I met my sister again 30 years after the volcano buried my city and separated my family

At just a week old, Jenifer de la Rosa received the nickname “daughter of the volcano” because she survived the avalanche that buried her city. On November 13, 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted and released a torrent of mud, water and rocks that destroyed everything in its path, including the city of Armero, where de la Rosa lived with her parents. Around 20,000 people, out of a total of 29,000 inhabitants, died in the Colombian city during the tragedy. Another around 5,000 people died in neighboring municipalities. Armero is today an open-air memorial in the department of Tolima, in central Colombia. Tourists and victims visit the site every year and visit ruins, parks, the cemetery and various monuments. Some survivors continue to live in nearby cities. Others, including hundreds of children, suffered very different fates. “I was adopted by a Spanish couple and didn’t return to Colombia for 30 years. Then, I discovered that I had a sister, who I never knew anything about; neither me, nor my adoptive parents”, says De la Rosa, now a journalist, in an interview with BBC News Mundo (BBC’s Spanish service). Around 500 children were placed for adoption through “regular and irregular processes” after the tragedy, according to the Armando Armero Foundation, dedicated to rebuilding the municipality’s memory and reconnecting adoptees to their families of origin. Some of these survivors live in Colombia; others, abroad — like De la Rosa, who lives in Spain. The foundation believes that some of the so-called “armero boys”, now adults, do not even know that they are from the city. For the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, due to the legal gaps in force at the time, it was necessary to investigate each of the irregular processes reported by survivors like De la Rosa. Baby among rubble Ashes had been falling on Armero since the early afternoon hours of that 13th. It was a foreshadowing of what would happen around 9pm (local time). Flows from the volcano, more than 5,000m above sea level, melted around 10% of the ice and snow on the slopes. The melt led to landslides and flooded everything below. Along the way, the water mixed with the soil and sediments on the slopes, which turned into a kind of wet cement that slid without control. These flows, known as lahars (a mixture of water, ice, pumice and other rock debris), filled with boulders of various sizes, destroyed Armero and injured its inhabitants. Tens of thousands died under rubble or asphyxiated in the mud. Dorian Tapazco Téllez was one of the few survivors. With her one-week-old daughter in her arms, she arrived at a shelter where there were other survivors. “I was the youngest baby there. A Red Cross rescuer told me that my mother returned to the rubble of the house and never came back. I never heard anything more about my mother, except that she changed her name,” says De la Rosa. Her father died in the tragedy, or at least that’s what her adoptive parents were told. They never knew that the baby they welcomed had an older sister, who had also been put up for adoption some time before, elsewhere. A life full of questions De la Rosa says that from an early age he wanted to know where he came from. “When I looked in the mirror and saw how different I was from my parents, family, cousins ​​and friends, I always wanted to know my origins,” he says. Her adoptive parents picked her up from an orphanage in Manizales, 174 km from Armero and very close to Nevado del Ruiz, when she was just over 1 year old, and took her to live in Valladolid, 200 km north of Madrid, the capital of Spain. “My parents told me since I was little that I was from Colombia and that my life was related to the Nevado del Ruiz volcano,” she says. In Valladolid at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s, the Latin American migratory wave that would settle strongly in Spain in the following years had not yet arrived. “I was targeted a lot. The question of where I am from was frequent and continues to be asked to this day”, she says. De la Rosa says that, as a teenager, he decided not to talk about Colombia anymore. The topic irritated her. He blocked the past for years and then moved to other countries. One of them was Brazil, where he reconnected with the nature of his continent, with another reality — and where, interestingly, his best friend was Colombian. She returned to Spain and, shortly after, at age 30, she made it a goal to return to Colombia on her birthday. It was then that he thought about looking for answers and making a documentary about his own life. An obsession: Dorian Tapazco Téllez In 2016, De la Rosa took the first steps in what he calls an obsession with finding his biological mother. He contacted the Armando Armero Foundation, did research, watched videos of adopted people, recorded phone calls, and traveled to Colombia for the first time. “There, I learned about the reality of so many testimonies; sons, daughters, parents who were looking for someone who could perfectly be me.” The pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. “I met a woman whose house I went to when I was little and where I learned to walk. And the Red Cross rescuer who took care of me as a baby in the shelter and who told me about my mother and how I looked like her”, she says. “It was something very strong for an adopted person. Although I couldn’t find my mother, I understood her context, her life and Colombia in 1985, with all the problems that sum up how difficult it is to find my biological mother”, he continues. De la Rosa’s life is marked by two dates that still torment the country today. She was born on November 6, 1985, the same day that M-19 guerrillas attacked the Palace of Justice in Bogotá (Colombian capital), and the military responded with an operation that left around 100 people dead. “It was the Colombia of the FARC, the M-19 and drug trafficking. When the volcano erupts on the 13th and destroys an entire city, the country collapses. It was the worst time to be born”, he analyzes. De la Rosa attributes part of what happened to adoptions like hers to that turbulent and chaotic period. A note in a newspaper She typed her mother’s name into Google many times without finding results, until one day she came across a note published in a newspaper. An adopted woman, Ángela Rendón, then 32 years old and from the city of Barrancabermeja, was also looking for information about her mother, who left her with a caregiver when she was 3 months old and never returned. The mother’s name was Dorian Tapazco Téllez. “The first thing I did was protect myself and think that there could have been a change of names, but that I couldn’t have a sister,” says De la Rosa. After the connection was established, the Armando Armero Foundation took action. Francisco González, director of the entity, sought out Rendón to explain the case, collect a DNA sample and compare it with De la Rosa’s. Weeks later, the test came back positive. De la Rosa and Rendón discovered they had a sister three decades later. “Oh, is it true, Francisco? Oh, how happy”, says Rendón through tears upon receiving the news from González and De la Rosa, in a moment recorded in the documentary. The sisters met at González’s house. When they saw each other, they shyly shook hands and exchanged a “hi, how are you?” “The first time I saw her, the hug was felt, I thought she was a stranger, someone from outside. My first reaction was cold, but she overflowed with love”, describes De la Rosa. She, in shock, had difficulty showing emotions, but Rendón hugged her and asked them to make up for lost time and act from now on like sisters. “When I received the news, my birthday was approaching and I thought it was the best gift possible. When I met her, I thought it was a dream,” Rendón tells BBC News Mundo. “At first I didn’t see any similarities, but then I met Paola, my niece, and I was struck by how much she looked like me when I was a teenager,” says De la Rosa. The reunion gained repercussions in Colombia. The sisters held a press conference next to the foundation that brought together dozens of journalists. “This family relationship grew and, at the same time, proved to be so complex. It’s still difficult for me to face that I have a sister. For her, however, it cost little. I wanted to share, find the family”, reveals De la Rosa. Frustrations About their mother, the sisters found few answers. They learned that she went to prison and changed her name, something difficult for De la Rosa to understand: “People tell me that it is possible that my mother was a person displaced by the armed conflict and that, therefore, she managed to change her name.” Along the way, De la Rosa encountered several frustrations. A silence surrounds the conditions under which many children were adopted — as in her case — and information about the existence of the other sister was “deliberately” hidden in the medical records, according to the journalist. “We are told that, at the time, officials thought the best thing was to facilitate the paperwork and thus make it simpler for us to find homes, but there were also interests,” he says. She came across the case of an adopted person whose father paid US$5,000 (around R$27,000 in values ​​converted at the current exchange rate, but not adjusted for inflation). “There was such a lack of control that, in my host home, they thought for a long time that I had ended up in Italy and not Spain”, he says. De la Rosa feels that some people he has met know more than they are letting on. “I understand that they are people who are suspicious due to the trauma of war, but I have suspicions. The same thing happens with Ángela. In relation to the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, I feel that there is a lot of veneer and a lack of transparency.” The Armando Armero Foundation and other victims have repeatedly asked the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare for more information about the protocols used to place children for adoption following the Armero tragedy. For the 40th anniversary, the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare announced the digitization and recovery of the so-called “Red Book” of the tragedy, which brings together part of the records of minors rescued and placed under the institute’s protection after the avalanche. The initiative is part of the strategy with which the organization, currently headed by Astrid Cáceres, intends to contribute to the recovery of the victims’ memory. Regarding possible irregularities in adoptions, Cáceres told BBC News Mundo that, at the time, there were “gaps” in the legislation that made it difficult to classify cases as irregular or not. “To do this, we need to investigate everyone before drawing conclusions,” he said. According to Francisco González, director of the Armando Armero Foundation, more than 400 families and 75 registered adoptees underwent DNA testing thanks to the foundation’s work. So far, four reunions have been possible through genetic comparison. Every year, dozens of survivors continue to come to Armero to ask, to hope that their sons or daughters will show up someday. “These are not people who seek to have their children’s bodies back, but who have seen their children on the covers of magazines or on lists of rescued people. The country owes a historical debt to them”, concludes De la Rosa.

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