Published 18/02/2025 14:17 | Edited 18/02/2025 14:53
We arrived early for the artistic-cultural act summoned in front of the House of Memory Museum, in Medelin, Chucas-the mothers of the victims of murdered and missing-and their allies of the movements that have colored Colombia in recent months, defending memory Collective as resistance, justice and democratic reconstruction.
Gradually they approached last Sunday (16), as for decades, wearing t -shirts with images of children, nephews and young family. Children’s photography raised indignation, composed the scenario of the tragedy. In the posters the words “Where are the missing? Living took them, alive we want them. ”
The answer came from victims of oppression, after the election of Gustavo Petro, overcome years of far-right miscooks who privatized public life and contaminated the country with American bases. With the watchword “Las Chucas Tenían Razón”, Passion surpassed the fear and threats of the paramilitaries, managed to pierce the rotten media siege of the oligarchy and excited expressive segments of the population. Yes, forced disappearance, clandestine cemeteries and impunity were not only, but they are a reality. “Colombia is the most dangerous country to defend human rights,” the Attorney General said, clarifying that between 2016 and 2024 1,372 were murdered, one average of one every three days.
“We are clear that Colombian media are funded by great advertisers and, therefore, the few times they hear us, always cut us, edit our speech. As they are negleys, we decided to resort to the murals to tell the world what is happening in the country, ”said Luz Amparo Mejia Garcia of Mother Candelária – founding line,“ entity that has been resisting, persisting and not giving up in the search for the search for the search for our missing ones. ”
In an attempt to beat the enemy at any cost, the army used a trap discovered and convicted by the United Nations Human Rights Council. He invented that the war was being won showing every dead guerrilla as a medal, a “positive”, young innocent civilians annihilated in fighting that never occurred. Hence the term “false positives” that official numbers point to over 6,402 and experts project up to 15,000. A systematic practice of military personnel who, in an attempt to make credible, camouflaged corpses, falsified scenes and documents
“Colonel received a medal for the death of 53 civilians who made if they passed guerrillas”
“In 2023 Colonel Jaime Pinzón Amézquita handed these victims, relatives of extrajudicial or false positive executions, a decoration called public order medal, given to officers who presented deaths. The officer at this time acknowledged that he had obtained the medal with the execution of 53 civilians who made the guerrillas passed, ”said lawyer Sérgio Arboleda, who accompanied the protesters to the House of Memory Museum.
Arboleda recalled that Colonel Pinzana Mesquita met with these victims and “as a dignity of memory dignity put the museum as a guarantor and guardian of award”, leaving humanitarian organizations as a counterpart as the mural.
“This year, from every movement of murals and graffiti at national level, the victims decided to redo the mural, this time with the message ‘We all know who gave the order,” said the lawyer. Then came from part of the municipal administration the instruction for the direction of the museum to bar the initiative.
Antioch, which has Medelin per capital, concentrates 25% of the country’s missing
“The problem is that the department [Estado] From anti -mud, of which Medelin is the capital, concentrates 25% of cases of disappearances at national level. That is, every four victims one is from here, ”said the lawyer, pointing out there is a clear attempt to hide the severity of the situation.
Thus, Arboleda reported, “the victims refused to get lost and, with great dignity, took the brushes and retrieved the mural that had been censored again.” “Understanding is the need to go beyond liability of troops, armed state forces, but reach ministers and former presidents. Because an exclusion of skills has been made to establish the responsibility of former presidents. And that has proper name: Álvaro Uribe Vélez, ”he emphasized.
Taller La Parresia artist, Javier Sanchez, celebrates the fact that “since the end of 2023, we have achieved as an artistic collective and victims of the city make this mural managed by the House of Memory, in order to remember extrajudicial executions” . “There was no maintenance and the wall fell into abandonment. Now with the painting movement of the cuchas it was recovered and we put the word ‘who gave the order’. In less than 16 hours the collective memory process was censored and denied, ”he said.
Unfortunately, in the park around the museum – which tends to reconstruct a truth that hides the links of governments such as Uribe with the paramilitaries and the United States, and many other aggressions to national sovereignty – there are numerous proof of sloppiness and abandonment, as To make the area a corner for drug users, affronting families.
Among several precious objects dropped to the open is a reminder of August 30, 2023, which expresses: “This commemorative plaque has remained for more than ten years in the sector known as La Escombrera, in Commune 13 – San Javier de Medelin. There was violated there on several occasions by paramilitary groups. It is repositioned at the House of Memory Museum to be cared for and dignified in memory of the victims and in recognition of the families they seek. ”
“Fight is to recognize memory as a right”
Maria Alejandra Arenas, director of the network of victims of survivors of displacement and forced disappearance, has been in his own flesh for three decades the ills of armed conflict. “I suffered from the murder of my two nephews and my brother -in -law, and my brother’s forced disappearance. I had to leave myself. We need to know what happened to our families, what did they do to deserve it? And what did we do, as a victim population, to suffer from all these abuse? ”He asked.
Our struggle, argues Maria Alejandra, “It is for our memory to be recognized as a right, because the biggest scourge for a family is to see her end. A healthy mother like my prostrate in a wheelchair, with us looking for loved ones in clinics, hospitals and cemeteries. ”
Wearing the T -shirt of daughter Vanessa González Quintero, Dom Álvaro being “desperately seeks by heaven, sea and earth by our missing human beings.” His daughter was kidnapped at the age of eight and received only in 2024 the information that she is trapped in prostitution networks in the United States. The barbarism of sexual abuse is known and recognized, as well as the involvement of great people, including being the subject of several films.
In December 2011, the New Arco Iris Foundation – a renowned NGO Foundation that works for the strengthening of participatory democracy and the construction of social equity alternatives – pointed out that 98 congressmen were part of investigations by the prosecution for their “bonds with paramilitarianism”.
“We gather at the Candelaria Church and are constantly seeking, painting murals, because crimes like these cannot be hidden. As for the false positives, of course the 6,400 are not the only ones, they are many more. A single general said that only he murdered 15,000 people by order of Álvaro Uribe, ”lamented Dom Álvaro.
“I find the strength in the collective”
Ana Leonilde Aria de Morales lost her daughter, Luz Esteli, on September 17, 2003 at the age of 16, but finds “the energy necessary in the collective.” “Together and with faith in God I have the fortress necessary to endure the pain of the memory of the girl who was always by my side,” he recalled.
Luz Amparo Mejia Garcia reiterated that “those who do not know the story is condemned to repeat it, and this is the case of Commune 13, in Escorra, where 34 military operations occurred.” “The most complicated was Orion because it was a connivance between the state and the armed forces, in which unfortunately those who lost was the civilian population again,” he explained.
According to information gathered from the museum itself, with the “implementation of the Alvaro Uribe Democratic Security Policy” (sic!), Only in 2002, six military operations took place in Commune 13, with the abuse of torture and all types of atrocities. They lived then in this 150,000 people’s slum, today there are about 250,000.
“The use of forces by the state with more than 1,500 men who arrived in the neighborhoods with helicopters [Black Hawk] and tanks, the invasion of housing, the capture and detention of residents, ”describe the newspapers of the time, were the marks of Operation Orion (16 and 17 October) executed in an urban area, when the disappearance of 77 people who was denounced that They would be buried in the Escorra in the garbage, wreckage and sand.
By irony of fate, Luz Amparo began his militancy seeking his brother, a soldier who faced the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla organization that at the time embodied the national and popular interests against imperialism and the selling them.
With the information we had available, Luz Amparo learned, “we made petitions for the Attorney’s Office to stop throwing waste into the Escorra, knowing that there had been thrown bodies of humans there.” “They called us crazy – like the mothers of Praça de Maio, in Argentina – but we were always convinced that we were right, we knew that our beings were there, next to the remains of people from the other 125 municipalities of Antióquia.”
“Time has passed and today seen the shirt of a young psychologist that the war has rendered his life project. This is how I follow, fighting for better days, so that it never happens again, ”concluded the woman whose name illuminates and supports a cause.
__
Communicasul Collaborative Communication Agency report with the support of the Povo Hora Journal, Southern Global Dialogues, Baron of Itararé, Red, Union Agency, Citizenship Mail and Office of Councilman Gilmar Lima Martins (Alegrete-RS)
Source: vermelho.org.br
