35

 / The long road to justice

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They all showed signs of having been savagely tortured, 
including the little boy, whose fingernails had been ripped 
off. That was the price that Rosario was forced to pay for 
demanding to know what had happened to her husband, 
student Carlos Rafael Cuevas Molinas, who had disappeared 
in May 1984. 

After Rosario’s murder, Aura Elena was forced to leave her 
three children and seek exile in Los Angeles, California. 
However, she decided to return to Guatemala after only five 
months despite the grave danger that she faced. 

Behind her soft voice and mild manners there’s an incredibly 
tenacious and determined woman.   

During her 28-year-long pursuit of justice for the disappeared, 
Aura Elena has never given up even though she has received 
countless threats. 

XIV

The Catholic Church in La Libertad was the only place 
where the survivors of the Dos Erres massacre believed they 
could voice the pain that had choked them since the day 
when their lives had been shattered in a thousand pieces with 
the savage blows of a sledgehammer, explains Aura Elena. 

Two priests listened to their story and in 1994, twelve years 
after the massacre, they decided to go to Dos Erres. 

When they found the shallow graves in La Aguada and Los 
Salazares, they immediately knew that what the peasants 
had told them was the truth and not a village rumor.