Claudia Marcela Colpas hasn’t heard from her son, Brandon Loaiza, since February 14, 2023, at half past five in the morning, when she last spoke to him. No call, no text, no email. Nothing during the nearly six months he was held incommunicado in El Salvador, in one of the prisons of the Nayib Bukele regime. “On that day he asked my blessing, told me that he was going to work and said goodbye,” remembers Claudia Marcela in a dialogue with EL PAÍS.
Brandon, 19, left his home on a motorcycle with another Colombian colleague, they were involved in an accident and while they were agreeing damages with the person who ran them over, the police arrived. They were arrested, taken to a police station and jailed for allegedly belonging to the dangerous Mara 18 gang, an El Salvador lawyer handling her son’s case told Claudia Marcela. They were arrested with no warrant, no criminal record, no investigation, no evidence.
The crime the two Colombians were accused of that day was membership in illegal groups. The same that the Bukele regime has used to jail more than 69,000 people in just 15 months since the state of emergency was declared in March 2022. Ingrid Escobar, director of the El Salvador NGO Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, which helps the families of detainees, reiterates that of the total number of people currently detained, at least 20,000 are innocent people. “The human rights of Colombians detained in El Salvador are repeatedly violated. We do not know exactly how many Colombians are imprisoned, but more than 20 families have contacted our organization asking for help. “Many of those arrested are not given hygiene kits or food and are being held in the same prisons with murderers, rapists and actual gang members,” Escobar said over the phone. And he adds: “Bukele’s exceptional regime served to trap crowds, but not to bring about justice.”
Felipe Gómez Loaiza, a young Colombian prisoner in El Salvador.
Claudia Marcela says her son arrived in the Central American country on January 25 in search of a better future for him and his family. Beguiled by Bitcoin’s seeming prosperity and perceived return of security, Brandon quit his job at Pereira Country Club to go to El Salvador for dollars. He hadn’t even been there a month when he was captured. “My son was arrested because he was Colombian, was poor and had tattoos,” says Claudia Marcela sadly. “He had a small M tattooed on one of his hands, which is the first letter of my name, so they accused him of being a member of a gang.” She tried everything she could to find out how Brandón was doing, but it was impossible to communicate with him. After numerous inquiries to the Embassy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Colombian Consulate in El Salvador, they informed him in an official reply that the regulations of the authorities of that country do not allow communication with persons deprived of their liberty. “The only thing I ask for,” says Marcela, is proof of survival, a photo, a letter to hear his voice again, to know that he is fine, if he could eat, if they humiliate him or hit him him.”
Erika Loaiza is experiencing the same torment as Claudia Marcela at this moment, Sister of Felipe Gómez Loaiza, the other young Colombian captured on February 14. He is 31 years old, father of two children, one a year old and the other four, and he arrived in El Salvador on December 22, 2022. “He left the country in search of better opportunities. A friend of his who lives there called him and said he was doing very well, there was progress and it was safe. He came with that illusion,” says Loaiza. Felipe lived in Cartago, Valle del Cauca and worked as a farmer on a farm. In El Salvador, until his capture, he made a living from trading, selling clothing and accessories. Like Brandon, he was accused of belonging to the Mara 18. His family hasn’t heard from him since either. His tattoos with his children’s footprints, names and dates of birth also had a negative effect on him. “Tattoos don’t turn them into criminals,” emphasizes Erika.
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For the Bukele regime, however, tattoos appear to be evidence of crime. Beatriz Helena Muñoz, wife of Cristian David Corrales, another young Colombian detained in El Salvador, denounced that they included a photo of her partner’s face covered in fake tattoos in a Bukele news program in order to present him as a criminal. “Cristian had an absurd structure. He doesn’t have any tattoos,” declines Beatriz, comparing her husband’s real photos to those on the cover of the news show, which show him as a gang member with tattoos all over his face. She too has not heard from Cristian since the day he was captured. “I am very upset. We talked every day via video call. Now I don’t even know if he’s still alive,” he laments.
Cristian David Corrales, a young Colombian imprisoned in El Salvador.
Beatriz Muñoz, Erika Loaiza and Claudia Marcela Colpas are three of more than 35 mothers, wives and sisters of Colombian prisoners in El Salvador who have organized to demand that Gustavo Petro’s government help them protect the human rights of their imprisoned relatives guarantee. In a letter, the women from different regions of Colombia, who did not know each other until a few weeks ago and are now sharing a common tragedy, ask the President for intercession so that the authorities of El Salvador can give them concrete answers about the condition of their relatives. . “We have spent several days not receiving any information from them and when we request it, the Embassy of El Salvador does not provide it to us.” Therefore, at the moment we do not know if they are sick or alive.”
Their fear increases each time they learn of the death of a prisoner in the Bukele prisons. According to the NGO Corro Jurídico Humanitaria, 156 people have died in the 15 months of the state of emergency, 60% from violence and 30% from medical negligence. “In the last few days, two babies born in captivity have died because they were not cared for,” denounced lawyer Escobar.
The signers of the letter addressed to Petro reiterate that none of their relatives have any history in Colombia and that they are young workers. “They are being charged without having legal counsel and/or legal representation,” the document said. “Mr President, we turn to you in the midst of our fear. We are low income people and do not have the means to travel to El Salvador and educate ourselves about the legal and health situation of our loved ones. For this reason, we request that through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ambassador in the country of El Salvador, the procedure be carried out to know the condition in which our relatives are.
In the letter, supported by the El Salvador Patria Querida organization, the women announce that they will travel to Bogotá to hold a sit-in in front of the embassy on July 11-12. “Since we don’t know anyone in the city of Bogotá and we don’t have any relatives in the city, we would like to ask you very politely if you could help us to find the place and/or an accommodation so that we can spend the night with our relatives,” they ask the President.
In a brief response to questions from EL PAÍS, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that the consular mission “has contacted the Salvadoran judicial authorities to request the guarantee of due process, defense and respect for human rights within the framework of the Universal Declaration.” of the human rights of Colombians detained in El Salvador”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Álvaro Leyva, also confirms that it has visited the detainees on several occasions and has provided their families with the necessary consular assistance and accompaniment. The relatives deny this accompaniment and state that they feel abandoned by the government.
For the time being, the relatives of the Colombians imprisoned in El Salvador only demand that they be treated with a minimum of dignity. The problem, lawyer Ingrid Escobar recalls, is that all the rights of the accused were lost under Bukele’s emergency regime. “The right to due process is not guaranteed here, the right to a hearing is not guaranteed, nor is the right to be defeated in a fair trial, the presumption of innocence is not respected.” asserts that judges in El Salvador “do not even know how many Colombians they allegedly jailed for gangs or gang membership.” members”. Most likely, he says, these young people will be released after a year if prosecutors don’t find enough evidence to convict them. And he concludes: “The worst thing is that the Bukele prisons are centers of torture and death.”
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