Introduction
Throughout his administration, Ronald Reagan invested billions of dollars in aid for Central American countries in the name of stopping the spread of Communism. In El Salvador, Reagan provided military and financial support to the Salvadoran government and army to help them defeat the insurgent guerilla groups. Reagan justified his actions in El Salvador by arguing that the US has a duty to support a democratic government that wants to protect the security of its civilians. To maintain this image of the Salvadoran government, the Reagan Administration denied and covered up many atrocities committed by El Salvador’s government and its military. One of the most notable examples of this deliberate concealment is the El Mozote Massacre. Considered the deadliest massacre in modern Latin America, news of the atrocity sparked outrage which only grew when people learned of the US government’s cover-up. This essay will summarize the massacre, describe how the US learned of the massacre, detail the US government’s dismissive reaction to the news, and explore the atrocity’s current legacy in order to explain how the El Mozote massacre remains a contentious issue in the US as survivors continue to advocate for justice and reparations.
The Salvadoran Civil War
To provide important historical context, the El Mozote Massacre occurred during the Salvadoran Civil War: a twelve-year-long conflict between El Salvador’s conservative militant government and the leftist guerrilla coalition known as the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). The United States became heavily involved in the war during Ronald Reagan’s administration. Fearing that the FMLN’s Marxist ideology would lead to the spread of communism, the US allied with El Salvador’s government providing the Salvadoran army with money and supplies. Members of El Salvador’s military (including the military group responsible for the massacre) also received counterinsurgency training at the US School of the Americas (Phillips and Axelrod 2015). After twelve years of constant fighting, the Salvadoran Civil War officially ended on January 16, 1992, with both sides signing a peace accord. In total, most sources estimate that there were around 75,000 total casualties with many more Salvadorans fleeing the country (Medina and Binford 513-33). The Salvadoran Civil War is marred with numerous atrocities and human rights violations including the El Mozote Massacre.
The El Mozote Massacre
The El Mozote Massacre was a part of the Salvadoran Army’s Operation Rescue: a scorched earth strategy plan for killing or displacing the civilians that supported the FLMN guerrilla groups. Known as the “draining the sea” tactic, the Salvadoran Army hoped that eliminating civilian support would leave the insurgent groups stranded, forcing them to surrender. The operation was carried out by the Atlacatl Battalion: one of the Salvadoran army’s first response infantry battalions (Binford 18). On December 10th, a Mozote store owner named Marcos Díaz relayed a message the Salvadoran military would be passing through and that the townspeople needed to congregate in the town’s center. The military warned that anyone caught outside the town would be killed. The Atlacatl Battalion arrived on the 10th and immediately instilled fear in the town by ransacking homes, searching for weapons, and accusing people of supporting the guerrilla (Danner 64). At 5:00 am the next morning, the military gathered the townspeople at the Church of the Three Kings. The men and older boys were taken inside the church and the women and younger children were gathered in small groups and taken to vacant homes. Once the Mozote people had been divided, the Atlacatl Battalion began the massacre first killing the men, then the women, and finally ending with the young children. By the end of December 11th, most of the Mozote population had been exterminated (Danner 81-84). The Atlacatl Battalion moved on to a neighboring town (Los Toriles) where they continued to carry Operation Rescue. In the span of two days, the Atlacatl Battalion traveled to six hamlets and killed around 1,000 civilians (Binford 28).
Initial US Investigation
On January 27th, 1982, news of the massacre broke in the United States when both The New York Times and The Washington Post published front-page articles on the topic. The news of the alleged massacre enraged many people in the US especially as there were already concerns about US involvement in El Salvador. To appease the general public’s demands for answers, the US government began its own investigation to see if there was any truth to the allegations of a massacre occurring (Binford 59-60). Government officials Todd Greentree and John McKay were selected to lead the investigation. In their investigation, Greentree and McKay examined four sources of evidence. To start, they interviewed military officers in the Salvadoran Army. Greentree and McKay also interview people in refugee camps who had fled from El Mozote and other people living in the surrounding communities. Besides interviewing people, Greentree and McKay flew over the site of the massacre on a helicopter. Greentree and McKay summarized the findings of their investigation in a cable report that became the US government’s standard press release statement on the massacre. The report’s main conclusion was that no evidence could be found that definitively proved a massacre had occurred. Additionally, the report claimed that there were far fewer civilian deaths than what the allegations suggested. The report blamed the FLMN for any civilian deaths claiming that the group knew a battle would occur in the Mozote area but failed to warn the villagers (Binford 61). Missing from Greentree’s and McKay’s report was some crucial information including the fact that none of the refugees Greentree and McKay interviewed actually witnessed the massacre. Greentree and McKay also interviewed the refugees in the presence of Salvadoran soldiers. Fearing retribution, the refugee may have censored their words and told a water-downed version of what happened (Binford 67). Overall, the US government excluded important facts from the report and subsequent press releases so that the government could tell their preferred version of what happened at El Mozote.
The Truth Commission Report and Mark Danner’s Article
Because of the US government’s complete denial, many people in the US lost interest in the massacre, especially as more news of violence came from El Salvador. Renewed interest in the massacre only occurred after the civil war when the Truth Commission of El Salvador published its report confirming that a massacre had occurred. Among the many human rights cases that the report includes, the Truth Committee confirms that the massacre did occur in El Mozote and that the Atlacatl Battalion is responsible. With the report, the US government could no longer deny the massacre as a speculation made by biased reporters. The objectivity and credibility associated with the United Nations made the Truth Commission’s report even more valid (Binford 132-133). While the report was significant for proving that a massacre had occurred, the Truth Commission did not mention the role that the US government played in the massacre. The US public would only become aware of the true extent to which the US government purposefully hid evidence of a massacre through the investigative work of Mark Danner. On December 6, 1993, Danner published his article “The Truth of El Mozote ” where he describes what happened during the massacre before detailing the US government’s cover-up of the atrocity. Danner’s investigative work conducting interviews and reading through declassified government papers showed that the Reagan Administration knew more about the massacre than what they told the general public. With these two releases, the US government could no longer deny that a massacre had occurred nor hide its involvement in covering up the atrocity.
The Ongoing Fight for Justice
Neither the Salvadoran government nor the US government officially apologized for the massacre after the publication of the Truth Commission report and Danner’s article. The Salvadoran government claimed that the Truth Commission Report was inaccurate, incomplete, and biased toward the FMLN. Five days after The Truth Commission released its report, the Salvadoran government enacted a law of General Amnesty which prevented any persecution of people deemed responsible for committing any atrocities during the war. Mark Danner’s article pushed individual US government officials who participated in the cover-up to admit they were wrong and apologize for their actions (Binford 151-153). Yet, the US government as a whole continued to struggle with understanding and accepting its role in the massacre.
Survivors of the massacre and their supporters have made slow progress towards receiving reparations and having the people responsible for the massacre persecuted for their crimes. On April 23, 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) began its case on the El Mozote Massacre. The case involved the survivors of the massacre and their representatives facing off against the Salvadoran government (Binford 240). In October 2012, the court ruled in favor of the survivors in requiring that the government give reparations to both individuals and the entire Mozote community. That same year El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes visited El Mozote and officially apologized for the government’s actions during the civil war ((Medina and Binford 513-33). In 2016, the General Amnesty Law ended when El Salvador’s Supreme Court deemed the law unconstitutional. With the law being revoked, trials could now proceed to prosecute the people responsible for the massacre. Even thirty years after the end of the civil war, trials related to the El Mozote Massacre are still being held as survivors continue to fight for justice.
Citations
Binford, Leigh. The el Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implications Revised and Expanded Edition. University of Arizona Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Danner, Mark. The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Medina, Rafael Alarcón, and Leigh Binford. “Revisiting the El Mozote Massacre: Memory and Politics in Postwar El Salvador.” Journal of Genocide Research 16, no. 4 ( 2014): 513–33.
Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. “Salvadoran Civil War.” Reference Guide to the Major Wars and Conflicts in History: Wars in the Contemporary World (1950 to Present). Facts On File, 2015.