Noticias
Adelma Esperanza Cifuentes’ middle name means hope in Spanish – apropos for the diminutive Guatemalan woman barely five feet in stature that seemingly has had only hope to cling to three years after her husband pressed a handgun against her palpitating heart and callously uttered to her that he would take pleasure in putting her lifeless body in a coffin.
Her husband only threatened to steal her life that day. Still unmercifully, he instead decided to blow off her left arm.
"He said he'd break my back and cut my legs off too. I told him I wasn't scared of him," said Cifuentes. "But I was scared. Then I tried to run away in fear and he shot me."
In the wake of that tragedy, a one-armed version of her former self, Adelma lost the ability to live a normal life. She needed the aid of her 14-year old daughter to do the simplest tasks, such as to hang clothes out to dry or tend to the cows that live on their small plot of muddy land in the rural countryside.
