Two years have passed since Josué Daniel Vargas Morales, 19, was seen alive in the departmental head of Zacapa and, since 2023, his family seeks justice for his disappearance.
It was Monday, May 29 and Vargas began a new week in the gym where he worked in Zacapa. That day, at 18.53 hours, Vargas He told his girlfriend Liza Moscoso who was in danger and that several subjects aboard agricultural vehicles had ambushed him.
Two hours after That messageat 9.50 a.m., the young man was found burned at the entrance to the Municipal dump of Zacapa, in the Colonia Convisa, about 75 meters from the asphalted route that leads to the Santa Lucía village, the Zacapa District Prosecutor’s Office explained on that occasion.
“We still have hope that they find it, be it,” said Vargas’ family.
The case was transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office against organized crime in the capital city before the escape of information and the threats that the family was receiving
With the change of the prosecution, the relatives thought they would have an answer about the whereabouts of Vargas and the alleged perpetrators of their kidnapping, but the only thing that the MP responds is that the case is under reserve and cannot give details of the progress of the investigation.
“A year ago,” the case was transferred, “because in the Zacapa Prosecutor’s Office there was a lot of information escape and external people had more details than us,” said the relatives of the missing person.
They pointed out that there were people who passed by investigators from the National Civil Police and quoted them on the Zacapa dump, where they found the Vargas car, to interrogate them.
After several weeks, an agent told them that no team assigned to the institution had summoned them.
They indicated that they received several calls to threaten them and stop looking for Vargas.
The family had gone to the Zacapa cemetery to look for it and, when they headed to the area where the buried as “XX” were, they received a call.
“They began to tell us that we stopped walking inside the cemetery, that we were not going to find anything, that we would go out or something would happen. They also warned us that the order was to disappear Joshua – Vargas – and disappear to all of us,” said the family.
They explained that two PNC agents had accompanied them during the tour in the field and heard the call when they threatened them.
“We put the speaker and what the police did was get us out of the cemetery. We had doubts about the call. How did we know we were inside the cemetery, where we were sitting and we had cried?” They said.
They added that they informed the MP about the phone numbers from where they received the calls, and two years later they are still waiting for the fact to be clarified.
What has the MP told the family of Joshua Vargas?
The family acknowledged that in December 2024 they changed the fiscal assistant who headed the investigation and that, before that, all they informed them was that the case was under reserve.
“They had summoned us twice and it was because we were questioning the advances of the investigation and because we were still victims of many death threats,” they said.
They added that two years have passed and the MP has not been able to resolve the case due to the disappearance of Josué Vargas.
“For a year – the prosecution against organized crime – the case was assigned and they should have made the exhumations that we are asking since the file was in Zacapa,” they explained.
Vargas’ relatives believe that the young man’s remains could have been buried that same May 29, 2023 in the Zacapa Camposanto.
“We still have hope that they find him, be as he is, and if he is already in the arms of God, what we want is to have him in a place to go see him and take flowers. We also demand that justice be done, that the responsible people pay,” they added.
A position was requested from the MP on the case of Josué Vargas and indicated that it was under reservation.