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CPT Net
August 30, 2001
BARRANCABERMEJA, COLOMBIA: Disappeared

By Pierre Gingrich

Teresa was just coming into Barranca. As she climbed up the steps at the
"Aguila" river port, a friend hissed, "Cripple-fist is coming for you.
Run!" She knew that 'Cripple-fist' was a killer for the paramilitary
'Self-Defense Forces', so she ran --scrambling back down to the river, then
wading thigh-deep through the oil and sewage-fouled water the 200 feet to
emerge at the next port. She kept running. That was Friday.

On Sunday, Teresa's common-law husband Chato hadn't heard from his wife. He
called her family in the city from his home 40 minutes south of Barranca,
and learned of her ordeal. By Tuesday, he still had received no word from
her. Had she been captured? Four days was a long time for a person
"disappeared" by the paramilitaries to survive in captivity. The
"disappeared" are either released, or more commonly, their mutilated bodies
show up in some corner of the city. He sent word to the CPT team in
Barranca saying his wife had been kidnapped, and on that basis we held a
vigil and press conference that afternoon in Arenal, a para-controlled
barrio, demanding that those who held her release her. (See August 25
CPTnet release.)

On Wednesday, Chato heard from some friends that a woman fitting his wife's
description (chubby, longish hair, light brown skin) had been found with
her throat slit, and when those of us in the countryside visited him, it
was obvious from his agitated speech that he was having a hard time of it.
But he hadn't seen the body, and he held out some hope that she had escaped.

The problem was, the same people he suspected of killing Teresa had also
threatened him, so he couldn't come into town on his own to visit the
morgue, or to contact his wife's friends and relatives to see where she
might be hiding.

By Thursday, the team arranged to accompany Chato into town, and one of us
went with him as he made his rounds. Late that evening, he made phone
contact with a relative in another part of Colombia. Through this relative
Chato learned that Teresa had sold everything in a panic and had fled to an
undisclosed location. As of printing the family has not heard again from
Teresa.

I left that same evening for the U.S. I haven't heard how Chato or Teresa
are coping with the trauma of Teresa's close call or whether she'll return
soon to join him in their rural home outside Barranca. Neither do I know
the people grieving over that other chubby long-haired woman whose throat
was slit.

But that evening, as I gave my teammates and Chato a goodbye hug and walked
to the bus station, I knew that in Teresa's return to life, I had witnessed
something like a resurrection.