The Spanish word alma translates to “soul.” And that’s what Alma Guillermoprieto, a Mexican journalist, has shown over 40 years of reporting: the immaterial essence of Latin America—its spiritual principles, moral nature, and emotional fervor.

Born in Mexico City, she moved to New York in 1965 to join the Martha Graham school of modern dance. The unwavering dedication and high excellence required of a dancer would serve her well as a journalist. In her first days as a reporter, covering the Revolução Sandinista in Nicaragua for The Guardian, she met Susan Meiselas, a photographer who was on assignment for The New York Times Sunday magazine and took Guillermoprieto under her wing. “So I learned how to be a reporter as a photographer,” she said. “If you don’t get close, you don’t get the shot.”

n January 1982, Guillermoprieto uncovered—along with Raymond Bonner—the killings of hundreds of civilians during a massive operation by the Salvadoran Army, backed by the US, against leftist guerrillas in El Mozote, in El Salvador. It is the worst massacre in modern Latin American history. El Salvador was in the early stage of a 12-year-long civil war, and President Ronald Reagan had increased aid to the Salvadoran Army. The Reagan administration insisted it had “no evidence” of the massacre, and the reporting by Guillermoprieto and Bonner was dismissed by conservatives as leftist propaganda. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial that stated: “There is such a thing as being overly credulous.”

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