The stories behind the play Developations, by the Truth Commission

Ana Delina Páez has a stomach ache when she goes on stage, not because of lack of acting experience or stage fright, but because on stage she will represent, or make reality, the way she imagined the search for her son, Eduardo Garzón Paéz, a victim of illegitimate executions presented as casualties in combat, known as' false positives'.

She is one of the 12 mothers of Mafapo who are part of the cast of the first large-format play of the Truth Commission, called Unveils: A Song to the Four Winds, which will be released this Thursday for the first time to the public at the Ibero-American Theater Festival in Bogotá.

It's not the first time Ana Delina has performed in a play. When I was at school - he recalled in dialogue with Infobae - he participated in any artistic initiative. The economic facilities of his home did not allow him to build a career in that field, but now, when he is around 70 years old, he has had several opportunities to do so, although with another objective: truth for the victims.

“I feel very happy, when I'm here I wouldn't want to leave. In this work I have been very happy, although this work is painful, because I have many memories of everything about my son”, he says.

Eduardo Garzón Páez was 32 years old when he disappeared on March 4, 2008. He lived in Bogotá with his mother, an orphan of a father and the second of two brothers. He had studied high school in a military school and did not lose the neatness taught, he had perfect teeth and combed flush. He had three children and to support them he worked with his mother in the casino of the Road Safety Police School.

On August 27, six months after spending all her labor savings on the tireless search and without any income, Ana Delina found her son in the Cimitarra cemetery, Norte de Santander, where he had been buried in a mass grave.

He had been killed the day after his disappearance, with several shots that shattered his skull. When they found him, he had an unpointed military uniform, put lightly. Next to him was Andrés Pesca Olaya, a young taxi driver also from Bogotá.

The case was one of the first known of the heinous crime of false positives and one of the first to reach conviction. For these events, a colonel, a lieutenant, a sergeant and five professional soldiers were each sentenced to more than 40 years in prison. Now they took advantage of the JEP.

Ana Delina sometimes feels faint in her search for truth, but every time she notices Eduardo's absence she draws strength to keep going. “Even if it's a poor surname, I have to clear my son's name,” he says.

Art has allowed him to face pain and heal a little that “very broken heart” that violence left him. In the process she tried to feel what Eduardo felt, but it wasn't easy. In a performance in La Candelaria, a few days ago, he felt that he would not be able to put on a military uniform, but he succeeded. Likewise, she was afraid and had to prepare for several days to bury herself alive on the occasion of the exhibition Madres Terra.

She had to be treated by paramedics after the first reconnaissance meeting in which she participated in the Truth Commission and met a soldier who had committed illegitimate executions. All for Eduardo, for him he continues and endures the cry that causes him to dig into the sand on the stage of the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santodomingo.

“It has been a great experience to show how we remember, to say how we can heal. They have been healing processes. It has been a way for these cases of extrajudicial executions not to be forgotten,” says Jacqueline Castillo, also a mother and victim member of Mafapo.

Explain that this is not an overnight process. She has been taking steps for more than 14 years to seek healing of the wound that opened the conflict, through various artistic forms in which she has participated together with the Mothers of False Positives.

Castillo says he would now like to be able to work even with perpetrators to advance reconciliation and try to leave hatred and rancor behind. “It was wonderful to see our family grow. We have spoken in spaces where we lost a loved one, our brothers, our children, but we have had the reception of many people, know victims of other events and now we see them as a family,” he says.

She manages Mafapo's networks and a few months ago she received a message from a soldier who had participated in extrajudicial executions. He visited him in his place of detention with other mothers who took out the gallantry to listen to him and embraced each other in reconciliation. Some time later, they participated with the former soldier in skydiving.

In the play Unveils: A Song to the Four Winds, multiple events of the conflict are narrated, such as massacres, displacements, forced disappearance, among many other situations that have been part of that history.

Commissioner Lucia González explained to Infobae that the work was born from visits to communities, the identification of artistic groups and the discovery of the different expressions they had built.

“We realized that it is the art through which communities express their pain, their tragedy, their experiences, their dreams. We thought at first to make a compilation of songs that have been written about armed conflict and resistance and we called Iván Benavides, who is an expert in our music, and we asked why not make a play”, he said.

Ramiro Osorio, director of the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santodomingo, proposed contacting Bernardo Rey and Nube Sandoval to direct the project. They, together with the communities, built a script that collected the narratives of the victims in a large-format work in which more than 100 people participate.

“Working from art with communities is to establish a very sincere, deep and meaningful dialogue, because it is not an elaboration of an interview, but rather it is something that is narrated from the soul of peoples, from the needs of naming. They have felt that what they are narrating can have a very big echo to the wider society, which needs to hear what they have been saying a long time ago,” Commissioner González explained.

These initiatives are part of a commitment by the Truth Commission, which will deliver its final report in the middle of the year, to a more comprehensive way of narrative of the conflict, explained the commissioner that it will lead to a more harmonious life for all.

Performance times are as follows: Thursday, April 14 at 8:00pm; Friday, April 15 at 3:00pm and 8:00pm; Saturday, April 16 at 3:00pm and 8:00pm.

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