Name: The rebel radio that brought down a war criminal - Diana Sierra Becerra
Uploaded: 2022-05-06T23:57:34.000Z
Duration: 6 min
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

In 1984, a group of radio broadcasters and operators

walked into the abandoned village  of El Mozote in El Salvador.

Fireflies illuminated the remnants  of a massacre

that had taken place three years earlier.

government soldiers had tortured, raped, and murdered 978 people,

The youngest victim, Concepción Sánchez, was just three days old.

Both the US and Salvadoran governments  denied the massacre had taken place,

and the slaughter left few people alive to tell their story.

But with the help of Radio Venceremos, one of those survivors, Rufina Amaya,

exposing both Monterrosa  and the governments funding his crimes.

This massacre was one in a long line of atrocities

had  controlled nearly all  the country's land,

forcing laborers to work for almost nothing.

In 1932, Indigenous farm workers led an insurrection,

but the dictatorial government responded by committing genocide

From then on, one military dictatorship after another ruled the country

when the United States began supplying the regime with military aid.

The US wanted to stop the spread  of reformist and revolutionary movements,

So they spent huge sums of money training Salvadoran soldiers and “death squads”—

fascist military units versed  in brutal counter-insurgency methods.

Throughout the 1970s,  these forces slaughtered farmers

such as living wages, food,  and clean water.

Finally, in 1980, farmers and urban workers formed

the Farabundo Martí  National Liberation Front.

This coalition of guerrilla groups fought to overthrow the dictatorship

and build a socialist society that met the needs of laborers.

These revolutionaries were attacked from every direction.

Colonel Monterrosa led a special battalion intent on destroying the FMLN,

using tactics he'd learned at an American military school.

State forces terrorized farmers  to stop them

But one group of rebels  would not be silenced:

This clandestine guerrilla radio began in 1981,

and its broadcasters Santiago and Mariposa became the voice of the revolution.

They transmitted news from the front lines

and reported military abuses  that no other source covered.

The station's politics and popularity made it a high-profile target.

And because they operated  in a relatively small area,

its broadcasters had to move constantly to evade capture.

To communicate undetected, the group  modified to radios into telephones,

linked together through kilometers  of barbed wire covering the countryside.

This secret telephone line helped  the rebels

the radio broadcast educational programs in areas under guerrilla control.

Here, farmers organized democratic councils to govern themselves,

alongside cooperatives, schools, and medical clinics.

Organizers also encouraged civilian women to participate in these councils

to ensure the revolution overthrew  both capitalism and patriarchy.

Women made up roughly  a third of the guerrillas,

Colonel Monterrosa was obsessed  with destroying Radio Venceremos.

government soldiers finally captured their radio transmitter.

Monterrosa himself went to retrieve the equipment

and held a theatrical press conference  celebrating

his “decisive blow to the subversives.”

But in reality, the radio team had outsmarted him once again.

Once Monterrosa's helicopter left the press conference,

radio members detonated  the device over El Mozote,

killing the colonel near the village he had massacred.

Monterrosa's death was one victory  in a much larger conflict.

The civil war raged on for 8 more years before concluding in 1992,

when peace accords dissolved  the oppressive National Guard

and allowed the FMLN to become  an electoral party.

But these accords didn't address  problems of deep, structural inequality.

reported that over 75,000 people died during the war.

Yet the Salvadoran legislature prevented the prosecution of war crimes

and continues to obstruct justice  to this day.

As of 2021, no participating  American officials have been put on trial,

and only one individual  from the Salvadoran government

Historical erasure exists  in the US as well,

where these and other stories  of US intervention in Central America

Rufina Amaya continued to share  her testimony until her death in 2007.

And survivors of other massacres still organize to denounce state violence.

They map old massacre sites, exhume and bury loved ones,

all in the hope of pollinating  a more just future.

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The rebel radio that brought down a war criminal - Diana Sierra Becerra

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