For Alba, the voices of families who defend the rights of their children are very powerful because it is something that comes from the womb and from the depths of the heart. |
“I lost my only son, but I gained many more”: Alba Lucía Reyes
Por: Dejusticia | May 6, 2023
By María Mercedes Acosta*
The first time, he tied a rope around his neck and hung himself from a beam. When he began to feel asphyxiated, Andrés Gutiérrez—who had not yet turned 20—desperately removed the rope. He never imagined that this method of trying to take his own life would involve experiencing that agonizing sensation; he thought he would die quickly. However, this was not the first time he had attempted suicide. At 17, he had ingested rat poison; earlier, he had tried to cut his veins; and on another occasion, he had taken 92 painkillers. Miraculously, he always survived.
In total, he attempted suicide six times. What tormented him most about living was feeling attracted to men and perceiving that his sexual orientation was not seen as “normal.” When he told his mother, she was deeply upset to learn that her son was homosexual. His father told him he would rather have a dead son than a “faggot.” And as many parents do when they do not understand that sexual orientation is neither chosen nor changed by force, they sent him to a psychologist in hopes that therapy would make him like women.
School was no better. They called him “little flower” and referred to him in the feminine. And when Andrés told his family about the bullying he experienced, his father’s advice was to respond with fists like “a real man.” In that context, the idea of suicide became increasingly clear. But tired of even failing at that, he decided to make sure this time: he would jump off a bridge in Villavicencio, the city where he was born and raised. He wrote his farewell letter.
On the chosen day, Andrés was watching cars pass by, ready to jump, when he received an unexpected call. His case had reached the ears of Alba Lucía Reyes, founder and director of the Sergio Urrego Foundation, created in 2015 after her only son, Sergio Urrego, took his own life. María Paula Vega, a psychologist from the foundation, was the one calling Andrés. Before contacting him, she had already alerted the police and an ambulance.
From the foundation, they identified and reached out to Andrés’s mother and closest friends. Over the phone, María Paula managed to convince him not to jump, telling him she was there with him and that he shouldn’t leave her alone. After a few minutes of conversation, Andrés stepped down from the bridge and continued talking with her for a long while. Since then, Andrés has not contemplated suicide again. On the contrary, he loves waking up and knowing he is alive, feeling the sun and wind while riding his bike.
Stories like Andrés’s led Alba to create the foundation’s lifeline, staffed by professional psychologists and focused on suicide prevention for children and young people—the only one in Colombia aimed at this population. For this, Alba trained with staff from The Trevor Project in the United States, a crisis and suicide prevention helpline for LGBTIQ youth in that country.
By March 2023, the helpline had handled around 10,000 cases. In 2019, when it began, they attended 541 cases, and in 2022, that number grew to 3,034. Each year, the figure increases while the ages of those attempting suicide decrease, ranging from 15 to 24 years old, though they have received cases involving children as young as six. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a suicide occurs somewhere in the world every 40 seconds. In Colombia, there are about 2,000 annually—an average of seven per day—mainly due to depression, rejection, or heartbreak.
The idea of creating a foundation has its most decisive antecedent on August 4, 2014, when around 8:30 p.m., Alba returned to Bogotá from a work trip to Cali and was told that Sergio, her only son, had jumped from the terrace of a shopping mall. His suicide was motivated by the persecution he suffered from the authorities at Gimnasio Castillo Campestre, the school where he studied.
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Sergio had become a thorn in their side because he protested against the fact that school authorities did not make up for the hours lost when a teacher failed to show up for class. At a parent meeting, Sergio said that Amanda Azucena Castillo, the school’s principal at the time, had given the contract for their graduation jackets (class of 2014) to a relative, even though it was more expensive than other bids. On another occasion, when Sergio voiced disagreement with a decision, a teacher told him he had no right to an opinion. Sergio replied that he did, and walked out of class. This was compounded by the fact that Gimnasio Castillo Campestre is a religious school, and Sergio identified as an atheist.
Everything escalated when the Physical Education teacher confiscated a student’s cell phone containing a photo of Sergio and his partner, Danilo—a fellow classmate—sharing a kiss. The school authorities demanded that Sergio and Danilo tell their parents about their relationship and even filed criminal charges against Sergio, falsely accusing him of sexually harassing Danilo.
Creating a foundation?
The truth is that after Sergio’s suicide, Alba felt the pain of his absence grow more intense with each passing day. She began to consider doing something to prevent other cases like her son’s. In 2015, exactly one year after Sergio’s death, someone told her, “You should create a foundation.” The idea appealed to her.
To make it happen, she held multiple meetings with activists like Marcela Sánchez, director of the NGO Colombia Diversa, psychologist Miguel Rueda, and lawyer Mauricio Albarracín. The Sergio Urrego Foundation was legally established on August 15, 2015—exactly on the first anniversary of Sergio’s death. For four years, Alba worked simultaneously at a compensation fund and at the foundation until one day her boss told her, “You should dedicate yourself fully to your foundation.” She followed the advice.
Her goal was clear: to ensure that her son’s story would never happen again, not only due to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity but also for being a migrant, farmer, or Afro-Colombian, among others. Thus, the foundation’s areas of focus were set: preventing suicide and discrimination against children and youth, which includes certifying schools that implement inclusive practices. So far, the foundation has certified four schools for their inclusion practices.
In 2023, the foundation added a third area of work: political advocacy. They dream of fully implementing Colombia’s existing legislation on quality education, non-discrimination, school retention, and suicide prevention. Now, their biggest challenge is survival, since Colombia allocates few resources to suicide prevention and mental health care.
Another challenge is ensuring that inclusion and respect for diversity begin at home. For Alba, the massive marches of 2016 against so-called “gender ideology” were eye-opening. She did not understand why parents would march against quality education for their children. Since then, although she does not claim the title, she has been recognized as “an activist mom.” Many children and young people call her “mom,” and she feels they are her sons and daughters. “I lost my only son, but I gained many more.”
For Alba, the voices of families defending the rights of their children are very powerful because it comes from the womb and the deepest part of the heart. It is visceral. And although she is far from being a Christian fundamentalist like Mary Griffith, the mother in the film “Prayers for Bobby,” it is impossible not to draw the connection. Both lost their LGBTIQ children to discrimination, which led them to become “activist moms”—Griffith through the organization PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), where she came to understand that the God she believes in had nothing to “cure” in her son, and Alba Reyes through the Sergio Urrego Foundation, driven by love to keep saving lives.
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(*) Editor at Sentiido and contributor to Dejusticia
