From the moment he started broadcasting from his radio station La Rotta had to pay hush money – known locally as “vaccine” – to paramilitaries operating in that area of northern Colombia amounting to 50,000 pesos ($21) a month. He bridled at the extortion, but paid up a number of times, until he could no longer take it and refused to continue doing so.

In October 2003 a friend reported to him that three armed men had gone to look for him at the radio station while he was away on a trip to Bogotá, the Colombian capital. As a result, La Rotta hid up in Bogotá for the next two months, until December 22, when he had to return to San Alberto to find someone to run the station for him “while things calmed down,” he said.

On February 7, 2004, he phoned his wife and children, who were already living in Bogotá, to tell them that he would be seeing them that day, as he would be taking a morning or midday flight to there.

But neither his wife, Luz Carmen Prada, nor his three children, Evelyn, Lizeth and Carlos Mario, ever saw him again. At 12:35 p.m. that day, while he was still at the radio station listening to the newscast, he was shot and mortally wounded. He ran out into the street calling for help, but it was already too late.

One year later, the murder of Martín La Rotta remains unpunished. Not one arrest has been made and the investigation is stalled at the preliminary evidence-gathering stage.