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

The number one reason the U.S. involved themselves with El Salvador was because the Communist political party started becoming a magnificent threat to the nation. Communism is the belief directed from Karl Marx, where everyone is essentially treated equal. In El Salvador during the 1980s, the Communist group, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (a.k.a. FMLN), and three other political parties were pushing for more power. Since these groups were

Reading the book Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez, has been very informative to me and has changed my perspective on U.S. foreign policy. Each account of the families from the different Latino countries has similar underlying trends that can be found because of the U.S. involvement in their countries. Every single instance of U.S. involvement in Latin American countries seems to evolve around the idea of greed and profit. The U.S. is like a business that only cares about the income of money and not about the morality of their actions. On top of all the injustice the U.S. government has employed, they don’t bother to own up to their mistakes and they tend to sweep their involvement under the rug. For example, the Iran-Contra scandal mentioned in the book of the Reagan administration was the result of using drug money from Iran to buy weapons for the Nicaraguan contra rebels against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It infuriates me that the U.S. would support a dictator that suppresses the rights of its citizens and all the while they want to take down the established, popular Sandinista government. The U.S. wants to do all this so that the new government will support U.S. interests in Nicaragua. When the scandal was uncovered, all Reagan could say was “I’m sorry” and “It won’t happen again” even though our involvement had the result of many lives lost in that war/rebellion. Unfortunately, this theme did not only occur in Nicaragua

Further, in the text “CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals,” it is revealed that the CIA “developed a major propaganda campaign” that, “included sending wooden coffins, hangmans’ nooses, and phony bombs to selected individuals” (“CIA and Guatemala”) in Guatemala. This use of terror and psychological warfare was intended to horrify Guatemalan civilians and politicians prior to executing the actual coup. It is clear that American foreign policy was quite dangerous in correlation with Guatemala and exhibited a masculine attitude. In relation to de Beauvoir, American foreign policy can be compared to “the great advantage enjoyed by the boy” in which “his mode of existence in relations to others leads him to assert his subjective freedom” (de

“The issue is our effort to promote democracy and economic well-being in the face of Cuban and Nicaraguan aggression, aided and abetted by the Soviet Union. It is definitely not about plans to send American troops into combat in Central America. Each year, the Soviet Union provides Cuba with $4 billion in assistance, and it sends tons of weapons to foment revolution here in our hemisphere…Central America is a region of great importance to the United States. And it is so close: San Salvador is closer to Houston, Texas, than Houston is to Washington, DC. Central America is America. It's at our doorstep, and it's become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the

The Sandinistas pictured in Reagan’s speech as a revolutionary party that has reach extends beyond their immediate neighbors. It will export the revolution to El Salvador, then Guatemala, then Honduras, and then Mexico. The Sandinistas have revoked the civil liberties of the Nicaraguan people, depriving them of any legal right to speak, to publish, to assemble, or to worship freely. Like Communist governments everywhere, the Sandinistas have launched assaults against ethnic and religious groups. The Sandinista-directed mob violence. However, as if all this brutality at home were not enough, the Sandinistas are transforming their nation into a safe house, a command post for international terror . The Sandinistas not only sponsor terror in El

When Stephen Kinzer comes to Nicaragua for the first time, he knows very little about the people or culture; everything from the burning sun to the earthquakes to the impending revolution surprises him. However, he is not the only one who seems to be unaware of the increasing tension that is mounting between the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas; even important figures, such as Colonel Laszlo Pataky, try to minimize the danger. Only Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, an anti-Somoza newspaper owner, admits that war is on the horizon. And before Kinzer leaves, he makes an exasperated statement about the relationship between the United States and Nicaragua: “The United States is the great, overwhelming factor in our national life and you don’t even know we exist!”

The Truth of El Mazote is the story of how a history of domestic incompetence, international short sightedness, and ordinary people trying to navigate a safe middle ground resulted in the murder of mothers, children, and the elderly. El Mazote is only one village, but it is used as an example of the violence that ranged throughout the country in the 1980s. Max Donner uses this one story to make comprehensible a level of blind violence that is nearly impossible to understand.

Societies are always marred by acts of incivility and social unrest across various divides. This stance could not have been brought out in no other better way than the way Connelly heightened the Guatemalan Civil War in “from ‘Three Dirges’”. The war hailed out as the most daunting stances that have ever taken place on the global realm. It is deemed to have lasted for over 36 centuries, primarily stemming from the battles between rural poor people and the Guatemalan government. Notably, Connelly posits that this war inflicted pain, hatred, and destitution in the lives of the Guatemala citizens. Connelly heightens how the acts of genocide, oppression and racism dent the calls for democracy, sustainability and progress of nations through the piece Requiem Guatemala, “from ‘Three Dirges’; thus, compelling societies to embrace peace and tranquility.

Regardless of everything they heard, and even the pictures they saw. The story of the Massacre was still chalked up to being just propaganda that the guerrillas were trying to use to their advantage. The United States ultimately made the decision to continue funding the war in El Salvador. The U.S. Press did everything they could to cover up what happened in El Mozote to assure that congress continued to provide funding to El Salvador. They were “worried about taking the blame for any advance of Communism in the hemisphere.” (92) By funding the war and assuring that the Guerrillas did not win the U.S. was preventing, “the worst disaster to befall human rights in El Salvador… a Communist victory”

El Salvador is located in Central America. The country has over 6 million people and is known as the smallest and over populated country. The people in El Salvador are of Indigenous American descent and European mixed with America Indian also known as Mestizos of European. El Salvador has had many revolutions to civil wars within a few centuries up into the twenty first century . El Salvador uniting with the Federal Republic of Central America in 1821, developing a communist party near 1932 and the most recent of the tragic El Mozote massacre in the 1980's is a few of the history events that took place.

During the cold war, in a misguided attempt to “secure” much of South and Central America, the United States played the charade of safeguarding freedom in such places as Brazil, Argentina, and Guatemala; each developed its own strain of repressive autocracy, to which the champion of democracy turned a blind eye. Such cases do not reflect a failure among Brazilians, Argentinians, or Guatemalans. Rather, they are a consequence of loyalty.

foreign policy interests suffered due to a combination of idealism and arrogance that came in the form of attempted regime change. Fearing that Central America would be the next domino to fall under the iron curtain, Reagan, “justified CIA support for the Contras as necessary to overthrow the Sandinistas…bombing oil storage and other facilities in Nicaragua” (RTG6). In the absences of congressional support, Reagan sought out funds by selling arms to Iran, resulting in the notorious Iran-Contra scandal. Even after Congress lifted its ban, all efforts at regime change proved fruitless and “never have so many contributed so much to so few with less results, for despite everything, the Contras made no progress” (RTG 9). Reagan’s policy at regime change in Nicaragua intended to install a U.S.-friendly govenrment, by rather resulted in a substantial waste of funds, and a bitter taste in the mouths of Central Americans. In a speech on the use of military force, Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger asserted, “we cannot assume for other sovereign nations the responsibility to defend their territory when our freedom is not threatened” (Weinbeger8). In Contra-Sandinista case, the sovereignty and national security of the U.S. was not threatened, and thus the Reagan administration’s policy of regime change derived from a desire to maintain greater power in the western hemisphere and contain the spread of communism. What ultimately ensured was a great

Located on the Pacific Coastline, El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and the most populated. The United States of America foreign policy on El Salvador is best explained by President Obama’s approach on Latin America where the United States is focused on economic growth and equality, energy and climate control, and regional and citizen security (Foreign Policy, 2012). This is best explained using the international level of analysis and neo-liberalism where the global structure and economic interdependence provides the foundation of America’s foreign policy. To ensure that one can see the transparency in United States methodology I will provide the history of El Salvador, the creation of United States interest in El

“So I guess in a way they are counter revolutionary, and God bless them for being that way and I guess that makes them contras, and so it makes me a contra too.” In 1979, a bitter war broke out in Nicaragua between the Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction, the Nicaraguan government, and the Contras, a vicious rebel group. The goal of this war was simple, overthrow the Nicaraguan government and restore freedom for all Nicaraguan citizens. It was this that caught the eye of the American government and it was not too long before the U.S began to fund the Contras. Although the United States government funded the contras, they viewed them with skepticism being that they were extremely controversial.

The USSR had recently funded a communications site on Nicaraguan soil to help them communicate with other socialist nations. With a rising fear of the USSR and other socialist nations, the US immediately accused it of being a spy base. Not shortly afterwards the US began to take action against Nicaragua by issuing an economic blockade. Because the Nicaraguan economy relied so heavily on imports, this had a profound effect and contributed to the collapse of the Nicaraguan economy. “It was impossible to spend even a day in Nicaragua without becoming aware of the huge and unrelenting pressure being exerted on the country by the giant standing on the northern front” (p.24).