Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny
A collection of photos and essays, Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny is a sobering account of Guatemala during some especially tumultuous years.
As Guatemala’s armed conflict raged in the 1980s, much of the news out of the country ranged from murky to actively propagandistic. Jean-Marie Simon, meanwhile, was one of a small number of foreigners consistently reporting on the war. The color photos in this book were taken between 1980 and 1986, covering the darkest period of the war during the Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt years, culminating in the first year or two of the Cerezo government, as the country moved in fits and starts towards something that might be considered a democracy.
Simon’s camera makes its way into military academies for pre-pubescent boys as well as military dictatorship press conferences, to funerals for “subversives” and training grounds for actual guerrillas, to villages under army occupation and capital city protests with white banners bearing red letters. We see charred huts and burning buses, bloodied corpses and traumatized children. We see survivors and soldiers, innocent bystanders and indigenous young men (on both sides of the conflict) carrying guns. We see needless suffering. We see breathtaking resilience. We see hopelessness. We see hope.
On every page, we’re challenged to remember—even as we’re tempted to forget.
