Morazán - Mozote and the civil war museum

My second weekend away promised to be very cheerful – a visit to the remote northeastern corner of the country and the site of some of the worst atrocities during the war. Arriving in Perquín you can easily understand how the secret guerrilla radio station, Radio Venceremos (We Will Win), was able to avoid capture throughout the 12 years of conflict – rugged hills covered in pine forest stretch as far as the eye can see.

The National Museum of the Civil War in Perquín has a fascinating collection of newspaper clippings and photos explaining the history leading up to the start of the conflict in 1980, including the massacre of 30,000 indigenous people in 1932. That was in response to a peasant uprising which attempted to overthrow the powerful elite – something which arguably still hasn’t been achieved. The leftist FLMN won the elections in March but the rich still monopolise everything from supermarkets to fertilisers and cases of corruption on an immense scale are still being discovered.

Elsewhere in the museum are displays of weaponry and bomb-making kits, as well as the room that was used to broadcast Radio Venceremos after the peace accords. Outside we were shown remnants of a helicopter, and told the story of how the guerrillas set a trap for Lt. Col. Domingo Monterrosa Barrios – the man responsible for the Mozote massacre in 1981.A botched ambush was set up in the mountains, complete with pig’s blood to add a realistic touch, in which the army finally captured Radio Venceremos’ transmitters. Monterrosa was convinced by the fact that they still worked and wouldn’t let his bomb expert check them over, instead he boarded his helicopter to fly the prize back to San Salvador. Once airborne the hidden bomb was detonated blowing him, quite literally, sky high.

On Sunday we visited the site of the Mozote massacre, where more than 1000 villagers were brutally murdered in an attempt to break the will of the guerrillas – babies were thrown into the air and skewered on bayonnets, girls were raped then hacked to pieces and only one villager escaped to tell her horrendous story. The village church has a very moving mural recording the event, as well as plaques with the names and ages of some of the bodies that have been found – more than half of those killed were children, including babies only a few days old.

The weekend wasn’t entirely about the war – after the visit to Mozote we found time to swim in the Rio Sapo, a beautiful mountain river complete with waterfalls and rapids, and basking in the midday sun helped to cheer all of us up after the grim stories of the war.