Unearthing Secrets of Colombia's Long War

Finding the Truth in Colombia

A new law is beginning to disarm Colombia's notorious paramilitary groups, and sparking hope that the remains of 10,000 missing people will finally be recovered.
(Video By Travis Fox -- washingtonpost.com)

Veloza said he did not flinch when it came to hiding the bodies. "We cut people's heads off, we dismembered," he said. "We had to spread terror."

Here in Anori, the exhumation team's arrival in July aboard two Vietnam-era Huey helicopters was an occasion for celebration -- a gaggle of rambunctious children met the seven-man team, which disembarked with shovels, plastic bags, hammers, chisels, measuring tape and cameras. Townspeople may never have reported who had been killed, but they knew where the bodies were buried -- and promptly told Hernández, the lead investigator.

The first set of remains, belonging to Alonso de Jesús Echavarría, 19, was pulled from a crypt where frightened relatives had placed the body after picking it up on a lonely country lane.

Two members of the exhumation team placed the remains on a white plastic bag -- connecting the femur to the tibia, the 26 bones of his hand, his 12 pairs of ribs.

"It was easy to put him together," said Saul Diaz, a forensic anthropologist who says he has dug up 2,300 bodies in a 14-year career, here and in Kosovo.

"The strange thing was that we did not find the skull," Diaz said during a break from the digging. "But we talked to the family, and they told us the body had been mutilated."

Echavarría's father, Orlando Jesús Echavarría, listened in silence as Diaz spoke, and then he recounted how he had discovered the body but never alerted authorities.

"You could not say anything, nothing," he said. "You were terrified. You were very afraid."

The skeleton of another victim, Francisco Luis Muñoz, was then dug up. Helmut Bermúdez, a member of the exhumation team, grabbed the skull and bounced it lightly on one hand as he examined a tiny bullet hole while brushing off dirt.

"Only a medical examiner can say if it was the cause of death," Bermúdez said. "But we can determine it was a bullet wound, and that there's an entry wound and an exit wound."

Muñoz's mother, Lidia Rosa Carmona, watched without expression as the bones were neatly laid out, a yellow plastic placard marked No. 2 placed next to the skull. She said she knew nothing about why her son had died.

"What happened is they killed him," she said. "It is that simple. They killed with one shot, and that was that."