The El Calabozo massacre was an incident during the Salvadoran Civil War on 21–22 August 1982, in which more than two hundred people, including children and elderly, were reportedly killed at El Calabozo by the Atlácatl Battalion of the

Salvadoran Army The Salvadoran Army (Spanish: ''Ejército Salvadoreño'') is the land branch and largest of the Armed Forces of El Salvador. Conflicts The Football War The Football War (also called The Soccer War or 100-hours War) was a term coined by Po ...

. In August 1982, the Salvadoran military attacked the

San Vicente Department San Vicente () is a Departments of El Salvador, department of El Salvador in the center of the country. The capital is San Vicente, El Salvador, San Vicente. On October 4, 1834, San Vicente City of Austria and Lorenzana (Ciudad de San Vicente de ...

, an area where the rebel

Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN) is a left-wing political party in El Salvador. The FMLN was formed as an umbrella group on 10 October 1980, from five leftist gu ...

was known to have bases. The department was bombed for several days before ground forces advanced, causing many civilians to flee. On the night of August 21, a group of internally displaced people was overtaken beside the Amatitán river by the Atlácatl Battalion, a US-trained counter-insurgency unit. The Atlácatl Battalion had previously been responsible for the El Mozote massacre, in which 811 captured civilians had been killed in the town of El Mozote At a spot called "El Calabozo" ("The Dungeon"), the battalion surrounded the IDPs and opened fire at close range. The soldiers threw some of the bodies into the river and reportedly threw acid on others, making an exact death toll impossible to confirm, but more than two hundred were reported missing after the incident by surviving family members. The dead included infants and elderly. The massacre was first publicly reported in The Boston Globe on September 8, 1982. Minister of Defense José Guillermo García stated that the government had investigated the incident and determined that no massacre had taken place. In 1992, survivors filed a complaint with authorities asking for an investigation. Though the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador documented the massacre's existence, the government closed the case in 1993 without charges. As of 2012, the Salvadoran government had not acknowledged the existence of the massacre or prosecuted those responsible.

References

{{coord missing, El Salvador 1982 in El Salvador Massacres in 1982 History of El Salvador Human rights abuses in El Salvador Massacres in El Salvador Military scandals Salvadoran Civil War San Vicente Department August 1982 events in North America

See also

References