Can you imagine it? She was 16 years old, preparing to go to one of her dance classes, her great passion. She felt very loved and protected by her parents. From a very young age, she had the vocation to squeeze every day of her life. He was very happy, that is. But the phone rang. And he took it. His father had been murdered. It was never known who did it or why. It happened in Cali, Colombia, where Juana Acosta was born in 1976. It has taken the actress thirty years to be able to talk about it: the infinite pain, the hatred, the rage, the anger, the desire for revenge, the most violent thoughts besieging her. He wanted to kill. His older brother ended up committing suicide. She opted for life, and for forgiving. For forgiving!
She has lived happily in Spain for years, where the public knows her and applauds her for her work on television and for films such as ‘Perfect Strangers’ (2017), by Álex de la Iglesia, where she shares the limelight with her partner at the time, Ernesto Alterio, father of her only daughter, Lola. Now she is embarking on her most personal project, an emotional adventure of great impact. She has brought to the stage, through words and dance, accompanied by the dancer and choreographer Chevi Muraday, and with the help of the playwright Juan Carlos Rubio, the traumatic event that has conditioned her life and that of her family. The show is called ‘The Forgiveness’. He has managed to forgive those who killed his father. If you want to give him a gift, know that he loves petunias.
– How was your life until that day when everything fell apart?
– Very happy. I had a childhood and adolescence with a lot of love, I felt very loved and very protected. My mother and father separated when I was 6 years old, but the truth is that no one ever spoke to me better about my mother than my father, and on the contrary. I stayed living with her, but I had a very close relationship with my father, who came a lot to eat at home and with whom we went every weekend. As a child she was already very sensitive, very playful and cheerful. The truth is that from a very young age she was already an extrovert. And, also always, very talkative [ríe].
– What good memories of your father accompany you?
– He was an extremely generous man, with an extraordinary sense of humor. She was a unique, exceptional being, beautiful on the outside and inside. He was the most handsome man in Cali. Still, when I walk through its streets, women stop me and say: ‘Your dad was the most beautiful man in this city!’ My father drove women crazy and men crazy, he entered any place and nobody could stop looking at him. He was a magnetic being, he really impressed with his elegance, his bearing, his self-confidence. In addition, he had the virtue of always having kind words for everyone, he was very special. I have the memory that he was a very loved being, and not only by his family but by all the people around him. My father’s funeral was massive, people came from all over Colombia. Nobody could understand that my father had died in those circumstances.
– And when he picked up that phone and they told him that he had died…
– My soul was broken. There was a before and an after. But fate is fate. I was 16 years old when that phone rang… I picked it up and it interrupted my whole life, including my first vocation, which was dance.
– What did they tell him?
– They told me: ‘I have bad news for you, they killed your father.’ The show ‘El Perdon’ begins with that phrase. It never crossed my mind that something like this could happen to me. I broke, me and my whole family were broken. It still does not fit in my head, 30 years later, how can a person’s life be interrupted in such a violent way at 51 years of age. It is something that is very difficult to accept. It has taken me three decades to be able to talk about it and feel capable on stage of transforming that wound and that pain into art.
– What happened?
– Never knew. An unpunished crime. Many things were rumored… It was a time of great violence, in which life in Colombia was worth nothing. The year my father was killed, they also killed two of my classmates. Last December, while I was there with a group of friends, of the twelve of us, two of us had had our parents killed. It was a broken, broken society, with enormous social inequality and with so much violence and so much hatred generated…; the violence never seems to stop. And that is the subject that I have been very interested in investigating: how to break the circle of violence, of that violence that generates violence and makes the nightmare never end. Living in that circle is hell.
“Pay back that damage”
– Did you feel a desire for revenge?
– Of course. When they do so much damage to you, when they break your life and that of your entire family, there is a very strong need to repay that damage with the same currency. Revenge comes naturally to you. And you have to make a decision if you don’t want to become their prisoner. The decision to get out of the circle so as not to remain anchored in anger and rage, wallowing in fury and perpetuating violence. I think that is what happens in the highly polarized societies in which we live. We cling to hatred and rage and that does not allow us to move forward as a society. That is why I think it is so pertinent to talk about forgiveness. It is important and timely to do so.
– What did you feel?
– Pure panic, because as a result of receiving the news of my father’s murder I had terrible thoughts, desires for revenge, to kill. And I got very scared when I was 16 years old thinking those things. And luckily I made the decision to get out of a lane that wasn’t going to take me anywhere, other than to continue perpetuating hatred and violence.
Did you fall into depression?
– No, because I was able to orient myself towards life. Art helped me, it saved my life; theater, acting, being able to put all my pain into art, being able to use it to tell stories that move consciences. That atrocious suffering caused by injustice could be avoided, we should not get used to them and sit idly by.
No to the death penalty
– What happened tohis older brother?
– When my father was killed, my older brother, who was the one who committed suicide fifteen years later, is the one who was the most furious of all of us. He was never able to get over it, and in the end, since he couldn’t exert violence outwards, he exerted it towards himself and took his own life. I had to grow up and mature quickly. Nobody said that living was easy, true, but until I was 16 I believed that life was something else.
– Have you come to forgive those who murdered your father?
-Yes, I have managed to forgive my father’s murderers, but first I have forgiven myself for having felt so much hatred and rage. The road has not been easy, nor short, there have been many years of therapy…; the pain does not go away, the years go by and what you are learning is to live with that pain. A little while ago my aunt asked me: ‘Juanita, do you still have that pain in your belly?’ ‘Yes, auntie, I’ll have it until my death, but I’ve learned to live with it.’
– Death penalty in any case?
– Of course not, not at all. I believe in second chances and I believe in reparation, what happens is that when there is no memory, because in the case of my father we did not know who was the cause or why, everything is much more difficult. When there is no justice or memory it is very difficult to repair. I am hurt with my country, which is very complex and has many social and economic problems at all levels… I am hurt, although I love it. What is certain is that it took me years to reconcile with Colombia.
– Do you understand the desire of some ETA victims to meet with the murderers of their relatives, for example, to try to understand?
– The truth is that I think that’s something I wouldn’t do, sit down and talk to my father’s killers. But I fully understand the need for many victims to do so.
– What have you been lucky?
– To have an intelligent, visionary, positive mother, with a spirit of improvement and extraordinary courage and strength. I feel immensely lucky because she has led me to the light, to have a positive attitude towards life. And also for having been able not only to try to carry out my dreams, but also to overcome adversity. They are presented to all of us, to all of us; I have been able to know the deep pain of many people.
– How are you today?
– I am a very disciplined woman, something that dance has undoubtedly helped me with, and a hard worker. I feel very proud of the career I have done and also of the decisions I have been making, and I greatly appreciate and am grateful that life has given me the opportunity to be a mother, which is the most beautiful thing that has happened to me. I value life very much, despite all the bitterness it may have. And I know better and better what I don’t want. I think it happens to all of us: we are becoming more demanding because we are realizing that time is pressing, it flies, and we want to be happy. That is one of my great goals, to be a happy person, because I have had to experience very terrible things.
“wonderful men”
– Have you demanded from your partners the perfection that you saw in your father? Let’s see who is the handsome one who can live up to it…
– [Risas] Fortunately, wonderful men have crossed my life, and I also feel grateful in that sense. Life compensated me on that side [más risas].
– How do you live in this country, about which we complain a lot?
– I am a voluntary exile, I live here because I fell in love with Spain and Madrid, which seems to me to be one of the most beautiful and lively cities in the world. I travel a lot, and every time I return I am aware of how lucky I am to live in this spectacle of a city. In addition, it is a city that embraces foreigners. He has hugged me. I think it is true that the people of Spain do not value what they really have, the fact of living in a very special country. I live happily in Spain.
– What do you dislike?
– I really dislike inequality, injustice. Over the years and through therapy I have discovered that one of my greatest wounds has to do with injustice, because a murder is one of the most unjust things there is. I rebel a lot against injustice, inequality and abuse of power. I try to go through life betting on loyalty, love and art.
– What helps you take care of yourself?
– Meditation gives me a lot of strength, serenity and well-being. And knowing how to breathe well is very important, among other things because it helps to observe you. And observing myself every day is very useful to me.
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