The El Mozote Massacre - Essay Example

It was the initial unit of its type in the Salvadoran military and was prepared by the US martial advisors. Its mission was Operacion Rescate or in other words, Operation Rescue was to abolish the revolutionary existence in a small district of northern Morazan, where the FMLN had a base camp and a training area. On the arrival of the armed forces, the soldiers not merely found the villagers but the campaigners who have constructed refuge in the neighborhood area. The military forces asked the villagers about the guerrillas and told them to lock themselves in their houses1.

In the next two days, soldiers separated men and women plus children as well. During the morning they grilled torture and finished the men in various locations. After killing the men, they took women and older girls in groups, raped them, and then killed them with their machine guns. Girls of age 12 were also raped under the alleged reason of supporting the guerillas. After killing the whole inhabitants, soldiers set up a fire to the buildings. On December 13, they went to the village of Los Tories, which is 2 km away from El Mozote.

A lot of inhabitants managed to escape but the unfortunate were lined up and shot dead. El Mozote 2However, the same thing was repeated in La Joya canton on December 11, in the village of La Rancheria on December 12, and in the village of Jocote Amarillo plus Cerro Pando canton on December 13. The victims of El Mozote were left unburied2. The guerrilla's secret radio station started spreading news of a massacre of inhabitants in the region.

On December 31, the FMLN subjected "a call to the International Red Cross, the OAS Human Rights Commission, and the intercontinental journalists to validate the genocide of over 900 Salvadorans" within and in the surrounding region of El Mozote. A number of Salvadoran human rights groups criticized the massacre. The Salvadoran system firmly shorn of that a massacre had occurred. No legal inquiry was commenced and there was no utterance of any analysis by the authorities or the military3. However, in the superseding years, the El Mozote tale was gradually buried.

In 2007, the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights unlocked the inquiry of the El Mozote massacre because of innovative proof originated by a team of Argentine forensic anthropologists in 2003. Current hard work by the lawyers in El Salvador to regenerate the case, which was abandoned in 2000, has constantly been unsuccessful4. However, a book was written in the honor of the victims of El Mozote by the author Mark Danner namely "The Massacre at El Mozote and Beyond the Mountains: The Legacy of Duvalier.