More than five decades after the brutal murder of Chilean folk singer and activist Víctor Jara, the final individual sought in connection with his death has been apprehended. Nelson Haase Mazzei, a retired colonel, was arrested in Puyehue, in the rural south of Chile, over the weekend, with a judge promptly ordering his imprisonment. Haase Mazzei had been at large since 2023, when he and six other former soldiers were convicted in absentia for the murders of Jara and another man, Littré Quiroga.
Víctor Jara, a revered figure in Latin American music and a prominent left-wing activist, was arrested in Santiago on 11 September 1973. This occurred just one day after General Augusto Pinochet's US-backed coup d'état deposed the socialist president, Salvador Allende. Jara was among thousands detained at a stadium in central Santiago, where he was subjected to horrific torture before being murdered four days later alongside Quiroga, Allende's national director of prisons. His body, found near Santiago's main cemetery, bore 44 bullet wounds and 56 broken bones.
The Víctor Jara Foundation, established by his late widow, the British dancer and activist Joan Jara, welcomed the news of Haase Mazzei's capture. However, in a statement, the foundation also underscored the challenge of fully embracing this as 'justice' given the half-century that has passed since the killings. Haase Mazzei had consistently denied his presence at the stadium, now renamed Estadio Víctor Jara, but sworn testimony placed him at the scene of the atrocities.
Haase Mazzei's conviction in August 2023 resulted in a 25-year prison sentence. He had joined Chile's notorious Tejas Verde brigade in 1972 and later became part of Pinochet's secret police, the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (Dina), working closely with its leader, Manuel Contreras. Contreras himself was sentenced to over 500 years for crimes against humanity before his death in 2015. The pursuit of justice for Jara's murder has been a protracted and often difficult process, with several co-conspirators also facing legal consequences.
Among those sentenced alongside Haase Mazzei was 86-year-old Hernán Chacón, who took his own life in 2023 when police arrived to arrest him. Another Tejas Verde officer, Pedro Barrientos, who fled to the US in 1989, was eventually deported back to Chile in December 2023 after a lengthy extradition battle. Barrientos reportedly boasted of killing Jara, and his US citizenship was revoked not for his crimes, but for failing to disclose his military background during his application process. The arrest of Haase Mazzei is widely seen as the final chapter in the legal quest for accountability for one of the most emblematic victims of the Pinochet dictatorship, a regime responsible for the deaths or disappearances of over 3,000 people and the torture of tens of thousands during its 17-year rule.