1974 through August 1977
Truth Commissions Digital
Collection: Reports:
Colonia Dignidad
The Commission examined a vast amount of information on the alleged use of the
El Lavadero estate, which belongs to the Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad [Dignity Welfare and Educational
Association], for holding and torturing prisoners during the period covered in
this chapter. This estate, which is usually called Colonia Dignidad, is located
in a rather remote area of the province of Parral, on the banks of the Perquilauquén River and the El Lavadero
estuary near Catillo.
Several hundred people, most of them of German nationality, live at Colonia
Dignidad. The Sociedad Benefactora
y Educacional Dignidad is engaged in a number of
farming, commercial, and philanthropic activities, including running a hospital
and a school, which also receive government aid. Over the years there have been
numerous incidents and public accusations about Colonia Dignidad, its
activities, and its internal life. These accusations have given rise to
numerous journalistic accounts, public debates, parliamentary investigations,
and legal actions of various kinds. As this report was being concluded, the
government's decision to withdraw the legal status of the association was made
public.
It is not the Commission's role to take a stand on issues or controversies
outside its mandate. However, it must examine and publish its conclusions on
the accusations about Colonia Dignidad, namely that its leaders had some kind
of agreement with the DINA allowing it to hold and torture prisoners there, and
especially the claim that all trace was lost of some of these prisoners after
their time at Colonia Dignidad. To examine this matter and draw conclusions
falls within the Commission's mandate to provide information not only on the
most serious human rights violations committed during this period but on the
surrounding circumstances.
In examining this matter, the Commission had available the numerous personal
testimonies it took, the testimonies and other proofs found in court records in
Chile and the Federal Republic of Germany, other documentary information, and a
vast amount of circumstantial evidence and background information. The
Commission wrote to Colonia Dignidad requesting permission to visit, but its
leaders wrote back refusing that request.
Having considered all the information in hand, the Commission has come to the
following conclusions:
* It has
been proven that there were various ties between the DINA and Colonia Dignidad.
It is a fact that from the time the DINA began to exist as the DINA Commission
in November 1973, its agents used properties like Colonia Dignidad's
El Lavadero estate and the properties resulting from
the division of what used to be the San Manuel estate in the hinterland of
Parral for DINA business, such as training its agents or for other
institutional purposes. It is also a fact that the Dignidad association bought
a house at Calle Ignacio Carrera
Pinto (formerly Calle Unión)
No. 262, which was known to have been used as a DINA facility, particularly for
training a regional intelligence brigade (transaction recorded on May 24, 1974,
property put in the association's name the following year, and sold in 1986).
It is also known that the head of the DINA and other DINA agents visited
Colonia Dignidad and seem to have had cordial relations with its leaders.
* The
Commission received a large number of statements from people who were arrested
by the DINA in
* The
Commission likewise received specific accusations concerning prisoners who
disappeared, about whom the last information is that they were being held at
Colonia Dignidad (aside from those who were held there only for a brief
period). Although the Commission in fact considers some of these persons to be
disappeared and believes that there are indications that they may have been
taken to Colonia Dignidad after their arrest, the only prisoner about whom it can
in conscience affirm that he disappeared after being transferred to Colonia
Dignidad is Alvaro Vallejos Villagrán.
* The Commission has also taken into account
that other sources, some of them foreign, have likewise concluded that Colonia
Dignidad was at least used as a detention center for political prisoners. Among
such sources are spokespersons for the government of the Federal Republic of
Germany and the United Nations Ad Hoc Working Group on the Forced Disappearance
of Persons. Nevertheless, the Commission has based its own conclusions on the
evidence it was able to examine directly.
The
house in Parral
The DINA Regional Intelligence Brigade operated out of Calle
Ignacio Carrera Pinto No. 262 in the city of