She gets up at 3:30 in the morning and goes to work. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. And the few ranches remain empty, except on some weekends when the patrons arrive to check their properties or spend the summer with their friends. The sun runs quickly because it refuses to see that the earth is witness to a war without mercy; the moon full of sorrow looks out and hides her glow pronouncing sadly that we are endangered men. This river needed someone to listen to it. Dead bodies from natural disasters generally do not cause epidemics. I also know that your eyes water when those that were people inevitably become spoils of war. But those most thankful are the few family members of victims that María Isabel has been able to address: "It’s a human being going by, and for each one there must be a mother crying, a wife asking, a sister. Two humble fishermen who live in a forgotten hamlet near to the Cauca river, discovered that a dead body had been tangled in their cast net. The River Cauca in Colombia has become a graveyard. A security officer explained how this arrangement worked in northern Cauca: The main roads are insecure for [armed groups] because of police controls. María Isabel always writes in silence, looking at the river, sometimes scrutinizing in the bodies. In Ituango, some 175 miles west from Catatumbo, environmental defender Isabela Zuleta’s work revolves around denouncing the Ituango Dam on the Cauca River. Download this stock image: A relative of a victim of a landslide cries as the body of his wife is carried by boat on the Cauca river in Pescadero, Colombia's Caldas province, November 23, 2001. Many have stayed there, blocked by branches floating on the river, and they had to be untangled in order to allow them to continue their course. He holds a degree in Spanish and Media Communications, and in Aesthetics and Creation from the University of Technology of Pereira. In contrast, in the town of Marsella, these same anonymous dead, whose bodies traverse the Cauca River, are uncomfortable and unwanted. Locals who lived along the river would take the bodies and bury them near the riverbanks. The municipality of Marsella in Risaralda eventually went broke at the cost of recovering corpses and conducting autopsies. Three Dead, 30 Buried in Collapse of Illegal Colombia Mine Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com. Failing to give notice to the authorities, they decided that it would be more humane to bury him, so they start dragging the dead body towards the jungle. Aerial view of an illegal mining area on the banks of the Cauca river, in the rural area of Santander de Quilichao, Colombia, in February 2015. 5 years ago | 12 views. Support our work. woman on segway riding past two men and woman with bicycles lying on pavement by river - dead bodies in car accident photos stock pictures, royalty-free photos & images. He holds a degree in Spanish and Media Communications with a specialization in Journalism and Literature from the University of Technology of Pereira. At least 25,000 people in Colombia have been evacuated after fresh floods caused by the Ituango hydroelectric dam on Monday followed the flooding of the Cauca river on May 12.. RELATED: Colombia's Dam Disaster Displaces Tens of Thousands. Very good at hiding it. The dismembered and tortured corpses are orphans in the river, and María Isabel assists them like a surrogate mother. TV9 - 2 dead bodies found at beas river … The Public Prosecutor’s Office carried out 159 exhumations of bodies in October 2017, which means that hundreds of other bodies could still be buried in the area. Witnesses saw these men beat Mr. Matinez as they walked toward a bridge on the Cauca River. The murderers hoped to cover their tracks and their atrocities – to go unpunished – by submerging the bodies. Now, Colombia is trying to recover from the violence of the last decades. They wrapped dead bodies with chicken wire and threw them into the river. Playing next. They believed that all bodies would be resurrected. It also helps when you give 6 million to help to secure the soon to be president's campaign. Someone had to do it, she says. We found her tortured and dead. That is what makes me so attached to them. Looking out at the river, she tells me, "It could be said that I passed from the freezer to the oven. She doesn't know their names or where they came from. The ranch is a place known for "summering" – a place for people to spend summer vacations. In them, there is a draft of a book with the name, “Funerals on the Cauca River.” She still has not made her edits. The flower withers at midday. Neither does she cry for them like the mothers of Trujillo, a place that has had to suffer serial murders and slayings. Trapped Colombia gold miners feared dead. The bodies aren't of her relatives. What it should be a time of fun, it brought him an unpleasant image that 35 years ago accompanies him: dragged by the current, two bodies with half their faces with exposed bones and the other half with skin rotting, both bound and floating in River. Yes, yes, river, I see them pass by. Wählen Sie aus erstklassigen Inhalten zum Thema Cauca in höchster Qualität. And she writes after finishing the chores, under a tree at about 9:00 in the morning, in the hours when the need to pour her heart out can no longer wait. Two humble fishermen who live in a forgotten hamlet near to the Cauca river, discovered that a dead body had been tangled in their cast net. She looks for an explanation for life’s fading. Their children, however, think that their mother's effort is to be admired. In 2020, the defence ministry reported sixteen dead and more than 100 wounded during 1,862 confrontations. She stays seated and I ask her, without asking her about death, why she writes: “I can’t be without a pen and a sheet of paper, so that my hands can capture everything my eyes allow me to see...", "There were days that five or seven would come down, so I would say, 'This could be common, but not normal’ – as common as you like, but normal it is not.". At the age of 8, the artist Gabriel Posada Andrés Montoya had a fishing trip with his father in the Cauca River. [2] [3] References Their means of subsistence were hunting, farming, fishing, and trading in raw materials and finished products. Even then, the risk of disease transmission to a trained body-handler is low (see question 6) 6. Two other were already rescued on Monday. At least 25,000 people in Colombia have been evacuated after fresh floods caused by the Ituango hydroelectric dam on Monday followed the flooding of the Cauca river on May 12.. RELATED: Colombia's Dam Disaster Displaces Tens of Thousands. "I think that it should have been someone's duty to remove the bodies when they came down, so I decided to take them out with my ink and paper. I transcribed it how the river told it to me.". She takes a napkin or a sheet of paper on which she conveys her emotions. The bodies of those murdered were often tossed into the Cauca River, which later became known as the River of Death. You also agree to our Terms of Service. “They were like the wind, that doesn't know where it comes from or where it's going. At times, he admits, jokingly, that María Isabel relates so strongly to the river that she might leave him for it. On Christmas, the family can share little. Going from the cold to the oven, it was almost like going from the beauty of the country, the peacefulness and tranquility of her dwelling, to a climate as intense and penetrating as it is rural and dangerous. She keeps as many poems to the dead as poems to the sugar caners, to moments of love, to the garden and the beauty of the countryside. They were over there, around the next corner, just left on the road (…)” We arrive at Argelia, a municipality in the Cauca department, in the heart of the Colombian Massif region. Dead bodies once found in this river. They would come and go without way or direction, leaving a sad emotion in my soul, leaving in their wake a spine-chilling impression. Law enforcement Seizures. She is the historian of a macabre era that continues on. The cartel were experts in counterintelligence . It got in because it overflowed its channel when heavy rains fell in the area of the Colombian Massif where the Cauca starts. And in some way, when I see them pass down, I give them a last goodbye, I pray to God for them," says María Isabel. When I finish the last one, I think that I will leave from here. Locals who lived along the river would take the bodies and bury them near the riverbanks. Dead bodies arrive and go on, down the river. To her own, she has taught respect and tolerance but, above all, love. The fragmented and battered bodies, putrefied and tortured, weren't a question of normality for her. I'm not making anything up. I transcribed a story. The sociologist Alfred Molano has said, by way of comparison, that the bodies could make a pile 173 kilometers long (about 107 miles). She sits in the area of Guayabito, in Cartago-Valle, alongside the immense river that covers more than 180 municipalities and has been the communal resting place during the history of violence in Colombia. Like any of the articles? "Later they told us to go look in the Cauca River. Living in La Bella, a township of the city of Pereira, Colombia, María Isabel never thought that her life would be spent writing to the dead. John Harold is the director of the journalism group Enfokados with whom he creates radio, television and digital works. They also produced and traded salt, extracted from the rivers though a technique involving boiling river water using fire and lava. Direct clashes have left both farmers and soldiers wounded. Just in my territory, hundreds of massacres were committed, and in all of Colombia, there were thousands, and most of those bodies were dumped into the rivers. Her hands, leathery and rough from farm work, are soft and fragile when she writes. Luis Robayo / AFP / Getty Images In a written response to an interview request, Erik Connolly, a lawyer representing RMC, said independent audits of the company show it has met its commitments to source gold responsibly. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. The river waited for her. The inland delta formed by the San Jorge River, the Cauca River, the Magdalena River and the Nechí River, south-west of Santa Cruz de Mompox, frequently flooded during the rainy season in the mountains from April to November, causing great inconvenience to the residents of the plains. More than 100 corpses, many of them children, have been found washed up in a shallow tributary of the River Ganges. 4. Each poem has a story, each death an impression. Many are the poems because many are the dead. I think the dead were waiting for me. With poems, she conquered her husband, to whom she gave three little ones. "She's going to trade me for the river," says Luis Eduardo Cano, Maria Isabel’s husband. Until recently, the bodies of unnamed victims of the armed conflict were thrown in the river. Two humble fishermen who live in a forgotten hamlet near to the Cauca river, discovered that a dead body had been tangled in their cast net. VOA Immigration Reporter Ramon Taylor contributed to this report. She makes something to eat, mops the ranch's tiled floor, keeps the lush and colorful gardens of the ranch clean, tidies up the house where she and the patrons — as she calls them — live, and goes from there from chore to chore. The right to the truth for victims of the armed conflict, relatives of these forcibly disappeared persons, should be protected by the Colombian authorities and international actors who support the peace process in Colombia. What if the rose cried seeing a petal about to open and it, already so withered and shriveled, about to die, cries, not knowing very well how to say good-bye... "Those people are deader than the dead that have passed by here because a person who doesn't have dreams and respect for life is dead.". Pre-Columbian period. It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet. We found her tortured and dead. cit. They don't let our children suckle and, much less, their bodies grow. María Isabel writes. The risk of disease from dead bodies is real only in cases where the deceased has died of a highly infectious disease, or has died in an area where such infectious disease is endemic. Last June, two boys from the area were decapitated –trouble that seemed to derive from a quarrel between families – and their bodies were thrown in the river. Central New York / Movimiento Campesino de Cajibio (Cauca) ... With marches, eucharists, and a pilgrimage through rivers, mountains and jungle, the Community honors the memory of its victims and transmits a legacy of resistance to the new generations. The dead aren't tucked away in the village of Koke, which sits in Papua New Guinea's Aseki region. Yet the pen of this woman stirs the memory and impedes forgetfulness. Claudio Salazar (died 1994) was a Norte del Valle Cartel associate. We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. It is his job to keep the ranch in order. That garden is now a distant memory, ever since she moved with her husband and sons to the place where, for more than 10 years now, she has carried out her roles as homemaker, mother of three and ranch worker – and watched dead bodies go down the river. María Isabel and her family have had direct contact with the dead, not only because they see them pass by whenever they look out from the patio of her house, but also because dead bodies have been a constant since she has lived on this ranch. It troubles me to ask what she wrote to him, and when I do, she sighs and recites to me the poem, "A Rosebush's Message": Yesterday I received a message: a beautiful rosebush, that thought a thousand things of me when a dreamer went to cut from its enchantment an exquisite rose for his beloved to wear,and she waited for him anxiously as she missed the light of his truth, and what was her surprise when she saw her beau arrive carrying in his hands a beautiful red rose that she would never forget, she picked the leaves off one by one to be able to think that he, who dared so much for their love to grow, never will he ever have his beloved's disappointment because today she is happy. Very few people live in Guayabito. By clicking “I agree” below, you consent to the use by us and our third-party partners of cookies and data gathered from your use of our platforms. We could identify the body because of a ring and a mole on her skin. The love for her family is what María Isabel shares with others, with those human beings navigating through the long river. It evokes curiosity that in a country of apathy, a woman takes up the task of recording the pain out of sensitivity. See our, Read a limited number of articles each month, You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads, Unlimited access to washingtonpost.com on any device, Unlimited access to all Washington Post apps, No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking. We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. Just hours before, María Isabel occupied herself with domestic chores on the ranch where she works. She has read very little poetry because she doesn't want to copy anyone. The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website: We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. Rodrigo is also an independent documetary filmmaker and journalist, he alternates his work as artist with teaching at centers for higher education. Their bodies were flowing together with cows in waters passive on the surface but tumultuous underneath. The municipality of Marsella in Risaralda was eventually bankrupted by the cost of recovering corpses and conducting autopsies. This content is currently not available in your region. The merciless violence has produced a woman ready to face reality and for Maria Isabel, that’s what poetry is, facing the reality others leave unlooked. 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