Desapariciones forzadas - Madres Buscadoras de Colombia y Ecuador. Entrevista con Luz Elena Galeano

What happens when a government deploys the military to the streets with an open letter? This already happened in Colombia under the government of Álvaro Uribe. Comuna 13 in Medellín is an open wound with more than 500 disappeared persons, but across Colombia the total exceeds 137,000. ✍️The discourse of security enabled these massacres. Today, almost 24 years later, only 7 bodies have been found in La Escombrera, and this June 2026, the courts convicted Santiago Uribe, the former president's brother, for these crimes. We spoke further with Luz Elena Galeano, a mother searching for her missing child from the collective Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad (Women Walking for Truth), who tells us her story and how she finds similarities between her experience and what Ecuador is facing today with the so-called Internal Armed Conflict, which continues to claim victims of forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. 📚This interview was conducted in partnership with the Department of Sociology and Gender at FLACSO - Ecuador, as part of the discussion "The Families Are Right: Disappearances and Community Protection in Times of Violence in Ecuador." #Colombia #HumanRights #ArmedConflict #Ecuador