Choice 评论

Twenty years of civil war in El Salvador have left in their wake a human rights record that is one of the worst in the world. Genocidal forays against peasants, the execution of nuns, priests, church workers and an archbishop (Romero), the systematic assassination and torture of civilian noncombatants, indiscriminate bombings of guerrilla areas, and a weak legal system all characterized the human rights landscape of the past two decades. The authors (among whom are Anne Manuel, James A. Goldston, Aryeh Neier, Cynthia J. Arnson, Polly Bone, and Allyson Collins) are optimistic that tolerance and respect for persons will win out over bigotry and ideological extremism now that the "prism of superpower rivalry" is no longer a distorting lens. Although El Salvador remains a "backwater of U.S. foreign policy," the willingness of both sides in the civil war to pursue peace promises a possibility of improvement of the human rights record there. This narration and documentation of human rights violations in El Salvador is a fine addition to the growing body of literature on human rights in Latin America, and complements other studies of single country cases such as Iain Guest's Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations (CH, Jun'91), or to Lawrence Weschler's A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990), which describes events in Uruguay and Argentina. All levels of readers. V. L. Muller; University of San Diego