El Salvador is still divided over its brutal, 12-year civil war

Miguel Cullen has an article up at the Catholic Herald on El Salvador is still divided over its brutal, 12-year civil war. Following President Mauricio Funes' apology for the state's role in the massacre at El Mozote, Sigfredo Ochoa Perez denounced the president's words and defended the actions of the armed forces during the war.

Among his attacks, Ochoa Pérez named as a “hero” Domingo Monterrosa, then head of the murderous Batallón Atlactal, which perpetrated the El Mozote massacre.

The row escalated when Roberto d’Abuisson – the son of Roberto d’Abuisson senior, alleged head of civil war death squads and chief planner of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1981 – who is now a deputy in his own right, put his weight behind Ochoa Pérez.

You will remember Monterrosa well from Mark Danner's excellent book The Massacre at El Mozote. The guerrillas eventually shot his helicopter out of the sky, killing him. They wanted not only revenge for Monterrosa's command of the Atlacatl Battalion during the El Mozote massacre but because his new approach to war in which he tended to the needs of civilians was threatening the revolution because it was working.

Generals Mauricio Vargas and Humberto Corado and others also disagreed with the president's words and said that the military were heroes. They have nothing to apologize for.

All the more reason to open legal proceedings in El Salvador so that the military, the guerrillas, and civil society can also present their evidence and arguments as to what happened during the civil war so that people can make up their own minds. Don't hide from what happened.