Hours before the discovery of the people, the authorities were no longer talking about the disappeared, but about a missing group. In statements to the media, emphasis was placed on explaining that the Luna Roa, García Peña and Serrano families were made up of hard-working people who were recognized in the town. Rosa Edilia García, 57, worked all her life selling Andean cakes at her brother’s bakery in La Grita.
The woman, who has a brunette, has always been an active member of the Catholic Church. She was part of the group charismatic renewal and then he distanced himself. Despite this, her participation in religious events continued. “She is a good woman, the problem is that fanaticism collapsed her. She has been telling us for months to go to confession because the end of the world was coming. But she never said things like talking to the Virgin Mary or God”, said to the whistle a relative who requested the confidentiality of his identity.
Getting away from the charismatics allowed Rosa García to form her own prayer group, but faced with the scenario of religious fanaticism, his family tried to talk to the priest to explain and ask him for mediation and prevent his attitude and radicalism from escalating of the woman. According to Rosa’s relative, they were never attended by the priest, whose secretary always indicated that he was very busy. The last time they tried to communicate with him it was too late, because the group was reported missing on social networks.
The García family is known in La Grita for being hard-working, having a good economic situation and being low profile. Rosa García prepared the spiritual retreat and invited her sister Teresa, her brother-in-law and nieces to it. Between them there were nine participants. In parallel, seven other people were also invited.
For their religious activity, the families dedicated themselves to buying food, water, gasoline and supplies to be in the Tachira mountain until September 13, according to what they told the police officers who found them on the afternoon of September 9, after 19 days of spiritual retreat.
Without having economic limitations, having provisions was not a problem for them. Rosa García’s family member said, hours before she was found, that they were not worried about her alleged disappearance because they knew that fanaticism of her relative was great, and although she was the humblest of the siblings, the rest of the family group had the resources to even buy a farm and disconnect without going through any need.
The same person was certain that her family was fine at all times, because although she now understands that her aunt Rosa does need psychological help, I knew he was not a bad person and they would not be in danger. The mayor of Jáuregui, Juan Carlos Escalante, also agreed hours before the discovery that they were fine, because he knew them and they were not crazy or bad people, and he was also convinced that they were in constant prayer.
From extraterrestrials to satanic sects, the authorities handled thesis at first by the testimony of people from the town who knew of Rosa García’s fanaticism. But the very day they were found, the authorities took on the task of denying any hypothesis and explain that the prayer group had gone to a religious activity, which is not penalized in Venezuela, since freedom of worship is established in the Constitution.
But they were missing. They were because, in addition, in the Corps of Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations (Cicpc) there was a complaint for the disappearance of two minors. The girls’ father formalized what was running through networks, which was the loss of the group.
The minors were with their mother, the Luna family. Although the complaint gave rise to the beginning of the investigation, Rosa García’s relative revealed to the whistle details about that circumstance and why they continued without worrying or thinking about kidnapping.
“They are separated. They have a newborn daughter and an eight-year-old daughter, and it turns out that the woman refused to allow the oldest to spend a few days with him and her new family because she was going on a spiritual retreat. Since they were disconnected and held incommunicado at the farm, he filed a complaint with the Cicpc as retaliation against his ex-wife. We know that it is a couple problem that transcended so much that it paralyzed an entire state, ”said the man.
Hence the explanation of why there were no more complaints. In the group was a 13-year-old boy whose mother did not give him up for missing until the Cicpc called her. He had authorized his son to go for a walk to a farm with his paternal family. The alarm went off when he saw on social networks that he was missing and that they were talking about sects, aliens and everything already known. Although he gave his consent, he was unaware that they were going to a spiritual retreat.
Read the full note in El Pitazo