The El Mozote Massacre : Human Rights And Global Implications

400 Pages·2016·12.609 MB·English

by  Leigh Binford

LEIGH BINFORD
TH E EL M OZOTE
M ASSACRE
Human Rights and Global Implications
REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION
THE UNIVERSITY OF
Arizona press
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The University of Arizona Press
www.uapress.arizona.edu
© 2016 The Arizona Board of Regents
All rights reserved. Published 2016
Printed in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3216-2 (paper)
Cover designed by Carrie House, HOUSEdesign 11c
Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created
with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal
agency.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress.
©This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To Doña Lola: midwife, coffee grower, human rights
activist, and confidante of a thousand compás

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ix
Preface to the Revised Edition xi
Acknowledgments xv
List of Abbreviations xix
Introduction: Reducing Cultural Distance in Human
Rights Reporting 3
1 The Massacre 15
2 The Eye of the Oligarchy 34
3 The U.S. Cover-Up 58
4 The Nascent Community of El Mozote 8o
5 The Politics of Repression and Survival in Northern Morazán 103
6 Investigation and Judgment 132
7 A Reformed Military? t-57
8 History and Memory !88
9 Representation, Witness, and Silence 212
VIII CONTENTS
10 The Struggle for Justice 238
11 Nunca Más!: El Mozote, Human Rights, and Transitional Justice 257
Chronology 2J3
Notes 283
References jjp
Index 363
ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS
1. El Salvador 2
2. Northern Morazán 19
FIGURES
1. Wooden crosses at the foot of an eroded adobe wall 8
2. El Mozote shortly after the massacre 21
3. El Mozote, layout of The Plain 24
4. One of El Mozote’s main streets in late December several weeks
after the massacre 31
5. Destroyed home in El Mozote 31
6. Sign left by the Adacatl on the wall of an El Mozote house 32
7. Baptismal font 95
8. Genealogical chart of descendants of TM and Isabel 127
9. Genealogical chart of descendants of NM andC atalina 127
10. Sacristy excavation 144
11. Skull and the bones surrounding it 146
12. Jorge Meléndez (Comandante “Jonas”) 191
X ILLUSTRATIONS
13. Museum of the Salvadoran Revolution, Heroes and Martyrs 193
14. Samuel Vidal Guzmán 194
15. Portion of the tail section of the helicopter of Lt. Col. Domingo
Monterrosa 195
16. Seven closed caskets containing the remains of at least 143 persons
disinterred in the sacristy at El Mozote 209
17. Primary memorial in the El Mozote plaza 219
18. Local member of the tourist collective describing the massacre
for visitors 220
19. Fidelia Amaya stands at the entrance to the Museo Rufina Amaya 223
20. Mural of Light and Garden of Reflection 229
TABLES
1. List of structures and inhabitants from the El Mozote survey 22
2. Massacres in northern Morazán, 1980-1981 118
3. Riflings by military and security forces in northern Morazán 120
4. Genealogical survey of sample of former El Mozote residents 125
5. Percentages of 433 Mariona prisoners subjected to each of
40 forms of torture 178
6. Human rights violations reported to the Truth Commission by
northern Morazanians, 1980-1991 180
7. Families repopulating El Mozote as of August 1993 202
PREFACE TO THE
REVISED EDITION
THE EARLIER EDITION of The El Mozote Massacre was completed in
1994, about the time I began a nine-month-long study of northern
Morazán supported by a Fulbright-Hays fellowship. A few years later
I relocated to Puebla, Mexico, to take up a position at the Social Science
and Humanities Research Institute of the Autonomous University of Puebla
(Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla [BUAP]). For most of the
next twelve years, my research focused on international migration from Mex­
ico to the United States and Canada. I thought and occasionally wrote about
northern Morazán, but it was only in 2008 that I returned there for a month
with the object of catching up on events of the last decade and obtaining the
preliminary information necessary to write a research grant. That grant mate­
rialized the following year and, funded by the National Science Foundation
([NSF] grant BCS-0962643), for several months over each of the following
three summers (2010-2012), I worked with a team of local and international
researchers to study what I referred to as “postinsurgent individuality.” The
NSF project was focused not on El Mozote but on the costs and adjust­
ments of the postwar among the members of three groups with some for­
mer relationship to the Frente Farabundo Mari para la Liberación Nacional
(FMLN): the Christian Base Communities of El Salvador (Comunidades
Eclesiales de Base de El Salvador [CEBES]), the Tourism Promotor (Promo­
tora de Turismo [PRODETUR]), and an agricultural cooperative—or what