When Cesar Chagas didn’t arrive home in the expected time, Irene felt uneasy. A policeman knocked on the front door and gave her the bad news, “Your husband has been shot and is dead. It happened outside his store. The store was also set on fire. I am so very sorry. I’ll go with you and, I’ll take you to him. Did your husband pay protection money? We think it was the paramilitary.
” “Mother! What’s wrong?” Elsa came running down the stairs. “Oh, my! God have mercy!” the cook exclaimed coming up from the kitchen. “Yes, he did pay protection money, have you arrested anyone?” “We don’t know for sure yet who did it,” the officer replied, “but we are questioning witnesses. However, you know how people are ....too scared to tell us anything.”

     Father Manuel Valdez held the funeral. At the cemetery Elsa vowed to her mother and the priest, “ I will find who killed Papa, and I will kill them.” Father Valdez told her, “God’s way is never violent.”

     Months later I heard from Alma, Elsa’s friend and my cousin, that they found Elsa bleeding to death on a street behind her father’s store. Elsa’s dog Andre’ was also dead next to her, and next to both of them was a dead paramilitary soldier.

     Irene Chagas spent almost two years trying to collect her husbands insurance money. When she did receive the benefit her lawyer took fifty percent.

     Where was justice in Charombia?