'My mother lay on the ground screaming. She tried to crawl over to the mortar that my sister was stuffed into. I could feel myself peeing from fear; the evil that was holding on to me was so big and so incomprehensible that I wanted to die. I wanted to die, I wanted my mother to die, and I wanted my sister to live. Someone would lift her up and tie her to their back. One of my aunts, who was also mother to my sister, would lead her back to life. No one should have to die crushed by a pole in a corn mortar. Such a sacrifice could not be worthy of death.

'Suddenly the man with no teeth seemed to give up. He shouted a few brusque orders to his waiting men. They began herding together the goats and the women and the half-grown boys, who carried on their heads the food the bandits had found in the village. They also dragged along me and my mother, who at the last moment tried to tear herself away to get my sister, who had started to cry down in the mortar.

'The leader must have heard her, the faint cries from inside the mortar. Because all of a sudden he picked up the pole that was lying on the ground beside Alfredo's head. He looked at the pole, as if he didn't at first understand why he was holding it.

'Then he lifted it up – the man with no teeth, who had come with his men like beasts of prey in the night to kill us in the name of liberation – and he slammed it into the mortar until my sister stopped screaming.

'My mother heard the screams stop. She turned round and saw what had happened, how the man with no teeth pounded the pole one last time, and then everything was very still.

'At that moment it felt as if the world died. Even though many of us were still alive, we were actually dead. Even the spirits, which were fluttering restlessly all around, fell to the ground like a rain of tiny, cold dead stones.

'I remember very little of what happened after that.