He told her that what she had done was extraordinary, that she had exposed a powerful man and given a voice to a dead man who had been crying out for justice for decades. Catalina thanked him, but confessed that she was afraid. Afraid of what would come next. Afraid that Don Erasmo had influential friends who could free him. Afraid that everything would go back to the way it was before. Father Anselmo told her that it was normal to be afraid, but that this time was different, that Lieutenant Ramírez answered directly to the federal government, not the corrupt state government, that Judge Morales had been in office for years.
They were waiting for an opportunity like this to rid the region of local strongmen like Don Erasmo, and Catalina’s testimony, along with the physical evidence of the corpse and the treasure, was enough to convict him. The following days were a whirlwind. Lieutenant Ramírez interrogated dozens of people in the town. Little by little, the truth came to light like water gushing from a spring after years of drought. It was learned that Don Erasmo had stolen that treasure more than 30 years ago.
During a time of violence and chaos following the revolution, the treasure belonged to the Medina family, a wealthy family from the region who had mysteriously disappeared in 1930. According to the testimonies of the village elders, the Medinas had been murdered one night, and their lands and properties had been seized by Don Erasmo, who at that time was merely an ambitious gunman in the service of a powerful local strongman. The chained corpse was, according to the evidence, that of Don Julián Medina, the family patriarch, who had been kidnapped and forced to reveal the location of his hidden fortune.
After confessing under torture, Don Erasmo had chained him up in that tunnel and left him to die of hunger and thirst, making sure he could never tell what had happened. For decades, Don Erasmo had secretly guarded that treasure, waiting for the right moment to remove it without raising suspicion. But that moment never came. And now, thanks to a desperate widow seeking refuge for her children, the whole truth had exploded like a bomb. Jacinto confessed everything during the interrogation, trying to save his own skin.
