Wanted for murder for decades, two ex-chilean guerrillas hid in a Mexican town. Then their double lives began to unravel
MEXICO CITY – They were a couple of middle-aged guys with odd accents who bought and sold properties, doted on their children, loved soccer and frequented galleries in an artsy expatriate haven in central Mexico.
“Ramon and Esteban never got into problems,” recalled Jose Luis Vargas Ramirez, a lawyer who knew both men socially in San Miguel de Allende and is still bewildered at their fate. “Everyone said, ‘How is it possible?’”
A pair of arrests in Paris last month has shed new light on the shadowy histories of Ramon and Esteban, as the two were known in San Miguel.
They weren’t the low-key, somewhat bohemian photographers and real estate speculators they seemed to be.
Their names weren’t Ramon and Esteban. And they weren’t Mexican.
They were actually clandestine ex-revolutionaries from Chile who had been on the run for more than 20 years – a lethal duo who, Chilean authorities say, once carried out meticulously planned assassinations as the country was recovering from years of military dictatorship. The pair also famously orchestrated a cinematic jailbreak – the 1996 escape from a maximum-security prison via helicopter.
Mexican authorities suspect the onetime leftist guerrillas of running a lucrative kidnap ring linked to some of the country’s most high-profile abductions, including the 2010 seizure of former presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos – who was released after seven months following reported payment of a multimillion-dollar ransom.
Their arrests have rekindled uneasy memories of a violent era in Chilean history and cast a revealing spotlight on the booming kidnapping-for-profit trade in Mexico. The latest act in the pair’s longrunning drama played out, improbably, in France.
On Feb. 15, French police responding to murder and kidnap charges in Chile arrested “Esteban,” whose real name is Ricardo Palma Salamanca, 48. He also goes by the nickname El Negro.
A few days later, police detained Palma’s longtime female companion and alleged accomplice, Silvia Brzovic, a Chilean national who was known in Mexico as Pilar Quezada Moreno.
Their detention follows the May arrest in Mexico of “Ramon,” whose real name is Raul Julio Escobar Poblete, 54, a legendary Chilean guerrilla who went by the moniker Comandante Emilio.
Unlike Escobar, who had evaded capture until last May, Palma is no stranger to the jailhouse.
Palma was arrested in Chile in 1992 and convicted of murdering a right-wing senator, Jaime Guzman, a year earlier.
Palma also was found guilty of participating in the 1991 kidnapping of the heir of the owner of Chile’s largest newspaper, El Mercurio. The paper had supported the rightist dictatorship of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet and, according to declassified U.S. documents, received secret CIA funding, although the newspaper denies this. The heir, Cristian Edwards, was released after almost five months of captivity and the payment of a ransom. Palma received a pair of life sentences. But on Dec. 30, 1996, a hijacked Bell 206 helicopter normally used for tourist excursions swooped down on the yard of a maximum-security prison in Santiago, the Chilean capital, and whisked away Palma and three other militants in a specially crafted metal basket, lined with bullet-resistant material, that dangled from the aircraft.
The stunning prison break – which garnered global headlines and was dubbed Two Chilean fugitives put down roots in colonial San Miguel de Allende, the trendy, foreignerfriendly haven 175 miles northwest of Mexico City.
Vuelo de Justicia, or Flight of Justice, by militants – was a humiliation for Chile’s still-fragile government.
Escobar and Palma dropped from sight. Interpol alerts did not prevent them from embarking on international kidnapping careers, law enforcement authorities say.
Brazilian police say Escobar plotted the seizure of an advertising executive who was held for almost two months in Sao Paulo in 2001-02 before escaping. Among those still imprisoned in Brazil for that crime is Mauricio Hernandez Norambuena, one of the four militants airlifted to freedom in the helicopter episode.
Authorities suspect that Escobar and Palma settled in Mexico more than a decade ago – Escobar as “Ramon Alberto Guerra Valencia” and Palma as “Esteban Solis Tamayo.”
The fugitives put down roots in colonial San Miguel de Allende, the trendy, foreigner-friendly haven 175 miles northwest of Mexico City.
By all accounts, the hip renegades with cash to spare mingled seamlessly into the town’s cosmopolitan society, where their South American accents didn’t arouse suspicions, despite their improbable assertions of having been born in Mexico. Their kidnap targets apparently included well-to-do residents of the San Miguel area, which is home to affluent Mexicans and U.S. retirees.
“These Chileans totally blended inside the society of San Miguel,” said Eduardo Garcia Valseca, a businessman and former longtime resident of the San Miguel area who was kidnapped outside town after dropping his children off at school.