The coffin of Martha Abarca Vilches, 17, arrived at the cemetery far from her family. His mother asked to be connected via video call to be able to attend the funeral. Martha lost her life in a bombing by the Military Forces against a guerrilla camp in the jungle of the Guaviare department, in which seven minors died. He did not go to the funeral for fear that war would knock on his door again. For fear of being killed. In less than two months he lost three of his minor children. In addition to Martha, Javier Alcides, 15, and Luis Carlos, 10, were victims of another military bombing, this time in the Amazon, on October 1. The first appears in the official list of victims. And the second, despite surviving, is missing.
The two attacks, which occurred in the same region of the country, aimed to strike a blow against the alias Ivan Mordiscothe dissident who operates and commands in the area with an army of minors that he uses as human shields. The operations, which opened fire in the middle of the dense jungle, left behind scenes that are difficult to reconstruct: scattered bodies, dismantled camps and a silence that makes it impossible to know precisely who was there and in what conditions. The bombings, which have been reactivated in the last four months, have put Gustavo Petro’s government on the ropes, which during the election campaign had promised to take care of the child victims of the war, but which also faces the urgency of containing dissidents.
The drama of the current dynamics of the war in Colombia is reflected in the family universe of Sonia, mother of the three minors who, out of fear, asks not to reveal her true identity. A month ago, he welcomed in a coffin his son Javier Alcides, one of those killed by the Military Forces in the municipality of Puerto Santander (Amazon), when the military attempted a coup against Ivan Mordisco. The dissident managed to escape, according to the Ministry of Defense, but the alleged security circle was seriously affected. The result of that operation was four deaths. The people the Military Forces described as personal escorts of one of Colombia’s most wanted criminals were, in reality, four minors recruited by that illegal group.
With the mourning still open, Sonia now finds herself faced with the impossibility of burying her daughter Marta, killed in the same circumstances as her brother. Marcial Quiñonez, lawyer for the Legal and Charitable Foundation for Peace, assures that, according to the Forensic Medicine report, “the minor was eight weeks pregnant at the time of the military operation.” In the early morning of November 13, military forces attacked the area using three planes dropping explosives from the air. The death toll was 19 people, including at least seven minors, all boys between 13 and 17 years old.
The military action, one of many that the government conducted against dissidents, quickly became a national and political scandal for President Petro. Meanwhile, Sonia faced, in silence, the disappearance of her son Luis Carlos Abarca Vilches, 10 years old, injured on October 1st in a similar operation in the Amazon. Last November 20, an administrative court in Bogota ordered, in response to a habeas corpus According to lawyer Marcial Quiñonez, the Colombian Institute of Family Assistance (ICBF) and Forensic Medicine provide official information on the whereabouts of the minor. So far, however, there are no more clues.
In response to the complaint presented by the family, the commander of the Army’s special forces, General Omar Moreno, denied that Luis Carlos was included in the official lists of those captured or those subjected to this operation. The ICBF also told the family that he is not in their custody and ordered entities to undertake a search across the Amazon region to find him. The complaint filed by the family for forced disappearance reads: “The minor’s mother has absolutely no knowledge of his whereabouts, she has had no contact with him and no authority has provided official information on his whereabouts or conditions.” The family remains uncertain, in the shadow of two official operations that revive the fragility of children in rural areas of Colombia.
A growing plague
The recruitment of boys and girls in the country is one of the least documented crimes in Colombia, with a greater risk for those affected, but more visible in large rural areas. Through deception, job offers or promises of protection and wealth, illegal immigrants take advantage of the fragility of childhood and the absence of the State and have filled their ranks with minors. In 2024, the Prosecutor’s Office received 604 formal complaints across the country, although the under-registrations are countless. According to a Special Jurisdiction for Peace report on the scourge, those most affected are between 12 and 17 years old, and one of the most common ways to attract their attention is through social networks such as TikTok.
Between 2018 and 2023, five years in which the dissident groups of the extinct FARC strengthened, the Office of the Ombudsman reported 299 early warnings, of which 251 related to the recruitment and use of minors. According to complaints from leaders trying to protect and prevent this plague, they are sometimes used as informers or informants bell ringers to warn of the presence of Army troops, in exchange for daily payments starting at 100,000 pesos ($25). When the group decides to formalize their entry, they are taken to indoctrination schools to teach them everything from military doctrine to how to use a weapon. They are then transformed into child soldiers, who are then used by commanders as shields to avoid being attacked or shirk their responsibilities in war.
The debate over the application of international humanitarian law in internal armed conflict has filled the headlines over the past week in Colombia. The government and military forces have closed ranks in defense of the bombing, but some progressive bases have criticized the president for ordering actions that he vehemently criticized when serving as an opposition lawmaker to right-wing governments. Meanwhile, the lists with the names of the minors killed in the operations become known one by one, and the war continues to take hold with hundreds of children who no one has managed to protect and who are now mourned by mothers like Sonia.
