Dear Claudia,
Spring is for new beginnings so you left San Juan Ostuncalco on May 7. You’d graduated in forensic accounting two years ago. So young! But it wasn’t happening, for what kind of future could Guatemala offer you? There had to be a better way. So you began the journey north. Guatemala to Mexico. Chiapas, and all the way to Nuevo León. No, not an easy path, but something had to be done, something other than this slow suffocation in Quetzaltenango.
I imagine you, focused and precise. Good at numbers but also good at caring. There are two photographs of you. In both, you wear a striped corte skirt, held up with a sash. A different blouse each time, square-cut and embroidered. You look younger than your nineteen years in both. There’s a slight smile, softly ironic. Focused but not morose. Proud Maya-Mam!
Claudia, I am so sorry. Your mother Lidia cannot stop weeping. She remembers your parting words: “Mom, we’re going to be alright. I’m going to make my own money.” You and Morales had plans. You were to make a life together. Now he is bereft, it’s as though he’s been cut in two. What’s he supposed to do now? And Gilberto, your father. You mattered, Claudia, and now so many hopes are ruined.
In Guatemala they say natural disasters are like cowboy movies: only the Indians get killed. You fled the natural disaster, and ran into a cowboy.
The state’s nameless face shot you in the head. Right away someone cried out, “Why did you shoot at the girl? You killed her. He killed the girl. She’s laying there and she’s dead.” And another voice, that of your murderer, immediately blaming your companions: “See what happens? This is what happens with you people.”
You heard none of that, Claudia. The soil overturned, the hurricane of mud, the razors of the sun. We would have been fortunate to have you among us.
May God comfort the many who loved you.