AP

Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, is the alleged leader of a 12-member sect that is accused of burning a baby alive.

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean police on Thursday arrested four people accused of burning a baby alive in a ritual because the leader of the sect believed that the end of the world was near and that the child was the Antichrist.

The 3-day-old baby was taken to a hill in the town of Colliguay near the Chilean port of Valparaiso on Nov. 21 and was thrown into a bonfire. The baby's mother, 25-year-old Natalia Guerra, had allegedly approved the sacrifice and was among those arrested.

"The baby was naked. They strapped tape around her mouth to keep her from screaming. Then they placed her on a board. After calling on the spirits they threw her on the bonfire alive," said Miguel Ampuero, of the Police investigative Unit, Chile's equivalent of the FBI.

AP

Investigators search for evidence in a house that was used to perform rites by a sect in Colliguay, Chile.

Authorities said the 12-member sect was formed in 2005 and was led by Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, who remains at large.

"Everyone in this sect was a professional," Ampuero said. "We have someone who was a veterinarian and who worked as a flight attendant, we have a filmmaker, a draftsman. Everyone has a university degree. "

Police said Castillo Gaete, the ringleader, was last seen traveling to Peru to buy ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew plant that he used to control the members of the rite.

The Associated Press

AFP - Getty Images

A photo from Oct. 21, 1971, shows writer, poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda, then Chilean ambassador to France, answering journalists' questions in Paris. Neruda's remains were exhumed Monday in an effort to determine whether he was poisoned.

ISLA NEGRA, Chile -- The body of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, dead nearly four decades, was exhumed on Monday after his former driver said the poet was poisoned under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

Neruda, famed for his passionate love poems and staunch communist views, is presumed to have died from prostate cancer on Sept. 23, 1973.

But Manuel Araya, who was Neruda's chauffer during the ailing writer's last few months, says agents of the dictatorship took advantage of his illness to inject poison into his stomach while he was bedridden at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago.

"We're hoping for a positive result because Neruda was assassinated. Pinochet made an error when he ordered Neruda be killed," said Araya. Results are expected in coming months.

Neruda was a supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, who was toppled in a military coup on September 11, 1973, nearly two weeks before the poet's death at age 69. Around 3,000 people are thought to have been killed by the brutal 17-year-long dictatorship that ensued.

Neruda was buried in his coastal home of Isla Negra beside his third wife, Matilde Urrutia.

His remains will be brought to Santiago for analysis. Some samples could be sent to laboratories abroad.

Chilean judiciary via AFP - Getty Images

Coroner's office personnel and relatives of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda carry a coffin containing his remains after their exhumation in Isla Negra, 75 miles west of Santiago, on Monday.

Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, better known by his pen name, was a larger-than-life fixture in Chile's literary and political scene.

While best known for his collection "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair," published in 1924, Neruda was also an important political activist during a turbulent time in Chile.

He organized a ship to bring about 2,000 Spanish refugees fleeing the civil war there to Chile in 1939, campaigned for Allende and was ambassador to France during the socialist's presidency.

The Andean country's intelligentsia frequently congregated in Isla Negra, as well as in his Santiago home "La Chascona" -- so named for his then-mistress Urrutia's messy red hair -- and La Sebastiana, his ship-themed home in the port town of Valparaiso.

Democratically elected Allende committed suicide in the presidential palace as it was under attack by the military, experts confirmed last year, amid accusations he had been murdered during the coup.

Chilean courts are also investigating the death of ex-President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who is presumed to have died in 1982 of an infection after a hernia operation. Some say he was poisoned by Pinochet's agents.

Related:

Communists ask to exhume Neruda's body

By Antoine Sanfuentes,  NBC News

As we enjoy Kerry Sanders and his team's extraordinary adventure to Antarctica, I am reminded of my connection to the region, via Juan Luis Sanfuentes, who served as Chile's President from 1915-1920.

Sanfuentes, a distant relative, played a key role in the rescue of the explorer's crew.

Slideshow: Antarctica: Journey to the bottom of the Earth

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See photos from NBC's Kerry Sanders' voyage to Antarctica.

Launch slideshow

In 1914, Shackleton and a team of 28 men set out to explore the Antarctic plains. As the tall ship "Endurance" arrived on the edge of the ice, its hull was soon consumed by this frozen impenetrable place.

Shackleton was faced with an impossible task as he and the members of his crew, miles from anywhere and without any way of communicating with the outside world, faced certain death. After watching the ship sink and setting camp on a nearby island, Shackleton seemingly had only one choice: To sail a small boat across a vast stretch of sea and ice to seek a rescue for the rest of his crew.

It took 14 months before Shackleton and a small crew sailed the 23-foot whaler 800 miles to the nearest inhabited island of South Georgia. Even by today's nautical challenges, this primitive boat had all the odds stacked against it. Meantime, the 22 sailors left behind waited at the camp on the ice, keeping themselves alive by eating mostly seal and penguin.

It took another five months for Shackleton to successfully return to retrieve his crew, after President Sanfuentes dispatched the navy ship "Yelcho" to the rescue.

His historic telegram read: "Please greet Sir Ernest Shackleton and place the Government patrol boat Yelcho at his disposition, in order that this celebrated explorer, who I hope will be extremely successful, may be able to rescue his gallant comrades."

Pilot Luis Alberto Pardo Villalon heroically braved the Antarctic peninsula after being beaten back three different times by the ice. On his fourth attempt, he was successful at rescuing them from Elephant Island.

Day 1: Greeted by dirt, not ice

Day 2: Climate change decimates food supply for penguins

Day 3: Watching Mother Nature in action

Day 4: How to sleep outdoors in Antarctica

Finale: Trips to the seventh continent are not just for scientists

Antoine Sanfuentes is Senior Vice President of NBC News

Hector Andrade / Agencia Uno via AP

Firefighters and investigative police officers carry the bodies of firefighters who died battling wildfires in a mountain near Carahue, southern Chile, on Jan. 5, 2012. Nearly 50 wildfires have sprung up in southern Chile, destroying hundreds of houses, forcing the evacuations of thousands of people and causing millions of dollars in damage to the forestry and tourism industries that fuel the economy in the country's Patagonia region.

Ariel Marinkovic / EPA

A photograph made available on Jan. 06, 2012, showing one of the wildfires in the area of Quillon on Jan. 04.

Hector Andrade / Reuters

Rescue team members walk past burnt woodland as they carry the body of a firefighter after a forest fire near Temuco city on Jan. 05.

The Associated Press reports from SANTIAGO, Chile: 

Five firefighters are dead and three others missing in Chile, where spreading wildfires are being fueled by high winds and dangerously dry conditions.

Gov. Miguel Mellado says a brigade of local firefighters was caught in the flames when winds suddenly shifted in Cautin, about 450 miles south of the capital, Santiago.

As well as those killed and missing, two other firefighters suffered severe burns as they battled blazes in the Cordillera de la Costa. Continue reading.

See more pictures of the fires on PhotoBlog.

Helicopters fight a massive forest fire affecting the commune of Ranquil, in southern Chile's Bio Bio region, some 450 Km south of Santiago, on Jan. 4, 2012. Forest fires in southern Chile, fueled by intense heat and strong winds, advanced further Wednesday after destroying nearly 45,000 hectares, officials said. The worst of the blazes were concentrated in Chile's Bio Bio region, where about 24,800 hectares have been destroyed, according to Chile's National Emergency Office (Onemi). Some 600 people have been evacuated from the area and some 160 homes have been destroyed.

AP reports: SANTIAGO, Chile — Firefighters in Chile battled three huge wildfires Monday that have burned about 90 square miles (23,000 hectares) of forest, destroyed more than 100 homes and have driven away thousands of tourists while causing millions of dollars in losses.

Chile's normally rainy southern regions are suffering from a nationwide heat wave, on top of a drought that makes fires increasingly likely. The country was battling 48 separate fires on Sunday alone, and red alerts were declared for the regions of Magallanes, Bio Bio and Maule.

Ariel Marinkovic / EPA

Firefighters triying to control the fire on the outskirts of Quillon, a rural town located 450 kilometers south of Santiago, Chile, on Jan. 4, 2012.

Ariel Marinkovic / EPA

Firefighters try to control the fire on the outskirts of Quillon, a rural town located 450 kilometers south of Santiago, Chile, on Jan. 4, 2012.

AFP - Getty Images

Tourists hike at the Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile on Jan. 04, 2012. Firefighters reported that most outbreaks in the national park Torres del Paine, where the fires started a week ago, were no longer spreading. The fires consumed 14,504 hectares.The park, which is visited every year by thousands of tourists, was partially reopened to the public Wednesday.

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