24
When she was 9 years old, in 1997, in Mapiripán “people lived well, in peace”. When
they were in Mapiripán she, her mother and her brothers and sisters had everything
they needed, food, shelter, clothing. Her father worked as a dispatcher at the landing
strip during the day, and for some time he owned a movie house.
She narrated the facts that happened when the paramilitary arrived at her house,
threw her father on the ground and tied his hands behind his back. She felt very bad
knowing that he would never come back, because none of those they had taken
away ever returned. At that time her mother prayed a lot and her brothers were
crying and distraught. The following day she saw her father’s feet when they were
transporting him to the cemetery, she felt bad and cried a lot. The day of the burial
she and her family left their house forever and spent the night in the town clinic,
fearful that they might kill them. She knows that her father died decapitated.
Afterwards she spent four years at a boarding school that did not charge them, other
children talked about the massacre and said that it had been carried out by the
military, that they had killed many people and had thrown the bodies into the river.
Her life changed very much after the facts. When they left the town, they went to
the house of some friends of her father, who gave them food and a place to sleep.
Her younger siblings were left alone because her mother had to work at various jobs,
in family houses and restaurants. She herself had to work at a supermarket and at
family houses to pay for what was needed to study and to help her family. However,
they often went hungry, and when they wanted something they could not have it.
She misses her father very much, thinks a lot about him and about how they
enjoyed themselves, because her relationship with him was “very close and special.”
She visits her mother every month. Justice for her would be for those responsible of
the massacre to be found and for the State to help her with her schooling.
k) Johanna Marina Valencia Sanmiguel, daughter of José Rolan
Valencia
She is 16 years old and she described how the facts of July 1997 took place. She
saw how they took her father away. Her sister Yinda cried and begged them not to
take him away. The witness, her mother and siblings also cried. “I thought that if
they took him away they were going to kill him, because a great number of people
had already been killed.” The day after they took her father they learned that he was
dead and that he had been decapitated. That same day she, her mother and her
siblings had to go somewhere else and they stayed at a clinic out of fear that they
might kill them too.
After the massacre they suffered a lot and life became more difficult. They went to
Villavicencio and lived with some friends of her father. Afterwards, they “went
hungry and [their] mother had to work to buy food. [She] had to take care of [her]
brothers and sisters since she was eight. [She has] a brother with special needs and
had to feed him from a bottle and clean him up. [She] also had to cook[.
S]ometimes [she] had to ask the neighbors for food.”
Her life would be much better if her father were alive. Although she knows that it is
not possible, she wants them to return her father. It is important for those
responsible to be punished.
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