As we finished our last interview of the day in the town of Carmen de Bolivar, Miguel Garcia was precise in his estimate of how quickly we could get to the closest city. We wanted to reach it by sunset. Having travelled this route through some of the toughest years of the war in Colombia, he has made this calculation countless times.
Garcia has spent most of his 20 years as a journalist reporting on Colombia’s civil conflict. As we drove out of the still-restive Montes de María region, he discussed the layers of violence that different Colombians experienced during the war.
Just walking on the streets in Montes De María as a civilian was a risk, he explained: paramilitaries could press-gang you. Doing the same as a journalist or activist made you a target for kidnapping. Women were vulnerable to both of those threats, and to sexual violence too.
