{"id":95998,"date":"2019-09-09T12:42:26","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T19:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/searching-for-the-80000-disappeared-in-colombias-brutal-civil-war"},"modified":"2019-09-09T12:42:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T19:42:26","slug":"searching-for-the-80000-disappeared-in-colombias-brutal-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/searching-for-the-80000-disappeared-in-colombias-brutal-civil-war","title":{"rendered":"Searching for the 80,000 Disappeared in Colombia\u2019s Brutal Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Searching for the 80,000 Disappeared in Colombia&#039;s Brutal Civil War\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cQ8N3gpJYcc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>SAN JOSE DEL GUAVIARE, COLOMBIA \u2014 Ceraf\u00edn M\u00e9ndez was out drinking one night when a fight broke out with his neighbor. The next day, three FARC soldiers came for him, bound his hands, and led him away.<\/p>\n<p>That was the last time his family would see him alive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was worried he had been left in the bush and eaten by animals, as if he were a dog,\u201d said his wife, Miriam M\u00e9ndez. \u201c20 days passed, a month and nothing, nothing was found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thirty years later, M\u00e9ndez was finally given some closure when the Colombian government successfully identified her husband\u2019s remains, and scheduled an event to bring them home for a proper burial.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI finally feel like my mind was put to rest. Knowing his final location makes us feel less like he was abandoned alone,\u201d M\u00e9ndez\u2019s daughter Mary told VICE News. \u201cBefore this, it was like he was forgotten in time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>M\u00e9ndez\u2019s story isn\u2019t uncommon in Colombia. More than 80,000 Colombians were violently disappeared at the hands of Guerrilla groups, armed gangs, and government forces during a half century of civil war. And for decades, their cases went cold, ignored or out of reach of authorities.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/searching-for-the-80000-disappeared-in-colombias-brutal-civil-war\">Continue reading \u201cSearching for the 80,000 Disappeared in Colombia\u2019s Brutal Civil War\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SAN JOSE DEL GUAVIARE, COLOMBIA \u2014 Ceraf\u00edn M\u00e9ndez was out drinking one night when a fight broke out with his neighbor. The next day, three FARC soldiers came for him, bound his hands, and led him away. That was the last time his family would see him alive. \u201cI was worried he had been left [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}