El Mozote massacre: Waiting for reparations 38 years later

[Judi Lynn]

Salvadorans who survived Latin America’s most brutal massacre of the 20th century still await promised reparations.

Anna-Cat Brigida by Anna-Cat Brigida
4 hours ago

Los Quebrachos, El Salvador - Over the course of three days in December 1981, Salvadoran soldiers murdered nearly 1,000 women, children and elderly civilians in El Mozote and other towns in the northeastern province of Morazan in what has since become known as the most brutal massacre in Latin America in the 20th century.

Survivors reported hearing the screams of women and children before they were gunned down. Soldiers then burned their houses and crops and killed their animals.

Thirty-eight years later, survivors and families of victims are still fighting for recognition, justice and promised reparations. But due to bureaucratic mazes, and a new administration in place, the compensation they have been promised has effectively stalled.

Sofia Romero, whose parents were killed in the massacre, is one of many waiting for reparations. In order to receive her payment, she must prove her parents died and that they were, in fact, her parents. She thought she had gathered all the paperwork necessary, only to find out she needed more documentation for her grandparents.

More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/el-mozote-massacre-waiting-reparations-38-years-191213142146986.html





Remembrance of a Massacre — El Mozote

In 2001, on the 20th anniversary of the El Mozote Massacre, a member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology team (EAAF) team team holds a photograph taken by Susan Meiselas shortly after the 1981 attack on the village. The team plans further exhumations at the site, which is marked only by the two story cement house in the background. El Mozote, El Salvador, 2001

The perpetrators were members of a U.S.-trained Salvadoran counterinsurgency unit called the Atlacatl battalion. Fresh from a skirmish with the guerillas, they had entered El Mozote in December 1981, and begun a systematic campaign of rape, plunder, torture and murder. In this village — little more than a Catholic church in a simple town square — more than two hundred men, women and children were killed; only Amaya had survived. Altogether, some 800 were killed in the area, making “El Mozote” a name that stands in infamy, one of the worst massacres in modern Latin American history.

The Salvadoran government denied the killings had occurred and the Reagan Administration insisted that The New York Times and The Washington Post reports of the massacre were gross exaggerations. As one Reagan official told a congressional subcomittee,“no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians.”

But twenty years later, the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador conducted a thorough investigation, and confirmed what we had reported. The commission wrote:

“During the morning, they [the Salvadoran soldiers] proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking out the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings.”

Photos:
https://www.retroreport.org/multi-media/remembrance-of-a-massacre-el-mozote/

Some images at google images:

https://tinyurl.com/sonhe57

[JoeOtterbein]

1. USA trained...

...evil.

[Judi Lynn]

2. They wear the brand, don't they? Unbearable. n/t