Overview

On the morning of July 1, 1800, a surveyor and mapmaker named Cayetano Díaz opened the window of his study in Guatemala City to find a horrific sight: a pair of severed breasts. Offering a meticulously researched and evocative account of the quest to find the perpetrator and understand the motives behind such a brutal act, this volume pinpoints the sensational crime as a watershed moment in Guatemalan history that radically changed the nature of justice and the established social order. Sylvia Sellers-García reveals how this bizarre and macabre event spurred an increased attention to crime that resulted in more forceful policing and reflected important policy decisions not only in Guatemala but across Latin America. This fascinating book is both an engaging criminal case study and a broader consideration of the forces shaping Guatemala City at the brink of the modern era.

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9781665200530

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Sylvia Sellers-Garcia is associate professor of history at Boston College. Her previous books include Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire's Periphery and When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. Rebecca Podos is the author of The Mystery of Hollow Places. She is a graduate of the writing, literature, and publishing program at Emerson College, and her fiction has been published in Glimmer Train, Glyph, Paper Darts, Bellows American Review, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She lives with her husband in Connecticut. You can find her online at www.RebeccaPodos.com.

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