The Crosses
In September 1973, days alter the military coup, 14 cellulose factory and railway workers, two students and two teachers were arrested and carried to the Laja Police Station. After being deteined 5 da…
The Crosses
In September 1973, days alter the military coup, 14 cellulose factory and railway workers, two students and two teachers were arrested and carried to the Laja Police Station. After being deteined 5 days, they dessapeared. The Police told to their relatives that they were transferred to a military regiment in the city of Los Angeles, but they didnt find them there. They looked for 6 years until his remains appeared in the Yumbel cemetery. Nobody said anything about their deaths and there were no explanation about how they got there. Almost 40 years after the massacre the case was reopen and the police, which until now had denied any involvement in these killings, began to talk. This way is known that the night of September 18, 1973, the 19 workers were killed in a forest near the town of Laja, and the Manufacturing Company Paper and Cardboard (CMPC) had relation with those deaths. Gradually, the policemen were giving their testimony which helped to reconstruct the details of the days when the workers were captured, imprisoned and tortured and the night they were killed in the back. Despite the confessions and the investigation's findings, the justice did not take any action against the CMPC (which still operates in Laja) and all the officers involved in the murders that night are free after posting a very low bail. Laja is a film where the massacre resonances accomplished by the local police and hidden for more than 30 years, can still be perceived in the landscape. The place of execution within San Juan farm has not changed, the Yumbel cemetery where they were subsequently re-buried in a mass grave remains almost unchanged, some relatives of victims and the victimizers still live in the area, the CMPC (cellulose factory) which employed victims and inmediately after the military coup contributed to his arrest and subsequent execution, is still working at full steam. But the din of the past does not reverberate in memorials or headstones, is inside the living memory of the present, because the Laja massacre has been revealed less than a year ago and has stirred the memories of the time. Laja retrieves the perpetrators'confessions and relive the arrest and subsequent execution. Court documents that were used for reconstitution of the crime are clarifying the chain of events and set a context in which occurred and their underlying details reveal some peculiarities: the murderers knew their victims, the company which employed the workers helped in their arrest at the factory entrace, that the policemen used the canteen as their headquarters, the factory provided a bus to transport the prisoners, gave spirits to the policemen to get drunk the novices and thus proceed to execution. Laja is an essay film based on unpublished documents of policemen confessions about the Laja massacre and taking as an axe the only one voluntary confession of the group, perhaps the most revealing testimony and one of the first voluntary attestation (from a political crime excutor) in the recent chilean history.
The Crosses
Documentary
Film Details
In September 1973, days alter the military coup, 14 cellulose factory and railway workers, two students and two teachers were arrested and carried to the Laja Police Station. After being deteined 5 days, they dessapeared. The Police told to their relatives that they were transferred to a military regiment in the city of Los Angeles, but they didnt find them there.
They looked for 6 years until his remains appeared in the Yumbel cemetery. Nobody said anything about their deaths and there were no explanation about how they got there. Almost 40 years after the massacre the case was reopen and the police, which until now had denied any involvement in these killings, began to talk.
This way is known that the night of September 18, 1973, the 19 workers were killed in a forest near the town of Laja, and the Manufacturing Company Paper and Cardboard (CMPC) had relation with those deaths. Gradually, the policemen were giving their testimony which helped to reconstruct the details of the days when the workers were captured, imprisoned and tortured and the night they were killed in the back. Despite the confessions and the investigation's findings, the justice did not take any action against the CMPC (which still operates in Laja) and all the officers involved in the murders that night are free after posting a very low bail.
Laja is a film where the massacre resonances accomplished by the local police and hidden for more than 30 years, can still be perceived in the landscape. The place of execution within San Juan farm has not changed, the Yumbel cemetery where they were subsequently re-buried in a mass grave remains almost unchanged, some relatives of victims and the victimizers still live in the area, the CMPC (cellulose factory) which employed victims and inmediately after the military coup contributed to his arrest and subsequent execution, is still working at full steam. But the din of the past does not reverberate in memorials or headstones, is inside the living memory of the present, because the Laja massacre has been revealed less than a year ago and has stirred the memories of the time.
Laja retrieves the perpetrators'confessions and relive the arrest and subsequent execution. Court documents that were used for reconstitution of the crime are clarifying the chain of events and set a context in which occurred and their underlying details reveal some peculiarities: the murderers knew their victims, the company which employed the workers helped in their arrest at the factory entrace, that the policemen used the canteen as their headquarters, the factory provided a bus to transport the prisoners, gave spirits to the policemen to get drunk the novices and thus proceed to execution. Laja is an essay film based on unpublished documents of policemen confessions about the Laja massacre and taking as an axe the only one voluntary confession of the group, perhaps the most revealing testimony and one of the first voluntary attestation (from a political crime excutor) in the recent chilean history..