33 He left Guatemala because he was afraid that the same thing would happen to him that happened to Mérida Escobar. He currently lives in Canada and has only returned once to Guatemala, in response to a request by Helen Mack Chang, to render testimony before the domestic criminal courts in September, 2002, for which he requested protection. c. Testimony of Lucrecia Hernández Mack, daughter of Myrna Mack Chang22 She lives in Guatemala with her common-law spouse, with whom she has been living for six years. She has two children, one who is 2 years old and the other 4 years old. She studied medicine and is currently in a graduate program in Public Health. Her mother studied social work in Guatemala and then obtained two graduate degrees in Social Anthropology in England. She worked for the Asociación para el Avance de la Ciencias Sociales (AVANCSO), an organization that she herself founded together with other colleagues in 1986 in Guatemala. Her mother was a very hardworking woman who showed great solidarity and was passionate about her work. All her activities were geared toward promoting or supporting some social transformation in her country. Her mother always urged her to also be socially aware. At the time of the facts she was 16 years old and she lived with Myrna Mack Chang, her mother, in an apartment within her grandparents’ home. The last time she saw her was on the morning of the day she died, when she was going to school. That day she was at home and about six p.m. she received a phone call from her mother, letting her know that she would leave the office soon. Afterwards, her aunt Helen received a phone call from the police informing her that apparently something had happened to her mother, and she imagined that it was an accident. She learned what had happened when her grandparents came to their house with a funerary hearse, and an uncle with “mental problems” told her that her mother had been knifed to death. When her mother’s body arrived at the funeral parlor, she helped clean it and tried to put on her favorite dress but was unable to, because an autopsy had been performed on her, the body had been sutured from the thorax to the neck, and it had several wounds on the arms, the abdomen, the neck, and the legs. The family suffered a very heavy blow with the death of her mother, because it was such an abrupt and violent loss. She could not understand that her mother was dead because she did not comprehend what had happened. Due to her mother’s death, she felt that she had no one to support her in difficult or happy times. She graduated from high school one month after her mother’s death and entered the university four months later, for which reason she believes that the fact that her mother was not there at a time “when one begins to make important decisions for life” has affected her. Her mother has not been with her when she graduated, nor during all these years while she was at the university, nor when she has had new friends, nor when she had her first boyfriend, nor when she decided to live together with someone, nor when she had her two children; in other words, in all her adult life, while she was establishing her identity and her personality, which takes shape between adolescence and adulthood. Her aunt Helen became her second mother. 22 She testified on the suffering she has undergone as a consequence of her mother’s extra-legal execution, on the many steps she has had to take to seek justice in this case, and on other background pertaining to the object and purpose of the application.