In early May, the Colombian Foreign Ministry held an act of recognition and non-repetition in Juan Frío, a village on the Táchira River on the border with Venezuela. The most striking image was not that of former paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso begging for forgiveness via videoconference, but that of the ruins of an oven used by the extinct United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) to cremate bodies. This week it was revealed that these were just the remains of a few ovens, while more others were turning up.
Members of the UBPD Missing Persons Search Unit team dig up the ovens hidden underground. Ferley Ospina
The Missing Persons Search Unit (UPBD) called relatives of missing persons to the same location this week. After months of excavations, he uncovered the complete ovens of what appeared to be an old mill used to convert sugar cane into brown sugar, which the paramilitaries later used to transport the bodies of murdered people.
According to UPBD, these are only initial excavations. When searching for remains of missing people, anthropologists and forensic media focused on the areas of the ovens most likely to contain “bone structures, teeth, or body parts of persons reported missing.”
UBDP specialists examine the excavated earth in search of human remains. Ferley Ospina
In order to give space for participation to the victims of enforced disappearances of their relatives, they made a humanitarian visit this week with several of them, members of the NGO Progresar Foundation and the Department’s Victims’ Table. Marlon Ayrton Sánchez, UBPD forensic anthropologist and head of the commission that organized the visit, explained why the ovens were excavated: “What we are trying to do here is to reconstruct and document the areas where the bodies were probably exposed to high temperatures . “the possibility that there is still evidence for this.”
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