Warning. This episode contains references to extreme violence and sexual assault. Please use discretion when listening.
Jamine Josuel Cornel Jonio Castillo.
So that's Coronell Jose Antonio Castillo. He's retired now, but he spent his entire career in the salvador In Army. I met him for coffee outside my hotel in San Salvador. He has short, neatly combed hair, blue eyes, and smiles like he's running for office. In fact, at various points throughout our interview, I thought he might be flirting with me.
In Cantal de Miel lucien Siendo, he.
Was stationed in my family's hometown, San Miguel, and he tells me that the most beautiful women are from there. I wanted to talk to Coronel Castillo to get the military perspective on the war, and he is not shy about sharing it. For him, the whole thing was very cut and dry.
Ohiamos a lapublica.
Deracia.
You had to choose. You were either with democracy or with the communists. Coronel Castillo has always been extremely patriotic. When he was in his teens, he idolized a well known military leader, a man named Domino monte Rosa, the head of the most infamous group of Salvadoran soldiers, the Atla Cado.
Battalion, Giofiul Mirador Deli, the Rasco Militar came Cal Coronel Domingo mont Rosa.
Vlade Cornel.
I'll be honest. Throughout her entire interview, I felt really uneasy. Coronel Castillo is charming, smiles easily, but knowing that he was stationed in my family's hometown, I can't help but wonder what he did during the war. His hero the Mengo monter Rosa and the Atla Coado Battalion are well known for the human rights abuses they committed. But it seems like the Coronel might be uneasy with me too.
Before starting the interview, he asked me a bunch of questions about where I work and what the angle of my interview would be.
Ist Sea.
Quinteistoria.
Whenever you hear a story, you're going to hear it differently depending on who's telling it, he tells me. Coronel Castillo is worried because he feels like a lot of the storytelling about the war is one sided, that there hasn't been enough attention paid to the violence committed by the f m l N, and this feeling that the stories told about the conflict are somehow incomplete extends to one of the most controversial moments from the war, the story of a town called El mosotekel.
See.
Elmosote is a small town high in the Salvadorn Mountains. It's in a district called Mora San where some of the worst fighting during the war happened. For many years, the town of Elmosote laid abandoned, but after the war a crew of forensic specialists came from around the world to investigate what had happened to this small town, and they discovered bodies, hundreds of bodies from what would later be called the El Mosote MASSACREO.
Dontulm savra com.
Coronel Castile's theory is that El Mosote was an fml and burial ground, a police where the guerrillas went to bury their dead. When I ask him what happened to the townspeople, he tells me that in December nineteen eighty one, there was a big battle that happened in Elmosote.
El informe the classifics d the combati in al in Frina albitia, momento, contract and combatido.
These theories that Coronel Castillo has, they're nothing new. They go way back to when the story of Elmsoto was first reported, and none of these theories are true. They've all been disproved by the UN Truth Commission and forensic evidence. Looking back, I wish that I had pushed back on some of what he was saying contradicted his prepared talking points, but I didn't. I just let him say his peace,
thanked him for his time, and left. It takes a lot of courage to tell someone in a position of power you're wrong, you're lying, and in that moment, I didn't have it. The truth of what happened at Enmosote is now part of the official history of El Salvador. It's been verified by experts and witnesses. But for many years the massacre went widely ignored and disputed, and even now there are people like Goronel Gastillo who refused to believe it happened. And it's important because how we remember
this moment. The stories we tell and the stories we ignore embody the country's struggle with its past and its present. I'm Jasmine Romero and this is Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints episode seven and Mosote, We'll be right back. The town of Inmosote is about two hours away from my parents house in San Miuel. The drive is almost entirely uphill, and it gets really rough in spots. My dad's truck was rattling so hard it felt like it was going
to just shatter into a million pieces. Okay, so we're in in the area of now, but we're on a really really narrow dirt road.
Oh god, oh god.
We end up in a paved plaza in the center of a small town. We're welcomed by the man that I'm here to see.
It's the Claros Tolmente, did they say, pa.
Lionelle Claros, the president of the Victims Association of Lionel, is here to lead us on a tour of the town. It's lovely here, with a spectacular view of the lush, green countryside. My mom keeps freaking out at all the beautiful orchids that grow wild here. Like most salvador In towns, it's centered around a church, like Lesia de Santa Catarina. Leonelle leads me and my parents through the plaza to where that church used to be. There's a memorial where it once stood. Is the is the monument.
The forty three years ago, in this very spot, the entire town of Elmosote was massacred.
This is based on the findings of the UN Truth Commission. On December eleventh of nineteen eighty one, in the early morning light, townspeople were ordered from their homes and gathered into the town square. Soldiers from the Atla Katal battalion, led by the famed Goronelle Domingo mont Rosa, told the people that they'd be given food. The soldiers then separated people into groups men, women, and children. The men were marched into the sacristy of the church. It's a small
room where the priests prepare before leading mass. There the soldiers tortured them for information before spraying them with bullets. Beside the church, there's a small building called Ilgnvento, the convent. It wasn't really a convent. It was mostly used to house visiting priests. When they were passing through the area, that's where the soldiers brought the children. They two were
killed with gunfire. Finally, across the street, the women were lined up in the yard of a house they were systematically raped, and then the soldiers pushed them into the house and killed them two. The soldiers then lit the town on fire and watched it burn. After the war, the bodies of the townspeople were brought here to where I'm standing now and buried together. In nineteen ninety one, a simple memorial was built in their honor. It's a big brick wall with black marble squares laid across it
in a grid. Each squareless ten names.
Lapare when a pamo.
Some of the squares are all just one last name, entire family lines extinguished. Maya Rufina Amaya is one of the very few survivors of that day, and she's buried here too. Her testimony is one of the reasons that the world knows the story of what happened here. Rufina lived in almost with her husband and four children. On the day of the massacre, she was lined up along with all the other women in town. She was the last woman in line, ye yea.
Ye.
When a soldier wasn't looking, she managed to escape and hide under a bush. She laid there for hours, frozen, listening as the soldiers massacred everyone in town, including her four children. As she lay there, she made a deal with God. She vowed that if she was spared, she would dedicate her life to telling the story of what had happened here. And she did.
Pourkup and she told it to tour groups and two journalists Quadri Brazos, and.
Across the decades, again and again she told her story. She was found eight days after the massacre by f M L and soldiers. The interviewed her and began to broadcast the news of the massacre on their clandestine radio station radios.
Radiomos.
They also invited journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post into the area so they could see for themselves and report on the massacre. Here's former New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner reading his notes after interviewing Rufina.
The earth was littered with spent sixteen automatic rifle cartridges. The house was shambles. Mama, they're killing me. They've killed my sister. They're going to kill me, screamed the nine year old son of Ruffina, Amaya. She was one who had managed to escape. This is Amaya, recalled. The soldiers had no fury, It just observed the lieutenant's orders, they were cold. It wasn't a battle.
Bonner and The New York Times reported that seven hundred and thirty three people had been massacred in Elmosote. The Salvadoran government vehemently denied that the story was true. Then Salvadoran President Josina claimed that the whole story was fabricated, just fml N propaganda, that the numbers of the dead were exaggerated. The US, upon hearing reports of a massacre, sent two embassy officials up to the area to see if the story was true, but the Salvadoran military refused
to escort those officials into Almosote. They basically dumped these two guys out on the side of the road in the middle of a war zone and said, if you want to investigate, be my guest. So the officials came back to the embassy and told their boss something happened, but we don't know exactly what. And that's what the ambassador told the White House. Shortly after the massacre, the US Ambassador Dean Hinton was asked if the reports were true.
His response quote, I certainly cannot confirm such reports, nor do I have any reason to believe that they are true. The day after Elmo soThe was reported in The New York Times, the Reagan administration certified to Congress that the Salvadoran government had quote made progress on human rights. They too, called the story propaganda.
A determined propaganda campaign is sought to mislead many in the United States as to the true nature of the conflict in El Salvador. Very simply, guerrillas are attempting to impose a Marxist Leninist dictatorship on the people of El Salvador as part of a larger imperialistic plan.
Raymond Bonner, the New York Times reporter who interviewed Rufina Amaya, was removed from his beat reporting on Central America and eventually left the paper. The Wall Street Journal ran an article lambasting The Times, meaning that they'd fallen for communist propaganda. With both governments denying or downplaying the massacre, the story of Enmosote would go basically unheard for another ten years. When the war finally ended in nineteen ninety two, the
UN sent a commission team to investigate. Finally, the bodies were found surrounded by hundreds of shells of US made ammunition, some of the best forensic specialists around the world came to this tiny mountain town to help uncover what had been hidden for so long, but it was ten years too late. By then, the theories about FMLN burial grounds and shootouts with the town had long spread, and even with all the forensic evidence saying otherwise, obviously, those stories
stuck to this day. The number of dead is uncertain because bodies were continually exhumed for years, but including the surrounding areas, the best estimates we have are two hundred and twenty men, two hundred women, and five hundred and forty one children. It's a devastating number, especially when you consider that two hundred and forty eight of those children were under six years old. But Gronlicastillo, the military officer we heard from earlier, had an answer for why there
were so many children's bodies at Enmosolte. His theory is that the children in those graves were child soldiers.
I shown an alle.
Samuelitos. It's the name that right wing Salvadorans give to child soldiers. I don't buy this on its face, it makes no sense. According to the forensic evidence, hundreds of the dead and Elmosote were babies and toddlers, including newborns. But here's the thing. There's a kernel of truth in the Coronel's theory. There were child soldiers working with the FMLN. But their stories are much more complicated than the one that the coronelle is trying to tell me. And after the break we'll hear one.
Chest senor.
Not far from almost on the hot asphalt of a public playground, I met a man named Jose.
Hasen.
Jose is not his real name. He would only meet me in a public park and he wanted to stay anonymous. He joined the f mL N when he was twelve.
Generally Mintererella also there he doos in Pleno Condricto.
Jose grew up the son of a Campecino in a rural area in this province, Morassan, the area where the leftists were gaining a lot of ground.
Rimero Nucleos, Diamo Clandestino Jorgania here Mile but heso Jo.
He says that it's father joined one of the groups that would eventually become part of the f mLAN Porque Cio.
The a group of Lavaltata for la Falta, Portundia economic for la Falta.
He felt like there was no future for his family or children, no chance at an education or to better their situation if society didn't change. Jose's mother wanted no part in any of it. She worried for her children, and she tried to flee the town with Jose as a child. She was killed by the armed forces.
Whende if we ever car carrios albara and maestra endo pelo implementary posta the Perla de Masiel.
Josett thinks that because of his father's connection with the leftists, the army killed his mother, along with his two aunts and his grandparents, but it's hard to say for sure because around that time the army seemed to just be lumping everyone in the area together, counting everyone in Morasan Province as a part of the leftists. It was part of a military tactic that's now called draining the Sea to hurt the Gerrias by cutting off their means of
support and intimidate anyone who might consider helping them. Draining the Sea is associated with the mass murder of civilian populations.
Last depart in La Sona nor.
Aod heron Kera guerriero.
Er.
It was an invasion, he tells me, with the rest of his family, Dad, Jose felt like his only option was to join his father and join the fighterouke.
Canno, can you have a fast organizaui loco? Since aver loka significava nagerra mucho meno.
He was twelve years old, he didn't really understand what joining a war even meant. He went through some basic military training along with classes on how to read and write, and then went into the conflict, but he insists that he wasn't recruited.
Yes, documento documenta.
Couto no no homilia ytonsa.
They killed their families, he says, we didn't have another option. It's estimated that of the eighty five hundred total FMLN soldiers, two thousand of them were under eighteen. That's what the UN classifies as a child soldier. Jose's story is just one of them, but it's a much more complicated story than the one Coronel Castillo is telling me about Samuelitos. When I first talked to Coronel Castillo, he told me that the war was a matter of choice. You were
either with democracy or with the communists. Maybe that was true for him, but Jose didn't have a choice. His entire family was killed.
Goron L.
Castile claims that the storytelling about the war is one sided. There's some truth to that. Even in this podcast, the focus has mainly been on the atrocities committed by the state, but the leftists definitely had their hands dirty too. They did use child soldiers. Even before the war. The FMLN did their fair share of kidnapping, torturing and murdering, but in the UN Truth Commission's report from after the war, they estimated that the FMLN was responsible for five percent
of the atrocities committed during the war. The military accounted for eighty five The last ten percent is unknown. The difference in all this is power, the power to choose whether or not to fight, the power to tell your own story and have it believed. The Salvador and oligarchy and government got to tell their version of the story. In return, they got billions of dollars in US military aid. Rufina Amaya told her story. In return, she was called a liar.
But I mean honoi, yeah, you gonna do OK.
Gave him.
It's not easy for me, she says, But there's no one else to tell it. People say that it's a lie, that it didn't happen. Those of us who lived it, we know the truth. Trufina Maya spent her life testifying about what happened in her small mountain town. Her testimony was the backbone for one of the earliest investigations into the case, led by the human rights organization tutell. It's an organization that was co founded by Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Tutella Lal's report on Elmosote continues to be one of the most extensive and thorough accounts. They led the charge on trying to get justice for the victims and their families. Grafina Amaya died in two thousand and seven of a stroke when she was only sixty four. She died waiting for justice to be done. The truth of what happened here lives on in the stories of the survivors and their families still here, telling the same story they've told
since the beginning. On the next episode, peace finally comes to El Salvador, but it comes at a price.
Sex Jesuit priests were brutally executed and San Salvador last week. Their deaths have triggered a heated congressional debate on continuation of military aid to that country.
If you want to know more, I highly recommend Mark Danner's book The Massacre at Enmosote. Sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints is a production of AJA Podcasts in partnership with Iheart's Michaultura podcast network and is hosted and written by me Jasmine Romero, produced by Jazmine Romero Sofia palitza Car with help from Jorge Just and Alo Rosibeles. Research and reporting by Jasmine Romero, Edited by Cyda Kevelo, Jorge Just
and Rose Red. Nation of Saints was recorded in New York City at the Relic Room with engineering by Sam Bear. Mixing and sound designed by Paciquinones. Original music by Golden Mines, Darko and Aeme based on Patrick Hart's original composition. Fact checking by Edendira Aquino Ayala. Executive producers are Carman geratol isaac Lee, Rose Red and Nando Villa. Our executive producers
at iHeart are Giselle Bansis and Arlene Santana. Sacred Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Baulovadro's Special thanks to Cynthia Glavic, Joanne Gross and the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland. The recordings of Dorothy Casel in this episode were provided courtesy of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland Archives. For more podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.