Thursday 17 October 2013

Trujillo, a Community in Search of Repair


By Daniel Ospina (undergraduate Economics student, level 3 English)
 
After a hectic and fast-paced semester, I decided to take a pause, and for some strange reason I came across a book about a hard reality. I must admit that it didn’t seem very thrilling at first, but as it turns out it was not just another academic text. It was the story of experts, victims and perpetrators of what I think was the most significant systematic slaughter during the second half of the twentieth century in Colombia. It was the Trujillo slaughter.

Although this event is already buried away at the bottom of many indolent Colombians’ memories, and unknown to many others, it is an issue that should generate social unrest, anger and condemnation. It was a cold-blooded carnage, where hundreds of families were relegated to an uncertain future, a community that grew up under the law of the jungle in constant fear of coming face to face with death at any moment. Generations play on the ground in which the dismembered bodies of their ancestors lie, as if nothing had happened there, without the slightest sign of respect for the blood that flowed into the Cauca River. It is very curious how many of the inhabitants and victims of the slaughter of Trujillo even justify the murder, torture and execution of their relatives by calling them "guerrillas", "snitches", "paramilitary" and "subversives" without any evidence of it.

Now this simple and unsophisticated introduction to this text aims to expose the reality, unconsciousness, cruelty, one might even say a "cultural Alzheimer’s" that has happened in Trujillo. Of course, this is an invitation to read and open your eyes through this fragment of Colombian history that assesses the political, economic, social and psychological factors that are discussed in this book.
Trujillo, una masacre que no cesa. (2008)

This publication is dedicated to Father Tiberio Fernandez Mafla (RIP) for his tireless fight against social injustice, and a victim of Trujillo.

"If my blood contributes to the cessation of violence in Trujillo, I will gladly shed it"

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