A Colombian woman has been reunited with her family after being kidnapped 52 years ago.
Aura Guerrero was only four years old when she was kidnapped in 1972 in Bravo Páez, a neighborhood in the south of Bogotá, the capital.
Now, she has been reunited with her brother after the two connected on Facebook while she searched for her real family. The two shared a warm hug when they met for the first time.
“It’s a real dream,” Aura said.
Guerrero recalled walking to the corner store five decades ago to buy a sandwich before a woman, whose features he still remembers, was snatched from the street, according to the Noticias Caracol news group.
‘I went out to buy a cookie and went to the corner that was a neighborhood store,’ he said. ‘When I returned the bus was parked. An older man was passing by, he scared me. I hid behind the bus while the old man passed by and the woman who kidnapped me arrived.’
Fidencio Guerrero (left) hugs his sister, Aura Guerrero (right), after they were recently in Bogotá, Colombia. He told Noticias Caracol that she was only four years old when she was kidnapped on the street by a woman who was upset with Aura’s father for despising her.
Aura Guerrero recalled walking to a neighborhood store in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, where she bought a cookie and being kidnapped by a woman and then raised by a family. She said she was already making food deliveries when she was five or six years old and was only 12 years old when she found a job that helped cover the rent on her house.
Fidencio Guerrero told Noticias Caracol that thanks to Facebook he learned about a social media campaign that reunited him with his sister, who was kidnapped in 1972.
Florencia Aura was four years old when a woman kidnapped her near a bus parked in Bravo Páez, a neighborhood in the south of Bogotá, capital of Colombia.
The kidnapper, she remembers, was “tall, dark, long-haired and thin,” who separated her from her family because her father had spurned his love interest.
Guerrero said the woman spent a lot of time walking with her until they got to a bus stop. The kidnapper bought a one-way ticket to Villarica, a city in the department of Tolima, 111 kilometers southwest of the capital city.
A family unknown to Guerrero raised her and named her Gina. She was around five or six years old when she earned money by delivering lunches to cover the cost of purchasing her school notebooks and at age 12 she was living alone and paying her own rent in the town of Restrepo.
Meanwhile, Fidencio and his parents moved from town to town in search of her, changing houses every time there was a new clue.
‘We became gypsies,’ Fidencio told Noticias Caracol.
Aura Guerrero and her brother Fidencio Guerrero share a warm hug recently as they see each other for the first time in 52 years
Aura Guerrero’s parents moved from town to town in Colombia and were known as gypsies by their neighbors as they fought hard to search for her after her kidnapping in 1972.
A young Aura Guerrero never lost hope of finding her family. She recently met with her older brother.
‘Where they were told there was a missing girl, there we were. I was studying in a place, a city, and they placed me for a month and took me out because the girl really appeared somewhere else,’ she added. ‘That was our life for about six or seven years. My mother never stopped looking for her.
Aura requested the help of Bogotá councilor Julián Espinosa, who used his presence on social media to help her find her biological family.
Fidencio, who rarely visits his Facebook page, received a message about a family looking for their relatives. He immediately recognized his mother and knew that he had finally found his sister.
Aura longed to reunite with her parents, but doing so with her brother is worth it.
“It’s a wonderful thing that only God can do,” he said. ‘He put the people, the moments, he put everything to be able to find my family.’
The siblings plan to celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day together and are looking forward to sharing stories at the Christmas table.
‘This year is going to be more special because she is here and because we are complete,’ Fidencio said.