Alma Guillermoprieto

Journalist Class of 1995
location icon Location
New York, New York
age iconAge
46 at time of award

About Alma's Work

Alma Guillermoprieto is a journalist whose books and essays vividly document modern Latin America for the English-speaking reader.

Guillermoprieto was one of the first to report the massacre at the village of El Mozote in northern El Salvador.  Her investigation of this situation involved a journey into rebel-held areas that brought about reprimands by the United States government and press.  In 1995, the facts that upheld this work finally came to light.  As a freelance writer, she has also covered the Colombian civil war, the Shining Path rebel movement in Peru, the aftermath of the “Dirty War” in Argentina, and post-Sandinista Nicaragua.  She is the author of the books Samba (1990), The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now (1994), Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America (2001), and Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution (2004).

Biography

A former South America bureau chief for Newsweek, Guillermoprieto writes in English for the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker and in Spanish for a number of publications in Latin America.

Guillermoprieto was a professional dancer and a member of the National Ballet Company of Mexico prior to beginning her journalistic career in 1978.

Last updated January 1, 2005

Published on July 1, 1995

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