{"id":492,"date":"2016-06-13T18:27:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T18:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cejil.z.actotal.net\/caso\/el-mozote-massacre\/"},"modified":"2021-03-12T20:23:01","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T20:23:01","slug":"el-mozote-massacre","status":"publish","type":"caso","link":"https:\/\/cejil.org\/en\/case\/el-mozote-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"El Mozote Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early morning of December 10, 1981, the Salvadoran military bombarded El Mozote, a small town in the Moroz\u00e1n department of El Salvador. Days before the events took place, radio transmissions and voicemails had been sent to the residents of El Mozote announcing that all in the area would be killed. The only way they could escape death, according to the messages, was if they were to lock themselves up in their homes. This way, the military assured the localization and accessibility of the population of El Mozote.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Carried out by the Immediate Response Infantry Battalion of Atlacatl, also known as the \u201cBIRI Atlacatl,\u201d along with forces of the Third Infantry Brigade of San Miguel, the Command Center of San Francisco Gotera and the help of air forces, the operation was called \u201cOperation Rescue\u201d or \u201cAnvil and Hammer.\u201d Between one thousand and two thousand troops were deployed in search of an alleged training camp belonging to the counter-insurgency.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The operation was extended throughout varying localities of northeastern El Salvador between December 10th<\/sup> and 13th<\/sup>. The soldiers began the operation in the small villages of El Mozote. They burned houses and animals, separated the women and children from the men and executed them. About one thousand people were massacred, with almost half of the victims being minors. To this day, the El Mozote Massacres mark the largest massacre to occur in Latin America. After the massacre, the troops returned to their headquarters to inform their superiors of the operation\u2019s \u201csuccess,\u201d which had been headed by Col. Domingo Monterrosa, Commander in Chief of the Atlacatl Battalion at the time. Meanwhile, the survivors of the massacre fled toward the hills and later returned to bury their loved ones. Many of those survivors migrated either within the country to different regions or to Honduras in order to escape any possible future attacks.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1993, El Salvador passed a Law of General Amnesty for the Consolidation of Peace, in a such a way that, to this day, none of the facts that have been presented from the El Mozote massacre have been investigated, and furthermore, not one person has been tried for the grave crimes committed. The case entered the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on March 8, 2011, after the Inter-American Commission (IACHR) accredited the responsibility of the attacks to the State of El Salvador for numerous human rights violations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Case Impacts<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n