Translations:Alfredo Molano/9/en

Alfredo Molano was capable of describing and speaking out against fundamental events in the history of violence in Colombia in a fearless and even-handed manner. Due to his denunciations he received death threats from paramilitaries, and as a result lived in exile in Barcelona for five years and in the United States for two years on a scholarship from Stanford University, where he was a visiting professor.

He was a staunch defender of peace, and formed part of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition that resulted from the peace agreement signed between the FARC guerrilla group and the government of Juan Manuel Santos, in which Molano acted as the commissioner for the Orinoco region (comprising the Meta, Caquetá, Guaviare, Casanare, Vichada, Vaupés and Guainía departments, regions that he had roamed from his youth until his final days). They called him the wise man of the tribe; a man of few words, “but when he spoke he grounded us in the fact that the truth had to be told on the basis of people, of the territories; that the truth lay in life stories, not in fragmented accounts … until his final hours, his life was the truth of the peasant farmers” said Father Francisco de Roux, the president of the Truth Commission.

Molano died in Bogota on October 31, 2019.