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Alter the disappearance of Antonio Flórez, the witness's mother lost a lot of weight,
she was always very sad and she had to work a great deal, because she had given
birth to a girl and that meant that she had five children. The witness and his siblings
had to grow up without a father or mother, because the latter had to go and work.
The witness's mother worked as a teacher in a rural school outside Ocaña, so that
she had to travel a long way to reach her work. Years later she was transferred to
Ocaña.
They did not discuss what had happened to Antonio in the witness's family. When the
witness was small, he saw his mother cry at night and it was difficult to speak to her
of what had happened, so he did not question her about it.
The witness's mother tried to find out what had happened to Antonio; she spoke to
an attorney who was later murdered in La Rochela. She also began to work for
ASFADDES, an organization that carried out different activities to determine the
whereabouts of people who had disappeared and which opened an office in Ocaña.
The witness's mother also worked for the Ocaña Human Rights Committee.
In 1989, when he was about nine years of age, the witness went to speak about his
father’s death at a congress of victims of people who had disappeared and of “the
dirty war.” He was accompanied by his mother, his brother, Luis Antonio, and by
Cristóbal Navarro - who later became his mother's companion. At the congress, the
witness related what had happened to his father in front of 5,000 people. For the
witness, this event caused him to “lose his childhood”, because afterwards he no
longer thought like a child but like an adult; he had to begin to think about why
these things happened, who did it and how it was done.
Rumors began to circulate that they were going to kill the witness's mother and
stepfather, owing to their activities in ASFADDES and in the Human Rights
Committee. People who were fond of them told them to take care and suggested
they should leave. The witness remembers that, one day in 1991, in the middle of
the night, a man, who was arrested by the Police, tried to throw a grenade into his
mother and stepfather's room, and also carried a gun.
The witness was attacked one night, after leaving his theatre classes, when he was
walking with his brother, José Antonio, one of his stepfather’s sons and other people
in the main park in Ocaña and the lights went out. When he began to cross the
park, someone opened the door of a vehicle and tried to force the witness into it.
His elder brother helped him and the other people with them began to shout.
Following this attack, he had to stop going to theatre classes at night and began to
take greater care.
In 1994, when the witness's stepfather was walking in the principal park of Ocaña,
someone fired at him five times. That person was captured. The Police captured
other individuals and then let them go. The witness's stepfather was transferred to
Bucaramanga in a small plane for surgery, but from then on he was paraplegic.
After this attack, the witness and his family spent two or three of the worst months
of their lives because a “paramilitary” group in Ocaña said that it was going to kill his
mother and stepfather, and all the members of the Human Rights Committee. After
one member of the Human Rights Committee was murdered, people stood in front of
the witness's house every evening, shouted that they would be killed and fired shots.
Almost every night, the witness's mother told him and his siblings to sleep under a