You, Guatemala, are a fist and a
fistful of American dust with seeds
a small fistful of hope.
Defend it, defend us …
because in the dark hours
you were the honor, the pride,
the dignity of the Americas.
Pablo Neruda (1954)
JanlFeb 1981
Alaide Foppa, feminist and
human rights activist, was visiting
her native country of Guatemala
last December 19 when she and
her driver, Leocadio Actin, were
stopped by three masked men
armed with machine guns. Accor-
ding to Guatemala’s most power-
41update * update * update * update
Disappeared feminist professor and poet Alaide Foppa.
ful labor organization, Foppa was
kidnapped by the Intelligence Ser-
vice (G-2) of the Guatemalan
Army.
What did the Army fear in Alaide
Foppa, a 67-year-old university
professor at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM)? Although virtually
unknown in the United States,
Foppa is widely respected in Latin
America. Her life weaves together
many of the threads that make up
the present-day Latin American
tapestry. On her father’s side, she
is an Argentine of Italian ancestry,
born in Spain. On her mother’s
side, Guatemalan. Raised in
Guatemala, she was forced to
leave that country more than
twenty years ago when her hus-
band, the director of Social Securi-
ty under the progressive Arbenz
government and a member of the
Guatemalan Labor Party, was
exiled to Mexico after a CIA-
sponsored right-wing coup in
1954. Since then she has lived,
worked and struggled in Mexico.
At UNAM, Foppa became the
first person in Latin America to
teach a university course on
women, and was a co-founder and
editor of fem, Mexico’s most
respected feminist journal. A
42
writer, art critic and poet, Foppa
has also produced more than 400
radio programs on women’s
liberation. It was for one of these
programs that she recently con-
ducted a series of interviews with
peasant women in the Quiche
region of Guatemala. El Quiche
has been under fierce attack by
the Guatemalan Armed Forces, as
the center of an increasingly
strong, indigeneous-based guer-
rilla movement. Foppa’s inter-
views document forcefully the
genocidal aims of the Guatemalan
military.
The Guatemalan government
has implausibly attributed Foppa’s
kidnapping to “the minority of
Guatemalan leftist trouble-
makers,” and has published no
other information on her disap-
pearance. Yet the International
Committee for the Life of Alaide
Foppa, which publishes a daily an-
nouncement in the Mexican
paper, Uno Mas Uno, unequi-
vocally states, “We hold the
Guatemalan government responsi-
ble for her life.”
Although she grew up in a
Guatemalan family of wealth and
position, Alaide Foppa has worked
tirelessly for the rights of the poor
in her native country and, more
Concerned people in the
United States are urged by
Foppa’s supporters to send
telegrams demanding the
Guatemalan government ac-
count for Foppa’s whereabouts
and end the repression against
the Guatemalan people to:
Presidente Romeo Lucas Gar-
cia, Palacio del Gobierno,
Guatemala.
recently, El Salvador. According to
statistics compiled by the
Democratic Front Against Repres-
sion in Guatemala, more than
2,000 people were assassinated
by that country’s extreme right
paramilitary forces in the final
three months of 1980. It is fervent-
ly hoped that Alaide Foppa and
Leocadio Acttn have not become
part of that grim statistic.
-Compiled in New York with in-
formation from Graciela Duarte
and the Comit6 de Ayuda por la
Vida de Alaide Foppa (Mexico)
and Elizabeth Weiner (New
York).
Menu
