a small cap, shall we say. But we search and find it. It was just the right size when the nurse put it in its place, “he recalls.
Around 14:30 they put the remains in a bag and prepared to return. “At that time a small swirl of wind and earth rose, it was a matter of an instant, I do not know if the mountain was grateful or annoyed for having removed the remains of the deceased from its guts,” the nurse described in the report he wrote when one of his bosses heard him tell the story. “You have to write that down,” he said. And he did so, by hand in a notebook that was later transcribed by machine by Professor Dora Muñoz de Guzmán, who helped him shape and finish it.
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They retraced the descending path and about two kilometers they arrived at a post where Don Nicasio was waiting for them, who had gone ahead and with Gerardo Torres, about 15 years old, who looked after the animals on the summer, they were waiting with a little goat.
The nurse’s narrative continues. “At 15:30 hours we started on the same road we had arrived, we forded the river and left the box towards the plain, but this time cutting the way, saving almost five kilometers, we crossed the river and headed down less trails dangerous towards the post ‘Los Cheuque’, where we left the horses and waited for the van to come looking for us. “Doña Ana Rita Castillo de Jorquera, told us that her father and father-in-law had witnessed the discovery of the body of the deceased Cifuentes, in the river, they were the ones who buried him in the place where we went to unearth him.”
The arrival in Varvarco was triumphant, with everyone galloping except the male nurse, who told the horse “calm that we arrived the same”, he remembers and laughs.
In town they were so surprised by the find that they asked him to put the skeleton together in the shed. “They couldn’t believe it when they saw it,” he says.
On Saturday, March 4, the remains of agent Cifuentes were deposited in the monolith where they rest, at the junction of route 43 that goes to Varvarco and 54 that goes to Manzano Amargo.
The members of the team that rescued them after 55 years received a plaque and a medal.
Napoleón Ricardo Hauiquiñir, at age 70, lives in the Villa María neighborhood in Neuquén and has five children, 25 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. “They were serious about populating Patagonia,” he jokes.
Miguel Ángel Olave, at 74, lives in Andacollo with his wife Ana María. In May they celebrated 50 years of marriage and could not celebrate. They have 5 children and 15 grandchildren. And like his friend Napoleon, a great story to tell them.
Although for his colleagues who investigated the case, the bandits were Chilean, according to the testimonies that Olave collected, they were Argentines who were returning from the trans-Andean country and that caused the confusion, compounded by the fact that the man who shot fled to Chile.
Thanks
Sergio Sepúlveda, retired chief petty officer of the Neuquén police and lawyer, these days Centinela del Neuquén is writing a book on the Cifuentes case and others that occurred in the province.
Tomás Heger Wagner, retired commissioner general, author of Guardians of Order, three volumes of historical compilation on the Neuquén police of which he was chief and which includes a review of the Cifuentes case.
Napoleon Ricardo Huaiquiñir, retired sergeant aide. Nurse during the exhumation of the remains and author of a detailed report.
Miguel Ángel Olave, retired first sergeant. In February 1989 he recognized the land before the exhumation of March of that year.
Iceland Valdez, a neighbor of Varvarco who houses Don Francisco Nicasio Vázquez, for the photos and testimonies.
Isidro Belver, historian. Expert knowledgeable of the area.
Martín Muñoz, photographer and wildlife guard.
Gabriel Rafart, Professor and researcher in Social History and Political History of the National University of Comahue and National University of Río Negro
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