As the eighth anniversary of her brother’s disappearance approaches, a haunting phrase echoes in the mind of Darling Rangel Roa: “If I don’t deliver the bag, they’re going to kill me.” These were the last words she heard from Marcos Yoseth Rangel Roa, just minutes before he left their home in the Moyano sector of El Palotal, a village in eastern San Antonio del Táchira.
Marcos Rangel never returned.
“It was Saturday, June 16, 2017, at nine o’clock at night. After a heated argument at home, he left with another friend who was also serving in the military at that time,” Darling Rangel recounted in an interview in the Ocumare neighborhood of San Antonio del Táchira.
Darling Rangel, now 31, explained that both her brother and the young man accompanying him that Saturday were soldiers in the Bolivarian Army’s Motorized Infantry Brigade, stationed in Vega de Aza, Táchira state. They were both enrolled in a program to become sergeants.
As Darling and her mother reflect on the events surrounding Marcos’s disappearance, one detail continues to baffle them: on the day he vanished, he was granted leave from the barracks, which was very unusual at that time. He was only halfway through his training and such outings were rarely authorized.
They recall that the only reason Marcos and his companion, a boy from Zulia known only as Tony, gave for being out of uniform was that they had permission from their superior to deliver something in La Mulata, a town north of Ureña, both bordering Colombia.
On that fateful Saturday, Marcos had a cellphone loaned to him by his mother, with which he maintained constant contact with his superior. “We found the situation odd, and when we asked about the content of the bag, he said it was dirty clothes, which seemed even stranger to us since he did not take it out for my mom to wash,” something that Darling thought would have been natural.
The doubt prompted the two women to intervene. Taking advantage of the boys’ absence as they ran another errand ordered by their superior in La Parada (a Colombian locality just meters from the Simón Bolívar International Bridge over the Táchira River), they searched the bag. They were immediately overcome with shock and anxiety by what they discovered: over 32 rounds of ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles and five grenades.
Darling recognized the nature of the equipment “because at that time I was also in the military, but in the Navy.”
What began as curiosity soon turned to worry: both mother and sister understood immediately that their relative was involved in something irregular and possibly dangerous. They decided to confront Marcos and Tony with their findings. This sparked a heated and at times dramatic argument upon the boys’ return. “My mother said she would report what she had seen in the bag to the authorities,” something she ultimately never did. Nonetheless, Marcos reacted with great anger, as his sister observed. He made it clear that if he didn’t deliver the package, he would be killed. “He said it through tears and in a fury,” Darling recalled as if reliving the scene. Then, “Marcos took the bag and left with his companion. It was nighttime.”
Before he left, according to Darling Rangel’s account, her mother managed to grab the cellphone Marcos was using to communicate with his superior and took a look at it; she had every right to, as the device originally belonged to her. “At that moment, messages were still coming in from the superior officer. He was writing questions like: ‘Have you delivered the package yet?’ or ‘Are you on your way?’”
Even today, Marcos Rangel Roa’s surviving relatives wonder how the two boys could set out towards the Colombian-Venezuelan border, an area, then as now, known for intense military and intelligence activity, carrying a package of weapons, suggesting some sort of complicity or official guarantee: “We began to think that more military personnel knew about this, that there were more people involved,” Darling insisted in her conversation with the reporter.
The fateful Saturday of Marcos Rangel’s disappearance coincided with Father’s Day weekend in Venezuela. As the celebration approached and only hours had passed since Marcos’s departure—the last of which they were yet unaware—the two women learned from a neighbor in El Palotal, known to the family, that Marcos had stopped by her home and then continued to a club called La Hacienda, where he had allegedly consumed alcohol and caused a ruckus. A group of men then reportedly entered the venue and took both him and Tony to La Mulata, their intended destination.
The neighbor’s account was laced with a nervousness that “led us to deduce that [she] knew what was in the bag. We sat down and continued talking. She revealed that my brother’s companion [the one called ‘Tony’] had shown up at her house around 11 a.m. [the following day], muddy and claiming that he had escaped after being tortured, but that Marcos didn’t make it out because he was injured in the leg. Tony said he needed to urgently leave the border. She allowed him to change clothes and then leave,” Darling recalled.
False Leads
With the leads provided by the neighbor as a starting point, Darling and a cousin, an officer with the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), decided to go to La Mulata to follow the trail. “My cousin made a contact who assured us that my brother was indeed being held in La Mulata and that we would need to pay three million pesos [just over 700 dollars at the current exchange rate] for his release,” said Darling Roa.
Even today, that amount is hard to gather overnight; back in 2017, collecting such a sum was daunting, during a time of the most severe socio-economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, particularly affecting Táchira state. However, the family mobilized, borrowed money, and within hours gathered the demanded total. “In the end, it was my father who delivered the money. They told him my brother would be released in the middle of nowhere. But that never happened; it was a scam.”
Amidst their frustration, Darling Rangel hopped on her motorcycle and returned to La Mulata. On the way, she encountered members of La Línea, a small irregular group operating in the area involving people from both Venezuela and Colombia. They warned her not to continue her search, as she risked not making it out of the rural zone.
Marcos’s father filed a report with the authorities and went to the Army barracks where his son was preparing to become a sergeant: “There they had the nerve to say that Marcos had deserted and that they knew nothing.”
“Over time, we continued receiving visits from military personnel wanting to know what had happened to the phone [the one lent to Marcos by his mother], as it was evidence that would incriminate them due to the messages it contained. We turned it off so they would think my brother had taken it,” Darling Rangel reveals, also recalling that another sister, the eldest of the Rangel Roa trio, had also answered the military’s call and served in the Army, holding a rank higher than Marcos. Following the incident, she requested a discharge, which she was denied for a time, and to make matters worse, she was threatened.
Key Points: ‘Tony’ and a Silent Phone
Such threats eventually spread to the entire Rangel Roa family, forcing them to disperse for safety across different points along the nearby Colombian-Venezuelan border. “We were very afraid to stay in the same house. We all stopped working and started staying at different houses, moving from place to place to avoid drawing attention.”
Darling Rangel firmly believes the threats came from the barracks. Any indication? Tony, the Zulia survivor, who returned to the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, “my sister decided to approach him inside the battalion to inquire more about what happened, and that was when the threats against her intensified. Naturally, he was then transferred to another battalion. My sister said Tony was the only one who could really explain what happened to Marcos, but they managed to distance him.” This certainty was so strong that Rangel Roa’s other sister insisted on contacting Tony via Facebook. However, the response she received was evasive, somewhat disheartening, and hinted at fear.
“He said he didn’t know anything, and that they didn’t want him to be searched anymore for both his safety and hers,” Darling recounts. The young man admitted he was also receiving death threats within the military institution and witnessed when Marcos Rangel Roa was tortured in La Mulata.
Three years after her brother’s disappearance, in 2020, a man who identified himself as “El mariachi,” a member of an armed irregular group, appeared: “He claimed to have information on where my brother’s remains were, stating he had been murdered. For this information, he demanded one million pesos,” the parents informed Darling. At that time, she was in an official vehicle and didn’t hesitate to ask the driver to take her immediately to meet El mariachi at his home. Upon arrival, the man seemed uncomfortable realizing Darling had arrived in an institutional vehicle.
“My father told me that he had already suffered enough and didn’t want to go anywhere to see if these were his son’s remains or not. I offered to go, believing I could ascertain whether it was true or not. In the end, I agreed with El mariachi that we would meet the next day at my house to leave from there to the site. I waited for him for several hours, and he never showed up. I didn’t see him again until three years later, in 2023.” It was a furtive and unexpected meeting, in which no conversation took place, according to her.
The last thing the family learned about Marcos Rangel, Darling notes, was through a call in which supposed members of La Línea warned the relatives to stop searching, as Marcos was paying because his superior failed: “They viewed my brother, we sensed, as the protégé of the one who sent the cargo in the bag.”
In the meantime, Marcos’s disappearance had a big bang effect on the family. “My parents separated, I moved out. My sister, fleeing from the persecution, went to live in Trujillo [another Andean state in southwest Venezuela]. My mom never left the house again, opting to remain locked up in hopes that my brother would return.”
When he vanished, Marcos Rangel was beginning to form a family. Today, his daughter is about to turn 12. “We know little about her; the mother went to Colombia and doesn’t allow us to talk to her,” Darling laments. She, her aunt, remained with the girl while her mother settled in Colombia. One day, the mother returned and took the girl to the park. They never saw her again, although they know they are in Colombia. “We have tried to contact her via Facebook. She has replied, sent photos, and then blocks us. She fears the girl learns what happened to her father or gets involved in something.”
Darling Rangel described her brother’s disappearance as a tragedy that shattered the family and left many unanswered questions to this day. Eight years of deep sorrow for those who still wait for Marcos.
The eldest sister recently returned to the border after several years living in Sabana de Mendoza, between Valera and La Puerta in Trujillo state. She was able to finalize her discharge.
But the mystery of Marcos’s disappearance remains unsolved. “The phone, when we tried to turn it on, didn’t work. It had been off for several years,” Darling grieves.
