Luis Antonio Loaiza Triana was disappeared and murdered 23 years ago. Today, his family was able to officially perform his funeral.

In the midst of a heavy atmosphere due to the 23-year absence of the family’s father, when the FARC guerrillas disappeared him near the Lejanias region, in the Meta department, and visibly sad, Gloria Ospina and her three children, William, Oliver and Yeisson, received Luis Antonio Loaiza Triana’s remains, a forced disappearance and homicide victim.

A short but very heartfelt mass, offered by a young Trinitarian priest, was the end of a search and the end of a family reunion achieved by the inter-institutional work of the Unit for the Victims’  Psychosocial Focus Group, the Internal Search Work Group, the Identification and Delivery of Disappeared Persons (GRUBE in its Spanish acronym) and the Transitional Justice of the Prosecutor's Office Direction; a process that is framed in the principles of truth, justice and reparation.

For Gloria, who was Luis’ wife at the time of his disappearance, this ending "is very important, because justice has been done. It has been possible to get him out of where he was for so long, and it was possible to clear up that it was him."

"Burying him in the way it should be given to a person, and the fact it’s not a vacant lot, as if he forgotten, as if he had no family, this is important. It makes one feel better," said William, the eldest son; on April 11, 1999, was nine years old.

Luis Antonio was disappeared and killed by the FARC when they accused him of being a paramilitary, an accusation the guerrilla group would accept as a mistake when they acknowledged the information was false.

With this funeral service, they also bury those difficult times when the FARC "disappeared the father figure and economic aid" as Gloria as Gloria says. They also bury "the suffering, because raising children without a father isn’t easy for any mother."

(End/EG/COG/RAM)