Peace Brigades International remembers with the Mutual Support Group (GAM) the life of Maria del Rosario Godoy Aldana de Cuevas
The Mutual Support Group (GAM) has posted on Facebook:
“We remember the painful loss of Maria del Rosario Godoy Aldana de Cuevas, co-founder of GAM in 1984, in times of the Internal Armed Conflict-CAI.
Like many other people at that time, she was looking for her husband Carlos Ernesto Cuevas Molina, who had disappeared. “… Either they bring me back Carlos alive or they take me too.. “I will never rest until I find my fat one.”
Maria del Rosario Godoy Aldana de Cuevas was killed on April 4, 1985 along with her son Augusto Rafael, two years old, and her brother Maynor René, 21 years old. The three bodies showed signs of polytraumatism.
On this day, we remember Rosario’s tireless struggle to find the missing persons forcibly and we keep the memory of Rosario alive.”
PBI and GAM
Liam Mahony and Luis Enrique Eguren, as well as PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark, have told the story of how Peace Brigades International (PBI) was founded in Canada in September 1981, placed its first team in Guatemala on March 21, 1983, and subsequently first met the Mutual Support Group (GAM) in early 1984:
“During their first year, PBI team members traveled throughout the highlands, visiting rural farmers, clandestine contacts, and government and military officials, introducing themselves and feeling things out.
Then on March 11, 1984, Nineth Montenegro de Garcia wrote them: “I am pleading for your aid in my anguish. My husband, Edgar Fernando Garcia, was kidnapped, or more accurately, illegally captured on Saturday February 18 this year.” She further explained that it was the Police Special Operations Brigade who had taken him.
Nineth was a young schoolteacher, Fernando was a 25-year-old worker at a glass factory who had become involved in a union. The PBI team asked Nineth if she knew of other people in the same situation and before long the Mutual Support Group (GAM) was formed.
The photo above is a family snapshot of Nineth de García, daughter Alejandra and husband Fernando before his abduction on February 18, 1984.
Given the number of people whose loved ones had been disappeared, GAM grew quickly.
It met weekly (at the PBI house in Guatemala City), organized memorial masses, published advertisements in the newspapers, listed disappearances and asked for support and investigations, met with the Guatemalan president, organized a silent march for peace, held a sit-in at the congress building, and announced their intention to charge elements of the security forces with the disappearances. They even called on the international community to cut off aid to Guatemala. It was that last action that led to a siege on GAM.
Photo of Rosario Godoy de Cuevas addressing a GAM rally in February 1985. The day before her abduction she had attended the funeral of GAM leader Héctor Gómez whose tortured body had been found on March 30, 1985. Amnesty International found several indications that members of security forces had collaborated in her death.
On April 3, 1985, PBI’s Alain Richard warned founder and secretary of GAM Maria Rosario Godoy de Cuevas not to leave her home for any reason because she was also in danger of being killed. The next day she was found dead in her car in a ravine with her brother and her two-year-old son, who had been ill. The cause of their deaths was strangulation, and the child’s fingernails had been pulled out.
According to Alain, the idea of personal accompaniment did not arise until after her death.
Alain notes, “The night before I had to leave [the country to renew my visa], a close diplomatic contact visited me, along with Jean-Marie Simon of Americas Watch, and they told me, ‘Listen, you’ve started to be with these women. That has to continue. How can you make sure you have enough people to do that?’”
This was the beginning of PBI ‘escorting’: providing the surviving GAM leadership with around the clock unarmed bodyguards.”
Photo: PBI volunteer in GAM office in 1993.
We remember Maria Rosario Godoy de Cuevas and our historic and longstanding relationship with the Mutual Support Group (GAM).
We also recently remembered along with the Mutual Support Group the life of David Hartsough who “was with Peace Brigades International, just walking along the street with a little camera, a notepad and some change so we could try to make a phone call” during a GAM march in Guatemala in 1985. Our article is here.
GAM post on Facebook.
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