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When Luis Corzo was just six years old, he was kidnapped. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1996, armed members of a small gang invaded the garage of his Guatemala City home. Corzo’s brother witnessed the incident and rushed back into the house. His sister was getting ready for school in another room. The youngest of three children, Corzo was in the garage when the kidnappers grabbed him. They were going to take his mother, but his father offered to take his place.
The third proof of life provided to the Corso family was left by the kidnappers on the back of this sign.
Luis spent the next twenty-five years trying to piece together the month he and his father, Juan Corzo Jr., were held for ransom. He remembered fragments: Dominican merengue playing in the background in one of the hideouts, the shadow puppets he and his father made to fill the empty time. Other horrors were harder to recall in detail, though they left a deeper mark. At the end of their captivity, the kidnappers cut off the ring finger of Juan’s left hand and left it for the family to take in a plastic container in a fast-food restroom, a menacing warning to pay.
Sourse: newyorker.com
