"We have a paramilitary and drug-trafficking government in Colombia" and "I designed this series as a weapon of subversion (...) which aims to wound this system to death, without drawing blood", underlines Daniel Mendoza during an interview with AFP near Toulouse.

This lawyer, criminologist and journalist had to flee his country shortly after the release in May 2020 of the first season of Matarife (Le Boucher).

The series connects political-economic elite, paramilitaries and drug traffickers, including the Medellin Cartel founded by Pablo Escobar and Juan David Ochoa, who died in 1993 and 2013.

Compiling press articles, interviews, photos, videos, court records, it focuses on the right-wing ex-president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), mentor of the current head of state Ivan Duque.

The elite and the narcos

"The Medellin cartel would never have been what it was if Alvaro Uribe, director of civil aviation, had not granted Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa clan the licenses (...) for their planes to take off full of coke and land full of dollars."

And, "it was the support of the Medellin cartel that made Alvaro Uribe governor, then president": with his finger, Daniel Mendoza follows the red thread linking, in a vast spider's web, the photos of the protagonists pinned on the his bedroom wall.

Colombian lawyer Daniel Mendoza, screenwriter and producer of the documentary series Matarife denouncing the "narco-paramilitary system", March 25, 2022 near Toulouse Lionel BONAVENTURE AFP

"The purpose of the series is to use existing information (...) and wrap this weapon in audio-visual lead shielding (...) so that it touches people's souls and awakens them ( ...) more than a conventional documentary", he adds about the jerky editing, on a background of techno music, where he appears himself with his tattoos.

Season 1 has "ten episodes of six to eight minutes so that people who have little credit on their mobile can watch them between two bus stops".

Broadcast on YouTube, shared via other social networks, it goes viral.

This success comes at a price: "Thugs were looking for me to kill me."

Daniel Mendoza, born April 8, 1972 in the heart of high society, has "a clear notion of how this elite devastated the country, of its direct relationship with the massacres (...) to displace populations and appropriate the land."

"Colombia is run by sociopaths (...) Today they hate me!"

But "all of Matarife's information is true" and so far the series "has won more than 30 lawsuits" brought against him.

Forced to hide, however, he was exfiltrated by France and will direct season 2 there during the summer of 2021.

"The first was for the Colombian people; the second, with longer episodes, for the outside, for the world to see" what Colombia is going through, including the repression of protests in recent years.

Three seasons, two books

Season 3, broadcast in early April and recorded in Mexico, Bolivia and Peru, is aimed at "Latin American people", he reveals.

"We are a society of internal exiles since the Spaniards made us deny our indigenous roots (...) we exist in Latin America, but live thinking Coca Cola, McDonald's, Versace, etc."

The spider web linking the photos of the protagonists of the documentary series Matarife pinned to the wall of the room of the Colombian lawyer Daniel Mendoza, on March 25, 2022 near Toulouse Lionel BONAVENTURE AFP

At the same time, the French journalist Guylaine Roujol is releasing a book on the series and Daniel Mendoza will publish a novel entitled "El Innombrable" (The Unnamable) in May.

"There is a before and after Matarife: we called Alvaro Uribe + the unnameable + because anyone who identified him in a comment received twenty lawyers and as many threats. Today, his name is shouted in the street (.. .) he is called a mafia, an assassin."

However, the lawyer does not think he will be able to find Colombia anytime soon, even if the left, victorious in the parliamentary elections in March, won the presidential election at the end of May.

"Those who want to kill me will still be there (...) in ten, twenty years, I may be able to return and walk quietly in the streets of this country that I adore", he says moved.

Admitting not to have measured the extent of the risks taken with Matarife, Daniel Mendoza does not regret it: "if I were to be reborn a thousand times, a thousand times I would start again".

© 2022 AFP