Word: atlacatl
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...what some journalists and human-rights activists have said for years: as many as 800 civilians, most of them women and children, were mutilated, burned and < murdered in and around the remote northeastern town of El Mozote in 1981, by soldiers from the Salvadoran army's U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion...
...following the smoke signals of destruction in the dry foothills around Usulután's dominant landmark, a 4,700-ft. dormant volcano. Wherever the fires burned, 1,300 troops of the elite U.S.-trained Atlacatl mobile battalion were rooting out base camps occupied by the Peoples' Revolutionary Army (E.R.P.), the largest and most aggressive of the five guerrilla groups that constitute the 10,000-strong F.M.L.N. As Yánez made the rounds of the battlefront, he delivered a message of encouragement. "Your being out here means that the campesinos now have a chance to work...
Winning scattered firefights is the first and least of the goals of Operation Well-Being, a protracted campaign that involves two other U.S.-trained Salvadoran battalions, the Atonal and the Bayoso, along with the Atlacatl unit. Their sweep through Usulután was a long-awaited extension of El Salvador's ambitious National Plan, a combined civilian-military offensive that aims to drive the guerrillas out permanently. Conceived with the help of U.S. military advisers, the National Plan was initially tested, with mixed results, last summer in the neighboring department of San Vicente. The plan's success...
This message apparently was not enough to prevent yet another string of atrocities. In Copapayo, some 45 miles northeast of San Salvador, survivors told foreign journalists last week that troops of El Salvador's elite Atlacatl battalion herded at least 20 women and children into a house, then turned machine guns on them. In a separate incident near by, the soldiers reportedly fired on a group of more than 30 civilians, killing some outright and forcing others into a lake, where they drowned. Said a guerrilla boastfully: "This type of behavior reflects the agony of an army that...
...automatic-rifle fire echoed in the cloud-draped mountains along the El Salvador-Honduras border, U.S.-supplied "Huey" transport helicopters banked low over steep, forested gorges, then deposited heavily armed troops at key locations on the forbidding terrain. According to eyewitnesses, the elite Atlacatl Brigade, some 800 to 1,000 strong, landed near the village of Valladolid, Honduras, violating Honduran airspace and territory as local soldiers looked on impassively. The invaders' mission: to engage leftist Salvadoran guerrilla forces entrenched in pockets along the demilitarized border zone established after El Salvador's four-day war in 1969 with Honduras...
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