Victoria Sanford
Writer, Public Anthropologist, Human Rights Advocate, Environmentalist, Mother
%20(1).jpg)
New Release
Textures of Terror
The Murder of Claudina Isabel Velasquez and Her Father's Quest for Justice
Investigating the unsolved murder of a female law student and the pervasive violence against Guatemalan women that drives migration.
Interview with Barriozona Magazine:
Order Now
Audiobook Now Available
Kerry Kennedy
President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
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.
Stephen Kinzer
Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and world affairs columnist for the Boston Globe
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.
Carolina Escobar Sarti
National Director, La Alianza Guatemala
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
Upcoming Appearances
Award-Winning Documentary ~
Comparsa
I am honored to join Vickie Curtis (director), Doug Anderson (director) and Lesli Canela Pérez (film protagonist, co-writer, and co-producer) for the New York premier of their award-winning documentary Comparsa.
​
I will be moderating a conversation with Vickie, Doug and Lesli following the film on Sunday, Oct 11 at 7pm. I would be delighted for you to join us.
The film is screening in NYC October 9-15 at DCTV located in the Historic Engine Company 31 Firehouse at the nexus of Chinatown/Tribeca/Little Italy + SoHo.
​Comparsa is a documentary about young people transforming their community. In Ciudad Peronia, Guatemala, sisters Lesli and Lupe lead a youth arts collective. After 41 girls are killed in a fire at a state-run "Safe Home" and the government refuses to act, they answer with a comparsa: a joyful street procession of towering puppets, fire-breathing stilt walkers, and pounding drums. Their movement reclaims public space for women and girls and finds healing through art.
​
Award-Winning Documentary ~
A Place of Absence.
I am honored to join award-winning Director Marialuisa Ernst for a conversation on Saturday, Oct. 17 at the 7pm screening for the New York premier of A Place of Absence.
A Place of Absence is an award winning documentary following Central American mothers searching for their disappeared migrant children across Mexico and the U.S., told through the filmmaker’s perspective as an immigrant whose uncle disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship. The film seamlessly links the trauma of present-day migration to the historic legacy of forced disappearances in the Americas.
The film is screening in NYC October 16-22 at DCTV located in the Historic Engine Company 31 Firehouse at the nexus of Chinatown/Tribeca/Little Italy + SoHo.
Previous Appearances
Contact
VictoriaSanford@victoriasanford.info
Gender Violence and Migration
Film Inquiries
Susan Schulman Literary Agency
454 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
212-713-1633
susan@schulmanagency.com
​
