In the massacre that took place in the school of this township, 13 people were murdered on April 25, 2001.

In Alto San Juan, a village south of the municipality of San Pedro de Urabá, the community affected by armed conflict is working to reconstruct the memory of massacre that took place 18 years ago and the other events that affected their communities.

After having made for the first time the commemoration of the massacre, which took place on April 25, 2001, and getting it to be institutionalized as the day of memory and solidarity with the victims, the Alto San Juan community (La Rula and El Rayo Villages), has taken the road to rebuild the memory, and the country knows the facts that happened there, including this massacre that took the lives of 13 people in the school of this village, in addition to the death of the president of the Board of Community Action of La Rula.

This community that rebuilds itself, wants the country to know its history and to be able to re-establish its rights. Has overcome the fear and has met after many years as a community and now started on the road to be recognized by the State as subjects of collective redress, with the support of the Municipal Ombudsman.

"Today we are very grateful for the entities that have accompanied us as the Victims Unit, we are striving to move forward our territory, today we see a light of hope and we hope to continue counting on the national government to resume our dreams and do not repeat everything we have gone through, we ask that the truth of our territory not be left unpunished and that we be included in the collective reparation route, this has been our lifelong dream, "said Wilton González, from El Rayo township.

This accompaniment by the institutions has been represented through the processes of returns and relocations, among other programs that have benefited them as victims of armed conflict.

For its part, Delcy Garcia, coordinator of the victims' table said that "the South sector has changed a lot thanks to the accompaniment of different institutions and thanks to the work of social leaders and community leaders, we want to continue moving forward".

They hope, in addition to reconstructing their history, to have a chapter in the memory of the country, they have started with the compilation of the stories on video, of what was the day of the massacre, when around 5 in the morning about 300 armed men broke into the sector taking families from their homes and then locked them in school, there were about 48 people who they said, would be the victims that day, but as Edwin Luna, president of the Community Action Board, Alto de San Juan and survivor from the massacre, "They locked us up since 5 o'clock in the morning, and there Mrs. Lucelly Miranda suffered an abortion, we tried to advocate so that at least they would attend to her but they were not moved. The order was to kill all of us, but miraculously, because of harassment in another sector they left someone in charge, that person freed some of us, we ran towards the mountain, but on the return of the one who was at the front, he complained that the order was kill us all the 48 that we had there".

Given these facts, 64 families and 376 people had to move to the head of San Pedro de Urabá municipality, others opted to go to the department of Córdoba. To these facts are added the affectations to their political conventions and loss of legal status of the villages, in addition to the ways of exercising leadership of these villages.

Today, Alto San Juan, La Rula, and El Rayo township, not only commemorated the 18 years of the massacre, but are willing to rebuild and raise their voices to be taken into account in the face of the effects of the wave of violence that was exacerbated throughout this region, which is why they lead the initiative so that their stories and other files are part of memory of the country and of the processes of justice and truth that are circumscribed as a hope to embark on the path of truth , memory and integral repair.

(CYT/CMC/LMY)