Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa, one of Guatemala’s most renowned former anti-mafia prosecutors, was murdered on Saturday, October 17. That same weekend, as hundreds of people paid their respects in Guatemala City, questions about his death —as well as about those leading the criminal investigation— only multiplied.
His murder took place around 9:35 a.m. on a turf soccer field in Zone 5, an area of the capital known for its military installations and nearby gun shops. A group of at least four hitmen disguised as athletes arrived wearing F.C. Barcelona jerseys at Campo Marte, a sports complex just a few meters from the Army’s Guard of Honor. Hours later, in his initial report on the facts of the case, Interior Minister Marco Antonio Villeda —the head of Guatemala's Security Cabinet— said they did not know how many men had fired shots. Nor did they know how the assailants managed to vanish from a popular sports complex in broad daylight.
What they did know was that the attackers left behind more than 50 shell casings. With the investigation ongoing, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has not specified the caliber. Two men were killed: Foppa, 43, was shot multiple times in the head and died instantly. According to the interior minister, he was coaching a soccer team from the sidelines and was the sole target of the attack. The other man killed was 53-year-old athlete Gustavo Adolfo Aguilar Gamarro, whom authorities described as a collateral victim. Five other people were injured, including a minor.
The former prosecutor had been assigned a National Civil Police detail since 2010, back when he prosecuted big cases against criminal organizations such as Barrio 18, the 18th Street gang. But when Villeda took office in November 2025, he said he increased Foppa’s security “due to the political profile he had at that time.” At the moment of the attack, the two police officers were standing by Foppa’s son “about 30 or 40 meters” away from him. According to Villeda, the officers reported that Foppa had asked them, before the attack, to stay by his son’s side. The authorities knew the obvious: that his two bodyguards did not stop the murder, but they did not know why.
Another major question mark is the apparent lack of cameras at the crime scene. Both Vice Minister of Culture Carlos Amézquita, whose ministry is responsible for Campo Marte, and Esvin Jacinto, deputy director general of operations for the National Civil Police (PNC), have stated that the sports complex does not have cameras inside the premises. According to newspaper Prensa Libre, in July, the Ministry of Culture —responsible for upkeep at the sports complex— unsuccessfully sought to contract the installation of dozens of cameras. On Thursday, October 22, on the heels of the double homicide, the ministry issued a new call for bids.
For two decades, Foppa held public offices where he was prone to making enemies. During his years as a prosecutor, he investigated the “Rueda” —or upper leadership— of 18th Street and secured convictions against gang leaders, including its top honcho in Guatemala, Aldo Dupié, alias “Lobo.” Four sources consulted by El Faro for a report in April described Lobo as a “psychopath” known to resolve conflicts through bullets.
Foppa left the Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2016. He then headed the Superintendency of Tax Administration until 2018, pursuing tax evasion cases such as those involving Aceros de Guatemala and Hotel Camino Real, touching major business interests in Guatemala. In recent years, he used his social media accounts to denounce corruption, organized crime, and their ties to political figures.
Foppa became the target of legal attacks during the administration of Attorney General Consuelo Porras (2018–2026). He was convicted three times for alleged crimes. One of those cases was related to his explicit involvement in politics. Prosecutors alleged irregularities in the formation of a political party, the Guatemalan Environmentalist Party (AGUA), of which he was secretary-general.
Another case arose in the trials against journalist Jose Rubén Zamora. Foppa was one of a dozen defense attorneys in the case. Under pressure by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and aligned groups such as the Foundation Against Terrorism, he ultimately agreed to plead guilty to charges of obstruction of justice. He said he accepted the charges because he did not believe he would receive a fair trial and felt he had to “get out” of the prison system, where he was in danger because of some of the very convictions he had notched as a prosecutor. He was sentenced to two years in prison in the Zamora case, though the sentence was commuted, and he was barred from practicing law for five years.
Even so, Foppa had not reported any recent threats to the Ministry of the Interior. According to Villeda, his death took them by surprise.
“The legacy Foppa leaves behind is one of courage, conviction, and commitment to justice. That must be upheld even in the most adverse moments,” exiled former anti-impunity prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval told El Faro English. “On two occasions I told him, ‘You have to leave Guatemala,’ but he didn’t,” he added. “He knew what exile entailed, and I believe that all the aspirations and ideas he believed in were inseparable from his presence in Guatemala.”
“He said it many times,” confirmed Andrea Villagrán, a representative from Raíces, a splinter group of the suspended ruling party, Semilla. “He said he wouldn’t leave the country, that if they were going to put him in jail, he would turn himself in. He was constantly at risk of being killed.”
Police under suspicion
On the Saturday of Foppa’s murder, Villeda said authorities were just starting to examine “the motive and scope of this crime.” The Special Criminal Investigation Division (DEIC) of the National Civil Police is working the investigation alongside the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which in turn has requested “international support,” referring to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “We are not going to jump to conclusions, nor are we going to rule out any hypotheses,” said Villeda.
But the first major setback for the investigation came before the victims were even buried, from within the National Civil Police itself.
On the very same Saturday as the attack, police officers from Precinct 13 arrested two suspects: brothers Rigoberto and Daniel Saqueo Choc Toz, aged 30 and 18, respectively. They are natives of San Antonio Senahú, Alta Verapaz, a town with a majority Q’eqchi’ Maya population. The older of the Choc Toz brothers served in the Guatemalan Army’s Central Regional Command from 2017 to 2019, when he was discharged. The younger, according to statements to the press and the Ministry of the Interior, speaks little Spanish.
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In the first hours after the crime —a critical period in any criminal investigation to identify the perpetrators— the brothers told the media that they had been detained while delivering food for the PedidosYa app. According to the police, the arrest took place on San Isidro Boulevard in Zone 16, under 10 kilometers from Campo Marte, at 9:50 a.m. on Saturday — about 15 minutes after the crime. The police reported the seizure of a carbine, 9-millimeter ammunition, and a tactical vest.
This initial move by the police to demonstrate progress fell flat. The Choc Toz brothers spent no more than the weekend in custody.
Moments after their arrest, the police released a photo of the brothers looking terrified, flanked by two officers, inside a truck bed from Precinct 13. One of the brothers was wearing a dark jacket with the F.C. Barcelona logo. Once in court, the brothers claimed they were about to pick up a Subway order when they were arrested. They asserted that the police planted the gun in their delivery backpack, damaged their phone —where evidence of that job could have been found— and forced them to change their clothes. Hours later, on Sunday the 18th, a judge ordered their release due to lack of evidence. Shortly afterward, a local Facebook page reported that the San Antonio Senahú municipal government offered them jobs and a stipend so they would no longer have to return to Guatemala City to earn a living.
On the Saturday of the crime, from the afternoon until late at night, dozens of PedidosYa delivery drivers gathered in front of the courthouse to protest the arrest and show solidarity with the brothers. When a judge ordered their release, in a courtroom cell, in front of the cameras, Rigoberto and Daniel Choc threw themselves to the ground and wept.
“This is an issue that strikes at the very core of the credibility of the Ministry of the Interior and the National Civil Police, and it must be resolved as soon as possible,” Stu Velasco, former deputy director of Criminal Investigation for the police, told El Faro English. “If it is confirmed that they planted the assault rifle, the question is whether the inspector and the police officer acted alone or whether they received instructions —an order— to plant it, and what the motive was: whether or not there was an infiltration by organized crime operating there.”
He concluded: “There is no such thing as the perfect crime, only poor investigations.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office ruled that the brothers were innocent, so Interior Minister Villeda ordered the Police Inspector General’s Office to investigate Precinct 13 Chief Érick Aroldo Segura Túnchez, two other superiors, and the four arresting officers. All were removed from their posts and reassigned to administrative duties. When questioned by Congress on Wednesday the 21st, police leaders stated that the officers had broken the chain of command and taken the Choc Toz brothers to a substation without the knowledge or authorization of their superiors.
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Deputy Director Jacinto ruled out the existence of a clandestine network within the police force, although —in an apparent contradiction— he asserted that “to commit a murder of this kind, I believe there must be a structure in place, because it is a premeditated act.” On Thursday the 22nd, the Public Prosecutor’s Office conducted an “inspection” of the General Directorate of the Police regarding the arrest of the Choc Toz brothers. Two days earlier, the Ministry of the Interior announced its own “exhaustive” review of the police force.
At Foppa’s wake, Villeda told the press that “the police have often been involved in reprehensible acts. I’m not going to cover up for anyone.” And he promised: “Once I have clear evidence of what happened, how the police acted, and have reached a conclusion based on evidence —not on assumptions— I will certainly make decisions, and heads will certainly roll.”
Multiple open fronts
Heads began to roll a year ago, in mid-October 2025. Before the guillotine fell, it was Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa who sharpened the blade. He revealed on social media that twenty 18th Street leaders had escaped from the Fraijanes II prison two months earlier, and that the Arévalo administration had not disclosed this to the public. He accused leaders within the police force and the prison system of having helped them escape.
Hence one theory: that Foppa’s death is linked to his allegations against 18th Street. He also spoke publicly about a dispute over control of small-scale drug dealing between the gang, its rival Mara Salvatrucha-13, and the Caradura, a drug trafficking group based in Guatemala City. Days before his death, he accused “CIA mercenaries” of massacring eight people in the rural town of Huité, Zacapa, halfway between Guatemala City and the Honduran border. He also said the Guatemalan Army could be complicit in the killings. In other words, Foppa was fighting on many fronts.
Following his allegations last year of an alleged collusion between high-ranking officials and leaders of 18th Street, then-Interior Minister Francisco Jiménez resigned and fled the country to evade arrest. Arévalo then appointed his substitute, Villeda: a renowned anti-mafia judge who had presided over cases litigated by Foppa during his time as a judge. Arévalo insinuated, without providing evidence, that Sandra Torres, a former first lady and presidential rival, had orchestrated the riots to destabilize his government. Torres denied any ties to the gang and accused the president of putting her safety at risk.
Even before Foppa’s revelation, there were warning signs of trouble. The most obvious was the arrest of María Marta Castañeda Torres —a well-known niece of Sandra Torres as well as the gang leader Lobo’s romantic partner— on August 27, 2025, in Antigua Guatemala, on charges of murder and criminal conspiracy. A week later, a hitman killed her defense attorney on a motorcycle in the Historic Center of Guatemala City. Torres has also distanced herself from her niece.
Earlier this year, after Villeda took office at the Ministry of the Interior, 18th Street put him to the test.
In January 2026, the gang staged three prison riots and killed nine police officers. Arévalo dispatched the Police Special Forces to regain control of the prisons. According to the official account, there were no fatalities. “We do not negotiate with criminals nor do we tolerate terrorist actions,” the president said in a nationwide broadcast, implicitly refuting Foppa’s claim that officials in his government had supported the escape. He declared a one-time 30-day state of siege the, from February through mid-May, downgraded it to a state of prevention, focused on five departments that are either border regions or hosting prison facilities.
Amid the crisis, Arévalo singled out 18th Street as one of the groups that sought to assassinate him in 2023, during the campaign. In response to these threats, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued precautionary measures for him and Vice President Karin Herrera. Although the Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the plot against the ticket, then-Attorney General Consuelo Porras did not publicly announce any progress in the investigation
After eight years in office, during which she faced sanctions for corruption from dozens of countries, Porras stepped down in mid-May. The new attorney general, Gabriel García Luna, took office.
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Enter the United States. Porras’s departure marked a turning point for cooperation between Guatemala and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The FBI’s Joint Task Force Vulcan arrived in Guatemala in November 2025 to help locate the fugitive gang leaders. But, at least according to Arévalo’s Interior Minister, Vulcan left early because Porras’s office was not cooperating. In June of this year, Villeda and the new Attorney General García Luna turned over a new leaf. The two top Guatemalan officials traveled to Washington to meet with the DOJ.
The Guatemalans achieved their goal. Four days later, Villeda announced that Vulcan would return in July. And the courtship was mutual: in September, more than a dozen prosecutors from five states, along with senior officials from the DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and representatives from the DEA, the FBI, and Task Forces Vulcan and Alpha landed in Guatemala on an “unprecedented” visit.
The message was clear. They met with Arévalo, Villeda, and García Luna. Among their objectives: “to build cases for litigation in U.S. courts.” In other words, extraditions.
By that time, both in terms of criminal law and public narratives, other pieces of the cooperation puzzle had already fallen into place. In September 2025, the State Department designated Barrio 18 as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Two days after Foppa revealed the jailbreak, Guatemala followed suit: Congress declared the country’s gangs “terrorists” and increased penalties for extortion.
On the military front, the two nations have tried to be more discreet. Guatemala is indeed part of the Coalition Against Cartels organized by the Donald Trump administration, which focuses on the operational-military aspect of the fight against drug trafficking. However, it has not joined the Shield of the Americas, the political arm led by former DHS chief Kristi Noem. While Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has stated that Guatemala and the United States are conducting “joint operations” on Guatemalan soil, Arévalo has only acknowledged that U.S. soldiers are conducting “training.”
In a video posted by Foppa two days before his death, he accused “CIA mercenaries” of carrying out the Huité massacre. “Who has the capacity to have two helicopters circling in a 100 percent clandestine operation — one that had, to some extent, the complicity of the [Guatemalan] Army?” he asked. “Only a U.S. foreign agency can do this.”
Although he provided no evidence to support this claim other than his own “analysis,” Foppa’s social media post left its mark on the conversation —or rather, the rampant speculation— surrounding the crime. One of the hypotheses put forward by the police is that the killers arrived in search of Haroldo Waldemar Lorenzana Terraza, known as “Haroldito,” wanted by the United States on drug trafficking charges.
* * *
In Guatemala, the 2023 elections were, to put it mildly, turbulent. The whole process was under siege for months, overshadowed by corrupt actors seeking to overturn the results, as well as threats from organized crime. Now, next year’s elections are scheduled for June 27, with a possible presidential runoff on August 22.
“We cannot ignore the fact that it’s not just that we’re in a pre-election year — we’re practically already in an election year,” observed Villeda. “Normally in Guatemala, acts of violence increase during an election year,” he continued. “If this [Foppa’s murder] is part of a deliberate plan to create anxiety, alarm, and wear down the government, it is a situation we still need to investigate.”
“This incident also poses a direct threat to people who denounce crime, corruption, and narco-politics,” said Velasco, the former deputy police chief. “We are facing an organized crime operation characterized by a high level of planning, capability, and operational support — traits typical of the strongest criminal structures operating in the country, which were affected by the allegations that Mr. Foppa had made.”
“It is essential to utilize all available domestic and international support, in terms of technology and human resources, that can expedite the investigation and make up for the twenty-four hours of investigative work that were lost” between the arrest and release of the Choc Toz brothers, he added. “This is a challenge for the new Attorney General Luna, putting his leadership abilities and, above all, his autonomy to the test.”
Four hours after his death, the U.S. Embassy condemned Foppa’s “heinous murder,” describing him as a “staunch defender of the fight against corruption and organized crime.” “We expect a thorough and transparent investigation that will shed light on the facts,” the Embassy stated.
CACIF, the conservative Guatemalan business association, also condemned the murders. “Violence has no place in a society that aspires to live in peace and under the rule of law,” they wrote in a statement on Saturday.
A long line of potential candidates for the June 2027 presidential election also spoke out. Among them, the UNE party, led by Sandra Torres, called for “a tough stance against crime and justice without impunity.” Zury Ríos, another presidential contender in 2023, declared that “we’ve hit rock bottom: insecurity, crime, and violence in Guatemala are out of control.”
Some of Foppa’s declared enemies also weighed in. Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, president of the Foundation Against Terrorism, wrote that his organization “mourns the loss of human life, regardless of who the victims are.” He also dismissed the claim that Foppa’s death was a “political assassination” as a cuento chino, or tall tale.
Foppa’s maternal uncle and family spokesperson, Julio Solórzano Foppa, rejected this flood of statements. “It is terrible, sad, and reprehensible that there are those who want to use Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa’s murder to push their own agendas, to gain a political edge, and to accuse others,” he said. They are instilling fear, he added, “so that those in exile do not return, so that committed individuals do not take action.”
A family haunted by death
“This is not just an attack on his life,” Julio Foppa told the press two days after the murder, on the second floor of a baroque, wood-paneled funeral home in Guatemala City. “These acts have other purposes and certainly other consequences: to instill fear, to sow distrust, to destabilize the country,” he said.
“The Solórzano Foppa family has suffered terrible losses due to violence,” he added. Among them, the former prosecutor’s grandmother, feminist poet Alaíde Foppa, was kidnapped and disappeared in 1980 in Guatemala City. His father —a commander of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) known as “Camilo”— died in combat in Quiché in 1983. His mother, Silvia Solórzano Foppa, also a revolutionary, gave birth to Juan Francisco in Nicaragua and raised him in exile in Cuba.
On Monday, October 19, Silvia Foppa and a handful of family members and close friends welcomed dozens of people to his wake. It began early. Around noon, when President Bernardo Arévalo made a brief stop at the funeral home, the place was packed to capacity. Throughout the morning, Rubén Blades’ crónicas urbanas played on loop. On Saturday, the president had denounced his “cowardly murder” and promised to find those responsible.
At age 18, Foppa joined the Municipal Fire Department. So his former colleagues helped set up two altars at the funeral home: one for the family —featuring a Barcelona jersey— and another in an adjoining room to accommodate the press. In keeping with the tradition of carrying their own upon marriage and death, the firefighters marched in single file down the aisle in their uniforms and red helmets to present a funeral wreath to the family. A delegation from the Mixco Municipal Police told El Faro English that Foppa had served as a security advisor in that municipality, on the outskirts of the capital.
Several legislators from Raíces also attended. In a city where soccer is played among tight-knit groups of colleagues and friends, Foppa played with some party congressmen and activists. In 2023, he sought to run for mayor of Guatemala City as a candidate for the original Semilla party, but the Supreme Electoral Tribunal —tainted that year by its irregular exclusion of high-profile candidates— rejected his registration.
Villagrán, the Raíces congresswoman, met him more than a decade ago, amid the massive protests that rocked Guatemala in 2015, leading to the resignation of President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti. Foppa, as head of the Criminal Analysis Directorate (DAC) at the Public Prosecutor’s Office, helped piece together the massive customs fraud case that brought down that government: La Línea. The following year, in 2016, he left the Public Prosecutor’s Office to become director of the Tax Superintendency.
“We were close from that moment on,” Villagrán recalled in a conversation with El Faro English at the wake. Over the years, Foppa “was always looking for ways to be involved in politics and have a greater impact. In my case, we always exchanged a lot of information from Congress,” she said.
At the same time, on the first floor of the same funeral home, family members were saying goodbye to the second victim of the armed attack and preparing to take him to the cemetery: Gustavo Aguilar, the 53-year-old athlete. According to investigators, a bullet to his right chest struck his aorta. He collapsed and died on the turf.
His body was taken to a quiet burial in the city, guarded by a small police contingent at the cemetery. Two of his brothers-in-law told El Faro English that the family trusts the initial findings. They rejected the account that Aguilar had resisted the killers. They logged off social media, overwhelmed by the constant mentions of their relative. Aguilar, they said, was a family man with no ties to organized crime or politics. He was an instructor with the Guatemalan Judo Federation. His loss, a tragic bolt from the blue.
Funeral honors in the plaza
Guatemala bid farewell to a former anti-corruption prosecutor gunned down by still-unknown killers, a man born in exile to a revolutionary family, on Tuesday, October 20, Revolution Day.
In the morning, the Constitutional Plaza in front of the National Palace of Culture —also known as the Plaza de las Niñas, in memory of the victims of the 2017 fire at the Hogar Seguro shelter home for girls— became a sea of umbrellas. Hundreds of people marched through the Historic Center carrying red carnations and banners bearing the faces of their martyrs.
Among them was a new face: Foppa, accompanied by others such as Oliverio Castañeda de León, a student leader at the public University of San Carlos. He was murdered just a few meters from the plaza exactly 48 years earlier, on a revolutionary October 20, 1978, on the eve of the most repressive years of the internal armed conflict.
The groups present —historic leftist activists, campesino associations, Indigenous leaders, and searchers for the disappeared— defended Foppa’s memory. They gathered around a Mayan ceremony, with candles, incense, and a sounding conch shell. “Foppa lives on, the struggle continues,” they chanted. One elderly woman approached, holding two long, lit white candles between her fingers, making her way through the crowd to place them at the foot of the bonfire.
The firefighters arrived with his coffin to the beating of drums. It was his final stop before proceeding to the cemetery. Silvia Foppa made her first public statement since her son's death.
“Juan Francisco has represented us in a truly remarkable way,” she said. “Thirty years since the Peace Accords is no small feat. Thirty years ago today, we would not have had the ceremony or the presence of our Mayan leaders and authorities as we do today. They would have had to be hiding in the mountains. Yes, we have made progress, and yes, we have achieved victories, but we still have a long way to go.”
She left a few minutes later, hoisting the URNG guerrilla front flag out the car window. Foppa’s fellow firefighters led the way, still scooping up a few final bouquets of flowers from the crowd.