The battle over historical memory in El Salvador

A state-backed film detailing the 1981 massacre at El Mozote raises thorny questions about the civil war in El Salvador even as the victims continue fighting for justice.

Kevin Ramírez

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ON 11 December 2025, the red carpet was rolled out in San Salvador for the premiere of the long-anticipated film Luciérnagas en El Mozote (Fireflies in El Mozote). The movie, which depicts the events of El Mozote – one of the most violent massacres committed by a state in modern Latin American history – was released 44 years to the day of the killing. In attendance were members of the country’s film industry, representatives from private sectors, and officials from the Salvadoran government who supported the making of the film.

While the event’s well-dressed invitees smiled for cameras on the brightly lit carpet, community members of El Mozote celebrated the news that the case of the massacre would finally go to trial. The announcement marked a monumental victory for activists fighting since the publication of the United Nations Truth Commission report in 1993. Nevertheless, news of the trial was notably absent from the film’s grand premiere.

The event’s avoidance of the thornier issues related to the massacre, along with the narrative told by the film, was likely the product of the Salvadoran state’s involvement in the production. Since coming into power in 2019, right-wing President Nayib Bukele has attempted to reframe the armed conflict of the 1980s, advancing a narrative that absolves the country’s armed forces of atrocities committed during its 12-year civil war (1980–92).

A film recounting such a stained moment in Salvadoran history might be expected to honour the victims of the massacre. Instead, it celebrated a turning point in Salvadoran film history, promoting the endless possibilities of shooting a production of this magnitude in Bukele’s ‘new’ El Salvador, which has achieved security at the expense of massive human rights abuses.

The massacre

On the evening of 11 December 1981, amidst a brutal armed conflict between the Salvadoran state and the left-wing guerilla insurgency known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the US-trained Atlácatl Battalion entered the village of El Mozote in the eastern department of Morazán in search of guerilla insurgents. Over the course of 48 hours, the battalion massacred upwards of 1,000 men, women and children.

After the massacre, the battalion moved on from the village, leaving behind Rufina Amaya, a survivor whose account informed the immediate details about the massacre. In the following days, the FMLN got news that the military had scorched a whole village and its people. Carlos ‘Santiago’ Consalvi, the voice of the FMLN’s rebel radio station known as Radio Venceremos, heard about what happened on 17 December and soon after went on air and told the world about the atrocities committed by the Salvadoran military. Though Washington received news about the massacre in the immediate days after, the Reagan administration stayed silent and eventually denied the reports in order to keep providing the Salvadoran military with over $1 billion during the war. It was not until 26 January 1982, when articles were published in The Washington Post and The New York Times, that the news reached mass audiences in the United States.

After the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992, Tutela Legal, a human rights legal office affiliated with the Archdiocese of El Salvador, filed a formal criminal complaint before the United Nations for violations of due process in the case of El Mozote. Tutela Legal won the case to invite an Argentine forensics team to excavate El Mozote. Their findings were published in the United Nations Truth Commission report, confirming that the Atlácatl  Battalion carried out the massacre of up to 1,000 civilians in El Mozote and the town’s surrounding hamlets. The report also provided wider details on the conflict, concluding that the Salvadoran military was responsible for upwards of 85% of the 75,000 people killed during the conflict.  

The film’s plot and production

Luciérnagas en El Mozote tells a different story of the events. The film opens with the massacre carried out by the Salvadoran military in El Mozote in December 1981. The only survivor is an 8-year-old boy who is rescued by unidentified guerilla fighters. The film then goes on to centre the boy in a daring guerilla operation that, though based on true events, calls into question his innocence and departs from the real story of Rufina Amaya.

Following several confrontations between the guerillas and the military, the guerillas orchestrate a trap to kill Colonel Montenegro – based on the figure of Atlácatl Battalion commander Domingo Monterrosa – by planting a bomb in a fake Radio Venceremos transmitter and allowing Salvadoran soldiers to discover it after an ambush. At the behest of the guerillas, the boy plays a key role in the operation, identifying Montenegro’s helicopter and eventually detonating the device. In the final scenes of the film, the boy comes to a realisation that the guerillas are no different than the military, depicting both sides as perpetrators of the violence being carried out against innocent people throughout the country.

This selective framing of the conflict was surprising to members of the film crew. A member of the team, referred to as ‘El Chele’ due to their fear of professional and political repercussions, said that the production team initially believed that the film would be historically accurate. ‘We were surprised when we saw that the government had a hand in the film. Once we saw that the armed forces were involved, we realised that it was going to be from their point of view.’

The Salvadoran state played a role in all stages of the movie’s creation. During the production, director Ernesto Melara – who passed away in March 2025 – producers and actors were invited to the presidential palace. In a video posted by the Salvadoran government capturing this moment, Melara boasted about shooting the film in El Salvador, saying, ‘The main reason we can carry out this production in the country is because of the climate of security that has been achieved by this government.’ This message was echoed by the film’s producers and actors, shifting the focus away from the horrific massacre at El Mozote and towards the country’s security.

In an interview with La Tribu FM, a Salvadoran radio show, producer Elías Axume stated that the budget for the film was $1.4 million, noting that, ‘in another country, it would have cost $5 million’. He made clear the film could not have been made without the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Armed Forces. This, however, was not shared with the film team. According to El Chele, ‘We realised Elías had contacts in the government when we got free access to Deininger National Park and the Armed Forces showed up – it’s usually difficult to film them.’ According to Axume, the Armed Forces supplied helicopters, soldiers as extras, and security, while the Ministry of Culture and Tourism provided free transportation and access to national parks around the country. In this sense, Luciérnagas en El Mozote was a project to ‘project the country’ and, as producer Carlos Figueroa told La Tribu FM, ‘promote the country as a destination for [future] productions’.

Long struggle for justice

The commercialisation of the massacre as a means to pitch El Salvador as a filmmaking destination, as well as the direct role of the Armed Forces in the production of the movie, was not well received by Salvadorans who have struggled to hold the state accountable for its violence. This fight has unfolded over decades.

In 1993, five days after the publication of the Truth Commission report, the Salvadoran parliament passed the ‘General Amnesty Law for the Consolidation of Peace’. The bill granted amnesty to soldiers responsible for war crimes, including the atrocities committed against the people of El Mozote. The law was denounced by legal activists as they continued to fight for national and international courts to reopen the case.

A significant step towards justice came in July 2016, when the Salvadoran Supreme Court overturned the amnesty law, declaring it unconstitutional. The decision came in response to a 2013 constitutional challenge by the Institute of Human Rights of the Central American University, located in San Salvador. The ruling came after the 2012 decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which concluded that the amnesty law did not apply to the case of El Mozote, ordering El Salvador to investigate the massacre and seek justice. Thereafter, Jorge Guzmán, Judge of the First Instance of San Francisco Gotera, reopened the investigation for criminal prosecution, gathering evidence and oral testimonies from the survivors of surrounding hamlets.

However, hope was shortlived. In 2019, the political landscape surrounding the case of El Mozote shifted dramatically with the election of Bukele as president of El Salvador. Despite pledging to provide full transparency of military archives, Bukele denied Judge Guzmán access to military documents pertaining to the massacre in 2020. He also went out of his way to challenge the conventional narrative of the massacre and reframe broader understandings of the armed conflict itself.

During the president’s first visit to El Mozote for the 39th anniversary of the massacre in 2020, Bukele stood before the families of victims and said that he was ‘not there to apologise or cry’ because ‘those responsible for the massacre should be the ones asking for forgiveness’. Instead, he accused past governments of exploiting the massacre for financial and electoral benefits. He also called into question the country’s wider peace process, stating that the Peace Accords signed between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN were a ‘farce’. In Bukele’s retelling, the victims of El Mozote and the wider war itself were collateral damage in a battle between two opposing sides.

In 2021, the legislature – controlled by Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party – passed the Judicial Career Law, which dismissed Judge Guzmán, putting a temporary stop to the efforts to take the case of El Mozote to trial. Nevertheless, on 9 December 2025, leading human rights NGO Cristosal reported that the judicial court of San Francisco Gotera ruled to take the case to the initial stages of a trial. During the hearing, Defence Minister Guillermo García, who was identified as the person ultimately responsible, and 12 officers of the Atlácatl Battalion were slated to take the stand. A few weeks later, however, the San Francisco Gotera court reported that the defence attorneys of the military personnel had appealed the decision, placing another obstacle in the pursuit of justice and leaving the ultimate decision to the Criminal Court of San Miguel. As of writing, the Court has not ruled on the appeal.

A historic step forward

The film, which is scheduled to debut in the United States in March 2026, has been celebrated with state support. Meanwhile, survivors and activists continue to wait for justice, forced to endure a system that has long denied them accountability. According to Cristosal, however, recent steps forward, like getting to a trial stage, have been ‘profoundly historic’ for the victims. Instead of a top-down effort led by the government, the case has been ‘written by the victims and the organisations that stood with [the victims of El Mozote] … It’s a victory for those who transformed their grief into moral strength.’

The breakthrough in the case marks a turning point in El Salvador’s collective memory. It opens the door for hope that accountability may yet be achieved. As Cristosal notes, this moment is ‘a reminder that even in the darkest chapters of Salvadoran history, dignity can open a crack through which light can shine’.                      

Kevin Ramírez is a PhD candidate in Latin American and Caribbean History at New York University studying Salvadoran Indigenous communities in the 20th century. This article is reproduced from the website of the North American Congress on Latin America (nacla.org).

*Third World Resurgence No. 366, 2026/1, pp 34-36