The Briefing Room
General Category => World News => Topic started by: TomSea on December 11, 2018, 05:39:23 pm
-
El Mozote massacre: Waiting for justice nearly 40 years later
by Anna-Cat Brigida
El Mozote, El Salvador - Juan Antonio Pereira knows who killed his wife and children. But nearly four decades later, the men responsible continue to walk free.
On the day of the massacre - December 12, 1981 - Pereira, 43 at the time, was at home in the Salvadoran village of Los Toriles with his wife. He was worried. The country was in the early years of a brutal civil war between the Salvadoran military and left-wing guerrillas. He had been hearing a steady stream of gunshots since the day before and he went next door to check in on his mother. While walking back to his home, he saw soldiers approaching and decided to hide.
Pereira, recalling the event 37 years later, said from where he hid, he saw the soldiers murder his wife Natalia, their 10-year-old son Mario and 14-year-old daughter Maria. Fourteen of Pereira's family members were shot dead that day, including his mother and both brothers.
Read more at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/el-mozote-massacre-waiting-justice-40-years-181210151727647.html (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/el-mozote-massacre-waiting-justice-40-years-181210151727647.html)
More reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War)
This last link is from Mark Danner who wrote a book on this incident.
http://www.markdanner.com/articles/the-truth-of-el-mozote (http://www.markdanner.com/articles/the-truth-of-el-mozote)
The war started in about 1978. I read that by 1983 in one of the links above, US military officers were put in charge of Salvadoran forces probably because of their behavior. It's not all comfortable to read.
The Guardian is about the only other MSM outlet that is covering this, as of now. Of course, both of these sources are not right-wing-friendly.... but the story should be aired. Maybe we will see some other reports.