Felicia López Manuel

September 21, 2004, letter to Christopher Curran

Hi Christopher. It’s a pleasure to write you, I’m hoping that you find yourself well and in good health along with your parents and in all the activities you undertake each day.

Christopher, I just wanted to tell you that during the vacation (October 2004 to January 2005) we have to go to my house. The help we are requesting is for next year.

We are in good communication with Marielos, she’s a very good person.

I’m asking for a scholarship because my parents really don’t have the economic resources to help us in our studies next year. My father is a person who dedicates himself to agricultural work where he earns Q.20.00 to Q.25.00 ($2.50 to $3.00) a day, for that reason my father isn’t able to support me with my studies and that’s why I’m looking for help from someone for the next year, when I will need to pay for my housing, food, tuition, and school materials. My father isn’t able to help me with money for next year.

I will also tell the story of my community. The community the Union Fourth Village Ixcán, in the department of El Quiché, was one of the places that suffered the most during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala.

It was a Sunday, March 14, when some people were having a market day and others were praying to God in the church.

At 10:00 am people saw a helicopter fly over the community and the helicopter landed. 30 well-armed soldiers got off and the people welcomed them one by one. Among them was their commander, who ordered the men in the community to go bring firewood for a party. The men, knowing nothing, went and came back with heavy loads of firewood. After that, they were told to make a pit 12 meters deep. Once the pit was finished, they threw the firewood in and poured gasoline over it.
One by one the soldiers took hold of the men, who asked what would be done to them and were told ‘the time has come for you to die because you are helping the guerrilla army of the URNG’ (the URNG, or Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, was the coaltition of rebel groups who took up arms against the government and military). Then men were thrown into the fire that had been prepared, and then the pregnant women of the community were taken and shut inside the mayor’s house. Soldiers entered to rape the women one by one, afterwhich they cut open their wombs and killed the babies they carried inside.

The young unmarried women were locked inside a meeting hall, where they were also raped, cut on the breasts, and killed.

The married women were tied down under large pieces of canvas, where they suffered for nearly five hours before the soldiers began to cut off their feet and hands, killing some of them at that moment.

At 4:00 in the morning airplanes flew overhead to drop bombs on the community. At that point my parents escaped death. They ran to the mountains where they stayed for a month suffering from the heat, flies, hunger and illnesses. My mother had given birth only ten days before the violence occurred in my community, and that child, my brother, died while they were in hiding on the mountain. This is the great sorrow that my parents always have in their minds.

By God’s grace my parents and other survivors were able to reach and cross the border with Mexico, where they worked during eight months for Mexicans in exchange for food and a place to sleep. Our family stayed in Mexico for fourteen years because of the violence that continued in Guatemala.

In the year 1995, we returned to Guatemala to live on land that my mother inherited from my grandparents, we went back to Guatemala to live on this land.

It is because of the armed conflict that in my community there is no development. There are no roads, no electricity, no drinking water, and many other things are lacking.

It was a great tragedy for each one of us, especially our parents who suffered so much, but thanks to God things are calm now.

Christopher, this is all I can write right now, thank you for your understanding and if you have more questions I can write more.

Warmly,
Felicia Laura López Manuel

To contribute Felicia's scholarship, please visit the Support us page.

Go back to the Students page to read more biographies.

 Tax-deductible contributions to Project Victoria may be made to:

Project Victoria Fund
Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation
200 1st St. SW
Cedar Rapids IA 52404
319-366-2862