El Mozote massacre

El Mozote Massacre
The memorial at El Mozote
Date	December 11, 1981
Target	Civilian residents of Mozote and neighbouring villages
Attack type	Shooting, grenades, decapitation
Deaths	900-1,200
Perpetrator	Salvadoran Army, Atlacatl Battalion

The El Mozote Massacre took place in and around the village of El Mozote, in Morazán department, El Salvador, on December 11, 1981, when the Salvadoran Army killed more than 800 civilians during the Salvadoran Civil War.

In December 2011, the El Salvador government apologized for the massacre.

In 1981, various left-wing guerrilla groups coalesced into the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front to battle El Salvador's right-wing government. Prior to the massacre, unlike many villages in the area, El Mozote had a reputation for neutrality. While many of its neighbors were largely Roman Catholic, and therefore often influenced by liberation theology and sympathetic to the guerrillas, El Mozote was largely Evangelical Protestant. The village had sold guerrillas some supplies but was also "a place where the guerrillas had learned not to look for recruits."

Prior to the massacre, the town's wealthiest man, Marcos Díaz, had gathered the citizens to warn them that the army would soon pass through the area in a counterinsurgency operation, but he had been assured that the town's residents would not be harmed if they remained in place. Concerned that fleeing the town would cause them to be mistaken for guerrillas, the townspeople chose to stay and extended an offer of protection to peasants from the surrounding area, who soon flooded the town.

In his 1994 book, The Massacre at El Mozote, US journalist Mark Danner compiled various reports to reconstruct an account of the massacre:

On the afternoon of December 10, 1981, units of the Salvadoran army's Atlacatl Battalion (named after an indigenous fighter, who fought the Spanish in the 16th century) arrived at the remote village of El Mozote after a clash with guerrillas in the vicinity. The Atlacatl was a "Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion" specially trained for counter-insurgency warfare. It was the first unit of its kind in the Salvadoran armed forces and was trained by United States military advisors. Its mission, Operación Rescate ("Operation Rescue"), was to eliminate the rebel presence in a small region of northern Morazán where the FMLN had two camps and a training center.