This was the massacre of a group of street dwellers inside a university in Barranquilla

On March 3, 1992, Barranquilla was immersed in the Carnival, enjoying one of the most important festivals in the country, where colors and life are celebrated to the rhythm of cumbias, tropical music and marimondas. And like a story from some forgotten book of Latin American magical realism where tragedy is mixed with celebration and joy, the inhabitants of the Atlantic capital woke up with the news that would lengthen the colors of the celebration.

The newspaper records of the time starkly narrate what for many is still an inexplicable and absurd act of terror typical of twisted and criminal minds. The main newspaper of that city, El Heraldo de Barranquilla, titled: 'Murders of homeless people were committed in Unilibre'.

This headline confirmed what many already knew, within the Free University of Barranquilla 10 street inhabitants were shot and beaten to be able to use their bodies inside the medical school and, supposedly, trade in organs.

According to the records of the time, at dawn of that weekend, one of the inhabitants of the street, identified as Omar Enrique Hernández López, was walking around the outskirts of the Free University collecting garbage and cartons and then reselling them when he was invited by the orderly who was on duty at that time to collect some papers old people within the institution.

The waste picker accepted the invitation and when he was inside the premises he received a blow to the head, which he intended to end his life. Upon regaining consciousness inside the amphitheater, Hernandez managed to escape and ran to the nearest police station.

When the uniformed arrived, they did not believe in his story, but due to the insistence of the recycler and the visible wounds they decided to go to the premises to check what was happening.

Already at the university, the nervous guards refused entry to the police officers, which aroused their suspicion. After several minutes and the arrival of more agents allowed the security guards to give in to pressure and let them enter the amphitheater.

“Here, here are the other bodies,” Hernandez shouted to the police.

The image, according to the police accounts to the media of the time, was shocking and frightening. Inside the cold room were the bodies of the indigent, who had bullet impacts and visible injuries from beatings, and organs that had already been removed from the bodies floated in formaldehyde buckets.

Among the bodies found were that of El Cartagenero, a 40-year-old man, and that of Diana Leiva, La Chupichupi, a 16-year-old girl, mentally retarded, who had been living with garbage collectors for a few years.

A judicial and forensic investigation was immediately launched to determine what had happened. One of the first people to speak out was the then director of the Office of Legal Medicine, Pedro Carreño, who assured El País de España that the presence of these bodies inside the university was strange.

From the University, they only succeeded in saying that it was false news, as noted by Alfonso Tamayo, senator and president of the Free University Foundation at the time.

“Even the university cannot explain the presence of the bodies, because Barranquilla is paralyzed by the carnival; when the situation normalizes, things will be clarified,” the senator told a local radio station.

There are few data on the intellectual authors and the effectiveness of justice, since one of the guards involved Santander Sabalza Estrada is free; the manager of the university Eugenio Castro Ariza, who, according to the authorities, was the mastermind of the massacre and was released in 1993, as was Pedro Viloria Leal , Sebastián Cuello Barbes, Saul Hernandez Otero, Armando Urieles and Elifrido Arias Veal.

As if that were not enough, a former investigator of the former F2, now the Sijín Judicial Police, told El Heraldo that the crimes of street dwellers went unpunished.

For now, all that remains of the victims are replicas of the faces of those killed who were never recognized or claimed by their relatives and about the university, the institution of higher education was not linked as a subject of proceedings.

KEEP READING: