More than 30 solar panels power the pumping plant in the village of El Mozote, in eastern El Salvador, providing water to around 360 families. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
EL MOZOTE, El Salvador , Jun 6 2025 (IPS)

The worst massacre of civilians in Latin America occurred in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote, where environmental projects are beginning to emerge, slowly fostering awareness about protecting the natural resources of this deeply symbolic site, embedded in the country’s historical memory.

Since early 2024, a small photovoltaic plant has been operating in El Mozote, in the district of Meanguera, eastern El Salvador, powering a municipal water system designed to supply around 360 families in the village and nearby areas.“We used to wash clothes in those communal wells, which were built after the war, in ’94.” — Otilia Chicas

“The project’s goal was to minimize environmental impacts in the area by seeking cleaner energy sources, and with that in mind, the solar panel system was implemented,” Rosendo Ramos, the Morazán representative of the Salvadoran Health Promotion Association (ASPS), the NGO behind the project, explained to IPS.

The Spanish organization Solidaridad Internacional Andalucía also participated in launching the initiative.

El Mozote is located in the department of Morazán, a mountainous region in eastern El Salvador. During the civil war (1980-1992), the area was the scene of brutal clashes between leftist guerrillas and the army.

In December 1981, over several days, military units massacred around 1,000 peasants in the village and neighboring communities—including pregnant women and children—accusing them of being a support base for the rebels.

The conflict is estimated to have left more than 75,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared.

The photovoltaic system installed in El Mozote, eastern El Salvador, operates alongside the national distribution grid, so on cloudy days with low solar generation, the conventional power grid is activated. Credit: Courtesy of ASPS

Sunlight to Distribute Water

The solar project consists of 32 panels capable of generating a total of 15 kilowatts—enough to power the equipment, primarily the 60-horsepower pump that pushes water up to the tank installed atop La Cruz mountain. From there, water flows down to households by gravity.

The photovoltaic system operates alongside the national power grid, so on cloudy days with low solar output, the conventional grid kicks in—though the goal is obviously to reduce reliance on it.

The project, costing US$28,000, was funded by the European Union as part of a larger environmental initiative that also included two nearby municipalities, Arambala and Jocoaitique, focusing on protecting the La Joya Pueblo micro-watershed.

Key aspects of the broader program include reducing the use of agrochemicals, plastic, and other disposable materials; and promoting rainwater harvesting.

The overall program reached 1,317 people (706 women and 611 men) across three municipalities and six communities, involving NGOs, schools, and local governments.

“The aim is to consume less energy from the national grid, thereby lowering pumping costs,” explained Ramos.

However, this cost reduction doesn’t necessarily translate into lower water bills for families in El Mozote and surrounding areas. That’s because the water system is municipally managed, and tariffs are set by local ordinances, making adjustments difficult—unlike community-run projects where residents and leaders can more easily agree on changes.

One benefit of the new system is that lower energy costs for the municipality free up funds to expand and improve other basic services—not just in Meanguera but also in places like El Mozote, Dennis Morel, the district director, told IPS.

The plaza of El Mozote, the iconic village in eastern El Salvador, was renovated, but local residents complain that the government-led construction work was not agreed upon with the community. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Water in the postwar era

Otilia Chicas, a native of El Mozote, recalled what life was like in the village when there was no piped water service—back in the days following the end of the civil war in 1992, when people began returning to the area.

“We used to wash clothes in those communal wells. They were built after the war, in ’94,” said Chicas, pointing toward one of those now-empty wells, about 20 meters away from where she stood, inside a kiosk selling handicrafts, books, and T-shirts in El Mozote’s central plaza.

Next to the plaza is the mural bearing the names of the hundreds of people killed by the army—specifically, by units of the Atlacatl Battalion, trained in counterinsurgency by the United States.

“We used to fetch water from there and bathe there, but since these wells weren’t enough, we’d go to a spring, to ‘El Zanjo,’ as we called it,” she recounted.

She added that the drinking water project arrived between 2005 and 2006, finally bringing the resource directly into people’s homes.

“The community had to pitch in, and the hours people worked were counted as payment, as their contribution,” she noted while weaving colorful thread bracelets.

There is uncertainty over whether the kiosk in the village plaza will be removed. Several women from the El Mozote Historical Committee sell handicrafts and work as tour guides there. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 Almost No One Was Spared 

Chicas, 45, was born in 1980, a year before the massacre. Now, she helps run the kiosk and works as a tour guide alongside other local women from the El Mozote Historical Committee, explaining to visitors the horrific events that took place in December 1981.

The artisan shared that her family lost several relatives in the 1981 massacre, as did nearly everyone here. The victims’ mural is filled with dozens of people bearing the last names Chicas, Márquez, Claros, and Argueta, among many others.

“My grandmother lost four of her children and 17 grandchildren,” she recalled.

Chicas’ father, in an attempt to save their lives, moved his family out of El Mozote before the massacre and resettled in Lourdes Colón, in the western part of the country. But the military ended up killing him in 1983 after discovering he was originally from Morazán and linking him to rebel groups.

“The National Guard came for him and two uncles—they saw they were from Morazán, a guerrilla zone,” she emphasized. “Before killing them, they forced them to dig their own graves. They were left by the roadside, in a place called El Tigre,” she explained.

The military operation that culminated in the massacre was planned and executed by the Salvadoran Army’s High Command, with support from Honduran soldiers and covered up by United States government officials, revealed Stanford University scholar Terry Karl in April 2021.

Karl testified as an expert witness during a hearing on the case held that April in San Francisco Gotera, the capital of Morazán.

Dormant in El Salvador’s judicial system since 1993, the case was reopened in September 2016. Among the accused are 15 soldiers—seven of them high-ranking Salvadoran officers—,the only surviving defendants from the original list of 33 military personnel.

The trial is currently in the investigative phase, where evidence is being gathered and examined before the judge decides whether to proceed to a full public trial.

A mural on the side of El Mozote’s plaza displays the names of the hundreds of people killed by the Salvadoran army in December 1981, marking the largest massacre of civilians in Latin America. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Times of Uncertainty 

El Mozote’s central plaza has been renovated over the past three years as part of the government’s effort to give it a more orderly and modern appearance—a promise made by President Nayib Bukele when he visited the site in February 2021.

The town is also nearing completion of a Urban Center for Well-being and Opportunities (CUBO)—a government-sponsored community center designed to provide youth with access to reading materials, art, culture, and information and communication technologies.

However, some residents told IPS that these projects are being carried out without prior consultation or agreement with the community, in violation of the 2012 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which called for justice, truth, and reparations for the victims.

The reconstruction work demolished the bandstand, a space highly valued by the community as a gathering place for meetings and collective organizing.

Despite this, Chicas said she supports the plaza’s renovations, as they have made it more inviting for young people to spend time there. Still, she noted that the remodeling affected her personally.

The construction forced her to dismantle her small food stall, made of corrugated metal sheets, where she used to make and sell pupusas—El Salvador’s most iconic dish, made of corn and stuffed with beans, cheese, or pork.

Chicas also mentioned the ongoing uncertainty about whether the kiosk where she and other women craft and sell their handicrafts will be removed.

“We’re left in limbo—we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

Sofia Romero Pineda, 55, and her grandson hold the few portraits she preserves of some of her family members killed during the military operation which slaughtered some 1,000 inhabitants of El Mozote and neighboring villages in eastern El Salvador. The portraits are of Simeona Vigil, her grandmother; Florentina Pereria, her mother; and Maria Nelly Romero, her sister. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
EL MOZOTE, El Salvador, May 23 2017 (IPS)

Except for a house with its walls riddled with holes made by bursts of machine gun fire, nobody would say that the quiet Salvadoran village of El Mozote was the scene of one of the worst massacres in Latin America, just 35 years ago.

“Many of us who live here are descendants of those who managed to survive the massacre,” 21-year-old university student Nancy García, who is from this village of about 700 people in the rural municipality of Meanguera, in the eastern department of Morazán, told IPS.

Shelved since 1993 in the Salvadoran justice system, the case known as the El Mozote Massacre was reopened in September 2016, providing a historic opportunity to try soldiers and officers accused of killing more than 1,000 inhabitants of this village and neighbouring hamlets.

The reopening of the case was made possible by a July 2016 Supreme Court ruling that declared unconstitutional the 1993 Amnesty Law which prevented the prosecution of those accused of serious human rights violations during the 1980-1992 Salvadoran armed conflict.“I cried when I saw the officers sitting there. I imagined them organising the operation and murdering my family, my parents, my 11-year-old little brother, Adolfo Arturo, my pregnant sister.” -- María Dorila Márquez

One of the survivors of the massacre was 79-year-old Juan Antonio Pereira, who was 35 when the military raided Los Toriles, a hamlet near El Mozote. He remembers the four days of terror, from Dec. 10-13, 1981.

From his hiding place behind some bushes, he said he watched the soldiers order people from their homes at gunpoint, including members of his family, and line them up to shoot them.

“You can’t imagine how sad it is to see your family being killed,” the peasant farmer told IPS. He watched his 35-year-old wife, Natalia Guevara, and their two children – José Mario, 10, and Rosa Cándida, 14 – as they were shot to death.

Investigations to clarify the events were launched in 1990, but the case was amnestied in 1993.

Now, the lawyers from the María Julia Hernández Legal Protection organisation and the Centre for Justice and International Law (Cejil), as well as local residents belonging to the El Mozote Association for the Defence of Human Rights, are working together to find those responsible for the massacre and bring them to justice.

Legal Protection tried to reopen the case in 2006, but the initiative was rejected because the Amnesty Law was still in force.

“This is not about vengeance, or about going against the armed forces, but against some elements that were involved in serious human rights violations. What we want is for this not to remain unpunished,” lawyer Wilfredo Medrano, from Legal Protection, told IPS.

On Mar. 29, a court in San Francisco Gotera, the capital of the department of Morazán, held a hearing to notify seven high-ranking army officers implicated in the massacre of the charges against them, which include murder, rape, deprivation of liberty and acts of terrorism.

Among those officials were Generals Guillermo García, a former minister of defence (1979-1983), and Rafael Flores Lima, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The investigation will be based on much of the documentary and testimonial evidence already collected when the case was first filed in 1990.

According to the testimonies of the survivors of the El Mozote Massacre in El Salvador, government troops locked women and children in this now rebuilt small church and murdered them in cold blood. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“I cried when I saw the officers sitting there. I imagined them organising the operation and murdering my family, my parents, my 11-year-old little brother, Adolfo Arturo, my pregnant sister,” 60-year-old María Dorila Márquez, president of the El Mozote Association for the Defence of Human Rights, who was 25 at the time of the massacre, told IPS.

Márquez estimates that 100 of her relatives were murdered.

The military leadership considered the local population collaborators of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas – a claim that is denied by the survivors and family members of the victims.

After the 1992 peace deal that put an end to the war, the FMLN became a political party. It has governed the country since 2009, having won two consecutive presidential elections.

On May 6, the same court notified three other officers, who had not been present at the previous hearing, of the charges against them.

“I feel terrible when I talk about this, I remember my murdered father, I have so much anger… If I were closer to those soldiers I would kick them,” said Santos Jacobo Chicas, 40, a native of the village of Cerro Pando, interviewed by IPS at the end of the hearing.

He and other relatives of several victims attended the court proceedings.

“Whoever gave the orders should pay, should go to prison,” he said.

He recalled how the soldiers of the Atlacatl rapid response battalion, an elite force trained by the United States military, killed his cousin’s two-day-old baby boy.

“They set him on fire,“ he said. It is estimated that more than 400 children were slaughtered during the operation.

For her part, Sofía Romero Pereira, 55, who was 19 in 1981, said that at least 35 relatives of hers were killed, including her father and four of her eight brothers and sisters.

She survived because her father, Daniel Romero, managed to get her and three other sons and daughters out of the village, before the troops entered El Mozote, taking them to the town of San Miguel, in a neighboring department.

But when he returned to get the rest of the family, he was caught in the middle of the military raid and was not able to rescue the rest: Ana María, 16; Jesús, 14; María Nelly, 11; and Elmer, just one year old. Ana María was taken to a nearby hill, where she was raped and later murdered, Romero said.

“They should at least admit that they did it, they should apologise, I would forgive them…what good is prison?” she said.

The lawyers from Legal Protection have also requested reopening the case of Óscar Arnulfo Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, who was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while giving mass in the country´s capital.

Meanwhile, the Movement of Victims of Terrorism in El Salvador has asked the Attorney General’s Office to reopen cases of crimes attributed to the guerrillas during the armed conflict.

These include the killings of three US Marines, allegedly executed when their helicopter was shot down by the guerrillas in 1991, while flying over the municipality of Lolotique in the eastern department of San Miguel.

Other cases involve four more Marines, who were shot in a restaurant in San Salvador in 1985, as well as the murders of mayors and other public officials, and of children killed by land-mines placed by the insurgents.

If the petition is accepted, criminal charges would be brought against members of the former guerrilla leadership and officials of the current government, including Salvadoran President Salvador Sánchez Cerén.
“Generally those who demand justice are leftist victims … and we are the voice of the victims of the war that have been forgotten, not only from the right, but also all of those who have been forgotten,” Fernán Álvarez, a lawyer for the Movement of Victims of Terrorism, told IPS.

The 12-year war in this Central American country, with a current population of 6.3 million people, left about 70,000 dead and 8,000 missing.

“It’s awful to see people who are criminals treated as heroes,” said Dorila Márquez, one of the survivors of the El Mozote massacre committed by Salvadoran army troops in December 1981.

Márquez told IPS that she lost many members of her family in the three-day massacre of some 1,000 men, women and children from El Mozote and surrounding villages in the eastern province of Morazán, committed during the 12-year armed conflict between government forces and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas.

President Mauricio Funes, elected in 2009 as the candidate of the left-wing FMLN – which became a political party after a peace agreement put an end to the war in 1992 – recently announced the creation of a military commission to review the history of the army for the first time ever.

The new commission will verify whether the armed forces have fulfilled the recommendations of the peace agreement, and will identify the names of officers and troops implicated in human rights abuses during the civil war.

The officers who fought the FMLN enjoy the status of heroes in the eyes of the army and the conservative elites.

The creation of the new commission was announced by Funes on Jan. 16, the 20th anniversary of the signing of the peace deal, when he apologised in the name of the state for the El Mozote massacre and other crimes against humanity committed by the military.

“For the victims of the abuses and for organisations like ours, it was gratifying to hear the president’s announcement,” Miguel Montenegro, an activist with the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES), told IPS.

For years, he added, there have been attempts to cover up and silence the human rights violations committed by the military against the civilian population of this impoverished Central American country.

Analysts and academics are sceptical, however, that the president’s initiative will bring results, at least in the short term.

“The military will continue to be seen as heroes, and no one can prevent that,” Jorge Juárez, director of the Institute of Historical, Anthropological and Archaeological Studies at the University of El Salvador, told IPS. “That reinterpretation cannot be made by decree.”

One of the “heroes” is the late lieutenant colonel Domingo Monterrosa, the commander of the Atlacatl battalion.

It was Monterrosa who led the counterinsurgency operation that ended in the El Mozote massacre, according to the United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission created by the peace agreement to investigate the targeted political killings and other human rights violations committed during the war, which left 70,000 people dead and 8,000 missing.

Monterrosa and several of his officers were killed in October 1984, when the FMLN, in one of its boldest moves, blew up the lieutenant colonel’s helicopter.

The lieutenant-colonel believed that under his seat he was carrying a trophy: the transmitter of the guerrilla group’s radio station, Radio Venceremos, whose nightly broadcasts from territory that the army claimed to control in the province of Morazán were a humiliation to the military, which claimed the pirate station was in Nicaragua.

The FMLN had a spare radio transmitter, which they pretended they were forced to abandon during a supposed firefight with army troops. But they had actually stuffed dynamite in the transmitter, and the bomb was detonated by remote control when Monterrosa’s helicopter was on its way to a press conference to celebrate the “victory” over Radio Venceremos.

After Monterrosa’s death, Congress named him the “Hero of Joateca” (the place where he died), and the 3rd Infantry Brigade, which was based in San Miguel, in the east of the country, carried his name. The military have also written songs for him and have created a web site called “Monterrosa Vive” (Monterrosa Lives).

“I don’t understand how someone who caused so many deaths can be considered a hero,” Márquez said.

The army today mythologises the role that the military played in the civil war, saying they saved the country from communism, Juárez said.

But the academic questioned the fact that a military commission will be evaluating the history of the army, and warned about the risk of a lack of objectivity.

For his part, Carlos Cañas, a member of the Academy of Military History of El Salvador, said the president’s announcement was impertinent, and that Funes was taking for granted that the military participated in human rights abuses, even though they have not been found guilty in court.

Funes’s announcement “contributes nothing in a society where the presumption of innocence does not operate and people are condemned ahead of time,” Cañas said in an interview with IPS.

“The armed forces were on a campaign against international communism, and their field actions and tactics were seen as operations of legitimate defence of the national territory,” he maintained.

Both historians agreed, though, that greater citizen participation in the military commission announced by the president is needed.

They stressed, however, that although there is greater openness to the participation of historians and other academics, the effort will not have a great effect unless there is an official decision for the army to open up its files on operations during the war.

The archives must be opened in order to provide access to reliable documents that back up the work of the commission, Cañas said.

For his part, Miguel Montenegro of CDHES said civil society should closely monitor the work of the military commission, and that mechanisms should be established to ensure that it is carried out as objectively as possible, with the participation of civilians.

In El Mozote, far removed from the debate among academics and politicians, local residents have not forgotten the bloody events of 1981. But at least some say they are willing to forgive those who committed the killings.

“If I could talk to the people who killed my family, I would forgive them, but it would be good if they would first admit they had participated,” Márquez said.

“I hope the commission will bring results, because we always questioned that they kept saying that the people who killed our families were heroes,” she said.