El Mozote

A little over a week ago I went to the little town of El Mozote. This town is located in the far northeast part of El Salvador in the department of Morazan. During the civil war this area was an area of heavy fighting between the military and the guerrillas. El Mozote is in a very mountainous and remote area- it took us more than 4 hours to get there from the capital.

On December 11, 1981, about 1,000 innocent civilians were massacred by the Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran army. (It is important to know that this battalion was trained by the U.S. The Atlacatl Battalion was responsible for many other acts of horrific violence including other massacres and the assassination of the 6 Jesuit priests and the two women at the University of Central America. Your tax dollars helped train these soldiers. And this sort of training continues today at the same school where the Atlacatl Battalion was trained, the School of the Americas.)

As was common during the war, the people in the area around El Mozote traveled around trying to escape the army. The army had been present in the area for a few days before they came to El Mozote and the army had killed some civilians in the area in the previous days. The people in the area got word that if they all went to El Mozote they would be safe there. They heard that the lives of anyone in El Mozote would be respected, and so people went there thinking they would be safe. El Mozote was a small town but with all the people who had come from the surrounding areas there were about 1,000 men, women, and children. On the morning of December 11, 1981, the soldiers entered the town, and ordered everyone into the town square. The men were taken into the church, the children were taken to the parish house next to the church, and the women were taken to a nearby house. The women and even girls as young as 12 were raped before they were killed. The men were killed inside the church. Then the children were killed in the parish house. Supposedly some of the soldier questioned if they really should kill the children because after all they were just children. But this was only just a passing doubt. Children as young as 3 days old were shot and there are even reports that some little children were thrown in the air and then shot. When the soldiers finished killing all the people, they burned the houses, the church, the fields, and they killed all the animals. They destroyed everything.

So the big question is why did the Salvadoran military kill all these innocent people? I can't really give you a good answer to this question, but I can tell you the logic or reasoning that the military might have used. The military wanted to kill guerrillas and they also wanted to create a sense of fear and terror that would prevent more people from joining the guerrillas. For a long time the Salvadoran government and the military claimed that the people that were killed in El Mozote were guerrillas. When the evidence showed that this wasn't the case, they claimed that the people of El Mozote were supporting the guerrillas. And when this explanation no longer worked they just claimed that they killed the people so that they wouldn't become guerrillas. If there aren't any people then there can't be any guerrillas. The truth is that the people that were killed in the town of El Mozote were not guerrillas, nor were they on the side of the guerrillas. They probably sold food and other supplies to the guerrillas that were in the area, but they also sold food and supplies to the armed forces. These were neutral people just trying to survive the war.

Even this "explanation" doesn't really make sense. War doesn't make sense, violence doesn't make sense, and death doesn't make sense. There are war strategies and justifications for war, but these are usually just stories that don't tell the real truth and the real truth usually doesn't make sense.

For years and years the Salvadoran government and military and even the U.S. government denied that the massacre at El Mozote even happened. One of the main reasons why we know what we know if because one woman, Rufina Amaya, managed to escape and survive the massacre. Until the day she died she told the story of the massacre. She heard her 4 children, aged 8 months to 9 years, being killed as she hid under a tree. In 1992, some of the victims of the massacre were exhumed by forensic archaeologists to scientifically determine what had happened at El Mozote. The exhumations of the victims from the parish house proved that there had indeed been a massacre at this site. They recovered the remains of 146 victims with an average age of 6 years. They said that the number of victims was probably far higher because many of the remains had been destroyed by the fire. They also determined that 24 shooters killed the children using M-16 rifles and bullets manufactured by the U.S.

After the war, people began to move back to El Mozote. They have rebuilt their town. They have a beautiful new church and some very nice memorials to the victims of the massacre. They have a monument with all the names of the people that were killed and there is also a garden next to the church in memory of the children that were killed in the space where the garden now is.

On the side of the church there is a beautiful mural of children playing. Along the bottom of the wall all the names of the children victims are listen along with their age- 3 days to 18 years.

After they exhumed the remains of the children, they buried the remains, and then replaced some of the bricks from the floor of the parish house where you can still see blood stains.

One sign there said "What happened in El Mozote, for good or for evil, is part of our history. To forget it would be fatal because only in preserving and remembering history can we avoid repeating similar horrific acts." So very true.

There was a well in the main square of El Mozote that was built through funds from the US Agency for International Development.  It's great that we helped provide drinking water for the people of El Mozote, but this hardly seems to even partly make up for the destruction that came from the training, weapons, and bullets provided by the U.S. just 14 years before this well was constructed.

After we left El Mozote we went to the Revolutionary museum. The had pictures and information about some of the important people in the revolutionary movement in El Salvador. There were posters from various organizations in different countries around the world that joined in solidarity with Salvadorans to demand that the killing and the repression stop. The museum also had some weapons and equipment that were used by the guerrillas during the war. There were also some things about the peace accords that were signed in 1992 by the guerrillas and the Salvadoran government. Outside they had some weapons and crashed aircraft that the U.S. gave to the Salvadoran military and then the guerrillas got them and used the weapons and aircraft. We also got to see a radio station like the guerrillas used during the war to communicate and share information among the guerrillas and the people.

There was also a 500 pound bomb that was manufactured in the U.S.

And then perhaps the most exciting part of our day was going to see a guerrilla camp. It was very cool to actually see the sort of thing that I had read about and seen pictures of. It was also a little overwhelming to be able to experience a little bit what it might have been like to actually live in a guerrilla camp.  Here is a shelter where 5-6 people would have stayed:

We got to see some of the weapons the guerrillas used as well as some of the radio equipment they used to stay in contact with each other and to send information to civilians.

We saw a "kitchen" where they would grind corn to make tortillas and they probably also had beans but not much else to eat.

There was a little field "hospital"

Then we got to see a couple of the holes in the ground where people would hide during air attacks. We got to go into the hole and spending less than a minute in the hole was enough for me. Sometimes people would have to spend hours and even days in the holes while planes and helicopters flew overhead dropping bombs.  Being in the camp made it a little easier to imagine what life might have been like during the war.  I am still far from being able to completely understand, but my day in El Mozote and at the museum and the guerrilla camp helped me gain a little bit better understanding.