Luz de la noche

Elvira Ipia has survived 244 guerrilla raids on Caldono, Cauca. In this episode she talks with a former guerrilla about what three decades of raids, forced recruitment and attacks on the community meant for hundreds of children and teenagers in the area, and for its schools, Indigenous reserves and everyday life.

Consuelo Osorio, a public official, was murdered by the FARC-EP in San Adolfo, Huila, for asking the security forces for protection during the 2003 regional elections. Almost 20 years later, her daughter Natalia Yepes, who was 10 at the time, sat face to face with the guerrilla who led the killing.

The 1998 attack on Mitú changed daily life forever for its people and for the Indigenous peoples of this Amazon territory. On behalf of the victims, Bernardo Gómez spoke with one of the commanders of the attack to ask why Mitú was taken and what happened to the hostages.

Irene Gaviria, sister of the former governor of Antioquia, Guillermo Gaviria, talks about what the loss of her brother and Gilberto Echeverri at the hands of the Farc-EP has meant for her, her family, and the country. Sandra, the commander of the front that kidnapped and murdered them, acknowledges her own pain at the harm she caused and apologises for not having listened to their message of nonviolence.

On August 5, 2000, the FARC-EP took over the Carmen de Atrato police station in Chocó and turned the centre of the town into a battlefield where the guerrillas killed three policemen. Mabel Angulo, the widow of one of them, confronts Rubén Cano, the commander who led the attack, about how it changed her life, her son’s and the town’s forever.

Moved by the testimony of Mario, who once served under him, Eliécer realises for the first time that, as a commander of Colombia’s paramilitary self-defence groups, he not only did irreparable harm to civilians but also changed forever the lives of his own men, whom he ordered to kill in cold blood.

After her son was recruited by the commander known as Karina, Martha, like dozens of other mothers in Argelia, Antioquia, begged her to give him back. Years after the refusal, and after losing her son forever, the two women meet again to piece together what happened and make way for reconciliation.

Deceived by people working for the security forces in Sucre, eleven young people from Toluviejo left home in 2007 for a job that promised a better life. They were later presented as combat casualties by army units under the command of Colonel Luis Borja. In this episode, María, the daughter of one of them, talks with Borja.