In the Sierra Nevada, 2007
I've got a brief on the forgotten victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia in this month's Walrus, Canadian magazine of the year winner.
SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA — I’m trudging down the lower slopes above the city of Santa Marta with a black plastic bag of human bones dangling like a scarf bundle from the handle of my shovel. An assistant to the forensic anthropologist I’ve been shadowing for the past eight days — a big, ribald gravedigger — stops on a ridge overlooking the misty clouds that have rolled in off the Caribbean, and laughs. “Do you want me to carry Doña Tulia?” he asks. That’s what we have taken to calling the woman we exhumed two days ago, a likely victim of paramilitary violence. “Tulia’s no trouble,” I say, more spooked by my nonchalance than by the bones.Read the rest here. Or buy the Walrus -- great publication.
