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The piled-up dead of political violence are a generic staple of our information diet these days, and according to the generic report all massacres are created equal: the dead are innocent, the killers monsterous, the surrounding politics insane or nonexistent. Except for the names and landscape, it reads like the same story from anywhere in the world: a tribe in poer slaughters a disempowered tribe, another cycle in those ancient hatreds, the more things change the more they stay the same. As in accounts of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, we are told that experts knew the fault line was there, the pressure was building, and we are urged to be excited-- by fear, distress, compassion, outrage, even simple morbid fascination-- and perhaps to send a handout for the survivors. The generic massacre story speaks of “endemic”or “epidemic”violence and of places where people kill “each other”, and the ubiquity of the blight seems to cancel out any appeal to think about the single instance. These stories flash up from the void and, just as abruptly, return there. The anonymous dead and their anonymous killers become their own context. The horror becomes absurd.
Pgs. 186-187
Very difficult book to review, at least for me. Difficult subject. Gourevitch keeps an excellent balance between the personal stories and the political context of the Rwandan massacre. He provides sympathetic and balanced commentary as to the root causes-- unpeeling them like an onion rather than pointing fingers.
Can you say well done about a book like this? Important to read, in any case. The world failed once as a witness.
