Truth Commission for El Salvador

Military regime Since its independence in 1838, It is estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians were killed as a result of the peasant revolt, with a majority of the casualties being indigenous people. By January 1980 right-wing extremists were threatening violence against the JRG, forcing all of its civilian members to resign. It is alleged that death squad commander Major Roberto D'Aubuisson was responsible for ordering Romero's assassination. In October 1980 the FMLN was officially created as an amalgamation of five leftist guerrilla groups. The United States government continued to finance the war in El Salvador throughout the 1980s, providing approximately $4.5 billion in military and other aid. The decade would continue to see violent clashes between the opposing parties. The presidential election of 1989 saw the victory of ARENA candidate Alfredo Cristiani, who continued to enforce severe offences against the FMLN. In November 1989 the FMLN organized a major offensive against multiple urban cities, including the capital city. The massacre garnered widespread international coverage of the atrocities in El Salvador, urging pressure for negotiations between the conflicting sides. By the conclusion of the war in 1992, an estimated 75,000 Salvadorans had been killed. ==End of the Civil War==

United Nations Intervention With increasing international pressure and Cristiani's doubt over the military's abilities to stifle the FMLN, UN-mediated peace talks began in July 1990 when both signed the Agreement on Human Rights. This accord was tasked with establishing a United Nations mission that would monitor human rights issues in the country, thus ONUSAL was founded. In December 1991 the Salvadoran government and FMLN representatives met at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to sign the Act of New York, which effectively combined several agreements signed up until that date, including the Mexico Agreement of 1991 that called for the establishment of a truth commission. Both parties also agreed to sign a final Peace Agreement on 16 January 1992 in Mexico City, what is known as the Chapultepec Peace Accords. ==The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador==

Formation and Structure The commission was established in accordance with the Mexico Agreement of 1991, assigned to investigate "serious acts of violence that had occurred between January 1980 and July 1991" that required "public knowledge of the truth". Objectives The commission's official mandate stated: The commission shall have the task of investigating serious acts of violence that have occurred since 1980 and whose impact on society urgently demands that the public should know the truth. The ambiguity of the wording gave the commission the authority to decide which incidents they would investigate, as not every account could be heard. The commission had to take the importance and social impact affiliated with each event into consideration in order to pursue further investigation. The mandate however did not distinguish large-scale acts of violence from smaller ones, it simply emphasized "serious acts of violence" which often outraged the Salvadoran public or potentially garnered international attention. The commission understood that the purpose of its formation was to "find and publicize the truth about the acts of violence committed by both sides during the war". Furthermore, they agreed that the necessity of a public report on their findings was an urgent matter. The mandate also entrusted the commission with producing "legal, political or administrative" recommendations, however it failed to specify the principles of law applicable to it. Moreover, during the time the commission took place, El Salvador was obligated by international law to adjust its domestic judicial system, and constrained to observe international human rights laws as the ONUSAL mission was underway. Activities Collection of Data The commission heard approximately 2,000 witness testimonies on the scope of atrocities committed. Additionally it collected data from national and international human rights groups, detailing the accounts of over 20,000 additional witnesses. All of this painstaking research was conducted by the three lead commissioners and a support staff of twenty members, as well as an additional twenty five short-term staff in the concluding months of the commission. The commission staff did not include any Salvadorans. They realized that the Secretary-General... had not been wrong in seeking to preserve the Commission's credibility by looking beyond considerations of sovereignty and entrusting this task to three scholars from other countries, in contrast to what had been done in Argentina and Chile after the military dictatorships there had ended. External Assistance The commission contracted the assistance of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to investigate the controversial massacre in the town of El Mozote, and exhume the remains of victims from this particular massacre in an attempt to figure out how many casualties were recorded. Exhumation took place from 13 to 17 November 1992 under the supervision of Dr. Clyde Snow, Dr. Robert H. Kirschner, Dr. Douglass Scott, and Dr. John Fitzpatrick of the Santa Tecla Institute of Forensic Medicine and of the Commission for the Investigation of Criminal Acts. In the exhumation the doctors worked alongside Patricia Bernardi, Mercedes Doretti and Luis Fondebrider of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. The process discovered skeletal remains of at least 143, however they noted that there may have been a greater number of casualties. The forensic report supported victim testimonies that "victims were summarily executed," and that at least 24 people participated in the shootings. ==The Final Report==

Conclusions and Recommendations The commission concluded that approximately 85% of the abuses committed between 1980 and 1991 were committed by government forces. According to the commission's mandate, its recommendations were legally binding. These recommendations urged the dismissal of any military officers or civil servants that were involved in the atrocities from government employment, as well as disqualifying them from holding positions in public office. To date, the government has yet to adopt the recommendation to award reparations to victims or survivors. In 2010, President Mauricio Funes established special commissions to address reparations, which have yet to result in the payment of reparations. Funes is the first president to officially apologize and acknowledge the abuses of the civil war. In 2016, the El Salvador Supreme Court ruled that the amnesty law was unconstitutional and that the El Salvador government could prosecute war criminals. Sites of Memory In recent years there has been a push to create monuments and sites of memory in an attempt to nationally recognize the atrocities of the war. In 1992 Salvadoran sculptor Ruben Martinez was commissioned to create a monument dedicated to "the birth of an era of peace in El Salvador." Following the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords, Carlos "Santiago" Henriquez Consalvi, a Venezuelan journalist, proposed an initiative to preserve and commemorate Salvadoran history. The result was the foundation of the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen in 1996. More recently in 2003, the Monument of Memory and Truth was erected in San Salvador. The tribute is a granite wall engraved with the names of those killed or disappeared during the country's civil war. However at the time the project began, a list of victims' names was incomplete, thus as of 2008 the wall had engraved 30,000 names and was an ongoing project. ==References==