Alma Guillermoprieto

Alma Guillermoprieto (born May 27, 1949) is a Mexican journalist who has written extensively about Latin America for the British and American press. Her writings have also been widely disseminated within the Spanish-speaking world.

Guillermoprieto was born and grew up in Mexico City. In her teens, she moved to New York City with her mother and she studied modern dance for several years. From 1962 to 1973, she was a professional dancer.

Her first book, Samba (1990), was an account of a season studying at a samba school in Rio de Janeiro.

In the mid-1970s, she started her career as a journalist for The Guardian, moving later to the Washington Post. In January, 1982, Guillermoprieto, then based in Mexico City, was one of two journalists (the other was Raymond Bonner of The New York Times) who broke the story of the El Mozote massacre in which some 900 villagers at El Mozote, El Salvador, were slaughtered by the Salvadoran army in December, 1981.

With great hardship and at great personal risk, she was smuggled in by FMLN rebels to visit the site approximately a month after the massacre took place. When the story broke simultaneously in the Post and Times on January 27, 1982, it was dismissed as propaganda by the Reagan administration.

Subsequently, however, the details of the massacre as first reported by Guillermoprieto and Bonner were verified, with widespread repercussions.

During much of the subsequent decade, Guillermoprieto was a South America bureau chief for Newsweek.

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