The Massacre at El Mozote

The second chapter begins with a brief overview of what effects the exhumation described in the previous chapter had in 1992, now that a peace treaty had been signed and the aftermath of the civil war was unfolding. “[H]uman rights groups” and “politicians of the left” saw the discovery as vindication, “definitive evidence that a matanza—a great killing—had taken place in Morazán” (11). On the other hand, Meanwhile, government members developed a reconstruction of events in which the dead children found in the church were guerrillas, and thus armed combatants during wartime. More facts and counter-facts began to circulate through various partisan news outlets: there was no record of military operations in that area of the country, but there were newspaper articles from December of 1981 discussing “Operación Rescate—Operation Rescue” (12). 

The chapter then returns the reader to El Mozote and the recovery efforts, in which some of the forensic anthropologists recover and catalogue the remaining bones of a tiny skeleton “perhaps a foot-and-a-half long” (14). Along with these remains, they find a toy horse that could help with identifying the remains, except for the fact that “here they killed all the mothers, too” (14).

Danner then turns to the accounts of people who lived nearby, including “Sebastiano Luna and his wife, Alba Ignacia del Cid,” who described, in the days preceding the massacre, how everyone in the surrounding area came to El Mozote for sanctuary from the war (16). This came at the behest of “the richest man in town” and owner of the general store, Marcos Díaz, who “had friends among the officers [of the Salvadoran army],” and had heard from one that “[t]he people of El Mozote would have no problems—provided they stay where they were” (16). 

Partly because of Díaz’s prestige and partly because of the town’s unique position in the war, people flocked to El Mozote. In this part of the country, “villages ‘belonged’ to the government or to the guerrillas or to neither or both,” but El Mozote maintained a tense neutrality, selling supplies to both the army and to the guerillas, although it was understood that “El Mozote had not been known as a guerrilla town” (17). This was due to the larger-than-average Protestant population, which was resistant to communism. But between the government, the guerrillas and El Mozote, “a delicate coexistence had been forged—an unstated agreement by both parties to look the other way” (19). Sebastiano and Alba, however, decided not to go, instead hiding “in the mountains above their house,” from which they later saw “thick columns of smoke rising from El Mozote, and smelled the odor of what seemed like tons of roasting meat” (20).

Chapter 3 further develops the necessary context for better understanding the events of December 1981 in the region of Morazán. Danner begins with a brief description of Radio Venceremos (meaning “‘We Shall Overcome’ Radio”), the guerrillas’ successful underground radio station that had become a thorn in the side of the governmental and military leadership: “the station [...] specialized in ideological propaganda, acerbic commentary, and pointed ridicule of the government” (22). The Salvadoran military leadership, especially Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios, decided that they needed to “advance [in the north] no matter what the cost until we reach the command post and Radio Venceremos” (22). This goal became one of the driving factors in the offensive that would take place that December, during which the Massacre at El Mozote would occur. 

Danner then provides an account of how Monterrosa, the “commander of the elite Atlacatl Battalion,” fit into the general scheme of the military leadership in the Salvadoran army (22). Widely respected among his peers, Monterrosa was a cut above most of the other military officials, many of whom were “embarrassing incompetents” (23). This then leads to a discussion of the fraught political situation in El Salvador, with leftist military leaders enacting coups that were then reversed soon afterwards by right wing military counter-coups, the volatility of which increased the reliance on “dirty war” tactics, especially by the ruling governmental and military forces. The brutality of these tactics was astonishing, and its effects included mutilated corpses in the streets of cities. This was a return to similarly brutal tactics used decades earlier to repress other incipient uprisings. Although the official line was that the identities of the perpetrators of these murders was a mystery, “there was no secret about who was doing the killing”: they were “basically organized and directed by Salvadoran Army officers—and [there was] no doubt, either, that the American Embassy was well aware of it” (27).     

The chapter then turns to Santiago, who directed Radio Venceremos and went to the hidden “studio” to send out a broadcast warning of the coming attack, packing up the equipment and returning to the large encampment of guerrillas in a town near El Mozote called La Guacamaya. In this section, Danner also describes in broad strokes the history of the guerrillas and how the movement grew first in the southern parts of the country then moved north as the so-called “final offensive,” meant to spark a mass “popular insurrection,” ultimately failed to do so. It also describes the self-perpetuating cycle by which guerrillas would attack an army outpost and the army would punish the villagers they assumed to be aiding the guerrillas, after which more villagers would join the guerrillas. The chapter ends with further attempts by guerrillas to warn the people gathered in El Mozote before the invasion by Monterrosa’s government forces begins.