The Massacre at El Mozote
On December 10, 1981 the people of a small Salvadoran town, El Mozote, were detained without resistance by the Atlacatl Battalion, which was a U.S trained army. On the following day, December 11, after spending the night locked in their homes, they were deliberately and systematically executed in groups. First, the men were tortured and executed, then the women were executed and, lastly, the children. This operation, known as operative de tierra arrasada, was a scorched-earth operation. Basically, "If the guerillas were fish swimming in a sea of people, then the army's job would be to drain the sea. As officers put it: it was to take away water from the fish" The civil war in El Salvador began in the 1970's due to discontent with social inequalities, a poor economy, and the repressive measures of dictatorship. The government was composed of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, and leftist anti-government guerrilla units, were led by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The U.S. supported the side of the right-wings, despite its scores of human rights violations. Early in 1981, advisers from the U.S. Army Special Forces were sent to perfect the military skills of the Salvadorans. The t
He was the only surviving child from the El Mozote massacre. When the soldiers arrived in the village they found, in addition to the residents, other peasants who were refugees from the surrounding area. Despite the compelling evidence that the Atlacatl had wiped out El Mozote and surrounding villages, administration officials were quick to deny that there was a basis for believing that any such thing occurred. The soldiers kept telling us, 'You are guerrillas and this is justice. The government was impartial to what really happened because of the United States' support for the Atlacatl. The government sent reporters to El Salvador, but these reporters weren't given the chance to see the center of town where the massacre took place. It seems to be done out of frustration more than anything else. "First they picked out the young girls and took them away to the hills, where they were raped before being killed," Amaya reported. The Reagan administration was determined to support the war in El Salvador at any cost, which made the reports from El Mozote a difficult thing to manage. The other peasants had come to El Mozote because Marcos Diaz, an honorable townsman, told everyone that the army was going to launch an operation but, "The people of El Mozote would have no problems, provided they stayed where they were. The soldiers remained in the village during the night. Their only option is to kill everybody without even knowing who is a guerrilla and who isn't. raining program was a key element of the Reagan administration's drive to professionalize the anti-guerrilla operations of El Salvador's military.
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