The El Mozote Massacre took place in the village of El Mozote, in Morazán department, El Salvador, on December 11, 1981, when Salvadoran armed forces killed an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign. It is reputed to be the worst such atrocity in modern Latin American history.
The massacre was both a low point and a turning point in the civil war that ravaged this Central American country between the late 1970s and early 1990s. As news of the massacre slowly emerged, the Reagan administration in the United States dismissed it as FMLN propaganda because it seriously undermined efforts by the U.S. government to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran government, which the US was supporting with large amounts of military aid.
