Abstract
In December 1981, the Salvadoran Atlacatl Battalion massacred more than a thousand men, women and children in and around the rural hamlet of El Mozote in Morazán Department during a scorched earth operation at the beginning of the Salvadoran civil war. The main massacre site has been the setting for commemorations, memorials and murals and attracts large numbers of national and international tourists. This article explores the way in which the history of El Mozote and its articulation with El Salvador's civil war history has been framed by different groups. We discuss the complexities of memory, politics and the place of the El Mozote massacre in postwar El Salvador in the context of Morazán's insurgent past and suggest, following Walter Benjamin, that the contested meaning of the massacre rises from the contradictory praxis of actors struggling to develop hegemony over the ways in which this event is/will be remembered and why.
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