Human rights activists and hundreds of residents of the Chalatenango department, in northern El Salvador, commemorated this Saturday the 42nd anniversary of the massacre of hundreds of civilians at the hands of the army in the well-known “guinda (flight) of May”, which It also led to the forced disappearance of more than 150 children within the framework of the civil war (1980-1992).
The commemoration began with a walk of about 300 people in the area of the military operation, near the Sumpul River, where flowers were thrown into the waters of the tributary in memory of the victims, testimonies were given and a Catholic mass was held.
The director of the organization to search for missing children during the civil war Pro-Búsqueda, Ana Escalante, told EFE that the 1982 operation was carried out by elite Army soldiers.
“For the population it is important to remember these dates not as a way to highlight their wounds but as a way to vindicate their loved ones, those who did not survive,” he indicated.
He explained that only “a minimal percentage of missing children have been found again and more still need to be located,” given that his organization only has a sample of 52 records.
The human rights defender maintained that this commemoration also serves to “make visible the rights that have not been fulfilled,” which are “truth, justice and reparation for the surviving victims.”
These murders and disappearances were recorded in 1982 and were perpetrated by members of the Ramón Belloso and Atlácatl battalions, the latter also accused of murdering some 1,000 civilians in 1981 in the El Mozote massacre, one of the cruelest of the Salvadoran civil war. .
Escalante maintained that it is necessary for these types of events to receive justice as a measure to avoid repeating them, because “when there are no justice measures for those who perpetrated serious violations of human rights, a society runs the risk of repeating the events.”
Currently there are criminal proceedings open in the case of the murder of Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero (1980), the massacre of some 1,000 peasants in the remote town of El Mozote (1981), the murder of six Jesuit fathers (1989), five of them Spanish , and two of his collaborators, among other facts.
The Salvadoran war, which pitted the Army, financed by the United States, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla, left 75,000 dead and 8,000 missing.
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