Chile Chico is a small town located south of Coyhaique, in front of the majestic Lake General Carrera, distant just about ten minutes from Argentina.
However, that Sunday, May 4, 2014, the peaceful charm of this southern town was interrupted by a series of screams that were heard from a house on Balmaceda Street.
Juana Leuquén hurriedly left her house in search of a phone to call Carabineros, to try to make her husband, Iván Vásquez, calm down, for the children who were already beginning to be scared and because they did not want them to see the show that was giving their father.
Today, the woman regrets having made that call that changed her life and her children forever."I regret having called Carabineros," she confesses to Biobiochile.
"So many years have passed and I don't understand why I did it," he says in tears.“Every day I regret having called Carabineros, especially when I started seeing my little children who suffered, who cried, who had 14 days and got up to wait for their father, and I had to tell them 'son, your dad doesn'tIt will arrive ".
"Seeing them cry and start seeing that my children begin to suffer needs, hunger, things that had never happened, many times they walked with the broken shoes in school," he adds.
"I had to start selling things in the house to be able to feed them and nobody helped me," he says.
Ivan's death meant Juana to have to look for work, even having to travel to the ancients, an Argentine town located about 20 minutes crossing the Jeinimeni river.
"He was a good dad, he was strict especially with the school's theme, but he gave up with his children, that's why they missed him," says Juana.
Ivan worked in a mining company in Argentine Patagonia, so he spent 14 days away from home.For the same reason, many of the domestic decisions passed through Juana, who facilitated a house they had in Cochrane to friends, which unfortunately suffered a fire.
The latter caused the discussion between the two that was progressively rising in tone.It was not the first time it happened, in fact the previous year Juana had filed a complaint for domestic violence.
However, they had decided to give a second chance, for the four children who had more than anything.Ivan underwent a program to leave its dependence on alcohol.Although that afternoon, he had taken a couple of beers.
A Carabineros patrol quickly arrived at the scene, led by noncommissioned officer José Gamboa, along with Los Cabos Carla Lallemand and Ricardo Huala, to take the procedure.
While the official stayed with Juana, Gamboa and Huala they entered the back of the house, knocking down the kitchen door violence as if it were an anti -drug operation, while he prepared the bottle to the smallest child of 1 yearand four months.
The Carabineros insisted on asking if their husband had hit her, but as she repeated that it was only an argument, Cabo Lallemand began to increase her."Women like you, it seems they like to be given," she said.
When he heard that his bus began to cry, he entered through the main door where he met his other daughter, who witnessed how they hit his dad.In the middle of the Batahola, they were taken while shouting and blows like a quarrel of canteen.
As they could not with him, a second support unit arrived with three other officials, to reduce it.
At that time a soft drizzle began to fall in Chile Chico, so Juana sent her eldest daughter to look for shoes for the bus.By the time she came back, she not only brought her clothes, but also with fright she told her what was happening inside her.
"Mom, my dad are hitting in the kitchen!" He said.
While he tried to enter to see her husband, she was prevented by the other officials.She would later find the place turned into a battlefield, with blood splashes in the linoleum, broken plates and both the refrigerator and the kitchen, had important abolish.
Finally, Ivan was taken by the house almost handcuffed with clear signs of having a beating, heading to the hospital to verify injuries.That was the last time his wife and his children saw him alive.
Hurd, Juana took a vest and other shelter clothes to leave Iván to the police station, because as she had told her, her husband had to be free in a while.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon he arrived at the 3rd Chilean Police Station, where he had to wait at the hall to deliver the clothes.There she met Cabo Lallemand again, who again incrend her for not denouncing her husband.
And after telling something to another carabinero who was in the guard, they sent her home telling her that she would be notified when her husband supposedly will be released.
At least two hours later, about five o'clock in the afternoon, a couple of Carabineros arrived at their home to inform that her husband had died after hanging in the dungeon.
His first reaction was disbelief, especially because they could not say clearly how life had been removed, if with a vest or with a shirt."Ivan didn't commit suicide," he confronted the police, "you killed me."
He quickly went to the hospital, where they did the autopsy of rigor to her husband.But since it is a small town and most of it is known, one of the officials who participated in the expertise of her when she saw her told her that it was not true that her husband had hanged himself from her.
“Her husband was broken, possibly for high impact blows.I'm not going to cover up this, her husband was killed, ”she confessed, confirming the suspicions she had from the beginning.
Upon recognizing her husband, almost at two in the morning, the bruises in her ribs caught her attention, while in her neck a small mark like an allergy, she questioned the police version.
His death medical certificate indicates that the cause of death was a "hypovolemic shock" caused by an "closed abdominal trauma", product of a "liver injury", which was reflected in the first autopsy report.
In simple terms, he bleeding for a blow that pierced his liver, in a death that the experts claim that it is very painful.
Other people told him that when Ivan arrived at the hospital, he would have told the doctor that the police had hit him with a churro.Given this, the professional was where the police to clarify the issue, but they denied at all times to have hit it.
According to the official document, Iván Vásquez was found a wound on his face, a scratch in the chest and was drunk.Gamboa also found a wound on his lip.
After the finding of injuries, witnesses told their widow that the police would have hit their husband to put it back into the van, while he increasing the Petty Officer Gamboa, whom he accused of having hit him.
“Gamboa hit me, I already had me with wives!I'm going to shit you, I'm going to hire a lawyer! ”Shouted helplessly.However, he never had the opportunity to call any defender.
According to the statement of one of the children, he says that “there were like five police officers who had my dad bent down with his hands back (...) I saw that one of them hit him on the side with his fist, hit him.When I saw that, I felt my dad complained. ”
The report of the Homicide Brigade of the PDI of Coyhaique highlights precisely this fact, that no carabinero has declared to have seen the aggressions described by his son and that coincide with the cause of death.
This, because in the statements of the officials they do not mention the blows that Gamboa would have given him.
While the preliminary autopsy report indicates that "there is no signs of hanging, only a lacerative and erosive wound at the neck level in the anterior face, and said action does not cause death."
That same afternoon, the arrival of a Carabineros helicopter caused strangeness among the inhabitants of the town, without knowing that in the aircraft came the largest of Coyhaique, who went to the wake of Iván Vásquez to give condolences.
However, in the house he found his widow in war, who swore to seek the truth of what had happened, even more before the weak excuses that the officer gave him.
"Mrs. Juana, in Santiago there are carabineros who hang themselves with a wool," he said.
"He knows that I don't care if people in the north hang with a dental thread, but my husband did not kill him, you killed me and time is what I have most to know what happened," he replied.
"You think that because of being a woman I will not do anything, they have no idea what awaits you with me," he added to then throw them out of the house.
His warning not to remain calm, the account would pass him in the following months because he began to be harassed by police officers.
Patrols were installed on the outskirts of the house, lighting their beacons and sirens, while their little children fled in terror seeking refuge in their mother's bed, thinking that they were going to enter the house again like when they hit him his father.
Tired of harassment, one night went to face them and threw a couple of stones “I am not afraid!Go are scaring the children! ”She shouted at them, although she was terrified inside.
Every time he crossed them on the street, they even took the time to get off their patrols to intimidate her."Poor and sad W ... Do you think you are going to beat us?" They told him, always taking care that there was no one near her to listen to them.
At this point he had already made contact with the human rights lawyer, Cristián Cruz, who had also had to fight from the beginning with the wind against, because the Public Ministry had declared incompetent, deriving the case to military justice.
Finally, after a seven -year wait, in October last year the fourth military court of Coyhaique condemned the non -prisoner Gamboa Petty Officer for the crime of unnecessary violence causing the death of Iván Vásquez Vásquez, 39.
The ruling, which was just known a week ago, did not leave according to the widow or his lawyer, so they already presented an appeal, looking for a higher sentence.
“We are not satisfied with this five -year ruling and one day, much less that only one person is blamed, when there were seven police.I find it as a mockery, because they are going to look for everything to be released, ”says Juana Leuquén.
"Seven years have been delayed that this carabinero has enjoyed freedom, his children have seen him arrive every day, he has been living with a salary, instead my children ...", he laments.
His eldest son never celebrated his birthday again, because he coincided with his dad's first burial.Yes, because Iván Vásquez was buried twice due to the expert opinions asked for the tanatologist Vivian Bustos, amid the efforts to defense to demonstrate suicide.
His exhumation was a strong impact on his family.“Take it out of there and more over waiting for them to tell the truth, not cover up something, cover it more.For me it was a mockery, it was quite cruel, ”says Leuquén.
In fact, the Bustos report pointed out that the wounds he presented in his liver would have been caused by the resuscitation maneuvers carried out by the police, when they allegedly found him hanged in the dungeon.
And, of course, he concluded that Vásquez had died as a product of "acute asphyctic state."
However, he forgot to mention the defense and legal medical service, which at least at that time, worked precisely for the uniformed police as a professor at the Carabineros School and in the Academy of Police Sciences, and as a Criminal Medical Advisor, according to documentsobtained by sources from Biobiochile.
It should be noted that the regulations say that when an expert is involved with one of the parties, it has to be disabled.
Asked about whether he still had a link with them, from the police institution they kept silent.They only pointed out that the three officials - Gamboa, Lallemand and Sergeant 2nd Alexis Rodríguez Jofré - were sanctioned after an administrative summary.
Despite the insistence, they avoided detailing what kind of sanctions they received.
In parallel, a report requested by the defense of Amnesty International, which was preparedliver.
"I think the cause of death cannot be attributed to suicide by hanging," says the international expert.
According to the testimony of Cabo Lallemand, she had been in charge of watching Iván Vásquez in the dungeons, but had to leave him alone to go to the hall to receive the clothes that his wife had brought him.
When he returned, at about three in the afternoon, he would have found him suffocating with a long sleeve t -shirt that hung from a rack that protected the window, so they tried to help him by making resuscitation maneuvers, being referred to the hospital where hisDeath at four in the afternoon.
Although in all police enclosures there are security cameras, in the case of the Third Police Station of Chile Chico it was indicated that they had no support system since February, so there was no record of what really happened.
Finally, a metaperitation requested by the defense established that the death of Iván Vásquez occurred in police custody, adding that the wounds that caused his death were when he was still alive, so it was ruled out that they have been caused by resuscitation maneuvers,ending by burying the hypothesis of hanging.
After what happened, the Vásquez Leuquén family is no longer the same.For example, the eldest son abandoned his studies and no longer speak of the dad's death because they easily excited himself.While the other little one blocked the images and memories of the beating of Carabineros in her kitchen, although she began to have nightmares.
“We had a calendar that they scratched to tell the fourteen days that the father was outside, because they knew that at the return it would come with chocolates from Argentina and other gifts… for many months, the children got up the fourteen day to wait for him as they usually did, ofInnocent way hoping to see him, ”says his widow among sobs.
"Five years is a mockery, a person who had a lifetime ahead, an excellent job in Argentina, that their children never hungry, they always worried about them, now they have suffered, they have been hungry, need."
"They think that with five years they have given that unfortunate they will pay everything they did to my husband, they killed me, they tortured me, they abused a green uniform," he claims with an evening outrage.
The only help he received was the widowhood pension of $ 80 thousand, which no longer receives due to the short time that her husband reached imposing in our country, since most of the time worked in Argentina and until today, noHe has been able to charge a single weight.
"I have not received any state aid, nobody has approached," he laments.
“With what they did, they left me on the street.I can't afford to get sick, or have depression.Once in court they asked if I had had depression and I replied: ’If the depression is eaten, register two kilos to feed my children,” she says.
“My daughter ends her middle room and I don't know what I'm going to do to send her to study, because if her dad was, another thing would be.My children would have their insured studies because with her dad we would have taken the dirt to get them forward, now not, it's me no more, ”she says resigned.
For worse, Juana now suffers from Fibromyalgia, a painful chronic disease practically invalidating.But still, he works in an elder asylum like Noche from eight in the afternoon, until eight o'clock in the morning of the other day, to be able to carry out their children, feed and dress them, pay rent, pay light, water, food.
As a family they are asking for compensation that she intends to use in the education of her children.In fact, her daughter wants to study to have a career and take care of her mother.
“I would give so much because the president -elect would read this and that he tried that this would not happen again, that there was no more Iván Vásquez in Chile, that there was no Franciscos, Constanzas, Camilas, or Joaquines without dad, that there are no orphans,Do not take away your childhood, ”he reflects.
“My daughters had to mature in three times when I had to go to work, and they helped me take care of their little brothers, when they had to go out to play like the other children, as they did before.They did not do it, many times for fear of police or because I had to go to work and they stay inside the house, ”she adds.
"We are not going to rest until they pay what they did to their dad, and sooner or later the name of their dad will be cleaned, people will know that the Ivan did not commit suicide, that they killed me," he said.
Military justice in his sentence classified as "reckless" the act of Gamboa, especially his entry to the home violently, despite the fact that the complainant was on the outskirts of the house to shelter.
But he considered as mitigating his irreproachable previous conduct, condemning him to five years and one day of prison to its minimum degree, paying the 152 days he was detained in preventive detention at the police station.
The ruling, on the other hand, does not mention anything else regarding the alleged suicide, or if the injury that the victim presented in the neck was carried out by third parties, it only mentions that the neck injury is little compatible with the use of theT -shirt that appeared tied to the rack.
On the other hand, the expert report of the Legal Medical Service establishes that "the deceased had no physical forces to hang himself, still under the stress situation he was living, and that groove could occur during the struggle to repress it with some garment or another."
In an interview with El Divisadero, General Rodrigo Herrera, head of the eleventh police zone, apologized for the “excesses” committed by police in the social outbreak and what happened at the Chilean Chico police station.
But beyond recognizing what happened, his statements are little matter to the widow of Iván Vásquez, who regrets the delay in finding reparation."For the poor there is no justice," she closes.