Every time that the march of the guerrillas who lashed the region of the La Mina village was heard in the Herrera Marín farm-house, In the jurisdiction of the Antioquian municipality of Argelia, Octavio Jesús Herrera Montoya and Faneri Marín Navarro ran to hide Estefanía, Caterine and Dani Mauricio, their grandchildren.
Nerves and fear seized the people of the region and they did not escape from it. It is not known how many times it happened, the account lost it a while ago. In the cupboards, under the beds, in some space in the kitchen the children would end up, who were in danger of being recruited by force by the FARC.
It may interest you: (Daniel Martínez flew in the Paris-Nice time trial, Nairo gave ground)
Thanks to her grandparents, Estefanía avoided carrying a rifle, long walks, confrontations between the guerrillas and the Army and the paramilitaries, and, incidentally, death.
The current cyclist, who on Sunday was crowned champion of the Vuelta al Tolima and has the option of going to compete in the Giro d’Italia, he was terrified when he realized that the guerrilla group was close by.
She lived with her grandparents because María, her mother, and the one who took them to Algeria when Estefanía was a few months old, did not work, and her father, John Jairo, was never by her side.
It was necessary to get rid of being found, as it was not only known that they would be forced to fight, but that the recruited women were sexually abused and then forced to abort.
Estefanía experienced first hand, alongside her family, the horror of war, the danger, desperation and anguish when she came face to face with the guerrillas, who mercilessly raised their weapons, loaded them and fired indiscriminately at the population. .
Although Octavio and Faneri were fortunate that the guerrillas never found their grandchildren, Well, it wasn’t difficult for the subversive group to arrive at the La Estrella school at any moment, force the students and teachers to go out to the patio and interrogate them.
“I saw a lot of murders, too many. I witnessed entire families being killed. They didn’t care about anything, the task was to annihilate them”
“Karina would arrive and ask if anyone had seen the Army or the paramilitaries. If someone denied it, they didn’t forgive her, one of them killed him, in front of us. And if they didn’t want to go to the guerrillas, the end was the same. They were very strong, hard moments, difficult to forget”, recalled Stefanía, the rider of the Colombia Tierra de Atletas team.
“I saw a lot of murders, too many. I witnessed entire families being killed. They did not care about anything, the task was to annihilate them. Young people were taken away; Fortunately, in my family we never fell for the recruitment, but we got tired of it and had to leave the field, ”he said through tears.
It’s just that there was no peace and the situation on the farm was not the best. His mother never worked and the children were raised by their grandparents, who grew cane, coffee, corn and panela, but the resources were few.
“It was our turn to help. We studied and I was in charge of milking the cow we had, we didn’t have a name for her, but I remember that she was what we did. I liked cycling from that time, I wanted a bicycle, but there was no money, it was scarce. My mom couldn’t buy it for me, we didn’t have money for food now we did for a bicycle, ”she said.
start from scratch
Due to the above, they made the decision to leave the region. At the age of 12, Estefanía grabbed a suitcase and with Caterine, her mother, and her grandparents took a bus to Medellín, the city where she was born on May 31, 1994.
“One was calm at school or on the farm and from one moment to another the shootings, the bombings began. Helicopters flew overhead and unleashed bursts of machine gun fire and on the ground the guerrillas responded. In the midst of the crossfire, we had to hide, we threw ourselves on the floor, but those were very difficult times, we lived with death,” said Estefanía, who recalled that when they left the farm, her mother left Dani Mauricio to an aunt. .
They knew they couldn’t go back; if they did, the safest thing was that the guerrillas would look for them, find them and kill them.
Estefanía and her family became part of the official statistics that warn that between 1997 and 2010 in Algeria 14,769 people were displaced, more than 70 percent of the population, and some 5,661 peasants never returned to the municipality, according to data from the local mayor’s office . The grandparents did not last long in Medellin. At the risk of being killed, they returned to the farm, but the rest remained under conditions that were not the best.
They had to pay a rent that was worth 150,000 pesos. However, they did not give up. They knew that taking a step back would be reliving the horror of war, and that was what they wanted to avoid.
Caterine was a seller of natural products, green tea, while Estefania made a living selling incense. “She was 15 years old and I was 12. It wasn’t easy, but we had to get the rent, which was a lot of money. My mom couldn’t stand it either and went back to the farm, ”she specified.
the first bike
Cycling was always on his mind. And in Medellín, well, a region of cyclists, it was a little easier to get a bike and ride. Estefania gathered some money and bought an old iron one. The first thing she did was paint it pink and mark it with her name on one side and her last name on the other.
Once, when he was riding a bicycle, a man approached him. She remembers that his name was Gustavo, but she doesn’t know what her last name is. He told her that she had a club of hers, that he invited her to join, because she could see her talent. Estefania accepted, but she took it as a hobby.
“I went to the velodrome and the DT of Antioquia, Benjamín Laverde, saw me riding under the track and told me I had a good cadence. I got excited. He put down a track bike, I rode it, I liked it, and I started as a junior,” he recalls.
In the midst of difficulties she had a boyfriend and from that union Julio César was born, who today is 10 years old. He is her impulse and sometimes she thinks that having been a mother so young (at 16 years old) helped her to mature.
“With Julio, life took another course. The father does not help me, nor does the family, but the child visits them, I want him to know that he has a family, “he said.
The information from Algeria was not the best. Octavio and Faneri were still alive, although harassed by the guerrillas, but Estefanía and Caterine received bad news: María, their mother, entered the world of drugs.
“Everything was very difficult for me. That topic of my mom hit me hard. Seeing her in that state is not easy for us. She is in her house, but she lives in bad conditions.”
“Everything was very difficult for me. That topic of my mom hit me hard. Seeing her in that state is not easy for us. She is in her house, but she lives in bad conditions. We paid her for a rehabilitation center in Rionegro, she turned out fine, but she returned to town and is in the same situation. I talk to her and when she needs to, I call a store and pay her a market, but she doesn’t leave that bad path, “said Estefanía.
In the midst of problems, cycling and work, he did not stop studying. Estefanía validated her high school at the Instituto Porfirio Barba Jacob. She began to study English, but her training, travel and concentrations prevented her from continuing.
He has been in teams like Coldeportes-Claro, Coldeportes-Zenú and today Colombia Tierra de Atletas.
“Being in a professional team gives me the necessary sustenance to support my son, for his study, so that he eats well, something that we did not do on the farm. I try to give them what I didn’t have and do what they didn’t do for me. I don’t want him to go through those things that I went through,” she said.
His career has been successful. What was a hobby became her profession and, proud of it, she talks about the titles of the Marinilla Classic and the Women’s Tour (2018).
He has been a bronze medalist in the 2019 road nationals. In 2020 he won gold in the team pursuit and bronze in the individual in the track national. He got third place in the individual time trial of the last National Games and was silver in the 2018 nationals.
Colombia Tierra de Fins became the first team in the country to be invited to the Giro d’Italia, currently the most important women’s race in the world, and Estefanía knows that it is a good option to appear.
The Giro will be held from May 6 to 29 and the best in the world will be there. Among them, Estefanía, who makes a stop along the way, remembers the hard years in Algeria and compares life with him today.
His grandparents sold the farm and returned to Medellín. Octavio lives in a home where he is being treated for a brain disease, and Faneri lives in a nearby house.
Estefania has her life made. She fights daily on the bike to get Julius Caesar forward. She sees life differently, enjoys her triumphs and is proud of Caterine, who has two children and is studying medicine, of Sebastián Afanador, her boyfriend, who is the commercial manager of Oquendo Shop, and of Dani Mauricio, who earns a living in a flower farm.
“I remember so many bad things that it is impossible to erase everything, but everything has already happened. It is not easy to turn the page and maybe my mother is still on drugs because she has not been able to overcome all those problems,” added Estefanía, the champion cyclist who fled from the guerrillas.
It may interest you: (Egan Bernal: ‘I’m practically ready to go to the Tour de France’)
Lisandro Rengifo
Editor of THE TIME
@lisandroabel
#Estefanía #Herrera #champion #cyclist #fled #guerrillas