First published 1991
Rosenberg builds her account from direct conversations with survivors of government violence across Central America. The book centers on testimonies from El Salvador and Guatemala, where state forces conducted systematic campaigns of torture and murder against civilians. Victims describe mass killings, forced disappearances, and abductions carried out by military units and death squads. Rosenberg documents how these governments used terror as a weapon against their own populations. The testimonies reveal the human cost of political repression in nations where speaking out meant risking death. Through these firsthand accounts, the book exposes the machinery of state violence and its impact on ordinary people caught in cycles of terror.
Genres: history, 20th-century, crime, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, activism, american-history
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: firsthand-accounts, machinery-of-violence, political-terror
Setting: Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
394 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow & Co
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, murder, torture