Seeking atonement, El Salvador will honor 6 Jesuits slain by military 2 decades ago

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Seeking atonement, El Salvador will honor 6 Jesuits slain by military 2 decades ago
By Associated Press

4:56 p.m. EST, November 3, 2009

SAN SALVADOR (AP) — El Salvador's president says the country will award its highest honor to six Jesuit priests murdered by the army in 1989.

President Mauricio Funes says the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado awards are a "public act of atonement" for mistakes by past governments.

They will be presented on Nov. 16 to mark the date 20 years ago when soldiers killed Spanish-born university rector Ignacio Ellacuria, five other Jesuits, a housekeeper and her daughter.

The killings sparked international outrage and tarnished the image of U.S. anti-communism efforts after it was found that some of the soldiers involved received training at Fort Benning, Georgia.



Read more: http://www.courant.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-lt-salvador-slain-priests,0,4023547.story

[ck4829]

1. It's a start

Weren't the military and the death squads also responsible for the lion's share of total civilian casualties in the Salvadoran Civil War though?

[Judi Lynn]

5. Here's some material which addresses this:

El Salvador: Ghosts at the Polls

By Don North
June 24, 2009


“If they kill me, I shall arise again in the Salvadoran people,” said Archbishop Oscar Romero 29 years ago, just two weeks before he was gunned down by a sniper while saying mass.

~snip~
Romero’s assassination by a rightist death squad in 1980 marked the beginning of a 12-year civil war between government forces and the guerrillas of the FMLN, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front, which now holds power as a political party.

In my new documentary “Yesterday’s Enemies,” I open with a song by Kris Kristofferson from 1983, the first year I reported from the war zone around the Guazapa volcano in central El Salvador. “They killed so many heroes, but the dreams they left behind them ain’t as easy as a man to blow away,” the lyrics said.

That appears to have proven true with Archbishop Romero, whose spirit seemed to hover above this year’s election campaign, both as inspiration for Funes and the FMLN and as a reminder of the grisly history behind ARENA, the longtime rightist governing party.

In 1993, a United Nations truth commission determined that ARENA’s founder, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson ordered the assassination of Romero, who had emerged as a powerful voice protesting the repression of the country’s many poor and dispossessed.

Much as Romero became the inspiring symbol for El Salvador’s Left, D’Aubuisson, a boyish-looking former intelligence officer who ran death squads on behalf of El Salvador’s wealthy oligarchy, became the face of El Salvador’s Right.

After Romero’s murder, D’Aubuisson death squads (often government soldiers dressed in plain clothes) systematically slaughtered leftist politicians, labor activists, students, intellectuals and clergy. Eventually, the opposition retreated to the countryside and took up arms as guerrillas under a coalition known as the FMLN.

Backing Repression

Fearing the spread of leftist revolution in Central America, the Reagan administration brushed aside complaints about the government’s human rights abuses and threw U.S. support behind the Salvadoran military in what often was a scorched-earth campaign against the guerrillas and their suspected civilian sympathizers. El Salvador’s civil war killed an estimated 75,000 people.

Though notorious as a death squad commander, D’Aubuisson in 1982 founded the rightist ARENA (National Republican Alliance), which grew to be El Salvador’s dominant political party even after the civil war ended in 1992, the same year D’Aubuisson died of throat cancer.

In 1993, the United Nations truth commission found that Salvadoran government military units and death squads had been responsible for 85 percent of human rights abuses during the war. Rebel FMLN forces were blamed for 5 percent, while 10 percent were declared undetermined.

More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/062409a.html

Archbishop Romero, assassinated:

Published on Thursday, March 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Oscar Romero, Presente!
by John Dear

~snip~
On March 23, Romero exploded with his most direct appeal to the members of the armed forces:

�I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army, to the police, to those in the barracks. Brothers, you are part of our own people. You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters. And before an order to kill that a man may give, the law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God. No one has to fulfill an immoral law. It is time to recover your consciences and to obey your consciences rather than the orders of sin. The church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, the dignity of the person, cannot remain silent before such abomination. We want the government to take seriously that reforms are worth nothing when they come about stained with so much blood. In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuously, I beg you, I ask you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!�

The next day, March 24, 1980, Romero presided at a special evening mass in the chapel of the hospital compound where he lived, in honor of someone who had died one year before. He read from John�s Gospel: �Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit �(Jn. 12:23-26). Then he preached about the need to give one�s life for others as Christ did. Just as he concluded his sermon, he was shot in the heart by a man standing in the back of the church. Romero fell behind the altar and collapsed at the foot of a huge crucifix depicting a bloody and bruised Christ. Blood covered Romero�s vestments and the floor of the church, and he gasped for breath. He died within minutes.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0324-21.htm

Archbishop Oscar Romero
The Last Sermon (1980)
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html

[L. Coyote]

12. Mass Mobilization to Shut Down the School of the America; Nov. 20-22, 2009, Fort Benning, GA

Source: School of the Americas Watch RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 3, 2009 - 10:35 AM


CONTACT: School of the Americas Watch......

WASHINGTON - November 3 - The military coup led by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) has on Latin America. Torture survivors and human rights activists from across the Americas, including Bertha Oliva, the founder of the Committee of the Family Members of the Disappeared (COFADEH) from Honduras and human rights defenders from Colombia will travel to Fort Benning, Georgia to participate in the mobilization. ....

MORE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4130643

[Judi Lynn]

2. List of former School of the Americas names some of these assassins:

Notorious Salvadoran School of the Americas Graduates

1LT Mario Arevalo Melendez 1989, Commando Operations Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Had prior knowledge of the massacre of 6 Jesuit priests and covered-up the massacre, which ultimately included the priests' housekeeper and her teen-age daughter. (UNTCRES)

SGT Antonio Ramiro Avalos Vargas 1988, Small Unit Training and Management Jesuit massacre, 1989: Non-commissioned officer in charge of the small unit that massacred 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, (UNTCRES)

COL Carlos Armando Aviles Buitrago 1968, Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Aided in the planning and the cover-up of the massacre of 6 priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter. (UNTCRES)

GEN Juan Rafael Bustillo 1965, Counterinsurgency Orientation Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered-up the massacre of 6 priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. (UNTCRES)
Torture, rape, murder of French nurse, 1989: Bustillo (with 3 other SOA graduates) is wanted in France in connection with the torture, rape, and murder of 27-year-old Madeleine Lagadec in El Salvador in 1989. Her raped, bullet-riddled body was found with its left hand severed, (AP, 4/29/95)
Labor union murders: Members of a school teachers' union claim that the Air Force, under Bustillo's control, targeted union members for torture and murder, including Maria Cristina Gomez and Miguel Angel Lazo Quintanilla (AI:TU)

1LT José R. Espinoza Guerra 1982, Spanish Officer Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Part of the patrol that massacred 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. (UNTCRES)

COL Francisco Elena Fuentes 1985-1986, Guest Instructor
1973, Officer Supply Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered-up the massacre. (UNTCRES)
Supervised death squad training, 1990: U.S. Ambassador William Walker termed Elena Fuentes and the First Brigade "among the worst in terms of human rights." Besides commanding the brigade, Elena Fuentes supervised the training of a death squad called "The Patriotic Ones." (NYT, 12/13/93)

CPT José Fuentes Rodas 1986, Combat Arms Officer Course
1980, Cadet Orientation Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered up the massacre. (UNTCRES)

1LT Francisco M. Gallardo Mata 1992, Combat Operations Course
1990, Combat Arms Officer Adv. Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered-up the massacre. (UNTCRES)

1LT Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos 1988, El Salvador Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Was a member of the patrol that killed the 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. (UNTCRES)

1LT José V. Hernández Ayala 1991, Combat Arms Officer Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Knew in advance of the massacre and aided in the cover-up of the murder of 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teen-age daughter. (UNTCRES)

LTC Carlos Camillio Hernández Barahona 1975, Communications Officer Course
1972, Combat Arms/Support Services Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered-up the massacre of 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her sixteen-year- old daughter. (UNTCRES)

1LT Ramón E. Lopez Larios 1992, Combat Arms Officer Adv. Course
1988, Infantry Officer Basic Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered-up the massacre. (UNTCRES)

1LT Rene Roberto Lopez Morales 1990, Combined Officer Advanced Course
1988, Commando Operations Course
1987, Combat Arms Officer Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned and covered-up the massacre. (UNTCRES)

COL Nelson Lopez y Lopez 1968, Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Assigned to investigate the massacre, he instead participated in the cover-up. (UNTCRES)

1LT Edgar Santiago Martínez Marroquin 1991, Combat Arms Officer Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Had prior knowledge of the massacre of Jesuit priests and aided in the cover-up of the crime, which also cost the lives of the priests' housekeeper and her daughter. (UNTCRES)

1LT Yusshy Rene Mendoza Vallecillos 1988, Commando Operation Course
1982, Spanish Officer Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Convicted for heading the patrol that slaughtered 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teen-age daughter. (UNTCRES)

COL Inocente Orlando Montano 1970, Engineer Officer Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Was in on the planning of the massacre, and cooperated in the cover-up. (UNTCRES)

COL Manuel Antonio Rivas Mejia 1975, Urban Counterinsurgency Ops.
1970, Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Assigned to investigate the massacre, Rivas Mejia instead participated in the cover-up. (UNTCRES)

LTC Rene Rodríguez Hurtado 1985, Combat Officer Review Torture, rape. murder of French nurse, 1989: In April 1995, a French court issued international arrest warrants for Rodríguez and three other SOA graduates for involvement in the torture, rape, and murder of 27-year-old Madeleine Lagadec in El Salvador in 1989. Her raped, bullet-riddled body was found with its left hand severed. (AP, 4/29/95)

GEN Gilberto Rubio 1976, Logistics Management Course
1971, Tactical Officer for Cadet Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Participated in the cover-up of the massacre of 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, who were all murdered at the priests' residence at the University of Central America in San Salvador. (UNTCRES)

GEN Rafael Villamariona 1983, Joint Operations Course Torture, rape, murder of French nurse, 1989: In April 1995, a French court issued international arrest warrants for Villamariona and three other SOA graduates for involvement in the torture, rape, and murder of 27-year-old Madeleine Lagadec in El Salvador in 1989. Her raped, bullet-riddled body was found with its left hand severed. (AP, 4/29/95)

GEN Juan Orlando Zepeda 1975, Urban Counterinsurgency Ops.
1969, Unnamed Course Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned the assassination of 6 Jesuit priests and covered-up the massacre, which also took the lives of the priests' housekeeper and her teen-age daughter. (UNTCRES)
Other war crimes, 1980's: The Non-Governmental Human Rights Commission in El Salvador also cites Zepeda for involvement in 210 summary executions, 64 tortures, and 110 illegal detentions. (CISPES)

http://www.derechos.org/soa/elsal-not.html

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu.nyud.net:8090/CollaborativeMinistry/martyrs.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_a3ctuUgQ96s/SRrHBpdEdcI/AAAAAAAABxA/tE227iYlrQY/s1600/Martires.jpg

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu.nyud.net:8090/CollaborativeMinistry/6-poster.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/01953BJ56B6sC/610x.jpg

Chicago Tribune
March 1, 2009
El Salvador amnesty law lets perpetrators of priests' murders walk free

Spanish court bids to prosecute 1989 slayings of priests

By Oscar Avila
Tribune correspondent

SAN SALVADOR — It was one sort of grief that Father Jose Maria Tojeira felt when he entered the home of his fellow Jesuit priests that day in 1989. Before him, he saw corpses and bloodstained walls, testament to one of the most notorious massacres committed during El Salvador's civil war.

Twenty years later, another anguish lingers in Tojeira from the knowledge that the military officers accused of killing six priests and two others in their home now live openly without fear of punishment.

A controversial law granting amnesty to the perpetrators of abuses is once again in the spotlight in El Salvador after a judge in Spain agreed in January to prosecute 14 military officers in the slaying while explicitly leaving the door open to indicting former President Alfredo Cristiani in the coverup.

From the current trial of Khmer Rouge members in Cambodia to the international tribunal prosecuting Balkans war crimes, the quest for justice after a conflict means overcoming legal barriers and revisiting the trauma of the violence itself.

El Salvador is still wrestling with how to achieve justice after a 12-year conflict between Marxist rebels and a military regime propped up by the Reagan administration.

While international human-rights groups say prosecution is the only logical avenue, both leading candidates in March's presidential election have taken the opposite approach, vowing to keep the amnesty law in place.

That angers Tojeira, now rector at Central American University, which houses a shrine to the slain priests. "We call it an insult to the victims of El Salvador," he said. "The amnesty law attempts to say that nothing happened here, that the living are the ones who count and the dead don't matter. It is a lack of respect to human dignity."

The facts of the murder of the Jesuits have been re-affirmed by national and international investigators. El Salvador's truth commission determined that high-level military officers planned the attack on the priests, who were considered "subversives" because they favored peace talks and had contacts with FMLN rebels.

Investigators have determined that the soldiers, part of a military trained by the United States during the Cold War-era clashes that flared throughout Central America, entered the priests' residence, tortured them and then ordered them to lie face-down in the garden. There, they were shot.

According to El Salvador's truth commission, military and security forces as well as death squads aligned with the government were responsible for about 95 percent of the 22,000 registered acts of serious violence.

More:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/elsalvador/amnesty-law.htm

[Rozlee]

6. I've always been an agnostic, but I hope that there is a hell

and that these murderers are right over it's furnace.

[Flaneur]

3. The Reaganites who bled Central America to keep it safe for capitalism...

...they're the ones who should be seeking atonement.

Elliot Abrams, anyone?

[EFerrari]

8. Poppy Bush. And Negroponte -- Hillary's "adviser".

Callahan - he was Negrponte's #2 man and is currently serving on the Honduras desk. Criminals with blood on their hands, all of them.

[IndianaGreen]

20. Meanwhile School of the Americas remains open at Fort Benning

that's where the leaders of death squads learned their trade.

[T Wolf]

4. I KNEW we were fucked way back then when the rape of nuns by the Raygunites, on his orders,

was ignored by most Americans and the cretins in the GOP suffered no consequences for those crimes.

In the face of evil like that, I cannot fathom how anyone could consider the GOPers anything but the lowest scum of the earth.

But fast-forward to now and you have the pukes again defending rape (Franken amendment). And they still get no negative blowback from that!

How is that possible?

[EFerrari]

7. My friend said these men were his teachers.

He'll be glad to hear this news.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. I remember my school had a moment of silence when this happened

I went to one of those communist indoctrinating jesuit schools.

[EFerrari]

13. My mom and all my aunts and uncles did, too,

The Jesuits did pretty well -- only about half of them turned into freepers. lol

[IndianaGreen]

9. Death squads were led by people trained at Fort Benning's School of Americas

Clinton did not close the SOA. What will Obama do?

[Joanne98]

11. I'd rather have them vote for the left!

[Mrs. Overall]

14. And there are also the three nuns and catholic lay worker raped and murdered in 1980

in El Salvador.

[Octafish]

15. Corporate McPravda played a big role in keeping Murder Inc going in Central America.

Remember El Mozote? Not many do.

Thanks for remembering and reminding us, Judi Lynn. ¡Muy agradecido!

[EFerrari]

16. Roberto D'Aubuisson almost certainly ordered these murders. And he was regaled by Raygundom:

"On December 5, 1984, at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C., US conservative lobbyists awarded D’Aubuisson a plaque honoring his "continuing efforts for freedom in the face of Communist aggression, which is an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere." The closed-door dinner, for 120 people, was given by the National Council for Better Education, and co-sponsored by the Free Congress Foundation, the Conservative Caucus, the Conservative Alliance, Viguerie Co., Gun Owners of America, Western Goals Endowment Fund, Washington Legal Foundation, United States Defense Committee, American Foreign Policy Council, Public Service Research Council, The Moral Majority, The Washington Times, National Right-to-Work Committee, National Pro-Life Political Action Committee, Intercessors for America, the Young America's Foundation, and Young Americans for Freedom. Former US ambassador Faith Ryan Whittlesey, then an assistant to US President Ronald Reagan, took part in the presentation but reportedly did not attend the dinner."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_D%27Aubuisson

I don't hate very many people. But I hate him and I hate all of that old felon Raygun's club. When they go to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, my mission is going to be to spoil it if I have to put up a website and blog 365 days in 2011 and organize counter remembrances in American cities.

[annm4peace]

17. will our Progressive power close the SOA?

I hope so, and I hope the military teachers and those who ran the SOA will be tried for crimes

[Judi Lynn]

18. El Salvador honours martyrs who fought inequality and injustice

The Irish Times - Tuesday, November 10,
El Salvador honours martyrs who fought inequality and injustice

RITE AND REASON: A notorious event in Central American history is nearing its 20th anniversary

THE ASSASSINATION of six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter by the Salvadoran army 20 years ago made such an impact on Noam Chomsky that in Dublin last week he referred to these murders as “the defeat of liberation theology” and “the end of Christianity”.

On the 20th anniversary next Monday, President Carlos Mauricio Funes of El Salvador will honour these martyrs with the nation’s highest award as a public act of atonement for the state’s involvement in their murders. In Ireland their memory will be celebrated at a Eucharistic celebration in the Church of the Virgin Mary, Shangan Road, Ballymun, on Sunday next, November 15th, at 7pm.

The House of Representatives of the US Congress recently passed resolution 761 to honour these martyrs, thus acknowledging American involvement in these crimes.

Conspicuous by its absence is the official church’s recognition of their martyrdom.

Why were these people murdered in El Salvador in 1989 and why, 20 years later, do they still make an impact?

These six Jesuits were responding to their superior general, Fr Pedro Arrupe, who challenged Jesuits worldwide to take up the preferential option for the poor, stating that “we cannot separate action for justice from the proclamation of the word of God”.

They transformed their Jesuit University of Central America in the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, from being an elitist institution to one which served the marginalised in a country where 14 families owned and controlled the wealth.

More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1110/1224258481032.html

[Judi Lynn]

19. Sorry, dupe. n/t

The Irish Times - Tuesday, November 10,
El Salvador honours martyrs who fought inequality and injustice

RITE AND REASON: A notorious event in Central American history is nearing its 20th anniversary

THE ASSASSINATION of six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter by the Salvadoran army 20 years ago made such an impact on Noam Chomsky that in Dublin last week he referred to these murders as “the defeat of liberation theology” and “the end of Christianity”.

On the 20th anniversary next Monday, President Carlos Mauricio Funes of El Salvador will honour these martyrs with the nation’s highest award as a public act of atonement for the state’s involvement in their murders. In Ireland their memory will be celebrated at a Eucharistic celebration in the Church of the Virgin Mary, Shangan Road, Ballymun, on Sunday next, November 15th, at 7pm.

The House of Representatives of the US Congress recently passed resolution 761 to honour these martyrs, thus acknowledging American involvement in these crimes.

Conspicuous by its absence is the official church’s recognition of their martyrdom.

Why were these people murdered in El Salvador in 1989 and why, 20 years later, do they still make an impact?

These six Jesuits were responding to their superior general, Fr Pedro Arrupe, who challenged Jesuits worldwide to take up the preferential option for the poor, stating that “we cannot separate action for justice from the proclamation of the word of God”.

They transformed their Jesuit University of Central America in the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, from being an elitist institution to one which served the marginalised in a country where 14 families owned and controlled the wealth.

More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1110/1224258481032.html