In the Youth Week, the testimony of Carlos Mario González, a 26-year-old young man who, despite losing a leg due to the war, insists on moving forward with tenacity and bravado.

By: César A. Marín C.

“We were entering the forest when I heard an explosion that lifted me; When I reacted and tried to stand up, I couldn't find my left leg, I couldn't feel it. I felt a very strong anguish, I thought about my mother and my brothers, because I believed that I was going to die”.

That anguish belongs to Carlos Mario González Montiel and the events, which left him without his lower left limb, occurred in June 2018 near Tarazá (Antioquia). That blast made him one of the approximately 11.730 people who have been victims of antipersonnel mines, unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive device in Colombia.

Carlos Mario is 26 years old and the fifth of ten siblings. His childhood passed between the urban and rural areas of his native San Carlos, in Córdoba. “Childhood was very beautiful because even though I didn't have many friends, I did share a lot with my brothers; we are very close, we played and we had both happy moments and sad moments”.

Childhood, elementary school and adolescence were exhausted, although he was left with high school: he only reached the ninth grade, paradoxically when he had already taken a love to study.

After some time, the economic situation of Carlos and his family weakened, to which was added a physical disability of his mother. At that time he learned through a friend that a farm in Tarazá needed people to work in livestock. "They made contact with the farm administrator, we spoke with him and then two friends and I, who was 23 years old at that time, left."

The tragedy

They arrived in the town on May 31, 2018 and the next day, June 1, they were already at the farm. There, Carlos Mario devoted himself mainly to milking, fumigating and washing cattle.

Due to the delicate situation of public order, they were warned that there were illegal armed groups in that area and that they should only dedicate themselves to work in the tasks for which they had been hired, to avoid making comments or generating gossip about what was happening in the region.

He had only been working there for two weeks when he came face to face with death. It was Saturday June 16. “As always, we got up to work at 4:30 in the morning, and together with a partner we were in charge of going on horseback and bringing the cattle to the corral for milking. While in these we realized that a batch of steers had left the property and had gone to a neighboring farm. They sent us in a beast to bring the cattle and we did it”, he recalls.

The cattle had escaped because of a damaged clasp. When they were getting ready to fix the wires, they realized that they needed a couple of sticks to the gate will be well reinforced.

It was around 11:40 in the morning. They decided then to get off the horses, cross the road and enter the forest on the other side and cut the sticks to completely fix the clasp.

¡At that moment, boom! Carlos heard an explosion that took him into the air. After a few moments on the ground, he was able to react and tried to stand up, but when he tried to feel his left leg, he could not find it, he did not feel it. Anxiety engulfed him. His mother and brothers filled his memories because he believed he was going to die.

“My partner was in shock, he only had some splinters on his body, and he stood like a statue. He was like gone, like stunned, he didn't know what to do. So I decided to crawl a bit. " As he was hitting the road, two boys on a motorcycle passed him and took him to a house located about 400 meters from the scene of the explosion. “There I realized that my foot was all shattered and that my leg was very affected from the ankle upwards. My partner was taken away on a motorcycle to a health post, while they called a car for me because I was bleeding a lot, and they couldn't transport me to the hospital on a motorcycle”.

That car never showed up. The people in the house where he was taken put a tourniquet above his knee and, around five in the afternoon, a vehicle passed in which they took him up. Arriving at La Caucana, they found an Army checkpoint, whose truck they passed him so that a nurse soldier could channel him and give him first aid. When they arrived at the health post, they washed, cleaned and bandaged his leg. After a while, in a Red Cross truck, they transferred him to the Tarazá hospital. It was seven o'clock in the evening. "I am miraculously alive, because from the moment of the accident to arriving at the hospital about eight hours passed," says Carlos Mario.

At the hospital they channeled him, gave him a catheter and an injection and he lost consciousness. He woke up the following Tuesday in San Vicente de Paúl hospital in Medellín.

There he lasted a month and a half, and endured four surgeries. “The first surgery was the normal one to disinfect and heal the wound and in that one they amputated me a little above the ankle. As the infection continued, I had a second surgery and I was amputated at the height of the twin. As the infection continued, again a third surgery and I was amputated from below the knee and finally a fourth surgery, in which I was amputated from above the knee. In any case, I felt that I was saved from dying, I felt that I was born again”.

Carlos Mario was accompanied by his older sister, after the administrator of the farm where the young man worked notified his family of the accident and sent them money to accompany him during his hospitalization in Medellín. In the capital of Antioquia he gave his statement before the Municipal Ombudsman to enter the comprehensive reparation route that the Colombian State manages for the victims of armed conflict.

Back in San Carlos, through a friend he managed to get a US foundation that works with survivors of antipersonnel mines to donate a prosthesis. Unfortunately, he used it for about five months and could not use it again, since a bone grew and the pain and discomfort was quite strong.

Currently, he is in the process with his EPS to authorize a prosthesis with a new design.

He did not hear from the partner he was with when the accident again; I had met him a few days ago. The two friends with whom he traveled to work on the farm returned to San Carlos at different times.

Compensation arrives

At the beginning of May of this year, Carlos Mario was contacted by the Victims Unit to deliver his administrative compensation as a victim of armed conflict, an economic resource that he received two weeks later. He immediately looked for a lot in San Carlos and the materials to build his house, which he estimates is 60% complete.

Before disbursing the money, the Unit provides the beneficiaries of the compensation with guidance on the appropriate investment of resources, hoping that they will take advantage of this income to improve their quality of life, especially in study and housing.

“I want to finish my house to set up a store there. I think it could be a good business”, says Carlos Mario, because the house is located about a kilometer from the urban area of ​​San Carlos and there is no business there. "It would be to make a living because of my disability it is difficult for me to do other jobs".

And so life progresses, between joys and troubles. “We play soccer with my brothers and I play them as a goalkeeper,” he says about his physical recovery. However, these days are sad for the recent death of his mother, Delmira Rosa González Montiel, whom he remembers as a person with a generous soul and beautiful feelings.

"I believe that having saved me from dying was a blessing from God, you have to value what you have, value life, value the air you breathe and value the people who are by your side", he says.

Today, he wants to finish building his house, start his business, finish high school, and hopefully study gastronomy. An antipersonnel mine got in the way of his dreams, but Carlos Mario is determined enough to achieve what he wants and make the new opportunity that life gave him worthwhile.