19 She had a stroke and she developed diabetes. She was ill due to the sadness and now she is getting a little better, but she cries when she remembers the victim. Owing to the stroke, she has to use a wheelchair and walks very little. On her daughter’s birthday, they take flowers to her grave or they say a mass for her. She visits her grave each time she travels to Guatemala. g) Testimony of María Elizabeth Chinchilla de González, widow of Manuel de Jesús González López She has lived in Los Angeles, United States, since 1988. Before the facts of this case, she lived with her husband and three children in a house in Guatemala City, which they were paying for. Her husband had a very good relationship with his children and was very affectionate; he also played and engaged in sporting activities with them. He worked as a mechanic and, before he died, he had been promoted to chief mechanic in a company that sold cars, where he earned approximately Q800.00 (eight hundred quetzales) a month. At the same time, he was studying human relations in order to improve his communication skills with his colleagues, because of his new position. The sight of her husband’s tortured body had made a considerable impact on her. After the events, she went to live with her brother because the house was taken away from her. Furthermore, all her belongings were stolen and it was then that she decided to go to the United States in order to make a living and enable her children to get ahead. When she left Guatemala, she had to spend about US$3,000.00 (three thousand United States dollars) for travel expenses, food and to pay someone to get her across the border. She left her children in Guatemala with her mother at that time, and this caused her “a great deal of pain [...] because they needed to be with their mother, with their father.” She had not seen her children from 1988, the year in which she went to the United States, until 1997, the year in which she appeared at the hearing before the Court on the merits of this case and, since then, she has not seen them again. This has caused her “a great deal of sorrow, a great deal of pain.” Her immigration papers are not in order in the United States; she works with a family and looks after the children; she earns about US$900.00 (nine hundred United States dollars) a month and sends US$400.00 (four hundred United States dollars) a month to her children.. Up until her husband’s death she was living a normal life and they were very happy, but in the United States she lives alone and is always working, so that she has not had a holiday for the last 12 years. She has always been in contact with her children and has never abandoned them. Her oldest daughter, who is 22 years of age, desperate owing to the years of separation, traveled for 22 days to reach the United States and join her. The absence of a father has caused a great deal of harm to her children. Her second daughter, 19 years of age, was the only one who was unable to get over it completely. When she was a child, the witness had to take her to a psychologist to seek professional help, but even today she is inattentive when she studies. Her daughter told her that “she would give anything to be with her mother and father.” With regard to her oldest daughter, the witness indicated that, if the events had not occurred, they would have always been together and she would not have had to take