Liliana Cáceres was 16 in 1997 when she began tying rags and sheets around her belly with girdles every day for almost two hours.
Before getting dressed, she drank liters of water to swell her abdomen naturally. She lived in the Nueva Colombia neighborhood in Barranquilla and had told her boyfriend Alejandro that she was expecting nine babies.
The news spread throughout the country. The media sought her out, neighbors treated her as a miracle, and even Gabriel García Márquez became interested in her case and invited her to a chronicle-writing workshop.
For nine months, no one noticed that Liliana’s belly was made of fabric and water, not life.
On November 28, 1997, medical examinations at the Hospital Universitario de Barranquilla brought the charade to an end: there was no pregnancy.
Psychiatrist Mónica Avendaño diagnosed her with a conversion disorder, and Liliana came to consider taking her own life because of the shame.
Today, at 44, with four children and a foundation for teenage mothers in Cartagena, she says she has no regrets: she says she did it all for love.