On the morning of Saturday, April 27, while Chile woke up with the news of the murder of three police officers in the Biobío region, in the south-central zone, Romy Vargas He woke up to a phone call at approximately 7:00 a.m. from Arica, in the extreme north of the country. The woman was at her house in the popular municipality of Cerrillos, in the northwestern area of Santiago. In the call, a uniformed officer notified her that Franco Vargas, her only son, who turned 19 in February, had died while performing his military service in the Motorized Brigade No. 24 Huamachuco in Putre. The young man was participating with his companions in an instruction march that started after six in the morning in Palloco, in the highlands, more than 4,000 meters above sea level. They were returning to the Putre barracks, after five days of exercises at low temperatures.
“He tells me that, unfortunately, in a daily routine, Franco fainted and died. I threw the phone away and started screaming in horror. I could not believe it. I couldn’t understand it. It was horrible,” said Romy Vargas in an interview to CNN on Wednesday, when the news had already caused commotion. After efforts from the Army, the mother boarded a plane on the afternoon of April 27 to the Arica region, 2,160 kilometers north of Santiago. “When I arrived at the airport, Commander Silva greeted me. I asked him crying what happened. And he tells me: ‘heart failure.’ His son, however, had no heart problems, Vargas said: “He never got sick, he was a completely healthy child.”
In Arica, Vargas said, the soldier told him that Saturday that the autopsy had not yet been performed because the Legal Medical Service was closed. “There he was wondering, how could he tell me that he had heart failure if not even an autopsy had been performed?”
Franco Vargas was part of the 245 conscripts who began their military service in Putre on April 6 and who, on the 21st, began the basic military training stage. Of them, 45 who were part of his group presented respiratory and gastrointestinal infections after exercising at low and extreme temperatures. Two of those young people are still hospitalized in the Military Hospital of Santiago. One remains in serious condition and another, on Wednesday, suffered the amputation of a hand due to an infection.
Boric quoted La Moneda on Friday to the commander in chief of the Army, Javier Iturriaga. It was a meeting for the Army to provide information on what happened in Putre and for it to be available to the families of the conscripts. Earlier, during the week, a group of pro-government parliamentarians had demanded the departure of the general due to the responsibility of his command, but Boric ratified it.
“They weren’t in a real war.”
The first statement from the Army regarding the Franco Vargas case was issued on April 28, in which it reported that on the 27th, on an instruction march from the Pacollo training camp to the Putre military barracks, “and while taking a break, A conscript soldier (RIP) presents respiratory problems, being immediately transferred by vehicle to the infirmary of the property under instruction, where he was stabilized by a military nurse and later transferred to a Cesfam [un centro de salud familiar estatal] from the commune of Putre, where unfortunately his death was confirmed.”
On April 29, Vargas’ mother reported to Chilevisión that there was negligence on the part of the Army. She accused that during the march his son asked his superiors for help in the intense cold of the desert and that he said he had had difficulty breathing, but that he was ignored: “This cannot be. They were not in a real war for Franco to have lost his life like that. “There was no need for training at that level and for them to be denied shelter and help.” Following his statements, Sebastián Silva, commander of the Huamachuco Brigade, days before being called into retirement by Iturriaga, explained that these exercises were routine and part of the soldiers’ initial phase training: “They were going down, as a company, all together. He [Franco Vargas] manifests these symptoms and is immediately transferred to the infirmary and to Cesfam of Putrewhere his death is confirmed.”
On May 2, in one of the several interviews she has given, Romy Vargas delved into her complaint to the same channel and also accused the conscript of mistreatment: “What I know from several testimonies is that my son asked for help. This guy, I have the name but I’m not going to name him, he told him that that was unmanly, that he was a faggot. She picked him up and hit him and he passed out. And then he woke up again; she pushed him again, to drag him.”
Two complaints have been filed in the case. One of the mother, represented by lawyer Sebastián Andrade, for illegitimate coercion resulting in death and another for illegitimate coercion by the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH), an autonomous state body, representing five conscripts who were part of the group of Franco Vargas. This last libel details that the young people “were subjected to beatings with their feet and fists by their superiors in charge.” And that the walks, day and night, were “with temperatures below zero, without adequate clothing” despite the fact that the Army had given him special clothing for the cold. It was also alleged that they suffered from “sleep deprivation for several nights” and that they had “exposure to mouse feces in the food preparation and consumption spaces.” The libel added “a context of permanent verbal abuse, with homophobic phrases such as ‘you are a little girl, a faggot, a faggot, a lesbian.’”
Paradoxes in the date of death
On May 3, General Rodrigo Pino, Chief of the General Staff of the Army, said that, in at least 15 years, they had no history “of a death of a soldier working at height.” And, regarding Franco Vargas, he pointed out that “in the first minutes of the march he stated that he felt bad.” Without giving names, he explained that whoever was in charge, in addition to a nurse, “immediately arranged their evacuation to the specialized medical care post installed in Pocollo to be able to provide health support” to the conscripts who were in the acclimatization stage in the area. . “The soldier was stabilized there and as his situation worsened, he was quickly transferred to the Cesfam of Putre. According to the records, he arrived with vital signs, alive there, and while they were waiting for the arrival of the Cesfam emergency doctor, the soldier would have suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest that implied that the health personnel would proceed to resuscitate him. The doctor arrived, continued with the resuscitation and unfortunately his death was confirmed at 7:12 a.m.,” he added.
However, on May 6, a new precedent contradicted that Army version. In an extraordinary session of the Putre municipal council, the director of Cesfam, Aldo Rivera, pointed out that according to the office’s record, the young man arrived at 6:52 a.m., transported in a military vehicle. His arrival, he said, was without prior warning, so a doctor had to be called urgently: “It is clear that this person came without vital signs nor with any response to verbal or physical stimuli.” And he added that “after six cycles of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the doctor on duty proceeds to declare the death of the conscript.”
Faced with these paradoxes, Iturriaga traveled to Arica, from where he took the first measures, relieving the command of two officers, a captain and a lieutenant colonel who were leading the campaign and the execution of the fateful march.
The case of Franco Vargas has led to the opening of investigations in the Army, in addition to an investigation by the Arica Prosecutor’s Office and another by Judge Jenny Book, who was appointed on Wednesday by the Supreme Court as a visiting minister to investigate the circumstances of the death of Franco Vargas. The judge, who is a minister of both the Court of Appeals of Santiago and the Court Martial, has traveled to Putre to investigate whether or not there was a crime in the death of the soldier. She has reported that she will most likely order a second autopsy, as requested by Romy Vargas and the INDH. The Legal Medical Service concluded that the young man suffered a sudden death and that there was no intervention by third parties.
The request for a visiting minister was made by Defense Minister Maya Fernández, who learned of the conscript’s death when on April 27 she was part of Boric’s delegation that traveled to the Los Álamos police station, in the region of the Biobío, to which the three murdered police officers belonged. Fernández contacted the conscript’s mother on May 2, and instructed the undersecretary of the Armed Forces, Galo Eidelstein, to travel to Arica.
Boric spoke for the first time about the case on Wednesday morning. “For Franco’s memory it is necessary to know the whole truth, to clarify the details of the events and to assume the corresponding responsibilities. Truth and justice,” said the president. In the afternoon Iturriaga admitted the lack of precision in the information provided by the Army for 11 days, and announced the retirement of the senior officers.
The president will meet on Monday in La Moneda with the conscript’s mother, who has insisted that she handed over “a living son” to the Army. “And they handed him over to me dead.”
Franco Vargas voluntarily registered for military service, which is no longer mandatory in Chile. He died when he had been in training for two weeks.
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