The 39-year-old conservative senator passed away last week from his wounds after being wounded in June while running for office in the capital, Bogota.
As she got ready to bury her husband, Maria Claudia Tarazona told a packed cathedral funeral service, “Our country is going through the darkest, saddest, and most painful days.”
Police have accused left-wing guerrillas who rejected the 2016 peace agreements of being responsible for Uribe’s murder. Six persons have been arrested in connection with the suspected scheme.
After years of very calm conditions, the assassination was a startling outburst of political violence for the majority of Colombians.
Drug cartels and other armed groups terrorized the nation in the 1980s and 1990s, leading to the assassinations of four presidential contenders.
In 1991, a failed police attempt to liberate Uribe’s mother, journalist Diana Turbay, from the Medellin cartel commanded by cocaine leader Pablo Escobar resulted in her death.
Miguel Uribe Londono, Uribe’s father, recalled the day daughter was killed 34 years ago on Wednesday.
He added during the funeral, “With all the pain in my soul, I had to tell a little boy of barely four years old the horrendous news of his mother’s murder.”
“I carried Miguel in one arm and his mother Diana’s coffin in the other in this same holy cathedral.”
“That same little boy is taken from me by this senseless violence today, thirty-four years later,” he added.
Conservative lawmaker Julio Cesar Triana, a strong opponent of the government, was unharmed when his car was shot at in the southern Huila region, which is home to rebellious members of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla group, as Colombia struggles with the murder.
At the funeral, Uribe’s wife promised that their little son and stepdaughters would have loving lives and that his murder at the hands of a suspected 15-year-old hitman would not be in vain.
She declared, “Until the day I get to meet you in heaven, Miguel, I will love you every day of my life.”
“I pledge to provide Alejandro and the girls with a happy, loving life free from animosity and bitterness.”
Colombia will have elections in 2026 to replace incumbent leftist leader Gustavo Petro, who is constitutionally forbidden from standing again.
According to President Petro, a former guerrilla himself, he declined to attend the funeral on Wednesday at the family’s request.
He wrote on social media, “We’re not going, not because we didn’t want to.” “We just show respect to the family and make sure hateful people don’t take over Senator Miguel Uribe’s funeral.”
Given that the president has adopted an accommodative stance toward armed groups, it was anticipated that some of those paying their respects might have jeered.
The right wing of Colombian politics has harshly criticized that position.
Former presidents Juan Manuel Santos, Ernesto Samper, and Cesar Gaviria attended the funeral.
