After April – May 2021, few things in Colombia were the same again. At this moment, as a reader, you may be thinking about the price of eggs and blaming the troublemakers, but the lives of many people were also worth a lot and those were lost forever.
Historically, April has meant revolution for Colombians, as well as May for the French, because precisely in April the murder of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán marked the beginning of a period of violence that today does not end, without naming sides or pointing guilty. It is simply the way of being of a nation discovered and founded on the most absurd violence in every way and not just by firearms.
A young protagonist of history
Sidssy Uribe Vásquez, is a youth leader from art and thought, better known for being the sister of Lucas Villa, the man who became the symbol of youth protest especially in this region, wanted to share with the newspaper her vision of what has happened during this time.
On March 17, when the president visited Quinchía, Sidssy took the opportunity to personally make the request to Gustavo Petro, so that Lucas’s homicide be clarified, to which the president responded outside the program and the protocol, recalling that at that time , the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had issued some recommendations to the Colombian Government, which he will abide by at present as President of the Republic. Among them, in addition to some aimed at reforming the Police, others that will focus on compensation and reparation for these victims.
What does the social outbreak look like two years after the events?
“Precisely the social outbreak occurs because there is a state abandonment in many lines, it is a range of inconsistencies at the level of the citizenry that comes out to claim tired, because the youth feel that they have the possibility of forming a life project, having ambitions, formulating themselves a future, so it’s like good or we fight now or nothing else will be.”
How are the victims doing?
“Fortunately for us, the victims, it is like a breath, a breath of hope that Gustavo Petro would remain as president, because I am very honest with you, many of us consider as social leaders, as victims and as activists of the Eruption that if another president represents what we It is the extreme right that would have won, that was what we feared, there was the possibility of having to leave the country. It is known that it is a government that is very young, that it has to come to build and reform. We have never wanted to abolish but to transform”.
Are you still afraid?
“Being assassinated is a possibility, because that is the reality of the country, of the people who think differently and that is what we want to change is to let the thought towards the defense of life gain value, it is that this should not Being questionable, neither from the left nor from the right, as they say out there, hunger doesn’t know about that”.
How’s Lucas’s case going?
The Prosecutor’s Office in conversations with the family, tells them that they are advancing, that they have not stopped, but Sidssy as a victim and as a person who does not know about litigation or investigations, says that it has been two years and that they have alleged perpetrators for omission. She emphasizes that it is important to say that Colonel Villamizar, who was the senior official at the time, gave the order that no one could be linked to her brother’s process and that the patrols that were close to the scene of the events did not they will get closer
“I don’t know if you can talk about complicity with criminals in that sense, because if the police don’t come in to defend the citizen, what then? They have to go against crime, violence and delinquency, why don’t they come to the citizen’s aid, then they become an accomplice to the crime and that is something that we are demanding as family members”.
As a family they feel that there is no will to solve the case, since they consider that there are very high heads that are not interested in the crime being clarified. The victims are waiting for the Barbosa period to come to an end, for the process to really move forward, but that will be in 2024, which means they still have a long way to go.