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see their uncles and Jaime Riaño Colorado taken away. Sometimes her mother
blamed her for having taken her brothers to work at La Cristalina.
She was forcibly displaced. What she had before the massacre –the farms and the
animals- “was lost or ceased to exist.” However, the Red de Solidaridad and the
Instituto Nacional de Vivienda de Interés Social y Reforma Urbana (INURBE) gave
her a house in her name and that of her children. After the massacre, the same
people who took her spouse and her brothers away threatened her in Acacías.
She has not seen the State do anything to establish the whereabouts of her brothers
and of her spouse. She did not file a complaint about what happened because she
“was frightened” and she lives in a state of nervousness about something happening
to her. She feels afraid upon rendering this statement because she “does not know
what it will be like when she returns to Colombia.”
She would like to see the body of her brothers and spouse. However, she would like
to see them alive and she “always hopes [that] they will return.” Sometimes she also
thinks that they are dead.
She would like those responsible to be punished, as it “hurts very much for them to
do those things without one knowing why.” She would like to receive financial
support for her children’s schooling and to recover what they had before.
c) Mariela Contreras Cruz, the mother of Diego Armando and Hugo
Fernando Martínez Contreras and the spouse of Gustavo Caicedo
Contreras
She lived an hour and a half from Mapiripán with her spouse and their 7 children.
Her house was wooden; she had electrical appliances, cattle, hens, pigs, and goats.
When they were in Mapiripán their children escaped and told them that they had
seen body parts. When they left Mapiripán they walked “from farm to farm” for a
month until they arrived at El Anzuelo. They had no comforts and the “children lost
time from studying.” Afterwards they had to leave that place because the
paramilitary attacked the town and threatened them. Since she “was traumatized by
what had happened,” she went to Villavicencio with her children, but since the State
did not give them much support, she went to Bogotá, where they helped her with
“groceries” five months later.
In Bogotá she stayed for some time at the house of her daughter, who had problems
with her spouse because she was ill and he had to work to support them. She “even
had to beg”. Afterwards, the witness and her younger children moved into a “house
closed in tin […] and plastic”, which belonged to her brother. Her children cried from
hunger, as she was unable to find employment. She has never gone to her house
because she “think[s] that they may kill [her…] also, with [her] children.”
Since she did not see her sons and spouse dead she “tell[s her]self that they are
alive.” However, she thinks that she will never see the corpses. She feels sad and
lonely, as she has “nothing and [is] morally destroyed from missing [her] children
and [her] spouse.” Her other children are extremely traumatized and they cry a lot.
She cannot sleep restfully and she dreams “terrible things” about her children and
her spouse.
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