Part Four, Chapter Three (C): From Madness to Hope: El Salvador: Truth Commissions: Library and Links: U.S. Institute of Peace

In 1980, 1981 and 1982, several massacres of peasants were carried out by troops of the armed forces of El Salvador. An account of three of them follows.

On 10 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote in the Department of Morazán, units of the Atlacatl Battalion detained, without resistance, all the men, women and children who were in the place. The following day, 11 December, 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, in the place where they had been locked up. The number of victims identified was over 200. The figure is higher if other unidentified victims are taken into account.

These events occurred in the course of an anti-guerrilla action known as "Operación Rescate" in which, in addition to the Atlacatl Battalion, units from the Third Infantry Brigade and the San Francisco Gotera Commando Training Centre took part.

In the course of "Operación Rescate", massacres of civilians also occurred in the following places: 11 December, more than 20 people in La Joya canton; 12 December, some 30 people in the village of La Ranchería; the same day, by units of the Atlacatl Battalion, the inhabitants of the village of Los Toriles; and 13 December, the inhabitants of the village of Jocote Amarillo and Cerro Pando canton. More than 500 identified victims perished at El Mozote and in the other villages. Many other victims have not been identified.

We have accounts of these massacres provided by eyewitnesses and by other witnesses who later saw the bodies, which were left unburied. In the case of El Mozote, the accounts were fully corroborated by the results of the 1992 exhumation of the remains.

Despite the public complaints of a massacre and the ease with which they could have been verified, the Salvadorian authorities did not order an investigation and consistently denied that the massacre had taken place.

The Minister of Defence and the Chief of the Armed Forces Joint Staff have denied to the Commission on the Truth that they have any information that would make it possible to identify the units and officers who participated in "Operación Rescate". They say that there are no records for the period.

The President of the Supreme Court has interfered in a biased and political way in the judicial proceedings on the massacre instituted in 1990.

On the afternoon of 10 December 1981, units of the Atlacatl Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) arrived in the village of El Mozote, Department of Morazán, after a clash with guerrillas in the vicinity.

The village consisted of about 20 houses situated on open ground around a square. Facing onto the square was a church and behind it a small building known as "the convent", used by the priest to change into his vestments when he came to the village to celebrate mass. Not far from the village was a school, the Grupo Escolar.

When the soldiers arrived in the village they found, in addition to the residents, other peasants who were refugees from the surrounding areas. They ordered everyone out of the houses and into the square; they made them lie face down, searched them and asked them about the guerrillas. They then ordered them to lock themselves in their houses until the next day, warning that anyone coming out would be shot. The soldiers remained in the village during the night.

Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses.

During the morning, they 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.

The soldiers remained in El Mozote that might. The next day, they went through the village of Los Toriles, situated 2 kilometres away. Some of the inhabitants managed to escape. The others, men, women and children, were taken from their homes, lined up and machine-gunned.

The victims at El Mozote were left unburied. During the weeks that followed the bodies were seen by many people who passed by there. In Los Toriles, the survivors subsequently buried the bodies.

The Atlacatl Battalion arrived at El Mozote in the course of a military action known as "Operación Rescate", which had begun two days earlier on 6 December and also involved units from the Third Brigade and the San Francisco Gotera Commando Training Centre.

The Atlacatl Battalion was a "Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion" or "BIRI", that is, a unit specially trained for "counter-insurgency" warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the armed forces and had completed its training, under the supervision of United States military advisers, at the beginning of that year, 1981.

Nine months before "Operación Rescate" took place, a company of the Atlacatl Battalion, under the command of Captain Juan Ernesto Méndez, had taken part in an anti-guerrilla operation in the same northern zone of Morazán. On that occasion, it had come under heavy attack from guerrillas and had had to withdraw with heavy casualties without achieving its military objective. This setback for the brand new "Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion" made it the butt of criticism and jokes by officers of other units, who nicknamed it the "Rapid Retreat Infantry Battalion".

The goal of "Operación Rescate" was to eliminate the guerrilla presence in a small sector in northern Morazán, where the guerrillas had a camp and a training centre at a place called La Guacamaya.

Colonel Jaime Flórez Grijalva, Commander of the Third Brigade, was responsible for overseeing the operation. Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios, Commander of the Atlacatl BIRI, was in command of the units taking part.

On 9 December, clashes took place between Government troops and the guerrillas. That same day, a company of the Atlacatl BIRI entered the town of Arambala. They rounded up the population in the town square and separated the men from the women and children. They locked the women and children in the church and ordered the men to lie face down in the square. A number of men were accused of being guerrilla collaborators. They were tied up, blindfolded and tortured. Residents later found the bodies of three of them, stabbed to death.

In Cumaro canton as well, residents were rounded up in the main square by Atlacatl units on the morning of 10 December. There, however, no one was killed.

There is sufficient evidence that units of the Atlacatl BIRI participated in all these actions. In the course of "Operación Rescate", however, other mass executions were carried out by units which it has not been possible to identify with certainty.

In all instances, troops acted in the same way: they killed anyone they came across, men, women and children, and then set fire to the houses. This is what happened in La Joya canton on 11 December, in the village of La Ranchería on 12 December, and in the village of Jocote Amarillo and Cerro Pando canton on 13 December.

The El Mozote massacre became public knowledge on 27 January 1982, when The New York Times and The Washington Post published articles by Raymond Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto, respectively, reporting the massacre. In January, they had visited the scene of the massacre and had seen the bodies and the ruined houses.

In the course of the year, a number of human rights organizations denounced the massacre. The Salvadorian authorities categorically denied that a massacre had taken place. No judicial investigation was launched and there was no word of any investigation by the Government or the armed forces.

On 26 October 1990, on a criminal complaint brought by Pedro Chicas Romero, criminal proceedings were instituted in the San Francisco Gotera Court of the First Instance. During the trial, which is still going on, statements were taken from witnesses for the prosecution; eventually, the remains were ordered exhumed, and this provided irrefutable evidence of the El Mozote massacre. The judge asked the Government repeatedly for a list of the officers who took part in the military operation. He received the reply that the Government did not have such information.

The exhumation of the remains in the ruins of the little building known as the convent, adjacent to the El Mozote church, took place between 13 and 17 November 1992.

The material found in the convent was analysed by expert anthropologists and then studied in minute detail in the laboratories of the Santa Tecla Institute of Forensic Medicine and of the Commission for the Investigation of Criminal Acts by Dr. Clyde Snow (forensic anthropologist), Dr. Robert H. Kirschner (forensic pathologist), Dr. Douglas Scott (archaeologist and ballistics analyst), and Dr. John Fitzpatrick (radiologist), in collaboration with the Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropologists made up of Patricia Bernardi, Mercedes Doretti and Luis Fondebrider.

1. "All the skeletons recovered from the site and the associated evidence were deposited during the same temporal event ...".³⁵¹ The physical evidence recovered in the site excludes the possibility that the site could have been used as a clandestine cemetery in which the dead were placed at different times.

2. "The events under investigation are unlikely to have occurred later than 1981".³⁵² Coins and bullet cartridges bearing their date of manufacture were found in the convent. In no case was this date later than 1981.

3. In the convent, bone remains of at least 143 people were found.³⁵³ However, the laboratory analysis indicates that "there may, in fact, have been a greater number of deaths. This uncertainty regarding the number of skeletons is a reflection of the extensive perimortem skeletal injuries, postmortem skeletal damage and associated commingling. Many young infants may have been entirely cremated; other children may not have been counted because of extensive fragmentation of body parts".³⁵⁴

4. The bone remains and other evidence found in the convent show numerous signs of damage caused by crushing and by fire.

5. Most of the victims were minors.

The experts determined, initially, after the exhumation, that "approximately 85 per cent of the 117 victims were children under 12 years of age",³⁵⁵ and indicated that a more precise estimate of the victims' ages would be made in the laboratory.³⁵⁶

In the laboratory, the skeletal remains of 143 bodies were identified, including 131 children under the age of 12, 5 adolescents and 7 adults. The experts noted, in addition, that "the average age of the children was approximately 6 years". ³⁵⁷

6. One of the victims was a pregnant woman.³⁵⁸

7. Although it could not be determined with certainty that all the victims were alive when they were brought into the convent, "it can be concluded that at least some of the victims were struck by bullets, with an effect that may well have been lethal, inside the building".³⁵⁹

(1) A "large quantity of bullet fragments [were] found inside the building ...".³⁶⁰ "Virtually all the ballistic evidence was found at level 3, in direct contact with or imbedded in the bone remains, clothing, household goods and floor of the building".³⁶¹ Moreover, "the spatial distribution of most of the bullet fragments coincides with the area of greatest concentration of skeletons and with concentrations of bone remains".³⁶² Also, the second and third areas of concentration of bullet fragments coincide with the second and third areas of concentration of skeletons, respectively.

(2) "Of 117 skeletons identified in the field, 67 were associated with bullet fragments. In 43 out of this subtotal of 67, the fragments were found in the areas of the skull and/or the thorax, i.e., parts of the body where they could have been the cause of death."³⁶³

(3) "In at least nine cases, the victims were shot inside the building while lying in a horizontal position on the floor. The shots were fired downwards. In at least six of the nine cases mentioned, these shots could have caused the victims' deaths."³⁶⁴

(4) "Direct skeletal examination showed intact gunshot wounds of entrance in only a few skulls because of the extensive fracturing that is characteristically associated with such high-velocity injuries. Skull reconstruction identified many more entrance wounds, but relatively few exit wounds. This is consistent with the ballistic evidence that the ammunition involved in the shootings was of a type likely to fragment upon impact, becoming essentially frangible bullets. Radiologic examination of skull bones demonstrated small metallic densities consistent with bullet fragments in 45.2 per cent (51/115).

In long bones, vertebrae, pelvis and ribs there were defects characteristic of high velocity gunshot wounds." ³⁶⁵

(5) The weapons used to fire at the victims were M-16 rifles.

As the ballistics analyst described, "two hundred forty-five cartridge cases recovered from the El Mozote site were studied. Of these, 184 had discernible headstamps, identifying the ammunition as having been manufactured for the United States Government at Lake City, Missouri. Thirty-four cartridges were sufficiently well preserved to analyze for individual as well as class characteristics. All of the projectiles except one appear to have been fired from United States-manufactured M-16 rifles".³⁶⁶

(6) At least 24 people participated in the shooting.³⁶⁷ They fired "from within the house, from the doorway, and probably through a window to the right of the door". ³⁶⁸

An important point that emerges from the results of the observations is that "no bullet fragments were found in the outside west facade of the stone wall".³⁶⁹

The evidence presented above is full proof that the victims were summarily executed, as the witnesses have testified.

The experts who carried out the exhumation reached the following conclusion: "All these facts tend to indicate the perpetration of a massive crime, there being no evidence to support the theory of a confrontation between two groups". ³⁷⁰

For their part, the experts who conducted the laboratory analysis said that "the physical evidence from the exhumation of the convent house at El Mozote confirms the allegations of a mass murder".³⁷¹ They went on to say, on the same point: "There is no evidence to support the contention that these victims, almost all young children, were involved in combat or were caught in the crossfire of combat forces. Rather the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that they were the intentional victims of a mass extra-judicial execution". ³⁷²

Before the Commission on the Truth began its work, the Director of the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) brought a motion before the judge hearing the case to have qualified foreign experts appointed.

The Commission on the Truth, from the moment it was set up, took a special interest in having the exhumation conducted under conditions that guaranteed the necessary scientific rigour and impartiality.

The Commission also reviewed the available publications, documentation and court records. It took testimony directly from eyewitnesses and was present at the exhumation site.

The Commission wrote three times to the Minister of Defence and once to the Chief of the Armed Forces Joint Staff requesting information about the units and officers who took part in "Operación Rescate", and about any orders, reports or other documents relating to that operation that might be in the archives. The only response it received was that there were no records for that period.

Special mention must be made of the interference in the case by the President of the Supreme Court of El Salvador, Mr. Mauricio Gutiérrez Castro. When on 17 July 1991 representatives of the Legal Protection Office asked the trial judge to appoint qualified foreign experts to conduct the exhumations, he told them that this would require the approval of Mr. Gutiérrez Castro. It was not until nine months later, on 29 April 1992, after ONUSAL stepped in, that he proceeded to appoint them.

On 16 July 1992, when the members of the Commission on the Truth went to see him, Mr. Gutiérrez Castro said that the exhumation ordered by the trial judge would prove that "only dead guerrillas are buried" at El Mozote.

A few days later, the court hearing the case ruled that its appointment of foreign experts was not valid without a complicated procedure of consultation with foreign Governments through the Supreme Court of Justice, with the result that the exhumation was on the point of going ahead without the presence of such experts.

On 21 October, Mr. Mauricio Gutiérrez Castro came to the exhumation site and, in giving his opinion on how future excavations in the zone should be carried out, said that care should be taken not to "favour one of the parties" (presumably the Government and FMLN) "because of the political implications of this process, which override legal considerations".

There is full proof that on 11 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote, units of the Atlacatl Battalion deliberately and systematically killed a group of more than 200 men, women and children, constituting the entire civilian population that they had found there the previous day and had since been holding prisoner.

The officers in command of the Atlacatl Battalion at the time of the operation whom the Commission has managed to identify are the following: Battalion Commander: Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios (deceased); Commanding Officer: Major Natividad de Jesús Cáceres Cabrera (now Colonel); Chief of Operations: Major José Armando Azmitia Melara (deceased); Company Commanders: Juan Ernesto Méndez Rodríguez (now Colonel); Roberto Alfonso Mendoza Portillo (deceased); José Antonio Rodríguez Molina (now Lieutenant Colonel), Captain Walter Oswaldo Salazar (now Lieutenant Colonel) and José Alfredo Jiménez (currently a fugitive from justice).

There is sufficient evidence that in the days preceding and following the El Mozote massacre, troops participating in "Operación Rescate" massacred the non-combatant civilian population in La Joya canton, in the villages of La Ranchería, Jocote Amarillo y Los Toriles, and in Cerro Pando canton.

Participating in this operation, in addition to the Atlacatl Battalion, were units of the Third Infantry Brigade, commanded by Colonel Jaime Flórez Grijalba (now retired) who was also responsible for supervising the operation, and units from the San Francisco Gotera Commando Training Centre commanded by Colonel Alejandro Cisneros (now retired).

Although it received news of the massacre, which would have been easy to corroborate because of the profusion of unburied bodies, the Armed Forces High Command did not conduct or did not give any word of an investigation and repeatedly denied that the massacre had occurred. There is full evidence that General José Guillermo García, then Minister of Defence, initiated no investigations that might have enabled the facts to be established. There is sufficient evidence that General Rafael Flórez Lima, Chief of the Armed Forces Joint Staff at the time, was aware that the massacre had occurred and also failed to undertake any investigation.

The High Command also took no steps whatsoever to prevent the repetition of such acts, with the result that the same units were used in other operations and followed the same procedures.

The El Mozote massacre was a serious violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

The President of the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador, Mr. Mauricio Gutiérrez Castro, has interfered unduly and prejudicially, for biased political reasons, in the ongoing judicial proceedings on the case.

The Commission recommends that the competent authorities implement the recommendations made in the experts' reports (see annex 1).

On 14 May 1990, units of Military Detachment No. 1, the National Guard and the paramilitary Organización Nacional Democrática (ORDEN) deliberately killed at least 300 non-combatants, including women and children, who were trying to flee to Honduras across the Sumpul river beside the hamlet of Las Aradas, Department of Chalatenango. The massacre was made possible by the cooperation of the Honduran armed forces, who prevented the Salvadorian villagers from landing on the other side.

The Salvadorian military operation had begun the previous day as an anti-guerrilla operation. Troops advanced from various points, gradually converging on the hamlet of Las Aradas on the banks of the Sumpul river. In the course of the operation, there had been a number of encounters with the guerrillas.

There is sufficient evidence that, as they advanced, Government forces committed acts of violence against the population, and this caused numerous people to flee, many of whom congregated in the hamlet, consisting of some dozen houses.

Troops attacked the hamlet with artillery and fire from two helicopters. The villagers and other people displaced by the operation attempted to cross the Sumpul river to take refuge in Honduras. Honduran troops deployed on the opposite bank of the river barred their way. They were then killed by Salvadorian troops who fired on them in cold blood.

In 1970, when the so-called "Soccer War" between Honduras and El Salvador ended, a demilitarized zone was established comprising a strip of land three kilometres wide on each side of the border. The zone was monitored by an observer mission of the Organization of American States. The armed forces of both countries were prohibited from entering the zone.

When the conflict in El Salvador began, many Salvadorian peasants took refuge in Honduras, where they set up camps. When anti-guerrilla actions increased in early 1980, a large number of Salvadorian peasants crossed the border, leaving a number of villages, including Las Aradas, almost deserted. The Honduran Government became increasingly concerned as Salvadorian refugees entered and remained in Honduras. It should be recalled that one of the reasons for the war between the two countries had been the settlement of Salvadorian peasants in border areas in Honduran territory.

The Salvadorian Government, for its part, believed that the demilitarized zone and Honduran territory were serving as a base of operations and a refuge for guerrillas whose activities had intensified in the adjacent area, in the north of the Department of Chalatenango.

A large part of the peasant population in the zone also belonged to the Federación de Trabajadores del Campo, which had joined the struggle for agrarian reform and was viewed by the Salvadorian Government as a guerrilla support organization.

In the last two weeks of March 1980, Honduran authorities put pressure on the refugees to return to their country. A group of refugees returned to Las Aradas.

Anti-guerrilla operations by the Government of El Salvador continued in the zone. After the villagers' return to Las Aradas and before the May massacre, National Guard and ORDEN troops, who were able to enter the zone freely, twice advanced as far as Las Aradas. On both occasions, residents fled across the river to Honduran territory.

On 5 May, nine days before the massacre, Honduran and Salvadorian military leaders met on the border, according to the Honduran press, to work out a way of preventing Salvadorian guerrillas from entering Honduras. A few days later, Honduran soldiers again put pressure on Salvadorian refugees and a group of them returned to Las Aradas.

When the operation which would lead to the massacre began a week later, many fleeing peasants converged on Las Aradas, confident that from there they would be able to cross the hanging bridge over the Sumpul river, which was running high because of the rainy season, and take refuge in Honduran territory. They also hoped that Salvadorian soldiers would not enter the demilitarized zone.

The armies of the two countries left the zone that same day. The National Guard continued to patrol the area to prevent residents from returning. The bodies were not buried.

In Honduras, the massacre received extensive media coverage. The first news report was transmitted on 21 May by a morning news programme on Radio Noticias del Continente, which operates out of Costa Rica. A few days later, the newspaper Tiempo published an interview with Father Roberto Yalaga, a priest in the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, who confirmed that at least 325 Salvadorians had been killed by the army and that a Honduran military detachment had cordoned off the bank of the Sumpul river.

Two foreign journalists, Gabriel Sanhuesa and Ursula Ferdinand, managed to get to Las Aradas from the Honduran side and obtain visual evidence of the massacre. They also managed to interview a number of survivors who had taken refuge in Honduran border villages. They published a leaflet on the incident.

A formal complaint about the massacre was filed by the priests and nuns of the Honduran diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán on 19 June 1980, signed by the diocese's 38 pastoral workers. The complaint was based on the visual evidence and the testimony gathered by the diocese as part of its investigations.

The complaint accused the Government and the armed forces of the Republic of Honduras of complicity in the massacre and in the subsequent cover-up and the Organization of American States (OAS) of complicity in covering up the tragic event. This accusation was endorsed by the entire Honduran Conference of Bishops, headed by the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Monsignor Héctor E. Santos, in a statement published by the press on 1 July 1980. From El Salvador, the Archdiocese of San Salvador endorsed and associated itself with the complaint by the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, in a communiqué published on 29 June 1980.

The Minister of Defence of El Salvador, General José Guillermo García, denied that the massacre had occurred. A year later, in an interview, he admitted that a number of people had died in a clash on 14 May 1980 at the Sumpul river, but said that the number of deaths had been greatly exaggerated.³⁷³

In October 1980, President José Napoleón Duarte, in an interview with the Canadian publication United Church Observer, acknowledged that a military operation had taken place in the Sumpul river area and said that some 300 people, all of them "communist guerrillas", had died. ³⁷⁴

The charges made by the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán were also denied in an official statement issued by the Government and armed forces of Honduras describing the accusations as libellous and irresponsible.³⁷⁵ The Honduran President, Policarpo Paz, denied the truth of the complaint in a speech broadcast on national radio and television. The Minister of Government, Colonel Cristóbal Díaz García, told the press that Honduras would not set up any commission of investigation. Replying to a question, he said that no one doubted that there had been a massacre on the other side of the river, but that Honduras had not been involved.

Colonel Alfonso Rodríguez Rincón, Chief of the OAS observers, dismissed the accusation by the Honduran Church as the product of an overactive imagination. He said that as Chief of the observers, he could confirm that they had known nothing about the incident. He added that there were numerous operations on the Salvadorian side and it was conceivable that many guerrillas had been killed; he wondered whether the incident was perhaps being confused with another one.

However, the Commission found out that OAS observers did report a major clash between Salvadorian troops and FMLN guerrillas as having occurred between 14 and 16 May 1980 on the border in that region. According to their report, over 200 people had been killed and some civilians had been caught in the crossfire, but there was no evidence that innocent civilians had been massacred.

On 26 October 1992, surviving witnesses of the Sumpul river massacre filed a judicial complaint with the Chalatenango Court of First Instance, which was declared admissible under the title "on verifying the murder of 600 people". ³⁷⁶

The Commission received some 100 direct testimonies on the incident and examined an equivalent number of testimonies presented to other organizations. It examined the documentation available, including photographs, and interviewed the original complainants. A Commission official travelled to Honduras to gather direct testimony. Members of the Commission personally inspected the scene of the massacre.

The Commission repeatedly requested the cooperation of the Salvadorian military authorities in conducting the investigation, but the only reply it received was that there were no records for that period. The Commander of Military Detachment No. 1 at the time, Colonel Ricardo Augusto Peña Arbaiza, was summonsed to testify but did not appear.

There is substantial evidence that on 13 and 14 May 1980, troops from Military Detachment No. 1 and members of the National Guard and of the paramilitary Organización Nacional Demócratica (ORDEN), backed by the air force, massacred no less than 300 unarmed civilians on the banks of the Sumpul river.

The Commission believes that the Salvadorian military authorities were guilty of a cover-up of the incident. There is sufficient evidence that Colonel Ricardo Augusto Peña Arbaiza, Commander of Military Detachment No. 1 in May 1980, made no serious investigation of the incident.

The Sumpul river massacre was a serious violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

On 22 August 1982, in the place known as El Calabozo situated beside the Amatitán river in the north of the Department of San Vicente, troops of the Atlacatl Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) killed over 200 men, women and children whom they were holding prisoner.

The victims had converged on El Calabozo from various directions, fleeing a vast anti-guerrilla military operation which had begun three days earlier in the area of Los Cerros de San Pedro and which involved, in addition to the Atlacatl BIRI, other infantry, artillery and aerial support units.

There was a major guerrilla presence, supported by the local population, in the area of the operation. Government forces had penetrated the area on earlier occasions, but the guerrillas had avoided combat. This time the operation, which bore the name "Teniente Coronel Mario Azenón Palma", involved some 6,000 troops and was designed to clear the area of guerrillas. As the troops advanced, the civilian population fled, fearing the shelling and the soldiers' violence. One of the places where a large number of fugitives congregated was El Calabozo.

According to witnesses, the fugitives were surprised by the Atlacatl Battalion unit. Some of them managed to escape; the rest were rounded up and machine-gunned.

The military operation continued for several more days. The Government informed the public that it had been a success: many guerrillas had been killed, camps had been destroyed and weapons and other supplies had been seized.

On 8 September, two weeks after the incident, the massacre was reported in The Washington Post. The Minister of Defence, General José Guillermo García, said that an investigation had been made and that no massacre had occurred. He repeated this assertion in an interview with the Commission.

In July 1992, the San Sebastián Mixed Court of First Instance launched a judicial investigation of the incident on the basis of a private complaint.

The Commission received eye witness testimony and examined available documentation. Commission members inspected the scene of the massacre. When the Commission requested information on the military operation, the units which had taken part in it and the outcome of the alleged investigation, the Minister of Defence replied that there were no records for that period.

There is sufficient evidence that on 22 August 1982, troops of the Atlacatl Battalion deliberately killed over 200 civilians - men, women and children - who had been taken prisoner without offering any resistance. The incident occurred at the place known as El Calabozo, near the canton of Amatitán Abajo, Department of San Vicente.

Although the massacre was reported publicly, the Salvadorian authorities denied it. Despite their claim to have made an investigation, there is absolutely no evidence that such an investigation took place.

The El Calabozo massacre was a serious violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

In addition to the massacres described here, the Commission received direct testimony concerning numerous other mass executions that occurred during the years 1980, 1981 and 1982, in which members of the armed forces, in the course of anti-guerrilla operations, executed peasants - men, women and children who had offered no resistance - simply because they considered them to be guerrilla collaborators.

Because the number of such individual and group executions is so high and the reports are so thoroughly substantiated, the Commission rules out any possibility that these might have been isolated incidents where soldiers or their immediate superiors went to extremes.

Everything points to the fact that these deaths formed part of a pattern of conduct, a deliberate strategy of eliminating or terrifying the peasant population in areas where the guerrillas were active, the purpose being to deprive the guerrilla forces of this source of supplies and information and of the possibility of hiding or concealing themselves among that population.

It is impossible to blame this pattern of conduct on local commanders and to claim that senior commanders did not know anything about it. As we have described, massacres of the peasant population were reported repeatedly. There is no evidence that any effort was made to investigate them. The authorities dismissed these reports as enemy propaganda. Were it not for the children's skeletons at El Mozote, some people would still be disputing that such massacres took place.

Those small skeletons are proof not only of the existence of the cold blooded massacre at El Mozote but also of the collusion of senior commanders of the armed forces, for they show that the evidence of the unburied bodies was there for a long time for anyone who wanted to investigate the facts. In this case, we cannot accept the excuse that senior commanders knew nothing of what had happened.

No action was taken to avoid incidents such as this. On the contrary, the deliberate, systematic and indiscriminate violence against the peasant population in areas of military operations went on for years.

Posted by USIP Library on: January 26, 2001
Source: UN Security Council, Annex, From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, S/25500, 1993, 114-126.