Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny

by Jean-Marie Simon

Book Overview

For 20 years Guatemala's government has been one of the most repressive on earth, yet the least acknowledged in the Western hemisphere. Jean-Marie Simon spent six years in Guatemala and the result is a beautiful but disturbing book of a civilization violated. More than 130 full-color photographs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393305066
• ISBN13: 9780393305067
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 2.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.6" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

Guatemala's atrocities are an unhealed wound

It is a rare instance to use a book as a base for creating such a moving experience. This book presents in raw, guttural and palpable images the cruel reality that has affected so many so close to us. Guatemala is still a dychotomy of social classes, of race, religion, power. The eternal tyranny has not yet devoured the precious landscapes nor its people... as long as people who produce books like this give a voice to the victims and put an image of injustice, oppresion, abuse, to teach us that when a people suffer, we all suffer with them. Guatemala, so beautiful, is not yet healed from this wound. I cannot feel but worry for all those who continue strugglig for survival, identity, and a life free of oppresion. This book is but the tip of the iceberg... I have done many interviews (informal conversations) with former Kaibil and G-2 officials (brutes, killing machines) who have applied for political assylum here in the US, who surprisingly are living a pretty much normal life. They have retold (not acknowledging any guilt, of course) killings of innocents which took place time and time again...The pictures bring out the bloodshed so the people who died are not forgotten. The book will give you just enough. You will be amazed to find out how this book was realized. Please don't just look at it, share it with those who need to be touched with human suffering and people like you and I who want to make a difference...

A painful, colorful study........

One has to understand the purpose of this amnesty international book. The sole intent is to demonstrate the deplorable human rights situation in guatemala. There is no intent to present a balanced picture. Basically it is a summarization of guatemala in the 1980s a terrible decade for that country. No punches are pulled here, just page after page of horror upon horror all presented in vivid color. The photograpahy is wonderful and i can't think of many books about guatemala with better photos. They capture the beauty of the land and people and the blatant tragedy at hand. This book isn't for the squeamish. I first read it as i was preparing to travel there to study spanish. This book scared me to death but more than that it outraged me and i think that was the purpose. Secondly it does educate at a basic level what has been going on in guatemala. A good primer about the human rights atrocities in guatemala..................socks

A powerful and disturbing view of a war-torn country

I ran across a used copy of this book before my first trip to Guatemala, and it radicalized me, preparing me for the devastating effects of the country's 35-year-long civil war. While the war is officially over, this book still has relevance to the plight Guatemala's indigenous population -- 90% of its people. It is remarkable that the author -- a woman, a photographer, a human rights activist, and a foreigner -- was able to get as close to her subjects as she did. This extremely moving photo-and-text essay is not for the faint of heart, but if you want a taste of what present-day Guatemalans have lived through, this book delivers it.