The Salvadoran Civil War in El Salvador (1980-1992) claimed the lives of over 75,000 Salvadoran civilians and personally touched the vast majority of Salvadorans. For many of the families who lost loved ones through homicide, kidnapping, forced disappearances, or massacres, there was no place to go to remember and grieve their loved ones. Monument to the Memory and Truth — in Spanish, Monumento a la Memoria y la Verdad — is a memorial wall located in Cuscatlan Park in downtown San Salvador.
The Salvadoran Civil War was a conflict between the military-led government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ‘umbrella organization’ of five left-wing guerrilla groups. A coup on October 15, 1979 led to the killings of anti-coup protesters by the government as well as anti-disorder protesters by the guerillas, and is widely seen as the tipping point towards the civil war. By January 1980, the left-wing political organizations united to form the CRM (Coordinated Revolutionaries of the Masses) and a few months later the left-wing armed groups united to form the DRU (Unified Revolutionary Directorate) which, following its merging with the Communist party in October 1980, was renamed the FMLN. The full-fledged civil war lasted for over twelve years, and saw extreme violence from both sides. It also included the deliberate terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, the recruitment of child soldiers, and other violations of human rights, mostly by the military. An unknown number of people “disappeared” during the conflict and the UN reports that more than 75,000 were killed. The United States contributed to the conflict by providing large amounts of military aid to the government of El Salvador during the Carter and Reagan administrations. In 1990, the UN began peace negotiations and on January 16, 1992, a final agreement, The Chapultepec Peace Agreement,was signed by the combatants in Mexico City, formally ending the conflict.
In 1993, the United Nations Truth Commission published its report on the Salvadoran Civil War. One of the recommendations was the construction of a monument containing the names of all those killed during the civil war as a way to remember the tens of thousands of innocent people who lost their lives. When it became apparent that the Salvadoran government had no plans to build such a monument, a committee was formed by groups like CODEFAM entitled the “Pro-Monument for the Civilian Victims of Human Rights Abuses Committee.” On December 6th, 2003, the first phase of the monument bearing over 25,000 names of civilian victims, was inaugurated. In 2005 a second phase was inaugurated that included over 3,000 more names and the list of over 200 massacres that happened during the Civil War. SHARE has supported the process at each step of the way, accompanying the planning of, fundraising for, and construction of the Monument.
Backpacker Filth 