My dad is not a macaw… he doesn’t soar through the skies in beautiful colors… he doesn’t spread his wings to kiss the air. My dad is just a farmer from Santander who one day was captured in a cage; this is his story.
Alberto, my dad, was a community leader in a rural village in a town as magical as the mist that gently descended and cloaked the mountains. The door to our house was knocked on July 20, 2003, at around 3 a.m. My uncle Osvaldo and Mr. Segundo were inviting him to “take out the guerrilla,” and he, ignoring the pleas of my 11-year-old brother, left.
They say that once you’ve gone to bed, even if someone knocks, you shouldn’t open the door… That early morning, my dad and his companions mistakenly shot a neighbor from the village. Their urge to take justice into their own hands sparked a new conflict that led them to prison and later to flee to avoid becoming victims of revenge… revenge that sought death.
Violence in Colombia is nothing more than the deepening of resentments that, as Germán Castro Caycedo would say, do not belong to us. We are part of a war that is not ours, but it has cruelly and mercilessly made us its own.
One day, many years later, Fernanda arrived — a macaw who, after being kept in captivity, was rescued by the Santander Environmental Authority and released in the rural area of the town of La Paz. From afar, her colors stood out among the trees: vivid orange and reddish tones, a touch of yellow, and the balance of a petroleum blue. She was, without a doubt, the largest and most striking bird I had ever seen in my life.
I grabbed my camera and stored her image in a little corner of my photographic memory and my heart. She gifted me a beautiful moment: she perched calmly on my dad’s arm to eat a banana, while he smiled and watched her.
It might have just been a coincidence, but it reminded us of how precious freedom is and the right every bird —every animal— has to always be free. If a person, even after making mistakes, sees prison as the worst punishment, how can it be that, for humans, it’s normal to condemn an animal to the same fate? Fernanda came to show us that violence isn’t just the cruel, miserable armed conflict — it’s any act that strips a living being of its freedom and its right to live in nature.
Without saying a word, I knew how my dad saw himself reflected in Fernanda’s eyes… how he wished that no one would ever clip his wings or stop his flight again. He didn’t have to tell me — his tears said it all as that macaw resumed her journey and disappeared among the trees.