For many years, human rights organizations and households of people that disappeared amid Colombia’s inner battle have pointed to La Escombrera, a trash dump within the western hills of Medellín, as the location of a mass grave with presumably lots of of our bodies buried beneath the garbage.
Following months of looking out which started in July 2024, and 36,000 cubic meters of dust eliminated, on December 18, Colombia’s Unit for the Search of Disappeared Individuals (UBPD) introduced it had found the primary set of human stays on the dump’s excavation website.
“We’ve got discovered the primary bone constructions in La Escombrera. Now, it’s crucial to gather organic samples from the looking out households to hold out genetic analyses and encourage the identities of the deceased, as a way to ship the culturally-relevant data to the general public, dignifying victims’ reminiscence,” stated Luz Janeth Forero, the UBPD’s director.
The invention of the stays has reignited deep-seated feelings within the metropolis, with households and activists lengthy accusing officers of stonewalling a search of La Escombrera in an try and cowl up crimes dedicated throughout the peak of paramilitary and state-sponsored violence within the close by Comuna 13 neighborhood within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s. Earlier in January, Medellín’s Mayor’s Workplace reportedly erased a graffiti mural exalting the moms of the town’s disappeared, and a journalist at an area radio station even went so far as to accuse the moms of burying their very own kids within the dump – sparking outrage from residents.
As we method a possible inflection level within the historical past of La Escombrera, let’s check out the location’s historical past and significance to the town of Medellín, and to Colombia’s wider armed battle.
The historical past of the Comuna 13
The historical past of La Escombrera is inextricably linked to Medellín’s embattled Comuna 13 district, which is now a hotbed for tourism within the metropolis.
Often known as San Javier, the Comuna 13 is considered one of 16 districts, or “comunas,” that make up the town. Situated within the western mountains, it was first closely populated by internally displaced folks from Colombia’s decades-long armed battle, and have become often called an “invasion neighborhood,” since its inhabitants increase in 1994, according to Medellín’s Mayor’s Workplace.
Its geographic location as a transit level to the Gulf of Urabá on Colombia’s Caribbean coast makes it strategic for medication and weapons trafficking, noted researcher Adriana González Gil, and has prompted violent clashes between Colombia’s leftist guerrilla teams, right-wing paramilitaries, drug trafficking organizations and state safety forces.
A report by Colombia’s Nationwide Heart for Historic Reminiscence discovered that this fixed battle led to missing state presence. From the mid-Nineteen Nineties, leftist city militias, together with the Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the now-extinct Armed Commandos of the Folks (CAP) exerted management on the inhabitants within the absence of the state. Till the 2002 Orión navy operation, these teams turned the de facto authority in a lot of the comuna, subordinating the inhabitants and utilizing the world as a refuge for illicit actions.
Operation Orión
In an try and eradicate leftist militias, the Colombian navy deliberate an armed operation inside the district. Orión, the largest city navy operation within the nation’s armed battle, started on October 16, 2002, with the backing of Medellin’s Mayor’s Workplace and the federal government of newly-elected President Álvaro Uribe Vélez.
The months-long siege turned emblematic for abuse within the context of Colombia’s armed battle, with the navy utilizing extreme violence, arbitrary detentions and compelled disappearances on members and suspected members of the militias. It will even be revealed that the Cacique Nutibara bloc of the right-wing United Self-Protection Forces of Colombia (AUC) – which had by this time been designated a terrorist group by the USA – aided the navy of their offensive.
In 2008, Diego Fernando “Don Berna” Murillo, a former Medellín Cartel affiliate and then-commander of the Cacique Nutibara bloc, testified in regards to the paramilitaries’ involvement within the operation. “Cacique Nutibara carried out intelligence, managed to find guerrillas, and infiltrated the civilian inhabitants. This data was later despatched to the navy forces,” he stated on the time.
Official data recorded by the Colombian Widespread Analysis and Schooling Heart particulars 150 government-led raids, the arrests of 355 folks – 82 of which have been formally charged with crimes – one civilian loss of life, 38 civilians wounded, and eight disappearances. Different sources, nevertheless, estimate greater human prices of the operation. As per the Corporación Jurídica Libertad human rights NGO, Orión led to 80 wounded civilians, 17 homicides dedicated by state forces, 71 assassinations by paramilitaries, 12 victims of torture, 370 arbitrary detentions, and 6 pressured disappearances throughout the operation, a quantity that rose to over 100 within the subsequent months.
Though the operation was labeled by President Uribe after which Medellín Mayor Luis Pérez as a hit for eradicating the militias, the Comuna 13 was successfully left beneath the management of the brutal paramilitary bloc till the AUC’s demobilization in 2003, and the Comuna – and far of the town – nonetheless struggles with an organized crime drawback to today.
Within the years following the assault, President Uribe has defended the operation and denied the involvement of paramilitaries, regardless of proof on the contrary, and just lately claimed the our bodies within the dump have been put there by leftist guerrillas.
“The neighborhood itself is a witness to the our bodies that have been thrown by terrorist organizations into the Escombrera since 1978. Even in 2019, the neighborhood requested for the dump to be closed as a result of they saved throwing our bodies there,” Uribe just lately posted on X. “The [Comuna] 13 is a vital touristic vacation spot at present, receiving over 1,000,000 guests yearly. What was an epicenter of crime, is now a middle of artwork and tradition,” the previous president added.
In recent times, the town has tried to revitalize the embattled district, together with investments in transportation and tourism in an effort to attach it to the remainder of the town. It’s now a vacation spot for overseas and home vacationers to go to out of doors artwork displays, out of doors escalators, its metrocable system, and different points of interest. However at the same time as Medellín’s violent crime price has dropped, the Comuna 13 stays one of the affected districts by way of violence, according to the Ombudsman’s Workplace.
A continued silencing of victims within the Comuna 13
The latest discovering of human stays in La Escombrera has reignited tense relations between victims of Colombia’s armed battle and a sector of the political institution that benefited from the victimization of populations prior to now.
As information emerged of the invention, households with lacking kinfolk spoke out about earlier makes an attempt to silence them. “We weren’t loopy girls or guerrilla members,” Luz Elena Galeano, a resident of the Comuna 13 who has been trying to find her lacking husband for 16 years, told newspaper El Espectador.
A collective of moms trying to find members of the family from the Comuna 13 additionally issued a statement in El Espectador saying they have been victims of “violent and revictimizing practices” by state establishments.
“We have been advised we have been loopy, so now, the nation and the world can see how that very same insanity overcame what administrations, establishments, and public officers dared to disclaim,” the assertion learn.
A mural from native graffiti artists which learn “The moms are proper” exalted the looking out moms and alluded to Uribe’s involvement within the disappearances within the Comuna 13 was just lately erased by the Mayor’s Workplace. Mayor Federico Gutiérrez claimed, “graffiti as inventive expression is one factor, as we’ve achieved within the Comuna 13 … One other very totally different factor is dysfunction and those that wish to instill chaos and make our metropolis ugly.”
Others have taken the rhetoric even additional, suggesting that members of the family could have dumped our bodies of their family members in La Escombrera. In a latest interview with a member of the graffiti collective, Néstor Morales, the brother-in-law of Uribe ally and former President Iván Duque and the information director of Blu Radio, requested his visitor, “Might you swear, guarantee me, that these folks present in La Escombrera weren’t buried there by their kinfolk?”
Surprised, the radio visitor replied, “How is it that you’re telling me that presumably a relative went and took the stays of their kids and buried them someplace within the metropolis?”
