Alaíde Foppa

In 2010, Foppa's family, Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) (Mutual Support Group) and the Centro de Reportes Informativos sobre Guatemala (CERIGUA) (Center of Informative Reports on Guatemala) and other organizations demanded that an inquiry into Foppa's disappearance be launched by Guatemalan authorities. In 2012, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) filed a complaint against Guatemala's inaction on the case. In 2014, Foppa's daughter Silvia concurred that there was no resolution from any of the court actions—in Spain, before the Guatemalan Supreme Court, or from the IACHR case. The whereabouts of Foppa and what happened to her is still unanswered. In 2014, a documentary by Maricarmen de Lara entitled ¡Alaíde Foppa, la sin ventura! (Alaide Foppa, the luckless one) was released.

On 2 December 1999, Foppa's children requested that the Audiencia Nacional de España open an inquiry. Though a case was opened, Guatemalan authorities did not respond. In 2005, an explosion at an obscure police station on the outskirts of Guatemala City revealed an archive of records going back to the creation in 1880 of the National Police. Forensic teams began examining the documents in the Guatemala National Police Archives, and Julio Solórzano wanted to ensure that the documents remained accessible. He contacted Karen Engle at the University of Texas’ Rapoport Center for Human Rights and persuaded them to digitize the records. He is hopeful that within the archive is information on his mother's case.

Alaíde Foppa (1914 – c. 1980?) was a Guatemalan poet, writer, feminist, art critic, teacher and translator. Born in Barcelona, Spain she held Guatemalan citizenship and lived in exile in Mexico. She worked as a professor in both Guatemala and Mexico. Much of her poetry was published in Mexico and she co-founded one of the first feminist publications, Fem, in the country. After her husband's death, she made a trip to Guatemala to see her mother and renew her passport. She was detained and disappeared in Guatemala City on 19 December 1980, presumed to be murdered. Some sources note the date of her disappearance as 9 December 1980.

Foppa's daughter Laura was a dancer and was performing in a production at the Covarrubias Theatre that was to open on 21 December 1980. When she called to verify that her mother would be returning for the performance, she learned from her grandmother of her mother's disappearance with the chauffeur, Leocadio Axtún Chiroy. Oldest son, Julio Solórzano Foppa, got a phone call from Laura who imparted the news to him and oldest daughter, Silvia learned of her mother's disappearance on the radio in a guerrilla camp in the mountains of El Quiché.

Foppa had apparently gone to buy flowers and pick up her passport in Guatemala City on 19 December 1980. She was accompanied by her mother's driver, Leocadio Axtún, who had taken her to the Plaza El Amate, where they were intercepted, and never heard from again. Rumors were that she was tortured by a death squad of a high-ranking minister and killed the same day she was captured. Initially the newspapers carried a report that she had been abducted by members of the G-2 intelligence unit, beaten, and forced into a car, which sped away, but fearful of retaliation witnesses would not come forward.

In 1972, she created the radio program "Foro de la Mujer" (Women's Forum) which was broadcast on Radio Universidad, to discuss inequalities within Mexican society, violence and how violence should be treated as a public rather than a private concern, and to explore women's lives. In 1975, she co-founded with Margarita García Flores the publication Fem, a magazine for scholarly analysis of issues from a feminist perspective. Foppa financed the publication from her own funds. Important Mexican journalists and intellectuals aided in the co-founding of the magazine. Many prominent Latin Americans in the early 1980s did not identify with "Feminism" but rather with "Humanism", as in the case of Griselda Alvarez when asked by Fem.

Foppa served on the faculty of the humanities department at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (University of San Carlos of Guatemala) and was a founder of the Italian Institute of Culture in the Central American country. She and her husband were forced to flee the country in 1954 when the presidency of Jacobo Árbenz was overthrown by a CIA-backed military coup.

In the 1940s, Foppa attained Guatemalan citizenship, and married a Guatemalan leftist, Alfonso Solórzano. A member of the FDN, he was an "intellectual communist", who managed the Guatemala Institute of Social Security. Solórzano eventually also served as a cabinet adviser to Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz With Solórzano, she had four children, born in Mexico: Mario, Juan Pablo, Silvia and Laura. Foppa's oldest son Julio was the child of Juan José Arévalo, Árbenz's predecessor as president of Guatemala.

María Alaíde Foppa Falla was born 3 December 1914 in Barcelona, Spain to Tito Livio Foppa and Julia Falla. Her mother was a pianist of Guatemalan descent and her father was an Argentine- Italian diplomat. She grew up traveling, living in Belgium, France and Italy. She was educated in Italy, studying the history of art and literature. She spoke fluent Italian and worked for several years as a translator.