Introduction
Many historians have written excellent books and articles on the Salvadoran Civil War exploring the causes of the war, important events and people, U.S involvement, and the war’s lasting legacy. Within this current historiography, the El Mozote Massacre is generally referenced in a single sentence or discussed in a supporting paragraph. The massacre is used as a case study of the atrocious violence and human rights violations that occurred during the war. Rather than being the primary topic of the article or book, historians fit the el Mozote Massacre in their larger analysis of the Salvadoran Civil War. Three historians who have conducted extensive research and produced informative writing focusing on the Mozote massacre are Mark Danner, Leigh Binford, and Rafael Alarcón Medina. Through their respective works, Danner, Binford, and Medina all answer important questions about the topic such as what happened during the massacre, how did the U.S. government react to the event, and what has been the massacre’s lasting legacy. Yet, a critical difference emerges when comparing Danner’s portrayal of the El Mozote community with Binford’s and Medina’s descriptions of the civilians. Binford and Medina criticize Danner’s generalization that the Mozote people were a homogenous group of poor peasants. Instead, Binford and Medina argue that the Mozote community was composed of people with differing political, economic, and social identities. Understanding this debate about the local Mozote community is important as people’s memory of the Mozote people impacts how they remember and memorialize the massacre as a whole.
The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War
In 1992, Mark Danner (a renowned journalist and professor) traveled to northern El Salvador to investigate the allegations that a massacre had occurred in the town of El Mozote. After conducting extensive research, Mark Danner published his findings in the 1993 New Yorker article “The Truth of El Mozote” which he expanded into a book titled The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War. In his book, Danner confirms that the Salvadoran army attempted to exterminate the local El Mozote community and describes the U.S. government’s deliberate attempt to cover up the event. Danner begins his book by using vivid imagery to describe the Mozote setting, and then he gives background details on both the perpetrators and victims of the massacre. Chapter 5 “La Matanza” is the climax of Danner’s book as he reconstructs the day of the massacre relying heavily on first-hand accounts from people like Rufina Amaya Mīquez. When describing the US reaction to the massacre, Danner summarizes that the US government cared more about fighting communism than protecting the human rights of the Salvadorian people. Danner’s work has largely defined how the El Mozote Massacre is remembered in the United States as the book is the most well-known text on the topic in the English language. Most historians who write about the El Mozote Massacre reference and utilize Danner’s research including Binford and Medina. Because of the book’s impact, Danner portrayal of the Mozote People as evangelical poor peasants became the accepted fact. Danner’s description of the Mozote people fit the leftist narrative that the Salvadoran Army had brutally attacked innocent civilians. Internationally, people were most interested in the massacre as a whole rather than the individual victims. In the following two works, Binford and Medina contest this accepted narrative of the Mozote people and explain the consequences of just portraying the Mozote people as passive victims.
The el Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications Revised and Expanded Edition **
In his book, The el Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications Revised and Expanded Edition, Leigh Binford (a professor at the College of Staten Island) provides an updated summary of the massacre and its aftermath to complement Danner’s older work. Utilizing the ethnographic research he gathered during his fieldwork in northern Morazón, Binford examines the massacre through an anthropological lens exploring the sociocultural identities of the local Mozote people. In his introduction, Binford gives the general criticism that human rights organizations ignore the personal histories of the victims and instead categorize them with broader terms such as “peasants” or “children” (Binford 5). Binford accuses historian and journalist Mark Danner of contributing to this problem by portraying the victims of the Mozote massacre “ as poor, illiterate peasants” which overlooks their varied histories (Binford 8). Binford warns that this tendency to group victims of human rights violations leads to depersonalization and a disregard for people’s suffering. In chapter 6 of his book, Binford expands that an additional consequence of the “innocent” label is that the Mozote people are simply seen as passive victims of the massacre. Binford contends that this association with passivity has followed survivors of the massacre as they actively fight for justice. Consequently, outside human rights groups rather than the victims themselves receive credit when progress is made toward reparation (Binford 136). By emphasizing the individual lives of the Mozote people, Binford hopes to highlight the varied and complex histories of the Mozote Community.
“Revisiting the El Mozote Massacre: Memory and Politics in Postwar El Salvador”
In this article, Rafael Alarcón Medina (an associate professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico) and Leigh Binford express the same critiques of Danner’s work that are found in Binford’s book. After stating their criticism in the introduction, Medina and Binford spend the rest of the article exploring how people’s perception of the Mozote people impacts their collective memory of the massacre. In the article, Medina and Binford examine how different groups in El Salvador grapple with rationalizing, contextualizing, and memorializing the Mozote Massacre. Medina and Binford focus on comparing two competing narratives of El Mozote’s history. One narrative emphasizes the “pain, suffering, death, and destruction” of the massacre hoping to gain more international sympathy and tourist money (Medina and Binford, Journal of Genocide Research 513-33). The other narrative focuses on Mozote’s “idealized pre-war past and a peasant utopian future” not wanting the hamlet to solely be associated with the massacre (Medina and Binford, Journal of Genocide Research 513-33). This differing contextualization of the massacre reinforces Medina’s and Binford’s argument that people have different memories of the event based on their own personal goals.
Conclusion
With his inflectional book, Danner established the narrative that the Mozote people one harmonious group of poor peasants. Danner describes the Mozote community as apolitical, innocent victims who refused to join the civil war because of their evangelical faith. While Binford and Medina praise Danner for “disseminating knowledge of the event [massacre] a dozen years after it took place and in critically detailing the role of United States officials in covering it up”, they critique Danner’s broad categorization of the Mozote people and limited description of the community’s pre-war history. disagree with many facets of this portrayal. Starting with a simple fact, Binford and Medina argue that existing evidence suggests the Mozote people were majority Catholic not evangelical. Additionally, Binford and Medina portray the hamlet of Mozote not as one homogenous group but rather as a community comprised of people with differing political, economic, and social identities. With their writings, Binford and Medina hope to combat the misrepresentation of the Mozote people as passive victims and instead portray them as active agents who participated in the conflict and fought for justice.
Citations
Binford, Leigh. The el Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications Revised and Expanded Edition. University of Arizona Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Danner, Mark. The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Medina, Rafael Alarcón, and Leigh Binford. “Revisiting the El Mozote Massacre: Memory and Politics in Postwar El Salvador.” Journal of Genocide Research 16, no. 4 ( 2014): 513–33.