User:SandraPGL/María Codoceo Rojas

Maria Olinda Codoceo Rojas was born in the city of Iquique on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert, on May 24, 1909. His father was an engineer who worked in the saltpeter works in the area, controlled by English capitals. During her growth, Maria grew up with British governesses, so she learned the English language from an early age. It is in the Chilean desert that Maria makes her first observations of lizards and other reptiles, at the same time that she trained by reading foreign publications. He traveled to Santiago de Chile to study at the University of Chile for a degree in Biological and Chemical Sciences, graduating at the age of 23 in 1932.3 María, who already knew English, must also have learned German, since most of the publications on Herpetology of the time were in that language. Her thesis dealt with the change of color in lizards with temperature, and was guided by the German Walter Hellmich (whose study Contribution to the knowledge of the<2FEMININE>matics and evolution of the genus Liolaemus, was translated from German by María Codoceo) an authority on the. field of herpetology, which described more than 30 species of the genus Liolaemus.

Since Maria was fluent in three languages, she managed to find work as a teacher in schools of foreign origin. One of them was the Colegio Santa Úrsula, where she worked as a biology teacher from March 1954 to February 1971. In 1978 María Codoceo cataloged Pablo Neruda's collection of shells, donated by the poet to the University of Chile. The initiative came at the behest of Grete Mostny, director of the National Museum of Natural History, who recommended María to undertake the work, to which she dedicated herself earnestly; at the end he cataloged 6,391 shells, a work that was published in the Annals of the University of Chile.4

María Codoceo married the chemist Pedro Ripoll and in 1935 had a son, Óscar Ripoll Codoceo, who in October 1973 was arrested in the city of Arica, and executed by members of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. Óscar Ripoll was then a metallurgical engineer, worked in the Technical Cooperation Service (Sercotec) and was a member of the Socialist Party. According to the Rettig Report, the death of María Codoceo's son would have been reported as a traffic accident, specifically due to the fall into a stream, on the Chaca slope, of the vehicle in which he was traveling along with other detainees, due to a mechanical failure. However, the Rettig commission establishes that the death of Óscar Ripoll Codoceo occurred on October 20, after the vehicle in which they were transferred stopped 40 kilometers south of Arica, was intentionally pushed by military personnel and rushed through a ravine, after the detainees inside were shot. In the vehicle, the members of the PS Julio Valenzuela Bastías and Manuel Donoso Dañobeitía also perished, arrested and accused of being involved in the so-called Plan Z.

In 2004, the ex-director of the CNI, Odlanier Mena, was tried by judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, for the death of Óscar Ripoll Codoceo. At the time of Ripoll's execution, Mena was a colonel and commander of the Rancagua regiment, and a military judge in the city of Arica, where Óscar Ripoll was detained and held incommunicado from October 9 to 18, when he was transferred to a headquarters of the Investigations Police, to be transferred to Pisagua two days later. This is reported in the Rettig Report: «On October 20, 1973, in a station vehicle, he would take the group with his eyes blindfolded and his hands tied. After having traveled forty kilometers to the south, the vehicle stopped, the drivers getting off and the civilians remaining inside. The first pushed the car until it fell into a ravine, where the detainees found death. ”5 For this same case, Judge Víctor Montiglio applied the amnesty to General Sergio Arellano Stark and determined that the military involved in the execution could not be imprisoned, according to international human rights treaties. This acquittal occurred in the framework of the investigation of the episode Arica, of the Caravan of Death, and Montiglio determined that the responsibility for the deaths -qualified homicide- corresponds to a cover-up operation carried out by Odlanier Mena, NCO Luis Carrera Bravo and Chief Warrant Officer René Bravo Llanos. According to Odlanier Mena's testimony, Arellano Stark had arrived in Arica two days later, on October 22, a fact that supported his acquittal. The investigation determined that Óscar Ripoll Codoceo's cause of death was due to "ballistic projectile impact".

In August 2007, Odlanier Mena Salinas was sentenced to ten years and one day in prison, for being the author of the triple murder of the socialist leaders. The Seventh Chamber of the Court d