After Six Years of Reporting, Sharing a Story of Resilience
Sunday's New York Times Magazine tells the story of a group of Mayan women in Guatemala who had banded together to prosecute the men who raped them 40 years ago during the Guatemalan civil war.
It's a story that the photojournalist Victor J. Blue has been following since 2019, when he was introduced to several of the women.
'They were so brave and open and clear that they had nothing to be ashamed of — it was bracing,' said Mr. Blue, who has covered Guatemala for more than two decades and photographed conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
During three reporting trips to Guatemala, Mr. Blue attended court hearings, visited the women in their villages, interviewed them in Spanish and rode with them on the hourslong bus journey from the town of Rabinal to the Supreme Court in Guatemala City. He and editors at The Magazine spent the last few months paring down his thousands of photographs into the stark black-and-white visual presentation published online last month and in print on Sunday.
In a recent interview, he shared how he gained the trust of the women, his biggest reporting challenge and what he hopes readers understand after seeing the photos. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did you first come across this story?
I'd been working in Guatemala for over two decades, most of that time trying to cover the aftermath of the civil war there. For years, I'd also been following the process of the legal cases that were looking to punish or to demand accountability from some of the people who committed the worst crimes during the war. In 2019, I heard about this group of Maya Achi women who were trying to start a trial to get justice against their attackers. A photographer friend introduced me to some of the women, and I followed them around for a day in Guatemala City as they were trying to push their case forward. I was floored by not only the crimes they had suffered through, but also their absolute determination to hunt for justice for what had been done to them.
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