Textures of Terror

"In Textures of Terror, Victoria Sanford brilliantly unravels complex and widespread gender-based violence in Guatemala and how the very institutions created to combat it perpetuate violence and impunity. Above all, she tells the love story of a father's ceaseless quest for justice for the murder of his beloved daughter."—Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights

"How can anyone convey Guatemala's descent into ultra-violence following a US-backed coup decades ago? Sanford does it beautifully by telling a single poignant story and placing it against the country's dazzling political and cultural background. Harrowing but deeply insightful, Textures of Terror shows how ordinary people react and resist as a society decomposes."—Stephen Kinzer, Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and world affairs columnist for the Boston Globe

"This book is simultaneously one book and many. One chronicles the murder of a young female law student. The others explore the layers of systemic horror that remind us that to be a woman in twenty-first-century Guatemala is to live in danger, in the shadow of violence, impunity, and historical oppression."—Carolina Escobar Sarti, National Director, La Alianza Guatemala

"In Textures of Terror, Sanford illuminates the way violence and impunity continue to destroy lives, especially women's lives, in postwar Guatemala. She focuses on the 2005 feminicide of Claudina Isabel and her father's efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice, weaving a story rooted in Guatemalan history, but with universal resonance."—Jo-Marie Burt, Associate Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University