23

 / The long road to justice

Pz

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a profoundly racist country that despises the copper colored 
skin of the Indian, was their ticket to salvation. They were 
also too young to remember their parents, whose bodies lay 
at the bottom of the well, and could be easily accepted by the 
families of the two lieutenants that intended to adopt them.

That night, in the military camp, the girls were repeatedly 
raped by the troop. Early in the morning, the soldier who 
wore the red handkerchief tied around his neck and had a 
mole on his left cheek, grabbed one of the girls and shot her 
in front of his fellow soldiers. “That’s how you kill someone”, 
he said, as if he was showing off a great exploit. The other 
young girl was also shot and their bodies were dumped in the 
shrubs.

A few days later, Lieutenant Ramírez Ramos pointed at the 
guide in a scornful manner and said that he fancied eating 
meat. Two soldiers grabbed the wretched man while a third 
soldier unsheathed his knife and sunk it into his ribs. A spine-
chilling scream that barely seemed human echoed through 
the jungle. Undeterred, the soldier tore out one of the man’s 
ribs, with the same ease as a butcher cutting up a pig. 

When the soldier gave Ramírez Ramos the bloody mass of 
flesh, the lieutenant burst into peals of laughter and said that 
it was a joke. With a puzzled look on his face, the soldier 
pointed at the man, who was lying unconscious in a pool of 
blood, and enquired what he was supposed to do with him. 
“Kill him”, replied Ramírez Ramos, as if he had been asked 
something blatantly obvious.

X

She heard gunfire and then saw a blood stained body lying 
on the ground. As she approached the corpse, she realized