El Salvador Opens Cultural Center in Site of El Mozote Massacre

Women observe a mural with the names of the campesinos murdered by the Armed
Forces in El Mozote, El Salvador, in 1981. | Photo: EFE

Published 29 January 2017 (8 hours 31 minutes ago)


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El Salvador inaugurated Saturday a cultural center in the town of El Mozote, where the U.S.-backed military executed more than 1,000 people in 1981 in one of the bloodiest massacre's in the country's 12-year civil war.

This site was built to "articulate culture as a right, where women and older adults generate wealth with their knowledge and remember their past so that the current generations know the injustices that were committed in the past and they won't happen again," said Secretary of Culture Silvia Regalado.

The initiative is part of the Integral Development Program of El Mozote, which has been preparing the cultural institution with the support of the Human Rights Association of El Mozote for three years, according to Regalado.

Soldiers from a U.S.-trained Salvadoran death squad "deliberately and systematically" tortured and executed 1,200 villagers, mostly women and children, in the small town of El Mozote and near villages between Dec. 11 and 13, 1981, according to the U.N. Truth Commission launched in 1992 after the signing of the peace accords.

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http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/El-Salvador-Opens-Cultural-Center-in-Site-of-El-Mozote-Massacre-20170129-0023.html