16 years after the disappearance of Sofía Herrera, her mother’s desperate request for Justice

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“Mom, why do they love me so much?” Sofía, 3 years old, asked her mother María Elena Herrera. The woman looked at her, she thought about how happy he was, how knowledgeable and intelligent her daughter was and how well she spoke even though she was so small. So he smiled, picked her up, hugged her and gave her lots of kisses.

Minutes before they had been dancing to Xuxa’s song, so María Elena combed her hair and fake bangs, changed the tulle skirt that the girl liked to wear over her legs, and sat both on the bed to watch the novel. It was his ritual every evening.

“Dame ma, if the baby is a boy it’s going to be called him and if it’s a girl, like her?” Sofía always told him and pointed out the main characters of the love story, and with her hands she grabbed his face, he pressed his nose against hers and smiled at her, narrowing his eyes.

María Elena was four months old and she thought life couldn’t be better. But on September 28, 2008, the girl disappeared in a campsite, 60 kilometers from Río Grande, where they live, when they went to eat a barbecue with her husband and some friends.

“Sofi chose the name for her sister. They didn’t get to know each other and it’s a shame,” María Elena tells LA NACION today, one more anniversary since the last time she saw her daughter.

“16 years have passed and I don’t want anyone or Justice to forget about her. Many mistakes were made in her search, but I want them to continue looking for her, because I have not stopped doing it a day in my life,” says María Elena, who will read the messages sent to her by witnesses on social networks every day.

María Elena is not afraid to remember September 28, 16 years ago, although her soul does not stop hurting. He says that the winters are very hard in Río Negro, so every time the nice weather approaches, leaving the house is the best plan. That 28 September 2008, the sun had risen and he remembers helping Sofi by preparing her small backpack: with her favorite doll, a coat and her juice. They were excited.

Around 11:30 they arrived with a family friend at the John Goodall campsite. She and her friend stayed in the car to start loading the food and the men, Sofi, and the couple’s children, aged 6 and 9, went out together. They returned immediately because there was nothing to barbecue, just a plate.

“Then I asked Fabián where Sofi was, he told me he thought she had returned to the car, but she hadn’t. We frantically looked her around the place, we screamed, we had no signal to call anyone. We went to the caretaker’s box that had a radio and we asked the police and Civil Defense,” says María Elena.

“We called at 12 and they showed up at 2. Anyone could have grabbed her and taken her to the border with any document, we were only 90 kilometers from the border with Chile. “A lot of time was wasted,” he laments about the first of many mistakes made in finding his daughter, something LA NACION reported in study as a common point of cases of missing children.

María Elena is sure that someone took her and since at that time they did not issue identity cards to children before they were 8 years old, it was even easier to abduct to avoid a police check.

Then, the prosecutor’s office and the Department of Justice searched the place with dogs. They investigated whether she could have been hit by a car on the road, an organ transplant was investigated, but especially, the family was investigated.

“We had a police officer stay with us for months, they told us we had sold it, it was because my husband was in debt because he was a compulsive gambler and in his life he put a foot in it the casino, that she was not my daughter, they said a strange thousand and they were not looking for her how they should look for him,” he says.

The disappearance of that girl who asked why everyone loved her decided that the warning Sofía was created, in 2019, a system that includes immediate release image and information of the missing child or teenager through mobile devices and mass and social media. networks.

So before 2008, the distribution of Sofi’s image was entirely up to Missing Children or Red Solidaria, organizations for which María Elena is very grateful. “If there had been something similar at that time, we might have found it,” he says.

María Elena regrets that they never investigated in depth a man who is important to Sofía’s disappearance. The thing is, a few days after Sofía disappeared, the son of the friendly couple who went to the campsite with them, and at that time he was 6 years old, said that he saw a man who went – out of a gray car, who grabbed Sofi, and took her.

The campsite was close to the trail and the search dogs had pointed out that Sofia’s trail ended at a fence, where there was a parking lot. “Everything was plausible,” said María Elena.

The police made an identification package and it was confirmed that the man who stopped in the rooms of the place was a homeless man, a Chilean citizen named José Dagoberto Díaz Águila and nicknamed “Espanta la Virgen. ” However, a few months later, a group of forensic psychologists from Buenos Aires arrived in Río Negro, interviewed the child and confirmed that he was “fabulating” so everything came back to zero.

“Over time it was learned that Díaz Águila was the only one who had appeared several times as a witness to the police saying that Sofía had fallen into a fox trap, died, and that a keeper’s friend buried her nearby on a tree. The agents told us that they searched the place and found nothing, but I wonder why they kept looking for that person,” María Elena says helplessly.

When that child turned 18, in 2020, he appeared in court to announce the same thing when he was only 6. A second identification package was made and as a result the same description of Díaz Águila. In September this year, Interpol launched a “red alert” for the international capture of the man who went from a witness in the case to a suspect. So far, no one has reported seeing it.

“You feel very lonely sometimes. Apart from the support of organizations like Red Solidaria, no prosecutor or judge ever contacted us to find out how we were doing and to tell us how the case is going,” says Maria Elena.

He knows that the police in many cities sometimes do not have cell phones, which is why he is convinced that there should be a State policy to invest in child detection, in the training of agents, prosecution and judges. “Even the warning Sofia, which must be approved by a judge, should be launched on the same day of the disappearance, because the first hours are crucial,” he said.

Much of the discovery in her daughter’s case was driven by her and her husband. “Last year I went to Chile to see the immigration records and Díaz crossed the border into Argentina on the 27th, one day before Sofi disappeared. There are no other records about him. He went in by bus but the next day he was seen in that gray car. “I asked the prosecutor to check any friends or acquaintances he had here, but I don’t know if he did because I have no news and it’s been a year,” he said. “Argentina didn’t have a migration record, in 2008, and it’s only this year that it’s starting to be digital,” he said.

All that matters are obstacles that, instead of keeping her from wanting to know what happened to her daughter, fuel her desire to find, whatever. “The first months I was so desperate that I didn’t understand anything, my husband didn’t leave the campsite the first week, looking for her, he slept in the car. Over time we became stronger, perhaps out of anger with Justice, out of helplessness. We check leads all the time, we travel when we can because we don’t have a big income,” he explained. Her husband works in the city and she is looking for part-time work.

“16 years after Sofi’s disappearance, I ask the Department of Justice to look for her, not to forget her,” said María Elena, who wants to know what happened to her, even though it’s the worst news. He says that he cries a lot, that the girl’s clothes are in bags, stored in a dark place, in a closet, until still have her scent in case it is needed in the investigation, he says that he misses her clothes, dancing Xuxa with her, the doll with skin that is still in some corner of the office of the He also admits that these days of September are the most difficult.

This Saturday María Elena and her husband Fabian went to the town square with Sofía’s face printed on posters. In the images you can see her in that iconic picture, with her blue sweatshirt, her smile, narrow eyes, messy hair. There are also projections of his face at 20 years old, the age he would be today, in 2024. Several neighbors will support them, as will other families whose children have disappeared and themselves still being discovered.

“Although we only spent three years and eight months together, I have the peace of mind to know that she was a happy girl, we were happy. And I will never stop dreaming about meeting his sister.”