Andrés Camilo Peláez, disappeared on April 3 in San Andrés de Cuerquia, Antioquia.
Claudia Yepes has lost six kilos of weight and although she has taken medication to fall asleep, she says that she still cannot sleep one night in one sitting.
Yepes, 50, has been looking for her son Andrés Camilo, 26, since last April 3.
That day, “a Sunday” —she repeats that she does not forget that last time they spoke— the trail of this forestry engineer who was doing field work in San Andrés de Cuerquia, a tiny municipality in the north of Antioquia, was lost.
"Where is Andrés Camilo?", Her mother repeats by phone, on social networks, in sit-ins and in the tours that she has undertaken in vain before the call of anyone who tells her that she has seen him.
“I have climbed mountains, I have entered rivers, but nothing, it does not appear”.
Colombia, which lived half a century in war, has seen up to 100,000 people disappear, according to the Center for Historical Memory.
This year there are about 1,500.
The case of Andrés Camilo Peláez is one and the story of his mother is that of thousands of mothers with their lives divided in two.
“When it gets dark, when everyone returns home and the lights start to go out, the same questions come back.
Where will he be? Will he be cold?
Has he eaten?"
Yepes, her husband and her other son have received the support of the authorities to search for him, but as if the earth had swallowed him, no one finds him.
The Government of Antioquia began offering this week a reward of 10 million pesos (about 2,500 dollars) to try to find a clue.
The family had nothing to give in return.
"We don't have money, we never have,
even in what we are experiencing we have to get up every morning to work.
We work or we don't eat, ”says Andrés Camilo's mother, who reviews from memory the last thing that was known about her son.
“That night [that of April 3] he told me that he was tired, that he was hungry and that the next day he had a meeting.
It is known, according to the version of the townspeople, that at night he was meeting in a store with three people.
According to them, after having a few beers, he said goodbye and went to the hotel where he was staying.
But he never came to the hotel.
The forest engineer was carrying out work with the communities for the ecological reforestation of the Hidroituango hydroelectric project.
It was the third time he had visited that town, but it was not the first time he had worked with communities.
He had never been threatened and the company to which he was linked, WSP, in charge of supervising the environmental projects of Hidroituango, transported him on each of his trips.
"The company took care of his safety," says his mother,
now not so convinced of how effective the accompaniment she received was.
The labor contract had begun in January and ended on May 5.
With him gone, her mother received the final payment and settlement.
"They have continued pending my son's case," she says resignedly.
Andrés Camilo measures one meter with 73 centimeters, he has black, straight and short hair.
The last day anyone saw him — “Sunday, April 3,” his mother repeats — he was wearing a black cap and t-shirt, gray pants and green tennis shoes.
The description, which has been shared dozens of times, has caused those who see someone similar to alert the family, who have gone out in search of a clue before any call.
“We have spent entire days following the instructions of someone who calls us and tells us that they saw him and that he knows where he is, but in the end we arrived and there is no one, there is nothing,” says the mother.
Andrés Camilo Peláez, disappeared on April 3.
Although Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world for environmentalists, neither Andrés Camilo nor his family feared for their safety, despite working on it.
According to the most recent figures from the Global Witness organization in 2020, for the second year in a row, this country was the deadliest for environmental defenders.
“We never thought that something could happen to him because of his profession.
How are they going to hurt someone who works for the good of all?
He had always worked with communities, he liked to teach, he liked to get into the mountains, into the water, be with the animals.
He was very happy with the last project, which was reforestation.
Peasants and leaders with whom he had worked in recent months attended a sit-in at the end of last month to ask for his return.
They don't know what happened either.
"Who took him?" His mother asks for more than forty nights.
“I know what country we live in, but one does not believe that this could happen to his family.
I still do not understand".
The disappearance of his son and the search for him have coincided with an electoral moment in Colombia, where the media attention is focused on politics.
Every morning, he posts one or several photos of his son on Twitter and tags all the candidates.
He doesn't care if he's right or left.
He needs his message to be viral, but in a country where the electoral contest is marked precisely by content tailored to what gives
likes
In social networks, the cry of this woman is lost in the noise of the Internet.
Until now, no armed group has acknowledged having him kidnapped, and the firefighters and the police who have even inspected the town and the surroundings of where he was disappeared with drones have not found any clues.
Claudia Yepes gets up every day to continue looking for him.
It is the story of so many mothers in a country that got used to living among the absences left by the armed conflict.
A country of the disappeared
From January to May 17, 2022, 1,447 people had been reported missing in Colombia.
Of these, the majority (891) are men.
20% of the reports, according to figures from the Institute of Legal Medicine, correspond to forced disappearance.
The rest of the cases are unclassified within a spectrum that includes forced recruitment by armed groups, kidnapping and human trafficking.
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