Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
In the past 20 years, the problem of forced disappearances
in Colombia has reached massive proportions.
According to figures from several humanitarian organizations, the number of missing persons
might amount to 60,000, a figure is twice that of those murdered in Argentina
and three times those murdered in Chile during those countries' military dictatorships.
Heavily escorted by anti-guerrilla commands of the police and army,
18 men and two women of the district attorney's office started one of the most
dangerous journeys of their lives as forensic specialists.
The goal: Exhume at least 42 bodies of several different people that were secretly buried underground
in a rainforest area, near the town of San Jose del Guaviare
in the south of Colombia.
IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH
The trip is dangerous! The guerrillas control the zone!
That's why the army guards the location and uses very
strict security measures to protect the mission.
The entire time is a confrontation with death: the journey,
the trip, arriving to the location, and when we start digging and
uncover a person that is already dead, and try to get all the facts surrounding this.
The prosecutors have arrived at this place thanks to information provided
by a paramilitary soldier that was present the day the victims were buried.
The climate affects us. Like you can see during these first few days, we worked in the rain.
There are sunny days when you can't escape the heat.
That has no comparison to when you
give back the human remains of a person, a relative -- be it the remains of their son, husband, father, mother or brother.
The information is precise and the corpses are found very quickly.
The neighbors of the "El Cacerio" -- witnesses of the massacre --
also know where the corpses are.
They don't forget that the paramilitaries forced them at gunpoint to bury the bodies.
Oddly enough, the corpses are not piled up in a common grave.
Why were they buried in individual graves?
It's an idea from a long time ago, a tradition that we should
bury the dead as best as we can.
After a bit more digging, the commission finds the first 29 graves.
The corpses are dressed in military uniforms.
Nobody knows if they were guerrillas, paramilitaries or,
possibly, peasants forced to wear uniforms and murdered by illegal armed groups.
The majority of the corpses that we have recovered in this place
share very similar characteristics: They had been placed in a disorderly way.
At first sight, the forensics discover that the cadavers are incomplete.
This makes it necessary that the recovery of any remains are done meticulously.
They quickly prove that they are not wrong.
Some skulls were destroyed by the impact of bullets.
The majority of the corpses have head or abdominal injuries,
which are lethal and fatal, and which are usually the cause of death.
The people in charge of the inventory are two forensic anthropologists
who have dug up more than 2,000 people all over the country.
For them, it is normal to work in adverse conditions,
in the sun or rain, or besieged by swarms of mosquitoes.
First of all, the excavation is made, the corpse is exposed and made visible,
and every piece of clothing and evidence we have found is recorded by photograph and in writing.
For us anthropologists, everything we find is evidence, and those clothes are registered,
documented and then packed and sent to the laboratory for processing.
Doctor William Romero is one of the most experienced
forensic anthropologists in Latin America.
Just like today, he has spent entire days at gravesites recovering corpses
without missing any details or evidence that can help clarify the actual
circumstances of each ***.
The bones tell the story of the person that is here.
They tell us about their age, their gender.
On the other end of the excavation, Doctor Mayra Martinez
recovers a corpse that, according with the residents of the area,
belongs to a young peasant murdered by the FARC.
Despite her years of experience, she admits that she
is deeply moved when she finds the corpses of children or women.
The majority of the corpses of women don't have clothes, and are positioned,
very, very different than the positions in which we find male corpses.
We find them with their legs opened, in positions that are very, very obscene.
So you're very affected when you see female corpses that are always naked.
In a lot of cases, these female corpses are not mutilated, but are left naked.
The team is also made up of experts who document the exact
characteristics of the field, as well as photographers and excavation experts.
The complexity of the job and the oppressive weather of the Amazon jungle
caused the forensic archaeology team to remain in the area for more than 10 days,
working 12 grueling hours per day, usually in the rain.
It the end, returning to Bogota, with vans loaded with the remains of 42 corpses,
the prosecutors know that the task is just beginning.
They say that every new finding is one less missing person to find,
one new corpse to identify and, perhaps, the only hope to end the agony of
a Colombian family, which has been waiting for years for the return of someone they love.