Dozens of people attended the vigil this Monday for the five young students, three men and two women, ages 17-18, who were murdered over the weekend while on a farm in the town of Buga, southwest Colombia. .
“Sometimes these acts of violence become a culture in Colombia and what we want with them is that this doesn’t falter in the historical memory because they are young people and children,” the rector of the Liceo de Los Andes told EFE today, Robinson Lizcano Echeverry.
The victims were Juan Pablo Marín Pérez, Nicolás Suárez Valencia, Sara María Rodríguez García, Valentina Arias and Jacobo Pérez, who were on a farm in the village of Cerro Rico, near the town of Buga, then at three. Sunday, four armed men arrived, rang the doorbell and shot them.
Four of them died on the spot and Jacobo Pérez was taken to a health center where he died Sunday afternoon. The attackers also injured the farm’s butler, Ramiro Martínez, 60, and another under 17, Santiago Tascón.
So far, the motives for the massacre are unknown and the prosecutor’s first hypothesis was that they were apparently trying to kidnap the son of the farm owner, who is an engineer.
“They realize that they cannot kidnap this person they wanted to take and that is where the unfortunate event of the shooting takes place,” Carlos Alberto Rojas, Cali’s security secretary, told Noticias Uno last Sunday.
In Buga, located in the department of Valle del Cauca, indignation and grief reign, and the mayor’s office issued three days of official mourning, while family and friends missed and paid tribute to the victims.
Career ahead
The five youngsters were childhood friends, went to school together and were on Jacobo’s father’s farm to say goodbye to Juan Pablo, who, according to local media, would move to Medellín to study.
In the videos they posted to social media that same night, they could be seen laughing, celebrating, blowing up floats and throwing chips at the frog.
“Nicolás, Jacobo, Juan Pablo, Sara and Valentina were young people with dreams, with a willingness to work … They were young people who studied, made an effort, with families of professionals who tried every day to make a homeland so that their children have the best education, ”Lizcano recalls.
Two of them, Nicolás and Jacobo, were athletes and represented the school and the municipality in roller hockey matches and competitions; Valentina, the only minor, had just graduated from high school and Sara was entering the second semester of veterinary medicine.
Nicolás, just turned 18, recently returned from a study stay in Australia to start college mechanical engineering, and Jacobo from an exchange in Canada, and was due to start the first semester of civil engineering this week as his father.
The teammates of Jacobo’s hockey team today received their coffin at Buga Cathedral, with their sportswear, sticks held high and their eyes heavily on the ground, in tribute to their friend.
Against resignation
“I believe that in Colombia impunity has reigned to the point of using a term that is resignation, but we cannot keep thinking from resignation,” Lizcano asked in memory of the young people.
According to the Earl of the NGO Institute of Studies for the Development of Peace (Indepaz), this is the sixth massacre committed in Colombia so far this year.
“It is the sixth massacre and the first month (of 2021) is not over yet,” said Indepaz president Camilo González Posso, who viewed it as “an alert that the UN Council has called on the government to take extraordinary action. to take “.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, on December 15 condemned hundreds of people who died in Colombia last year in massacres or as victims of selective murders, particularly among social leaders and ex-guerrillas.