How does Armero remember Omera Sanchez, the Colombian girl who symbolized the tragedy that killed 25,000 people 40 years ago?

Four decades later, the Amira Cemetery is the busiest corner of Armero, and today it is a cemetery of monuments and tombs fighting the weeds.

Meters from the grave, local merchants sell souvenirs. It is a strategic point because thousands attend every year.

Visitors pray, take photos, give thanks, and leave offerings; They venerate Amira as a saint.

“He was very brave,” says Gloria Cartagena, a local resident who frequents the memorial. “He trusted to the end that he would be saved. People say he performed miracles for him.”

Ricardo Solorzano also comes every month. His wife, a native of Armero, requested before her death five years ago that her ashes be scattered here.

“I came because the girl gives me the courage to continue living and peace of mind. Any tribute (to Amira) is more than deserved. She is an angel,” admits Solorzano.

“Thank you Omerita for granting me that miracle I asked for,” says a card on the stone near the grave.

Another wrote: “Thank you, Omira, for the services you received.”

So much had accumulated around the tombstone that a few years ago they decided to fence it off.

There are three other monuments dedicated to offerings and prayers, also around his supposed place of death.

Today, the site is unrecognizable, but years ago the street intersected here where the O’Meara family, Sanchez and Garzón, and their neighbors Galiano, lived.

On the day of the tragedy, Amira’s mother, nurse Aleida Garzón, was in Bogota running errands.

The girl stayed at home with other relatives. They were probably already asleep, like many in town, including Marta Galeano, Garzón’s neighbor and co-worker.

Galeano says she was startled that night, overwhelmed by the brightness of the cocoyo plants.

Minutes later, he realized that those lights were not insects, but rather the flashlights of neighbors fleeing the avalanche.

She remembers that she woke up her husband, that they walked with their two children to a high point in the city, and that on the way they passed over dead people.

He did not know more about Amira until he saw her die on television hours later.

“I couldn’t believe it. One never forgets that horror. She is a wise Catholic girl who encouraged society with dances,” Galeano tells BBC Mundo.

He adds: “Many years have passed, but one carries it in one’s memory to this day.”

Armero had a population of about 29,000 before the disaster. It was a prosperous city, and the cotton industry was flourishing there.

Today many of the survivors live in surrounding municipalities, such as Honda, Lleida or Armero Guayabal, where Galeano receives me.

Months before the tragedy, many experts in Colombia warned of the volcano’s threatening activity and the danger it posed to municipalities like Armero, but the authorities never responded.

In addition to nearly 25,000 deaths, the disaster destroyed more than 5,300 homes and left nearly 230,000 homeless.

In the absence of scientific and political explanations, faith responds to the sufferings of people like Galeano, Garzón, and thousands of pilgrims.

“We thought it was the end of the world, and the girl Amira was destined to become an angel and a story of courage,” Galeano told me.

“May God allow them to sanctify her one day. She is my angel, my guardian, my warrior,” wrote Aleida Garzon, Omera’s mother, who currently lives in Lleida, 15 kilometers south of the cemetery.

Not all Armero survivors agree on how Amira’s memory was used by merchants, the press, and visitors.

Garzón, who frequently visits her daughter’s grave to support her, doesn’t seem entirely satisfied with tour guides who recite the girl’s words before her death or even sell themselves as family acquaintances without being one.

“Some learn the story from TikTok and then charge you for it during the tour,” he says.

Maria Moreno, who runs a souvenir stand, makes more money during peak visitor season, such as the November days leading up to the anniversary of the tragedy.

He agrees that his business is in the best possible position, since the girl’s grave is Armero’s busiest corner and where visitors stay the longest.

He says he is “saddened” that his livelihood comes from this tragic story, but he has no alternative: “I would like to get out, but that is not possible at the moment.”

Some also lament that attention to Amira’s monument distracts from Armero’s public standing.

The family of Gloria Cartagena, a regular visitor, points out the plastic bottles and waste others throw on the ground.

“They have put up more signs honoring the victims and what happened on some of the roads, but it is sad to see the state of many of the remaining graves and buildings, which have been vandalized and graffitied,” says Cartagena.

Many bodies were not recovered. Some empty graves reflect where the victims were last seen or where they supposedly lived.

There are people who draw and arrange epitaphs days before the anniversary. Others seem to have been neglected for years.

On some of the houses still standing, cut off by tree roots or half-buried, they painted the names of the families who lived there.

In the old cemetery, almost all the graves appear to be vandalized. There are isolated bones within some of the niches.

Many survivors of the tragedy feel that the state’s abandonment of Armero is not just a physical abandonment.

The media coverage of the Omera Sanchez case preoccupies the press and visitors too much, without paying enough attention to the drama of the other “Armero children.”

This is the position of Francisco Gonzalez, director of the Armando Armero Foundation, dedicated to reconnecting families separated during the tragedy and rebuilding the memory of the municipality.

Armando Armero denounced the offering of about 500 children for adoption through “regular and irregular processes.”

Many of them, now adults, live in Colombia. Others ended up abroad.

Gonzalez believes some don’t even know their roots.

The Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF) defends that, due to gaps in the legislation that existed at the time, it would be necessary to investigate on a case-by-case basis the irregular operations reported by those affected.

ICBF Director Astrid Cáceres confirmed to BBC Mundo that they will intensify efforts to recover memory and clarify adoption cases with victims.

Through Armando Armero, 400 families and 75 registered adoptees have undergone DNA testing.

To date, four reunifications have been performed through genetic matching.

Hundreds of victims still wait, every anniversary, for their relatives to appear again at a memorial event.

Hajaj Amira and hundreds of other Armero children unite in clinging to miracles.

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