By Alejandra Bonilla Mora, CAMBIOColombia, August 3, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
There were days of walking in the sun, carrying more than 30 kilos on your back, while the humiliation reverberated in your head; a soldier who’s not worth a thing because he doesn’t produce “results”. He’s an outcast, a leper. Sergeant Alexander Muñoz Orozco was reduced from building roadblocks to digging up dead bodies from mass graves, until he began to understand what his superiors wanted: “There are a lot of worthless down-and-out bums in Valledupar; there you have your results.” This is the story.
“You don’t have a right to even be in this battalion. Go three kilometers down the road. There’s a garbage dump there. To the outcasts, the lepers, and to the sergeants that don’t understand the way things are; it’s up to you to handle it.”
I left the soldiers all around because we were in a garbage dump and, well, I’m a piece of garbage . . . I grabbed my rifle and got going, I was going to do it, but there’s always been my mom. Shoot! Imagine what it’s like when they tell her that your son killed himself because, supposedly, in the Army, the ones that kill themselves are cowards.
Sergeant Alexander Muñoz Orozco thought at least twice about killing himself while he was living a nightmare. It was 2008 and he was leading a squad in the La Popa de Valledupar Battalion.
His breaking point came in the garbage dump after wandering around in the middle of César Department. Muñoz was flat on the ground with his blistered feet about to start bleeding, physically exhausted and morally destroyed.
I wasn’t Muñoz, I was an outcast, a “leper”. I was “You’re good for nothing and good for shit”. First Sergeant Muñoz or “First Arrow”. He wanted to be the best soldier, and he was surprised when he heard on the radio that other units in the same Battalion were able to produce “results” and he wasn’t. In vain he set up roadblocks and ambushes. He couldn’t get anything. The pressures became a Calvary when finally in 2007, Colonel Adolfo León Hernández took over as Battalion Commander.
A blackboard listed all the companies; marked with little stars were the “results” for each, and showing “First Arrow” had nothing at all”. Major Rubén Blanco Bonilla changed his strategy. First, he sent Muñoz on foot to Puente-La Mina, some 40 kilometers from Valledupar. He ordered him to set up a roadblock on the road and go to certain coordinates that he gave him.
Muñoz testified before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace that there were some 12 kilometers that he had to cover before the next Communication with Commanders (QSO in Spanish). “What hurt me the most was that I had to walk. He didn’t care that it was 10 or 15 kilometers that a person had to walk. From Puente La Mina to there was some 12 kilometers. That was pretty far, and that hurts, walking on the highway, and the soldiers have to carry their equipment and with the food on top. That was heavy.”
We did get there, full of blisters, exhausted, but we reported, nothing new. Blanco’s response was just a single “you are definitely of no use to me”. From that ranch, Muñoz doesn’t remember the name of it, they had to get to the outskirts of the Municipality of Pueblo Bello, another 22 kilometers. There was nothing to do but walk there.
“The soldiers were weighed down with the heavy loads. I helped them carry the milk and the sugar. Obviously, we got there but we didn’t get there early. There was no cell signal at that place, and for sure, if you would call somebody they would call back, and when nobody answered, you would be bawled out seriously,” recounted Muñoz.
“Soldier, how come you didn’t go to the QSO?”
“Major, it’s that you were ordering me to walk nearly 22 kilometers, and from there to here is a long ways. After that we walked from Puente La Mina to the ranch and from the ranch up to there. Nobody can run that far. I didn’t run here and not on a bicycle either.”
“Soldier, the order is that you have to arrive on time, otherwise a penalty.”
“Major, but what could I do? If I was driving a car, that would be a bad thing, but believe me, I did raise some guerrillas here, and I’ve got a soldier down, and it’s my problem?”
“Well, Soldier, just stay right there because you are definitely . . . I have to leave the lepers there, so you get over there.”
That’s how Muñoz recalls his conversation with Major Blanco. That same night they had to move to a place called La Pista, as the road from Valledupar is known, to Valencia de Jesús. Then they had to get to La Paz. It was another 17 kilometers. The soldiers, completely worn out, were starting to desert. That meant we had to carry their stuff, more than 30 kilos, and nothing to say to the Commanders to avoid being bawled out.
The penalty came later, when, being in La Mesa, 12 kilometers from Valledupar. Muñoz couldn’t take any more. He wanted to desert, and he decided to call his mother so he wouldn’t kill himself. They gave time off to the soldiers under the table, taking turns, to give them a break from the pressure. Muñoz even asked somebody to imitate his voice when the time came in the QSO while he was resting up in Valledupar.
Blanco caught on and called a meeting of the whole Battalion.
“It’s that you are definitely not worth anything at all. You are the worst one in this whole Battalion. You are the most leprous of the lepers.”
“Major, the truth is that I was fed up. I’m just tired of this whole situation. The soldiers are all worn out. Soldiers have gone and left, they’ve deserted. I’ve had to go and look for soldiers.”
“But, Soldier, if you don’t want to work the way I want, how do you want me to treat you? As I see it, you just keep on being the same leper as always. Sergeant, you’re of no use to the Army. If you want to leave, get going.”
After being bawled out and threatened with prison—because evading Army service is a crime—Muñoz had to go back to La Mesa, ordered to obtain a “result”, no matter how he did it. On foot, once again. They left at 9 o’clock at night and they didn’t get to the QSO at 4 o’clock in the morning, but rather at 10:00. The situation remained the same, bawling out the “lepers” who didn’t report on time.
“I’m ready, Major, no problem. I’ll get started working here. I’m starting to do some searches around here.”
“Soldier, you most definitely did not understand what it is that I want. All right, sonny, get going towards El Mamón.”
The El Mamón peak was in a rural area of Pueblo Bello in a mountainous zone of the Sierra. From there to another place, and every time we didn’t get to the QSO on time we got orders to go somewhere else. Desperation increased with every step. Villa Germania is a town located 76 kilometers from Valledupar. In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, everything changed.
Muñoz was no longer thinking of legal matters. He contacted the Corregidor (civil servant in a small town), who told him in which areas people had been buried. Yes, that’s what it says here, he had no problem at all in thinking about digging up some dead bodies to present as “results”. And he found them. Seven common graves that could have been either guerrillas or murdered civilians. According to him, in his head, he even had the idea that he might be able to identify disappeared persons. Major Blanco didn’t like the idea. In his testimony to the JEP, Muñoz remembers it this way:
“Why would you dig up a sonofabitching corpse out of a f—-ing hole? It’s that you are definitively, really ignorant. You just can’t understand what I’m trying to say.”
So then Muñoz contacted a demobilized man they called Bigotes in Villa Germania, and gave him 70,000 pesos out of his pocket (roughly USD $35 at the exchange rate of that time) to tell him how to find a stash. They pulled out a rifle that was all full of grease, four holsters, and some ammunition. He reported it but the answer was the same.
“I don’t need you to pick up a f—ing rifle. Pick up that sonofabitching rifle and stick it up your ass.”
From Villa Germania they walked 22 more kilometers on foot to get to the outskirts of Mariangola. In fact, just now in 2025 they’ve started a project to pave the road. The soldiers, says Muñoz, were already demoralized; they had to shoplift in stores to get something to eat. Then they went back to Pueblo Bello, which this time was not very far, but there was nothing to report to QSO. That’s how the days went by. And the humiliations continued.
“You are definitively worthless, Sergeant. Listen, I don’t know why you ever joined the Armed Forces.”
There the circle was completed, and the order was to go back to the Batallion, to Valledupar. Muñoz described how the situation didn’t change and how he would only be free of this stuff if he ended up transferred. Even the civilians he encountered on the road criticized him when they saw the soldiers he was leading were sick and almost fainting. He had to get them into a vehicle however he could, to get them to the outskirts of Valledupar, and that got him into another penalty. “The soldiers had blisters on their feet and I had scalded my . .. or better said, I was so dehydrated I couldn’t even have shed blood, and I couldn’t tell that señor that, because I was just the same leper,” he said.
“Do you think I’m going to order a car for you? No, I’m not going to spend gasoline for you. If you have to carry the soldiers lying down, go ahead and carry them, but just get them here!”
And they arrived at the base of the La Popa Battalion, but they wouldn’t let us come onto the base. They ordered them to go to the garbage dump where Muñoz had thought about killing himself. Muñoz asked them to take care of the soldiers as a favor, and then came the conversation that changed everything.
“Soldier, you know that in Valledupar there are street kids, beggars, yes or no? There’s a lot of bums around here in Valledupar. You know you have your ‘results’ right here.”
“But Major, how in the world?”
“If that head of yours is worth anything . . well, just use it!”
Muñoz told the JEP, “It was like he was telling me, if you want to show some ‘results’, it was like, well, I could kill my mother and show her as a ‘result’! I said, ‘Major, how can you say that? Or is this the place where you say dammit: one of these guys here never had a mother? You’re telling me to do something that’s just like, my very own mother, I kill her and present her . . . OK then, now I’ve understood what you were telling me to do, but no, I won’t do that, I’ve said no, and the soldiers know that it’s no.”
The soldier described how Major Blanco ordered him to go to La Mesa again, how he insisted that there he would be able to get the “result” “that would cover him with glory” and he told him again that he ought to use his head because “the society doesn’t need those useless bums.” Muñoz started talking with the people, to pay for some things, get some information about thieves and rapists.
All of this was a prelude, according to Muñoz’ narrative, about how they were able to get some grenades, some camouflage, some equipment, some bracelets that said ELN, while a corporal named Fonseca obtained the victims. While they just slumped along to La Mesa, in their reports they said they were doing searches. All that ended up in the extrajudicial execution on April 12, 2008, of Darwin Daniel de la Rosa and Giovanni José Ospina.
Nobody was able to say “no” to the pressure without feeling unbearable it was. Those events took place in a period of four months. Muñoz himself admitted a previous episode in which he had to go and “take care of a ‘result’”, and he recognized that he had murdered the person because the dead body “was cleaner than I was.” The members of the different military units knew about it but said nothing. Nobody made a complaint. Nobody prevented it. Four months were enough to kill somebody by deceiving them, and while they were defenseless. That was possible. It could never be justified.
According to Muñoz, Major Blanco told him, “Do you see now how you can cover yourself with glory?” Immediately afterwards, they simulated a combat. And Muñoz once again called in to the QSO to report himself “in combat”. The next day, in the same QSO where he had been so humiliated, Sergeant Muñoz received congratulations. But since he wouldn’t accept continuing in this manner, Blanco dissolved the squad and once again commanded him to walk to his new assignment in Meta Department.
Muñoz was imprisoned in the La Popa Battalion for 19 months for that extrajudicial execution. He applied to the JEP in 2017 and requested a pardon.
In the testimony seen by CAMBIO, Muñoz reflected on the pressures he had received, and admitted that he didn’t have the courage to say no, and recounted—among other things—what he had had to confront in the legal proceedings, with lawyers that wouldn’t defend him, but rather looked everywhere for ways to avoid mentioning Blanco and Hernández. Their testimony about how a lawyer had suggested using a chicken to poison another soldier who had told the truth to the Court, getting through it that way; that led the JEP to seek the record regarding the lawyer, Irma Yasmith Suárez Mariño.
Major Rubén Briam Blanco Bonilla was Operations Officer for La Popa Battalion between 2007 and October 2008 and became Deputy Commander in June 2009, with 28 military operations resulting in the deaths of 46 people. Of those, in reality, 41 had been murdered by members of the Colombian Army and falsely reported as “combat kills”, according to the charges filed by the JEP last March 31.