The Massacre at El Mozote

by Mark Danner

A masterpiece of scrupulous investigative journalism that is also a testament to the forgotten victims of a neglected theater of the Cold War.

"Once in a rare while a writer reexamines a debated episode of recent history with such thoroughness and integrity that the truth can no longer be in doubt. Mark Danner [has done] just that." — The New York Times

In December 1981 soldiers of the Salvadoran Army's select, American-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the village of El Mozote, where they murdered hundreds of men, women, and children, often by decapitation. Although reports of the massacre—and photographs of its victims—appeared in the United States, the Reagan administration quickly dismissed them as propaganda. In the end, El Mozote was forgotten. The war in El Salvador continued, with American funding.

When Mark Danner's reconstruction of these events first appeared in The New Yorker , it sent shock waves through the news media and the American foreign-policy establishment. Now Danner has expanded his report into a brilliant book, adding new material as well as sources.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Latin American History, War, School, Journalism

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

Mark David Danner is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

the depravity of the US during the Cold War.

The US had one objective in the Cold War: Stop Communism! It did not matter what tactics the governments we gave billions of dollars to used to "secure" that objective - it only mattered that countries in Latin America and Africa fell into non-Communistic hands.

Sign the check and don't ask questions. Don't worry about the death tolls, or who has gone missing. Ignore intelligent reports from El Salvador that say an entire village has been destroyed all because rebels were supposedly in the area. No, fund the war, achieve your objective and don't ask about the atrocities that were committed to get it done.

In 1981 and entire village in El Salvador was erased by an US funded/trained Salvadoran army. They marched into El Mozote and wiped out an entire village in one of the most heinous stories I have ever read. Compared to stories out of the Rwandan Genocide and the Rape of Nanking - this book made me shudder and question the true depravity of man. It is amazing the hatred that can fill a human life, and the ability man has, time and time again, to see their neighbor as somehow not human and worthy of such treatment.

The trust of the massacre lay hidden for 11 years, before Rufina Amaya Márquez, the sole survivor of the attack managed to tell anyone her story.




For a bit more information on one of the heroes of the situation look at http://economist.com/obituary/display...

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the debate over what happened at El Mozote, secrecy was never the key obstacle to determining the truth: Some of the most important evidence was available to the public almost from the start..." -Mark Danner

"I'm glad that Reagan dead." -Killer Mike

"The Massacre at El Mozote" is a slim book on a terrible moment in history written in unpretentious prose. It recounts the events leading up to and following the execution of an entire rural village by American-backed (as in, trained by the CIA, and shooting American bullets, and funded with hundreds of millions in military aid) right-wing death squads with an impressive lack of hand-wringing or really political commentary of any kind. It is, in short, an objective account... the kind that was sorely lacking when the massacre actually took place, in 1981. It took more than ten years after the fact for this book to explain, in indisputable detail, exactly what happened in El Mozote.

Why the delay? Well, "The Massacre at El Mozote" explains that, too. Its critique of the U.S. media goes hand-in-hand with its critique of U.S. government. The Atlacatl didn't need to cover-up what they had done to the (truly innocent, as in, unaffiliated in any way with the guerrillas or the government) people of El Mozote, and they knew it. They knew that as long as the Reagan administration was on its anti-Communist footing, U.S. money would keep flowing in. No human rights atrocities would force their hand, because no human rights atrocity, in the Reagan administration's mind, was as great as the possibility of a Communist government. So when a few noble reporters actually go to village, interview its lone surviving resident, and take pictures of myriad corpses, they are not only ignored by the government: they are attacked by the Wall Street Journal and other prominent media voices for being too "credulous." Their true account is quickly squashed and replaced by a far more "politically correct" version of what happened, one that refuses to assign blame; one that keeps repeating stupid lines like "there are only 300 people in that village, so why do the commies keep saying 700 deaths" (totally disregarding how the reporters already accounted for this in their articles: not only people from El Mozote were murdered!); one that uses the fact that not everything can be known to argue that NOTHING can be known.

We see the American government and their abettors in the American media do this time and time again. By "this," I don't just mean "lie to the public"-- I mean mercilessly smearing all people who would dare defend the account of anyone to the left of Mussolini (one of the original El Mozote reporters was fired by the New York Times after the WSJ "critique"). I mean engineering war in other countries and then pretending like "the truth can't be discerned" when it all goes to hell. I mean talking a lot of stuff about "human rights" and then going to bat for the forces that are most vicious when it comes to destroying humans. First-hand testimony of government soldiers decapitating men, raping and murdering women, bayoneting babies. And we, the people, continued to send the Atlacatl money for years...

This book is amazing. It's small, but its implications are huge; it's indeed a "parable of the Cold War," as the subtitle says. Trigger warning: the chapter on the massacre itself is probably the most harrowing thing I've ever read. Though fans of cosmic (if terribly late, and hardly sufficient) justice will get some of it during the last couple of chapters on "Monterrosa's Prize."

[Sara S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a difficult read, not because of the writing style, which was engaging but rather the subject matter. “In the debate over what happened at El Mozote, secrecy was never the key obstacle to determining the truth: Some of the most important evidence was available to the public almost from the start” information was published in the Washington Post, New York Times, and photos from journalists were available. However, the United States government continued to deny what had occurred and call it propaganda so that they could continue to give aid to the CIA trained and funded soldiers who had committed the atrocity— all in the name of stopping communism. The exact number of deaths still isn’t known but it’s somewhere close to 1,000: all civilians, many women and children.

I think this is an extremely important book to read, and piece of history to remember. To be honest, I’m offended we don’t learn more about this kind of “US Intervention” in school.

[Addie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little under two years ago I witnessed the first ever change of government in El Salvador as the people voted in the leftist FMLN party over ARENA, the rightest who had ruled the country for its entire existence. At the time, I believed that the threat of a leftist Chavez-type victory would be dangerous here in El Salvador. I also believed that the left would bring little of the promised change. Now, I can say that only one of those was actually true. The government has made little changes but now I believe that even if the left had intended to become Chavez-esque that they would not have succeeded. The people of El Salvador are not ideologues and change comes painfully slow. The idea of an extreme-left takeover of this country seems laughable now.

The most important findings of this book includes the atrocious behavior of the American government as they supported an Army that clearly lacked control or discipline. They continued to fund a war on civilians so because they feared a communist takeover. As in other ridiculous situations with the same storyline of this time, it seems the American government had this deep-seeded fear of a shadow named Communism that might one day turn into a person and try to kill them. Oh, how wrong they were. Several times throughout this book it quotes American government officials as saying that the killing of a few hundred civilians was preferable to a communist victory. Because, apparently, a communist victory by definition meant doom for MORE civilians later.

Some other points I noted during my reading were:
-The military officers had a distinct system whereby they became "kin" and sheltered each other and supported each other NO MATTER WHAT. This meant anything from shielding their companions from illegal acts they may have committed to supporting and even hand=picking the next president.
-There was a little mentioned faction of "progressive" military officers who favored more centrist policies and working with the agitated left. Some of these officers later defected and joined the guerrilla fighters.
-In many cases, civilians who were sympathetic to the left were killed simply because the left did not have the resources to protect their own people. They waged guerrilla war and the only way to protect their own was to have them flee. This is hard when you have lots of children, etc.
-Many of the arms the guerrillas used were bought from the Salvadoran Army via soldiers looking to make a buck.
-Most reminiscent of the Afghan/Iraq war: "If we don't kill them (the children) now, they'll just grow up to be guerrillas. We have to take care of the job now."
-When trying to downplay the massacre, the US govt used as evidence the way the guerrilla army was pushing news of the massacre. The govt said that was proof that it was propaganda. Just the fact that it was being pushed, meant it probably wasn't true.

Knowing what I know now, after reading this book and spending two years here in El Salvador, it is pretty incredible that people are able to get on in a very civilized, Democratic way. Lots of blood was shed. I went to a cemetery just outside Mozote last Day of the Dead with a family in my community who saw an uncle and two brothers killed during the war. It's not like it was that long ago but yet people have been able to maintain a civilized way of dealing with each other. It is truly impressive.

[Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been on my TBR for years. Reading it now, as another government's military kills thousands of innocent civilians with impunity while the U.S. government provides explicit permission, seemed like a good time to remember that unless we do stand up and speak out...history repeats itself.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Massacre at El Mozote is an extension of a New Yorker article, so it's fairly short and not particularly dense. It chronicles the course of the Salvadoran civil war leading to the massacre and the response by the US government to the news. It's a standard Cold War imperialist atrocity narrative - the US gave arms, advice, and training to the Army of the military junta government to keep them in power against a popular rebellion supported by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who presumably had something to do with Communism. Danner starts with the background: 12-year civil war, starting with a purge of the urban left (first union leaders and activists, then teachers, then girls in jeans and tennis shoes), evolving into a counterisurgency against guerillas in the mountains. As with any of these cases, there's no question who's on the right side here, and no excuse for the US to fall so heavily on the wrong one.

The interesting thing is that the focus on El Mozote somehow undermines the atrocities of the rest of the war. El Mozote is interesting because they were born-again Protestants, immune to the Liberation Theology inspiring the guerillas. They supported the Army, had contacts within it, and expected to be spared in the scorched earth campaign in the area. An officer friendly to El Mozote's shopkeeper advised him to keep everyone in the village - those who fled would be presumed guilty. However, this ends up seeming like a deliberate trick (though it's not obvious that the massacre was so planned), when troops show up and kill 99% of the village and those who had fled there from neighboring towns, seeking its promised asylum. It's almost as though Danner is suggesting the massacre was bad because it was a betrayal, because they were "innocent." There seems otherwise no reason to focus on it - it was slightly larger in scale than previous incidents, but otherwise not particularly noteworthy. This is unfortunate, because it is not obviously more "atrocious" than the rest of the government's US-encouraged war, nor was it the only opportunity the US had to learn about the Salvadoran military's violation of human rights conditions on which military aid was legally supposed to depend.

It's instructive for me to come back to US military regime change and intervention stories after letting my ideology cool a bit, because I can now see the cause of these things in a clearer light. Before, I would have jumped at the Embassy, the Military, and the CIA for conspiring to hide these things from the public, trying to avoid getting caught with the hands in the blood jar, so to speak. But it is now quite obvious that the whole operation, the utter stupidity and willful blindness about the relationship between the rebels and Communism (they apparently believed that ANY atrocity on the part of the government would pale in comparison to what the rebels would do if they took power), were in part a product of media-amplified public fear of the Soviet Union, of changes in the power balance that might threaten their hemisphere.

This explains the Congressional schizophrenia: members needed to maintain the pretense that they were basically decent human beings without making decisive inaction that could lead to them being called out for "losing El Salvador to the Communists" - a situation that would be perceived as directing threatening US security. Imperialist atrocities weren't just an plot that greedy corporate-purchased politicians and revolving-door civil servants pulled over the public's eyes. They were that, but they were also well within the spirit of the foreign policy many Americans wanted the government to pursue.

[Karla Guady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me more than a month to get through this book partially because of the content and its historical significance, or lack there of according to some. It is disheartening to read how there was such a lack of legitimate evidence gathering shortly after reports of the massacre, so as to not compromise the US government's agenda in their foreign policies. I appreciate Danner including the press and governmental documents/statements referenced throughout the book because they helped color in more of the contextual picture. This event and the reaction to it is upsetting because it is always poor people who greatly suffer at the hands of governmental interests. This book highlights the scary reality that the truth can always be twisted, reconstructed, or denied when it is happening out of your eyes reach and it raises the question of how to be conscious, truth seeking global citizen.

[Ben Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the Cold War, the US created a habit of supporting numerous fascist regimes in Latin America. This book details the US relationship in regards to an atrocity that occurred in El Mozote in El Salvador. Post 9/11, George W. Bush stated that "if you fund a terrorist, then you're a terrorist" the same case can be made about funding fascists.

[Sami · Rating 4 out of 5]

A shocking and often forgotten chapter of Central America's history where U.S. Cold War politics fueled violence across the region for decades. The dirty wars that shaped Salvador’s Civil War and continue to influence its present trajectory.

[Kimberlyyyreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly an emotional read and one worth checking out in understanding the impact that the U.S. has had in Latin American countries. This book does an incredible job at criticizing the depravity of el Mozote Massacre.

Rufina Amaya Márquez and victims to the massacre will not be forgotten. May their voices continued to be heard.

[Liana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extensively investigated and thoroughly detailed, this human rights disaster was brought to my attention only recently for a graduate course in human rights. For this massacre to have happened under the administration of a certain "Gipper" further casts a darkening shadow over the legacy so many people (*cough* conservatives) have been tripping over themselves to praise. What should we protect more? Political ideology or innocent human lives? More attention should be paid to El Salvador as it is still struggling with deadly aftershocks of its civil war, as well as still mourning the horrific events surrounding the massacre at El Mozote. Read this book and be chilled to the bone.

[Tahlia · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beyond disturbing that the American government accuses eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence of unfathomable atrocities as being biased to a political cause

[Angel Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

will have to reread as I skipped the document section. my favorite chapter was the one recounting Washington's retelling of events. as if it somehow has the same weight as the voice of the victims. unfortunately, in terms of power Washington's voice carries more weight.

this book is about a remote place in Morazan, El Salvador, where innocents died to satisfy the needs of US anti-communism. remaining at the scene of the crime were bullets manufactured for the US Government at Lake City, Missouri (pg 159). no better symbol for US policy than bullets.

[Kevin Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book chronicles the worst atrocity that has occurred in Central America: the massacre of 767 non-combatant civilians in December, 1981 by the Salvadoran army in the village of El Mozote, and likely many more victims whose remains did not permit counting. Not a dramatic narrative, the author focuses on telling the facts preceding the situation, the event, and the denial and obfuscation by both the Salvadoran regime and the US government that poured six billion dollars into supporting the regime and its oppression.

I'd already visited the site and heard the story of what happened told with a lot more emotion by people who lived the Salvadoran conflict. What I found most interesting in Danner's book is the materials he includes. Intentionally or not, the source materials (embassy cables, interviews, US government hearing transcripts, etc.) show how the truth is destroyed not by denial, but through dilution, misdirection, small lies, semantic games: it dies from a thousand cuts. It is a cautionary lesson to me, as I process the "news" from conflicts, military actions, and other atrocities small and large that continue unabated.

[Bobby Montano · Rating 5 out of 5]

EDIT: Re-read this one again tonight, inspired by the long-overdue confession from a former Atlacatl Batallion officer that the US-trained and supplied forces indeed did carry out the massacre—despite shameful and aggressive denials from the Reagan administration. It is infuriating to think that Elliott Abrams’s political career survived this; worse yet to know that he is still a man of great influence in our foreign policy machine.

This is now the second time I’ve read this book in one sitting and could not possibly recommend it more strongly to anyone interested in the true history of American foreign policy and its impact on vulnerable people. A must read. (With a trigger warning for extreme violence and photography, as Danner shows Susan Meiselas’ gut-wrenching photography from the scene.)

_______

A life-changing book from Mark Danner that should be required reading in every single U.S. history class in the country. Couldn't recommend more emphatically, especially now that Elliott Abrams is back in the fray (because OF COURSE he is).

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 4 out of 5]

ABD'nin kontrgerilla okullarında eğitim gören El Salvador ordusuna bağlı Atlacatl Ölüm Tugayı 1981 yılının Aralık ayında, yani ben henüz doğmuşken birkaç gece içinde yaklaşık 900 kişinin öldürüldüğü bir katliam gerçekleştirdi. El Mozote Katliamı'nı Salvador ordusu ve ABD bir ağızdan yalanladı. 10 yıl sonra yapılan kazılarla böyle bir katliamın varlığı kesin olarak kanıtlandıysa da, sorumluları hiçbir ceza almadan kurtuldu, çünkü ülkede "barış" olmuştu.

ABD'li gazeteci Danner bu katliamın peşine düşerek öncesini ve sonrasını etraflı bir şekilde araştırmış. Yetkililerle ve gerilla komutanlarıyla konuşmuş, haberleri taramış. Olayın tanıklarının ağzından katliam günlerinde yaşananları bir roman gibi yeniden yaratmış.

Ancak geçen zaman kitabı biraz eskitmiş. Üstelik hedef kitlesi ABD'li okur olduğundan ulusal gazeteler arası çelişkilere, gazeteci, politikacı, diplomatlara dair anlatımlar da ABD dışındaki okurlar için konu dışı kalıyor.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrific account of the massacre of nearly 1,000 politically neutral civilians by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army and efforts to deny it ever happened those in power in both countries. Histories like these breed the political and economic instability we see today that drive mass emigration.

[Adam Langlois · Rating 5 out of 5]

the US government is a bummer

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"So if I had said everyone was crying, and everything- well, that wouldn't have had any credibility."
Here, a journalist offhandedly mentions how he removes the emotion from the accounts of the women who have witnessed their families being beheaded because the U.S. government officials would see this as detracting from the credibility of the story. Any display of humanity not just an afterthought but a point of disgust. The absolute lack of empath and pure human evil displayed by the United States government during the Cold War, especially by the Reagan administration, is at the forefront of this book.

There's no flowery language or any complex analysis in this- Danner lets tells the official documents, interviewees, and the words of the civilians speak for themselves. They reveal how the Reagan administration sacrificed the lives of innocent men, women, and children in order to uphold the illusion of the United States winning the battle against communism in the dozens of wars it was funding. In El Mozote, the Salvadoran army funded by the United States, trained by the United States, and armed by the United States, raped, beat, shot, and beheaded almost a thousand innocent civilians. The U.S. government then twisted the account of the lone survivor and those who discovered the site of the massacre to manipulate the American public. They were led to believe that not only was the massacre an exaggeration and a lie, but even if it was true it was the fault of the left wing guerrillas for challenging the sovereignty of the ruling class (sounds familiar!).

The propaganda the Reagan administration put out surrounding the numerous massacres the army it controlled orchestrated and also the war in general is a reoccurring theme throughout not just the Cold War but even now. The justification of civilian causalities being a necessary evil- whether against communism, dictatorships, terrorism, every bullshit reason the government has cited to explain a war- has continued past the dissolution of the Soviet Union and been used time and time again in Iraq, Iran, and now in Palestine. From Mozote to Gaza, the American government has used propaganda to allow for the funding of wars that do nothing but uphold America' facade of being the world's foremost power and line the pockets of corporations and politicians.

Obviously the lies this book exposed made me very angry but I also cried like a baby. The last twenty pages were just the names of the murdered in tiny tiny print and the Matanza chapter was nauseating and had photographs of the massacre that made me lightheaded. The fact that this was not an isolated incident and smaller massacres occurred across the country throughout the duration of the war makes me wonder how my people aren't collapsing with grief at all times. Although it's looking up, theres no question why El Salvador is in the state its in even 30 years after the end of the war.

Really resisted the urge to rate this 5 stars like I do with all books surrounding El Salvador but this was also missing a lot of context and important background in my opinion. I wish a chapter had been dedicated to explaining both sides of the war, who consisted of each side, and how it evolved from the Matanza of the 30s and all the prior coups. Also wish there was a deeper exploration into the United States' role in the 1979 coup, the Soviet Union's involvement, and the widespread use of child soldiers throughout the conflict.

[GeoLyceum · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author Mark Danner, a journalist and teacher, is now currently Chancellor’s Professor of English and Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard. He has written a compelling and graphic account (which first appeared in "The New Yorker" magazine) of a massacre committed by the El Slavadoran Army in and around the town of El Mozote in December 1981, during the Salvadoran civil war.

Subsumed by the Cold War and brushed under the rug at the time, Danner gives the background of deterioration of the political situation spiraling into war, then recounts how the massacre unfolded. The details are vivid and extremely unsettling -- a woman who has had to listen to her children's screams holding her breath under a scratchy bush feet away from soldiers, children's bones being uncovered by forensic anthropologists-- and meticulously documented. Key individuals, such as Lt. Col. Monterrossa, the leader of the Atlacatl Battalian which committed the massacre, and the guerrilla Radio Venceremos station operators who first broadcast the story, are profiled.

But that's not the end of Danner's story. He describes the effort to get the word of the massacre out to the world, through the actions of reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post, the National Council of Churches in New York, and the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, which was working with the Catholic Church. He also explains what the U.S. observers saw, and how their report was framed so as to allow both the Salvadoran government and the Reagan administration to deny the event -- facts which did not become apparent until the evidence of the Truth Commission's report was released in 1993. The fight against inequality and oppressive governance was not as important as the fight against communism to the U.S., and a blind eye was turned.

Danner makes use of multiple interviews with people on all sides of the massacre: soldiers, rebels, villagers, and outside observers. He also draws heavily on documentary evidence, with diplomatic cables and other primary source documents attached as appendices. As a case study, it works for many different fields: demonstrating the politics of the situation, the business of reporting, and the complexity of history.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A hundred teenage boys enter the Gerardo Barrios Military Academy, and from their number perhaps twenty toughened, hardened men would emerge four years later; throughout the next quarter century, these men would be promoted together, would become rich together, would gradually gain power together. If among them there proved to be embarrassing incompetents, not to mention murderers and rapists and thieves, then these men were shielded by their classmates, and defended ferociously. Finally, perhaps two decades after graduation, those who stood out early would lobby within the officer corps to become the President of El Salvador.”

“A big pile of corpses was discovered one morning, and almost all of them turned out to be young women wearing jeans and tennis shoes. Apparently, one of the intelligence people had decided that this ‘profile’ - you know, young women who dressed in that way - made it easy to separate out ‘leftists,’ and so that became one of the profiles that they used to round up so-called subversives.”

“The hard-core guys there really did believe that it was a virus, an infection, they’d always say ‘a cancer’ - you know, ‘Communism is a cancer.’ And so if you’re a guerrilla they don’t just kill you, they kill your cousin, you know, everybody in the family, to make sure the cancer is cut out. It had to be cut out, even if healthy flesh had to be lost, too.”

“The soldiers were putting ropes on the trees. I was seven years old, and I didn’t really understand what was happening until I saw one of the soldiers take a kid he had been carrying - the kid was maybe three years old - throw him in the air, and stab him with a bayonet.”

“After the billions and billions of dollars and all the fine words about “training” and “reform,” at bottom the Salvadoran Army remained what it had been at El Mozote.”

“If Congress felt so strongly about human-rights abuses, it could have simply cut off aid. But Congress didn’t cut off aid, because it didn’t want to risk being blamed, if the guerrillas won as a result, for ‘losing’ El Salvador. Instead, they required certification - which is to say, they agreed to fund the war while reserving the right to call us Fascists.”

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow… rating it four starts because it’s history that we should know, but kinda dull to read. There was tremendous research that was done for this book, but only the dedicated would read until the end. (You’re welcome, read every page!) Americans need to know more and politicians need to do better. This book is an account with lots of research behind it on the murders in 1981 in El Salvador. I am glad I read it. It did read a lot like a textbook in spots, but I am glad I trudged through those spots to learn about the events. How horrible that innocent people died. War is horrible. The USA needs to take responsibility for their choices and not waste tax dollars on violence. I wouldn’t read this book again, but I wish I could be in a book club about it and have others to talk about it with. The USA was funding the army in El Salvador against the guerrillas. The army ended up using tactics to kill anyone and everyone in the “zones” of where the guerrillas were. This included civilians by the hundreds. The USA the whole time didn’t investigate well and turned their attention elsewhere to try to avoid responsibility for training and supplying the army that did the killings. A man in 1990 brought forward complaints and got the ball rolling with investigation. This led to exhumation of El Mozote, where the remains of people were found and evidence of the massacre brought to light. Until then, it was “neither confirmed or denied” status by the USA. Even though there were two reporters who had gotten into El Mozote shortly after it happened, did reports and took pictures. Crazy the stuff that’s going on in politics that they don’t admit or bring to the public. How horrible. Rest in peace to those killed and their loved ones who survived but have to carry that pain everyday.

[Addie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a real feat of reporting -- collection of over a decade of documents, reports, briefs and individual interviews and dividing the book in half: the front half is the written narrative, and the second half are the official documents themselves. I read them both rather than skipping the original documents.

Otherwise, the content of this historical narrative is incredibly difficult to read and digest. Mass slaughter of civilians, from the elderly and infirm down to newborn babies. A decade long cover-up. Multiple parties leveraging its denial for their own benefit. It is as important a historical event as My Lai, a similar incident often referenced by main actors. It crosses four presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton). As subtitled, it is very much a parable of the folly of the Cold War proxy territories. There are heartbreaking and fascinating sub-stories: the New York Times and Washington Post reports in a foot race to break the story before key Congressional hearings, the wartime bravado of the retributive death the FMLA perpetrated on Colonel Monterrosa. The few survivors themselves are hard to contemplate...how such events could do anything but drive a person mad. The horrors are too unspeakable to even write here.

I was continuing my reading of the Bible as literature this morning and while reading Judges, I was struck in the similarities and how often the heroes in the Bible sack a city, murder every living thing including children and livestock, burn the villages and salt the earth. Having just finished the step by step outline of what people experienced during the Massacre at El Mozote, it certainly puts so much of the Old Testament events in a new, more specific light.

[Brian Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why read a 1993 book about a 1981 massacre in El Salvador? Perhaps because Mark Danner’s The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War is a remarkable piece of long-form journalism. Or maybe because it is a blueprint for how the U. S. government covers up complicity in atrocity. Either reason will do. In a model of investigative journalism, Danner reveals how the U. S. embassy officers in-country couldn’t quite bring themselves to whitewash the Salvadoran military, while communicating the “clear impression that ‘something horrible happened,’ and of [embassy official Todd] Greentree’s conviction ‘that there probably had been a massacre, that they had lined people up and shot them,’ the cable supplied to officials in the State Department a number of arguments that they might find useful in impeaching the press accounts of El Mozote – deeply misleading arguments that would form the basis of the government’s effort to discredit the reports of the massacre.” (p. 117) It worked. And the Reagan administration certified that the El Salvador military was improving its human rights record when in fact the opposite was true and being accurately reported in the press. Fortunately, the U. S. press exposure caused enough discomfort to the Salvadoran military that “the officers realized that lesser massacres – of forty people or fewer, say – could accomplish as much without attracting so much attention.” (p. 140)

Danner concludes his account with a list of the 767 innocent infants, children, women, and men who died in the most chilling manner at the hands of the U. S. trained & supplied “anti-communist” military organization.

[Lauren Lyness · Rating 5 out of 5]

TW for this book: R*pe, war crimes, mass murder, mass sexual abuse, sexual abuse and violence against children and graphic descriptions of all the above.

This is an incredibly important, well written and engaging book which makes it all the more devastating and difficult to read. It makes painfully clear the level of US complicity in the atrocities committed not only in El Mozote but more broadly in Latin America. The history American foreign policy is a ledger of blood. This country enabled horror after horror in the name of defeating communism, and what has this country done to atone? Nothing.

The author leaves no room for spin because there isn’t any. This book is a masterclass in exposing the horrific truth of American involvement and cover-ups abroad. I didn’t think it was possible to have more distain for the Regan administration but here I am seething and mourning for the lives lost. Murders committed with bullets made right here in the USA. Bullets this government sent to evil dictators as “military aid” to murder children ripped from their mothers arms. Unfortunately this isn’t a relic of the 80s. Undoubtedly atrocious acts are being committed across the globe with the direct and/or indirect assistance of our government.

Chapter Five in particular had me setting the book down as I processed the horror of what happened at El Mozote. It is an important telling of the massacre but one should prepare to be deeply disturbed before reading this book and in particular chapter five. Seriously make a plan to take care of yourself during and after reading this chapter it is deeply deeply disturbing and graphic.

[Zulu Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This is a well-written and well-researched account of what was possibly the single biggest massacre committed by US backed forces in the Western Hemisphere during the Cold War.

This was originally a series of New Yorker articles, which largely accounts for the ultra readability.

The author does an incredible job of narrating what happened in predictably horrifying detail, and then pivoting to the experiences of local State Department officials who wittingly or unwittingly helped cover the whole thing up. An interesting final perspective is that of US media, and in particular the NYT and the Wall Street Journal, the latter of which seems to have never fully acknowledged what happened.

I didn’t realize that fully half of this book would be documentation, notes etc., this is probably amazing for people living in the early 1990s and still interested in debating whether or not US backed forces really did this, but for me it was superfluous.

Quick and easy read that probably could have remained a series of articles, but nevertheless extremely enjoyable and enlightening.

[Chuy · Rating 5 out of 5]

bought The Massacre at El Mozote for a class on the Central American migration crisis, and I haven't been able to put it down. Mark Danner delivers a gripping investigative account of the December 1981 massacre in El Mozote, where a U.S.-backed death squad murdered over a thousand innocent Salvadorans-mostly women and children-in the name of "stopping" the spread of communism.
Danner vividly details the events before, during, and after the atrocity, exposing the brutality of U.S. foreign policy and its role in funding human rights abuses.
Though fairly short and accessible, this book is a crucial starting point for understanding how the U.S. has repeatedly denied accountability for crimes against humanity-whether in El Salvador over 40 years ago or in conflicts across the world today. Danner also provides readers a historical and material context of Salvadoran history of what led to massacre.
"For eleven years, Rufina Amaya Márquez had served the world as the most eloquent witness of what had happened at El Mozote. but though she had told her story again and again, much of the world had refused to believe her." PG 7.

[Eve Javey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will this book haunt me forever? Yes! Was it well written and well researched? Yes! It is interesting how different authors writing about different contested massacres choose to go about laying out the facts to prove that these horrible slaughters did in fact happen. What Danner did that was different than say Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, was put the political battles at the forefront of the story as opposed to the slaughter itself. That being said, because there were so many players at hand, I found myself getting a little bit confused as to who was who. This very well be my own reading comprehension that failed me, but I would have appreciated some reminders as to which general or US agent did/said what thing as they continued to get brought up throughout the book.

Overall, I recommend this book if you are curious about El Salvador during the Cold War and/or the US involvement in it.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible piece of reportage that seems quintessentially pulled from the pages of the New Yorker. Eyewitness testimony and long interviews are stitched into an absorbing narrative that feels sinewy and strong. Coming relativelu uninformed to the subject, it provides both great detail and a rooted context to tell the strongest condemnation of yet another of the Reagan administration and American imperalism's sins.

The book shows perfectly how the bureaucracy can twist and elide information to tell its preferred story, wonderfully capturing the smarminess and careerism that so frustrates me about the foreign service. The access journalism amd pretension of the newspapers is also wrung out beautifully showing just how the neoliberal consensus is propped up.

That thus is done with such efficiency and with an obsessive appendicization of sources is just beautiful journalism.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

El Salvador is a microcosm of the depravity unleashed by the US in its anti-communist endeavors, and El Mozote is a case study on exactly what occurs to locals caught in the crossfire.

This book is an account of the El Mozote massacre during the Salvadoran civil war. It was so heartbreaking to read about the horrors witnessed by the villagers there. Mark Danner does an excellent job of presenting the details of the massacre, especially the latter section about the US recollection of the events that transpired. I picked this book out because I know many Salvadoran migrants. There's not many books out there that detail the events of their civil war, so this book is essential for anyone curious about American involvement in Central America, Salvadoran history, or Cold War era anti-communist efforts in general.