On February 6, the Republican Party delivered the list of names of the candidates for its pact. This a few days after the internal elections of the party in which the list led by José Antonio Kast prevailed over that of Senator Rojo Edwards by around 85% of the vote. A landslide victory.
In the Valparaíso region, several fairly well-known faces were chosen to be candidates in the Constitutional Council elections. Tatiana Bernal, who gathered almost 5,000 votes in her attempt to be elected as Regional Councilor; Antonio Barchiesi, former secretary general of the party and brother of the current deputy Chiara Barchiesi; María de los Ángeles López, who gathered more than 6,000 votes in District 6, in her attempt to be a constituent conventional; and Pedro Schwedelbach, also a former candidate in the regional councilor elections.
One of the lesser known names is that of Chantal Robert de la Mahotiere Flottes. In the last municipal elections she was a candidate for councilor for Viña del Mar, an occasion in which she was also supported by the Republican Party. That year, she was interviewed in the February issue of Contraplano Magazine. The note describes it like this:
“This professional and enterprising woman is 50 years old, married, with 3 sons. She is an Industrial Civil Engineer and has been working since she was 22 years old. She has developed her working life in Financial Consulting, Highway Concessions and the Banking Industry. Her last challenge was as an entrepreneur with a coffee in the Viña del Ma planr”.
This is the description provided by the local media, which omits other relevant information about the candidate who is also today. Chantal Robert de la Mahotiere Flottes is the daughter of Emilio Robert de la Mahotiere González, Army Brigadier and who during the dictatorship was the pilot of the Caravan of Death, being co-responsible for and complicit in the deaths of dozens of people. Chantal fiercely defends her father, and also other former soldiers who have been held in Punta Peuco for crimes against humanity.
“That nonsense against humanity”
I am a Republican because José Antonio Kast is the only candidate who has gone to Punta Peucoand he is the only person who has given them a light of hope, a hope of reprieve (…) They are convicted of crimes against humanity, and crimes against humanity is what leaves us out of all prison benefits, therefore, we need our political prisoners to be considered in those same benefits, and stop this nonsense against humanity”.
These are part of the statements by Chantal Robert, who gave for the program directed by Carlos Fica Cisternas of the FACIR multi-union. This multi-union states on its website that it brings together “all the organizations in which retired personnel from the Armed Forces, Public Order and Security meet” and that its purpose is “help colleagues persecuted by justiceto bring not only help, encouragement and consolation, to them and their families, but also, carrying out concrete actions of a different nature, nationally and internationally, that make it possible to repair the injustice that is committed against them and put an end to such a fierce and unequal persecution.
The current candidate added in that program, that “I have visited Punta Peuco many times, I went for 3 years, because you know that my father was imprisoned in Punta Peuco, and it is close to re-entering (…) We want equality before the law, for all those old people who are in Punta Peuco, sick and about to die. It’s a tremendous thing. The one who has not gone… There are no words to describe it… I know that reality, that loneliness of those who do not have family to visit them. Sitting with them and talking for a while makes their lives happy. (…) They want to lower our pension, take away the pension of people who have been prosecuted. That influences us. We cannot let that happen, because they would take away my father’s, my mother’s, me and my children’s pension. When they talk about these things, they talk about our interests.”
The candidate for the Constitutional Council is well aware of the interests of her sector, creating a dividing line with families seeking justice for her father’s victims. She feels sorry for the loneliness of these former military inmates, but it seems that there is neither space nor will to think about the loneliness of the families of the disappeared detainees, many of whom do not even have a grave to visit.
The Caravan of Death
Emilio Robert De la Mahotiere González was a pilot of the Puma helicopters on the trips of the Caravan of Death, a delegation led by Sergio Arellano Stark and responsible for the torture, executions and disappearances of at least a hundred people between the months of September and October from 1973.
Robert De la Mahotiere lived with impunity for almost 30 years since the plebiscite took place on October 5, 1988. His wife was Alicia Flottes, with whom he had at least 3 daughters: Solange, who has also played an active role in the search for benefits and privileges for criminals convicted of human rights violations during the dictatorship.
At the beginning of the 2000s, the participation of Emilio Robert in the crimes of the Caravan of Death began to be investigated, and almost a decade later, in 2013, He was sentenced to 3 years and one day for his responsibility as a cover-up in the “Antofagasta Episode”, in the murder of 14 people in Antofagasta on October 19, 1973.
De la Mahotiere began his sentence at the beginning of 2016 in the Punta Peuco Prison, and in August 2018 he received the benefit of conditional release, ratified by the Supreme Court, which was later rejected by the Liberties Commission. However, the brigadier served his sentence in the following months.
In September 2022, the Supreme Court issued new sentences against several retired members of the Army, including Emilio Robert, for the kidnapping, homicide, and illegal exhumation of 26 political prisoners in the “Calama Episode,” in which one of the victims was Carlos Berguer, then the place of today’s deputy Carmen Hertz. De la Mahotiere González was sentenced to 12 years in prisonas the perpetrator of the repeated crime of qualified homicide.
In November 2022, the Santiago Court of Appeals once again sentenced former members of the Army for their responsibility in the crimes of qualified homicide of 15 victims of the Caravan of Death as it passed through the city of La Serena in 1973. Between The victims were the composer Jorge Peña Hen. The former brigadier was sentenced to 5 years and one day in prison for his participation as an accomplice in the crimes committed.
The complicity and participation of De la Mahotiere in the illegal detention, torture, murder and disappearance of more than fifty people has been proven. It is important that the electorate have full knowledge of the political ideas and projects of the candidates to integrate this new constitutional process.
“95% of the prisoners in Punta Peuco are innocent”
contacted by The counter Chantal reaffirmed that the prisoners of Punta Peuco should have the same benefits as common prisoners, but when asked if this included that they also be sent to common jails, she replied no, that she only wanted them to have the same benefits as common prisoners. , but not sharing their jails.
“Many talk about the fact that the political prisoners in Punta Peuco are in a special prison, the truth is that it is the only prison that meets the standards, the other prisons are the ones that do not comply,” he added.
Regarding their guilt, he stated that “in 95% of the cases, the military are not guilty of the charges against them. If we analyze the cases, we have a helicopter pilot who was charged with murder, and it turns out that he didn’t even see the people, and it’s proven that he didn’t see the people. So there are other similar cases, so why are they accused? They are accused of murder when they were not present in those places. These are flawed processes, they have no witnesses. They are judged only because they knew, and at the same level as if they had committed the crime.”
Chantal’s aspiration in terms of crimes against humanity, if she is elected, is “to include equality before the Law in the new constitution, that these special laws are not made and that everyone have equal benefits.” Regarding her statements against the existence of the category of crimes against humanity, she added that “the crime against humanity is a fictitious situationit did not exist before, it was invented precisely to separate the prisoners”.
