El Mozote Massacre

One of the most notorious human rights violations during the Civil War occured early on in the war's timeline with the El Mozote Massacre in December of 1981.  The Atlacatl Battalion of the U.S.-supported Salvadoran army came into the small Salvadoran village and killed 809 victims, with only one villager surviving.  Rufina Amaya watched her country's own government slaughter not only her family but her entire village as well.  Following the massacre, the United States governement stated that anyone who was killed was most likely a rebel, which turned out to be extremely false when the mass burial sites in El Mozote that were excavated post-war were filled with innocent civilians.

Rufina Amaya shared her story of the massacre with the New York Times, which made many Americans question why their country was supporting a government who was carelessly slaying its own people.  The New York Times' article on Amaya gave graphic details of what occured in El Mozote.  It was reported that the government soldiers went into the village and split up the villagers into groups of men, women, and children, with the men and children either beheaded or mowed down by machine guns and the women being raped and kill.  The article included an interesting quote from Amaya that gives the insight of the Salvadoran people on the Civil War.  The average Salvadoran civilian did not even want anything to do with the war, as Amaya "...remembers people saying: ‘Don’t get involved. Let’s just live and work and not get involved’” (Martin).