US government responsibility for the El Mozote massacre

El Mozote

American Complicity in the Massacre at El Mozote

Today, Latin America is seen as a continent very much distinguished by its divisive political violence, an approach toward democracy beset by resistance, an ethnic makeup rife with historical tensions and a vulnerability to the incursion of foreign invasion. Such conditions have created a precarious part of the world, where military dictatorships, radical militant peasant organizations, commercial investors and legitimate democratic reformers have continually vied to bring either order or self-gratification through aggressive pursuit of control in its various states and regions.

Indeed, this was a characteristic common to the leftist revolutionary groups of Latin America, who were themselves critically implicated in the larger world conflict between two superpowers. Reflecting the broad reach of the Cold War, the various civil conflicts which tore asunder the continent during the second half of the 20th century were provoked by the opposing interests of the Soviet Union and the United States. As part of their competing strategies for 'nation-building,' both imperial entities invested manpower, weaponry and ideology in the numerously splintered militant groups which they identified as sympathetic to their respective aims.

As is frequently the case in the discourse over Latin American civil unrest, the intervention of a foreign imperialist power had a substantial impact on the devolution of stability which plunged El Salvador into a long and terrible internal conflict. With the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) support of a right-wing military junta in 1979, the nation became sharply divided in its allegiance. The established military dictatorship invoked popular resistance amongst the various leftist groups which had sought to represent social imperatives in El Salvador and neighboring states. Forming an alliance called the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the populist movement erupted with protest, led by such vocal organizers as the Archbishop Oscar Romero. (Harper, 1)

Having the sympathies of the people and simultaneously representing what the United State viewed as a communist threat to its pale of influence in Latin America, the FMLN was targeted by the hardline El Salvador military, now as the Atlacatl Battalion. The army paramilitary group used tactics of fear, domination and bloodshed in order to stamp out what it viewed as the simultaneous threat of the FMLN campesinos and the rural dwellers who sympathized with them. The village of El Mozote would contain just such an assembly, comprised of women, children and the elderly as well as the guerilla rebels who camped their. Thus, on December 11th, 1981, the Atlacatl Battalion approached the village with the intention of eliminating it from existence. With the support of the United States both in its funding and in the degree to which the event was obscured from the eyes of the international community, the Battalion would hold the village and its inhabitants hostage for 24 hours before torturing and killing every man in the village; raping then murdering all girls and women above the age of 12; machine gunning the children; and burning the buildings constituting the village to the ground. As the primary text by Danner (1994) reports on the incident which has emerged to notoriety only in the decade thereafter "that in the United States it came to be known, that it was exposed to the light and then allowed to fall back into the dark, makes the story of El Mozote -- how it came to happen and how it came to be denied -- a central parable of the Cold War." (Danner, 13)

This comports with an emerging pattern of U.S. intervention in Central and South America, where a voracious push for agrarian reform, labor protections and other leftist causes threatened to plunge the region into communist orientation. The Reagan Administration is notable in history for reinvigorating the more aggressive elements of the Cold War. The principle of fighting the Soviets by proxy would gain some of its strongest executive interest in contexts such as Central America. Indeed, in El Salvador, the dedication of the U.S. To a harsh military dictatorship reflect its priorities in the Cold War. At this juncture, these appeared less to coincide with the rhetorical priorities of democracy or the philosophical aims of nation-building. This denoted an imperative clearly intended simply to confront and vanquish the Soviets in any context. Given the defeat suffered in Cuba in 1959 and sustained as the lone Soviet bargaining chip in the backyard of the United States, the United States had come to view the security of this region from communist power to be a major priority.

So much was this a priority that pleas from the leftist movement to the U.S. government would be met with disregard. Indeed, Golden (2000) reports that "by 1980, amidst overarching violence, Romero wrote to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him to cease sending military aid because he wrote, 'it is being used to repress my people.' The U.S. sent $1.5 million in aid every day for 12 years. His letter went unheeded. Two months later he would be assassinated." (Golden, 1)

The military government was held as largely responsible for targeting the influential leftist advocate, provoking the outbreak of total civil war. At this juncture, the global community had come to understand America's role in the violence persisting throughout El Salvador. The United States was noted for its contribution of resource support to the government and for its foreboding of any outside parties the provision of aid to leftist groups in El Salvador. From this role, it helped to provide a shield from the observation and intervention of the world community as the military battalion gradually moved from targeting activist or rebel groups to liquidating parts of the civilian population viewed as sympathizers with the revolutionary cause. It is at this juncture that America's priorities in conquering the global scourge of communism came into direct intercession with the interests of a tiny village in the jungles of El Salvador. With a population whose numbers are often debated in the forensic aftermath of the massacre, El Mozote is said to have been between 300 to just under 1000 inhabitants including the guerillas who were among the unidentified masses found on the site.

Danner's text is particularly compelling for the firsthand account which it reports from one of the only known survivors of the massacre. Rufina Amaya would be a source for many of the reports to emerge in the U.S. media in the aftermath of the massacre, providing direct testimony to the reporters who would suffer considerable discrediting at the hands of the U.S. government. In Danner's text, Amaya's testimony is captured in full. With respect to the initiation of the massacre, she describes an event that most clearly depicts unarmed civilians being executed in cold blood. She reports that "the soldiers told the villagers they were from the Atlacatl Battalion. 'They said they wanted our weapons but we didn't have any. That made them angry, and they started killing us.' Many of the peasants were shot while in their homes. But the soldiers dragged others from their houses and the church and put them in lines, women in one, men in another, Mrs. Amaya said. It was during this confusion that she managed to escape, she said." (Danner, 191)

This would put her in a position to report on the nature of the atrocities which she had experienced. She would also survive to lead New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner and Washington Post reporter Alma Guillermoprieto to visit the village where even for the ensuing month, nobody had arrived to assess what had occurred. This is an important sequence of events for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the level of sheer complicity facing the United States government with respect to the massacre. Indeed, that nobody of authority had visited the location where a massive human rights atrocity had occurred was deeply discrediting to the operation in El Salvador over which conservative Republic President Ronal Reagan now presided. The dedication of money are arms to an operation in El Salvador now appeared as, at the very least, impractical given the clear lack of authority on the part of the United States. That is to say that either it endorsed the actions committed by the Atlacatl Battalion or it failed to prevent them. From a political perspective, neither of these was an appealing responsibility to accept, which initiated the second repercussion of Amaya's survival.

Were it not egregious enough to consider that the United States had sided aggressively in both a practical and philosophical way with the force responsible for this act of atrocity, its response to the evidence emerging regarding that which had occurred in El Mozote is yet more stunning. For the Reagan administration and his Republican co-conspirators in Congress, the primary enemies in the scenario were the journalists who had reported the atrocities to the American public and the world at large. Indeed, even as the administration continued unrepentantly to request funding from Congress from the continuation of this cause, it would tie this request to a slandering of Bonner and Guillermoprieto. Accusing both of possessing communist sympathies and of allowing themselves to become tools of leftist propaganda, a staunch Reagan ally, Ambassador Rivas from El Salvador, argues that "'serious efforts' were being made to stem armed forces abuses and that this was the 'type of story that leads us to believe there is a plan' to discredit the ongoing electoral process in El Salvador, and to discredit the armed forces 'or to take credit away from the certification President Reagan must make to Congress." (Danner, 188)