[ad_1]
They thought he was dead. The last time they saw him, in late 1985, he was 25 years old. He was a tall and stocky man, with the vigor of those born and raised in the fields, with that strength that is built by tilling the land and that some wanted to use as labor for war. That is why he fled. A guerrilla group, which had already killed one of his brothers-in-law, wanted to recruit him into their ranks, and preferred to leave their home and family than allow it
. “I was not born for that; I like my freedom. For the good, I was not going to go there, ”says Pablo *, who is now 60 years old. In the background his wife can be heard. There is less than half an hour for a car to pick up the couple and their three children. The destination of the trip – which will take almost eight hours – is Arauca, and the reason has been waiting for 35 years to complete: Pablo will be reunited with his family.
***
The first thing they notice about him is that he talks little. When he does, the rural accent of the llaneros is felt, and he says that among what he has kept since he was a boy is the taste for the music of his land, for the harp, the bandola and the maracas. He spends his days herding cattle or on a small farm that he owns, where he grows yucca, plantain and corn. His skin has that brown color left by years of work under the sun’s rays, and he wears espadrilles, a wide-brimmed hat and a white poncho on special dates. That’s Pablo now.
(It may interest you: Controversy over figures of disappeared in report from the Memory Center)
If she had returned to look for her father and her nine siblings in the years following their escape, she would have found nothing but the wooden walls of the house, already eaten away. In August 1986, just nine months after he left, His father died. In the next three years, the violence forced all of his brothers to leave that land.
Maria remembers it well. She was the last to leave the region and she knew that if she did not, they could kill her along with her husband and take her children. The day he decided, he was in worship with about 25 people from his evangelical congregation. Three armed men arrived at the site, held their guns at them and, with a list in hand, began to name who would be their next victims.
“We had not done harm to anyone, but we had to move. We leave everything there. One’s life is worth more than the house or the animals, ”says María.
Around that same time, Pablo was beginning to organize after a few years of walking. First he came to Villavicencio. It was the end of the 1980s and the eastern part of the country was flooded with coca leaf crops. He began to work as a raspachin, and they offered him to go to Guaviare, where he met his wife and had his first two children, who are now 25 and 14 years old.
Although all his siblings were displaced, they soon established contact with each other. There were no cell phones, but when they installed the public telephones – those that worked by inserting coins into them – they began to communicate.
(Also read: In Sucre, Cauca, they have not known what happened to two leaders for a year)
But Pablo never called, never went back to the place he left. “When you are young, you like to walk, to know, but every day of this life I thought about going to look for them, but that one is like careless,” he says.
***
News came that he had died. At first, Maria doubted whether to believe it or not. They had already told him that they had seen Pablo in Villavicencio, that he was on one side and the other, but they could never verify it. As the years turned into decades, he began to think that the rumor was true.
“I did it dead. He didn’t even remember it well anymore. He could have passed me by without my recognizing him, because a long time had passed. But I wanted them to help us look for him, whether he was dead or alive. “says María, who for 34 years did not report the disappearance of her brother, out of fear. Several armed groups continue to operate in the region where he lives, including the one that persecuted and displaced his family.
“As the armed conflict continues in the context of this area, this intimidates people from going to the institutions,” explains Luz Marina Monzón, director of the Unit for the Search of Persons Given as Disappeared (UBPD), a humanitarian entity and extrajudicial, created with the peace agreement, which you are tasked with finding at least 120,000 people of which the trail was lost due to the war.
In Pablo’s case, although there was a key clue to her whereabouts, her family did not dare to refer her to any authority. In 2006, María was told that her brother had obtained his ID in a municipality in Casanare that, in fact, she visited from time to time. Only until January 2020, one of her children, who learned about the UBPD work, convinced her to go and ask for help to find her relative.
Pablo had left Guaviare for Casanare for the same reason as when he separated from his family 35 years ago: violence. “You couldn’t live there. The Army had clashes with these groups at all hours. You couldn’t sell the land because no one was buying, everyone was leaving. We lost everything. They displaced us, ”says the man, who had to escape with his youngest daughter still in his arms.
(Also read: JEP reports the discovery of 17 new bodies in Dabeiba; there are 71 in total)
The town they came to was much closer to where he was born. It was less than 350 kilometers and, although his wife told him several times to go find his family, the plan remained in words. “I had not heard from them. Some time they helped me to look for them on the networks, on FacebookBut since so much time had passed, I no longer remembered them. You even forget the names, ”Pablo recalls.
That unsuccessful search task was accomplished by the UBPD in less than a year. Luz Marina Monzón says that, after the request of the next of kin – who only had Pablo’s civil registry – the Unit began to step on information, to consult sources such as the Victims Unit, the records of public services and health, until they established that he was alive and where he lived.
On July 31, the entity contacted Pablo for the first time to confirm his identity. “I was even going to hang up the phone, because it was strange that they asked me so much, until they told me everything. That was very exciting. They know how they look for you, ”says Pablo, and laughs at the mistrust that the call generated.
“Methodologically, we have several meetings, dialogues, both with the person we identify and who the loved one is looking for. There we are exploring what is the expectation and what are the conditions in which they are to meet again. After 35 years, it is a lifetime, it is to get to know a person with whom contact was absolutely lost ”, says Monzón.
Pablo’s first meeting with his family was through a video call, which EL TIEMPO learned about:
“I’m very happy, little brother, to look at you after so many years.” I was very hopeful of finding him one day, whatever it was. I’m very glad to see you with your wife. You already have a family, ”one of her sisters told her.
“I’m also very happy here to look at her and everything, the whole family.” He was close—, Pablo replies.
–But he never looked for us. And I who have passed through his town several times-, she finishes off.
If Pablo was surprised that his family looked for him after three decades, finding those long-forgotten faces on the screen left him perplexed: “You know that one changes a lot after getting old. My sisters are already pure old women ”.
***
For Monzón, who has known the drama of disappearance, the reunion of a family is just one step to close a vein that the conflict opened in Colombia: “There are thousands of people who live in suffering. They have been left alone in a A task as painful, long and uncertain as the search for a loved one. Searching for the disappeared is taking on a historical debt, but at the same time being able to know what the reality of this country is in relation to this pain it has caused the victims. “
(Read on: Two of the four bodies delivered by JEP in Dabeiba are children)
Sunday, November 29, was the day to pay off that debt with this family. The UBPD itself coordinated everything so that Pablo, his wife and their three children traveled again to Arauca and could personally see the relatives that the conflict denied them the possibility of having.
“I can’t explain how they did that job so well done and so light. We started in January and we heard from my brother for months and today we could see each other face to face ” Maria said after the meeting, while thanking the UBPD for helping her find her brother.
Pablo reaffirmed his image of the video call: “When you are young, you are elegant and beautiful, but after you are old, it happens like trees when they wither: they fall. My sisters were looking for me and they already found me. My family and I are very happy ”.
In the shadow of the reunion, the fog of violence that separated them more than three decades ago and that is still unleashed in the region remained. Pablo learned that the youngest of his brothers was murdered by the guerrillas in 2000 and, now, when he was finally able to return to the rest, he hopes that the situation will allow them to make up for lost time.
* Names modified for font safety
JULIÁN RÍOS MONROY
And Twitter: @julianrios_m
Drafting Justice
