On October 20, as Guatemala commemorated the 1944 Revolution, a new face joined the portraits of victims of murders and disappearances during the internal armed conflict: Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa, a lawyer and former prosecutor who was murdered just three days earlier, on Saturday, October 17, on a soccer field at the Campo Marte public sporting complex in Guatemala City.
An hour earlier, Solórzano Foppa’s coffin had been honored in the rain in front of the National Palace, in the Plaza de las Niñas, where family members, friends, and protesters gathered to bid him farewell.
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His portrait was placed alongside the red carnations commemorating the 1944 Revolution and the image of Oliverio Castañeda de León, a student leader shot to death on October 20, 1978, after participating in a march commemorating the October Revolution.
Every year, student organizations from the University of San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC) and the Frente 78 collective gather in front of the Portal del Comercio, at 6th Avenue and 8th Street in Zone 1 of Guatemala City, near where Castañeda de León was murdered. There, they lay flowers and display portraits to honor his memory and demand justice for a crime that, 48 years later, remains unpunished.
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Athlete Gustavo Adolfo Aguilar Gamarro also died in last Saturday’s attack; the Interior Ministry described him as a “collateral victim.” Solórzano Foppa had led investigations into high-level corruption and organized crime and headed the Superintendency of Tax Administration (SAT).
In recent years, he used his social media accounts to expose links between gangs, criminal organizations, and figures in Guatemalan political parties, as he did in April of this year, in a report by El Faro.
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