Here is what I know for sure: my great aunt, Adita, was kidnapped from her home one morning in Colombia about 10 years ago. Hours later, she was found dead on the side of a dusty road in the nearby mountains of Santa Marta.
The violent murder of Adita Perez is one shrouded in mystery. Her kidnappers were mysteriously killed before questioning and no one was ever charged with her death. Some say she was killed on the side of the road and then set aflame (a gruesome version of the story I had grown up with). Others say Adita was killed in her home, rolled up in a carpet and dumped in the mountains. The theories surrounding why she was murdered are even more nuanced.
I hadn’t been to Bogota—my birthplace—in over a decade but after years of wondering about Adita’s murder, I decided to fly to Colombia to trace my family’s past and learn more about the people I believed were guilty: FARC.
