Alaíde Foppa

María Alaíde Foppa Falla was a Guatemalan academic, feminist, poet, human rights defender, and translator who fled to Mexico after the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and eventually was disappeared during a return visit to Guatemala in 1980. Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1914, Foppa came from a wealthy liberal family. She moved to Italy around 1930, where she began writing poetry in Italian and later studied literature and art history at the Sapienza University of Rome. She then moved to Guatemala in 1943, where she was deeply moved by the social injustice she perceived under the regime of Jorge Ubico. She became a Guatemalan citizen in 1944 and developed connections with the revolutionary movement that forced Ubico's resignation that year.