Hey there, it's Nick.
Today we have something a little different, a story told in three parts in collaboration with our friends at the podcast.
Everything is stories.
All the names have been changed to preserve anonymity.
I had this one uncle who was called El Diablo, the devil.
He is a taller guy, and he had receding hairline, black hair, always very well dressed, nice pants, some sort of like snakeskin shoe, silk shirts, and that stereotypical macho latin man type of thing, you know, unbuttoned down to the middle of his chest with gold necklaces, really evil, beady black eyes.
Being a child of two or three years old and being in the same room as El Diablo Washington, terrifying.
It was like a negative, negative energy.
When he came into the room, he would come over to my grandmother's house, and as soon as he would come over, I would run into my room, close the door, and play with my dolls and stay there until he left.
I was terrified of him.
My dad and his brothers, my uncles, they were born in Colombia and inherited huge lots of land in Colombia.
I think my dad was the only one that left Colombia to come to the United States.
The way that it's always been in my head was that, like, he was over here, and then one of his brothers was like, hey, man, you know, the land and all that that mom and dad left us, we figured out something to do with it, come back and be a part of it, because we're making money.
The business was to let the guerrillas basically use the land to grow cocaine.
From radiotopia, you're listening to love and radio.
I'm Nick Vanderkolk.
Today's episode, la retirada part two.
It is so hard to break, so hard to get out, because all Rodrigo's family was on it.
I didn't want to.
I didn't want to cut the relationship with the family because his family, I didn't like what they were, you know, what they were into, but, you know, their family.