[TABLE OF CONTENTS of the whole book (parts I – V) listed at the bottom of this chapter] [The whole book “Back to Seventeen: Diary of Miguel Enríquez – Biographical & Historical Commentary” is available to free download at Libertarian Books Europe, in this link, from Sept 5, 2025]
4. From the “lost trunk” to the “forgotten trunk”
The surreal story of Miguel Enríquez’s Life Diary, and how it finally came into my hands
Half a century has passed since several of Miguel’s manuscripts, including notebooks with his Life Diary, were piled up in a hiding place in a house in Santiago. There they lay, buried beneath dust, moisture, and the brutality of time. Because of the years of dictatorship and clandestinity. And then of oblivion.
I would say an unforgettable oblivion.
For that task, Carmen herself says referring to the barretines and transports of 1974,
“comrades risked their lives. There was an iron will to preserve, for the transmission of history.”[1]
“You have to hide books and documents; tomorrow they will return to the light of day. Bury everything, don’t burn anything, Miguel used to say, Carmen relates in third person in her book “Un día de octubre en Santiago”.[2]
That is how those manuscripts ended up hidden in the house of Carmen Castillo’s parents. The Castillos, Carmen included, then went into exile in Europe, and there was Miguel’s Diary and other materials and books slowly deteriorating in their forced concealment in the darkness of a courtyard on Avenida Ossa.
Four years later, in 1978, Carmen Castillo’s parents returned to Chile. Then, “the library with literary books, Mónica [Mónica Echeverría, Carmen Castillo’s mother] gave it to Jaime Castillo[3] [her brother-in-law, Carmen’s uncle].
The Clinic reports:
“All the rest of the material, related to Miguel and the MIR,” including “a handwritten personal diary when he was 17 years old,” was taken to his new residence in Quinta Michita, in La Reina. There they hide them on a cement couch.[4]
The dictatorship was abolished in 1990. However, thirteen years after the restitution of civil liberties, the Diary of Miguel Enríquez and other manuscripts on the MIR continued to accumulate oblivion on the couch of the Castillo family.
In other words, since they were concealed (”barretinated“)[5] and clandestinely moved and transported to the generous hiding place of the Castillos by “comrades [who] risked their lives,” seventeen years had passed without the manuscripts with Miguel’s Diary being delivered to the knowledge of the general public or of the Mirista community in particular – including the ex-members of the MIR who are repeatedly mentioned in the Diary. as is the case of this author.
It was only in 2003, thirty years later, that Carmen Castillo, as she recounts in Jacobin, [6] and in Le Monde Diplomatique, [7] would have been re-united with Miguel’s materials. And this only as a result of a cleaning done in that house of the hiding place, and because of a change of house or situations of that family nature. This is what Carmen Castillo relates:
“They remained there until September 2003, thirty years submerged. The story did not stop there as far as I was concerned, I continued not to pay attention, without stopping to look and that lightness challenges me.”[8] [my italics].
The fact is that the manuscripts containing Miguel’s Diary, sometime after the “re-discovery” of 2003, later arrived at the Miguel Enríquez Foundation, as reported by The Clinic on October 5, 2014 in the report on “The lost trunk of Miguel Enríquez”.
In other words, only forty years after having been hidden in the residence of Carmen Castillo’s parents, the public of Chile and the Miristas of Chile in general, thanks to the publication of The Clinic (”Exclusively: The Story of the Lost Trunk of Miguel Enríquez”, October 5, 2014) for the first time became aware of the existence of the Diary of Miguel Enríquez. Instead, The Clinic could well have titled the article: “Miguel Enríquez’s forgotten trunk.”
There, at the Miguel Enríquez Foundation, the manuscripts of Miguel’s Diary remained sealed, without being delivered to the public, and finally, years later, in 2018, they were returned to Carmen Castillo.
When I received that last information from Andrés Pascal, I then contacted Carmen Castillo directly (September 15, 2023). She told me that she would send them to me from France, to wait for me a little. Later, at my insistence, he told me (30 October 2023) that he was waiting for a scan. During these contacts, I offered Carmen Castillo to finance and execute on my behalf the complete digitization and publication of those manuscripts through my publishing house. [9]
Even before my contact with Carmen Castillo, I had prepared an edition with comments on a small number of transcribed pages of Miguel’s Diary, a few pages which I had obtained from Marco Álvarez Vergara (who was for a few years the custodian of said material at the Miguel Enríquez Foundation) in exchange of other courtesies from my own.
But after my contact with Carmen, and her promise to send me all the digitized content of the manuscripts, I decided to wait in order to complete the material for the benefit of the reader.
Thus, we arrived at October 2024, when I realized that “all” the manuscripts of Miguel’s Diary had been delivered by Carmen Castillo to the National Archives. Is it all of them?
What is missing from Miguel’s Diary and that was not delivered to the National Archive
In a communication from Marco Álvarez (then custodian of the Diary commissioned by the ME Foundation) received on May 19, 2016, he writes to me “having carried out the indexing of the 1,427 pages written in Miguel’s own handwriting” corresponding to his life diary. [10]
1. I reproduce here the text of the aforementioned communication from Marco Álvarez, sent by him with a copy to Andrés Pascal. Here Marco Álvarez gives reasonable reasons why he was forced to place the manuscripts of Miguel’s Diary under “seal”:
“Dear Mr. Marcello, along with greeting you, I am very happy that you are supporting the work of the FME.
I tell you that after having indexed the 1,427 pages written in Miguel’s own handwriting, I have sealed the “Diaries of Miguel’s Life” collection. The above decision responds to the fact that the conditions do not yet exist to be able to carry out a work of “digitization” and “transcription” of such materials. It is true that I had tried to start [such task], unfortunately, I realized that the dimensions of this project require a systematic work that exceeds my mere will. My idea is to be able to take up the challenge again when such conditions are encountered. I believe that their re-opening should be governed by the logic of a project (with deadlines, techniques and financing), which give viability, as preservation to the material (the idea is not to continue opening and closing them to locate specific documents. That damages the materials a lot).
It is also true that I have fully identified what you need. You should have no problem in being able to send him the copy, with the prior authorization of the president of the FME (procedure agreed for any movement of the “Diaries of Miguel’s Life” fund). I think it is very good to refute the MSR; a question that I will even ask about my latest book “The Constituent Assembly...” in my next post, where I think I did not mention it due to lack of sources. If I could unblock the application, I would also have to give myself a couple of days to carry out the procedure, since at the moment I am very busy.
About the material I asked him for a couple of weeks ago: “1963 vacations”; I would be very grateful if I could send it.
Leaving you a big hug.
CC: Andrés Pascal.”
2. In 2018, the materials of the Journal are returned to C. Castillo.
3. In 2024 (October) it was publicly announced that Carmen Castillo would deliver the material of the Diary to the National Archives. But what she delivered is not all the material indexed in 2016 at the ME Foundation.
4. At the beginning of October 2024, after having received the material from Miguel’s Diary digitized by that institution by courtesy of the National Archive, I was able to discover an inconsistency between the material originally compiled by Álvarez and that delivered by Carmen Castillo to the National Archive:
5. Of the 1,427 pages written in Miguel’s own handwriting corresponding to his life diary, only 940 handwritten pages of Miguel’s diary were given to the National Archives.
There were 487 pages missing, that is, more than a third of Miguel Enríquez’s diary was not delivered to the National Archives.
Later, Marco Álvarez explains to me that the missing material could correspond to the book that Andrés Pascal donated to Marco Enríquez Ominami and that it was not part of what Carmen Castillo gave to the National Archives.
I immediately contacted Marco Enríquez Ominami from Italy. He answered me immediately and invited me to a meeting at his home in Santiago, which we had after a few weeks. He had no problem giving me the physical book with a volume of Miguel’s Diary – corresponding to parts of 1961-1962, and which had been donated to him by Andrés Pascal.
Thus, I discovered that, even including the book in the possession of Marco Enríquez Ominami, about 150 pages of Miguel Enríquez’s Diary are still missing.
Where are those pages? What notes are missing, and about what, who or who made them? As I have noted before, it is strange that, for example, there is practically nothing in the accessible pages of the Diary about the MIR, nothing about the Central Committee, nothing about the Political Commission, nothing about his love life in recent years. Nothing about Carmen Castillo.
Above: a post by Marco Enríquez Ominami (MEO) in social media, November 2024, depicting Ivonne Fontaine Pepper, Marcello Ferrada de Noli, and Marco Enríquez Ominami at his residence in Santiago de Chile.
Diary Passages Not Included in the National Archive. Why?
This section concerns references present in earlier transcriptions but absent from the publicly accessible corpus.
Along several years in the 2010’s, the Miguel Enríquez Foundation (under the presidency of Andrés Pascal Allende) trusted the custody of the Life Diary of Miguel to Marco Álvarez Vergara. During that time –but also after he was finished at the said foundation– Álvarez kept sending me photocopies with fragments of pages from those manuscripts which refers to opinions Miguel wrote on me in his Diary.
He also sent, via email, excerpts of transcriptions he had made from the pages of the Diary and that referred there to me.
As an example, I present an excerpt transcribed by the custodian of Miguel Enríquez’s Diary for several years, the historian Marco Álvarez Vergara. This was shared with me via email in 2016, and it was intended to show Miguel’s own thoughts:
“I am the custodian of Miguel’s trunk, which contains life diaries, letters, manuscripts and much more documentation. So far, I have transcribed the diary of life from 1961 (very complicated handwriting). In its pages, it repeatedly refers to you. There is more than one “I admire Marcello for his personality”. He talks a lot about the fact that at that time he was “alone”. Bauchi began to flirt with Inés; Darío travelled to the USSR; Lalo (Eduardo Trucco) “hardly saw him anymore” and he says very little about Rodrigo Rojas. But of you, he says: “Marcello supports me” (...) “He comes to pick me up to go to the big parties” (...) “no one makes me laugh so much with him”, etc. And many other things.” [11]
However, they are not part of the 1,280 manuscript pages provided to me by the National Archive (added the material given to me by Marco Enríquez Ominami) that I was ultimately able to examine.
In other words, such materials remain hidden, or may have been destroyed, or else. I regard this is a serious question that only Marco Álvarez Vergara, who served as custodian of the manuscripts Miguel Enríquez’s Diary on behalf of the Miguel Enríquez Foundation during several years (or Carmen Castillo, who receive them afterwards) would eventually be able to answer. The National Archive has secured to me that they have sent to me the complete material received by Carmen Castillo (material that previously was under the custody of the said Marco Álvarez). In a later contact with Álvarez (November 2024) he admitted that those missing ages could be left in some hard disks he had kept –but he did not have then the time to search for it.
Despite I have already went public about this concern in a publication on Substack (Aug 24, 2025) and in the Spanish version of this book (Libertarian Books Europe, 2025), I have not received any explanation at all about these missing materials of the Diary of Miguel Enríquez among those were made public at Chile’s National Archive.
A relevant itinerary
1. The book in possession of was donated by Andrés Pascal to Marco Enríquez Ominami on June 12, 2009, as indicated by the date in facsimile A:
2. Five years later, on October 5, 2014, in a report and interview with members of the Miguel Enríquez Foundation, The Clinic published [12] a photo of one of two pages of that book (Facsimile B, below) whose original had been given five years earlier to Marco Enríquez Ominami.
The conclusions about these discrepancies regarding the true and complete content of the Diary of Life of Miguel Enríquez, I leave to the reader, or to future researchers.
The problem is not only the quantitative discrepancy, but also the fact that pages representing approximately eleven percent of Miguel’s original diary manuscripts still do not appear in the publicly accessible corpus. More troubling, however, is the qualitative issue represented by the content of the information that is missing in that material.
REFERENCES
[1] Daniela Yáñez, Exclusive: The Story of the Lost Trunk by Miguel Enríquez. The Clinic, 5 October 2014.
[2] Id.
[3] Id. – “Part of it remained at home and the rest was distributed in vulnerable schools and high schools.”
[4] Id.
[5] It refers to the act of hiding materials for their deposit or clandestine transport.
[6] Jacobin, Oct 5, 2024. Op cit.
[7] Le Monde Diplomatique, 7 October 2024. https://www.lemondediplomatique.cl/miguel-enriquez-mi-felicidad-es-la-lucha-por-carmen-castillo.html
[8] Jacobin, Oct 5, 2024. Op cit. My italics.
[9] Libertarian Books Europe. Publishing company of an altruistic nature (non-profit).
https://libertarianbooks.eu/
[10] Marco Álvarez, email of 19 May 2016
[11] Mail from Marco Álvarez Vergara, 11 Mar 2016.
[12] The Clinic “Exclusive: The Story of Miguel Enríquez’s Lost Trunk“, 5 Oct 2014
5. Diary notes on our political groups that converged in the founding of the MIR. Context
Iwitness that Miguel wrote his diary intermittently from at least 1960–61, and even in the years 1965 and 1966. The last known entry is from 1969, after a very long pause. But I can attest that Miguel continued to write his Diary during 1968. I saw him doing it.
And although many of his notes in the diary were present or retrospective accounts of his personal life, how do we explain that in what is finally known today about the Diary there is a notable absence of episodes about politics and actions of the groups and parties that we formed and grew under his leadership between 1962 and 1965?
There are few mentions of the MSI as well as the MSR in the Journal; of the VRM one or another, and of the MIR almost nothing. Just a few reflections on his decision to join the Socialist Party in 1962. In addition, in this context, there is some criticism of the (Trotskyist) P.O.R.
Miguel’s last entries in the Diary material delivered to the National Archive are from 1967. It is striking that there is no entry in the “Diary of Miguel Enríquez” corresponding to the times of and around the foundation of the MIR, a fact so important for him and of which he was a main architect.
On the other hand, it is notorious that in the diary there is a note by Miguel in 1966 that he is “preparing the thesis for the congress.” With the particularity that what is known as “the thesis for the congress” is the insurrectionary thesis that we wrote for the founding congress of 1965 a year ago! My conclusion is that Miguel would be referring to the 1967 congress, where he also read a political-military thesis (not the same one presented by us at the founding congress of 1965).
Nota bene: Many of Miguel’s notes refer to events that occurred years earlier. Therefore, the dates in the annotation do not correspond to the dates of the events to which he refers.
The MSI
The MSI was an informal political study group focused on international politics, political literature, and historical events. It emerged from gatherings among friends who had shared similar political and cultural interests since our high-school humanities years.
In early biographical works it is reported that Miguel’s group of friends from the high school days was made up of, in alphabetical order: Miguel Enríquez Espinosa (No. 1 in the photo of the 4th grade-A, 1958), Marcello Ferrada de Noli (No. 2), Rodrigo Rojas Mackenzie (No. 5), Eduardo Trucco Burrows (No. 3), Darío Ulloa Cárdenas (No. 4). In the photo is not Bautista van Schouwen because he arrived at the Men’s High School of Concepción only in 1959. Then the courses had been separated for majors in “letters, biology, and mathematics.” Bauchi and Miguel met in March 1959 in the Biology course (5th Degree).
However, by the end of 1960 only three of those named shared an ideological and political affinity: Miguel, Bautista (Bauchi) and me.
At that time, Eduardo Trucco was a sympathizer of the Radical Party (like his father), Darío Ulloa with the ideas of the Communist Party (like his father), and Rodrigo Rojas was an “independent leftist” (I believe his father was also a left-wing independent who sympathised with the Socialist Party).
That is how, at the beginning of the summer of 1961, Miguel, Bauchi and I decided to structure the MSI. The name “Socialist Left Movement” already denoted our inclination to a revolutionary line in opposition to the prevailing reformism and represented in the traditional left by the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. In November 1960 I had joined the Socialist Youth of Concepción. As I will explain here later, Miguel, Bauchi and Marco Antonio Enríquez later joined the nucleus of the JS that I directed in 1961. It is the “Espartaco” nucleus – also referred to as the “Sierra Maestra” nucleus after our marginalization from the PS.
A great inspiration to our political aspirations was always the Cuban Revolution, and in particular the 26th of July Movement.
A symbolic illustration: at the founding congress of the MIR that we held in Santiago four years later, I proposed – on behalf of my colleagues in Concepción – that the colours and design of the MIR flag be the same as the flag of the 26th of July Movement.
In the photo on the next page, taken in Santiago at the end of February 1961, we are from left to right: Bautista van Schouwen, this author, and Miguel Enríquez Espinosa. The photo is taken in the early hours of the morning, in the Alameda Bernardo O’Higgins, which explains the scarce movement of vehicles.
Bautista van Schouwen, Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Miguel Enríquez Espinosa. Santiago, 1961.
In 1964, three days after Miguel’s 20th birthday, he refers to the MSI (Socialist Left Movement) in his diary:
March 30, 1964: “I am only twenty years old, and I have had all kinds of experiences. I’ve slept with women. I’m in the IV [year] of medicine. I have organized and directed the JS [1] in Concepción, the MSI, VRM and MSR; I am already a man; I date, in love; I am a student; what I lack is study.”
First MSI Meetings
The original MSI group, 1961
1674 Roosevelt Avenue, Concepción. Residence of the Enríquez-Espinosa family
We commonly met in Miguel’s small apartment, which his father had built at the back of the courtyard of the residence at 1674 Roosevelt Avenue (Concepción). Around May 1961, Jorge Gutiérrez Correa, who had met Miguel in the first year of medical studies that began in March of that year, joined the MSI. It was there that Marco Antonio Enríquez (Miguel’s older brother) also joined some meetings.
In reality, Marco Antonio was a member of another group, the GRM (Trotskyist), led by an economist named Gamaliel Carrasco, and who met in Hualqui – then more than an hour and a half by minibus from Concepción. This, plus the fact that Marco Antonio was very dedicated to his studies in history pedagogy (after having had to leave law studies), left him little time for meetings with “his younger brother” and apprentice friends of that age. However, one or another author insists that Miguel was introduced to Marxism-Leninism by his brother Marco Antonio, and that, therefore, he would have had a Trotskyist inspiration.
Marco Antonio Enríquez E. Photo taken by the author in Oxford, 1979
Indeed, some biographical accounts of Miguel repeat this information, without basis or source, inferred from the fabrications of the Trotskyist author Luis Vitale. These are analysed in detail and refuted in my book “Con Bautista van Schouwen”.[2]
On the other hand, in a first biographical writing about Miguel (”The life of Miguel Enríquez and the MIR” by Pedro Naranjo Sandoval), we find Marco Antonio’s own statements that “the Leninist training Miguel gave it to him alone”, himself. That is, without the influence of his older brother. This is what Marco Antonio Enríquez Espinosa declares:
“... Very early on, the group of friends became interested in the study of Marxism, which was broad, very intense and without ideological rigidity.... Moreover, the Leninist formation Miguel gave it to him alone, ... One day and without knowing where he got them, Miguel appeared at the house with some boxes where he brought the complete works of the “pelao” Lenin; later, he systematically studied them alone and was more interested in the pragmatic and authoritarian nature of the discourse...”. [3]
At that time there was not really a “leader”, but it was a spontaneous stream of ideas and discussions about politics – more international than national. It was the time of the Cuban Revolution, of the incipient independence movements in Africa, the Algerian Resistance to French colonial power, etc.
By mid-1961, the members of the MSI were, in alphabetical order: the two Enríquez brothers (Miguel and his older brother, the most senior, Marco Antonio), Marcello Ferrada, Jorge Gutiérrez Correa (Miguel’s classmate in the first year of medicine) and Bautista van Schouwen – also a classmate.
There are several notes by Miguel about the existence of this first group of references that we call MSI. For example, this one from May 19, 1964:
As for the organization of the meetings, it is simple, there was none. Generally, about when we would have the next one, we agreed to finish one of those meetings.
Or we simply changed the program on some occasion when we were in between those dates. [left, Miguel at the FEC][4]. Those “some occasion” was practically every day. We were all accessible to each other in the same Barrio Universitario environment. And we also met for all kinds of social or family activities, in addition to the political.
Regarding the modus operandis, each of us was responsible for delivering a report on a specific topic, at the beginning of the meeting.
Another peculiarity of these MSI meetings are the paseos, or “paseíllos” as Miguel called them, and which we organized on some weekends, quite frequently. There we also analysed the political fact. Even if we got together only for “the socialising” aim, the content of our conversations infallibly ended in the political situation or our ideological considerations based on the readings of the moment. No, we weren’t talking about the weather, or fashion, or popular music, or radio programs that we consequently ignored.
The destinations varied. but a constant was in general the beaches of Lirquén, Playa Blanca, and Laraquete. It was what was known in those days as “picnics,” that is, we brought provisions and drinks. We travelled by train or bus. On other occasions, during the summer season we went to Llacolén, a club on the slope of a lagoon near Concepción and surrounded by forests, and of which our parents were members.
the attendance at these meetings centred around the MSI was also varied. But in general, the presence of Miguel, who was the main promoter and organizer, was indispensable. And then the members of the MSI his sister Inés, who would eventually become Bauchi’s girlfriend.
On several occasions Héctor Trautman Hornickel (”Gringo” Trautmann) – a brave, noble and kind fellow medical school student also attended the excursions. This is what he recalls:
“I remember the trips to Playa Blanca and that they shared long conversations about the university and other topics. Those were true and positive friendships of a committed youth, who wanted better changes, who marked a milestone in history. The beautiful memory is moving, and it is a shame that they are not with us.”
On the other hand, who I don’t remember having attended those country or beach meetings, attending, is Jorge Gutiérrez Correa (Guti). Although he was always at the MSI meetings usually held in Miguel’s small apartment (at the back of the house on Roosevelt Avenue), Guti left our political group around 1964. He then wrote a political farewell letter to Miguel, which he received on good terms.
Jorge Gutiérrez Correa (Guti), in 1962 and 2005
Guti was very intelligent and dedicated to his medical studies and was awarded the University Award (best student in his class). Although I remember correctly, all his humanities education was done at the Alliance Française school in Concepción. In addition, he was very Christian. He ended up professionally serving as head of the oncology department of the Las Condes Clinic, and was also president of the Chilean oncology society, if I remember correctly. I always had the impression that Miguel relied a lot on him for the study and preparation of the exams of the medical courses.
Going back to the excursions, of course the corresponding girlfriends of Miguel and I (plus Bauchi and Inés) attended there. Marco Antonio remained ‘single’ until a little later in his studies at the University.
It is there, both in the “formal” meetings and when we went on excursions, where –being members of the MSI circle– we discussed the readings of Gramsci, Sartre, Isaac Deutscher, Irwing Horowitz, etc., as well as the “classics” (Engels, Marx, Tolstoy). We also began to analyse in more detail national politics and the availability of political organizations that might be of interest to us.
Youth of the Socialist Party (entry)
Inote that at one point we began to be interested in elucidating the intricate spectrum of Chilean politics of those times, for a fundamental reason: at the centre of our interests and discussions on “international politics” was the Cuban Revolution. What can be done to contribute concretely to that cause?
For my part, I had concluded that the Socialist Party could be an appropriate vehicle to channel our activity of solidarity with the Cuban and Algerian Revolution. And therefore, by personal decision, I had enrolled in the Socialist Youth of Concepción in October 1961. At that time, the Regional of the JS in Concepción was quite depopulated by student cadres, since a significant part of these cadres were university students and at that time they were on vacation.
That, I think, was one of the reasons why Luis Enríquez (a law student at the U of C., son of a doctor from the city and therefore a permanent resident in Concepción), asked me to join the Espartaco nucleus, of the JS in Concepción, to “reinforce it with student cadres.” This nucleus was composed entirely of workers’ cadres.
Shortly after, a former high school student (also the son of a worker of the State Railways) named Martín Hernández entered, supposedly sent by Luis Enríquez for the same purposes of “support”. A vote was held to elect the head of the said nucleus, and I was elected, Martín Hernández losing the vote. He, being the son of a worker like most of the members of the nucleus, naturally considered himself more legitimate in opposition to my nomination proposed by themselves. He never forgave me.
(Martín Hernández’s animosity dated back years, as a result of a dramatic episode that occurred in the men’s high school of Concepción. What I tell in my book “Walter’s Wife and Other Stories”)[5]
The first recruitment I made as head of the nucleus was that of Marco Antonio Enríquez, whom I convinced to leave the dilettante Trotskyist group of Gamaliel Carrasco – a group that had no pragmatic political activity, not even planned for the future.
Marco Antonio then helped me convince his brother Miguel Enríquez that the PS was then the most open to implement our support for the Cuban Revolution. This is how Miguel also joined the JS of Concepción in the first months of the academic year of 1962.
Van Schouwen and Gutiérrez followed Miguel (as in everything) and joined the Espartaco nucleus that I led in the Socialist Youth of Concepción.
The MSR
After we began as militants in the Youth of the Socialist Party (JS), while we were all at the University, Miguel had the initiative in 1963 to form a fraction within the Socialist University Brigade led by Ariel Ulloa (later mayor of Concepción in two terms).
The reason for this factional work was to promote a revolutionary line to the activities of the Socialist Brigade of the university, especially the support for Cuba and Vietnam and in general for the anti-colonial movements of the time. This was not initially conceived as a factional work aimed at the Socialist Party of Concepción.
Judging by events, however, Miguel’s plan was to change the reformist political line of the Socialist Party at the regional and national levels, towards revolutionary positions exemplified by the Cuban Revolution. When Miguel made this strategic approach known in the faction, some members withdrew. This is the case of Claudio Sepúlveda (photo on the left), who had recently been elected secretary general of the FEC as our candidate (I say of the faction, which had a strong electoral base in the School of Medicine).
The internal dynamics of the fraction allowed it to be “clandestinely” known in the university as a political entity with no formal organizational link to the PS. In this way, at the end of 1963, independent students of the left and even of the Radical Party joined it, as is the case of Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy (lawyer, later mayor of San Miguel) and two of his companions of the Radical Youth, Nelson Muñoz and “Chico” Sarmiento – law students. Other members of the fraction were Edgardo Condeza, another with the surname Sandoval, Faúndez and Jara, all of them from medicine; Luis Díaz, of education). Claudio Sepúlveda, from medicine (photo bellow), withdrew very early from the MSR group and remained in the JS.
Claudio Sepúlveda
Miguel’s “FUI” initiative and the beginning of the MUI
FUI, the University Front of the Left, arose at Miguel’s initiative around the elections of Student Centers and the executive committee of the Federation of Students of the University of Concepción (FEC) in 1964. FUI was a precursor model of the University Movement of the Left (MUI). Miguel writes on November 23, 1964, after reporting that “the CP and the PS refuse to enter” into his formula of “left unity”:
Facsimile A
Facsimile B
Miguel:
“[The FUI] was my idea; I drafted the declaration of principles [...]. The left-wing group[6] at the Engineering School movement refused. Then he left the FRAP[7] and [I] founded [the] MUI [University Left Movement] [...] gathering 90–100 people. The CP [Communist Party], by order of the Central Committee in Santiago, [did not] enter. In the end, the PS [Socialist Party] also joins [the MUI]. I was a candidate for president of the medical student’s union, and I came in second place in the voting. In Medicine, FUI beats FRAP by 4 votes [in the election for FEC Executive Committee[8]]. This demolished the FRAP; we got the 1st left-wing majority in the Education School student’s union.
During the IC[9] I become the speaker of the [...], I defeat the D.C. I get a vote [..] from the D.C. in favor of [..]. Another against D.C. [Christian Democracy] and Freemasonry; another against the UFUCH etc.
[...] I took one out for the revolutionary opposition to the Frei government.
3) FEC Assembly, I destroy the D.C.[10]“
Miguel, leader of the Socialist Youth in Concepción
In addition to having been the promoter and leader of the MSI group and the MSR faction, Miguel Enríquez organized and was a leader of the Socialist Youth in Concepción. This he wrote in his diary on March 30, 1964:
“I have organized and directed the JS in Concepción, the MSI, VRM and MSR.”
This Miguel confirms in another note of February 1963, in which he relates that he is “a member of the Socialist Youth Reg. Committee“:
There we kept each other company, since I was already a member of the Regional Committee of the JS before we started the MSR fraction, and when I was still head of the Spartacus nucleus of the JS. [El Sur, December 4, 1962]:
“... Ferrada Noli is secretary of Art and Culture of the Regional Youth Committee of this group”
When Miguel leaves his leadership positions in the Regional Committee of the Socialist Youth
Thursday, March 10, 1962:
“I have left the leadership positions of the P.S.; I am preparing to start working at the grassroots level; to the recruitment of people; the left-wing of the base.
But; Despite being aware that it is my duty, I feel disillusioned with the past and the future; I don’t feel like working; for I know that what I do will not be in favour of the Revolution; it does go in favour of the PS; and the decadence and corruption that is seen in this party; it is clear and discouraging.
How eager I would be to work directly on the revolution; but I can’t.”
Definitive departure from the Socialist Party and entry into the VRM
The definitive departure of Miguel and the rest of the MSR from the Socialist Party occurred during the XX Congress of the PS held in Concepción on February 14 and 16, 1964. As is publicly known, this happens after a presentation with contents of revolutionary (anti-reformist) strategy presented by Miguel – and which was rejected by the secretary general of the PS, Raúl Ampuero, and those who were majority in the congress.
However, an important fact – and I believe until now publicly unknown – emerges from a retrospective entry in Miguel’s Diary.
There he says that in January 1964, that is, before the marginalization of the PS, he already agreed with the political secretariat of the VRM (Marxist Revolutionary Vanguard) to integrate the MSR cadres (those of us who had not yet left the PS) into that organization.
(2) from January 23 to 28, 1964 – in Santiago, and cooperated in dividing the PS. I meet with [...] (of the) JS (Socialist Youth) Santiago. I maintain the unity of the VRM in Santiago with the Political Secretariat and the Consultative Secretariat of the [...]”
Another proof of that is this other retrospective entry – that Miguel leaves in his diary on February 19, 1964. Here he states that a month earlier, on January 20, he travelled to Santiago to meet with the MSR of that city, and “integrate with VRM, etc.”
In that period (December 1963 – April 1964) I was in Cuba, in military training. Shortly after arriving in Concepción, I was called to a meeting of the MSR that was held in the lawyer’s office that the father of the young Dr. Edgardo Condeza Vaccaro [photo in next page] maintained in his residence. Waiting for those who had not yet arrived at the meeting, during these informal conversations I was informed of the following:
The MSR of Concepción and its counterpart in Santiago (made up of some university cadres led by Andrés Pascal and Edgardo Enríquez Espinosa) had withdrawn from the PS.
Or, as I learned in more detail, after Miguel’s presentation of an anti-reformist document at the PS Congress held in Concepción (February 1964) led by Senator Raúl Ampuero – a document that was considered a provocation – our group (the MSR) had been expelled by most of the delegates at the said congress.
At Miguel’s initiative, the young socialists of Concepción and Santiago then decided to publish a document called “Socialist Insurrection”, distributed in March 1964. There they called all ranks withing the PS for joining the VRM.[11]
The document was signed by 12 comrades from Santiago and 11 from Concepción. I appear to sign as “director of the Chilean-Cuban Institute of Culture”, even though I never really signed the document –– because, both when it was written and when it was published, I was in Cuba. Miguel put my name there.
Dr. Edgardo Condeza Vaccaro
In other words, my departure from the Socialist Youth was the product of fait accompli. But, although I protested about this to Miguel, I did not seek a further discussion about this in the group, because, as I said, it was already an irreversible decision.
At the MSR meeting held in April, Miguel announced that, since we are no longer affiliated with the PS, he suggested starting discussions with the VRM and put this proposal to a vote. Yet, according to what is reported in his Diary (as referenced above), it seems that Miguel had already conducted talks or reached agreements with the VRM’s political secretariat during meetings in Santiago.
At that time, I was ignorant of those agreements Miguel had done in Santago with the VRM (I came to know it only in 2025, when I got access to Miguel Diary’s manuscript). I would have certainly protested about those early meetings of Miguel with the VRM if I had known. The VRM was a sectarian Marxist group composed –even if this sound unbelievable– by nearly half Stalinists and the other half Trotskyists.
On the basis of ideological arguments, after a while I opposed our participation into the VRM,[12] an organization that I considered – in today’s language – a sectarian container of old and embittered Stalinists and Trotskyists – mainly “old” – and who occupied their time recriminating each other. In the beginning, I was the only one there who objected, as Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy has witnessed.
Miguel was furious. I, pressured by loyalty to our old friendship, decided to continue in his project after Miguel’s plead. Then he immediately gave me the task of initiating military training for the VRM cadres (as I said, I had recently returned from my military training in Cuba). The VRM group in Concepción led by Miguel had grown somewhat in number, including a couple of workers’ cadres with a Trotskyist past, as well as two law students previously incorporated by Juan Saavedra.[13]
Primary because the hybrid composition of the WRM, that organization broke after some months. I was one of the first to announce my departure from it ––Miguel became sad and disappointed.
The remaining Trotskyist group, into which most of the former MSR cadres had followed Miguel, also dissolved itself after a while.
Thereafter, in October 1965, we founded MIR, where some of the old Trotskyists also came to participate. But, less than two years thereafter, they were finally expelled by Miguel and his young followers.
Juan Saavedra Gorriáteguy (on the right in the photo) with Miguel Enríquez, in a meeting with Mayor Urrejola, Concepción
The failed night outing of “military training”
After I came back from Cuna, and for the purpose of “military instruction” at the elementary level, I had devised a series of outings, in the beginning inspired by the elementary “Listos Para Vencer“ (”Ready to Win”) program and combined with other military basic exercises with firearms, which I knew during my military training in Cuba. The “Listos para vencer“ was a rather primary plan, almost at the school level, and which was principally aimed at young civilians. It was not the three-month military training program I received in Havana.
I explained to Miguel what the most essential thing consisted of in this series –which progressively would entail full firearms exercises, etc., and that it would start with a march in which we could provisionally evaluate the physical capacity and aptitudes of the members of the “squad”.
The march would be at night to avoid detection near the university campus –since the terrain chosen was a big hill that separates the university from the Nonguén Valley. , known locally as Camino Einstein, began near the Lagunas de Los Patos in the University District.
I was well acquainted with this area, as my parents once owned agricultural land in the Nonguén Valley, specifically in its interior region beyond the university hills. This location was also home to the country house where I lived with my partner and my new born son —a house later besieged by members of Patria y Libertad on the morning of September 11, 1973.
All arrangements for the exercise were finalized, and we set the meeting for late at night. However, of the sixteen people expected, only seven arrived, most of them significantly late, resulting in considerable wasted time. Among those who were punctual were Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy and Marco Antonio Enríquez. Notably, Miguel never showed up. Despite this, we proceeded with the march, equipped with three handguns, including a Mauser pistol from my family and an Astra pistol belonging to the father of the Enríquez brothers.
The Drunken March
According to standard protocol, a complete squad of the Cuban infantry is composed of approximately 10 combatants, which can be divided into two sections. On this occasion, I led the vanguard squad accompanied by three comrades, while Marco Antonio was appointed to command the rear squad. Among those present was Juan Saavedra, affectionately known as ‘Patula’. Despite being only thirty yards apart, the dense woodland and the darkness of night made communication difficult.
A complication arose when one member of the rearguard squad, Chico Walter, decided to bring along a bottle of brandy.
Chico Walter, a former Trotskyist from the Huachipato sector, acted without discipline, drinking brandy as he walked and inviting his companions to join him. Fortunately, aside from another undisciplined cadre, the rest of the squad refused and pressed on with the march. This behaviour significantly slowed the progress of the rear squad, and at one point, I lost contact with them. Marco Antonio soon approached me, reporting that Chico Walter was intoxicated and unwilling to walk with the group.
Indignant, I went to the location of the delayed squad, which had now stopped. There I witnessed Chico Walter drunk, while Juan (’Patula’) Saavedra and Marco Antonio Enríquez laughed at his refusal to continue marching.
With the years, recalling details on this incident, Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy remembered my demand that he and Marco Antonio, for laughing at Chico Walter, should carry him on their shoulders as we returned to the starting point. According to ‘Patula’, Marco Antonio alone undertook this task, demonstrating considerable strength. [14]
As a result, I was compelled to suspend the training march before even completing the first phase of the programme. This left me deeply disappointed and particularly frustrated with Miguel.
I rebuke Miguel
The Enríquez house, located at 1674 Roosevelt Avenue, sat only a short distance from the bustling university neighbourhood, positioned on the side that faces the Laguna de Los Patos. I made my way there quickly, my steps hurried and marked by frustration.
By the time I arrived, it was already well past dawn, with breakfast time underway. My anger towards Miguel was twofold: firstly, for his absence at the “instruction” session he himself had organised, and secondly, for the manner in which he had chosen the militants.
To compound matters, upon entering and finally reaching Miguel, I found him seated, calmly reading. He wore a soft sweater, the colour of milk tea—a garment that carried its own history. It had been given to me by my girlfriend, the beautiful María Eugenia Santander, who happened to be the sister of Charito, another of Miguel’s former sweethearts.
All of these annoyances, intensified by the circumstances, led me to speak directly to Miguel. I remember quite clearly what I said to him in that moment.:
1. From the outset, I observed that the spirit exhibited by this group of “combatants” would never, under any circumstances, be sufficient to even provoke the Chilean armed forces. I expressed my concerns directly, noting that he seemed having not only a lack of awareness regarding the army’s state of preparedness, but also a distinct absence of interest in studying and deepening understanding of their tactics, doctrines, and ways of thinking.
2. Reflecting on my personal experiences, I summarised to him my conclusions about the preparation and instruction in the military and Carabineers bases where I had resided. The most recent was Tejas Verdes, during the 1960 school year, when I stayed at the home of my uncle Patricio Zúñiga Fuenzalida, who was a colonel in the engineer regiment. My time there was a direct consequence of the partial collapse of my school in Concepción following an earthquake.
There, by my uncle Patricio Zúniga I was able to read and study countless manuals on contra-insurgency prepared by the U.S. military for their Latin-American allies. My uncle –which later became a general– had also expend training time at the U.S. Fort Gulick, in Panama.
In essence, I confronted him about his significant undervaluation of the Chilean armed forces, which, in my view, he only compared jokingly to Batista’s ineffective troops in Cuba.
3. I told him that my participation in his VRM project would go no further. He had begun this initiative in the summer of 1964, [15] without my knowledge, as I was in Cuba at the time. I made it clear that I did not believe in the organisation, neither ideologically—since its members were either Stalinists or Trotskyists—nor in its organisational design. Furthermore, I disagreed with the so-called ‘revolutionary’ quality of its members, as evidenced during that night of “military training”.
This moment marked the second time I refused to continue my involvement in the VRM.
On April 10, 1964, soon after the episode above, Miguel writes cryptically about his experiences with the older (and sectarian) militants of the VRM. This is in one of the most difficult paragraphs that I tried to decipher:
“1) We are being defeated and the elders [..] they are against us.
2) [...] Address
3) The [..] does not make geniuses, [..] groups of geniuses.”
Conflicting Loyalties: Friendship, Family, and Revolutionary Duty
Afew weeks went by before Miguel reached out to me by phone. He had heard from Bauchi that I had travelled to Santiago with my family to attend on 09/05/1964, the ceremony at the Military School where my brother graduated as a second lieutenant of artillery. Miguel was not pleased. He criticised my decision, insisting that I should not have any contact with officers of the armed forces, branding them categorically as “the enemies”. He argued forcefully that I ought to return to the VRM, warning that if I did not, our friendship could not continue.
Miguel’s reasoning, which is a view shared by many within revolutionary circles, is that within such an organisation, one cannot maintain friendships with those outside its ranks. Genuine bonds—understood in the strictest sense as party camaraderie—are reserved solely for those who are engaged in the daily, organised work of the insurgent party. Such members are expected to devote themselves entirely, offering one hundred percent of their time and energy. That was essentially Miguel’s message, delivered without pleasantries or ambiguity.
At the time, we were only twenty years old. Our fanaticism was more a product of youthful zeal than true understanding; more dogmatic than deeply held. The more we detached ourselves from reality in this way, the less likely we were to bring about real change.
Family, Homeland, and the Revolution
Family is the primary reality. The homeland comes second. Our attachment to the revolution was not a tautology—we do not love the Revolution simply because we are revolutionaries. Rather, our desire to improve the Homeland, to make it more just, is born from our love for it.
So, as I told him verbatim, I considered that he had begun to see politics as an exclusive, closed fraternity. And that for my part, it was unthinkable for me to miss my brother’s graduation ceremony—not because I was compelled to attend, as Miguel supposed, but because he was my brother. We had –my brother and I– not only grown up together but had also shared the same classes at high school, from first to last.
Above all, I could never have snubbed my brother, or any member of my family, regardless of Miguel’s disdain for the Chilean military. My older brother, Mauricio, had always been a supportive and caring presence in my life. Miguel knew this as well, as Mauricio belonged to the second circle of his friends. [16]
Nonetheless, out of loyalty to our friendship, I agreed to Miguel’s request to finish the program I was engaged with in his VRM, but I made it clear that I would not abandon my private life or any family commitments. This renewed collaboration was quite short-lived.
Just a week later, I left the VRM for good, along with Miguel’s entire group. My prediction had proven correct: the rigid sectarianism of the VRM left no room for Miguel’s project, just as I had foreseen during a meeting at Condeza Vaccaro’s house in April that year. This is confirmed by a note Miguel made in his diary during a VRM congress on 15 May, where he confessed as much:
“15-V-64. The VRM Congress took place, apparently [...]; We are all broken, angry; Claudio left, Marcello left, the rest broken. I lack faith; I’m weak.”
References to Claudio Sepúlveda and Myself
Days after acknowledging that “we are all broken” (see his text above), in an annotation of May 19, 1964, Miguel refers synoptically to the history of the MSI/MSR and the passage through the VRM.
In this annotation, Miguel makes explicit mention of Claudio Sepúlveda, who, at the time, was pursuing medical studies and was actively involved as a militant in the Socialist Party (PS). Miguel interprets Claudio’s actions as constituting “a betrayal” of the MSR, attributing this to Claudio’s choice not to continue his involvement with the MSR and instead to uphold his allegiance to the PS. In the same vein, Miguel accuses me of having “betrayed” the MSR, and that was for my repeated refusals to participate in the activities of the VRM fraction, as mentioned before.
However, it is important to note that Miguel omits a significant detail regarding my position. I did not voluntarily, or through my own initiative, leave the Socialist Party Youth organisation by February 1964:
At the time when the MSR fraction was expelled from the Congress of the Socialist Party, which took place in Concepción on February 14-16, 1964, I was in Cuba undergoing military training. During my absence, Miguel included my name—without consulting me—among the signatories of the letter that announced our group’s break from the Socialist Party and called for joining the VRM.
Leaving the Socialist Party was simply a fait accompli for me.
“... out of 4 people, we are defeated; by their hesitations. The C.R. JS Concepción retires, and we are formed as MSI. Since September 1963 we have existed as MSR. And there they were, 1st, Condeza, Díaz, Guti, Bauchi, Miguel, Marcos, Marcello and Claudio. The last two betrayed.” (Annotation of 19 05 1964).
Ultimately, all members of the MSR decided not to continue their involvement in the VRM. This collective decision marked a turning point for the group, as they sought new avenues to pursue their political objectives.
The following year, we became actively involved in the establishment of the MIR. The founding assembly was notable for its inclusivity, providing space for libertarian and anarchist perspectives alongside those from other traditions. It was in this environment of broad ideological engagement that Miguel, Marco Antonio, and I collaborated to draft the political-military thesis of the MIR. [17] This document held particular significance, as it became the first thesis to be formally approved at the founding congress of the MIR. [18]
My involvement with the MIR did not end with its foundation. I remained an active member until after Miguel’s death, specifically until June 1977. During this later period, my role had shifted to working in the external direction of the organisation, reflecting a continued commitment to the MIR’s objectives and activities.
NOTA BENE
In light of the previous conversation with Miguel, and considering his own references to the repercussions of the dispute in his Diary, I wish to elaborate further on these matters.
While I take pride in my friendship with Miguel Enríquez, I have always held equal pride in my brother. His conduct towards me and my friends during the military government was exemplary. Despite his unwavering loyalty to his fellow officers, he made significant efforts—alongside other members of my family, including my father—to secure my release from Quiriquina Island. [19]
Later, it was my brother who succeeded in obtaining the commutation of the military court proceedings against me, resulting in my expulsion from Chile [20] rather than harsher punishment. This occurred months after my photograph appeared on the front page of La Tercera (5 October 1973), among those described as “the extremists who shot at the armed forces with firearms.”
In January 1974, while I had returned as a prisoner in the Concepción Stadium, awaiting transfer by plane to the Chacabuco prison camp in the north of Chile, my brother was then an officer of the “Silva Renard” Artillery Regiment stationed in Concepción.
On this occasion, my brother came to my aid in order to ensure compliance with the expulsion order signed by General Agustín Toro Dávila.
Although he had no direct involvement with the prison camp, he arrived from his regiment and compelled the soldiers to open the bars of the Regional Stadium. This action allowed Mrs. Raquel Espinosa, mother of Marco Antonio and Miguel Enríquez, along with other mothers of prisoners, to enter and bid farewell to their children before they were transported to Chacabuco within hours.
With my brother Mauricio in 1969
The core of Anthropology and Miguel’s opposition
It has already been commented by other authors in biographies of Miguel Enríquez or Bautista van Schowen (Bauchi), that the cultural and/or scientific interest of our group went beyond the frameworks of the compartmentalized study of either medicine (Miguel and Bauchi), history (Marco Antonio), or philosophy (my case).
In 1965, the University of Concepción opened a new academic department, then called the Center for Anthropology and Archaeology. The central branches of that program were physical anthropology and paleontology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology.
There was a great deal of discussion within the MSR about this new study center. But not, as one might suppose, a debate on political aspects of the event (for example, its relationship with the problem of the propaedeutic or the university reform)[21] or its impact on our struggle on the university student front. The discussion revolved instead around the intellectual “to be or not to be” of ourselves in terms of integral pictures. Miguel’s position was ironclad: we should only concentrate on advancing our already determined academic careers, and with the time we could steal from them, we should dedicate ourselves to activism in the FEC.
Miguel’s position was supported only by Guti (Jorge Gutiérrez C.), who had a great discipline – or academic ethics, I would add – and was the one who took medical studies more seriously and dedicated. (Guti deservedly received the university prize at the end of his medical studies).
On the other hand, Bauchi, Marco Antonio and I maintained that a greater breadth in the cultural and scientific horizon would perhaps help us more fully to understand the problems of today’s society from the point of view of its historical, even paleontological, evolution.
Result: Bauchi, Marco Antonio and I enrolled in the Anthropology and Archaeology career.[22]
1= Bautista van Schouwen, 2= Marcello Ferrada, 3= Claudio García,[23] 4= M. Antonio Enríquez. All members of the MSR.
At the foundation of the MIR
Two days before the founding of the MIR, on a Tuesday night, we had a “definitive” meeting with Luciano Cruz Aguayo in Miguel’s apartment. We were, apart from Luciano, Bauchi, Miguel and me. There Luciano would deliver his final answer about his position with respect to us, that is, Miguel’s project of a new revolutionary organization, which resulted in the founding of the MIR.
(Miguel’s project did not refer only to the constitution of a new “pan-revolutionary” organization of groups in opposition to reformism, but to a very specific political strategy, designed to converge in armed struggle. And this was and always was a major difference between Miguel’s group and the other small groups that attended the MIR constituent assembly. Here I must remember that contrary to what most “historians” and students of history affirm – by following, without investigating, the versions of Luis Vitale. These, instead, were the facts:
With the sole exception of the delegation of Concepción, the rest of the groups that attended the founding congress of the MIR had no more than three or four “delegates” each. And what would be proven there is that these “delegates” in fact constituted all the militancy that these groups had. The delegation of Concepción, almost all students and all members of the MUI (University Movement of the Left), constituted the majority group at the Founding Congress of the MIR).[24]
During the weekend, Miguel had met in Concepción, on three occasions, with Luciano, at the time a militant of the Communist Youth.[25] In that last meeting on Tuesday 3, Luciano finally responded that he agreed to attend as part of our delegation to the founding of the MIR. And at that same meeting we decided who, for our part, would be proposed to be members of the central committee of the new organization, respectively of the military commission.
From the tenor of that meeting it was clear that a condition set by Luciano to Miguel in his previous meetings was that of being proposed to the central committee. Luciano was already a recognized student leader (not only at the university, but also since high school), and therefore “weighed” as a representative political figure. I must add, another fact not known, or not so well known, and that is that Miguel never got along with Luciano. And one reason for the friction revolves around the beautiful maiden Monica San Martin, who flirted with Luciano and then with Miguel.
Therefore, what was decided at the last meeting on August 3 was: Luciano, Bauchi and Miguel to the central committee, and Marco Antonio and I to the military commission. The next day at night we boarded a ramshackle minibus heading to Santiago. The congress began on August 5.
As an illustration, I must add that, according to my personal testimony, the relations between Miguel and Luciano were never good, and even at some periods, frankly hostile. Some have hypothesized that it was due to rivalries in the leadership of the MIR. But that is out of reality. Lucian, despite being a magnificent orator, was not an ideologue or creator of strategies. Suffice it to point out just one fact: Luciano never wrote a document, at least worthy of being published. A letter from the FEC that appears in the newspaper El Sur de Concepción in the name of him and the Executive Committee of the FEC, I wrote. It is a direct and in-extensive reproduction of the document “University of Concepción – Students on Alert”, which I had published in the Revista Polémica Universitaria, in 1965. (Later approved as an official document of the Reform of the U of C” [26]).
On the other hand, Luciano had been the boyfriend of Mónica San Martín,[27] who later became Miguel Enríquez’s girlfriend.
Miguel Enríquez (at left in the photo), Mario Díaz (Punto Final chief-editor),[31] and Luciano Cruz (at right). Santiago, June 1969.
The difficulty between them was exacerbated by these two facts: a) Shortly after being elected president of the FEC by the MUI list (a front of the MIR), Luciano traveled to Cuba where he stayed for many months, began a love affair there, from which a son would later be born. Meanwhile, the work of the FEC and the student front was left to Nelson Gutiérrez, Pedro Naranjo, Juan ‘Patula’ Saavedra, and me (as head of the university brigade of the MIR).
Going back to the 1965 congress. The meetings of the founding congress of the MIR began rather informally, already in the morning, on issues of delegates and the organization of the agenda. Not all the provincial delegates had yet come there. We were in the premises of the Anarchist Leather and Footwear Workers’ Union. In those hours of the morning several entered to look around and then left.[28] Clotario Blest invited us (the group from Concepción mentioned above) to lunch in his house of aristocratic vestige, with a combination of humble furniture and centennial furniture. He also invited Dr. Enrique Sepúlveda and his son-in-law ‘Chepo’ Sepúlveda. At fourteen o’clock the official session was inaugurated with the presentation of our political-military thesis.
The next day, August 6, and as agreed in Concepción, Miguel, Bauchi and Luciano were elected members of the Central Committee of the MIR. Marco Antonio and I, together with ‘Pelao’ Zapata (from Santiago), were elected members of the first military commission of the MIR. Of these, I was the only one who had military training in Cuba. And, according to Marco Antonio, Zapata had received military training in China. For his part, Mark Antony, about to graduate as a professor of history (and distinguished with the University Prize of his generation), was a living encyclopedia on the classical theme of wars and battles. This ‘military commission’ lasted in its functions for just under two years.[29]
As I have shown in “Rebels With a Cause”,[30] in that founding congress, the delegation of Concepción – and specifically the group of students from the University of Concepción – had, as a group, a majority in that Congress, and therefore could have proposed and elected the majority of that central committee. We abstained from that. Miguel was about to make room for the Trotskyists even though they were a minority.
For my part, I note that in addition to having been co-author of the political-military thesis that was approved at the Congress, my proposal on the name of the organization and design of the flag (with the red and black colors of anarchism, and of July 26) of the new organization, obtained the majority of votes among the delegates.
Flag of the MIR, design by Marcello Ferrada de Noli (”Atacama”), 5 Oct 1965
Divergence with Miguel on Appreciation of the Armed Forces
That distribution of tasks that I describe above could also help to explain why the military was not then in Miguel’s priority sight, in his central concern – and this since our discussions in years before. He, particularly after being elected secretary general of the MIR in 1967, had as his primary occupation the political and organizational issue, despite a new political-military thesis of which he was the author and was approved on that occasion.
That is how on several occasions, from 1961 to 1968, I continued to have divergences with Miguel about the importance of knowing meticulously, of trying to make him understand more deeply, the mechanics and spirit of the Chilean armed forces, beyond the caricature that he always made of them. An example of such discussions was the one we had after the failed “night out of military training”, which I have already described above.
When I spoke to him about the discipline of the troops, classes and soldiers, and the hierarchy of commanders in the armed forces – an issue that I had experienced since I was a child, practically raised in barracks and regiments – Miguel returned to his paradigm of “soldiers of the people, revolutionaries for the people”. That is, he was of the notion that the troops would rebel against the commanders and officers.
He thought, and so he used it as an argument, of the uprising of the soldiers and sailors during the Bolshevik Revolution against the Tsarist regime; or in the creation of the Red Army of China with its peasant hosts; etc. He did not think that, in the history of Chile, although the army has revolted against any government, no vast contingent of soldiers or officers has revolted against the army.
Or perhaps he thought, with his inherited bourgeois spirit educated in classical literature, that the courtesy of the officers would be equivalent to that of the revolutionaries. He did not think that both the officers and the troops were educated in a doctrine that did not consider the revolutionaries as heirs of Robin Hood or Manuel Rodríguez. Rather, for them, thus educated at Fort Gulick or at the War Academy, every modern society faces the danger of terrorism, and the terrorists in Chile, Pinochet called them (and to whom Kissinger said it) were the Miristas. And he was her boss.
And when Miguel on October 5, 1974 stopped his shooting and asked “don’t shoot, there is a pregnant woman here, wounded!” The assassins in charge of the execution respond with bursts of shrapnel.
In them there was not the chivalrous courtesy with which Miguel was educated and believed in. And it could not exist because the inexorable discipline of killing went from general in chief to lieutenants of any rank. The discipline that I had a hard time convincing him about. As my father convinced me from a young age: “The enemy must always be considered superior.”
And with this I return to the question asked by the family person very close to Miguel : did he seek death that day in the house in Santa Fe?
My answer is no; I don’t think so. Considering his central reflection in his commentary on “The Bridge”, Miguel did not want to die in a battle that was not central to the decision of the war.
But the war was already decided. And let’s add honestly: it was very much a war decided by a misunderstanding of the enemy’s lethal capacity, and partly by a disdain for him.
Conversely, a defeat also helped by our sense of invincibility that we had stolen from the dialectic of history. Without considering that dialectics has two poles and does not predict or name which is the thesis, and which is its antithesis. Ergo, it does not predict whose synthesis it will be.
Everything that does not make Miguel’s death any less heroic. But the epic thing was his life, his struggle for what he believed to be noble.
Miguel Enríquez Espinosa [31]
[1] JS (Juventud Socialista) is the Youth Section of the Chilean Socialist Party
[2] M Ferrada de Noli, “Con Bautista van Schouwen. Memories of struggle and friendship“. Libertarian Books, Sweden, 2018. ISBN 978-91-88747-08-2 pdf/e-book / ISBN 978-91-88747-09-9 hard copy. Pages 136–154.
[3] Quoted by Pedro Naranjo Sandoval, “La vida de Miguel Enríquez y el MIR“, CEME, 2003, 2006.
[4] Photo in Archivo Chile, 2003–2006.
[5] M Ferrada de Noli, “Walter’s Wife and Other Stories“, Libertarian Books Europe, Bergamo, 2021. ISBN 978-91-88747-02-0. Chap. El Rencor, on pp. 50-56.
[6] A left-win group –of less than ten students– at the Engineering School (university of Concepción). It was led by Pedro Holz, and then by Luis Moreno.
[7] FRAP= Frente de Acción Popular. A coalition formed mainly by the Communist and Socialist Parties.
[8] FEC = The student union of the University of Concepción.
[9] “Internal Congress of the medical student’s union
[10] Christian democrats
[11] Miguel Enríquez et.al., “Insurrección Socialista“, Santiago, Concepción, March 1964. elsudamericano.wordpress.com. Sept 2017.
[12] M Ferrada de Noli, “Rebels With a Cause”, op. cit. pp. 50–52.
[13] Until then there were only 16 members in Miguel’s VRM: He and his brother Marco Antonio, Bautista van Schouwen, Jorge Gutiérrez Correa, Edgardo Condeza Vaccaro, Hugo Díaz, Sandoval, Faúndez, Carlos Jara, Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy, Sarmiento, Chico Walter, Miranda, Sergio Pérez Molina, Nelson Muñoz, and me.
[14] Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy, conversation of April 24, 2025.
[15] In fact, in the light of what is found in the Diary, Miguel’s commitments to the VRM dated from January 1964, before the break with the PS that occurred in February of that year.
[16] See chapter 14.” Other classmates of the high school”, on p. 230 et seq.
[17] This collective elaboration of the MIR Insurectional Thesis of 1965 is referred e.g., in a) P.A. Valdés Navarro (2008) “Theoretical elements in the formation and development of the MIR during the period 1965-1970”. U de Valparaíso; b) J. Navarrete and M. Álvarez (2019) ‘Introduction’, in “Miguel Enríquez Espinosa, “A construir la revolución chilena! Military Political Thesis – 1967“. Showcase. Republished on ResearchGate.
[18] On the founding congress of the MIR, its participants, etc., see M. Ferrada de Noli “The origins of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). With a commentary on the theses of Prof. Eugenia Palieraki and Luis Vitale“. Libertarian Books Europe, Stockholm/Bergamo, 2016, 2021. ISBN 978-91-88747-19-8.
[19] My father, several among my uncles and nephews served as officers in the Armed Forces and Carabineros of Chile. Among them was Army General Patricio Zúñiga F., a friend and colleague of Augusto Pinochet since their shared tenure as professors at the Army War Academy.
[20] This order was signed by General Agustín Toro Dávila, who had returned from Mexico, where he was military attaché at the Chilean embassy, to replace General Washington Carrasco in Concepción. Years earlier, my brother had served as assistant captain to Colonel Toro when he commanded the artillery regiment ‘Rancagua’ in Arica.
[21] One of the main demands in our approach to university reform was the abolition of the propaedeutic system, which consisted of a first year of university in which students did not enter a career, but first had to pass (and/or prove) courses and credits in courses administered by the Central Institutes of the university. Then came a new selection to enter professional careers. We eventually won that fight in 1968.
[22] There I was later a student-assistant of physical anthropology, and a laborer of archaeology. Positions that I lost after a public debate with the director of the new department (Professor Zulema Zeguel) in the newspaper La Patria de Concepción, and which lasted several weeks. The debate originated after the publication of my essay “On the Origins of Religion. An anthropological theory”, and which was based on materialist theses.
[23] Claudio García joined our group later that year.
[24] M Ferrada de Noli. The Origins of the Revolutionary Left Movement, with a commentary on the theses of Prof. Eugenia Palieraki and Luis Vitale. Op.cit.
[25] Contrary to what is stated in the article “Chile. Luciano Cruz Aguayo, a forgotten revolutionary“ (Simón Manríquez Villena, Resumen Latinoamericano, September 2, 2018), Luciano Cruz was never a member of the VRM.
[26] M Ferrada de Noli, “Introduction to a concept on the Mission of the University“, U de C. 1968.
[27] Miguel writes: MSM [Mónica San Martín] is in a relationship with Luciano July 1961-end 1962 (p. 202).
[28] The reason was that a small sign had been put on the wall next to the outside door, indicating that this was the place of the meeting convened – to guide the provincial delegates.
[29] One reason was that for the meetings Marco Antonio and I had to travel to Santiago to meet with Zapata – who had a very difficult agenda to coincide with and also worked full time in a laboratory at the University of Chile, in the school of engineering if I remember correctly. Another reason was that Zapata was super ‘clandestine’, which made it difficult to make contact. But in the main, Zapata did not agree with our proposals that we had written in the “Insurrectionary Thesis of 1965” and instead he was elaborating his own military thesis. He was very capable and dedicated; a militant with a Trotskyist past and very upright.
[30] M Ferrada de Noli, “Rebels With a Cause...”, op. cit.
[31] Photograph by Miguel Enríquez Espinosa. Digital Archive London 38. CL AL38 CRPF-S03-E03-013. Part of the Punto Final Collection
REFERENCES and NOTES
[1] Small hideouts used in clandestine life to preserve documents or other small-size materials.
[2] Carmen Castillo recalls in the third person in her book “Un día de octubre en Santiago”.
[3] Mónica Echeverría, Carmen Castillo’s mother.
[4] Carmen Castillo’s uncle.”
[5] “En exclusiva: La historia del baúl perdido de Miguel Enríquez”. The Clinic, 5 October 2014. https://www.theclinic.cl/2014/10/05/en-exclusiva-la-historia-del-baul-perdido-de-miguel-enriquez/
[6] Id.
[7] The late Gonzalo Rojas, recipient of the Chilean National Prize for Literature and the Cervantes Prize.
[8] Image from Radio Esmeralda, Cuba. https://radioesmeraldadecuba.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/26-de-julio-motivaciones-y-retos-de-un-pueblo-en-revolucion/
[9] ”Pololeo” is a Chileanism meaning ”I am having a romantic relationship with…”. ”Pololeo enamorado” means “I am in love in a relationship with…”
[10] M Ferrada de Noli, "Con Bautista van Schouwen. Memories of struggle and friendship". Libertarian Books, Sweden, 2018. ISBN 978-91-88747-08-2 pdf/e-book / ISBN 978-91-88747-09-9 hard copy. Pages 136–154.
[11] Quoted by Pedro Naranjo Sandoval, "La vida de Miguel Enríquez y el MIR", CEME, 2003, 2006.
[12] Photo in Archivo Chile, 2003–2006.
[13] Email sent by Héctor Trautmann Hornickel, 18 May 2016.
[14] M Ferrada de Noli, "Walter's Wife and Other Stories", Libertarian Books Europe, Bergamo, 2021. ISBN 978-91-88747-02-0. Chap. El Rencor, on pp. 50-56.
[15] Miguel Enríquez et.al., "Insurrección Socialista", Santiago, Concepción, March 1964. elsudamericano.wordpress.com. Sept 2017.
[16] M Ferrada de Noli, "Rebels With a Cause", op. cit. pp. 50–52.
[17] Conversation with Juan Saavedra at the Hotel San Francisco, Santiago de Chile, in presence of Prof. Ivonne Fontaine. 27 December 2023.
[18] Until then there were only 16 members in Miguel's VRM: He and his brother Marco Antonio, Bautista van Schouwen, Jorge Gutiérrez Correa, Edgardo Condeza Vaccaro, Hugo Díaz, Sandoval, Faúndez, Carlos Jara, Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy, Sarmiento, Chico Walter, Miranda, Sergio Pérez Molina, Nelson Muñoz, and me.
[19] That house was subsequently besieged by elements of Patria y Libertad, on the morning of September 11, 1973.
[20] Juan Saavedra Gorriateguy, telephone conversation from Chile, April 24, 2025.
[21] In fact, in the light of what is found in the Diary, Miguel's commitments to the VRM dated from January 1964, before the break with the PS that occurred in February of that year.
[22] See chapter 14." Other classmates of the high school", on p. 230 et seq.
[23] a) P.A. Valdés Navarro (2008) "Theoretical elements in the formation and development of the MIR during the period 1965-1970". U de Valparaíso; b) J. Navarrete and M. Álvarez (2019) 'Introduction', in "Miguel Enríquez Espinosa, "A construir la revolución chilena! Military Political Thesis – 1967". Showcase. Republished on ResearchGate.
[24] On the founding congress of the MIR, its participants, etc., see M. Ferrada de Noli "The origins of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). With a commentary on the theses of Prof. Eugenia Palieraki and Luis Vitale". Libertarian Books Europe, Stockholm/Bergamo, 2016, 2021. ISBN 978-91-88747-19-8.
[25] My father, and most of my uncles, and several nephews, were officers of the Armed Forces and Carabineros of Chile. Among them was an army general (Patricio Zúñiga F.), a friend and colleague of Augusto Pinochet since the time they were both professors at the Army War Academy.
[26] This was signed by the then General Agustín Toro Dávila (who arrived from Mexico where he was military attaché of the Chilean embassy, to replace General Washington Carrasco in Concepción). Years before, my brother had been an assistant captain to the then Colonel Toro when he was commander of the artillery regiment 'Rancagua' in Arica.
[27] One of the main demands in our approach to university reform was the abolition of the propaedeutic system, which consisted of a first year of university in which students did not enter a career, but first had to pass (and/or prove) courses and credits in courses administered by the Central Institutes of the university. Then came a new selection to enter professional careers. We eventually won that fight in 1968.
[28] There I was later a student-assistant of physical anthropology, and a laborer of archaeology. Positions that I lost after a public debate with the director of the new department (Professor Zulema Zeguel) in the newspaper La Patria de Concepción, and which lasted several weeks. The debate originated after the publication of my essay "On the Origins of Religion. An anthropological theory", and which was based on materialist theses.
[29] M Ferrada de Noli. The Origins of the Revolutionary Left Movement, with a commentary on the theses of Prof. Eugenia Palieraki and Luis Vitale. Op.cit.
[30] Contrary to what is stated in the article "Chile. Luciano Cruz Aguayo, a forgotten revolutionary" (Simón Manríquez Villena, Resumen Latinoamericano, September 2, 2018), Luciano Cruz was never a member of the VRM.
[31] Punto Final (1956–2018) was a biweekly, left-leaning Chilean magazine, that published documents and interviews, including articles authored by some of us at the MIR –Including pieces of mine about the ideology of the Christiandemocrats, and anothers historical article about José Miguel Carrera.
[32] There is only one opinion article of his, published in Punto Final, which existence is confirmed. Two others (a letter and another op-ed) only announced: https://archivochile.com/Homenajes/html/luciano_cruz.html
[33] M Ferrada de Noli, "Introduction to a concept on the Mission of the University", U de C. 1968.
[34] Miguel writes: MSM [Mónica San Martín] is in a relationship with Luciano July 1961-end 1962 (p. 202).
[35] The reason was that a small sign had been put on the wall next to the outside door, indicating that this was the place of the meeting convened – to guide the provincial delegates.
[36] One reason was that for the meetings Marco Antonio and I had to travel to Santiago to meet with Zapata – who had a very difficult agenda to coincide with and also worked full time in a laboratory at the University of Chile, in the school of engineering if I remember correctly. Another reason was that Zapata was super 'clandestine', which made it difficult to make contact. But in the main, Zapata did not agree with our proposals that we had written in the "Insurrectionary Thesis of 1965" and instead he was elaborating his own military thesis. He was very capable and dedicated; a militant with a Trotskyist past and very upright.
[37] M Ferrada de Noli, "Rebels With a Cause...", op. cit.
[38] Photograph by Miguel Enríquez Espinosa. Digital Archive London 38. CL AL38 CRPF-S03-E03-013. Part of the Punto Final Collection