The heart

From Florencia on, you hear about La Novia, La Novia, La Novia, La Novia and La Novia…and you go there and you are surprised because it is a tiny town.

It is often mentioned because this was a coca area that had a lot of money. . . there was a lot of money there. It is located on the Fragua River in the department of Caquetá. There you bumped into sacks full of money and didn’t know whom they belonged to.

The mafia used to tell you, ‘Here, I’ll give you this for a soda’ and gave you two, three million pesos.

And in that little town you couldn’t find one family home. There you would only find bars, discos, taverns, cockfight rings, motels and restaurants. Speedboats used to leave from this town with sacks full of money to Curillo. They left, with guards, to Curillo to make deposits, and off they went. And here, I was coming in this boat. I was carrying two thousand millions for buying coca.

Basically, the ‘Paras’ (paramilitaries) came only for the money that I was carrying and to burn this town down… and then leave. But then the guerrilla attacked them. This battle is remembered here as ‘El corazón’ (the heart) after the civilian that was killed by the paramilitaries in that tree. He was a civilian… basically, it was difficult for them to kill him, they tortured him and the man wouldn’t die, so they decided to cut him up and rip his heart out.