A Salvadoran man speaks about the finding of twelve local campesinos who were killed and thrown down a 180-foot well, bottom center, in the village of Los Mangos, Sonsonate department, El Salvador, April 7, 1984. The two men implicated in the murder were members of a civil defense unit associated with local death squads. Civil defense patrols were utilized by the Salvadoran state regime as a form of paramilitary control, specifically over the rural sectors of society. The civil defense patrols along with the Salvadoran National Guard were complicit in indiscriminate attacks on peasant cooperatives and villages suspected of subversive sympathies.
A Salvadoran National Guardsman, right, speaks to the media, including radio reporter Edith Caron, left, about the killing of twelve local campesinos in the village of Los Mangos, Sonsonate department, El Salvador, April 7, 1984. The two men implicated in the murder, in which they reportedly threw the twelve men down a 180-foot well, were members of a civil defense unit associated with local death squads. Civil defense patrols were utilized by the Salvadoran state regime as a form of paramilitary control, specifically over the rural sectors of society. The civil defense patrols along with the Salvadoran National Guard were complicit in indiscriminate attacks on peasant cooperatives and villages suspected of subversive sympathies.
A handcuffed Salvadoran man implicated in the killing of twelve local campesinos speaks to the media, including radio reporter Edith Caron, right, in the village of Los Mangos, Sonsonate department, El Salvador, April 7, 1984. The two men implicated in the murder, in which they reportedly threw the twelve men down a 180-foot well, were members of a civil defense unit associated with local death squads. Civil defense patrols were utilized by the Salvadoran state regime as a form of paramilitary control, specifically over the rural sectors of society. The civil defense patrols along with the Salvadoran National Guard were complicit in indiscriminate attacks on peasant cooperatives and villages suspected of subversive sympathies.
A crowd of local townspeople listen to a handcuffed Salvadoran man implicated in the killing of twelve local campesinos as he speaks to the media in the village of Los Mangos, Sonsonate department, El Salvador, April 7, 1984. The two men implicated in the murder, in which they reportedly threw the twelve men down a 180-foot well, were members of a civil defense unit associated with local death squads. Civil defense patrols were utilized by the Salvadoran state regime as a form of paramilitary control, specifically over the rural sectors of society. The civil defense patrols along with the Salvadoran National Guard were complicit in indiscriminate attacks on peasant cooperatives and villages suspected of subversive sympathies.
Photographers record the aftermath of a battle while Salvadoran army soldiers gather body bags of 57 dead soldiers killed by guerrillas from the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN, in Tejutepeque, El Salvador, March 26, 1984. Guerrillas attacked two army positions in Tejutepeque, 20 miles from San Salvador, and reported 16 of their own killed in the ambush.
A television crew from ABC films a young fighter from the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, ERP, as guerrillas stop commercial traffic along the Pan American Highway in Usulatán department, El Salvador, May 1, 1983. Guerrilla tactics for disrupting the transportation of commercial goods were employed in protest of economic inequality and to show defiance to the authoritarian state regime.
International media crowd United States Ambassador at Large to Central America Richard Stone as he prepares to depart at Ilopango Airport, San Salvador, El Salvador, August 1, 1983. Stone was facilitating preliminary peace talks between guerrilla leaders from the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN, and the Salvadoran government. Negotiations between the groups were ongoing throughout the twelve-year civil war. United States involvement in the Salvadoran armed conflict can be traced to a strategic hegemonic dominance favored by U.S. policy in Latin America, as well as Cold War-era concerns over the spread of communism after the revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua.
Journalists from western news organizations listen to leftist guerrilla officials from the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, FPL, as they respond to questions during a press conference in La Palma, El Salvador, February 6, 1983. FPL, as a member of the coalition Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN, acquired arms and strategic support from socialist parties in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union to fund their campaigns. The FMLN and their political counterpart the Frente Democrático Revolucionario, Revolutionary Democratic Front, FDR, were recognized as the established insurgency in El Salvador and played an integral role in the 1992 peace accords.
Associated Press photojournalist Luis Alberto Romero gestures outside a news event in San Salvador, El Salvador, April 1, 1983. Every major paper and wire service had a bureau in El Salvador while international concern maintained the Central American conflicts as hemispheric battles over communist expansion.
A group of international journalists are shown captured weapons from a guerrilla safe house found by the Guatemalan Army in the regional military garrison run by Colonel Byron Lima Estrada in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. Col. Lima Estrada was commander of the Quiché department army garrison. He received U.S. Army counterintelligence training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas, and instruction from the U.S. Army Mobile Training Team (MTT) and the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). Following his term as intelligence chief, Lima Estrada served as senior officer in key operational units during the Guatemalan Armed Forces' "scorched earth" campaigns against the Maya population in the highlands. Lima Estrada was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Catholic Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera, which remains one of the most infamous crimes of Guatemala's post-war history.
View of a cache of weapons and propaganda materials recently seized by the military from a Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, Guerrilla Army of the Poor, EGP, safe house at the regional military garrison in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. The EGP emerged in 1967 from dissident factions of the guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, Rebel Armed Forces, FAR, Catholic followers of liberation theology, and students affiliated with the Juventud Patriótica del Trabajo, JPT, a youth wing of the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo, Guatemalan Labor Party, PGT. The EGP established themselves in the highlands where civilian support for their cause was high. Among their demands were land reform, access to healthcare, and a respect for human rights, particularly for the Maya population of the country.
View of a cache of weapons and propaganda materials recently seized by the military from a Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, Guerrilla Army of the Poor, EGP, safe house with General Benedicto Lucas García, far right, at the regional military garrison in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. The EGP emerged in 1967 from dissident factions of the guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, Rebel Armed Forces, FAR, Catholic followers of liberation theology, and students affiliated with the Juventud Patriótica del Trabajo, JPT, a youth wing of the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo, Guatemalan Labor Party, PGT. The EGP established themselves in the highlands where civilian support for their cause was high. Among their demands were land reform, access to healthcare, and a respect for human rights, particularly for the Maya population of the country.
Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, center, shows a group of international journalists a cache of weapons recently found by the military in a Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, Guerrilla Army of the Poor, EGP, safe house at the regional military garrison in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. Col. Lima Estrada was commander of the Quiché department army garrison. He received U.S. Army counterintelligence training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas, and instruction from the U.S. Army Mobile Training Team (MTT) and the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). Following his term as intelligence chief, Lima Estrada served as senior officer in key operational units during the Guatemalan Armed Forces' "scorched earth" campaigns in the 1980s. Lima Estrada was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Catholic Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera, which is considered one of the most infamous crimes of Guatemala's post-war history.
A group of international journalists are shown a cache of weapons recently found by the military in a Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, Guerrilla Army of the Poor, EGP, safe house with General Benedicto Lucas García, far right, at the regional military garrison in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, the Santa Cruz del Quiché garrison commander, center, observes the guerrilla equipment. In 1981 the military regime and the Guatemalan army initiated a brutal counterinsurgency program of scorched earth tactics to consolidate control over civilians and counteract the influence of the guerrilla insurgency. The genocidal policies enacted by President Fernando Romeo Lucas García and later by Efraín Ríos Montt were also intended to eradicate the culture and identity of the indigenous population. For his role as army general in the internal armed conflict, General Benedicto Lucas García was sentenced on May 23, 2018 to 58 years in prison for crimes against humanity, aggravated sexual violence, and enforced disappearance. Col. Lima Estrada was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Catholic Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera, which is considered one of the most infamous crimes of Guatemala's post-war history.
A Guatemalan army soldier looks over a cache of weapons recently found by the military in a Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, Guerrilla Army of the Poor, EGP, safe house at the regional military garrison in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. The EGP emerged in 1967 from dissident factions of the guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, Rebel Armed Forces, FAR, Catholic followers of liberation theology, and students affiliated with the Juventud Patriótica del Trabajo, JPT, a youth wing of the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo, Guatemalan Labor Party, PGT. The EGP established themselves in the highlands where civilian support for their cause was high. Among their demands were land reform, access to healthcare, and a respect for human rights, particularly for the Maya population of the country.
A group of international journalists are shown captured weapons from a guerrilla safe house found by the Guatemalan Army in the regional military garrison run by Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, left, in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, February 1, 1982. Col. Lima Estrada was commander of the Quiché department army garrison. He received U.S. Army counterintelligence training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas, and instruction from the U.S. Army Mobile Training Team (MTT) and the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). Following his term as intelligence chief, Lima Estrada served as senior officer in key operational units during the Guatemalan Armed Forces' "scorched earth" campaigns against the Maya population in the highlands. Lima Estrada was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Catholic Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera, which remains one of the most infamous crimes of Guatemala's post-war history.
Salvadoran CBS television producer, Estella Castillo, stands in the doorway of the U.S. network's office at the Camino Real Hotel in San Salvador, El Salvador, January 1, 1983. Every major paper and wire service had a bureau in El Salvador while international concern maintained the Central American conflicts as hemispheric battles over communist expansion.
Larry Price, photographer with the Philadelphia Enquirer, takes a picture of a dead guerrilla fighter from the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, ERP, killed during a Salvadoran army operation in San Miguel department, September 1, 1983. The twelve-year armed conflict would claim over 75,000 lives before peace negotiations concluded in 1992.
A group of human rights investigators from Holland leave the El Camino Real Hotel in San Salvador, El Salvador, March 22, 1982. The group came to investigate the death of four Dutch journalists shot and killed by Salvadoran security forces while they were pursuing an interview with leftist guerrillas from the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, FPL, in the Chalatenango department. The Salvadoran government and the United States embassy in El Salvador denied knowledge of the ambush, claiming that the journalists were caught in an ongoing firefight between guerrilla soldiers and the military. This fact was later refuted with witness testimony in the 1993 publication of the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador.
Members of the media gather in a funeral parlor to film the dead body of a Dutch journalist killed in guerrilla territory two days earlier, San Salvador, El Salvador, March 19, 1982. Jacobus (Koos) Koster, Hans Ter Laan, Jan Kuiper and Johannes (Joop) Willemsen were shot and killed by Salvadoran military forces while they were pursuing an interview with leftist guerrillas from the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, FPL, in the Chalatenango department. The Salvadoran government and the United States embassy in El Salvador denied knowledge of the ambush, claiming that the journalists were caught in an ongoing firefight between guerrilla soldiers and the military. This fact was later refuted with witness testimony in the 1993 publication of the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador.