The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights (Hegemony and Experience)
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., GainesvilleCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.