Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

LAUTARO YOUTH MOVEMENT • 379more of a lumpenproletariat-anarchist gathering of disaffected, thrillseekingruffians than a bona fide leftist revolutionary group. Oftenthey would steal trucks carrying food and distribute these goods in thepoorer neighborhoods of Santiago and Concepción.Lautaro attacks on police often involved deceptive calls for help ordiversionary attacks used to lure solitary policemen to ambushes. On24 January 1991, Lautaros shot dead two policemen in Santiago. Followingthe release of a Chilean government report on the state terrorof the Pinochet era, detailing over 2,000 slayings committed by theChilean secret police, three police stations were bombed and six banksrobbed. The perpetrators claimed to be leftists protesting the unwillingnessof the Christian Democrat administration of President PatricioAylwin to prosecute General Pinochet, who retained command of theChilean armed forces following the installation of the democraticallyelected government on 11 March 1989, or others also responsible forthe state terror.On 15 March 1991 Lautaros assassinated Héctor Sarmiento Hidalgo,chief investigator of Concepción, who had not been involvedin the human rights abuses of the Pinochet era. Their motive wasrevenge for the killing of an escaped Lautaro leader, Marco ArielAntonioletti, by the investigations unit led by Sarmiento. CertainChilean government officials believe that some of these attacks wereactually instigated by Chilean right-wing agents-provocateurs seekingto create an antileftist backlash in favor of a renewed authoritarianmilitary regime and to forestall serious investigations of humanrights abuses under Pinochet. Three days after the 1 April 1991slaying by unidentified gunmen of Senator Jaime Guzmán, a formerPinochet confidant and adviser, the Chilean government announceda 150 percent increase in spending for the national police force anda 400 percent increase in spending for the government Departmentof Investigations, and most of the group’s 60 or so members werearrested and imprisoned briefly.On 21 October 1993 the Lautaros resumed activity with the holdupof the Bank O’Higgins in Las Condes, Santiago, in the course of whicha bank guard was killed. The Lautaro robbers were escaping in a minivanwhen they ran into a military police patrol at the Apumanque Mall;a shoot-out ensued in which one military policeman, three Lautaros,and three bystanders were killed. Finally in 1994 the group’s leader,Guillermo Ossandón, was captured and on 4 May 1998 Ossandón andtwo other Lautaro leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment.