Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

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During her many trips to the Attorneys General’s Office 
to file motions of habeas corpus in a desperate attempt to 
locate her brother, Aura Elena began to recognize the faces 
of many other women who arrived day after day, just like 
her, to  demand their right to know what had happened to 
their loved ones.

Among them was Emilia García, the mother or labor 
unionist Fernando García, who disappeared in February 
1984, Catalina Ferrer, who was searching for her husband, 
law student Hugo de León Palacios, and Raquel Linares, the 
mother of student leader Sergio Linares.

The latter was identified, in December 2011, among the 
bodies found in a clandestine cemetery in the former military 
detachment of San Juan Comalapa, in the department of 
Chimaltenango. In October 2010, the two policemen who 
captured Fernando García had been given a forty year prison 
sentence. However, Rubén Amílcar Farfán’s body has never 
been found and Aura Elena’s ninety-five-year-old mother 
still clings to the hope that one day he might walk through 
the door. 

Aura Elena and the other women who were seeking justice 
for their loved ones realized that together they could exert 
pressure on the military government and fight for their 
right to know the truth. This is how a series of human 
rights organizations such as the Mutual Support Group and 
Famdegua, were created.

On April 4, 1985, the mutilated bodies of Rosario Cuevas, 
one of the founding members of GAM, her three-year-old 
son Augusto Rafael, and her brother, Maynor René, were 
found by the road leading from the peripheral municipality 
of Boca del Monte to Villa Canales.