A judge has reopened the investigation of perhaps the most ghastly and notorious crime of the Cold War, the 1981 massacre of as many as 1,200 Salvadoran villagers in the northeastern town of El Mozote. El Mozote became a synonym for the United States’ government’s atrocities in a brutal campaign to stave off communism in Latin America and the rest of the developing world. The slaughter was carried out by an elite army unit trained at the U.S. School of the Americas. Most of the victims were women and children, all were civilians.
El Salvador’s civil war stretched from 1980 to 1992, leaving 75,000 dead and another 8,000 people missing. El Salvador’s government denied for years having had any role in the killing, but in 2012 the government of then-President Mauricio Funes acknowledged the state’s role and apologized to the families of the victims.
— source telesurtv.net | 2016