By Geraldine García
Cúcuta, Colombia (EFE).- Carmen Cecilia Torres, aged 68, has spent her life dealing with pain and longing for one thing: to be reunited with her son, Sergio Abril Torres, who disappeared 16 years ago on the border between the Colombian city of Cúcuta and the Venezuelan state of Táchira.
His absence leaves a void that Carmen tries to fill every day. “I prepare two breakfasts and two lunches, waiting for his return,” she tells EFE.
The International Day of the Disappeared is a day for Carmen and thousands of Colombian families to demand justice and truth.
In Cúcuta, a hundred photographs of missing people lit up a march organized by the Search Unit for Missing Persons (UBPD), alongside families, social organizations, and entities working to find their loved ones in Norte de Santander, a department bordering Venezuela that has experienced the cruelty of the armed conflict first-hand.
On Saturday, the main streets of Cúcuta, the departmental capital, became a gallery of absence, with images of men and women, mainly young, held aloft by their loved ones.
Rosa Reyes held up a photograph of her son, Jhaylander Raúl Arévalo Reyes, who disappeared in Cúcuta in 2022 after crossing the border to buy materials for his home. She shared her anguish with EFE, saying, “It’s as if the earth swallowed him. I don’t know anything about him.”
Remembrance of those long gone
Each image tells a story and captures a moment in time with a loved one who is no longer there.
“They took them alive, we want them alive!” “For our disappeared relatives, not a minute of silence!” those who attended the march shouted.
“We cannot allow time to erase their faces,” cried another mother, clutching the image of her son.
Against this backdrop, memories of Juan Frío in the municipality of Villa del Rosario, near Cúcuta, come to the fore. Over two decades ago, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) established an operations center in that area.
In improvised crematorium ovens, the paramilitaries burned and disposed of the remains of hundreds of victims in an attempt to erase any trace of their crimes.
It estimates that some 500 people were incinerated in these ovens alone by paramilitaries from the Fronteras Front of the Catatumbo Bloc of the AUC, under the command of Jorge Iván Laverde, also known as El Iguano. Years later, he accepted the Justice and Peace Law, which led to the demobilization of the group in 2006.
Disappearances continue
Sonia Rodríguez Torrente, the UBPD coordinator in Norte de Santander, told EFE that around 5,793 people have disappeared in this department.
“The UBPD is a state entity of a humanitarian and extrajudicial nature that searches for people who disappeared before Dec. 1, 2016,” she said, referring to the date on which the peace agreement signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in November of that year came into force.
According to Rodríguez, the UBPD “has a humanitarian task that it tries to carry out as well as possible in a territory as complex as Norte de Santander,” where all the groups involved in the Colombian armed conflict operate.
Regarding the interventions carried out in the Cúcuta cemetery, the official from the Search Unit noted: “The forensic teams have reviewed over 12,000 bone structures, of which 670 could be associated with the armed conflict.”
Disappearances did not end with the signing of the peace agreement, which is why on Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross urged the Colombian state to create a humanitarian alternative to address the 2,144 cases of disappeared people, mostly civilians, since the 2016 agreement with the FARC was signed.
Between Dec. 1, 2016, and Jul. 31, 2025, the ICRC documented that only 764 of these cases received a response: Of these, 574 people were found alive and reunited with their families, while 190 died and their bodies were recovered and identified. However, 1,380 cases remain unresolved. EFE
ggb/dgp