Joan Didion was on a roll in the 1980s, writing
about the excesses of the Reagan administration and its fight against
Communism. This is seen very clearly in Salvador, an account of her
journey to El Salvador in the early 1980s.
This was an extremely dangerous time to travel to
that country. Embroiled in a civil war,
reporters, aid workers and all manner of people were brutally slayed. Didion
presents this palpable sense of fear with a well grounding in the exploration
of the (then) current situation in the country, its history of violence and
instability, and numerous American missteps in the region.
A short, tense book, Didion captures a time of proxy
American imperialism and narrowly sighted interests.
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