2024-04-25 11:32:11
Image source, Netflix
Caption, The Netflix documentary, called “Antares de la Luz: la sect del fin del mundo”, premieres this Thursday, April 25.Article information
- Author, Fernanda Paul
- Role, BBC News World
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1 hour
His name was Ramón Gustavo Castillo Gaete, but he liked to be called Antares de la Luz.
With a long beard, short hair and a prominent height, his presence did not go unnoticed.
Nor his strong character that led him to be the leader of a sect where he claimed to be the reincarnation of God.
His followers not only adored him but also paid him obedience, convinced that his mission was to save the world.
For it, they had to make sacrifices.
In November 2012, the group committed a brutal crime by burning a newborn alive on a bonfire.
According to the sectarian leader, the baby was the “antichrist.”
The event shocked the country and Antares de la luz fled to Peru, becoming the most wanted person by the police in Chile. Months later, he was found dead in the city of Cusco. He was 35 years old.
Their story is portrayed in a new Netflix documentary – called “Antares de la Luz: the sect of the end of the world”– which premieres this Thursday, April 25.
The film -directed by Santiago Correa and made by the Chilean production company Fable– contains unpublished details regarding how the sect operated and exclusive interviews with some of its former disciples, including, Pablo Undurragawho was the closest to Ramón Castillo Gaete.
Next, we tell you who Antares de la Luz was, how his sect worked and what is behind the brutal murder of the baby.
First followers
Ramón Castillo Gaete grew up in the city of Santiago, in a middle-class family.
When he left school, he studied music and taught at a school for vulnerable children. He played soccer and had friends.
Some time later, he joined an Andean musical group called Bitterwhere he played instruments like the clarinet, panpipe and quena.
In conversation with BBC Mundo, the journalist and researcher Veronica Foxley, who wrote the book “Five Drops of Blood: The Intimate History of Antares de la Luz and the Colliguay Sect,” assures that it was on a trip to China with his musical band when he began to experience some changes in his personality.
Image source, Veronica Foxley
Caption, The journalist Verónica Foxley investigated the case from the beginning and captured her work in the book “Five Drops of Blood”, published in 2013.
“He was more withdrawn… following that, he started taking trips alone to different places in Latin America. He went to Ecuador, and It is supposed that it was there that he had his first revelation. When he returned to Chile, he came back different,” he points out.
It was then that, in 2009 and through different meditation groups, he began to acquire followers.
One of them was Pablo Undurragawho, according to what he himself says in the Netflix documentary, had had a difficult childhood, being a victim of bullying, so being part of a group made him feel good.
Verónica Foxley – who also participates in the film directed by Santiago Correa – comments that, like Undurraga, “the majority of the members of the sect had significant emotional fractures, they were highly sensitive people, they had had complicated childhoods, some had had psychological problems, such as mood disorders, and self-esteem problems“.
“They had a dissatisfaction with the environment in which they lived. And they saw Antares de la Luz as a being with special, magical, energetic abilities,” he indicates.
Little by little, Ramón Castillo Gaete and his followers began to live together. First they did it in Santiago, but then they moved to different areas of central Chile, ending in the town of Colliguayin the Valparaíso region.
At the beginning, they dedicated themselves to holding meditation seminars and workshops in order to “discover the inner being.” The leader of the sect used to dress in white and no one might touch him or look him in the eye.
But then came the “restrictions”says Veronica Foxley.
Indoctrination
“Once his followers were convinced that this man was their salvation, permanent indoctrination began, and Antares became tougher,” says the journalist.
“He imposed new rules and behaviors, the first being that they had to take care of him, give him massages. He also told them when they might or might not have sex, determined what they might eat and how many hours they should sleep. He made them work very hard and isolated them from their environments, from their families,” he adds to BBC Mundo.
All of the above with a great promise: that they were not only going to change the world but they were going to save it. Specifically what would happen December 21, 2012 when, according to an eschatological belief, it was going to be the “end of the world”.
Image source, Netflix
Caption, Pablo Undurraga was one of the closest people to Antares de la Luz. In the interview granted for the Netflix documentary, he reveals unpublished details of his days in the sect.
As part of the rituals, they sometimes consumed ayahuascaa hallucinogenic plant that has been used by indigenous South American people in ceremonies for centuries.
According to Verónica Foxley, Antares de la Luz consumed it regularly.
“It is likely that he suffered from fibromyalgia because his body always hurt and ayahuasca was the only thing that calmed him down. But he consumed it like someone drinks water and that, indisputablyit leads you to a degree of obvious psychosis”dice.
As December 21 approached, the intensity within the sect grew.
The physical and mental control that Ramón Castillo Gaete exercised over his “disciples” was increasing, to the point that the women of the sect had to serve him sexually whenever he wanted.
“At first they had consensual sexual relations but in the end he outright committed rape,” says Foxley.
He also imposed harsh punishments that included beatings with sticks. One former member of the community even had her wrist broken.
The crime
In 2012, one of the most faithful followers of Antares de la Luz, called Natalia Guerra, she got pregnant.
According to Foxley’s investigation, during pregnancy the woman was forced to live in a cabin in the Andes, in seclusion, because for the sectarian leader the fetus she was carrying in her womb might be the antichrist and that meant a danger to the group.
The baby was born in November of that year at a hospital near the sect following three days of failed labor.
Antares de la Luz said that the baby had been born earlier than it should have and, therefore, that was a sign that He embodied a “dark being.”
Thus, two days following his birth, the leader ordered his followers to dig a hole in the hill where they would later the baby was burned alive.
“Not all the members of the sect were there at that time. Some say they heard screams, others the baby’s crying. But many did not see what was happening,” says Foxley.
Contrary to what might be expected, the journalist points out that this fact “strengthened” to the group instead of tearing it down.
“They felt like they had moved forward. Those around Antares also saw him as a sacrifice once morest the antichrist,” he indicates.
Image source, netflix
Caption, One of the houses where the sect remained, in the rural area of Colliguay, in the Valparaíso region.
Escape and subsequent investigation
But fissures within the group did not take long to appear.
And they intensified following the promise that the end of the world would arrive on December 21, 2012 was never fulfilled. That caused some to begin to doubt.
“That day, December 21, they were all expectant and nervous, completely convinced of what was going to happen. But when the hours passed and nothing happened, Antares said: ‘I’m not seeing anything, we’re going to have to prepare because now the end of the world is going to be in Ecuador and in March,’” explains Verónica Foxley.
Then, Pablo Undurraga – who was also the financial support of the group – decided to escape with his girlfriend, who was also a member of the sect.
“When they left, the sect lost its executive arm. Then they began to despair, everyone began to doubt, to remember what had happened with the baby… and one by one they began to escape,” says the journalist.
The investigation of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) It began in early 2013, following an anonymous complaint regarding what had happened there.
In April of that year, the case exploded in the Chilean press and the members of the sect decided to turn themselves in to the police. While the investigation lasted, all remained in preventive detention.
After the trial, only Pablo Undurraga and Natalia Guerra, the baby’s mother, received effective prison sentences (5 years each).
Image source, Investigative Police (PDI)
Caption, The Chilean police released this poster to try to find the leader of the sect in 2013.
But Antares de la Luz fled to Peru, where a search was launched once morest him.
“He was cornered from all sides and on May 1 he was found dead in an abandoned house in Cusco, hanging from a beam,” says Foxley.
In statements to the newspaper La Tercera, Santiago Correa, director of the documentary that is now premiering on Netflix, said that it was important to deliver a new and more reflective perspective on the factsa decade later.
And, more than 10 years following the events, the case continues to impact Chile.
Few understand how a young man who claimed to be God might take over the will of his followers who, following entering a spiral of terror, ended up being the protagonists of one of the most brutal crimes in recent Chilean history.
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