That morning the family got up early from the San Agustín village so as not to be late for the long-awaited appointment with Marisol. The color white stood out among the clothes they decided to wear for the occasion.
The reunion was in an intimate room of a hotel in Villanueva, south of the Casanare department. In this private space, the warmth and filial feeling remained present between Doña Leonor, her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and her nephews. As they remembered those special moments they lived with her, her nostalgia appeared through tears and laughter.
“Her music was northern,” said one of the brothers while holding the photo where Marisol smiles at the camera, wearing a hat and riding a donkey in the middle of the field. As they pass the portrait through their hands, they try to remember details of her life. Everyone agrees that she liked to cook. At a family gathering, after evoking her during her lifetime, they realized that most of them still have her objects: a cauldron, a belt, a piece of cutlery and a white dove.
Unlike her uncles, Carolina, Marisol’s only daughter, has no memories of her mother. Marisol, she disappeared when she was just a child. She assures that her absence changed her life, but she tries to maintain the family bond with her uncles and grandmother. While showing the photo to his two little children, he explains that his feelings are different from those of his uncles, but he also accompanies them and shares with them.
This is the point of reflection and communion of the thousands of families fragmented by disappearance due to the conflict.
Marisol would have been about 20 years old when her disappearance occurred. Her family presumes that she was deceived with a job offer. The only thing they still wonder is how could she have traveled along a road corridor from Casanare to Meta without being seen? Well, as they remember, at that time the subversive groups had total control of the local roads and citizens could not move freely.
The non-judicial and humanitarian investigation of the identification process of Marisol’s body was carried out by the Search Unit for Persons Reportedly Missing through the internal territorial work group of Yopal after the family made the search request voluntarily in 2020.
During this time, constant communication and various dialogues were maintained with the family to expand the information for the search. Also, genetic samples were taken by the Search Unit, which contributed to the confirmation of identity in a work coordinated with the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.
“It is the joint work that allows us to achieve this result and a very positive relationship with the family; “It is a family that has been very open to the search and attentive to the entire process,” said Ibeth Cáceres, an official in Casanare’s internal working group who led the delivery from the entity.
After this confirmation, a match of genetic profiles was presented between Marisol’s mother and a skeletonized body recovered by the Attorney General’s Office. As a result of this inter-institutional coordination, it was possible to carry out this dignified delivery.
“We have already taken her out of that grave, where she should not be, and given her a Christian burial in a cemetery. She is going to rest and so are we,” said María Eugenia Rojas, Marisol’s sister.
On the way back to San Agustín, the road is mostly unpaved, which slowed down the vehicles and during the 20-minute journey, Doña Leonor looked at the road and assured that, although the road was in poor condition, in Previous years it was worse, since those are the paths he has traveled his entire life.
It was in San Agustín where his 6 children grew up surrounded by country life in a family and united environment. Marisol was the youngest. She “she was the ‘cuba’. After she disappeared from me, I thought I was watching her come home,” she remembers.
More family, friends and neighbors were waiting for them on the sidewalk, who came to say goodbye to the friend, neighbor and childhood playmate whom many of them saw growing up among the few streets of the place.
The parish bells rang to announce the beginning of the liturgical ceremony. At the end, white balloons accompanied the walk to the cemetery, where his body was buried next to the grave of his father, Mr. José Gabriel Rojas. Marisol was born in Villavicencio, but was raised in San Agustín, where much of her family still lives. She returned to say goodbye, after more than 20 years have passed since her disappearance.
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