Jean-Marie Simon

Guatemala

"Well written, well photographed, well laid out and beautifully printed. It could be considered a landmark example of modern journalism in which eyewitness writing and photographic talent combine with meticulous research to produce a book of contemporary history." —Cornell Capa, New York Times Book Review

For twenty years government repression in Guatemala has been the most insidious and the least acknowledged in the western hemisphere. Virtually every Guatemalan has lost friends, relatives, or colleagues. There have been some 100,000 killings and 40,000 "disappearances." Still, Guatemala remains anonymous, overlooked by much of the press, and its troubles denied outright by the United States government. For the past six years, Jean-Marie Simon has been photographing people and reporting events from this hauntingly beautiful and remote land. Her text and pictures tell the story of a people imprisoned, particularly the Mayan Indians, whose lives have been so torn apart by political strife. This is a beautiful book; yet at the same time it is incredibly disturbing in its portrayal of a civilization violated by the army, police, and paramilitary government forces.

"Guatemala is proof, in a powerful text and photographs of immense force, that Guatemalan governments over the past years have been waging savage war—genocide is no exaggeration—upon the Guatemalan people. That under the Reagan adminstration especially, that State Department has sought to mitigate and justify this savagery is a horror for an American citizen to contemplate. I pray this book will awaken the American conscience." —Arthur Miller

"Jean-Marie Simon's Guatemala is a country in which history, cultural diversity, exotic beauty and cruelty are reflected on the faces of its Indian peasants, its soliders, its politicians, its protesters and its mourners. She has recorded that Guatemala knowledgably, faithfuly and lovingly, and with the skill and eye of an artist behind her camera." —Aryeh Neier