Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Funes apologizes for El Mozote massacre

As I mentioned in December, several weeks ago marked the 30th anniversary of the massacre at El Mozote. Yesterday, President Mauricio Funes, in the name of the Salvadoran state, apologized and asked forgiveness for the massacre.


This video is only a clip of a longer speech, but in includes the parts translated for the article above. It is long past time that the Salvadoran government acknowledge and apologize for its role in this killing. But I hate that it has been Funes, the first president with no ties to the death squads and military, who has done all of the apologizing thus far. Thursday marks 20 years since the Peace Accords were signed ending ("ending?") the civil war. And yet it wasn't until 2009 that Salvadorans had a president who was not connected to the state violence of the war. Seventeen years worth of presidents never saw fit to do this (for good and self-preserving reasons, from their POV). It shows a great deal of character that he is doing this - for Mozote, Romero, the Jesuits - he has apologized and asked forgiveness for all of them. He is not a perfect president. But he has done more atoning in his first thirty months than previous presidents did in almost seven times that long.

We as a society have gotten really good at the nonapology - the "I'm sorry IF anyone was offended by that, it was not my intent..." (We seem especially good at this when it comes to race and gender privilege.) Funes is becoming an expert in the opposite - apologizing for horrors that he was not involved in, but for which he now bears the responsibility of atonement because of his position. This is probably one of those times when the only adequate response is 'puchica.'

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