A village deserted for so long
________after such a horror:
________________Battalion Atlacatl, armed & trained in
________________torture & so-called low-intensity warfare
________by the US of A, killed 1000 people here &
________in neighboring villages in Operación
________Rescate
One December night in '81, the soldiers arrived and stayed.
The people of the village were forbidden to leave their
__homes.
The next morning, the soldiers gathered the people:
________the men in one place...
________the women in another...
________the children in the convent.
First they interrogated/tortured/shot the men...
________then they shot the women...
________then the children...
The soldiers left their boasts on the walls of the now-empty
homes
________& laid torch to it all.
The campesinos & guerrilleros near saw the columns of smoke
__arising.
Some had heard the shots & shouts, the screams.
When they arrived all that was left was the bodies of 1000
people
________being eaten by buzzards & dogs.
And now the air is disturbed
________only by a slight breeze through the long-needled pines.
A silhouette sculpture of a family
________________man/woman/children holding hands
________stands in the center of the village.
Roofless buildings--some with bullet & shell holes,
________all with charred beams.
And from these ashes, from the debris of fallen roof tiles
________you, the few survivors of that massacre
_______________________[only six, with your new families]
________________arise like a Phoenix
________________________to rebuild your homes & your community
________________still called El Mozote.
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