Sylvia Sellers-Garcia's book The Woman on the Windowsill

A true story of violence and punishment that illuminates a transformative moment in Guatemalan history

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.

 

Reviews

“The Woman on the Windowsill is that rare history book that will keep you on the edge of your seat. At the book’s core is the paired drama of an unfolding crime with the historian’s measured discovery of a puzzling and at times inscrutable past.” — Kris Lane, Tulane University

“An exquisite book. It is at once scholarly and popular, learned and accessible, challenging and inviting. The beauty is in the understated elegance, the pacing, and the care with which Sellers-Garciá approaches the pleasures and the problems of the archive.”— Raymond Craib, Cornell University

“Every historian dreams about finding a spellbinding old case or an irresistible cache of documents. Sellers-García has found such a case and used it to give us a grand tour of colonial Guatemala City, showing us its cobblestone streets, nearby ravines, hospitals and medical procedures, families from various walks of life, city leaders, victims, and villains.”—Andrés Reséndez, author of The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

Author Information

Sylvia Sellers-García 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.