🐕Mental health· 2015
Death by dog bites and a court order at the colonies
A patient at the Etchepare colony died after dogs attacked him in 2015. A judge intervened and gave ASSE a deadline to remove the animals and rehouse residents of two wards.
Bodies involved
ASSE
What it is
The Bernardo Etchepare and Santín Carlos Rossi colonies in San José make up the country's largest psychiatric institution and are run by ASSE. In April 2015 the weekly Brecha described just over 800 patients cared for by around 1,000 staff —roughly a quarter on medical leave— an average stay of 20 years, some 45 discharges a year, and barely 15% of residents receiving any family visit during the year. Appearing before the Chamber of Deputies health committee, then health minister Jorge Basso called the model “unacceptable” and said “the country cannot tolerate” it.
What is questioned
On 26 March 2015 El Observador reported the death of a patient attacked by dogs inside the grounds the previous night. Mary Gesto, general secretary of the staff committee, told the paper there were “more than 100 ‘wild’ dogs on the site”, that “at least one person is bitten every day”, and that the union had been filing complaints: “for four years we have been reporting it and we get no answers”. The courts stepped in: according to Teledoce (5 May 2015), a judge set ASSE a deadline to capture more than 100 dogs and move residents out of two wards, including people held there under judicial order; ASSE's president said the agency would comply with every judicial resolution. On 8 April 2015 the Presidency announced that residents of wards 29 and 30 had been rehoused in the former Medical-Surgical Unit building and that no dogs remained; ASSE's mental health director, Horacio Porciúncula, said they “were removed without a single one being put down”. The same statement recorded that 70% of the colonies' infrastructure had been improved since 2006, that a finished 42-bed ward was awaiting authorisation and another for 50 users was under construction.
Why it matters to you
This is the case that exposed what does and does not get bought in a long-stay institution: works announced for years, a finished ward left unopened, and a basic sanitary problem that took a court order to solve. Residents of those wards have nobody to complain on their behalf: the vast majority receive no family visit all year.
Where it stands
The colonies did not close. They were renamed Ceremos and remain under ASSE; in October 2023 they housed 444 residents, according to El Observador. Law 19.529, passed two years after these events, ordered asylum establishments closed before 2025; the current text published by IMPO now sets that limit at 2029. As of this file (August 2026) the sources consulted show no judicial developments after the 2015 measures.
We could not isolate a defensible set of contracts
This spending does travel through public procurement, but we found no filter that separates this file's contracts from everything else those bodies buy. Rather than show a total that mixes the questioned spending with what nobody disputes, we show none. You can explore the body's contracts yourself from the explorer.
The events date from 2015. The procurement search covers ASSE works, food and supplies, but cannot reconstruct which ward each contract served. Population and staffing figures are those published by Brecha in 2015. Nothing described here implies wrongdoing in any specific contract.
Explore contracts in the explorer