Paul Smith

The abandoned home of Senor Macondo whose dream it was to develop a small eco-tourism business in the village of Villa Arteaga. However, guerrillas of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) would occasionally pass through the village, buying soft-drinks and snacks and talking with villagers outside the small shop owned by an evangelical Christian couple, Miguel Gonzalez and his wife, Piedad Carmona. At daybreak on the 10th of July 1996 a heavily armed group of men dressed in combats arrived, waking villagers and taking several of them from their homes. The men murdered eleven villagers. Minutes after the armed men left, the survivors began gathering what little they could and fled the area. Over the years that followed the village fell into decay until one day, years later, a bulldozer contracted by a large landowner arrived and flattened the remaining homes and now cows graze where the homes once stood.