The struggle of Colombian mothers to clear the names of their children who are victims of internal violence

In 2008, a group of young people disappeared from the municipality of Soacha, south of Bogotá. Months later, they were presented as members of armed groups killed in combat by the Colombian Army in the department of Norte de Santander.

These facts, known as “false positives”led the mothers of these young people to try to clarify the circumstances of their children’s disappearance, and were baptized by the media as The Mothers of Soacha.

“False positives” are extrajudicial executions in which civilians were killed and reported by the Colombian Military Forces as guerrillasin order to inflate combat casualty statistics.

The story of these mothers, who marked one of the darkest chapters in the history of Colombia, gave rise to an insatiable search for justice by these women, which led to the formation of Las Madres de Soacha and the collective that today It is known as Mothers of ‘False Positives’ (MAFAPO).

On Thursday, November 28, 2024, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the court that emerged after the 2016 peace agreement, presented for the first time the names of 1,934 victims of these murders by the Colombian army in a ceremony to honor the families and as a way to confront the sectors that deny the veracity of these crimes.

Regarding these cases, the JEP has charged more than 100 top Army officials with these crimes, of which 85 have acknowledged their responsibility.

“We have been fighting since it began. We wonder why they murdered our children. I wondered why they killed my son. Reading in these pages all the number of boys who were murdered by the Colombian National Army is very sad, because they are the people who have to take care of us,” he told the Voice of America Blanca Monroy, one of the mothers of the false positives.

The mothers, magistrates and administrative staff of the JEP read for one hour and 25 minutes the 1,934 names of the victims of the 6,402 false positives that the special peace court has registered and for which there is already a judicial ruling.

“He left the house with a promise of work. He told me to save food for him, that it wouldn’t take long, but we never heard from him again,” said Blanca, who feels that a part of her left with him on March 2, 2008, when her son attended a false promise of work.

As always, Blanca said goodbye to her son Julián Oviedo Monroy with the symbol of the cross; However, on March 3, 2008, he was presented by the army as a guerrilla killed in combat.

“My husband traveled to Ocaña (Norte de Santander) to pick up his body. When my husband arrives in Ocaña, some soldiers tell him that his son was a real guerrilla. From there to here we carried out the fight to know the truth and show that our children were not guerrillas,” he added.

The boots of false positives

“There are the mothers of the false positives” or “those are the boots of the mothers of the false positives,” would say any Colombian who sees a rubber boot with a name painted on its edges.

The mothers paint their boots to represent and commemorate their children, since they learned in the middle of the investigations to clarify why their relatives had disappeared that the Colombian military put their boots on them backwards to make them pass as guerrillas.

That’s how people began to distinguish them. In each event or demonstration, the boots became a tool that allowed them to learn about the events surrounding the disappearances of their children.

“What do these things represent? Well, look at this boot. These boots represent our children. “They are our love,” says Ana Páez with a rubber boot over her hands. Voice of America.

His son Eduardo Garzón Páez disappeared on March 4, 2008 and was found murdered on August 29, 2008, after being presented as a false combat casualty by the military in the municipality of Cimitarra, in the department of Santander.

His name was one of the 1,934 that the JEP revealed for the first time of these forced disappearances illegally presented as combat casualties by the public force during the armed conflict.

“The names that we read, as you heard, are those in which the investigation has already ended, which are judicially proven facts. The rest of us continue in contrast. But a single name would be enough to deplore what happened,” said the president of the JEP, Alejandro Ramelli, to the VOA.

“To name them is to honor their memory so that this tragedy is never repeated, because the mere cry of a grieving mother should be enough to understand that using the weapons of the State to attack defenseless citizens is illegal and immoral,” added Judge Ramelli.

The JEP has an exact figure of 6,402 victims of these false positives; many of those names have not yet been found. But the number could be even higher, which is why these mothers say that “boots are oxygen” to continue looking for their children.

“We wonder why they murdered our children. They put boots on backwards, but we wear them properly because it is the symbol we have to continue searching for the truth,” concluded Blanca Monroy.

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