It’s one of the most heart-tugging tales of Colombia’s long civil conflict: Rebels appear at the jungle home of a poor farmer carrying a 7-month-old boy with bandaged left arm.

The farmer tells them that the medicine man they seek isn’t around. They leave the baby anyway, and promise to return the following day. But they don’t. The abandoned child won’t see his hostage mother until an emotional reunion after she is finally freed from captivity three years later.