WEBVTT

00:00:02.772 --> 00:00:09.772
[music]

00:00:52.267 --> 00:00:54.170
My name is Rufina Amaya.

00:00:56.724 --> 00:00:59.182
I lived outside El Salvador
for eight years.

00:01:04.728 --> 00:01:06.192
I had to flee to Honduras

00:01:06.360 --> 00:01:09.260
because the Salvadoran army
was attacking and killing us.

00:01:10.255 --> 00:01:11.405
I had to save my life.

00:01:17.785 --> 00:01:20.744
My daughter was born
in a refugee camp in Honduras.

00:01:25.038 --> 00:01:28.438
From the time she was small,
she dreamed of returning to El Salvador.

00:01:28.904 --> 00:01:32.354
She\'d go out with her little suitcases
pretending she was going there,

00:01:32.563 --> 00:01:35.563
then she\'d come back saying,
\"Mom, I\'ve been to El Salvador.\"

00:01:35.754 --> 00:01:36.854
She gave me strength.

00:01:46.159 --> 00:01:47.699
In December 1981,

00:01:48.159 --> 00:01:50.759
I lost everything
that I\'d worked for over the years,

00:01:50.927 --> 00:01:53.050
My children, my money, everything.

00:02:01.919 --> 00:02:08.919
[music]

00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:17.343
My name is Wilson Guevara Barrera.

00:02:18.537 --> 00:02:20.187
I spent all my childhood in war.

00:02:20.864 --> 00:02:22.364
They were really tough times.

00:02:30.381 --> 00:02:32.481
I was 11 when I first picked up a pistol.

00:02:34.974 --> 00:02:36.724
I was fighting with the guerrillas.

00:02:37.193 --> 00:02:44.193
[music]

00:02:54.102 --> 00:02:55.102
When the war ended,

00:02:55.270 --> 00:02:58.355
I decided to join
the new National Civilian Police.

00:03:17.057 --> 00:03:18.907
I was afraid when we came back here.

00:03:19.462 --> 00:03:21.412
The soldiers were still in the streets,

00:03:21.580 --> 00:03:23.780
so I was afraid,
knowing that they were mean.

00:03:24.142 --> 00:03:25.292
That they were killers.

00:03:31.755 --> 00:03:34.884
I\'d ask myself
why I\'d ever come back to El Salvador

00:03:35.265 --> 00:03:38.315
with everything that had happened,
and everything they\'d done.

00:03:55.527 --> 00:03:58.177
Here in the new Civilian Police,
there are guerrillas.

00:03:58.345 --> 00:04:00.645
There are also
members of the old police force,

00:04:00.813 --> 00:04:03.735
civilians, and some soldiers
from the Atlacatl Battalion.

00:04:13.647 --> 00:04:16.184
I didn\'t feel too comfortable about that
at first.

00:04:16.352 --> 00:04:17.352
I was weary,

00:04:17.520 --> 00:04:19.670
because they\'d been our enemies
for so long.

00:04:25.492 --> 00:04:27.292
Now people say that the war is over,

00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:29.710
and we shouldn\'t hold grudges
against anybody,

00:04:29.951 --> 00:04:31.001
but it\'s not so easy.

00:04:37.517 --> 00:04:44.517
[music]

00:05:11.928 --> 00:05:15.289
El Mozote used to be a pretty place
and many people lived there.

00:05:18.174 --> 00:05:20.174
I was happy there with all my children.

00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:24.906
We had sugar cane fields
and [?] patches.

00:05:26.903 --> 00:05:28.327
We grew corn and beans.

00:05:29.334 --> 00:05:30.784
We were selling handicrafts,

00:05:31.346 --> 00:05:32.796
so we were doing fairly well.

00:05:52.288 --> 00:05:53.568
I was born in Mozote.

00:05:54.361 --> 00:05:55.861
It was a nice little village.

00:05:58.752 --> 00:06:02.202
My mom used the spinning wheel
to make tiny bows out of Mezcal string,

00:06:02.370 --> 00:06:04.220
and she\'d go into town to sell them.

00:06:10.510 --> 00:06:13.660
In December 1981, I was eight years old,

00:06:16.211 --> 00:06:17.261
but I remember a lot.

00:06:17.579 --> 00:06:20.479
That was the year of the worst massacre
in the eastern area

00:06:21.129 --> 00:06:22.736
or even the entire country.

00:06:40.788 --> 00:06:44.461
We were at my in-law\'s house
pressing sugarcane to make sweets.

00:06:47.750 --> 00:06:52.134
All of a sudden we heard shooting
and saw planes firing in all directions

00:06:52.398 --> 00:06:55.928
over towards Arambala, La Joya,
everywhere.

00:06:57.092 --> 00:07:04.092
[helicopters flying]

00:07:29.557 --> 00:07:33.514
[machine gun firing]

00:07:33.682 --> 00:07:39.095
[plane flying]

00:07:41.265 --> 00:07:42.865
We were living near the school.

00:07:43.753 --> 00:07:45.795
The first soldiers arrived in Mozote.

00:07:51.523 --> 00:07:53.023
A soldier came up to our house

00:07:53.191 --> 00:07:55.841
and told us
that everybody had to go to the church.

00:07:59.435 --> 00:08:02.135
My mom and Don Fernando,
the man she was living with,

00:08:02.303 --> 00:08:03.303
said they\'d go.

00:08:04.460 --> 00:08:05.460
They left

00:08:05.628 --> 00:08:08.478
and I stayed behind
in the house with my younger brother.

00:08:24.373 --> 00:08:26.723
First
they forced everybody out of their houses,

00:08:26.891 --> 00:08:29.141
and made us all
lie face down in the street,

00:08:29.565 --> 00:08:30.565
both men and women.

00:08:36.334 --> 00:08:37.434
The kids were crying.

00:08:37.983 --> 00:08:40.283
They kept us there
until 7:00 in the evening.

00:08:40.985 --> 00:08:43.035
They searched us all and took everything,

00:08:43.349 --> 00:08:46.549
then they told us to get up
and lock ourselves inside our houses.

00:08:47.296 --> 00:08:50.579
They said if we stuck so much
as our noses out the door,

00:08:50.992 --> 00:08:52.521
bullets would start to fly.

00:09:06.045 --> 00:09:07.495
I don\'t want to show my face,

00:09:07.670 --> 00:09:11.070
because I\'m afraid of turning up dead
like the people from Mozote.

00:09:16.809 --> 00:09:18.809
We were two civilians for each company.

00:09:19.537 --> 00:09:22.237
The National Guard ordered us
to go with the battalion,

00:09:22.503 --> 00:09:25.237
and in those times,
if anyone refused, he was killed.

00:09:26.156 --> 00:09:27.156
They used us mostly

00:09:27.324 --> 00:09:30.924
to carry the pack and mattress
of whoever was in charge of the company.

00:09:31.701 --> 00:09:33.851
The head commander was Colonel Monterrosa.

00:09:35.241 --> 00:09:37.791
The second in command was [?].

00:09:39.623 --> 00:09:40.992
[barking dog]

00:09:48.961 --> 00:09:52.411
At four o\'clock the next morning,
they made us leave our houses again,

00:09:52.579 --> 00:09:54.339
and they took us
to the center of the village

00:09:54.494 --> 00:09:58.249
where we had to form two lines,
one for women, and the other for men.

00:09:58.746 --> 00:10:02.546
The younger kids were with the women,
and the older ones were with the men.

00:10:04.622 --> 00:10:05.822
Then they separated us.

00:10:06.516 --> 00:10:10.066
They locked up the men in the church
and the women in different houses.

00:10:10.234 --> 00:10:17.234
[music]

00:10:19.482 --> 00:10:22.382
A while later,
we heard screaming coming from the church.

00:10:23.250 --> 00:10:25.050
I saw what was happening to the men.

00:10:25.218 --> 00:10:27.768
They were blindfolded
and they had their hands tied.

00:10:30.318 --> 00:10:32.718
They brought out my husband
and four other men.

00:10:34.327 --> 00:10:36.577
I could see
that they were going to kill them.

00:10:36.745 --> 00:10:39.970
When my husband tried to escape,
they cut off his head.

00:10:55.754 --> 00:10:57.754
My dad and my mom still hadn\'t come back

00:10:57.922 --> 00:11:01.122
when a soldier came up to the house
at about 6:00 in the morning.

00:11:04.554 --> 00:11:06.654
\"Go over to the soccer field,\" he told me.

00:11:06.876 --> 00:11:08.626
\"Okay, I\'m on my way,\" I answered.

00:11:09.014 --> 00:11:11.864
I took my brother by the hand
and we headed for the field.

00:11:17.254 --> 00:11:18.254
When we got there,

00:11:18.452 --> 00:11:19.702
I saw the other soldiers

00:11:20.379 --> 00:11:22.979
and they had lots of people there,
mostly children.

00:11:27.091 --> 00:11:28.591
Some of the kids were crying.

00:11:30.888 --> 00:11:32.345
One was hung from a tree.

00:11:35.868 --> 00:11:38.318
Then I noticed
some little shapes on the ground.

00:11:39.128 --> 00:11:40.478
They must\'ve been children.

00:11:52.122 --> 00:11:53.272
What scared me the most

00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:55.448
was when they grabbed the little kid
by the head

00:11:55.616 --> 00:11:57.166
and threw him up into the air.

00:11:57.334 --> 00:11:59.684
Then they used the bayonet
on the end of the gun

00:11:59.852 --> 00:12:01.452
to catch him when he came down.

00:12:01.721 --> 00:12:04.121
I turned my head away,
so I wouldn\'t see anymore.

00:12:04.606 --> 00:12:07.306
I was sure that they were going to kill me
right there.

00:12:16.700 --> 00:12:19.007
They raped the 12-year old girls.

00:12:19.676 --> 00:12:22.961
Some of the soldiers said
that they only liked 12-year-olds.

00:12:23.664 --> 00:12:26.014
One soldier was telling some others
about a girl

00:12:26.182 --> 00:12:29.032
who said that they could do
anything they wanted with her,

00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:31.050
but she begged them not to kill her.

00:12:32.023 --> 00:12:33.023
After he raped her,

00:12:33.601 --> 00:12:35.639
he slit her throat and drank her blood.

00:12:52.615 --> 00:12:55.265
When they brought me here,
I thought I could escape.

00:12:58.333 --> 00:13:00.733
The women were lined up
on both sides over there.

00:13:01.965 --> 00:13:02.965
I stayed here.

00:13:07.552 --> 00:13:09.302
There were soldiers on both sides.

00:13:12.027 --> 00:13:13.977
When they moved away to see the women,

00:13:14.335 --> 00:13:16.235
I kneeled down on the ground to pray,

00:13:19.295 --> 00:13:21.095
and then I snuck off into the bush.

00:13:28.528 --> 00:13:32.078
I stayed right next to an apple tree
and covered myself with branches.

00:13:38.137 --> 00:13:41.737
I didn\'t move from 5:00 in the afternoon
until about 1:00 in the morning,

00:13:41.905 --> 00:13:42.905
when I could escape.

00:13:51.683 --> 00:13:52.826
I was really scared.

00:13:53.666 --> 00:13:54.666
I said to myself,

00:13:55.316 --> 00:13:56.616
they\'re going to kill me,

00:13:56.784 --> 00:13:58.684
but they\'ll have to get me on the run,

00:13:58.852 --> 00:14:02.402
because I\'m not going to let them
tie me up before they finish me off.

00:14:11.947 --> 00:14:13.347
They shot at me, but missed.

00:14:14.448 --> 00:14:21.448
[music]

00:14:43.053 --> 00:14:45.453
I could see
that the school was full of children,

00:14:45.621 --> 00:14:47.121
who are crying and screaming,

00:14:48.190 --> 00:14:49.990
and then the church started to burn.

00:14:50.751 --> 00:14:51.751
I asked the captain,

00:14:51.919 --> 00:14:54.619
\"Why don\'t you
at least get the children out of there?\"

00:14:54.787 --> 00:14:57.893
\"No,\" he said,
\"That way you just have more subversives.\"

00:14:58.220 --> 00:15:05.220
[music]

00:15:09.925 --> 00:15:12.775
I could recognize my children\'s voices
when they shrieked,

00:15:13.019 --> 00:15:14.769
\"Mommy Rufina, they\'re killing us.\"

00:15:15.049 --> 00:15:17.549
The screams from the dying children
were horrible.

00:15:31.791 --> 00:15:35.030
It hurt a lot to leave my brother behind,
but he was too small.

00:15:35.842 --> 00:15:38.492
If I tried to carry him,
they would\'ve killed me too.

00:15:59.169 --> 00:16:02.336
A bunch of animals were going
by the path where I could escape.

00:16:02.884 --> 00:16:05.813
I crawled on my hands and knees
inside the herd

00:16:06.228 --> 00:16:08.678
until I came out
on the other side of the fence.

00:16:17.258 --> 00:16:19.098
Then I slithered like a snake.

00:16:19.418 --> 00:16:23.488
[gunshots]

00:16:23.656 --> 00:16:25.656
That\'s when they started to shoot at me.

00:16:25.831 --> 00:16:29.489
The bullets lifted up the [?] bushes,
but missed me.

00:16:29.657 --> 00:16:32.407
I heard very clearly
what one soldier said to another,

00:16:33.448 --> 00:16:36.748
\"You\'re scared by the ghosts
of those people you killed, you idiot.

00:16:36.967 --> 00:16:38.667
They\'re going to drive you crazy.\"

00:16:51.683 --> 00:16:54.609
I can\'t tell you exactly
how many people died there,

00:16:55.086 --> 00:16:57.206
but I came across about 100 bodies.

00:16:58.352 --> 00:17:01.466
They left them lying on paths
or stuck to fenceposts.

00:17:02.153 --> 00:17:03.353
Most of them were kids.

00:17:07.688 --> 00:17:09.438
Later, the Colonels had a meeting.

00:17:10.151 --> 00:17:13.901
They said that they\'d won a victory
by killing that whole slew of guerillas.

00:20:10.674 --> 00:20:17.674
[music]

00:20:39.708 --> 00:20:42.358
Salazar gathered the company together
for a meeting.

00:20:43.662 --> 00:20:44.962
He said, \"Look, soldiers,

00:20:45.144 --> 00:20:48.044
whatever you have seen and heard
doesn\'t get out of here.

00:20:48.440 --> 00:20:49.790
Once you\'re home and drunk,

00:20:50.038 --> 00:20:52.638
don\'t talk about any of this
like some soldiers do.

00:20:56.889 --> 00:20:57.889
War is tough, man.

00:20:58.057 --> 00:21:01.257
If you got to kill your mother, you do it.
You\'ve got no choice.\"

00:21:01.425 --> 00:21:02.855
You placed a flag that said,

00:21:03.023 --> 00:21:05.323
\"if the guerilla came back
to Morazán province,

00:21:05.681 --> 00:21:07.231
so will the Atlacatl Battalion.

00:21:39.611 --> 00:21:42.050
Well, I remember walking down one trail,

00:21:42.705 --> 00:21:45.055
and off to the right
was a hut that I went in.

00:21:45.876 --> 00:21:47.676
There were the bodies of several men

00:21:47.844 --> 00:21:51.505
and out front were some wood planks
that had recently been cut.

00:21:52.465 --> 00:21:56.057
I remember pacifier
and some children\'s clothes.

00:21:57.694 --> 00:21:59.565
All the houses had been destroyed.

00:22:00.687 --> 00:22:04.861
In the cornfield
just on the right at the edge of the house

00:22:05.029 --> 00:22:06.120
were several bodies.

00:22:06.288 --> 00:22:08.838
It was fairly obvious
that they\'d been taken outside

00:22:09.017 --> 00:22:11.875
or gathered together,
and then shot in a group.

00:22:13.743 --> 00:22:16.243
It was clear it wasn\'t-
it didn\'t happen in combat.

00:22:16.411 --> 00:22:18.811
You can see
there\'s no bullet holes in the walls.

00:22:19.348 --> 00:22:21.898
Combat,
all the houses aren\'t destroyed like that.

00:22:22.143 --> 00:22:24.524
In guerrilla warfare...
They might be in World War II,

00:22:24.692 --> 00:22:25.851
but they aren\'t guerrilla warfare-

00:22:26.019 --> 00:22:28.944
you don\'t have bodies
laying out in a cornfield.

00:22:30.034 --> 00:22:31.784
They don\'t die like that in combat.

00:22:32.331 --> 00:22:33.331
Our next witness,

00:22:33.757 --> 00:22:37.571
Secretary Enders
to the subcommittee once again.

00:22:43.409 --> 00:22:46.026
We sent two embassy officers down

00:22:46.194 --> 00:22:49.856
to investigate the reports
that you referred to Mr. Chairman

00:22:50.024 --> 00:22:55.896
of a massacre
in Mozote in the Morazan province.

00:22:58.845 --> 00:23:01.693
What is clear
from the report that they gave,

00:23:02.431 --> 00:23:04.181
that there has been a confrontation

00:23:04.349 --> 00:23:07.799
between guerrillas occupying El Mozote
and attacking government forces

00:23:07.967 --> 00:23:08.967
last December.

00:23:09.388 --> 00:23:11.579
There is no evidence at all to confirm

00:23:11.755 --> 00:23:15.239
that government forces
systematically massacred civilians

00:23:15.407 --> 00:23:16.740
in the operations zone

00:23:16.968 --> 00:23:20.395
or that the number of civilians killed
even remotely approach

00:23:20.936 --> 00:23:26.111
the 733 or 926 victims
variously cited in the press.

00:23:27.167 --> 00:23:31.084
Look, the policy was
to support the Salvadoran government.

00:23:32.168 --> 00:23:35.718
The old line, \"He may be a son of a bitch,
but he\'s our son of a bitch.\"

00:23:35.886 --> 00:23:38.357
They may be thugs, they may be killers,
they may be brutal,

00:23:38.525 --> 00:23:40.175
they may be human rights abusers,

00:23:40.343 --> 00:23:43.893
but the policy was we, the United States,
has to back this government.

00:23:44.474 --> 00:23:48.074
I wasn\'t surprised, I don\'t think,
particularly at what Enders had said.

00:23:49.523 --> 00:23:52.526
There was no cover up here by anybody.

00:23:53.090 --> 00:23:56.114
I was not in-charge of Latin America
at that point.

00:23:56.608 --> 00:24:00.740
I was certainly cognizant of most
of what was coming up from the embassy.

00:24:00.908 --> 00:24:03.000
What was coming up from the embassy,
I think, was a report

00:24:03.168 --> 00:24:06.720
that something happened in this place,

00:24:06.888 --> 00:24:08.735
but we don\'t know what,
we can\'t get to it,

00:24:08.903 --> 00:24:12.584
and the behavior of the FMLN
is certainly suspicious.

00:24:14.410 --> 00:24:19.063
There was not evidence at that point
of there being a massacre in El Mozote.

00:24:50.819 --> 00:24:52.669
If they wanted to know what happened,

00:24:53.050 --> 00:24:55.293
the United States was supporting the army
at the time,

00:24:55.461 --> 00:24:56.861
totally supporting the army.

00:24:57.029 --> 00:24:58.241
The Salvadoran government
would\'ve collapsed

00:24:58.409 --> 00:24:59.551
without the United States\' support.

00:24:59.719 --> 00:25:02.439
You\'re telling me they
couldn\'t have conducted an investigation,

00:25:02.607 --> 00:25:05.337
sat down with those military officers
and gone through what happened?

00:25:05.505 --> 00:25:08.655
Of course they could\'ve.
They didn\'t want to know what happened.

00:25:11.078 --> 00:25:13.004
El Mozote was a blown operation.

00:25:13.742 --> 00:25:15.368
The guerrillas had left.

00:25:16.328 --> 00:25:22.181
Basically, what got captured was
about 600, 700 people who had not fled.

00:25:24.134 --> 00:25:26.978
The intelligence officer for the operation

00:25:27.363 --> 00:25:29.813
had told me
that these people had been captured.

00:25:30.315 --> 00:25:32.065
Basically, what he had told me was,

00:25:32.233 --> 00:25:33.583
they would need my services

00:25:33.751 --> 00:25:37.556
to go interrogate
all these people that had been captured.

00:25:41.715 --> 00:25:44.979
Though something happened in there,
I\'m not sure why,

00:25:45.147 --> 00:25:48.242
but there were never any interrogation
those people were shot.

00:25:48.877 --> 00:25:51.685
Very soon, the very next day,

00:25:52.384 --> 00:25:56.397
I\'d been told to wait to be called up
to go interrogate them.

00:25:56.566 --> 00:25:57.883
That call never came.

00:25:58.745 --> 00:26:05.745
[music]

00:26:24.052 --> 00:26:27.062
This was one
of about four or five operations

00:26:27.230 --> 00:26:30.248
whereby whoever was found got slaughtered.

00:26:33.002 --> 00:26:35.897
Basically,
what you had was an all out paranoia.

00:26:37.722 --> 00:26:40.037
You had an army that felt isolated.

00:26:41.186 --> 00:26:45.345
They didn\'t know who their enemy was,
especially up at the higher levels.

00:26:46.028 --> 00:26:49.572
They knew they were dressing as civilians.

00:26:49.740 --> 00:26:51.363
I think that, all of a sudden,

00:26:51.531 --> 00:26:54.931
they start seeing
every civilian as a potential enemy,

00:26:55.099 --> 00:26:57.566
and later on every civilian as an enemy

00:27:18.539 --> 00:27:19.682
In 1981,

00:27:20.137 --> 00:27:23.403
I took a team into El Salvador in March

00:27:24.133 --> 00:27:26.733
to train
the Atlacatl Immediate Reaction Battalion.

00:27:28.924 --> 00:27:33.259
I taught a class to the Salvadorans
on human rights.

00:27:33.427 --> 00:27:35.677
Now,
I did not title the program human rights,

00:27:35.845 --> 00:27:39.838
I felt that that would be
too upfront and way with them.

00:27:40.006 --> 00:27:43.344
I just called it the proper treatment
of suspects and prisoners.

00:27:43.893 --> 00:27:47.885
We integrated into that, for example,
how to treat the general populace.

00:27:48.860 --> 00:27:52.349
The idea of the training
was to make them understand

00:27:52.517 --> 00:27:54.355
that just because someone\'s
on a battlefield,

00:27:54.523 --> 00:27:56.123
it doesn\'t make them your enemy.

00:28:01.276 --> 00:28:02.276
Generally,

00:28:02.444 --> 00:28:04.996
the officers
I worked with in a six month period,

00:28:05.242 --> 00:28:06.242
including the staff,

00:28:06.562 --> 00:28:07.562
were pretty good.

00:28:13.141 --> 00:28:15.146
Most of them, half of them at least,

00:28:15.314 --> 00:28:18.314
could\'ve served probably
in any army anywhere in the world.

00:28:25.579 --> 00:28:29.117
I think the leadership of that unit
was really a cut above

00:28:29.463 --> 00:28:33.022
in terms of referencing them
to the rest of the Salvadoran military.

00:28:33.785 --> 00:28:39.794
The commander Colonel Domingo Monterrosa
was a very inspiring, charismatic leader.

00:28:41.637 --> 00:28:43.559
His troops willingly followed him.

00:28:45.073 --> 00:28:46.123
He was a good planner

00:28:47.696 --> 00:28:49.246
and he truly cared for his men.

00:29:09.428 --> 00:29:12.178
I was not surprised
that something like that happened.

00:29:13.230 --> 00:29:14.230
I was surprised

00:29:14.398 --> 00:29:16.698
that the Atlacatl Battalion
was accused of it.

00:29:18.070 --> 00:29:22.695
I was skeptical
when I continued reading press reports

00:29:22.863 --> 00:29:28.520
that the Atlacatl Battalion
was the unit that did this.

00:29:29.724 --> 00:29:30.974
Of course, it bothered me

00:29:31.142 --> 00:29:34.392
that the press always said
the US trained the Atlacatl Battalion.

00:29:34.678 --> 00:29:41.678
[music]

00:30:13.400 --> 00:30:17.772
The Embassy was worried about...

00:30:18.487 --> 00:30:22.989
The embassy was suspicious
of a series of reports

00:30:23.157 --> 00:30:27.605
which it believed were largely motivated
by propaganda from the guerrilla side,

00:30:27.773 --> 00:30:29.173
and which were not reliable.

00:30:29.341 --> 00:30:32.482
I think, in fact,
this is a lesson for the press

00:30:33.070 --> 00:30:37.207
in why it is important
to maintain credibility

00:30:37.375 --> 00:30:40.181
and not be captured
by guerilla propaganda.

00:30:40.349 --> 00:30:43.149
Because then what happens is
you get a story that turns out to be true,

00:30:43.284 --> 00:30:44.670
and you have the embassy think,

00:30:44.838 --> 00:30:47.325
\"This probably isn\'t true,
because look who\'s reporting it.

00:30:48.046 --> 00:30:49.478
That editorial, that attack,

00:30:49.947 --> 00:30:52.347
turned around
the reporting in Central America.

00:30:52.631 --> 00:30:56.795
I know one journalists down there.

00:30:59.215 --> 00:31:03.829
The journalist editor in the States
sent the Wall Street Journal editorial

00:31:04.014 --> 00:31:06.214
and said,
\"Let\'s not let this happen to us.\"

00:31:08.215 --> 00:31:10.165
It did have an impact on the reporting.

00:31:10.333 --> 00:31:12.083
They wouldn\'t have done otherwise.

00:31:35.170 --> 00:31:37.167
Somebody said, \"ne more massacre.

00:31:37.335 --> 00:31:40.329
We\'ve told them one more massacre
and no more money.

00:31:40.497 --> 00:31:41.920
We\'ve told them and they know we mean it.\"

00:31:42.088 --> 00:31:45.518
Well, as one again,
American diplomat said to me,

00:31:46.581 --> 00:31:48.085
that was 10 massacres ago.

00:31:48.554 --> 00:31:49.554
We were constantly,

00:31:49.722 --> 00:31:52.365
the United States Congress,
the government, the State Department,

00:31:52.683 --> 00:31:54.978
the White House, the Congress,

00:31:55.630 --> 00:31:58.480
they were always making these threats.
\"One more massacre.

00:31:58.648 --> 00:32:00.137
If they don\'t clean up
the human rights situation,

00:32:00.305 --> 00:32:01.705
we\'re going to cut off aid.\"

00:32:02.042 --> 00:32:03.892
The United States never cut off aid,

00:32:04.416 --> 00:32:07.566
and the massacres continued,
the human rights abuses continued.

00:32:28.275 --> 00:32:30.975
We have been doing this work
for the last nine years,

00:32:31.654 --> 00:32:35.490
but what it was really very shocking
in El Mozote

00:32:35.658 --> 00:32:36.658
was the fact that,

00:32:37.126 --> 00:32:40.295
we were exhuming
this enormous amount of children.

00:32:40.463 --> 00:32:43.720
That was something
that was completely unusual for us,

00:32:43.888 --> 00:32:49.202
and was very hard and unique.

00:32:49.512 --> 00:32:52.381
We have never seen a case of this kind.

00:33:04.508 --> 00:33:08.883
We found 143 individuals
from this one small room,

00:33:09.320 --> 00:33:12.714
one pile over the other one,
forming a compact mass,

00:33:13.373 --> 00:33:15.242
from which 131

00:33:15.638 --> 00:33:18.400
were children
under the age of 12-years-old.

00:33:20.143 --> 00:33:21.610
There were several infants

00:33:21.778 --> 00:33:25.679
that were
between six months to one-year-old.

00:33:29.168 --> 00:33:33.157
We found on the floor of the building
38 holes,

00:33:33.594 --> 00:33:37.495
in which in some of them
we found fragments of bullets.

00:33:38.805 --> 00:33:41.019
Over those holes, we found for instance,

00:33:41.187 --> 00:33:45.920
skulls
or parts of the chest of the skeletons

00:33:46.277 --> 00:33:48.972
that were showing
the path of a bullet through them.

00:33:49.140 --> 00:33:51.290
That is to say
that at least in those cases,

00:33:51.467 --> 00:33:53.617
they were just killed
inside of the building

00:33:53.793 --> 00:33:57.466
while they were lying down
in an execution manner.

00:34:13.571 --> 00:34:15.871
There were two moments
that it was really hard.

00:34:16.188 --> 00:34:19.545
One was when I was cleaning
the skeleton of a woman.

00:34:19.816 --> 00:34:25.738
As I start going on the pelvic area,
I start finding fetus bones.

00:34:26.576 --> 00:34:29.976
I start realizing that this woman
was pregnant when she was killed.

00:34:31.639 --> 00:34:34.560
Well, of course,
that was really pretty hard.

00:34:35.965 --> 00:34:37.273
The second moment was

00:34:37.441 --> 00:34:42.332
when I was removing
the clothing of one of the children,

00:34:43.340 --> 00:34:46.808
and a little horse...
A little plastic horse

00:34:46.976 --> 00:34:50.030
came out
of one of the pockets of the little boy.

00:34:51.713 --> 00:34:53.410
That kind of thing, their toys,

00:34:55.860 --> 00:34:58.774
was really very hard to continue working

00:34:59.195 --> 00:35:01.961
when we were just
exhuming toys and children.

00:35:02.129 --> 00:35:06.299
It was really very, very hard.

00:35:24.286 --> 00:35:26.886
I can\'t help,
but think back to Vietnam and My Lai.

00:35:27.535 --> 00:35:30.039
That happened.
It should not have happened.

00:35:33.127 --> 00:35:37.127
I don\'t know the circumstances of it.
I wasn\'t there. I\'ve read accounts of it.

00:35:37.295 --> 00:35:39.545
Unfortunately,
I think in just about all wars,

00:35:39.713 --> 00:35:41.313
these kinds of things do happen.

00:35:41.586 --> 00:35:44.186
Innocent people were killed,
sometimes on purpose.

00:35:44.672 --> 00:35:45.972
There\'s no excuse for it.

00:35:49.342 --> 00:35:50.342
I would say

00:35:50.510 --> 00:35:53.796
to the Salvadoran military people
that did that,

00:35:55.676 --> 00:35:57.826
\"Shame on you,
and you should be punished.\"

00:36:15.439 --> 00:36:19.310
The teachers here at the police academy
insist that we defend human rights.

00:36:20.074 --> 00:36:23.515
What people expect is that from now on,
we respect their rights.

00:36:24.122 --> 00:36:25.522
We would like the new police

00:36:25.690 --> 00:36:28.140
to be totally different
from the one of the past.

00:36:43.479 --> 00:36:47.629
A few weeks after the massacre in Mozote,
I met up with the guerrillas in the hills

00:36:55.255 --> 00:36:57.705
I told them
that my mom and dad had been killed.

00:36:58.341 --> 00:36:59.715
I was the only survivor.

00:37:05.487 --> 00:37:09.104
They said to me, \"Don\'t worry.
You can live with us and you\'ll be okay.\"

00:37:10.876 --> 00:37:12.576
I agreed and I felt good about it.

00:37:14.847 --> 00:37:17.297
Then they sent me
to a little school for orphans.

00:37:28.610 --> 00:37:31.731
It was one big family.
We shared everything.

00:37:32.501 --> 00:37:35.067
When there was food, nobody went hungry.

00:37:39.245 --> 00:37:42.345
Then I became a messenger
with the guerrilla commander Manolo.

00:37:42.647 --> 00:37:44.120
I was about 11 by then.

00:37:50.109 --> 00:37:52.278
I had a pretty little 9mm pistol.

00:37:53.199 --> 00:37:56.445
I was still small,
and I felt good about having that pistol.

00:37:58.257 --> 00:38:01.681
I had it for three years
until I was big enough for a rifle.

00:38:02.244 --> 00:38:04.906
In \'85, they gave me a cut off M-16.

00:38:05.074 --> 00:38:12.074
[music]

00:38:22.137 --> 00:38:25.487
At first, I hated the soldiers,
because they had killed my mother.

00:38:30.086 --> 00:38:32.236
I knew
I\'d have to take revenge against them

00:38:32.404 --> 00:38:34.054
someday, somehow.

00:38:35.376 --> 00:38:36.976
Since I was with the guerrillas,

00:38:37.144 --> 00:38:38.144
I picked up my gun

00:38:38.312 --> 00:38:41.362
and was more than eager
to fight the soldiers and kill them.

00:38:43.211 --> 00:38:46.523
I knew what they done with my mom,
and I wasn\'t afraid of them.

00:38:48.087 --> 00:38:49.087
If they killed me,

00:38:49.361 --> 00:38:51.961
they were just getting
the last member of our family.

00:38:52.129 --> 00:38:53.129
That\'s all.

00:39:14.279 --> 00:39:16.851
When I left Morazán, I had nothing left.

00:39:22.886 --> 00:39:25.186
In Honduras,
I started working in healthcare.

00:39:25.746 --> 00:39:28.246
I took care of those kids
as if they were my own.

00:39:28.813 --> 00:39:30.213
I felt that they were mine.

00:39:30.990 --> 00:39:34.190
This is how I got better
and started to feel love for life again.

00:39:54.135 --> 00:39:55.935
I didn\'t want to have any more kids.

00:39:56.521 --> 00:39:57.521
I said to myself,

00:39:57.689 --> 00:40:00.589
\"I don\'t want any more
if they\'re just going to kill them.\"

00:40:00.757 --> 00:40:01.757
Five years later,

00:40:01.925 --> 00:40:04.075
I fell in love
with a man I\'d known before.

00:40:04.406 --> 00:40:06.797
Then I had another child, Marta.

00:40:11.430 --> 00:40:12.730
She was a big help to me.

00:40:12.898 --> 00:40:15.298
I don\'t know
how I could\'ve made it without her.

00:40:59.684 --> 00:41:01.617
The peace is still very fragile here.

00:41:02.835 --> 00:41:04.559
Studying human rights together,

00:41:04.957 --> 00:41:08.307
we have discovered that we have rights
and we want them respected.

00:41:08.867 --> 00:41:12.223
We can have peace
only when we have justice and truth.

00:45:56.014 --> 00:45:58.314
This just wasn\'t the time
for an amnesty law.

00:45:59.372 --> 00:46:02.622
The cases were being investigated,
and the truth was being told.

00:46:04.389 --> 00:46:05.739
It\'s all part of the past,

00:46:05.907 --> 00:46:07.307
but we can\'t just start over

00:46:07.475 --> 00:46:09.675
with a clean slate
like the government says.

00:46:10.363 --> 00:46:12.974
It\'s never going to be forgotten
or wiped clean.

00:46:13.502 --> 00:46:15.874
We can forgive, but we won\'t forget.

00:46:22.392 --> 00:46:23.892
If those people are forgiven,

00:46:24.319 --> 00:46:26.881
that means
no matter what happens in El Salvador,

00:46:27.071 --> 00:46:29.021
there\'s always a way to get around it.

00:46:29.817 --> 00:46:32.217
Killing children
is about as low as you can go.

00:46:34.083 --> 00:46:35.900
If those people get off scot free,

00:46:36.537 --> 00:46:38.837
it\'s because our governments
are responsible.

00:46:39.624 --> 00:46:43.424
If you let a beast keep all its claws,
it can repeat what it\'s always done.

00:46:44.769 --> 00:46:48.369
I don\'t think that a sick person
can get better without taking medicine.

00:47:14.656 --> 00:47:17.456
The main thing for me
would be to have a full time job,

00:47:17.829 --> 00:47:20.779
so that I could start to earn something
and pick myself up.

00:47:25.301 --> 00:47:27.101
I\'ve got nothing at all right now.

00:47:27.426 --> 00:47:28.426
Not even a house.

00:47:29.451 --> 00:47:32.571
I\'ve come out of a 12-year war
just like I went into it

00:47:33.342 --> 00:47:34.938
or maybe I\'m worse off now.

00:47:35.876 --> 00:47:40.015
My hope is that someday I\'ll have a place
to settle down and live in peace.

00:48:04.404 --> 00:48:06.704
If the massacre in Mozote
had never happened,

00:48:07.106 --> 00:48:08.956
I might have had a normal childhood,

00:48:13.837 --> 00:48:15.295
but I grew up in the war.

00:48:15.778 --> 00:48:18.228
I\'ve forgotten
what it means to have a childhood.

00:48:20.646 --> 00:48:22.093
My only toy was a gun.

00:48:25.472 --> 00:48:27.872
Would you want the same thing
for your children?

00:48:34.759 --> 00:48:36.805
I want my children to develop normally

00:48:37.192 --> 00:48:40.592
and go through all the stages
of their childhood and teenage years.

00:48:44.188 --> 00:48:47.422
I don\'t want them to be forced
into the kind of life that I had.

00:48:57.490 --> 00:49:04.490
[crowd cheering]

00:49:34.483 --> 00:49:41.483
[singing]

00:49:47.206 --> 00:49:54.206
[music]

00:49:59.130 --> 00:50:01.080
I hope that the future will be better.

00:50:01.376 --> 00:50:04.038
That there will be no more war,
no more killings.

00:50:08.482 --> 00:50:12.389
I want our children to have a future
for them to live better with dignity,

00:50:12.779 --> 00:50:14.129
and not the way it\'s been.

00:50:15.127 --> 00:50:17.227
That\'s what I would like for my daughter,

00:50:17.395 --> 00:50:19.103
that the future belongs to her.

00:50:51.619 --> 00:50:53.027
Since my graduation,

00:50:53.195 --> 00:50:55.345
I\'m working as a policeman in the village.

00:50:56.511 --> 00:50:58.961
I always believed
that peace would come one day,

00:50:59.634 --> 00:51:03.084
that the killings would stop
and we could finally live without fear.

00:51:11.541 --> 00:51:14.444
But today we\'re seeing
this terrible wave of violence.

00:51:15.374 --> 00:51:19.174
Former guerrilla fighters and commanders
are being murdered in the streets.

00:51:28.302 --> 00:51:29.302
They say

00:51:29.470 --> 00:51:31.870
that so-called secret armed groups
are to blame,

00:51:32.195 --> 00:51:33.895
but they are the same death squads

00:51:34.063 --> 00:51:36.763
who have been spreading terror
for the last 10 years.

00:51:40.722 --> 00:51:43.322
I\'m afraid
that they\'re going to do something to me.

00:51:57.101 --> 00:51:59.951
I\'m worried the guns will be heard again
in El Salvador.

00:52:01.224 --> 00:52:04.518
There has never been sharing
between rich and poor here.

00:52:06.651 --> 00:52:09.302
People are used to violence
to solve problems,

00:52:10.352 --> 00:52:13.024
but the truth
is that violence is no solution.

00:52:38.068 --> 00:52:40.668
It hurts
to think about our dear ones who are dead,

00:52:42.193 --> 00:52:44.746
but we know
that death gives way to new life.

00:52:46.985 --> 00:52:48.635
These candles symbolize the light

00:52:48.803 --> 00:52:51.283
of the children and old people
who died here.

00:52:52.303 --> 00:52:53.303
Without this light,

00:52:53.852 --> 00:52:57.837
we can never have the bliss that we hope
will one day return to our hearts.

00:53:04.670 --> 00:53:06.370
We can say that we have forgiven,

00:53:07.224 --> 00:53:09.424
but deep in our hearts,
we know we have not.

00:53:10.016 --> 00:53:11.716
It is not that we live with hate.

00:53:12.036 --> 00:53:15.336
We only want to be sure
that these killings will not happen again.

00:53:30.222 --> 00:53:37.222
[music]