The book “Volver a los diecisiete. Diario de Miguel Enríquez” will appear in a few weeks, published in Italy by Libertarian Books Europe. This is the author’s foreword, reminiscent of my early encounters I had with the leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) – the main force of resistance to Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile. Miguel Enríquez died fighting, being killed by forces of the Military Intelligence (DINA) on October 5, 1974. He received 10 bullet wounds in the body; one in the head.
By Marcello Ferrada de Noli
Brief about my encounter with Miguel
Miguel began to write his Life Diary in 1960-1961. He was 17 years old at the time. His pen was the legacy of a dynasty of illustrious politicians who have left their mark both in republican Chile and before that in monarchical Spain.
When we met in 1956 between games and talks in the University Neighborhood of Concepción – which was a natural meeting place since his father and my mother were professors at that university – Miguel was twelve years old and spoke to me about his family with manifest pride (I describe details of that meeting in a chapter of this book).
Indeed, according to his brother Marco Antonio Enríquez, a doctor in history from the University of Paris (Sorbonne), the Enríquez dynasty dates back to the Admirals of Castile (nobles appointed by the Spanish crown) who held the leadership of the Castilian navy from the early 1400s to the late 1600s. Among them were Fadrique Enríquez, Alfonso Enríquez, Luis Enríquez y Téllez-Girón, and Fernando Enríquez de Velasco. And during the colonial era, a member of the Enríquez dynasty (Juan Enríquez Villalobos, knight of Calatrava) was Governor of the Kingdom of Chile in 1670-1682.
But in those summer months of late 1956 and early 1957, Miguel’s pride was, apart from his father, his two senator uncles: Inés and Humberto Enríquez Frödden, both from the Radical Party. Over time, Miguel’s own father would come to occupy an even more important position in politics, as minister of state.[1]
As I have described in Rebels With a Cause,[2] from the beginning this reconciliation of ideas and preferences with Miguel is established. Neither he nor I were interested in reading post-childhood literature – or we had already read it some time ago (e.g. Edmund de Amicis, Alexandre Dumas, etc.). However, the influence of his radical uncles, plus that of his father, Dr. Edgardo Enríquez Frödden (who was, as delegate of the Serenissimo, the highest authority of the Freemasons in Concepción) permeated Miguel’s precocious ideological discourse.
That discourse can be characterized as secular, liberal and with a hint of social-democratism. That is, what the Radical Party of his uncles said or aspired to represent. In addition, Miguel’s paternal grandfather, the lawyer Marco Antonio Enríquez, was a member of the Liberal Party. Miguel’s paternal great-grandfather, owner of the estate and of conservative tradition. [3]
Thus, in the times of 1956 Miguel was a recipient and spokesman of liberalism in social matters, and even propagated the proposals of, especially, his uncle Humberto (those who today, with some generosity, could be considered social democrats). And it was that secular and free-thinking attitude in the ideological sphere that functioned as a colloquial amalgam from our first meetings.
And this is because I for my part was already a staunch liberal, an atheist, and a “comecura” (“not fond of priests”). And all this despite, or as a reaction to, the fact that my family was pious and conservative, and even partly funded the local clergy. My grandfather was also a monarchist and went especially to Genoa to vote against it in the referendum of June 2, 1946, which would abolish the Italian monarchy and initiate the Republic. It was my stay in Catholic schools and the unintelligible or absurdity of the exegesis dictated by the priests (sometimes with violence) that spurred my entry into the opposite ideology – profoundly liberal and passionately anti-clerical. It was there that, instead, I came devoted to humanist and free-thinking literature, and to my first encounter with Enrico Malatesta.[4]
And if they say that older brothers influence, through being an example, or by imitation, or by rational conviction in the best of cases, my older brother was already in the Youth of the Liberal Party. And Miguel’s older brother had already begun to read the classics of Marxism, and Lenin and Trotsky – sources to which Miguel himself would avidly turn a couple of years later.
Different paths
We had met when Miguel was twelve years old. The following year we began to be bench mates in the third grade of humanities (3rd A) of the Liceo de Hombres Nº1 de Concepción. Our political debut – or “premiere in society”, as we called it festively – took place in April of that year, when we participated in the demonstrations of students and workers in protest against the increase in transportation fares, from seven to ten pesos. That was during the Ibáñez government.
Miguel’s participation in that first protest in 1957, just after he was thirteen years old, would represent an iconic illustration in the analysis of his social commitment over the years, and until his death: as he was fighting against the ticket price increase,while himself was not a user of transport in buses; From our homes we walked comfortably the distance to the high school, and then to the university. The struggle of Miguel and his peers for the poor of Chile was always an absolutely altruistic project, alien to any kind of need or personal interest.
The period of the second cycle of secondary education is marked by the concentration on reading the classics of all kinds, in literature, Utopian socialism, Marxism, etc. And it is then that Miguel outlines his readings of Leninism and Trotsky’s criticisms of the Stalinist model, and I for my part of the anarchist, existentialist and libertarian philosophers. In 1959 I had to leave high school by decision of my parents and despite being back in a private school (owned by the Archbishopric), our friendship with Miguel continues indelibly. In addition, in that year Bautista van Schowen arrived in Concepción. Then in 1960, when the earthquake damaged my old school (“God’s punishment?”), my parents sent me to my aunt and uncle’s house and another school in the Valparaíso region. The contact with Miguel had to continue in an epistolary way.
Already at the University of Concepción, Miguel began studying medicine in 1961 and I instead chose philosophy and law. However, we were still with the same small group of friends (Miguel, his brother Marco Antonio, Bautista van Schouwen, Jorge Gutiérrez Correa,[5] whom Miguel met in his first year of medical school, and me). We met avidly and frequently in a small apartment that his father had built for him in the courtyard of his residence at 1654 Roosevelt Avenue. This text by Ignacio Vidaurrázaga, author and biographer of Miguel, contains a testimony of Dr. Edgardo Enríquez Frödden about that legendary stay:
“That room at the background was at the dawn of this story. It was known by several of the conspirators. Of course, by Marcello Ferrada Noli and Bautista van Schouwen. Andrés Pascal and another fellow in studies and struggle (“Bombita Gutiérez”) would also arrive there.
Edgardo Enríquez Froedden – in testimonies to Jorge Gilbert – also refers to the significance of that room in that story: “I always say it jokingly, that the MIR was formed in my children’s room that they had at the back of our house.” Then, and immediately, he refers to how he appreciated what would be the organization that was forged at that time, among other places, in that piece of the background: “It grew quickly and in such a violent way, that very soon it became a majority among the student body of Concepción. It was a party of great honesty, violent, brave, but at the same time made up of extremely intelligent and prepared people.” /(published in Interference, 05/10/2022).
That year 1961 we founded the MSI (Socialist Left Movement) and in 1963 the MSR fraction (Revolutionary Socialist Movement) in the Youth section of the Socialist Party of Concepción. Then we founded the MIR in 1965.
I think that, in his inner life, Miguel lived in the same dichotomy as all those who genuinely undertake the revolutionary political task from a young age: on the one hand, duty, one hundred percent dedication to a mission to which one must give one’s soul all, all the time, and seriously commmited.
On the other hand, their social ancestor does not abandon them; the presence of the taste of the beautiful things in life, the classical musical notes that hit the temples; the aromas of ardent love confused in the elegant taste of that wine; the laughter that grew into laughter and died in tears and turned into nostalgia…
But that cultural intrusion is condemned to the instantaneous.
They, the full-time revolutionaries, do not allow those emotions to become uninvited passengers, stowaways aboard their guns.
I think that, in me, Miguel projected that archetype of survival that he did not allow it for himself – with the exception of women.
He never criticized me for my hedonic revolutionarism shared with a part-time artist endeavour. On the contrary, he asks me clearly in the dedication of a book he gives me for Christmas 1966 (“The Forgotten Language”, by Erich Fromm):
“So that you remember old Ferrada,
of the guitar, the poems
and the women.”
Miguel did not predict an academic career for me. He says it in some way in his diary. He insisted that I stay as “his” artist. And I commented on it when I finished my doctorate in medicine at the Karolina Institute in Stockholm, and where I dedicated my doctoral thesis to Miguel:
“I dedicate this work to the memory of my best friend, from school to university and from children’s games to the armed struggle, and who was best man at my wedding: Miguel Enríquez. Miguel was a brilliant medical student and later a promising neurosurgeon. He died heroically in active combat after a siege by fascist forces, during the armed resistance against the past military government in Chile. The Cuban government, paying homage to the memory of the revolutionary leader, named the modern Havana Hospital “Dr. Miguel Enriquez Hospital.” In the tribute speech, the Cuban Minister of Education, Armando Hart, ended his words by saying: “Long live those who wanted to take the moon by storm!”
Last meeting
Our last personal meeting was in 1971, when Miguel traveled to Concepción for the funeral of Alejandra Pizarro, his ex-wife. Miguel and Alejandra had witnessed my marriage in Concepción in 1968. This meeting with Miguel (1971) took place during a family meeting at the home of the rector of the University of Concepción, Don Edgardo Enríquez Frödden, who officially occupied it. Then Miguel was devastated with sadness and I had never seen him like this, with so much sorrow.
Then Miguel wrote a letter to Irene, Alejandra’s mother, in which he says “Despite having separated, in fact he is the person I have loved the most”. [6]
That last meeting with Miguel, and for legitimate reasons, contrasted diametrically with the one we had had only months before, in that same house, in the midst of laughter and memories. That was when he arrived with his Austin Mini, in the company of Andrés Pascal, and he proudly showed me that he had learned to drive. And on that occasion he asked me to go for a ride on my motorcycle, he incognito, through the square in the center of Concepción and back along the diagonal that overlooks the Barrio Universitario – as a greeting to the old days. He was then, again, the happy, smiling and intrepid adolescent Miguel.
Miguel had moved to Santiago definitively in 1968 (he was elected secretary general of the MIR in 1967) where he finished his medical studies. He lived clandestinely with his wife Alejandra in an apartment on the second floor on Bellavista Street, where I visited them several times. Even there we celebrated my birthday in 1969, a surprise prepared by Miguel in full hiding, and after he had called me from Concepción. I thought it was about an organic task, which in reality was instead a feast of joyful memories and exchange of dreams, of following in the wake of a moon that slipped out of our hands.
At that time (1969) we kept company to each other on the list of thirteen MIR leaders “fugitives from justice”, decreed by the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei (Minister of the Interior Pérez Zuchovic) when it declared the MIR outlawed. Then I was eventually captured and imprisoned in Concepción. In between those years 1968-1971 I continued to meet him on numerous occasions, both in Santiago and in Concepción. For my part, I never wanted to leave Concepción and that is one reason why the Political Commission entrusted me instead with the direction of the university brigade of the MIR, which later progressed in the direction of the group of professors of the MUI and other tasks linked to the university.[7]
During that time, our differences in interpreting the social world and our role in changing it became more explicit. Miguel clustered his Leninism and the “What To Be Done” became Miguel’s what to do. I affirmed myself in the libertarian and humanist reading that began in my childhood with Voltaire and Malatesta. Criticized first as an “anarchist,” and then, for reading Marcuse, Sartre, or Fromm, Miguel laments my “ideological conciliation” and “premature senility.” Miguel stamps that in a dedication of a book by Erich Fromm, a gift for my birthday in 1966. Then I was twenty-three years old:
But despite being different in character, intellectual preferences and ideological and also political thinking, our friendship was always very intense over the years. We also had serious organic estrangements, such as in a period in 1964 when I refused to be part of the VRM project. And even some differences in strategy during the drafting of the first political-military thesis presented at the founding congress of the MIR in 1965, a document that Miguel, his brother Marco Antonio and I made.
The last comment – to my knowledge – that I have about Miguel about me is from when I was captured in the middle of the resistance activities in Concepción in 1973. According to a colleague in the organic environment of the Political Commission of the MIR at the time, when he heard the news of my capture from newspapers in Concepción and Santiago [8] he “became quite sad” while commenting on me in fraternal terms, according to the testimony. [9]
Miguel’s Diary leaves pleasant and ungrateful opinions, once in a while ruthless, regarding all those who were close to him, girlfriends and loves, close friends, family. And I am no exception. But, in summary, to finish this brief review of our friendship, I leave it to Miguel himself to state what he thought. This is a transcription of a communication I received (2016) from who was the custodian of Miguel Enríquez’s Diary for several years – the historian Marco Álvarez Vergara:[10]
“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 traveled 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.”
Contrary to what might be supposed, Miguel’s Diary is not an itinerary of his political, organic or military work. It is not in the style of José Miguel Carrera’s Diary, or Comandante Che Guevara’s. What has survived of Miguel’s Diary are entries largely focused on his love life in adolescence and early youth, and his candid, honest confessions about his multidimensional development into the profession of man.
To properly interpret the thoughts and emotions that spring from the hyper-personal lines of the adolescent Miguel, the reader would need the crystalline pampering spirit of the author of the Diary. It would require that the reader himself be able to “go back to seventeen after living a century”—which would mean, in Violeta Parra’s profound formulation, “deciphering signs without being a competent sage.”[11] Wherefore I ask that it be understood: my comments on the passages of Michael’s Diary which I here transcribe are not unquestionable; but they are written with affection to an unforgettable friend, and with great respect to a legendary figure in the history of our continent. Respected even by his enemies.
Friendships that save from torture
To conclude, I want to relate an experience linked to my friendship with Miguel, which occurred during my time as a prisoner on Quiriquina Island, in October 1973:
Even though Quiriquina Island was part of the Talcahuano naval base, the prisoners were brought there from multiple locations in the region. Therefore, the interrogations of the prisoners were carried out by a military intelligence team made up of officers and non-commissioned officers of the Army and Carabineros of Concepción, one or another detective of the political police, plus personnel of the Navy. At that time the DINA did not yet exist.
The second time I am called for interrogation, I am entered into a room in which, behind a table that serves as a desk, there are three interrogators. Other armed sailors, standing and behind the desk. Sitting in the middle is an officer in Navy uniform and of European genotype (most likely his name is Ary Acuña Figueroa – in charge of the Intelligence Department Anchor Two – since the physical type I refer to corresponds to descriptions of other ex-prisoners of that time who identify him as such). On his right side is a detective from Concepción who has a large book open, like the “book of the course” of the high school. I recognize this detective, of short stature, as one of the torturers during my detention in the Prefecture of Investigations of Concepción on August 2, 1969, and that on Monday, August 4, I was transferred to the Public Prison, incommunicado. [12]
The detective shows the open book to the Navy officer and comments:
– “This is the one from the team of Miristas since they started at the university, a very good friend of Miguel Enríquez.”
The naval officer stares at me and immediately rebukes me:
– “Where is Miguel Enríquez! Where is he hiding!”
Before I can answer I receive an anonymous slap in the right ear from behind.
This was my answer:
– “I don’t know where Miguel Enríquez is. I don’t think anyone knows, except him. Nobody knows, because naturally they are all living clandestine in Santiago. You understand. And I have always been in Concepción, as the detective here knows.”
The Navy officer (in a different tone):
– “Yes, but if you are such a friend of Miguel Enríquez you should know where he is”
I answer:
– I don’t know where Miguel Enríquez is. It’s impossible. And if I knew where he is, I wouldn’t say it either. If you were in a similar situation, I am sure you would not either. Because, would you say where your best friend would be hiding?
Looking at the guard behind me, the officer raises his hand in a “stop” gesture, and after a few seconds in silence, orders:
– “Just take him back to his quarters.”
No torture was inflicted at that ocassion. Miguel’s friendship saved me.
(P.S. In the first interrogation, the hard, and also baroque one, I had been insistently asked about the whereabouts of the MIR’s weapons… those that everyone knew did not exist any longer. Those of us who confronted the coup plotters in self-defense in the center of Concepción in the hours or day after September 11, did so with private weapons. But that’s another story to tell apart.)
Miguel Enríquez and the author in 1968. Photo taken by Inés Enríquez Espinoza at the mouth of the Bío-Bío in Concepción.
The book “Back to the Seventeen. Diary of Miguel Enríquez”, will be available as a free PDF download at Libertarian Books Europe, from the third week of May 2025.
Notes and References
[1] After being rector of the University of Concepción, Don Edgardo Enríquez Frödden was Minister of Education in the government of Salvador Allende.
[2] M. Ferrada de Noli, Rebeldes con Causa. Mi vida con Miguel Enríquez y los Derechos Humanos. Libertarian Books Europe, 2020. ISBN 978-91-981615-2-6 pp. 271-282.
[3] Miguel’s paternal great-grandparents were Clotildo Enríquez and Leonor Plaza de los Reyes, owners of estates born at the end of the seventeenth century.
[4] M. Ferrada de Noli, “My Libertarian Road to Malatesta. A left liberal path to classical humanist values”. Libertarian Books Europe, Bergamo 2024. ISBN 978-91-981615-4-0
[5] He left our group in 1965.
[6] Waldo Díaz and Pilar Palma, The Eventful History Behind Enríquez’s Sister, La Tercera, August 7, 2009.
[7] At Miguel’s proposal, the Political Commission of the MIR nominated me as a candidate for rector of the University of Concepción for 1973 – a proposal presented in Concepción by Nelson Gutiérrez. It was then opposed by the regional secretary Manuel Vergara (expelled from the MIR in September 1973).
[8] La Tercera, Santiago, October 5, 1973; Diarios de Concepción El Sur, Crónica and Diario Color, October 1973.
[9] Commentary delivered in Malmö, Sweden, by a comrade who had been a COP secretary in Santiago. She was then (1976) a member of the “GAM” groups in Malmö, and whom I visited in organic tasks on behalf of the MIR leadership in Stockholm (Juancho). She is the wife of a former member of the Central Committee of the MIR, Álvaro Rodas; but I don’t remember his name.
[10] Mail from Marco Álvarez V., 11 Mar 2016
[11] “Back to Seventeen
After living a century
It’s like deciphering signs
Without being a competent sage”
/Violeta Parra (1962). In “Las últimas composiciones”, album published in 1966.
[12] Rebeldes con Causa, op. cit. pp. 71–76.