Fuchsia Boxex
Installation (Sculpture and drawings):
aluminum, cardboard, paper and drawings on the wall.
340 x 90 x 50 cm.
1996-2008.

Anexo 273.
Cibachrome.
23 x 37 cm.
1996.

In June 1994, after the second round of presidential elections, candidate Ernesto Samper was elected president. Soon after, one of the most notorious scandals in Colombia’s recent history erupted: financial contributions from the Cali Cartel to the Liberal Party’s campaign.

For a long time, the main figures involved—Santiago Medina and Fernando Botero—concealed the facts, until their situation became untenable. They decided to cooperate with the authorities; their statements implicated not only President Samper but also several Liberal Party politicians. A significant number of them, as well as individuals linked to the Cali Cartel, were convicted. The evidence gathered by the Office of the Attorney General compelled the opening of an investigation against the president himself. By law, the trial of a sitting president had to be conducted by Congress, which found no grounds to prosecute and decided to close the investigation.

The works Fuchsia Boxes and Annex 273 are based on the testimonies and statements of those implicated in the judicial process against the politicians involved in the infiltration of narcotrafficking money into the presidential campaign. After reviewing the file presented by the Attorney General’s Office to Congress, it became evident that these events tended to fade from public consciousness, mainly due to their textual nature. Except for documents such as minutes, photocopies of checks, and receipts belonging to the Asociación Colombia Moderna (responsible for managing the campaign’s finances), most of the evidence consisted of statements.

From these statements, certain details stand out as particularly unsettling—for example, the narcotraffickers’ deliberate choice of paper to wrap the crude cardboard boxes used to send the money, as well as the sheer physical volume of such a sum. The final shipment, made before the second round of the elections, consisted of six cardboard boxes that had to be carried by two people due to their weight and size.

The reconstruction of the evidence, in physical and visual terms, provides previously non-existent references that materialize an event of great political and historical significance. The work seeks not only to refer to specific facts, but to create a symbol of a particular aspect of Colombian society—one that has coexisted with the phenomenon of narcotrafficking for decades. This is an economic and social phenomenon with profound cultural repercussions, which cannot simply be seen as a misfortune, but as a formative part of who we are today.