Rufina Amaya

Her testimony of the attacks, reported shortly afterward by two American reporters[1] but called into question by the U.S. journalism community as well as by the U.S. and Salvadoran governments,[2] was instrumental in the eventual investigation by the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador after the end of the war.

The investigation led to the November 1992 exhumation of bodies buried at the site and the commission's conclusion that Amaya's testimony had accurately represented the events.

[citation needed] Amaya lost not only her neighbors, but also her husband, Domingo Claros, whose decapitation she saw; her 9-year-old son, Cristino, who cried out to her, "Mama, they're killing me.

[8] By March 2000, Amaya was living near the Morazán village of Segundo Montes, Morazán,[9][10] established by fellow repatriated exiles in memory of a Jesuit priest and scholar killed during the war in a mass assassination of priests by government forces at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA).

Amaya died of a stroke in a San Salvador hospital aged 64, on March 6, 2007, following a long illness.