The 1981 slaughter of more than a thousand civilians around El Mozote, El Salvador, by the country's U.S.-trained army was the largest massacre of the Salvadoran civil war. The story was covered—and soon forgotten—by the international news media. It was revived in 1993 only when the U.S. government was accused of covering up the incident. Such reportage, argues anthropologist Leigh Binford, sustains the perception that the lives of Third World people are only newsworthy when some great tragedy strikes. He critiques the practices of journalists and human rights organizations for their dehumanizing studies of "subjects" and "victims." Binford suggests that such accounts objectify the people involved through statistical analyses and bureaucratic body counts while the news media sensationalize the motives and personalities of the perpetrators. In relating the story of this tragic event, Binford restores a sense of history and social identity to the fallen people of this Salvadoran village. Drawing on interviews he conducted with El Mozote-area residents, he offers a rich ethnographic and personal account of their lives prior to the tragedy. He provides an overview of the history and culture of the area and tells how such a massacre could have happened, why it was covered up, and why it could happen again.
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From Library Journal
In 1981, a U.S.-trained military hit squad went into the El Salvadoran village of El Mozote and massacred 1000 innocents, mostly women and children. The incident received scant attention in the United States until 1993, when the U.S. government was accused of covering it up. Binford (anthropology, Univ. of Connecticut) criticizes our press for failing to emphasize the humanity of the victims so that Americans simply view the atrocity as "things that happen elsewhere." He also chastizes the press for failing to note the complicity of U.S. representatives who lie to Congress about human rights abuses. Binford tries to restore the humanity of El Mozote's victims by giving an ethnographic account of their lives, emphasizing the villagers as a social system. Nevertheless, Mark Danner's The Massacre at El Mozote (LJ 5/15/94) offers a more powerful and readable account and will appeal more to lay readers. Binford doesn't add much to the story except that his book was written later so he had the advantage of later research. For special collections.?Louise F. Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Binford's call for a more humanistic anthropology and a less apathetic world comes across clearly. . . . well written, compelling, and recommended for all those interested in Latin America, anthropological ethics, and human rights." —Human Mosaic "Binford's book does an admirable job in meticulously reconstructing the events which led up to the massacre. He is intent on making the victims of the massacre real human beings with lives and livelihoods, not an anonymous mass of people. His broader aim is to show how quantifying human rights statistics can dehumanize the victims and desensitize people to what is actually involved. His anthropological study is the most interesting part of the book." —Latin American Studies
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A tedious diatribe disguised as anthropology,
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This review is from: The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights (Hegemony and Experience) (Paperback)
Leigh Binford's "The El Mozote Massacre" is not merely not a good book (and it most assuredly is NOT a good book), as it is a wholly pointless book. Even the subtitle "Anthropology and Human Rights" remains disingenuous, as the text has little to do with either anthropology or human rights. The book is essentially, a poor retread of much superior Mark Danner's "The Massacre at El Mozote," to which has been added a confusing and confused Marxist interpretation. Binford argues that brutal elements of the El Salvadorean army didn't really kill a thousand people in 1981, ultimately it was Global Capitalism that did it. Yes, really, that's his entire thesis.What really happened on December, 1981, was a horrible event by any reckoning. Deploying ugly "scorched earth" tactics to defeat a communist insurgency, elements of the El Salvadorean army swept into the small village of El Mozote and systematically murdered the entire population. It was a cause of the narrow-minded militarism of the Salvadorean officer corps, dividing the countryside into "Friendly Us" and an "Enemy Them," the sense of a resurgent Cold War, and the communist guerillas themselves, urging the people to rise and then abandoning them at the first sign of danger. But this, again, is all adequately covered in Danner's excellent text and interested parties are urged to look there. Binford attempts to give a social history of the background that led to the massacre, albeit a social history that reads like a press release straight from the communist guerillas themselves. He casually tosses off a series of odd statements, like the country being built through the theft of capital and capitalism as "nothing more than a congealed form of other people's labor" (34). He describes the state dynamic of El Salvador as being a collaboration to "sustain a capitalist economy with semifeudal characteristics and an authoritarian state apparatus that secured by violence and paternalism the minimal political conditions necessary for the system's maintenance and reproduction" (27). Goodness. The logic employed here, if it can be called such, is pretty tortured. That he doesn't feel the need to support that statement and simply hangs it out like it's a simple statement of fact reveals the confusion present in the author, a confusion that extend throughout his text. From there the snowball rolls forth and particularly offensive is his attempt to turn the poor dead people of El Mozote into some manner of Marxist martyrs. He works very hard to turn them from fairly neutral evangelicals caught in the cross-fire into Catholic Liberation scholar and soldiers working towards the workers' paradise. That he attempts to score political and revolution points over their graves remains a thoroughly grotesque effort. He has a small section towards the end that... sort of addresses anthropology... claiming that anthropology should seek to overturn the global system of brutal exploitation of the neocolonial south. Or, at least, they should attempt to make such a system marginally less brutal, through the transfer of wealth North to South, opposing assaults on the Welfare State. Anthropologists of the World Unite,apparently. They have nothing to lose but their chains. One should study horrors like the massacre at El Mozote to ensure that such atrocities never happen again. Accordingly, one should also study a book like Binford's to ensure that such literary atrocities remain equally as rare.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Morazan: Blood stain from yesterday.,
By Mark Hoffman (MEJICANOS SAN SALVADOR) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights (Hegemony and Experience) (Paperback)
I met Leigh Binford in Dec 1994 during the burial of the 143 children and 2 adults that were sent back for the formal burial at El Mozote. Binfords analysis is more in depth than Danners dramatic book as far as cultural background and historical development of El Mozote and the state of Morazan in general. I currently am living in San salvador and right now they (Medicina Legal Forensics) are currently exhuming massacre remains near San Vicente. Too bad the whole worlds attention is so Pavlov to the Medias bidding to current events while the past -and current- U.S. Involvement in El Salvador is swept under the rug and hid behind low intensity conflict style blaming. "Oh its their fault" Yeah, we trained them, and knew it was going on all the time. Right NOW we are VERY involved in COLOMBIA, and everybody is just sitting and browsing the net with starbucks coffee., Lets get off our duffs and find out what's going on. "Oh, but wait.. I have to see if My plastic Horses have sold on Ebay." Good work LEIGH!
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