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As was customary, that Wednesday, December 6, 1989, Hernando Jiménez Ñungo arrived at his office, located on the fifth floor of the now-defunct Administrative Department of Security (DAS) building, to receive the orders of the day.
It was 7:30 in the morning – the then detective and escort recalls perfectly – and while they were gathered they felt a loud roar and scenes of terror as it passed: “An intense wave of smoke and earth came. He took me against the ceiling and, in the air, I felt the explosion on my face. My face was covered with cement, glass and dirt. (…) I wanted to die. I felt my left eye pop I tried to hold it with my hand and push it. I thought they could reconstruct my eye, that’s why I never let go of it. It was like having an egg. “
It is the story of Hernando Jiménez Ñungo, one of the survivors of the attack with a bus bomb loaded with 500 kilos of dynamite to the building of the defunct DAS. The attack, attributed to the Medellín cartel mafia, was directed at the then director of this institution, Miguel Maza Márquez, who was unharmed. But nevertheless, 63 people died and more than 600 were injured.
(Also read: The horror experienced by a journalist who covered the attack on the DAS)
I felt my left eye pop, I tried to hold it with my hand and push it. I thought they could rebuild my eye, that’s why I never let go
Hernando Jiménez Ñungo was a detective and worked in the DAS building.
“I lost my strength, I felt lost and out of this world. Everything was blurry, I only heard the screams of the people and the sound of the ambulances“, remember. Hernando, by that time 29 years old, lost his left eye, and his face and body were left with several scars after the attack.
The walls of the building, located on Carrera 27 with Calle 17, in Paloquemao, in the center of the city, disappeared and only the columns remained. In addition, it was seen a crater thirteen meters in diameter and four meters deep.
Hernando was transferred, along with eight other people, in an ambulance on the way to the Barraquer Clinic in Bogotá. “There they valued me and They told me there was nothing to do and they couldn’t get the eye back. I felt very bad, very bad thoughts were coming to me ”.
“I heard the doctor say: ‘Don’t give him so much anesthesia that it goes away.’ And I answered: ‘I want to die, I don’t want to live anymore. ‘ I wanted to be killed. They were cries of pain“, bill.
(Also: This is how the explosion of 500 kilos of dynamite against the DAS felt)
And I would reply: ‘I want to die, I don’t want to live anymore.’ I wanted to be killed. They were cries of pain
Minutes after the attack, his brother Eliecer Jiménez, also a former DAS detective, arrived at the building to look for him. They told him that his brother, whom they know as ‘Ñungo’, had been taken among the wounded. Eliecer manages to find Hernando around one in the afternoon and tells his family, who at that time lived in the La Guaca neighborhood, in the south of Bogotá, that they were alive.
At the Barraquer Clinic, Hernando underwent surgery for six hours and after a month had the prosthesis. He was disabled for 180 days and was retired after a diagnosis of 96 percent permanent disability.(Special: 30 years of the attack against the DAS)
Hernando Jiménez Ñungo in the DAS office. For the date of 29 years.
Hernando emphasizes that he regained strength for his daughter, who at that time was 4 years old; his parents and his wife.
Now, in his 60s, he reflects and affirms that he feels like a lucky man: “I thank God that nothing more serious happened to me. I am lucky to be alive “. However, there are moments that, 31 years later, are still marked. “Now I hear an ambulance and I despair. I was in mental and psychological treatment, and I managed to recover out of love for my family, my friends and dreaming that there could be a better country, “he says.
Hernando claims that, in all this time, he has not been accepted as a victim in the judicial process that is being carried out for the attack. “The government does not know us, that is not understood. We had a part of the war that simply left pain, orphans, disabled people and the investigations are still the same ”, he questions.
The place was turned into a war zone: 300 destroyed commercial establishments, destroyed apartment buildings, 30 financial entities and more than 200 damaged courts, among others.
For these facts there are only two convicted. In 1994, a judge sentenced Guillermo Alfonso Gómez Hincapié to eight years in prison and Eduardo Tribín Cárdenas 9 years in prison, the low sentences were the result of benefits from the policy of submission to justice. And the noted intellectual authors (Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, the ‘Mexican’; John Jairo Arias Tascón, ‘Pinina’ and Gonzalo ‘Chalo’ Marín) are dead.
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‘A column saved my life’
Jhon Jairo Castellanos Aguirre along with another colleague from the DAS.
Jhon Jairo Castellanos Aguirre spent the night on the third floor of the DAS. He was part of the group of escorts who had no family in Bogotá and who were offered accommodation.
That day he got up at 5:30 in the morning. The cars and all the weapons they needed for the escort service were ready, but, At the last minute, Jhon Jairo decides to return to change his shirt and wear another jacket.
“At 7:25 in the morning I went up to the accommodation, opened the wardrobe, I took off my shirt and that’s when the bomb went off. It was a roar and I crouched down thinking that the roof was going to fall on me ”, recalls Jhon Jairo, who at that time was 28 years old and was the head of the bodyguards.
(In pictures: the horror and last days of Pablo Escobar 27 years ago)
“Everything was dark, with a lot of dirt. I realized that all the walls that divided my accommodation were collapsed. Nothing existed, there were only the columns. A column, located next to the wardrobeIt was the one that saved my life ”, he highlights.
There was nothing, there were only the columns. A column, located next to the locker, was the one that saved my life
Jhon Jairo maintains that the most terrifying scene was when he looked out from the third floor: “I was amazed to see the crater left by the bus and to see many mutilated bodies on the road. Firefighters would arrive and I was looking at the security cordon around the building. I screamed for a long time of anger and the grief that I had ”.
At that moment, the only thing Jhon Jairo thought about was helping others so much that he left the building only until noon. His family lived in Manizales, he had no place to sleep and his few belongings (clothes and a television) disappeared amid the rubble. A friend allowed him to stay at his house and offered him a room, where six other former escorts slept.
(Also read: The ‘ghost of Pablo Escobar’ still stains the image of Medellín)
Only until that Wednesday night did he call his mother: “I’m fine thank God, we are recovering from this great scare”, Told him.
Jhon Jairo says that learning to overcome the attack has been a whole process. At night he would wake up screaming and scared.
Life for Jhon Jairo has not been easy. By 1998, he lost his left leg while serving a guard duty in Sahagún, Córdoba, by mistakenly firing a shotgun. Now he works as a merchant and claims that he was never compensated or pensioned by the DAS.
ANGY ALVARADO RODRÍGUEZ
ELTIEMPO.COM
[email protected]
Twitter: @angyalvarador
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