Families plead for answers about thousands missing along Colombia-Venezuela border

Photographs of missing men and women occupied empty chairs beside their relatives in Cúcuta, where families gathered to demand answers for people who disappeared in Norte de Santander.

The gathering marked the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Relatives dressed in white and carried Colombian flags, representing family members whose names and whereabouts remain unknown.

For Aída María Pérez, the search began in 2001, when her 15-year-old son, Jhon Jairo Useche Pérez, disappeared on his way back from visiting an aunt in El Tarra. He reached the town, but vanished while traveling through Tibú. The only account she received said paramilitaries intercepted him at night. She has since traveled alone to Tibú several times, returning without answers.

Other families recalled similarly long absences. Ida Rosa Ortega said her son, Wilmer Eliécer Parra Ortega, disappeared 12 years ago while working as a motorcycle taxi driver in La Parada, near the Venezuelan border. Doris Martínez Velandia displayed embroidered pictures honoring mothers who died without finding their relatives, while continuing to search for her sister Nelly Martínez, last seen in 2018 in El Escobal.

Nidia Milena Delgado remembered her father, Luis Delgado Amaya, a merchant from Ocaña who disappeared in 1991 while traveling between Santa Marta and Maicao. The families’ accounts reflect the continuing uncertainty in a region affected for decades by armed groups and criminal organizations.