The Empire 209

'Remembering Rufina Amaya
By Thomas Riggins

On March 9 The New York Times ran an obituary on Rufina Amaya who died at 64 in El Salvador, of a stroke, the previous Tuesday. We should all remember the ordeal experienced by Ms. Amaya at the hands of troops specifically trained by U.S. Special Forces.We read in the papers today that the U.S. plans on the “Salvadorization” of the Iraqi counterinsurgency as a way to bring about an American victory. In fact, The New York Times Magazine in a 2005 article (May 01) revealed that the Iraqi counterinsurgency was being advised by an American who led the Special Forces in El Salvador in the 1980s.What can Iraqi civilians expect to face? Well, here is the story of Rufina Amaya and her village, El Mozote, and what happened to her and it at the hands of the American trained troops. This information is all publicly available on the internet (Wikepedia, articles from the The New Yorker, New York Times and Washington Post, among others).The Atlacatl Brigade was the first “Rapid Deployment Infantry Brigade” in the Salvadorian army. It was trained by the U.S. and was supposed to destroy the peasant liberation movement fighting for bread and land against the Salvadorian oligarchy and its American supporters (the FMLN).On the night of December 10, 1981 the Atlacatl Brigade took over the remote village of El Mozote. The Brigade thought that FMLN members might sometimes be getting food and shelter in the village, but they had no proof. On the morning of the 11th the Brigade decided to put its training to work and make an example of the people of El Mozote. They decided to kill the entire population of the village (about 900 people including peasants from the countryside who came to stay in El Mozote out of fear of the Atlacatl Brigade in the field. The population was unarmed. The men were separated from the women and children and publicly executed, many were beheaded (not an Iraqi invention). Then all the girls and women 12 years old and up were killed, many were first raped. Finally all the children under 12 and the babies were taken into the village church and then shot and bayonetted.'

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