The truth about the largest mass killing of El Salvador's 12-year civil war may finally be getting a public airing--and perhaps even a little justice to go along with it.
The Truth Commission created as part of El Salvador's peace accords to investigate political crimes committed during the war--the most prominent are the assassinations of Archbishop Oscar Romero and of the six Jesuits and their coworkers--arrived in Ciudad Segundo Montes in mid-July to hear about a less publicized but equally shocking atrocity: the Mozote massacre.
More than 1,000 people--most of them women, children, and elderly men--were brutally slaughtered by Salvadoran soldiers in the remote mountain village of El Mozote and surrounding hamlets during a three-day rampage that began on December 11, 1981. The Salvadoran military had accused the victims of being leftist guerrillas or rebel sympathizers.
The massacre was carried out by the elite Atlacatl Battalion, which was trained by U.S. Green Berets at Ft. Benning, Georgia, for several months before the slaughter. The same unit was later implicated in the November 1989 Jesuit killings.
The Mozote investigation is considered key to El Salvador's fragile peace process and efforts to end impunity by holding military and government officials responsible for crimes they commit. If there is no justice in the Mozote case, human rights activists warn, there may be no lasting peace in El Salvador.
The case remains shrouded in controversy. Salvadoran officials deny a massacre occurred and U.S. officials have expressed their own doubts. Many Salvadorans, conditioned by their media's portrayal of the security forces as altruistic defenders of democracy, believe the authorities. No one has ever been charged or convicted in the case. However, justice--or at least a public exposure of the truth--may be soon in coming.
In mid-July the Truth Commission listened to testimony from the massacre's sole surviving civilian witness. Rufina Amaya, 50, who managed to escape during the bloodbath, watched in horror as soldiers machine-gunned her husband and then, because his arms and legs were still moving, decapitated him. Later, during the massacre of the children, Amaya heard her frantic 9-year-old son screaming, "Mama, Mama, they're killing us."
According to a report compiled by the Salvadoran archdiocesan human rights office, some of the soldiers were hesitant to kill the children. To initiate the slaughter, their commanding officer threw a child in the air and speared him with a bayonet. Teen-age girls were first raped and then killed by the soldiers, and other victims were beheaded and burned.
The corpses of many men are still buried in the rubble of El Mozote's church, which had been burned down around them while some were alive. Amaya says she heard their anguished screams as the flames engulfed them.
Many people from the area who managed to avoid the massacre fled to a refugee camp in nearby Colomancagua, Honduras. In late 1989, despite threats from the Salvadoran military, they returned en masse to their home, which they renamed after one of the Jesuit martyrs.
The Atlacatl Battalion commander who allegedly supervised the Mozote massacre, Lt. Col. Domingo Monterrosa, is considered by the Salvadoran military to be one of the bravest, most daring heroes in Salvadoran military history. Numerous military installations bear his name and he is remembered on ceremonial occasions. Monterrosa was killed in a guerrilla trap in 1984.
At about the same time the Truth Commission hearings were getting under way, a Salvadoran judge conducting a separate investigation began finding pieces of human bones at sites where survivors told him they saw numerous corpses days after the massacre. Exhumations were scheduled to begin in September, though they probably won't be finished by the time the Truth Commission issues its findings at the end of this year.
The Truth Commission cannot convict anyone of crimes but can recommend judicial proceedings against individuals if enough evidence is gathered.
Despite the mounting evidence pointing to the military's guilt in the massacre, it remains unclear whether government officials will permit the truth to be publicized or if anyone will be punished. Human rights workers contend the Salvadoran government--and presumably its ally, the United States--doesn't want this case investigated. They asked President Alfredo Cristiani two years ago for a list of the military officers and soldiers who participated in the "scorched earth" operation, but he still refuses to reveal their identities, says Gloria Romero, a human rights worker in Ciudad Segundo Montes.
U.S. officials don't appear eager to resurrect memories of the massacre, either. A spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador said she wasn't authorized to say whether the United States wanted to retract statements made in the early 1980s expressing doubts that a massacre occurred, while State Department officials said they are awaiting the Truth Commission's report.
Even if the truth about Mozote emerges, it is doubtful anyone will go to jail. Many observers expect the Salvadoran legislature to grant a full pardon to individuals implicated by the Truth Commission. While that is a disturbing prospect to many people, including human rights workers, the country's political forces, including the leftist FMLN, have agreed that simply exposing the truth about the war's worst crimes will help prevent such atrocities from happening in the future. And they say granting a blanket pardon will open the way for a national reconciliation.
Whatever the outcome of the investigations and pardons, relatives of the Mozote victims say they can never let the authorities simply forget about the massacre or conceal the truth. They have pledged to continue "breaking the silence" that for years has surrounded the macabre event.
And they say the American people need to know, too. El Salvador was the U.S. "showcase" for democracy in Central America during the 1980s, and the Mozote massacre provides stark evidence of what kind of "show"at a cost of $4 billion--our government was producing.
Bart Jones, a former journalist with The Atlantic City (New Jersey) Press, was currently serving as a Maryknoll lay missioner in Latin America when this article appeared.
A Visit to El Mozote
Karen Murphy, a Presbyterian missionary working in El Salvador, visited the site of the El Mozote massacre this fall. Following are excerpts of her reflections on the visit.--The Editors
Today I went to El Mozote. I have read about war, violence, massacres. I have met victims of war. But never have I been to such a place. There are many burned-out shells of homes and one large ruin of a store. It is here where many of the bodies were taken to be burned. There is a well in the center where many were thrown.
I wanted to lay down on the ground, where so much blood had seeped and where so many bones had turned to dust, and mourn--as a citizen of the United States who is indirectly responsible, and as a member of the human race--for the sin against humanity that had taken place there.
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