They left him for dead and met again 35 years later

Luz Marina Monzón, the General Director of the Search Unit for Missing Persons (UBPD), announced that this mechanism found alive a person who, due to the armed conflict, had been missing since 1985.

“In January of this year, the victim’s relatives presented their search request to the UBPD. Since then, we began an investigative process to collect and analyze information that allowed us to locate it in another region of the country and corroborate its identity, ”said Monzón.

It is about a 60-year-old man, who at 25 had to flee from the family farm in Arauca, after he was persecuted by armed men, who had the purpose of recruiting him for a group outside the law. Although he managed to escape, the people who helped him were threatened or killed. His family was even a victim of forced displacement.

“I was not born for that; I like my freedom. For the good, I was not going to go there “, said the man in the newspaper El Tiempo.

If she had returned to look for her father and her nine siblings in the following years, she would have found nothing but the wooden walls of the house, already eaten away. In August 1986, just nine months after his escape, his father died. In the following three years, the violence forced all his brothers to leave that land, according to the newspaper El Tiempo.

His family had no news of his whereabouts and had to refrain from going to the authorities due to the threats they received. In that sense, according to they affirm, they went to the Unit for the Search of Persons Given as Disappeared, a humanitarian and extrajudicial entity, created with the peace agreement with the Farc, which has the task of finding at least 120,000 people whose trace on account of the war.

The family approached the UBPD only with the victim’s civil registry. This document was essential to collect and analyze the information available in official and unofficial sources that would make it possible to determine that the person who was being searched was not only still alive, but was residing in another department.

Grass: Bogotá, the first Latin American city in the presidency of the metropolis network

According to the man, he first arrived in Villavicencio, at the end of the 80’s, when the eastern part of the country was flooded with coca leaf crops. He began working 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, according to the newspaper.

“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, “said one of his sisters, who for 34 years did not report the disappearance of her relative, out of fear. Several armed groups continue to operate in the region where he lives, including the one that persecuted and displaced his family, confirmed the newspaper El Tiempo.

The UBPD established the first contact with the victim on July 31 in order to verify the will to reunite with his family, in order to jointly build a participatory process that would guarantee a dignifying reunion.

According to El Tiempo, the man had left Guaviare for Casanare for the same reason as when he separated from his family 35 years ago: violence. 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 never materialized.

“I had not heard from them. Sometimes they helped me look for them on social media, on Facebook, but since so much time had passed, I no longer remembered them. You even forget the names, “he told the newspaper.

Subsequently, the Search Unit took ten finger samples to fully corroborate the identification and ratify by technical means that the person located was the same person who was being searched.

“The disappearance in Colombia went through many dynamics and for this reason, it is a source of immense joy to know that families will be able to find their missing loved ones. Today in Arauca a family lives what many would like to live and that is to find a loved one alive, these humanitarian actions are a great contribution, not only to the construction of peace, but also to the equity and solidarity that we must have as humanity facing the pain that thousands of families live, ”said the director of the Unit for the Search for Missing Persons.

That unsuccessful search task was accomplished by the UBPD in less than a year. Luz Marina Monzón said that, after the request of the relatives, the entity 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 identified his place of residence.

In the shadow of the reunion, which took place this Sunday, November 29, the fog of violence that separated them and that still punishes the region from which they are natives remained. The man learned that the youngest of his brothers was murdered by the guerrillas in 2000 and, now, when life finally gave him back to the rest of his family, he hopes that they can recover the time that the armed conflict in the country stole from them.

It may interest you:

The young man who gave life to the character of ‘how is it, how would it be’ passed away