somewhat antiquated in its analysis and outlook (much like other Didion books) but her prose remains stylistically enviable

As an admirer of Joan Didion’s work, a literary journalist, and the daughter of Salvadoran refugees, this book has been at the top of my list for a while. My instinct was to rate this 5 stars. I was transfixed from the beginning and moved through the book quickly. Her prose is elegant, enchanting and intricate, yet seems somehow effortless.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was letting style dictate my whole review. And the fact that I had never read anything like this, a book (or series of essays) about Salvadoran history from the perspectives of oligarchs, government officials and expats. I have done a lot of formal and informal research on the Salvadoran civil war, but was accustomed to the perspectives of refugees, villagers, guerrilleros and child soldiers. This was a window into the thinking of key players behind the scenes. It was a chilling read.

My main issue is that she lets those perspectives narrow her vision of El Salvador. El Salvador has had a string of corrupt, vicious, Machiavallian, willfully deceptive leaders. She interviews a lot of them, and it was obvious to me (though she won’t outright say it — she’ll just make YOU feel it) that she is disgusted by them. But then she takes this disgust and casts it all over El Salvador, as if these leaders are a reflection of a failed nomadic people without a deeply rooted Indigenous history, without any scientific achievements (or a talent for numbers!), without any native literary and cultural centers. Yes, this is all true, but she writes these observations as if they are the results of a hopeless people (implying that a hopeless war is the consequence of a hopeless people) and not the natural outcomes of a country devastated by psychopathic leadership.

Didion acknowledges that the Salvadoran government had driven a century-long campaign to destroy Indigenous people and culture. She is spot on about the facts: La Matanza of 1932 wiped out a whole generation of Indigenous people (the strategic terror of the civil war is part of its legacy, in my opinion). But she doesn’t develop any empathy from these facts. I know Didion is known for her cool, detached prose. The only emotions she expresses in the book are fear and disgust (reasonably so). Unfortunately, this fear and disgust is also projected onto regular Salvadorans, ignoring that they have been traumatized and culturally paralyzed by a recent genocide and the mass killings of the present (the very last remnants of Indigenous culture were destroyed during the civil war). She barely wrote about the citizens. She certainly didn’t talk to any of them.

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. She was terrified. She spoke to people with titles, people who could be held “accountable” if anything were to happen to her. People with records. It was probably safer that way. If she were caught interviewing locals, she might be seen as an enemy. Maybe she considered all of this. Also, Didion was a woman of her time. She was raised republican in a conservative part of California. I admired that she had the bravery to challenge the anti-communist narrative in El Salvador (which is now well-known in Central American scholarship, that the anti-communist stance was just bait for U.S. weapons and training).

I disagree that the book is entirely apolitical. Didion shows — doesn’t tell you what’s right or wrong — she shows you what’s happening, so you decide. I think this is an excellent and beautifully written book if you can keep everything I've said in mind, and if you supplement this reading with texts written by Salvadorans, those who survived the war and stayed in the country and are currently rebuilding it, and those who fled and have also helped rebuild the country from abroad.

I love Joan Didion's non-fiction work. This felt more like a report than a book but it's still definitely well worth the read. I only wish I had more context - I'm not as well acquainted with what happened in El Salvador in 80s and before as some people might be. But even without that I learned a lot through this great work of reportage.

Well,we barley made the airport
For the last plane out
As we taxied down the runway
I could hear the people shout they said:
"Don't come back here again.Yankee"
But if I do I'll bring back more money
Cause all she wants to do is dance - Don Henley

Reading Joan Didion's account of her two week visit to El Salvador in 1982 at the height of the Salvadoran Civil War which was eventually to cost 75,000 lives is truly a trip back through time. Reagan ruled and the perceived evil of the time was communism and the worse kind was that found in the Americas. It was to be battled at any cost.

Didion talks of terror but it is a different sort than what we speak of today. It is the terror of being disappeared, it is the terror of a menacing army who perceives that you are on the wrong side.

Didion lunches with Victor Barriere,the grandson of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, former president of El Salvador whom Gabriel Garcia Marquez used as a model for his book The Autumn of the Patriarch. The grandson tells Didion:

"It was sometimes strange going to school with boys whose fathers my grandfather had ordered shot,"

Didion talks about how difficult it is to get accountable news in El Salvador. For each story there are dozens of variations. Everything is murky and obscure with and edge of danger permeating, nothing is clear. In this environment Didion feels that perhaps Gabriel Garcia Marquez could more aptly be labeled a social realist.

Didion has written this interesting slim volume that takes you back through time. It is indeed told from a certain perspective and bias, but for those interested in the time period it is still a valuble and interesting read.

I think that this account comes from a place of extreme privilege that I wish was acknowledged by Didion herself. Didion said that while in El Salvador she "did not forget the sensation of having bern in a single instant demoralized, undone, humiliated by fear." A fear the subjects of her account live in on the daily-that is not acknowledged by Didion. Her POV is a very white and rich point of view (as it always is), but it just does not work in the context of the suffering of others. Her prose is beautiful as always, but the content is what really lacks in this one. I think like all her works it is well done and a succinct portrait of her experience, but I wish it was a portrait of the reality.

Salvador is a short read that manages to cover a lot of differing perspectives (Salvadorian locals and ex-pats, State Dept., USAID, etc.), thus giving a powerful overview of what was happening in the country at the time. It's important to note that Didion only spent a few weeks there- this book is in no way indicative of El Salvador's history or the complexity of US involvement. But, written in Didion's beautiful prose, it does a good job encapsulating US involvement in a foreign crisis.

Trips over the line of veracity into racist pastiche more than once. But I'm a brown guy, what do I know?

Not sure a white latina writer should have been the one to tackle El Salvador….

the best part of this was when she called herself a gringa

"That the texture of life in such a situation is essentially untranslatable became clear to me only recently"

I read Salvador years ago when I was in New York City staying at a friends and nursing a migraine. The book took me to a completely other place, one I'd never seen but which seem ultimately familiar. Then I realized why. I'd just spent 5 years working in the Marshall Islands as Micronesia ended its long stint as a U.S. Territory. The U.S. approach to El Salvador was the same: throw money at it, rape anything you can from it (In Micronesia, there wasn't much except a place to test nuclear bombs), and otherwise ignore it. As Kissinger once said, "Who cares? Just fly over it." (Probably a bit paraphrased, but you get the gist). My heart had ached for the Marshallese I knew and loved. And it ached for the Salvadorians. Not to mention, Didion is a magnificent writer.

Amazing writing and a deep understanding of Latin American politics.