36 pages • 1 hour read
Mark DannerThe Massacre at El Mozote
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Hammer and Anvil”
Chapter 4 begins with the story of Lt. Colonel Monterrosa’s arrival in Perquín, where he rounds up and presses into service ten villagers as guides. He then splits the Atlacatl Battalion into five units to begin “Operation Rescue’s ‘hammer and anvil,’” with the several units that were advancing north from the Río Torola being “the hammer of the operation, [and] […] meant to push all the guerrillas in the zone toward the anvil of the Atlacatl and crush them against the best troops the Army had to offer” (47). However, the guides pressed into service didn’t know this at the time, instead thinking they’d be killed, as often happened in towns where allegiances were fluid, with towns being occupied by guerrillas, then the army, then back again.
The chapter then shifts focus to the Atlacatl Battalion and Monterrosa, providing more history and context, as well as to the state of the Salvadoran Army in general and the US’s role therein. Monterrosa’s troops stood apart from the rest of the Army for several reasons; for one, they had been trained by American Special Forces. Danner asserts that “[m]ostly, though, [the difference] came from Monterrosa,” who was “aggressive, charismatic,” and “a soldier of the classic type” (38). This contrasted to many of the other “guys in the real combat commands,” who “tended to be total incompetents” (39), due to the “tanda system” (40), in which one’s loyalty to one’s brethren became the sole rule.
As the chapter continues, Danner explores the immediate context of the military strategies before the events at El Mozote. He also goes into more detail about the idea of massacres within the context of this war. Rather than being outliers, as Danner writes, it was a “proved idea” (49). He also details a previous mission in the area that had ended in an embarrassing defeat, which was possibly a factor that influenced the drastic turn toward violence. Ultimately, the strategy of Operation Rescue was a sort of pincer movement. The Atlacatl Battalion would use its helicopters to fly north. The bulk of the Salvadoran Army, meanwhile, would be moving north over the Torola River and into the red zone. This ground movement pushed the guerrillas in front of them and Monterrosa would head south from his northerly position, attempting to pick them off. However, the operation was so large that word necessarily got out, and the guerrillas under Villalobos had plenty of warning and were able to punch a hole through enemy lines and escape.
Chapter 5 Summary: “La Matanza”
The account of the massacre begins with the arrival of the Atlacatl Battalion. Originally, according to Rufina Amaya, the people who had taken refuge did not know what to expect. Certainly they were frightened by the ever-nearing sounds of battle, and once the Army arrived, were unnerved by their actions, gathering everyone outside of their houses and beating some of them and asking for information about the guerrillas. However, they weren’t yet convinced that anything horrible would come from it. After all, they saw no reason for the Army to want or need to harm them. Danner also gives a brief anecdote from a soldier to the south who was told he might be needed for interrogations the following day, only to never be asked about it again.
The next day, things escalated and the soldiers began separating out the men and beating them, locking the women and children up in a single house. Rufina was able to stand on a bench as they began hearing the shouts of the men saying “No! No! Don’t do this to us! Don’t kill us!” (68). Rufina watched as her husband and another man broke free in an attempt to flee and were gunned down and executed. Their children heard it happen and knew what it meant. Meanwhile, more men were killed and decapitated. Other men were marched to a place “outside the hamlet, on a hill known as El Pinalito” (70). Then, on neighboring hills, young women and girls began screaming. One of the guides the battalion had pressed into service recalled, “We could hear the women being raped on the hills” (71).
The soldiers began to separate the women from the children, herding them in a long line toward a building, and once they got closer, they could see the blood of previous victims and understood they were being herded toward their deaths. It was then that Rufina fell to her knees to pray and just so happened to fall in the right place “between a crab-apple and a pine tree” (73) so that she was overlooked by the soldiers as she heard the rest of the women being murdered and saw the soldiers set the house on fire. She stayed still, barely daring to breathe, narrowly escaping discovery by covering herself in leaves. She overheard and saw the children being killed, and listened as some of the soldiers balked and were cowed into submission by Captain Salazar, who was saying, “This is what war is” (82). Finally, Rufina escaped, fleeing on foot amidst the sound of gunfire, and managing to grab her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
Chapter 4 moves from the shorter, contextualizing chapters of the first section of the book into the heart of the matter and the meat of the story of El Mozote itself. Chapters 4 and 5, nearly twice as long as any of Chapters 1 through 3, craft the story of the immediate precursor events leading to the massacre, and then discuss the massacre itself. These climactic moments fall roughly at the midpoint of the text, creating a sort of fulcrum for the book.
One aspect of Danner’s writing style that shines through in especially Chapter 5 is that the author treats the horrific subject matter unflinchingly and matter-of-factly. He does not attempt to shield the reader from the incredible violence and brutality of the episode, but also does not dwell on it overly much. He says what happens, and then moves on to the next thing. Much of this, also, is probably due to Rufina. A lot of the chapter is punctuated by her quotes, and she tends to recount what happened without noticeable emotion. For example, describing when the children are being murdered, she says simply, “They slit some of the kids’ throats, and many they hanged from the tree. All of us were crying now, but we were their prisoners—there was nothing we could do” (77).
Also notable in Chapter 5 is a shift from the format of the first four chapters, all of which, to greater and lesser degrees, contain elements of narrative storytelling, presenting a plot of sorts but also moving away from the narrative to delve into historical context and the backgrounds of the major figures in each of these episodes. Chapter 5, by contrast, is strictly narrative, moving us through the days in which the massacre took place in chronological order and sometimes shifting perspective to provide further details, but never fully deviating from the story of it. This makes the actual massacre stand out in the book, giving it its own moment, one that is undiluted by analysis or context.
