Cali (Colombia) (AFP)

"We, the mothers of the missing, suffer eternal pain," wrote women who are waging an endless quest in messages they distribute to bus passengers in Cali, a city in southwestern Colombia.

"Scholars", as these broken-down mothers, who are aged before the age of tragedy, show signs in the public transport stations, with the photos of their children whose traces are lost in the fratricidal war that is tearing this country for more than half a century.

The question "Dónde está?" (Where is he / she? - ed) overcomes the portraits of each of these civilians and soldiers, men and women, most of them very young.

"It's like a cry that we are launching for the world to know (...) become aware," Maria Elena Gallego told AFP, who blames herself almost for failing to find her missing daughter for eight years.

Nearly 35 women are trying to draw attention to the deep tears caused by the enforced disappearance, board buses, sign around their necks, and distribute their messages.

These texts tell the story of some of the almost 83,000 missing in the conflict, a figure almost three times higher than the total record of the Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean dictatorships of the twentieth century.

"Dear friend (...) I write this letter because I want you to know what my life was like," says the message that Maria Elena gives to the passengers.

- Therapy against a painful absence -

Then, she tells how little she knows about what happened to her daughter, Sandra Viviana Cuellar, environmental engineer: on February 17, 2011, she left for Palmira, a town located about thirty kilometers from Cali, and is never returned. She was 26 years old.

"I got down to the task of investigating her, going from here and there, to attending workshops to learn how to look for my daughter because what I want most is that she reappear, "concludes the message.

For Maria Elena, telling her drama in the bus is a kind of balm against uncertainty.

"At least, we go out, we shout, we talk, we cry, it's an outlet (...) it's a therapy, but the pain, we take it everywhere. to understand each other, "she says.

Although no authority has given her any track on Sandra Viviana's fate, she believes her daughter has disappeared because of her work for the environment. And she thinks she can still find her alive.

A campaign titled # ReconocemosSuBúsqueda (Recognize Their Quest - Ed) was launched this year to highlight the work of these women who, alone, investigate the disappearance of their loved ones.

The initiative is supported by the Missing Persons Research Unit and the Truth Commission, created as part of the 2016 peace agreement that ended more than 50 years of armed confrontation with the powerful guerrillas Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

- Why so much indifference? -

The readers of the messages, also published on the commission's website, can write to victims via social networks.

One of them, Luz Edilia Florez, 57, paid in her flesh for wanting to know what happened to her son José Ernesto Moran, kidnapped in 2002 by a far-right militia in Jamundi ( southwest) after refusing to be enlisted.

When these paramilitaries found out she was investigating, they seized her, raped her, tortured her, then threw her into a torrent, leaving her for dead, she recalls.

Today in the buses of Cali, she distributes her testimony, which also denounces the "indifference" of society towards these dramas.

Hanging on a bar, the huge picture of her son hung around her neck, she sings at a lamenting rhythm, "My son could be in a pit," she admits.

Forced disappearance has been judicially considered a crime in Colombia for 19 years, where the conflict has, over the decades, involved some 30 guerrillas, paramilitary groups and law enforcement agencies.

According to the National Center for Historical Memory, a public entity, at least 82,998 people disappeared by force between 1958 and 2017, but officials are known for only 52% of cases.

For the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, held on August 30 of each year, Luz Edilia only asks that "there are no more missing". And she will continue to look for her son.

© 2019 AFP