A Brief History
On this date, December 11, 1981, during a time of renewed tension in the cold war the United States was eager to help “friendly” countries resist communist rebellions and the USSR was doing all they could to “convert” non-communist countries to Marxism. With this backdrop, the U.S. had been training anti-insurgency forces in El Salvador and helped form the first such unit there. Unfortunately, this day saw a bloody and wrongly applied use of that force when the village of El Mozote and the area suffered the massacre of abut 900 innocent people.
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper, we find the Atlacatl Battalion (the El Salvador anti-insurgency force) sent to the El Mozote area to root out leftist guerrillas, gathering villagers and other peasants from the area and confining them indoors on December 10th overnight.
