Colombian Human Rights Violations

2011 Isabel Morales and Julian Resendiz with photojournalist William Fernando Martinez – Bogota, COLOMBIA — The death of her 20-year-old son at the hands of Colombia’s military was but the beginning of Gloria Mancera’s ordeal. In the four years that followed, Mancera, 44, fled her small farm in the town of Granada with her daughters in tow, changed her name, slept on the floor of a relative’s house in Bogota and scavenged meals from trash bins. This happened, she says, because she questioned the army’s account of her son’s death. Aurelio Gallego Mancera was shot dead on March 12, 2007 by soldiers from the army’s Mobile Unit 12 based in Granada, about 90 miles from the capital. The military said the man was a FARC guerrilla killed in a firefight.