El Mozote
Encyclopedia
Morazán Department
Morazán is a department of El Salvador. Located in the northeast part of the country, its capital is San Francisco Gotera. It covers a total surface area of 1,447 km² and has a population of more than 200,000.-History:...
in El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
. It was the site of the El Mozote massacre
El Mozote massacre
The El Mozote Massacre took place in and around the village of El Mozote, in Morazán department, El Salvador, on December 11, 1981, when Salvadoran armed forces trained by the United States military killed at least 200 and up to 1000 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran...
during the civil war
El Salvador Civil War
The Salvadoran Civil War was a conflict in El Salvador between the military-led government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front , a coalition or umbrella organization of five left-wing militias. Significant tensions and violence had already existed, before the civil...
in December 1981 when nearly 1,000 civilians were killed by the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion
Atlacatl Battalion
The Atlacatl Battalion, a former Salvadoran Army unit, was a rapid-response, counter-insurgency battalion created in 1980 at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, then located in Panama. It was implicated in some of the most infamous incidents of the Salvadoran Civil War...
, backed by the Salvadoran government.