Manuel Correa

In Bogotá, Colombia, in 1989, Judge Martha Lucía González exposed the dark network connecting military personnel, paramilitaries, drug traffickers, and landowners, directly challenging powerful figures like Pablo Escobar and high-ranking army officers. After three decades of living in anonymity and exile, she has been found and has proposed, for the first time, to tell her story. Her research and testimony serve as a long-forgotten cornerstone for understanding the origins of paramilitarism in Colombia and the way state actors, landowners, and mercenaries collaborated to maintain a deeply unequal society.

Memories from Exile will use video as a research tool to create new visual evidence. In this investigation, Judge González becomes a witness. Through the use of reenactments of events, the project will explore justice through embodied experiences. A group of performers will work to recreate the acts of violence experienced by Judge González. To rigorously reconstruct these events, she will co-direct the actors alongside the filmmaker. This methodology is inspired by judicial practices, aiming to offer a novel form of testimony that simulates the presentation of evidence by experts in court. Using reenactments will provide an embodied understanding of the facts, generating empathy and raising awareness.

The methodology and theme of Memories from Exile complement each other: the law, beyond its known punitive functions, plays a critical role in defining social truths. Judges meticulously study past events to determine whether they occurred and how they unfolded. Bringing bodies back to justice invites reflection on the scripts, rituals, and performative nature of legal practices, challenging the view of law as purely mechanical and rational.