On this day in 1981, the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion systematically massacred the entire village of El Mozote, El Salvador, killing nearly 1,000 ppl (533 children & 200 women). Soldiers tortured, raped, beheaded & burned down a building packed full of trapped children. 
The Atlacatl was a “Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion” created for “counter-insurgency” warfare by the US. The battalion carried out the massacre with US weapons, and there are also credible claims US advisors even oversaw the massacre.
ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/el-salvador-30…
ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/el-salvador-30…
The Mozote massacre was the most brutal signal incident of the 12 year war in El Salvador, in which the US backed brutal death squads & a military junta waging a ruthless war on the FMLN leftist movement & villagers, workers, and students who were suspected of supported it.
Around noon on Dec 11, 1981 the battalion began taking the women and older girls in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them after raping them. Girls as young as 10 were raped.
Many children were killed by slitting their throats, then by hanging them from trees, other children were tossed in the air and bayoneted. After killing the entire village's population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings.
Rufina Amaya, a witness who survived the attack described how the army killed her husband and her four children, the youngest of whom was 8 months old. Then they lit the bodies on fire.
Amaya described watching her husband being beheaded and hearing her daughter’s final scream. She heard her son shout: “Mama, they’re killing me. They’ve killed my sister. They’re going to kill me.”
nytimes.com/2007/03/09/wor…
nytimes.com/2007/03/09/wor…
The soldiers methodically executed everyone in the village. They killed children last, firing into a building children had been trapped in. Then they set it on fire. A decade later, the remains of at least 143 child victims were found in that building, w/ the average age being 6.
Immediately after the massacre, the Reagan admin increased support for El Salvador’s right-wing regime and sent US US Special Forces instructors to El Salvador, for additional training on how to commit more atrocities.
The Reagan admin denied the massacre occurred & even tried to help El Salvador cover it up. The US still has many records on its support for the atrocities in El Salvador that have not been released.
The University of Washington Center for Human Rights is suing for the release of these and other documents relating to US involvement in the war in El Salvador. jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/20…
In 2015, someone broke into the UW Center for Human Rights and stole the records on the US involvement in El Salvador. The break-in happened just as the center was accusing the CIA of illegally withholding records. magazine.washington.edu/feature/on-the…
The fight to bring to justice Salvadoran military personnel who carried out the atrocities is ongoing; however, there are no signs the Washington DC planners and funders of the atrocities will be brought to justice.
thedailybeast.com/el-salvadors-e…
thedailybeast.com/el-salvadors-e…
