In December 1981 soldiers of the Salvadoran Army's select, American-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the village of El Mozote, where they murdered hundreds of men, women, and children, often by decapitation. Although reports of the massacre -- and photographs of its victims -- appeared in the United States, the Reagan administration quickly dismissed them as propaganda. In the end, El Mozote was forgotten. The war in El Salvador continued, with American funding.

When Mark Danner's reconstruction of these events first appeared in The New Yorker, it sent shock waves through the news media and the American foreign-policy establishment. Now Danner has expanded his report into a brilliant book, adding new material as well as the actual sources. He has produced a masterpiece of scrupulous investigative journalism that is also a testament to the forgotten victims of a neglected theater of the cold war.

The Massacre at El Mozote

The People of Paper

The powerful story of a young poet who becomes an activist through a trial by fire

"What You Have Heard is True" is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman's brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman's radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.

Carolyn Forché is twenty-seven when the mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep. The relative of a friend, he is a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it is brilliant. She's heard rumors from her friend about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, but according to her, no one seemed to know for certain. He has driven from El Salvador to invite Forché to visit and learn about his country. Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts and becomes enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension.

Together they meet with high-ranking military officers, impoverished farm workers, and clergy desperately trying to assist the poor and keep the peace. These encounters are a part of his plan to educate her, but also to learn for himself just how close the country is to war. As priests and farm-workers are murdered and protest marches attacked, he is determined to save his country, and Forché is swept up in his work and in the lives of his friends. Pursued by death squads and sheltering in safe houses, the two forge a rich friendship, as she attempts to make sense of what she's experiencing and establish a moral foothold amidst profound suffering. This is the powerful story of a poet's experience in a country on the verge of war, and a journey toward social conscience in a perilous time.

What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

The last time Nicols saw his mother, she was mortally wounded by gunfire that erupted in a crowded plaza. Watching while her body is dragged away with other victims, Nicols believes that his mother is still alive and vows to find her again. Thus begins the young boys harrowing journey through his war-ravaged country.

The Weight of All Things

Winner of the 1998 American Book Award

Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.

Bitter Grounds

To Rise in Darkness offers a new perspective on a defining moment in modern Central American history. In January 1932 thousands of indigenous and ladino (non-Indian) rural laborers, provoked by electoral fraud and the repression of strikes, rose up and took control of several municipalities in central and western El Salvador. Within days the military and civilian militias retook the towns and executed thousands of people, most of whom were indigenous. This event, known as la Matanza (the massacre), has received relatively little scholarly attention. In To Rise in Darkness, Jeffrey L. Gould and Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago investigate memories of the massacre and its long-term cultural and political consequences.Gould conducted more than two hundred interviews with survivors of la Matanza and their descendants. He and Lauria-Santiago combine individual accounts with documentary sources from archives in El Salvador, Guatemala, Washington, London, and Moscow. They describe the political, economic, and cultural landscape of El Salvador during the 1920s and early 1930s, and offer a detailed narrative of the uprising and massacre. The authors challenge the prevailing idea that the Communist organizers of the uprising and the rural Indians who participated in it were two distinct groups. Gould and Lauria-Santiago demonstrate that many Communist militants were themselves rural Indians, some of whom had been union activists on the coffee plantations for several years prior to the rebellion. Moreover, by meticulously documenting local variations in class relations, ethnic identity, and political commitment, the authors show that those groups considered “Indian” in western El Salvador were far from homogeneous. The united revolutionary movement of January 1932 emerged out of significant cultural difference and conflict.

To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932

In January 1932, thousands of peasants in western El Salvador rose up in armed rebellion. Armed mostly with machetes and a few guns, they attacked military garrisons, occupied towns, and looted or destroyed businesses, government buildings and private homes. In response, the army and local paramilitary bands killed thousands of citizens in a few days, most of them innocent of any involvement in the rebellion. Recalled as a massacre, the government's actions are regarded as one of the most extreme cases of state-sponsored repression in modern Latin American history. The "Matanza" left generations of Salvadorans and internationals alike attempting to make sense of the events.

"Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador" examines national and international historical memories of the events of 1932 and the factors that determined those memories. It also analyzes Miguel M�rmol, by Roque Dalton, a well-known and influential narrative of the 1932 Matanza and one of the most important texts in modern Salvadoran history. The authors employ an array of primary evidence, including the personal archive of Roque Dalton, made available by the Dalton family for the first time. They argue that a systematic look at rivaling memories of the Matanza reveals the close association between historical narratives and political action. The book is complemented by a valuable appendix of primary documents that reveal the evolving memories of these important events in 1932.

Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador: The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton, and the Politics of Historical Memory

The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

First published in the Soviet journal "Novy Mir" in 1962, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

"A tale told well that provides valuable insights into the motives and "modus operandi" of the death squads in El Salvador, and of the financiers who commissioned and facilitated such crimes. It also highlights the difficulties that face those who pursue such cases many years after the crimes have taken place."--"New York Review of Books" On March 24, 1980, the assassination of El Salvador's Archbishop �scar Romero rocked that nation and the world. Despite the efforts of many in El Salvador and beyond, those responsible for Romero's murder remained unpunished for their heinous crime. "Assassination of a Saint" is the thrilling story of an international team of lawyers, private investigators, and human-rights experts that fought to bring justice for the slain hero. Matt Eisenbrandt, a lawyer who was part of the investigative team, recounts in this gripping narrative how he and his colleagues interviewed eyewitnesses and former members of death squads while searching for evidence on those who financed them. As investigators worked toward the only court verdict ever reached for the murder of the martyred archbishop, they uncovered information with profound implications for El Salvador and the United States. 


Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder �scar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice

Elisabeth Wood's account of insurgent collective action in El Salvador is based on oral histories gathered from peasants who supported the insurgency and those who did not, as well as on interviews with military commanders from both sides. She explains how widespread support among rural people for the leftist insurgency during the civil war in El Salvador challenges conventional interpretations of collective action. Those who supplied tortillas, information, and other aid to guerillas took mortal risks and yet stood to gain no more than those who did not.

Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador

El Salvador is a mix of native and Spanish customs and traditions. This attractive new book introduces readers to the fascinating history and celebrations of the Salvadorian people and highlights their art, folklore, and literature. Full-color illustrations.

El Salvador: The People and Culture

Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory

Beth Kephart met and fell in love with an artist from the jungle hills of El Salvador, a place of terrifying myths and frightening realities, of civil war and devastating earthquakes. She discovers love means having to take in a stranger and their history too.

Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir

"Poets and Prophets of the Resistance" offers a ground-up history and fresh interpretation of the polarization and mobilization that brought El Salvador to the eve of civil war in 1980. Challenging the dominant narrative that university students and political dissidents primarily formed the Salvadoran guerrillas, Joaquin Chavez argues that El Salvador's socioeconomic and political crises of the 1970s fomented a groundswell of urban and peasant intellectuals who collaborated to spur larger revolutionary social movements.

Drawing on new archival sources and in-depth interviews, "Poets and Prophets of the Resistance "contests the idea that urban militants and Roman Catholic priests influenced by Liberation Theology single-handedly organized and politicized peasant groups. Chavez shows instead how peasant intellectuals acted as political catalysts among their own communities first, particularly in the region of Chalatenango, laying the groundwork for the peasant movements that were to come. In this way, he contends, the Salvadoran insurgency emerged in a dialogue between urban and peasant intellectuals working together to create and execute a common revolutionary strategy--one that drew on cultures of resistance deeply rooted in the country's history, poetry, and religion. Focusing on this cross-pollination, this book introduces the idea that a "pedagogy of revolution" originated in this historical alliance between urban and peasant, making use of secular and Catholic pedagogies such as radio schools, literacy programs, and rural cooperatives. This pedagogy became more and more radicalized over time as it pushed back against the increasingly repressive structures of 1970s El Salvador.

Teasing out the roles of little-known groups such as the politically active "La Masacuata" literary movement, the contributions of Catholic Action intellectuals to the New Left, and the overlooked efforts of peasant leaders, "Poets and Prophets of the Resistance "demonstrates how trans-class political and cultural interactions drove the revolutionary mobilizations that anticipated the Salvadoran civil war.


Poets and Prophets of the Resistance: Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Laura Rivera can’t believe what has happened. Her best friend has been killed in cold blood in the living room of her home, in front of her two young daughters! Nobody knows who pulled the trigger, but Laura will not rest easy until she finds out. Her dizzying, delirious, hilarious, and blood-curdling one-sided dialogue carries the reader on a rough and tumble ride through the social, political, economic, and sexual chaos of post-civil war San Salvador. A detective story of pulse-quickening suspense, "The She-Devil in the Mirror" is also a sober reminder that justice and truth are more often than not illusive. Castellanos Moya’s relentless, obsessive narrator—female, rich, paranoid, wonderfully perceptive, and, in the end, fabulously unreliable—paints with frivolous profundity a society in a state of collapse.



Castellanos Moya’s "Senselessness" was acclaimed “an innovative and invigoratingly twisted piece of art” ("Village Voice") and “a brilliantly crafted moral fable, as if Kafka had gone to Latin America for his source materials” (Russell Banks).

The She-Devil in the Mirror

Suitable for ages 9-14, this book features photographs which capture the lush landscape of El Salvador from the Pacific coastline to the volcanic mountains and rainforests. The topics covered include: geography; climate; people; cities; farming and industry; the changing economy; transportation; and, plants and wildlife.

El Salvador: The Land

A contemporary folktale about magical dogs that live on the volcanoes of El Salvador and protect the people from many dangers.

Magic Dogs of the Volcanoes/Los perros magicos de los volcanos

"A gripping, electrifying study of the brutal Salvadoran gang culture." -- Mark Danner, author of "The Massacre at El Mozote"

One of President Donald Trump’s favorite rhetorical motifs is stoking fear that members of the MS-13 gang from El Salvador intend to cross the U.S. border in force and wreak havoc on American society. It’s an inaccurate scenario, and in State of War, foreign correspondent William Wheeler tells the real story: In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the repressive Salvadoran government in a brutal civil war, and many Salvadoran families fled to America—especially Los Angeles, where teenagers in poor neighborhoods founded MS-13. A decade later, the U.S. responded to rising anti-immigrant sentiment by deporting many Salvadorans back home. Ever since, El Salvador has been one of the most violent countries in the world.

Wheeler interviewed gang members, frustrated intelligence officers, and crime investigators who give chilling insider reports of how corruption at the highest levels has helped the gangs become stronger, richer, and more influential than ever. State of War makes vividly clear why Salvadorans are fleeing their country, and why Trump’s harsh immigration and asylum policies may only empower the gangs more.

State of War: MS-13 and El Salvador's World of Violence

El Salvador's long civil war had its origins in the state repression against one of the most militant labor movements in Latin American history. Solidarity under Siege vividly documents the port workers and shrimp fishermen who struggled yet prospered under extremely adverse conditions during the 1970s only to suffer discord, deprivation and, eventually, the demise of their industry and unions over the following decades. Featuring material uncovered in previously inaccessible union and court archives and extensive interviews conducted with former plant workers and fishermen in Puerto el Triunfo and in Los Angeles, Jeffrey L. Gould presents the history of the labor movement before and during the country's civil war, its key activists, and its victims into sharp relief, shedding new and valuable light on the relationships between rank and file labor movements and the organized left in twentieth-century Latin and Central America.

Solidarity Under Siege: The Salvadoran Labor Movement, 1970-1990

El Salvador's Civil War: A Study of Revolution

Bilingual English/Spanish. Young Jorgito has come to live in the Mission District of San Francisco, but he hasn't forgotten the unique beauty of El Salvador. Young Jorgito has come to live in the Mission District of San Francisco, but he hasn't forgotten the unique beauty of El Salvador.

In his first collection of poems for children, poet Jorge Argueta evokes the wonder of his childhood in rural El Salvador, a touching relationship with a caring father, and his confusion and delight in his new urban home. We glimpse the richness of Jorgito's inner world and dreams-the movie in his pillow.

Artist Elizabeth G�mez perfectly captures the indigenous beauty of El Salvador, the sadness of the war, and the joy of family reunion in San Francisco. Her paintings, with their brilliant colors and striking details, fill every page with authenticity and charm.

A Movie in My Pillow/Una pelicula en mi almohada

An Indian mail order bride is not what she sees herself as, and certainly not what he expects… 
 
Ceeh'eenesie's whole family is dead. Her Arapaho way of life is dying. Sometimes Ceeh'eenesie wishes she could vanish as well. 
 
But she has a promise to keep. Her dead grandfather wants her to go on, to carry on their ways. And being a mail order bride is her only way. 
 
Until… 
 
She discovers her late husband left her with a present: a baby in her belly. 
 
Marshall Berkley hasn't seen any kin in years. When Marshall’s friend Michael Briggs tells him he's bringing him a bride, the last thing Marshall expects is an Indian. 
 
One look at the Arapaho woman and he demands she be sent back to where she came from. But Michael pushes, and Marshall eventually relents. Somewhat. 
 
Ceeh'eenesie can be his housekeeper, not his bride. And they won't become close. Ever. The last thing Marshall trusts is an Indian, and he has the scars on his face to show it. 
 
Worse still, Ceeh'eenesie needs to tell Marshall about her secret child, especially with the summer's rising complications. 
 
A federal agent arrives in town, bent on taking Ceeh'eenesie to the Indian reservation. Marshall then marries Ceeh'eenesie. Suddenly he finds that his own motivations have become increasingly confusing. All the while, the due date comes closer. 
 
A secret Indian baby is on its way, and so is some of the greatest dangers Ceeh'eenesie and Marshall have ever faced. 
 
How can a scarred Marshall let go of his past and embrace the present? How will Ceeh’eenesie manage her burden and love all at the same time?

The Indian Bride And Her Scarred Farmer (Seeing Ranch, #11)

In the revolutionary decade between 1979 and 1992, it would have been difficult to find three political systems as different as death-squad-dominated El Salvador, peaceful social-democratic Costa Rica, and revolutionary Sandinista Nicaragua. Yet when the fighting was finally ended by a peace plan initiated by Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias, all three had found a common destination in democracy and free markets. To explain this extraordinary turn of events is the task of this landmark book, which fuses political economy and cultural analysis.

Both the divergent political histories and their convergent outcome were shaped by a single commodity that has dominated these export economies from the nineteenth century to the present--coffee. Jeffery Paige shows that the crises of the 1980s had their roots in the economic and political crises of the 1930s, when the revolutionary left challenged the ruling coffee elites of all three countries. He interweaves and compares the history, economics, and class structures of the three countries, thus clarifying the course of recent struggles. The heart of the book is his conversations with sixty-two leaders of fifty-eight elite dynasties, who for the first time tell their own stories of the experience of Central American revolution.

Paige's analysis challenges not only Barrington Moore's influential theory of dictatorship and democracy but also contemporary approaches to "transitions to democracy." It also shows that a focus on either political economy or culture alone cannot account for the transformation of elite ideology, and that revolution in Central America is deeply rooted in the personal, familial, and class histories of the coffee elites.

Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America

El Salvador's civil war between the Salvadoran government and Marxist guerrillas erupted into full force in early 1981 and endured for eleven bloody years. Unwilling to tolerate an advance of Soviet and Cuban-backed communism in its geopolitical backyard, the US provided over six billion dollars in military and economic aid to the Salvadoran government. El Salvador was a deeply controversial issue in American society and divided Congress and the public into left and right. Relying on thousands of archival documents as well as interviews with participants on both sides of the war, The Salvador Option offers a thorough and fair-minded interpretation of the available evidence. If success is defined narrowly, there is little question that the Salvador Option achieved its Cold War strategic objectives of checking communism. Much more difficult, however, is to determine what human price this 'success' entailed - a toll suffered almost entirely by Salvadorans in this brutal civil war.

The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977-1992

With his vivid, stylized prose, cyberpunk intensity, and seemingly limitless imagination, Jack Womack has been compared to both William Gibson and Kurt Vonnegut - though Gibson admits, "If you dropped the characters from Neuromancer into Womack's Manhattan, they'd fall down screaming and have nervous breakdowns". Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Womack's fifth novel, is a thrilling, hysterical, and eerily disturbing piece ot work. 

Lola Hart is an ordinary twelve-year-old girl. She comes from a comfortable family, attends an exclusive private school, loves her friends Lori and Katherine, teases her sister Boob. But in the increasingly troubled city where she lives (a near-future Manhattan) she is a dying breed. Riots, fire, TB outbreaks, roaming gangs, increasing inflation, political and civil unrest all threaten her way of life, as well as the very fabric of New York City. 

In her diary, Lola chronicles the changes she and her family make as they attempt to adjust to a city, and a country, that is spinning out of control. Her mother is a teacher, but no one is hiring. Her father is a writer, but no one is buying his scripts. Hounded by creditors and forced to vacate their apartment and move to Harlem, her family, and her life, begins to dissolve. Increasingly estranged from her privileged school friends, Lola soon makes new ones: Iz, Jude, and Weezie - wise veterans of the street who know what must be done in order to survive and are more than willing to do it. And the metamorphosis of Lola Hart, who is surrounded by the new language and violence of the streets, begins. 

Simultaneously chilling and darkly hilarious, Random Acts of Senseless Violence takes the jittery urban fears we suppress, both in fiction and in daily life, and makes them explicit - and explicitly terrifying.

--Publisher/Powells.com

Random Acts of Senseless Violence

In 1981, more than a thousand civilians around El Mozote, El Salvador, were slaughtered by the country’s U.S.-trained army. The story was covered—and soon forgotten—by the international news media. In the first edition of "The El Mozote Massacre", anthropologist Leigh Binford successfully restores a social identity to the massacre victims through his dissection of Third World human rights reporting and a rich ethnographic and personal account of El Mozote–area residents prior to the massacre.

 Almost two decades later, the consequences of the massacre continue to reverberate through the country’s legal and socioeconomic systems. "The El Mozote Massacre, 2nd Edition "brings together new evidence to address reconstruction, historical memory, and human rights issues resulting from what may be the largest massacre in modern Latin American history.

 With a multitude of additions, including three new chapters, an extended chronology, discussion of the hearing and ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2012, and evidence gathered throughout half a dozen field trips made by the author, Binford presents a current perspective on the effects of this tragic moment in history. Thanks to geographically expanded fieldwork, Binford offers critical discussion of postwar social, economic, religious, and social justice in El Mozote, and adds important new regional, national, and global contexts.

"The El Mozote Massacre, 2nd Edition" maintains the crucial presence of the massacre in human rights discussions for El Salvador, Latin America, and the world.

The El Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications Revised and Expanded Edition

Shelly Dalton Smith travels to war-torn El Salvador hoping to heal from past trauma. When Shelly is taken in by a host family, she is tricked into helping a mission that jeopardizes her life and exposes her to secrets and lies.


She learns of the death of an American journalist and hears harrowing accounts of refugees who saw their families massacred. It is almost too much to bear until she meets an American fighting with the guerrillas. He teaches her a passion for living she has never known, but every day places both of their lives in danger, and she wonders if anyone will make it out unscathed.

Secrets and Lies in El Salvador: Shelly's Journey (A Novel Based on Real Events)

Plagued by political instability, economic hardships, and massacres of innocent men, women, and children, El Salvador has fought for freedom throughout the centuries. No other reference source captures the suffering and adversities this ever-evolving country has faced. El Salvador's tumultuous history and recent past are clearly documented in this comprehensive volume, filling a void on high school and public library shelves. This work offers the most current coverage on this tiny Latin American nation's struggles, covering from the pre-Columbian era to economics and politics in the 21st Century. Complete with interviews and accounts from former rebels and guerillas and other victims of the country's struggle for freedom, this volume highlights a unique account of El Salvador's past-the viewpoints from the civilians who lived through it. Students will find "The History of El Salvador" to be an invaluable source for social studies, history, current events, and political science classes.

The History of El Salvador

Part diary and part reportage, "The Soccer War" is a remarkable chronicle of war in the late twentieth century. Between 1958 and 1980, working primarily for the Polish Press Agency, Kapuscinski covered twenty-seven revolutions and coups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Here, with characteristic cogency and emotional immediacy, he recounts the stories behind his official press dispatches—searing firsthand accounts of the frightening, grotesque, and comically absurd aspects of life during war. "The Soccer War" is a singular work of journalism.

The Soccer War

Schuyler Van Alen is running out of time. The Dark Prince of Hell is storming the Gates of Paradise, intent on winning the heavenly throne for good. This time he has his greatest angels by his side, Abbadon and Azrael—Jack and Mimi Force, as they are known in the Coven.

Or so he thinks. Even as Lucifer assigns Jack and Mimi the tasks of killing their true loves, the Force twins secretly vow to defeat the Dark Prince once and for all. But how far will Mimi and Jack go to conceal their real loyalties?

Meanwhile, former vampire Bliss Llewellyn has joined forces with Lawson, the greatest wolf of the underworld, to free his people from their imprisonment in Hell. As they struggle against impossible odds, an ancient message, woven into the very fabric of time, reveals just how much depends on the success of their mission.

Lucifer seeks the key to the Gate of Promise, and when Schuyler is taken captive and delivered straight to Hell, she must make an unthinkable choice—the same one the archangel Michael was forced to make during the Crisis in Rome. Will Schuyler find the strength to do what he could not?
 
The epic, heartbreaking Blue Bloods series comes to a close with this final novel about staggering courage, unbearable sacrifice, and the immortality of true love.

Gates of Paradise (Blue Bloods, #7)

An expatriate professor, Vega, returns from exile in Canada to El Salvador for his mother’s funeral. A sensitive idealist and an aggrieved motor mouth, he sits at a bar with the author, Castellanos Moya, from five to seven in the evening, telling his tale and ranting against everything his country has to offer. Written in a single paragraph and alive with a fury as astringent as the wrath of Thomas Bernhard, "Revulsion "was first published in 1997 and earned its author death threats. Roberto Bolano called "Revulsion "Castellanos Moya’s darkest book and perhaps his best: “A parody of certain works by Bernhard and the kind of book that makes you laugh out loud.”

Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador

A war story that is so very human that it will shock you out of your comfort zone. It's one man's account of the suffering he witnessed in El Salvador, but it's also a story about the motives behind this peasant uprising and the deadly manner in which it was crushed in the name of democracy. Black and white photos.

Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador

In "Rutilio Grande: A Table for All", veteran journalist Rhina Guidos explores the inspiring life and ministry of the Salvadoran priest whose killing changed the church in El Salvador and the life of his close friend, the country’s most prominent church member, Archbishop Oscar Romero.  Born in a rural and poor hamlet surrounded by sugarcane fields in El Salvador, Grande went on to study in Europe and Latin America as a member of the Society of Jesus. Though he found himself in the comfort of academia, he gave it up to return to the periphery of the rural world and its people. Inspired by teachings of the Second Vatican Council and a major bishops’ meeting in Medellin, Colombia, he and a team set out to teach the poor to read, to stand up for their rights, and to call out injustices perpetrated by the government.

Grande’s brutal 1977 assassination in a shower of gunfire marked the first notorious killing of a Catholic Church member during El Salvador’s civil conflict, but made him one in a long line of El Salvador’s Catholic martyrs. 

Rutilio Grande: A Table for All

robot coloring book Welcome to the future-a lively world of robot animals, robot dogs, robot bird, robot fish, robot monkey and robot cat. - and kids who love these animated marvels will adore this book. The fun activities featuring dog, cat, monkey and their robotic animals.----This simple and fun activity can help greatly in the development of your children.---- This is a coloring book with Robotic animals to color that keeps little ones busy and entertained for hours...

Terrific Robot Animal Coloring Book for Boys: ROBOT COLORING BOOK For Boys and Kids Coloring Books Ages 4-8, 9-12 Boys, Girls, and Everyone

This is the first interpretive history of Central America by a Central American historian to be published in English. Anyone with an interest in current events in the region will find here an insightful and well-written guide to the history of its five national states—Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Traces of a common past invite us to make generalizations about the region, even to posit the idea of a Central American nation. But, as Hector Perez-Brignoli shows us, we can learn more from a comparative approach that establishes both the points of convergence and the separate paths taken by the five different countries of Central America.

The author offers a concise overview of the region's history from the sixteenth century to the present, beginning with human and cultural geography in the first chapter and ending with the present crisis in the last. He deals with the fundamental themes and problems of the area: the characteristics of the colonial heritage, independence and the crisis of the Federal Republic, the formation of nation-states during the nineteenth century, and the development of export agriculture based on coffee and bananas. The narrative moves finally into the twentieth century to look at the growing impoverishment that multiplies inequalities and leads to the shipwreck of liberal democracy. The case of Costa Rica, exceptional in more ways than one, receives special attention.

A Brief History of Central America

Castellanos Moya’s most thrilling book to date, about the senselessness of tyranny. The tyrant of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s ambitious new novel is the actual pro-Nazi mystic Maximiliano Hernández Martínez — known as the Warlock — who came to power in El Salvador in 1932. An attempted coup in April, 1944, failed, but a general strike in May finally forced him out of office. "Tyrant Memory" takes place during the month between the coup and the strike. Its protagonist, Haydée Aragon, is a well-off woman, whose husband is a political prisoner and whose son, Clemente, after prematurely announcing the dictator’s death over national radio during the failed coup, is forced to flee when the very much alive Warlock starts to ruthlessly hunt down his enemies. The novel moves between Haydée’s political awakening in diary entries and Clemente’s frantic and often hysterically comic efforts to escape capture. "Tyrant Memory" — sharp, grotesque, moving, and often hilariously funny — is an unforgettable incarnation of a country’s history in the destiny of one family.

Tyrant Memory

A timely and no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerilla warfare, immigration, and intergenerational trauma, Robert Lovato’s memoir and cultural critique reflects on his multifaceted life and examines many of the self-serving myths underlying modern American culture.

The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s California. Joining a gang in his teens, he witnessed a friend take a bullet to the face in a coke deal gone bad and survived his own shooting. He eventually traded the violence of the streets for wartime El Salvador where he joined the guerilla movement against its corrupt, fraudulent military government. 

As a child. Roberto endured beatings and humiliations driven by his father Ramón’s anger—a rage rooted in his own childhood in El Salvador. Raised in extreme poverty in the countryside during the time of La Matanza—in which tens of thousands of indigenous peoples were killed in the span of a few months—young Ramón also spent time in a brothel and as the leader of a small band of thieves on the streets of San Salvador. Roberto looks back to the pain of his father’s youth and examines both how he survived a life straddling intersecting underworlds of family secrets, traumatic silence, and criminal black-market goods and guns, and how these forces impacted his father’s life and subsequently Roberto’s own.

Returning from El Salvador, Roberto channeled his own pain into activism and journalism, focusing his attention on how intergenerational trauma affects individual lives and societies. In "Becoming Américan", he makes the political personal, interweaving his story and that of his father with wider social issues, including gang life—notably that of MS-13—and the immigration crisis, to reveal the profound ties between El Salvador and the United States that have fueled the rise of both of these issues.

Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and the Revolution in the Americas

Moon Handbooks give you the tools to make your own choices.

Can't-miss sights, activities, restaurants, and accommodations, marked with M


Essential info on San Salvador, El Salvador's resilient urban heart


Suggestions on how to plan a trip that's perfect for you, including:

The Best of El Salvador


Surf's Up!


From Cool Cloud Forests to Warm Waves


Art and Culture: Past and Present


13 detailed and easy-to-use maps
The firsthand experience and unique perspective of author Jaime Jacques


Moon El Salvador

Alfredito and his family are getting ready to return to their old home in El Salvador for Christmas, their first time back since they left as refugees. But they will make this trip on a plane — the first time any of them has ever flown. The excitement mounts as they drive to the airport, get on the plane and fly up into the air, each step bringing an increasing level of amazement. But the greatest moment of all is when they finally arrive and their beloved relatives meet them. Their old house looks and feels as it always did. The smells, the food, the new puppies, the familiar plants and flowers fill Alfredito's heart with a sense of belonging and joy.

Alfredito Flies Home

Teenager Sergio is caught between two countries. He has lived in Los Angeles since the age of six, when he emigrated from Central America with his parents. But in a country far away from his birthplace and birthright, he finds himself coming of age without any sense of a homeland. Sergio has spent many years under the strong, guiding influence of his grandfather, who lived with Sergio's family until his recent death. Before Abuelo dies, he exacts a tough promise from Sergio. After years living in a land that is not his own, Abuelo demands to be buried in his own native soil. Sergio's struggle to honor his grandfather takes him on a dangerous mission, fraught with unexpected disasters. Sergio's voyage of self-discovery and cultural exploration requires him to take control. He encounters unexpected triumphs and discoveries that will enrich the rest of this life. Viaje a la tierra del abuelo explores critical questions of identity, homeland, and culture, issues that are grounded in the reality of immigrant teenagers who have been raised and educated in the United States. In this well-crafted and sensitive narrative, acclaimed author Mario Bencastro draws upon his own experiences working with immigrant teens to deftly examine the pressing questions and problems facing bicultural teens.

El Salvador

The Massacre at El Mozote

Mark Danner

The People of Paper

Salvador Plascencia

What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

Carolyn Forché

The Weight of All Things

Sandra Benítez

Bitter Grounds

Sandra Benítez

To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932

Jeffrey L. Gould

Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador: The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton, and the Politics of Historical Memory

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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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El Salvador: The People and Culture

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Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory

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Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir

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The She-Devil in the Mirror

Horacio Castellanos Moya

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Jeffrey L Gould

El Salvador's Civil War: A Study of Revolution

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A Movie in My Pillow/Una pelicula en mi almohada

Jorge Argueta

The Indian Bride And Her Scarred Farmer (Seeing Ranch, #11)

Florence Linnington

Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America

Jeffery M. Paige

The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977-1992

Russell Crandall

Random Acts of Senseless Violence

Jack Womack

The El Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications Revised and Expanded Edition

Leigh Binford

Secrets and Lies in El Salvador: Shelly's Journey (A Novel Based on Real Events)

Sherrie Miranda

The History of El Salvador

Christopher M. White

The Soccer War

Ryszard Kapuściński

Gates of Paradise (Blue Bloods, #7)

Melissa de la Cruz

Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador

Horacio Castellanos Moya

Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador

Charles Clements

Rutilio Grande: A Table for All

Rhina Guidos

Terrific Robot Animal Coloring Book for Boys: ROBOT COLORING BOOK For Boys and Kids Coloring Books Ages 4-8, 9-12 Boys, Girls, and Everyone

Ellie And Friends

A Brief History of Central America

Héctor Pérez-Brignoli

Tyrant Memory

Horacio Castellanos Moya

Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and the Revolution in the Americas

Roberto Lovato

Moon El Salvador

Jaime Jacques

Alfredito Flies Home

Jorge Argueta

Viaje a la Tierra del Abuelo