The dead without a body of Mathieu Martin, the French adventurer murdered in Argentina

“We are here, nothing will stop us in your search.

We love you.

Patricia, Perrine and Claude ”.

With those words, read in Spanish by his lawyer, the parents and sister of Mathieu Martin expressed from France that they are not convinced that the young man was murdered in a rural area of ​​the province of Salta, in northwestern Argentina, during the winter of 2018, as the Prosecutor's Office believes.

As his body was not found, they understand that there is no irrefutable evidence against the accused (two brothers) and they asked for his acquittal.

But the court did find one of them, Juan Cuevas, guilty of murder.

He sentenced him to 13 years in prison and ordered that Mathieu's death be registered in the Civil Registry.

His status as a disappeared person is thus modified, and the most ambitious investigation of the Salta criminal justice system is closed.

Mathieu, 32, had been traveling on his own for 15 years.

He had visited about 70 countries.

He was friendly, cautious and humble, he enjoyed meeting people and did not pursue sporting feats or risks.

This is how he was described by family members, acquaintances and locals who treated him in his last days, when he was touring the Iruya department, a mountainous and cold area, one of the most isolated in the South American country.

Teachers, peasants, health agents and day laborers gave their testimony in the Salta Grand Trials Chamber.

Also shepherds who had never left their villages.

They are scattered places, without formal roads, where life, very austere, goes between raising animals and planting potatoes, corn and beans for family consumption.

Some said they had never seen a tourist before.

Mathieu's beard, backpack, and accent stuck with them.

His stories allowed him to reconstruct his itinerary from Tilcara (Jujuy), where he lost contact with his family on August 8, 2018, to Huacaloma, where he would be killed days later.

There is no telephone or internet signal there, and its only inhabitants are the brothers Rosa, Juan and Froilán Cuevas.

The backpacker arrived after wandering around the area for a few days.

His goal was to unite the head of Iruya (last tourist town) with Oran, bordering a river.

This meant walking for three days and going from a mountainous environment –with peaks of up to five thousand meters and ledges that only the baquianos and goats dominate– to a flat and jungle environment: the

.

Then he would go to Paraguay and Brazil.

But, on the advice of various settlers, he gave up and camped near Huacaloma.

He was at the mercy of the Cuevas and was not heard from again.

In December 2018, after months of searching, a police commission in Huacaloma obtained a confession to the crime.

"Tell them why you killed the Frenchman," Froilán said to his brother.

"I'm stupid," answered Juan.

They explained that Juan treacherously stabbed him in El Chorro - a distant ravine 1,300 meters from their homes - and pushed him over a precipice that falls almost 40 meters and ends on a surface of sharp slabs.

Then they buried him there.

The police dug for hours at the indicated point, without success.

Four months had passed.

The Cuevas brothers, imprisoned since then, tried to undo this story and say that the police forced them to accept the fact.

But the trial proved that Mathieu died at the hands of Juan.

Froilán's involvement was not proven and he was acquitted.

The brothers, 41 and 44 years old, did not go to school, they raised cows, grew potatoes and were addicted to

ethyl alcohol with water).

They used to roam the roads "rushing" passersby, from whom they demanded money for more alcohol.

In the memory of many witnesses, their "bad machas" (aggressive drunkenness) are linked to permanent conflicts, sexist violence and two other deaths.

Experts from the trial highlighted the cognitive impairment of both due to chronic alcohol consumption.

A titanic quest

Suspicious objects appeared in Huacaloma.

Binoculars, a thermos

pants

and a shred of a T-shirt with a legend in Basque.

Also a rubber bracelet like the one Mathieu wore in his latest photos, with the accused's DNA and a genetic profile compatible with that of the Martin couple.

But, despite the efforts of the Argentine State, the body of the victim was not found.

There were at least six expeditions to the site.

Police officers from four provinces and men from the Army and Gendarmerie worked.

They used dogs, drones, helicopters, experts in high mountains and mines.

They descended to precipices and made crossings in all directions.

“It was one of the most difficult operations in which I participated and with the most resources.

Ambitious, dangerous and exhaustive ”, described a member of the Federal System for the Search of Persons (SIFEBU), Diego Maidana.

"It is the investigation where the largest amount of human, technical and scientific resources in the history of the administration of justice in Salta were invested, only with provincial and national funds," said prosecutors Ramiro Ramos Ossorio and Pablo Rivero.

In this place, the slopes crumble like bricks without amalgam and the relief mutates.

Everything is "unstable and dangerous," and is exposed to "absolutely destructive continuous geotorrential phenomena," said geologist Reinhold Weigert.

If a body is deposited there, he explained, it is buried and destroyed under tons of rocks.

The killers hid Mathieu where they knew he would not appear and thus added suffering to the family, prosecutors said, who asked for convictions for the two defendants.

“But we don't need the body to say that a person was killed here.

We took charge and generated this whole process to prevent your photo from still in the airports as missing and this goes unpunished.

Mathieu Martin is dead ”, they maintained.

Without counting the crimes of the dictatorship (1976-1983), Argentina has a dozen convictions for homicides in which the body of the victims was not found.

The cases of the Swiss Annagreth Würgler, in La Rioja (2004), and the Malaga Roxana Núñez, in Buenos Aires (2009), are some.

Mathieu Martin now joins that tragic list.

And also another: in the winter of 2011, French tourists Cassandre Bouvier and Houria Moumni were raped and savagely murdered, also in Salta.