[1] "The fable of my childhood was woven by their legends and stories; with her I discovered the power of the word," Carranza said in an interview with Carlos Jáuregui.

[1] The family returned to Bogota, Colombia in 1958, where the young Maria Mercedes lived a difficult period of re-adaptation to her native country.

She would later study philosophy and literature, first in Madrid and intermittently between 1965 and 1978, in the University of Los Andes (Colombia) in Bogotá, where she graduated with a thesis on her father's work.

Two of her closest friends had recently died and her brother Ramiro Carranza had been kidnapped by leftist guerilla group FARC.

[5][6] The final collection published during her lifetime, 1997's El canto de las moscas is an overtly political reflection on violence in contemporary Colombia through the sites of massacres.