She was studying to become a bio-pharmacist in Sao Paulo when she met Marcos Antonio Heredia Viveros, a schoolteacher originally from Colombia, through mutual friends. He was likeable and helpful, and they quickly fell in love. In 1976 they were married.
After Maria finished her studies, the couple moved back to her home city of Fortaleza, on Brazil's north eastern coast, and they began a family. But the man she had fallen in love with soon began to change.
"When his Brazilian citizenship was granted, he showed his true colours," Maria recalls. "I had no idea of how to make him go back to what he was like before.