Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa

Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa was born in 1983 (Spanish Wikipedia gives Guatemala City as his birthplace; his exact birth date has not been made public). He grew up in a family shaped by Guatemala's internal armed conflict. His grandmother, Alaíde Foppa (born in Barcelona in 1914), was a celebrated poet, feminist, university teacher and co-founder of the Mexican feminist magazine Fem; she was abducted and disappeared in Guatemala City on 19 December 1980. His grandfather belonged to the Guatemalan Party of Labour, which backed the reformist president Jacobo Árbenz, and Foppa later wrote that his grandfather had been a trade unionist and union lawyer.

His parents were both guerrillas, according to InSight Crime. His mother is Silvia Solórzano Foppa. His father, known by the nom de guerre "Comandante Camilo", was among the first members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and was killed by the army in the 1980s while the EGP was trying to build urban militias. Two of his uncles, also guerrillas, died in the war. Journalist Juan Luis Font wrote that Foppa was raised in Cuba.

Foppa studied law at Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City and qualified as a lawyer and notary (abogado y notario), according to Con Criterio and Spanish Wikipedia.

For more than 13 years Foppa served with Guatemala City's Municipal Fire Brigade (Cuerpo de Bomberos Municipales), according to Publinews. In interviews he explained that rescue and emergency work in the streets of the capital brought him close to its most vulnerable settlements and to everyday urban violence, an experience that influenced his later approach to crime and security.

Foppa worked for about 12 years in Guatemala's Public Ministry. During the tenure of Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz he headed specialised prosecution work on special methods and crimes against life, and colleagues and journalists came to regard him as one of the ministry's most effective anti-gang and anti-extortion prosecutors.

In 2013 he became director of the ministry's criminal analysis unit. There, with other officials, he built the diagrams and maps of criminal structures behind major cases. The most important was La Línea, a customs fraud network inside the tax authority that prosecutors and the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) exposed in 2015. The case forced the resignations of President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti, both of whom were later jailed.

After Jimmy Morales took office in 2016, Foppa was one of several former prosecutors given senior government posts, first as vice minister of security. Later in 2016 Morales swore him in as Superintendent of Tax Administration, head of the SAT, describing him as an expert in analysing tax and customs fraud and in identifying criminal structures. "I take on the post with commitment and responsibility," Foppa said at the ceremony.

At the SAT he worked closely with CICIG commissioner Iván Velásquez and Attorney General Thelma Aldana. He promoted embargoes and forced collections against large companies and consortia with historic tax debts and purged customs staff accused of tolerating contraband. The agency achieved record collections, yet in early 2018 the Finance Ministry said he had missed his targets, by about 0.3 percent according to InSight Crime, and he was removed. Prensa Libre wrote in an editorial that the dismissal could only be read as a return to the past, and Plaza Pública questioned its legality.

In 2019 Foppa sought to run for mayor of Guatemala City at the head of the civic committee Mi Barrio, but the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) rejected his registration because it was filed after the deadline.

On 1 March 2020, at an assembly in Palín, Escuintla, the Partido Agua (Guatemalan Environmentalist Political Party) was founded and Foppa was elected its secretary general. Errors in the founding act later became the basis of a criminal case against him.

In February 2023 the Semilla, Winaq and URNG parties presented a joint slate for Guatemala City under the banner FoppaXlaCiudad. The TSE registered the municipal list but refused to register Foppa himself, and in April 2023 urban planner Ninotchka Matute replaced him as the coalition's mayoral candidate. Journalist Juan Luis Font wrote that Foppa had immediately begun leading the polls. In 2023 he also announced a bid to lead the Guatemalan Bar Association (CANG).

After leaving government, Foppa became a recurring target of prosecutors under Attorney General Consuelo Porras.

In May 2021 he was arrested over the founding act of Partido Agua and accused, with others, of illicit association and conspiracy. Rejecting the arguments of prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, a judge found those charges unproven and sent him to house arrest while the investigation continued. He had spent 23 days in a newly built cell at Mariscal Zavala prison. The Party of the European Left called for his release.

In early 2023 Foppa took on the defence of José Rubén Zamora, founder of elPeriódico, after earlier lawyers for the journalist were themselves prosecuted. He withdrew from the defence in March 2023, saying anyone who tried to defend the case would be criminalised, and on 20 April 2023 he was arrested on accusations including obstruction of justice and breach of professional duty (patrocinio infiel). He presented himself at the court that had issued the warrant.

Arguing that the justice system was captured and that remaining in prison indefinitely offered no guarantees, Foppa accepted charges in both cases in June 2023 under Guatemala's acceptance-of-charges procedure. He received commutable sentences and fines, which allowed him to leave prison.

Foppa described himself as a fighter against corruption and impunity, and he remained a fierce critic of former president Alejandro Giammattei and of Consuelo Porras, whom human rights groups and the government accused of leading the so-called pact of the corrupt. He also criticised the government of Bernardo Arévalo, for whom he said he had voted, over its handling of gang violence and security.

In his last years he used X, Facebook and video to reach a large audience. Drawing on his years as an anti-gang prosecutor, he regularly published information about gang activity, questioned alleged links between opposition politicians, including the family of former first lady Sandra Torres, and leaders of the Barrio 18 gang, and denounced the escape of around 20 Barrio 18 members from a maximum security prison. He also posted explainers on fuel prices and taxes. Two days before his death he argued that a September 2026 shooting in Huité, Zacapa, in which eight civilians died, had been an incursion by CIA-backed mercenaries supported by the Guatemalan army, a claim reported by AP and DW.

Foppa is remembered as part of the generation of Guatemalan prosecutors who, with CICIG, brought down a sitting president in 2015, and as a tax chief who made powerful companies pay. Journalist Juan Luis Font called him the bravest and most effective anti-gang prosecutor the Public Ministry had known and the most successful collector of unpaid taxes of all time. His critics, including politicians he attacked online, pointed to his criminal convictions after he accepted charges in 2023.

His killing, despite police protection, prompted condemnation from President Arévalo, the United States Embassy, the Organization of American States and the Guatemalan Bar Association, and calls from many sectors for the crime not to go unpunished.

No formal awards or state honours for Foppa have been reported in the sources reviewed. His recognition came mainly through public tributes, including statements from President Bernardo Arévalo, the United States Embassy in Guatemala and the Secretary General of the Organization of American States after his death.

Foppa was a frequent guest on Guatemalan television and podcasts, including a long interview on TanGente Podcast and an appearance on Televisión Moderna Guatemala (TVM) in 2026. He ran a popular X account, @foppaguate, where his posts on gangs, corruption and public spending regularly drew tens of thousands of views; his final analysis of the Huité shooting was viewed more than 260,000 times.

On the morning of Saturday, 17 October 2026, Foppa was playing football with relatives on the pitches at Campo Marte, a government sports complex in Zona 5 of Guatemala City, when gunmen opened fire. He was killed, as was another person, and five others were wounded. More than 20 shell casings were found at the scene. He had four police officers assigned to his security, according to Prensa Libre. He was 43.

Police arrested two brothers, one of them a former soldier, and seized a rifle that, according to a preliminary report, was found in a food delivery backpack. The two men told reporters they were innocent and had been detained while working as delivery riders.

President Bernardo Arévalo wrote on X that he strongly repudiated the "cowardly murder" and that both the material and intellectual authors must face the full weight of the law. The United States Embassy condemned the "atrocious murder" of a "firm defender of the fight against corruption and organised crime" and called for a full and transparent investigation. OAS Secretary General Albert R. Ramdin joined calls for an exhaustive, independent inquiry. The Guatemalan Bar Association also issued a statement. Funeral and burial details have not been made public in the sources reviewed.