The Search Unit for Persons Reported as Missing (UBPD) delivered the body of a young man who disappeared 8 years ago, Jhonatan Smith Montenegro Cadena, at the Samaniego University for Peace, in the Colombian department of Nariño, following the Awá indigenous ritual, community to which his family belongs, the entity reported this Wednesday.
At the event, in the El Sande indigenous reservation, a tribute was paid to the young man’s “peasant, simple and dreamy” life, and he was remembered as “cheerful and hard-working,” just as he was at the age of 19, when He was a high school student who loved motorcycles and the countryside and was disappeared due to the armed conflict.
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On July 3, 2015, Jhonatan asked his mother to take him on a motorcycle to a point where he was going to meet with more people to do a job that was going to take two days, according to the woman, and he never heard from her again. he.
The investigation shows that “preliminarily” it was the members of the Mariscal Sucre Mobile Column of the now extinct FARC who disappeared the young indigenous man, according to the UBPD.
The family began the search with the support of the entire community of the El Sande Awá indigenous reservation and other civil and humanitarian organizations, and in 2019 the UBPD received the official search request for Jhonatan.
The entity began its work based on the stories of the mother, other family, friends and former combatants and members of the Reencuentros Humanitarian Corporation, which culminated in July 2023 with the recovery of the young man’s body and its delivery to the National Institute of Legal Medicine. and Forensic Sciences of Popayán, where analyzes were carried out to confirm his identity.
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“For us it is a unique moment because the Avafer association is the first missing person that we have found,” said Alexandra Morán, who, representing this association of victims of disappearance and as part of the indigenous community, participated in the award ceremony. body according to the relevant rituals.
The governor of the El Sande reservation, Gabriel Nastacuas, also attended, claiming that “the earth is the mother of us, a living being that, due to clashes, is also affected, so it is time to do a ritual to heal and harmonize the territory.”
In Colombia, according to the UBPD, there is a universe of 104,602 people missing during the armed conflict, of which more than 89,700 continue to be missing.
Of these, at least 3,300 people have disappeared in the department of Nariño, according to data from the Unit.
