Carlos Alberto Castaño Martínez, or as they call Carlos Castaño "El Bueno", was born in Villahermosa, Tolima department. This is the story of a farmer and former guerrilla PLA (People's Liberation Army) who became a live referent of reintegration: Carlos decided to change his gun for a photographic camera.
The Gallery
Castaño is the author of the photographic exhibition “The memory, realities. Because eye and the lens dont lie” and he is convinced that the best way to reach people with his message of memory is exhibiting it on the street, breaking all the classes paradigms, where only a few have access to information and culture. Through his gallery, Carlos works for both the homeless as the high executives to know the history of the armed conflict in Colombia. He has been target of threats. The most serious occurred last December, when he got an email with a signed pamphlet from “the Capital Block of the Black Eagles”, where they gave him an ultimátum to him and his family to leave the city. For fear to the reprisals he abandoned together with his family their old residence.
It was repeated the story he lived in Tolima in 2001, when he was displaced for the first time. The threats were known by the District Attorney's office and by the National Unity of Protection, but to date the only statement has been is the promise to analyze his case in a month. Eight months have passed.
At this time only a group of police from the neighborhood where he lives, due to they had information that he is under threats, went to his house to let the phone numbers of the quadrant and, Carlos says, one of these cops said while they were talking “Mr. If you were rich they would help you”.
"Leaning against the tree that witnessed of my death and conspiratorial of my resurrection”
Carlos made his first photographic pines since childhood. He says he always felt attracted by the images but because of the frustrations experienced on the countryside, he took the decision of join the ranks of the EPL in 1984. His passion for photography was overshadowed by war. Later in 1990, he had an experience that split his life: an execution.
Carlos narrates “that 27th of July 1990 on jurisdiction of the town of Isaza, northwest from Caldas, the paramilitaries and members of the Battalion Barbula of Puerto Boyacá, made a massacre where six peasants died. They were tortured and then murdered and a 14-year-old was missing. I, together with another peasant, were tied up to a tree and then executed. The peasant died and I survived”. Due to the failed execution, Carlos demobilized on 1991, resuming the image and the word to make visible the social disaster that he saw in the country.
Now-a-day, Carlos and his family live on donations received from the passersby who stop to see and read his work or from the sale of a CD where all the gallery is compiled. Carlos’s tireless fight has taken him to some countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Spain or to schools and universities here in Colombia. There, he says, he sees his greatest desire accomplished: to educate the young to, knowing his history, dont let that such horror happen ever again.
This work was published in Pacifista - Vice Colombia