President Lagos Was Nearly Killed After 1986 Attempt On Pinochet’s Life
When dead bodies started turning up in the streets of Santiago, hours after the Sept. 7, 1986 attempted assassination of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Cuadra, secretary general at the time, knew that something was going on.
By the end of the night, three men were found dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, and several political opposition leaders, including current president Ricardo Lagos, were being detained for their own safety.
“That was when we realized that these were revenge killings,” Cuadra said in a recent interview with Diario Siete. “We had been given no news that the National Intelligence Center (CNI) was carrying out an operation.”
On Sept. 7, 1986, Pinochet’s motorcade came under fire by militants as it traveled through Cajon del Maipo outside of Santiago. Two vehicles were destroyed by shoulder-fired missile-launchers and five government guards were killed in the attack.
Immediately after the attempt on Pinochet’s life, government officials from multiple branches of the military regime met at La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, to plan the government’s response to the attack.
Because officials at the scene did not capture any militants or find any of their bodies, government officials initially had no idea who was responsible for the attack on Pinochet. Some speculated that it was a military coup; others thought it was an assassination attempt by the CIA because of the sophisticated weaponry used in the fight.
It was later confirmed that the attack was carried out by operatives from the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FMPR), a Communist militant group. Officials monitored hospitals immediately after the attack for any gunshot victims seeking medical attention in the hopes of learning more about the identity of the attackers.
“There was total confusion,” said Cuadra. “The army had to initiate Plan Cobra, an operation that deployed forces to comb the hills of Cajon del Maipo.”
While he and other government officials were waiting for news in La Moneda, Gen. Humberto Gordon, director of the CNI, sent a coded message to the CNI anti-terrorist unit via Chile’s national television station TVN. The TV announcement that ran several times that day asked members of the Papillón Sports Club to meet in Colina for a public utility service meeting.
At the “Sports Club” meeting, Álvaro Corbalán, CNI operations chief, and Manuel Provis, then chief of the Army Intelligence Battalion (BIE), gave a list of names to Jorge Vargas, Iván Quiroz, Osvaldo Pinchetti, and other CNI agents of left-wing political activists that were to be killed in response to the attack on Gen. Pinochet.
Vargas and Quiroz testified last week to the events that transpired after their meeting with Corbalán and Provis, detailing their involvement in the murders of four left-wing political activists. Government officials and the victims’ families now know exactly what happened to the men killed that night.
The killings began at 2:15 in the morning, when masked men burst into the home of Felipe Rivera, an electrician and communist activist living in Pudahuel. Rivera was seized in front of his wife, Alicia Lira, and just a few hours later his dead body was found in the street. Next, the agents went to the home of Professor Gastón Vidaurrázaga, destroying the front door of his house and ripping him out of bed half-naked. He was taken a few kilometers from his house and shot 16 times with a submachine gun.
After the first two murders, the CNI agents went to the home of José Carrasco, editor of the opposition newspaper Análisis and director of Chile’s School of Journalism. At approximately 4 a.m., Vargas and Quiroz arrived at Carrasco’s house, threw the night watchman into their van, tied Carrasco’s door to their vehicle and ripped it off its hinges. They entered the house and beat Carrasco in front of his wife and children until they woke up the neighbors, then threw Carrasco into their van and sped off. At a nearby cemetery, they forced him to kneel down in front of a mural and shot him 14 times in the back.
While CNI agents were executing political activists around the city, Lagos was detained by Investigations Police forces, part of an attempt by the Ministry of the Interior to save the lives of potential political targets.
According to Hilario Muñoz, a former officer with Chile’s Investigations Police, his team arrived at Lagos’ house around 1 a.m. As they were escorting him out, a group of CNI agents arrived and ordered the police to hand Lagos over.
“They surrounded us with their vehicles and arrogantly demanded that we turn (Lagos) over,” said Muñoz. When the police arrived with Lagos at Gen. Mackenna prison, the CNI agents returned and once again demanded that the officers step aside. “At that point we had to load the UZI machine guns we were carrying,” said Muñoz. “We didn’t think the situation was going to be resolved with words.”
After seizing Lagos, the police went to the homes of the murdered men, only to find that the CNI had already been there.
When Cuadra was asked Monday about the event, he said, “I don’t know who gave the order, but I was informed that they were going to arrest opposition political leaders with the intent to save their lives.”
At the time of the killings, Cuadra reported for the government that the murders were a “typical purge within Marxist groups.” Investigators are now expected to question Cuadra about the discrepancy between his statements in 1986 and new information taken from recent testimonies.
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