Chapter 6: La Historia: Shaded by Violence

The first time I witnessed a murder I was 10 years old. I was playing soccer on the street with my friends and we heard multiple gunshots coming from an alley. We quickly ran behind a wall to hide and peek. We saw a man come out of the alley with a gun in his hand, smoke still coming out of the barrel. We then saw how he met another man, and they exchanged money and the gun. It was the early 1990s, in the city of Medellín, Colombia, categorized as the most dangerous city in the world, with around 6,000 homicides per year. This story repeated itself day in and day out for years. It was the norm. So much so, that every night when my brother or sister went out to hang out with their friends, I would sit down to pray that they would come home alive. I had already lost two uncles and a cousin to this unceasing violence; I knew it could happen to anyone, even to me.