Jesus arrived dressed in white. A Monastery t-shirt, “but crazy,” he told us later. From his right hand, the intact one, hang a golden watch and two very small pendant handles.
—Nice to meet you, partner. What is there to do?
Jesus is 40 years old, but he doesn’t look it. From his short, recently groomed beard, not a single gray hair appears. He keeps his left forearm inside his pocket, as if he were keeping something.
“Hey,” we say, “Jesus, tell us how you lost your hand.” Or was he he from birth?
He hesitates for a moment, then gains momentum on the chair.
“Not from birth,” he says, clearing his throat to clear his voice. I threw it away when I was 20 years old. She was making a firecracker and it exploded when she put the rods into it. She blew off my hand and damaged my genitals.
Silence.
“Jesus, but come on,” we insisted, “tell us how you started in crime.”
—At 17 years old, when I was three months away from finishing high school. But, that question you are asking me, I answer it in one of my books. You read it and understand everything.
—Oh, have you written several books?
-Clear. Three books I made in the six years I paid for it. The first is called An Uncertain Future, and it is about my life in La Sierra, during the war.
The text, which he wrote in the solitude of prison, recounts the first days of Jesus in the ranks of the Metro Block. This paramilitary group had entered into a blind war against the guerrilla militias, which were deployed throughout the communes of Medellín.
—Do you know what I’m telling there? —Jesus tells us, arching his body, finally removing his forearm from his pants—. I tell about the first night, the first time I fired a gun, that I gave myself a pass.
The war between the militias and the paramilitaries was, mainly, between boys. Jesus was 17 years old when he faced the militiamen the first time; His boss was La Muñeca, a boy a couple of years older, wiry, who wore a funny mustache. But everyone feared him.
La Muñeca is the protagonist of the documentary La Sierra, released in 2004 and directed by Margarita Martínez and Scott Dalton. Jesús appears in the documentary giving himself a pass and talking about the war. He is a rather weak teenager, with a thin and dull voice, who is already missing a hand.
—After the documentary I became famous. The first few years, people recognized me and talked to me, but that passed.
-And then?
—Then—Jesús snorts and sits back in his chair—they put me in jail for a simple kidnapping. I spent six years in Bellavista, La Modelo…
From that journey, he tells us, his second and third books came out: Experiences behind bars and A Bandit Talking to God. Because Jesus says it clearly:
—I was a bandit, but I changed and today I want to help. I dream of selling my books and giving lectures. One young man I save from war is enough for me.
In La Sierra, Jesus predicts the future. Leaning against a tree, and with the city behind him, he says that the war with the militiamen will end, but then another will come, and from somewhere another enemy will come out, and then another, who knows against what new enemy.
—Now I need help, to give me a hand with this project.
—What is the project? —we asked him.
—I want to bring that character from the past, who was forced to enter the war, to tell why that world is not worth it. I have my three digital books, but I want to print and sell them, and that costs.
On the way, Jesús met Steven Galeano. They were at a party and Steven remembered that somewhere he had seen this boy who is already in his forties, who talks like a kid and wears a cap. He had seen him in La Sierra, of course, and they talked for a while. Since then they became friends and today Steven is a kind of manager who advises and accompanies Jesús’ project.
“I want one thing to be clear,” says Jesús: “I didn’t go to war because I wanted to. In the neighborhood they threatened to kill me and that’s why I couldn’t finish school.
In An Uncertain Future, Jesús says that La Muñeca, the leader of the paramilitaries, fell in love with his sister. In the process of courtship she used to go to Jesus’ house, where he remained confined because of the threat that had fallen on his shoulders (or his head). The Doll was a womanizer, and flaunted his power; He knew he was the authority and even settled problems between neighbors.
—They killed a friend in front of me and they let me live. La Muñeca gave me the opportunity to join the band, I was at home, without school, with nothing to do.
War belongs to the boys, says a man in the documentary. In the book, Jesús narrates the first days of that conflict and how La Muñeca, in payment for a return that she had done well, paid her some pesos that Jesús invested in some original sneakers. They were beardless boys, corrupted by vices, who still lived in their parents’ or mother’s house, because many, like Jesus, never had a father figure.
Jesús’s greatest concern in those times was that his mother, whom he constantly calls “little mother,” would realize the steps that her son was following with The Doll.
—How did you buy those shoes? The little mother told him, worried.
—I won them in a raffle.
It was a war commanded from the mountains, by the leaders of the AUC, and carried out by the boys of the poor neighborhoods; With weapons they played at being men.
To continue the project and change lives, Jesús asks for help to buy a camera with which he can tell his story, and for someone to help him print the three books. He asks that you follow him on Facebook as @JesusMartinez and on Instagram as @jesus.write_.
—It’s not what I need anymore.
And Jesus leaves dressed in white, walking like a handsome man, dreaming about his project, which today keeps him awake.
2023-09-09 16:07:53
#story #Jesus #bandit #appearing #Sierra #film #book #writer #lecturer
