The Truth Unearthed

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND THEIR U.S. PATRONS repeatedly denied it. But when a team of forensic anthropologists excavated nearly 60 of several hundred battered skeletons from around a demolished church in what was once an F.M.L.N. guerrilla stronghold, they found convincing evidence of what some journalists and human-rights activists have said for years: as many as 800 civilians, most of them women and children, were mutilated, burned and < murdered in and around the remote northeastern town of El Mozote in 1981, by soldiers from the Salvadoran army's U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion.

The victims' relatives want those responsible tried for murder, even though a new amnesty law prevents any of the perpetrators from having to serve time for political crimes. They would also welcome the final dissolution of the notorious battalion, as was stipulated under the current peace plan signed by both the government and the rebels last January. But the San Salvador government has indefinitely suspended the battalion's disbanding, claiming the F.M.L.N. has yet to demobilize its troops according to the schedule. The former rebels claim that despite advances in political, police and land reform, they will not meet the Oct. 31 disarmament deadline because judicial and electoral reforms are lagging, and rebel leaders are still targets of violence. To break the deadlock, the U.N. proposed a six-week extension for compliance.