by James Canon
The Moment of Truth only attracted a handful of people at the beginning, but after Don Misael started serving beer, it became the most popular event of the week. Within a few months, people began to repeat socialist poems and Communist speeches. They memorized “La Maza,” “Si Se Calla El Cantor,” and other revolutionary songs, for which they invented lively steps and poses, creating a unique dance that was a mix of tango, salsa and sanjuanero. Five newborns were christened after legendary Communist philosophers, rebels and places: Hochiminh Ospina, Che López, Vietnam Calderón and Trotsky and Cuba Sánchez. Communism, once a foreign term for most villagers, became synonymous with Sunday-afternoon entertainment.
Ángel was aware that the villagers didn’t take his doctrines seriously, but he was proud of having raised their political consciousness. Nothing pleased him more than hearing a couple of older men talk about Karl Marx as if the philosopher were their next-door neighbor and they fully understood and agreed with his ideas, and weren’t just two old drunk men. Ángel, however, couldn’t help being disappointed when on election day, after a couple of years of indoctrination, the majority of the villagers temporarily forgot about Marx and Lenin, Castro and Che Guevara, and voted for the candidates of the two traditional parties.
Despite his Communist leanings, the news about Ángel joining the rebels came as a surprise to everyone in town, because he’d had several opportunities to join in the past and never done so. No one in Mariquita thought that El Profe, El Loco, El Diablo, El Comunista and El Bomboncito would be courageous enough to take such a bold step. What they didn’t know was that this time, Ángel had a reason to leave town. He’d fallen in love with Amorosa, a prostitute from La Casa de Emilia who’d recently left Mariquita without so much as an adios. Ángel was suffering the pangs of her departure. He couldn’t eat, sleep or think about anything else but her. He needed to go away with the guerrillas, or with the traveling circus, or with the Capuchin friars, or simply vanish with the torrential rains of November before he went mad.
THE GUERRILLAS BEGAN to eat the food and drink the sodas they had collected. When they were finished, Commander Pedro, a tall, brown-faced man with a scar that ran down the side of his neck, parallel to his jugular, walked slowly among his troops, staring at each rebel without saying a word. “Matamoros,” he finally called out. “Let me have a word with you. In private.” The two men left the group and walked across the plaza, stopping in the center by a half-mutilated statue of an anonymous hero. They spoke in whispers. It was clear that the matter they were discussing was serious, even dangerous, because both men looked tense. They shook hands solemnly and went back to the troops. Commander Pedro handpicked six rebels, including Ángel Tamacá, and ordered them to prepare to leave. “The rest of you follow orders from Matamoros,” he said. Five minutes later, Commander Pedro, Ángel and five other men made their military farewells and headed toward the mountains.
Matamoros was a tall man in his twenties, handsome except for his missing right eye, which he had lost three years before after being shot in the face in a military confrontation with the Colombian army. His four upper front teeth were lined with gold, as if to compensate for the lack of expression on his face. With so much gold in his mouth, each order he gave seemed to carry additional weight. Matamoros waited ten or fifteen minutes before instructing his anxious men, then grabbed the megaphone and began shouting:
“We’re very disappointed with the people of this town—”
The guerrillas got to their feet.
“We asked for food, and you gave us your leftovers—”
They adjusted their rucksacks on their backs.
“We asked for money to continue fighting for you, and all we got were your worthless coins—”
They checked their old rifles for bullets.
“We asked for young men to join us, to help us free our country from imperialism, and except for your teacher everyone scurried like roaches into their houses—”
They broke into squads of five.
“You’re selfish cowards who don’t deserve our willingness to die for you—”
They lined up and pointed their guns at the sunless sky.
“Listen carefully, people, because I’m only going to say this once: if you’re older than twelve and have a pair of balls between your legs, you must join the revolution today. Come to the plaza right now, or you’ll be found and executed!”
And, finally, they waited for Matamoros’s last command:
“Comrades: in the name of the Colombian revolution, take what’s yours!”
The rebels fired several shots into the air, then went around the village kicking doors open, stuffing their rucksacks with food and money, dragging young and older men out of their dwellings, pulling them from under their beds, from inside their wardrobes or trunks, and shooting those who resisted. The first man struck by a bullet was Don Marco Tulio Cifuentes, the owner of the town’s bar, who got shot in the leg when he tried to escape by way of the roof of his house. In her distress, Eloísa, the wounded man’s wife, pounced on the aggressor and hit him repeatedly with her bare hands. This so infuriated the rebel that as soon as he managed to free himself from the madwoman, he shot Don Marco Tulio twice through the head. Two streets down, Police Sergeant Patiño and his two officers rushed out of the magistrate’s house (where they were hiding) with their guns. When they saw the many guerrillas, the two officers dropped their guns on the ground and threw up their hands. The sergeant, however, managed to kill a rebel with a single discharge of his revolver. His heroic action was reciprocated by nineteen shots that pierced his body from all different directions. Before collapsing, the sergeant’s body froze like a statue in a fountain with jets of blood showering the ground. Soon after, the remaining men—including el padre Rafael—timidly came out of hiding and began marching, heads down, hands in the air, toward the plaza.
THE MORALES WIDOW circled her living room. With her eyes half closed and her hands locked behind her back, she thought about how to prevent the rebels from taking her thirteen-year-old son Julio César. Orquidea, Gardenia and Magnolia stood in a corner holding hands, waiting for their mother to calm down. Suddenly, the widow had an idea. She gave specific instructions to her three daughters and started searching for the old first-communion dress that her girls had worn on three separate occasions. She found it wrinkled in a trunk under her bed. It will serve the purpose, she said to herself. At that moment, the widow remembered that there was a God and a group of saints to whom she could turn in difficult situations, and though time was pressing, she lit candles in front of the numerous images scattered around the house. Then she began saying her prayers while looking for her frightened son. “Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo…Julio César! Santificado sea tu nombre…Julio César! Venga a nosotros tu reino, hágase tu voluntad…Julio César! Where the hell are you?” She found the slender little boy hidden under his bed, his body shaking in terror. “Hurry, put this on,” she ordered, throwing the fluffy white dress on his bed. “Dádnos hoy nuestro pan de cada día…” The widow repeated the words mechanically, interrupting herself every few moments to hurry Julio César. She helped him zip up the back of the dress, wrapped his little head in a white silk kerchief and secured it with a plastic tiara. The speechless boy pointed at his bare feet. “Don’t worry about the shoes,” she said, then pushed him out into the living room.
When Matamoros and four of his men strode into the Morales’s house, they found Orquidea, Gardenia and Magnolia knitting peacefully in the living room, their mother making guava preserves in the kitchen, and Julio César sitting in the wooden rocking chair like a small Virgin Mary, a Bible in his hands and his heart in his mouth. Matamoros stood by the door, a long rifle in his hands. The other four guerrillas went around the house, disturbing the quietness of the rooms with the tread of their soiled boots, searching every corner for men old enough to fire a gun.
“The only man in this house was Jacobo, my husband,” the widow said to Matamoros, pointi
ng at a large, framed picture of a man who could pass for Winston Churchill, which hung on the wall. “He died of cancer ten years ago.” She covered her face with both hands and cried out loud through her fingers.
“Don’t you have any sons, señora?” Matamoros asked, looking at Julio César out of the corner of his eye.
“No, sir,” she sobbed. “God blessed me with four beautiful girls.”
“I see,” he said, and started walking back and forth, now staring at the boy. The three girls became increasingly distressed, and, as was to be expected, Gardenia began to sweat out her rank fumes. “What’s your name, little girl?” Matamoros finally said, addressing Julio César. The boy grew pale and his mouth hung open. At that moment, the four guerrillas joined their superior in the living room.
“Negativo, Comandante,” one of them shouted. “Not a single man in this house.”
“Let’s go, then,” Matamoros said, motioning to all of them to go out.
“Comandante,” said one of the rebels, a leer on his small face, “may we fuck the girls?”
“Afirmativo, Comrade,” the commandant replied. “That is, if you don’t mind the smell of shit in this house.” He spat on the floor. Suddenly the rebels noticed the stench and quickly went outside; all except the youngest one, who untied the red bandanna from around his biceps, covered his nose and mouth with it and walked toward the three girls. He looked no older than fifteen, a dark-skinned Indian boy missing one of his upper front teeth. He stood next to Orquidea, squeezing her nipples with one hand while holding his ancient rifle with the other.
“Please don’t,” begged Orquidea, pulling away from the boy. “I’m a virgin.”
“So much the better,” sneered the boy, bringing his hand down to her crotch. Gardenia shut her eyes and lowered her head. Magnolia smiled at the boy and placed her sewing instruments to the side, hoping she would be next. But the guerrilla had already turned his lustful eyes on Julio César, who was rocking the chair much faster. “She must be a virgin too,” said the young rebel, and approached the boy. The three sisters jumped up, screaming, and their mother, who had been silently praying, cried out, “Don’t touch my little girl!” She ran to her son’s side. “Do whatever you want with the other three. Take me, if you wish, but please not Julia.”
“And why not?” the boy asked cynically.
“She’s just a little girl. She hasn’t even received her first Holy Communion.”
The boy laughed loudly through the cloth that covered his mouth. “Well, she will now,” he said, grabbing his own crotch.
The widow had a sudden impulse to smack the insolent boy across his face. Feeling empowered by this urge, she stood between him and her son. “I won’t let you have your evil way,” she said purposefully.
“Señora, I’m warning you: get out of the way.”
“You’re supposed to be fighting for our rights, not violating them,” she said accusingly, her hands on her hips. “We women have rights, too, and my daughters and I will do whatever it takes to protect ourselves from wretches like you.”
“You women don’t have nothing,” the guerrilla boy said disdainfully. “This is and will always be a land of men.” He struck her down with a single punch to the face, shouting, “Come near me again and I’ll shoot you!” He let his belt out, unbuttoned his dirty pants and began to pull them down slowly. Julio César rocked his chair rapidly, weeping, while Orquidea and Magnolia bit their nails in a corner. Gardenia, visibly agitated, sat down and fanned herself with the bottom of her long skirt, fouling the air in the room with her perspiration. The stench was now insufferable. The guerrilla fell on his knees and threw up. While he was still retching, Doña Victoria got up off the floor, opened the door and pushed and kicked the half-naked boy out with her bare foot. She watched him and his rifle roll down the step and hit the ground, then shut the door with a slam.
As Gardenia’s fears diminished, the smell went away. The widow went around with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, making her daughters and son sniff it until they recovered from the shock and the disgust. All five sat together around the dining table, holding hands, the old matron saying a few prayers between tears and nervous giggles.
Outside, the firing in the streets went on, punctuated from time to time by the heartbreaking cry of a new widow, and the weeping of another fatherless child.
WHEN THE SHOOTING stopped an hour later, the Morales widow went outside. The left side of her face was already swollen. The women of Mariquita had gathered on both sides of the main street, leaving just enough room for the line of men and boys being taken away by the guerrillas. These men were the Morales widow’s neighbors and friends: the ones who’d welcomed her, her husband and their two older daughters when they first arrived in Mariquita in 1970; the ones who’d brought her handpicked flowers after she gave birth to each of her two youngest children; and years later, the ones who’d consoled her when her husband passed away. These were the only men she had known in twenty-two years. And those young boys marching next to them, their younger sons, were the ones who stopped by her house every afternoon to do homework with Julio César, the ones who helped her carry her basket of groceries from the market, and the ones who played soccer every Sunday morning in the open field in front of her house.
The widow saw the women weep as their men filed past them with their heads down. She saw Cecilia Guaraya give her old husband a pair of spectacles, and Justina Pérez give hers a set of dentures. She saw Ubaldina Restrepo give her youngest stepson, Campo Elías Jr., her own rosary. She saw others hand their men family photos, food wrapped in banana leaves, toothbrushes, alarm clocks, love letters, cash. She saw the women cry as they held their men tight against their bodies, sobbing as they kissed them for the last time. They knew they would never see them again; that those husbands, sons, cousins, nephews and friends were dying right there, at that very instant, before their eyes.
In sad moments, the widow always felt nostalgic for her late husband. This time, however, she didn’t cry. She thanked God in her head for giving Jacobo the cancer that had allowed him to die at home, in her arms. She felt very sorry for the rest of the women in town, and couldn’t help letting out a long sigh when she saw the last two men vanish amid the clouds of dust raised by their marching feet.
The Morales widow turned around slowly. Just as slowly, she walked toward her house, followed by a long echo of wails. She stepped inside, held the doorknob with both hands and pushed the door closed with her forehead. She stayed like that, weeping, for a long time.
Her dearest Mariquita had turned into a town of widows in a land of men.
Gordon Smith, 28
American reporter
“John R.,” 13
Guerrilla soldier
It was Sunday afternoon. I was sitting in a clearing next to the guerrilla camp waiting for John. He had agreed to meet me there for an interview.
The guerrilla camp was a small settlement located in the highlands of the country, about three days away on foot from the closest town.
Suddenly John emerged from the woods, a little boy wrapped in an oversize olive-drab uniform with a rifle slung over his shoulder. His face was small and shiny with sweat, splashed with freckles. A shadow of soft hair above his upper lip suggested a future mustache. His hair, what I could see underneath his hat, was black. He looked no more than twelve, maybe thirteen. We shook hands and exchanged smiles.
“Sit down, kid,” I said, making room for him on the tree trunk where I was sitting.
“No, gracias,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’m good here. And by the way, I’m no kid. I’m fifteen.”
His voice hadn’t broken yet, and he spoke loudly, as if to compensate for it.
I’d first seen John during a soccer game that had taken place only two hours earlier in the same clearing. John seemed to be the youngest of both teams—a child playing jokes on his comrades. “The Boy Soldier,” I thought, would make a good title for the story.
But the boy I
had in front of me now wasn’t the same John I’d seen earlier. This one pretended to be older and taller than he actually was. He lifted one of his legs and pulled out a pack of Marlboros from his sock. He smacked it three times on the palm of his free hand before offering me one. I’d given up smoking about a year ago, but I figured a cigarette might help break the ice between us, so I took one. Next, he produced a lighter shaped like a small replica of a cellular telephone.
“This is a good lighter,” he said, handing it to me. “It was made in Estados Unidos.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. On the lighter I read “Made in China.”
“A gringo gave it to me. He came here to interview our comandante.”
I wasn’t the first foreign reporter to brave the dangers of Colombia in search of a good story. In the two years I lived there, I met a lot of guys from different parts of the world who were interviewing guerrillas, paramilitaries, army soldiers, coca growers, or, like me, all of them.
“And how do you know he was from Estados Unidos?”
“He looked like you, pale and blond, with blue eyes. And he talked funny like you.”
John and I each took drags on our cigarettes, but I choked on the smoke and began to cough.
He burst into laughter, “Haha-haha-haha-haha…”
This was the John I’d seen earlier, the mischievous laughing boy; his “hahas” made him unique. I put out the cigarette and watched him laugh until I got my breath back.
Then, abruptly, he said, “I’m only thirteen.” He looked down, as though ashamed of being a child. “I don’t tell nobody, though. There’s this guy who said he was fourteen and they don’t respect him no more. Like you need to be full-grown to kill people.”
When I’d chosen John as the subject for my interview, the commandant had given me the boy’s file. According to it, John hadn’t yet been in battle. I doubted that. I knew commandants doctored their recruits’ files, especially if they were underage.
