María Villamizar came to think the “worst” when she heard that 16 people had disappeared in La Grita, an agricultural city where she lives in Venezuela, famous for being a meeting point for Catholic pilgrims.
He was relieved when he learned that this group had been located on Thursday, that it had isolated itself in a religious retreat so hermetic that it filled Venezuela with rumors and led to the mobilization of troops, dogs and drones to find it.
“It is something shocking because we have never heard of something like this here (…). We thought the worst », he said this Friday to the AFP Villamizar, a public worker in this city of 90,000 inhabitants in the state of Táchira, on the border with Colombia.
The people reported missing, including a 20-day-old baby, left on August 22 for a religious retreat. They were located on a farm in a mountainous area.
Press versions said during the search that they were “religious fanatics” who were waiting for “the end of the world”; hypothesis that went viral on social networks amid increasingly rare rumors. There was even talk of a cult of “aliens.”
“Thank God they are fine,” added Villamizar at the Sanctuary of Santo Cristo de La Grita. Which is built between mountains in honor of a figure of Jesus Christ crucified dating from 1610. The Catholic faithful attribute multiple “miracles” to it. A corridor of huge stained glass windows leads to a chapel.
“There was anxiety” between “very crazy theories,” says Deivis Márquez, 30, a deacon at the Basilica of the Holy Spirit, the church where that iconic wooden figure of Christ is located, next to the central Plaza Bolívar.
“For us it was a great joy,” he continues, that the lost people, who live in La Grita and its surroundings, appeared.
Rumors, troops, dogs, drones and a happy ending for the disappeared in La Grita
The pilgrims decided to leave their cell phones at home to avoid distractions on their retreat, authorities reported Friday.
The father of two of the six minors who were in the group filed a complaint due to the impossibility of communicating with them, a source from the scientific police told AFP. The parents of another, a 13-year-old teenager, say they took him to the activity without his permission.
“Wherever one sat” there were people talking about the matter, says María Isabel Rolón, 53, at a street stall where she sells pictures and stamps of the emblematic Christ in front of the basilica.
“surprised”
The parishioners were praying a rosary when the police found them at a farm called El Rodeo. Said Yesnardo Canal, regional director of Civil Protection.
When the agents showed them videos of the commotion surrounding their case, Canal says, “the children innocently declared that they were famous, but the adults were ashamed” and many “apologized.”
“They were surprised, the least they thought was that all this was happening,” he adds.
This closed a special deployment launched on Tuesday with the actions of more than 160 police and military personnel and Civil Protection officials, who combed an area of 364 kilometers with the support of drones and canine brigades, said Division General José Martínez Campos to the balance the operation.
The García and Luna families “were in perfect health,” Martínez Campos said.
The 16 were transferred at dawn on Friday back to La Grita, where they underwent medical and psychological tests.
“It wasn’t a show”
The scientific police interviewed the people found on their return to La Grita. The authorities did not give details of it.
“What we wanted is for the child to appear and from now on the government entities will take their measures,” Yeilen Gutiérrez, aunt of the 13-year-old boy, whose parents denounced that he was taken without permission, told the press. “It wasn’t a show. It was not a game, he was a child who was missing », she deepened.
La Grita, after days of agitation, recovers her calm.
“(They are) deeply religious people, we can assume it as a spiritual retreat,” said Juan Escalante, mayor of the Jáuregui municipality, to which La Grita belongs. “It is important that we welcome these families with open arms.”
La Grita is an important agricultural pole in Venezuela and at the same time has a particular mystique for the Catholic faithful.
Every year, on August 6, the city receives hundreds of pilgrims who go to give “thanks” to the Christ of La Grita for his “favours”.