On May 14, 1980, units of the Salvadoran Armed Forces and pro-government militias killed some 300-600 civilians believed to be supporters or sympathizers of the outlawed Marxist insurgent group, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The FMLN had as its objectives the overthrow of the government through armed revolution and formation of a communist regime. The site of the massacre was the Sumpul River that separates El Salvador with neighboring Honduras. The civilians were fleeing from the advancing Salvadoran army by crossing the Sumpul into Honduras but were deterred by the presence of Honduran troops on the other side of the river. In the immediate aftermath, both the Salvadoran and Honduran governments denied that the incident took place.
The massacre was one of many such incidents (e.g. the El Mozote Massacre (800-1,200 dead) in December 1981; El Calabozo Massacre (over 200 dead) in August 1982) that took place during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992), a Cold War conflict between the pro-West Salvadoran government and the local Marxist rebel group, the FMLN. The war was resolved following the end of the Cold War when in January 1992 the government and the FMLN signed a peace treaty. With regards to the Sumpul River Massacre, in April 1993, the United Nations published its “Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador”, finding that there was “substantial evidence” that Salvadoran forces “massacred no less than 300 unarmed civilians” and that “the massacre was made possible by the cooperation of the Honduran armed forces.” It noted that “Salvadorian military authorities were guilty of a cover-up of the incident”, and described the massacre as “a serious violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law”.
The peace agreement also established a fact-finding body, the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador (“Truth Commission”), to investigate “serious acts of violence…and whose impact on society urgently demands that the public should know” and make recommendations. Some 30,000 written and oral complaints of human rights violations were received and processed by the Truth Commission, which released its report on March 15, 1993. The report implicated the Salvadoran military and state security forces in 95% of all the human rights cases filed, while the FMLN was named in 5% of these cases.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the human rights branch of the Organization of American States (OAS), in its ruling in October 2012 regarding the El Mozote Massacre, has stated that El Salvador’s amnesty law must not violate international laws; as such, the IACHR has asked the Salvadoran government to investigate the El Mozote Massacre. Earlier in December 2011, President Mauricio Funes (of the FMLN Party) issued, in behalf of the government, a public apology to El Mozote residents in a town ceremony.
The war had enormous repercussions on the population. Some 75,000 civilians (mostly peasants) were killed; 20,000 rebels and 7,000 government soldiers also lost their lives. About one million of the country’s total population of six million people lost their homes and became internally displaced. Tens of thousands fled to nearby countries, such as Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mexico. About one million entered as refugees in western democratic countries in Europe and North America, with most eventually settling in the United States.
(The “Farabundo Marti” in FMLN was the name of a Salvadoran Marxist-Leninist revolutionary who in 1932 led a failed peasant uprising in El Salvador’s western provinces. Government forces captured and executed Marti and then carried out a campaign of extermination against the Pipil indigenous population, whom they believed were communist supporters of the uprising that was aimed at overthrowing the government. Some 30,000 Pipil civilians were killed in the military repression.)