Pedro Martínez, witness and survivor of the 1981 El Mozote massacre, died on March 12, 2020, at the age of 85. Martínez was 46 years old and lived in the canton of La Joya—in the municipality of Meanguera, Morazán Department—when the Salvadoran Army massacred nearly a thousand civilians there in December 1981. Martínez survived by hiding in a cave for 12 days. When he came out, he crawled his way through a ravine to find a vantage point to see if the soldiers had left. Looking out over the area known as Arada Vieja, he saw the bodies of dozens of massacred civilians—mostly women and children. Martínez did all he could to assist in the prosecution of those responsible for the massacre. He recounted his experience during pretrial hearings in San Francisco Gotera’s Court of Instruction on December 14, 2017. Six months later, in June 2018, he accompanied police experts to La Joya, assisting them in locating the places he had referenced in his courtroom testimony.
According to reports from El Mozote victims advocacy organizations, three other massacre survivors have died this year alone: Ángel Mejia on March 23rd, Agustina Ramos on July 21st, and Alfredo Márquez on July 30th. In addition, General Rafael Flores Lima, a former Salvadoran deputy defense minister and one of the defendants in the trial, died on June 29. Of the 28 military officers mentioned in the indictment, only 13 are still alive. For the few left standing, justice is a challenge of endurance.
Since the case was reopened in 2016, court proceedings have remained in their pre-trial phase. Judge Jorge Guzmán has called for a special hearing with both the private secretary and legal secretary of the presidency, as well as the defense minister, the director of the National Civil Police, the Salvadoran human rights attorney, the minister of culture, and the president of the Institute for Access to Public Information (IAIP). The August 28 hearing will focus on the “planning, coordination and scheduling” of judicial investigations into the archives of eight different government agencies, as part of the court’s search for information relating to the massacre.
*Translated by Max Granger
