Rodrigo Rojas de Negri - Events of The Case

Events of The Case

During this time Chile was experiencing widespread political instability and human rights abuses. A national protest was organized for July 2 and 3rd, 1986. Rodrigo Rojas, who had been in the country for only six weeks, decided to try to participate and document the barricades that were going up in different areas of Santiago.

At 8 AM on July 2, 1986, he was part of a small group of people that were setting up a barricade in the Los Nogales neighborhood, in the municipality of Estacion Central. According to the official report, endorsed and quoted at a speech by General Pinochet himself, the group was carrying five old tires, a molotov cocktail and a gallon of gasoline. They were intercepted by an army patrol that was clearing barricades in the area of General Velázquez Avenue. All escaped except for Rojas and Carmen Gloria Quintana, an engineering student at the University of Santiago, Chile. The patrol, under the command of Lieutenant Pedro Fernández Dittus, was composed of three officers, five noncommissioned officers, and 17 soldiers.

There are two versions of the succeeding events: the first, which was officially endorsed and quoted by General Pinochet at a speech, states that a as Quintana and Rojas were arrested by a military patrol, some of the molotov cocktails they were carrying broke, setting them on fire accidentally. The opposing version (of Quintana, the only survivor) alleges that both of them were severely beaten by military personnel, and later soaked with gasoline and set on fire.

What is clearly known is that after both of them were in flames and unconscious, patrol members wrapped them in blankets, loaded them into a military vehicle and drove them to an isolated road in the outskirts of Santiago, over 20 kilometers away. There, in an irrigation ditch, they were dumped and left to die. Some agricultural workers found them and notified the police, who then took them to a public hospital.

Rodrigo Rojas' burns were fatal. He had second- and third-degree burns that covered 90 per cent of his body, a broken mandible and broken ribs, and a collapsed lung. He lingered for four days after the incident, and died on July 6, 1986.