Salvadorans Mark Anniversary of 1981 Massacre of Civilians
With religious ceremonies and the solemn burial of exhumed bones, families and friends on Saturday commemorated the 22nd anniversary of a bloody army massacre of civilians during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.
Participants celebrated a Mass and dedicated a floral offering “in honor of the martyrs of Mozote,” said Maria Julia Hernandez, director of a nongovernmental agency that works with the relatives.
The massacre happened in the town of El Mozote, on the Honduran border about 80 miles northeast of the capital, San Salvador. According to Hernandez’s agency, Tutela Legal, members of a counterinsurgency army battalion “assassinated hundreds of civilians, including children, women and the elderly” during a three-day military operation lasting from Dec. 11 to Dec. 13, 1981.
The killings took place in the early days of a 12-year civil war that ended with peace accords in 1992. Salvadoran legal authorities aided by forensic experts from Argentina have been exhuming victims’ remains.
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