My first mutilation

This happened around San Carlos (Antioquia).

I joined the group (AUC), and I was brand new. I was about twenty one years old, more or less… “We are going to test this guy, to see if he is able to do things,” they said.

The first time I had to do it I was pale and scared and shaking… It was like: “bring a calf for him to behead it.”

I grabbed its heart and squeezed it and I thought; “Err, but, it’s that, one depends on this little thing.”

To see that he is a human being because one has a heart as well… and to have to quarter it.

That becomes like a routine, normal, like something from everyday life.