22 He thinks that they would be better off with their father and nothing would be lacking, while now he does not know how they are going to manage for the books and living expenses. He wants to recover everything they had on the farm and for them to help him “with school, to continue studying.” g) Maryuri Caicedo Contreras, sister of Hugo Fernando Martínez Contreras and of Diego Armando Martínez Contreras and daughter of Gustavo Caicedo Rodríguez She is 14 years old. Her father was “a very good person” and took care of her very much. The family went out and they had a good time. She felt protected by her father and by her brothers; her mother took care of them because she did not have to work. The day that her father and her brothers were taken away, the witness, together with three of her brothers and the parents, was going from the farm to the town to get health care for her brother Gustavo. When they turned around, they had already taken them. She saw people crying and telling them not to go looking for them because they would be killed. However, they “looked for them everywhere and could not find them.” She saw “people thrown into the river[, and] some people only the body, as they had no hands, […] no heads.” Her mother and sister cried a lot and [she] was very much afraid that they would kill them. When she remembers all this she wants to cry. Their father gave them everything they needed and paid for their schooling. When they left Mapiripán they lost everything, they went hungry, and for two years she could not study. Then they lived in a tin hut in Bogotá, where she became ill due to the cold, and even though the doctors gave her medicine, it did not help. She feels very strong headaches and cannot see well. She also had appendicitis and menstrual problems; the doctor said they were symptoms of thrombosis. She has had and continues to have problems studying and understanding what the professors say to her, because she is thinking about her father and brothers. The professors at the school in Bogotá frowned on her for not wearing a uniform, but they had no money to buy it. Before they left Mapiripán they had many things and now they have nothing. She continues to think a lot about her father and brothers. She misses her brothers very much. She cries a lot, sometimes does not sleep well, and has nightmares in which she remembers how they killed the people in Mapiripán. Her father was going to give her a party for her fifteenth birthday and had promised to buy her a motorcycle; she will not get the promised gift. She would like to have the same comfortable situation they had before, and it is important for her that those responsible be punished. h) Nadia Mariana Valencia Sanmiguel, daughter of José Rolan Valencia Her father was an employee at the mayor’s office and he worked as a dispatcher at the airport. She described the arrival of the paramilitary in her town, how the place changed completely, and the comments she heard about how they were killing people.

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