Ada Kelly Alfaro says the cries from friends asking for help still haunt her daughter, Cynthia Phaola Morales, seven years after she survived a fire at a children’s shelter in Guatemala that killed 41 girls.
Cynthia was one of only 15 survivors of the blaze at the Virgen de la Asunción (HSVA), in San José Pinula, just outside Guatemala City, which broke out on the morning of 8 March 2017.
She and 55 other girls had been locked in a tiny room with no food or access to a toilet, as punishment for an attempted escape from the shelter. The fire started when one of the girls set a mattress alight in protest at their treatment. Despite the girls’ pleas for help the doors of the room remained locked for nine minutes.
Rita, a film inspired by the tragic events at the shelter and the failure of the authorities in Guatemala to protect the girls, who were mainly from low-income families, will premiere next week at the Fantasia international film festival in Montreal.
Rita tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who is taken to a state-run home after running away from her abusive father. The centre’s oppressive conditions soon lead Rita and other youngsters to plan their escape to expose abuse.
The act of rebellion by the girls at HSVA is at the heart of the film, says its award-winning writer and director, Jayro Bustamante. “The moment they took matters into their own hands and decided to stand up against these dark beings who take advantage of their fragility, they became heroines.”
Bustamante says what most interested him was the hostility directed towards the girls in the aftermath of the fire. “Our first reaction as a society was to criminalise the girls, to say that they deserved what had happened to them because they were delinquents.”