El Mozote Massacre: US-Trained Battalion Kills 1,000 Civilians

The Atlacatl Battalion—El Salvador's first rapid deployment unit, trained at the US Army's School of the Americas—massacred approximately 1,000 civilians (including 553 children) in the village of El Mozote and surrounding hamlets on December 11–13, 1981. US Ambassador Deane Hinton and the Reagan administration initially denied and covered up the massacre. The UN Truth Commission later confirmed it was the largest massacre in modern Latin American history.