Araya studied at the Liceo de Hombres in Antofagasta and began working at age 16 as a messenger for the Telegraph Service in that city. He later worked in the Anglo-Chilean Railway Workshop in Tocopilla and at the Antofagasta & Bolivia Railway, where he joined the Communist Party and helped organize industrial unions.[1]
In 1940 he completed a course on Marxist economics organized by the party. By February 1946 he was deputy secretary-general of the Confederation of Chilean Workers (CTCH) during its internal split; he led the faction aligned with communists, radicals and falangists, serving first as acting secretary-general and later as secretary-general until his arrest in October 1948 under President Gabriel González Videla.[3]
In the 1945 parliamentary election he was elected deputy for the Second Departmental Grouping (Antofagasta, Tocopilla, El Loa and Taltal) for the 1945–1949 term, running under the National Progressive Party label used by communists that year. He served as a substitute member of the Permanent Commissions on Public Works and on Labor and Social Legislation. On 4 January 1949 the Court of Appeals of Concepción lifted his parliamentary immunity. He was detained in September 1950 by court order, escaped from a hospital in March 1951 while ill, and remained underground until receiving a pardon in late 1952.[4]
In 1961 he was again elected deputy, for the Seventh Departmental Grouping (“Santiago”, First District), serving on the Permanent Commission on Labor and Social Legislation and on special commissions regarding the CUT (1961), the Oil Problem (1963–1964) and Housing (1963–1965).[5]
On 2 April 1976, Araya, his wife, a brother-in-law and grandchildren were detained by DINA agents at their home in Quintero, Valparaíso Province. They were taken to the “Venecia” detention center in Independencia, Santiago. The brother-in-law and the children were subsequently released; Araya and his wife remain disappeared. The first habeas corpus petition was filed on 5 April 1976 and rejected by the Court of Appeals of Santiago; official statements at the time denied the detention or claimed the couple had left the country via Pudahuel Airport and the Los Libertadores Pass.[6]
The case was later incorporated into investigations related to Calle Conferencia, an operation against the Communist Party leadership. Proceedings led to criminal convictions of former DINA agents; in 2017 the Santiago Court of Appeals sentenced ten agents for aggravated kidnapping of the couple.[2][7]
In April 2013, the case resurfaced in the media when Mónica Araya, one of his daughters, confronted hooded vandals during a student march near Estación Mapocho in Santiago.[8][9]
