Eulogy for Dani

Daniela Z wanted to be a doctor like her father. He died in 2023, soon after her brother and mother, as a consequence of his efforts to protect one of his patients, Víctor Peña, a persecuted Indigenous Zenú leader. Orphaned, with only Víctor to look after her – she didn’t trust government institutions – Dani planned to attend the University of Antioquia, in northwest Colombia, after finishing high school. Instead, she died with ovarian cancer and a lung infection on 22 December, before she turned eighteen.

She died in the hospital her father once worked in. Víctor had no money to bury her. Having neither eaten nor slept, he was hospitalised himself, for perhaps the sixth time since I first met him in 2020 (we did relief work together in Medellín during the pandemic). Since then, his compañera and many of his family have been murdered in Tuchín, Córdoba, and he has come close to death several times himself.

The doctors and nurses made a collection to help pay Dani’s hospital bills, medical expenses and funeral expenses; I helped. She has yet to be buried next to her mother, father and younger brother, all of whom were alive and well two years ago, because the cemetery wants to charge a premium rate for the family plot. The officials at the morgue had no problem holding her until their bill was paid – the longer it took, the higher the bill.

Who would dare denounce such extortion to the Ombudsman’s Office? Víctor’s compañera, Cindy, did after her mother died. She was with Víctor in Medellín, where he was undergoing lung surgery. On the day she returned to Tuchín, she was murdered. Víctor also made a public denunciation. Two of his brothers were murdered, and their houses and corn crops burnt. He only narrowly escaped.

Every time he went home for a funeral, Víctor had to flee on foot through territory contested by paramilitary and guerrilla groups. Part of the danger stemmed from the possibility of his being identified as an Indigenous leader, but anyone passing through these areas by road is at risk of being stopped at a checkpoint. Men are often taken off buses, searched, identified and taken away. Sometimes it’s forced recruitment, sometimes kidnapping, sometimes murder. After Víctor made it to Medellín, in poor health and without reliable work, he often fell behind on his rent, and would be evicted or beaten up.

The death threats against Víctor’s doctor, Dani’s father, increased at the beginning of 2023. He spoke to a friend in the local police. The next day, the paramilitaries in charge of the area told him to stop or else. He fled, and hid out with Víctor. Dani’s brother was attacked by paramilitaries and died of his injuries. Dani’s mother took her own life in May 2023. Dr Z died of late diagnosed kidney cancer the following month.

In 2022, Dani was a fifteen-year-old living a comfortable middle-class life in a prosperous suburb outside Medellín with her parents and younger brother. Overnight, she had to bury her father beside her mother and brother, leave their graves, flee to a place she had never been and keep quiet so that no one would know where she came from or what had happened to her and her family. It was a three-hour walk to school.

She once told me she couldn’t understand how her more fortunate classmates, who were going on a school trip to the Caribbean Coast, could be so cruel as to mock her for not being able to afford it. Like many young people from Antioquia, she had never seen the ocean. I sent her the money for the trip. She wrote to say she could not believe the beauty and majesty of the Caribbean.

To bury Dani alongside her family, her doctors and nurses need to raise $450. Víctor will also have hospital bills. Anyone in a position to help can write to me via blog@lrb.co.uk

Read Forrest Hylton’s first post about Víctor Peña here.