Mark Danner, editor of the New York Times magazine, recounts in The Massacre at El Mozote a horrific crime against humanity committed by a branch of the Salvadoran army . He gives several points of view and cites numerous eyewitnesses to try to reconstruct something that was hidden by the government of the time. In December 1981, news broke in major newspapers across the United States about atrocities committed and the total massacre of a hamlet in El Salvador known as El Mozote, or the Thicket. At the beginning, more than a thousand civilians, women, men and children without affiliation with the guerrillas, were massacred. Danner brings together survivor testimonies and interviews with Salvadoran army officers. El Mozote was not affiliated with the guerrillas of the time. It was a city considered a last resort for fleeing civilians. There was supposed to be a safe haven, as the rebels and army would fight in the woods, away from civilians. On December 8, peasants gathered one by one in El Mozote and expanded the boundaries of the small town (Danner 34). Even the town's mayor was under the impression that the citizens of El Mozote would receive leniency. They were instructed not to go out into the streets and to stay indoors to avoid fighting. Marcos Diaz, the mayor, recounts his apparent betrayal: “Wait!” he begged. They promised me that nothing would happen to the people here. The officers told me so” (Donner 64). he was right, the citizens of El Mozote were supposed to show mercy, they should not be wronged. Atlacatl, the so-called “elite and American-trained” branch of the Salvadoran military, was acting on its own. They had received basic training from the Americans, but their in-depth training was assigned to Monterrosa (Donner 50). These apparently advanced troops were not at all the same. They “shot the animals and splashed their faces with blood, cut open the animals’ bellies and drank the blood” (Donner 50). So a renegade unit led by a renegade general was supposed to show mercy to a guerrilla-infested hamlet? The answer would become obvious. An important source of information during this middle of paper......a fact happens. I believe Donner does an excellent job of presenting the facts as clearly as possible. He cites a number of sources, from a first-hand account of the events by Rufina Amaya to a number of documents presented by both the Salvadoran and US governments. He has a collection of front-page articles from major newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. Also featured are interviews with Domingo Monterrosa and the soldiers who were part of Atlacatl. Based on such a variety of published sources, I think Donner did an excellent job of presenting the information so that the reader can decide what really happened in December in northern El Salvador. Before reading this, as I am of course, so many others had no idea of ​​the scale of the injustices that can arise during these conflicts. Furthermore, this did not happen very long ago, nor very far away, and that speaks volumes about the government's ideological and policy differences. El Salvador is an extreme case of how a government treats its citizens. The El Mozote massacre was truly an eye-opener and I doubt I'll forget it anytime soon..