Joan Didion’s 1983 book Salvador is short—108 pages, including Tim Adams’ introduction. In these 108 pages, El Salvador’s brutal 1979 – 1992 civil war is unpicked through the lens of Didion’s own experience. The book is crafted around quotations, memories, and feelings rather than facts or statistics, and Didion’s retellings reveal truths that are not attributed to sources.
“I became abruptly aware, in the light cast by a passing car, of two human shadows, silhouettes illuminated by the headlights and then invisible again,” Didion writes. “Nothing came of this, but I did not forget the sensation of having been in a single instant demoralised, undone, humiliated by fear, which is what I meant when I said that I came to understand in El Salvador the mechanism of terror.”
Salvador is a seesaw between safety and fear on a knife’s edge. By writing through the lens of emotion rather than fact, Didion transforms the medium of journalism—a transaction of knowledge—into the felt experience of war. In doing so, she extends her audience’s understanding of war zones beyond body counts and political rivalry and communicates the permeating reality of fear within war.
In Paul Theroux’s review for the Sunday Times, Didion’s Salvador was described as “an excellent account of being nervous” but, all in all, a bad book on El Salvador. Theroux, who had recently written The Mosquito Coast (1981) and believed himself to be an expert in this region, described El Salvador as “a miserably poor, overpopulated, badly governed, and politically and religiously divided police state.”
Throughout Salvador, Didion does not shy away from outlining El Salvador’s harsh reality. She speaks to the body dumps in El Playón, the children dying of dehydration after the local water tank was bombed, and the cycle of America’s weaponisation of aid for compliance and El Salvador’s responsive compliance for aid. Alongside these facts, however, Didion interweaves emotion and empathy for the Salvadorian plight and provides her readers context, depth, narrative, and character. In doing so, Didion presents stories that people dislocated from war will not forget.
As I write this article, the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine are unfolding and are being reported daily. The war is relayed through the prism of hard news: fact-oriented and staccato. An article posted to the Guardian on the 18th of June describes a developing situation in Gaza as follows:
In a live update posted on the 19th of June: “In another Gaza City suburb, Sheikh Radwan, an Israeli airstrike on a house killed four Palestinians, including a child, medics said.”
While this style of writing is proficient in explaining the facts of the situation, it does not provide any understanding of who the people killed in the airstrikes were, why these areas were targeted, or what the context of the situation is. By formatting the news in this way, the information takes on a fast-paced and replaceable characteristic, one that leaves little impact on its reader.
Salvador is not meant to exist within this staccato universe. Narrative is at its core. To create this sense of narrative, Didion uses tension as a tool. Official government releases are contrasted with first-person perspectives from Salvadorians, thus creating a complex and often contradictory overview of El Salvador’s corruption, America’s involvement and the harsh reality of civilian life. On page 37 of Salvador, Didion focuses on the differential retellings of the El Mozote Massacre, comparing documents from the American embassy with the story of Rufina Amaya, a 38-year-old woman and the sole survivor of the hamlet of Mozote.
The page starts with a pulled quote from the US embassy: “12/11/81: El Salvador’s Atlacatl Battalion begins a 6-day offensive sweep against guerrilla strongholds in Morazán.” The “armed forces operation” of “one of the country’s most embattled areas” killed over 811 people. Rufina Amaya’s recount of the attack was different.
“In the early afternoon, the young woman was taken to the hills nearby, where they were raped, then killed and burned. […] ‘Because we knew the Army people, we felt safe.’ Her husband, she said, had been on good terms with the local military and even had what she called a military safe conduct.'”
By presenting a government-sanctified version of reality besides the lived experience, Didion emphasises the complexity of war reporting when political manipulation and military collusion work to distort reality. Writing with a focus on narrative, Didion encourages her readers to actively engage with the facts being presented and employ their own judgment.
In a recent interview for the 2024 Journalism Festival, Ukrainian feature writer Nataliya Gumenyuk sat down with journalist Jen Stout to discuss the importance of long-form journalism in war zones. The first story she mentioned (to my surprise), was a love story she had written based in Izium Ukraine – a city where several mass graves where found after Russians were forced to retreat from the area – titled A Love song for Natalia. The story focused on a 60-year-old man, Yevhen Horbenko, and his 63-year-old wife, Natalia, who were separated during Russia’s invasion. Weekly, he would walk 2,500 steps to the nearby hill where there was a connection to call her.
“2,500 steps just to hear your voice
To reach the clouds
To freeze in anticipation of the phone’s beeps
Gently press the cheek
And don’t be afraid of anything
2,500 steps just to hear your voice”
Gumenyuk writes stories that surpass the immediate violence of war. Rather than focusing on the pervasive nature of death, violence and loss, she seeks out examples of resilience, love and connection within the context of war. By crafting stories around the human experience, Gumenyuk is able to expand the foreign understanding of war beyond bombings and torture. Her writing –specifically her work with the Reckoning Project – has resulted in investigations into Russian war crimes and stolen children and deepened the West’s understanding of the reality of war.
She has achieved these global reckonings on Russia’s conduct by platforming first-person war experiences in a narrative-driven format. As described in the Reckoning Project’s mission statement, “We focus on individuals, stories and testimonies, and the human element of crimes. Evidence is collected in real-time or shortly after an atrocity occurs.” Through long-form journalism, Gumenyuk’s work solidifies the haze of war, a feeling that Didion discusses in Salvador’s writing: “In the absence of information (and the presence, often, of disinformation) even the most apparently straightforward event take on, in El Salvador, elusive shadows, like a fragment of a retrieved legend.”
In her interview for the Journalism Festival, Gumenyuk unpacks why it is important to her to pursue a style of journalism that works through the fragmentary and illusive qualities of war. “You speak to so many people, and all of a sudden, you have a puzzle, and it works,” Gumenyuk said. When it’s done, it can stay as solid evidence, it can stay as a book, it can stay as a film, and it will live longer.”
This notion of the life span of a work in the context of war reporting stood out. When researching the civil war in El Salvador, I was struck by how little coverage had survived these past 40 years. Most news produced in the 20th century has not been digitised, as the internet as we know it—Web 2.0—did not exist until January 1999.
Moreover, physically archiving newspapers is difficult as the paper used in printing is chosen with the understanding that it will be quickly disposed of. The paper itself is highly acidic and quickly becomes brittle and yellow. This, alongside the normal conservation risks of storing paper, such as mould, insects, and distortion from temperature fluctuation, makes it difficult. Digitising provides the most sustainable route; however, relying on technology as an archive raises issues about digital obsolescence, the environment, and financial sustainability.
When these concerns are applied to live logs, a style of bullet-point news generally used in developing situations, the fear of archival obsolescence spikes. Alongside empathy, narrative, and understanding, long-form journalism provides a pathway for stories to stay in existence. Didion’s Salvador started off as three extended essays in The New York Review of Books and developed into published essays. Salvador is a relic of the war and has educated me—someone born 16 years after its publication—of what actually happened in the Civil War. As Gumenyuk said, “When it’s done […], it will live longer.”
