Essay about The Massacre in El Mozote as Told by Mark Danner

The Massacre at El Mozote as told by Mark Danner takes place El Salvador. El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America. It shares borders with Guatemala and Honduras. El Salvador is divided into 14 departments and El Mozote is a village in one of the Departments called Morazan. According to the author, the Salvadoran Civil War 1979-1992 was a conflict waged by the Military led Government of El Salvador and coalition of left-leaning militias or guerillas called the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).The FMLN was supported by peasants and indigenous Indian people. The United States supported the El Salvador Military government. The tensions between the classes, the halves and the halve-nots are therefore represented†¦show more content†¦Also, the growing presence of the Soviets and Cuba in Nicaragua escalated the cold war and in order to ‘draw the line† the Reagan administration â€Å"doubled economic aid for El Salvador to a hundred and forty four million dollars† (pg 40). According to Danner, â€Å"the priorities of American Policy in El Salvador had become unmistakable† (pg 41).Second, The American government was â€Å"opposed to dispatching American combat forces to Central America† (pg 22) and in order to prevent another Nicaragua, Congress agreed to â€Å"reform† the Salvadoran Army by financing, training and arming its troops to fight the FMLN. As Danner notes, â€Å"the Americans had stepped forward to fund the war, but were unwilling to fight it†. Third, the Monterrosa led Atlacatl led batallion through American funding descended in El Mozote with â€Å"the latest M-16’s, M-60 machines guns, 90 millimeter recoilless rifles, and 60- and 81 millimeter mortars†(pg 39) and with a list of names massacred an entire village because â€Å"communism was cancer†(pg 49). The U.S. government was clearly responsible for the Massacre at El Mozote because without the funding, supporting, and training of El Salvador troops the war would have been tilted in the guerillas favor as they had managed to hold the disorganized army in certain areas. In contrast to neighboring departments El Mozote and its inhabitants of born-again Christians did not fit in as guerilla sympathizers. In fact, the training at American handsShow MoreRelatedEl Mozote Essay1448 Words   |  6 PagesMark Danner, an editor for the New York Times magazine, recounts in The Massacre at El Mozote a horrific crime against humanity committed by a branch of the Salvadorian army. He gives multiple points of views and cites numerous eye witnesses to try and piece together something that has been tucked away by the government at the time. In December, of 1981, news reports were leaked to major newspapers in the united states about an atrocity committed and a total massacre of a hamlet in El SalvadorRead MoreAnalysis Of Mark Danner s The Salvadoran Civil War1578 Words   |  7 Pageshorrifying actions and atrocities on its own people. One such event occurred inside and in the proximity of the village of El Mozote, in Morazà ¡n, El Salvador, on December 11, 1981, when the Salvadoran Army killed more than 800 civilians in the course of the Salvadoran Civil War. To truly understand the complexity of this event and its impact/place in history author Mark Danner has complied an in-depth assessment of this incident (expanding on his original investigation which appeared in the publicationRead MoreAnalysis Of Sal Castro And Maria Tula s Hear My Testimony1698 Words   |  7 PagesBlowout!, by Sal Castro and Maria Tula’s Hear my Testimony are both testimonios, meaning that they are told in the first-person narrative. They provide an accurate representation of the attitude and ideology of not only their own, but others at that time period as well. In both books, the testimonio helped tell a fuller story because it provided a deeper first hand view of socially significant scenes and demonstrated, through their own voice, first hand how characters identities were developed. These