Maria Fenix dries tears during an interview about her missing brothers at her home in Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. The twin brothers Alexander and Henry vanished on their way to a business meeting in 2007. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

CALI, Colombia (AP) — From time to time, Gustavo Arbeláez faces relatives whose losses were caused by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the powerful guerrilla group he was part of during Colombia’s five-decade armed conflict.

Tears in their eyes, victims name their loved ones and reprimand him: They had dreams and now they’re gone.

“I have never regretted being a guerrilla member,” said Arbeláez, who signed a divisive peace pact with the government alongside 13,600 FARC fighters in 2016. “But I now see that those of us who fought our country’s war lost sight of what life means.”

The fight among leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug lords and government forces left more than 450,000 people killed and 124,000 disappeared. These figures are on par with other conflicts in Latin America, where thousands have vanished under similar circumstances.

In Colombia, though, a peculiar thing happened. Aiming to heal long-time wounds and build new paths toward reconciliation, dozens of former rebels, officials, forensic anthropologists and religious leaders now work side-by-side in finding their country’s disappeared.

A divisive peace

The 2016 pact earned then-President Juan Manuel Santos a Nobel Peace Prize, but neither he nor his successors have fully addressed endemic violence, displacement and inequality — issues that helped spark Colombia’s conflict in the 1960s.

Since he came into office in 2022, the rebel-turned-president who was sworn in as the country’s first leftist leader, Gustavo Petro, has pushed for “total peace.” His goal is to demobilize all rebels and drug trafficking gangs, but even as a ceasefire was carried out, negotiations with Colombia’s remaining guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), are in crisis and violence escalated. Simultaneously, FARC hold-out groups and trafficking mafias continue to affect the country.

“A peace accord is not only a matter of setting down arms,” said the Rev. Arturo Arrieta, who oversees human rights initiatives in Palmira, a city in southwestern Colombia where efforts to exhume unidentified remains at a church-administered cemetery are underway.

“There’s a delay on the implementation of the accord, it’s underfunded and, although certain mechanisms are working, more actions are needed,” he added.

The peace pact established three crucial institutions for searching efforts: the Truth Commission; the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which encourages offenders to confess their crimes and make restitution actions in exchange for not serving any jail time; and the Search Unit for Disappeared Persons, which traces disappearances within the conflict, conducts exhumations and returns loved ones' remains to hurting relatives like Doris Tejada, whose son Óscar Morales disappeared in 2007.

“It’s been 17 years and still hurts,” said Tejada, who found Morales’ remains in 2024. “I asked God for help because it was difficult to see his bones. We still mourn.”

Morales vanished near the border with Venezuela, where he had traveled from a city neighboring Bogotá to earn money selling clothes. Tejada later learned that he became a “ false positive," one of the 6,402 civilians who were slain by the military and intentionally registered as rebels during the conflict.

Officials have apologized for the killings and some soldiers involved have been sentenced to prison, but many remain reluctant to acknowledge that the military committed war crimes as serious as those carried out by rebels.

“I’ve been very vocal about this,” said Tejada, who tattooed her son’s face on her arm to keep him present. “If this will go unpunished, I want everyone to know that what I cared about the most was rescuing my son’s body and giving him a Christian burial.”

All Colombians deserve to be found

Arbeláez joined FARC in the 1980s in Valle del Cauca, a highly affected region during the conflict. According to him, as a university leader his life was threatened, so he chose the path of arms.

“None of us decided, from a young age, to become paramilitary leaders, rebels, drug dealers or to run a hitman’s organization,” he said. “Certain circumstances led us to embrace those decisions and no one owns the truth, so we are still trying to understand what made us become part of a conflict that drove us to kill one another.”

Government forces and illegal groups were as responsible for massacres, forced recruitment and disappearances. According to the Truth Commission, paramilitary groups committed 45% of the homicides, while guerrillas — most of them FARC — carried out 27% and the government forces 12%.

Among his commitments toward the peace accord, Arbelaez and fellow former FARC rebels have shared information that benefits searching efforts. He also works with Corporación Reencuentros, an organization led by 140 ex-members of FARC who look for disappeared Colombians all over the territory.

Among those missing are rebels who died in combat and were buried by their comrades in the mountains, so that the military did not show them off as trophies.

“When public forces took our men, our souls were ripped apart,” Arbeláez said. “So we disappeared ourselves.”

Given the divisiveness that the peace process inflames, some have disavowed the search of former rebels. According to the Truth Commission, FARC members were responsible for 24% of the disappearances during the conflict and victims have blamed rebels for causing widespread pain through attacks and kidnappings that financed their operations.

During a recent ceremony in which Corporación Reencuentros returned a fighter’s remains to his family in the Colombian city of Cali, Cristián Pérez’s partner said that her search was stigmatized for years, as if relatives of guerilla members had no right to find their loved ones.

“Regardless of the political spectrum, religious preference and ethnicity, we are all human beings and have families that look after us,” said Marcela Rodríguez, of the search unit in Valle del Cauca. “That’s the view from which the unit was born and what we're constantly trying to make awareness of.”

Our peace will be finding our loved ones

Up until late 2024, the search unit had found 31 disappeared Colombians alive and returned 354 remains.

Its personnel has said that bodies may be buried in complex locations: cemeteries, dumps, crematory ovens and strong-current rivers. Given Colombia’s geography and the remoteness in which the conflict developed, teams travel up to 8 hours by mule through rambling roads to reach spots of interest.

Nonetheless, said forensic anthropologist Juan Carlos Benavides on a recently released documentary that details how the unit operates, it’s all worth it. “Finding a body might mean there’s one less person disappeared in Colombia, but it’s the peace of a whole family.”

For those who have searched for their loved ones for decades — signed accord or not — peace has been a troublesome concept to grasp on.

“Every single day, one wonders what happened to them,” said María Fénix Torres, who lives in Bogotá and has searched for her twin brothers since 2007. “It’s terrible.”

Alexander and Henry vanished on their way to a business meeting. From a young age they worked in emerald mining, an industry that has historically suffered under rivalries and violence.

Torres holds a monthly Mass to pray for her brothers and renew her strength. Church is currently the sole meeting place for her family, which grew distant after the disappearances.

“People tell me to stop looking because if I speak badly about the mines, I will get killed,” said Torres. “Well, let them kill me. I will never hide. I will search for them until God allows me to.”

Back in Cali, Melba Bernal also continues her search. Her 34-year-old sister, who was member of a political party founded by rebels, disappeared in 1988.

“I’ve been searching for my sister for 36 years and I find this inconceivable, painful and unfair,” Bernal said. “I ask God to bring her back to me, to bring me justice.”

Witness testimonies led her to believe that Olga was captured by intelligence police officers who tortured her, then transferred her to a hospital to treat her wounds and ended up taking her to a police commander who denies any wrongdoing.

Bernal said her mother always searched for her sister alive, and until her death two years ago, she used to look at homeless people’s faces, hoping to find her.

It’s painful, Bernal said, that her sister’s son, now 41, has no memories of Olga. He barely speaks of her, but Bernal believes that if her remains are ever found, he would spread her ashes over water.

“In the ocean, in a river, one can find rest, fluency, peace.”

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