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Date:         Thu, 5 Nov 1992 02:24:44 CST
From:         "(Rich Winkel)" <rich@PENCIL.CS.MISSOURI.EDU>
Subject:      Proceso 536: Exhumations in El Mozote
Comments: To: politics%ucf1vm@mizzou1.BITNET

/** reg.elsalvador: 133.0 **/
** Topic: Proceso 536: Human Rights **
** Written  9:06 am  Nov  3, 1992 by cidai@huracan.cr in cdp:reg.elsalvador **
From: cidai@huracan.cr (Centro de Informacion Documentacion y Apoyo a la Invest.
 - UCAJSC)
Subject: Proceso 536: Human Rights

Center for Information, Documentation and Research Support (CIDAI)
Central American University (UCA)
San Salvador, El Salvador

PROCESO 536
October 28, 1992

IDHUCA REPORT:
Exhumations in El Mozote

     Breaking with the sins of the recent past is not a simple task
in El Salvador. Even though the massive, profound and unjustified
human rights violations committed here demand full clarification in
order to attain effective and consistent national reconciliation,
the governmental structures continue to be the principal sources of
hindrance and opposition to getting to the bottom of the truth.
There have been repeated public manifestations of this attitude by
top judicial officials over the past week, in the context of the
process of exhuming the remains of the victims of the El Mozote
massacre.

Brief history of the case

     The El Mozote massacre -just like the other well-known
massacres like Rio Sumpul, Las Hojas and others- was the product of
the "scorched earth" counterinsurgency strategy which the army
carried out mercilessly during the first few years of the war. In
this context, the El Mozote massacre was, if not the worst, at
least one of the worst manifestations of contempt for the life and
dignity of the poor campesinos of El Salvador. In fact, about a
thousand women, children and elderly campesinos were killed between
December 10 and 14, 1981. According to local residents who survived
the massacre, the brutal incident was perpetrated by troops
belonging to the Immediate Reaction Atlacatl Battalion.
     The Legal Aid Office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador
investigated and documented the case in great detail. As a result,
the relatives of those killed in El Mozote presented a suit in 1990
which seeks to determine individual responsibilities for the
massacre. The case was assigned to the principal court of San
Francisco Gotera (Morazan), and after overcoming countless
obstacles, the process of exhuming the remains of the victims has
begun. The team carrying out the exhumation has 90 days to do so,
and is headed up by judge Federico Portillo, Dr. Juan Mateu Llort
(director of the Forensic Medicine Institute) some 20
anthropologists, pathologists and forensic expert from different
countries (Argentina, Chile, Spain, England and the U.S.), as well
as delegates from the Legal Aid Office of the Archdiocese and the
non-governmental Human Rights Commission.
     The job of these experts is to determine, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, the existence of wounds or indications of torture to which
the victims were subjected, and to establish the body of the crime.
In this sense, it is possible to say that ten years after the
massacre, those killed in El Mozote "can testify" before the nation
and the world about the horrors and excesses committed by those who
staunchly defend an unjust socio-political system such as the one
which still prevails in El Salvador. After one week of excavating
in the El Mozote area, the skeletons of some 58 persons have been
unearthed, most of them children, as well as one pregnant woman.
According to witnesses and relatives of the victims, there are at
least five other areas around the village which presumably contain
mass graves.

The first vicissitudes of the exhumation

     The government knew it was inevitable that the dimensions of
the campaign of extermination and terror, aimed at stifling the
challenge to the established order represented by the incipient
revolutionary forces at the time, would be revealed and
ascertained. And even now, as the truth is about to revealed, the
government continues to refuse to bring the masterminds and
executioners of this genocide to justice.
     The work of obstructing justice and covering up the crime has
included the highest government circles. President Cristiani has
repeatedly refused to present a list of the military personnel
involved in the massacre. His most recent refusal was addressed to
the judge in charge of the investigation. The arguments wielded by
the president are feeble, and demonstrate his complicity with the
military assassins. He alleges that it is impossible to determine
their identity because "after having searched for information, we
have found nothing, not a single record. We must recall that there
was a de facto government at the time and the Armed Forces was
being restructured."
     Similar positions have also been found in the highest echelons
of the judicial system. The latest example of this was seen on
October 21, during a visit to the exhumation site by the president
of the Supreme Court, Mauricio Gutierrez Castro. Before even
showing any outrage at seeing the scandalous evidence which had
been unearthed, Gutierrez plunged into a public dispute with
Argentine anthropologist Dr. Mercedes Doretti and Truth Commission
member Dr. Patricia Valdez. At the center of the dispute was
Gutierrez' rude opposition to the experts' well-placed suggestion
that the excavations ought to be carried out simultaneously in
order to speed up the process. According to him, speeding up and
broadening the work of exhumation was inappropriate because "first
we have to finish with El Mozote before going on to other places,
because otherwise that would mean using more personnel and
incurring greater costs; anyway, international attention is focused
on El Mozote, and that is how the case is known. So digging holes
here and there would not be as appropriate as remaining where
evidence has already been found."
     Finally, from another quarter, and in an attempt to cover up
the truth, the morning daily El Diario de Hoy, true to its unique
tradition of disinformation, published a story about the case on
October 20 in which it blatantly suggested the hypothesis that the
skeletons and other human remains found in El Mozote were those of
FMLN combatants and not those of defenseless civilians. Even though
such a hypothesis is ridiculous and unfounded, it constitutes a
grave offense to Salvadoran society in general. Nevertheless, the
objective and impartial work of the forensic experts will be able
to reconstruct the horrors to which the massacred campesinos were
subjected. The ultimate goal of this difficult and delicate work of
exhuming their remains is the need to get to the bottom of such
barbarous and irrational acts in order that they never be repeated.


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