El Salvador honors 6 Jesuits slain by army in 1989

[Scurrilous]

Source: Associated Press

<snip>

"Six Jesuit priests killed by the army during El Salvador's civil war two decades ago were decorated with the country's highest honor Monday.

Mauricio Funes, El Salvador's first leftist president, called the decorations an act of atonement for an atrocity during the 1980-1992 war between leftist rebels and a U.S.-backed right-wing government.

He presented the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado to the families of the priests on the 20th anniversary of the massacre.

"It means lifting the dirty carpet of hypocrisy and starting to purge our home of our recent history," said Funes, whose election in March brought to power the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which fought for 12 years to overthrow U.S.-backed governments until laying down their arms and becoming a political party."

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i4MpbaMH2pl4hw6MnYpCptWREDpAD9C0T3MG0

---

In pictures: El Salvador remembers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8361950.stm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Right wingers are happy to forget their religion if it means they can torture, slaughter leftists

or anyone who seeks to bring hope, aid, food or shelter, friendship to suspected leftists.



http://www.crimesofwar.org.nyud.net:8090/onnews/pix/elsal-AndJesuitPriests12.jpg
San Salvador, El Salvador, 1989, The bodies of slain Jesuits Segundo Montes and another priest on the lawn outside their home at the Catholic University the morning of their murder by the Atlacatl battalion of the Salvadorn Army. The Army murdered 6 Jesuits including Iganciao Ellacuria, the University Rector and the famed psychologist Ignacio Martin Baro. Also murdered were the priest's housekeeper and her daughter.
© Donna DeCesare, 1989
http://3.bp.blogspot.com,nyud.net:8090/_a3ctuUgQ96s/SRrHBpdEdcI/AAAAAAAABxA/tE227iYlrQY/s1600/Martires.jpg
~~~~~~~~~~~


10/26
Former Salvadoran army officer Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, convicted for the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her 14-year-old daughter, was arrested by federal agents on October 18 in Los Angeles, California.

Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, a sub-lieutenant in the notorious Atlacatl Battalion, took part in the November 16, 1989 massacre at the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador. Less than a year before the brutal killings, Guevara Cerritos received military training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

~~~~~~~~~
Prior to the murder of the 6 Jesuit priests, the housekeeper and her daughter, 3 nuns and a church volunteer were raped and killed by death squads in 1981.

http://www.brendancalling.com.nyud.net:8090/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/dead-american-nuns-el-salvador.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/3245/2607646165_fe75745ddd.jpg

Memorial for 4 US Nuns Murdered in El Salvador

On Anniversary of El Salvador Jesuits' Slaying, Momentum for Justice Tuesday, November 16th 2004

Mary Jo McConahay, Pacific News Service

EDITOR'S NOTE: Fifteen years ago on Nov. 16, six Jesuit priests and two others were murdered in San Salvador by the Salvadoran army for their outspoken stance in defense of the poor. Now, legal and legislative efforts to justice to victims of El Salvador's civil war are picking up steam, especially in the United States, which armed, trained and educated many death squad members. Mary Jo McConahay is a PNS editor who covered the war in El Salvador in the 1980s.

On an early morning 15 years ago in San Salvador, a handful of reporters walked cautiously into the walled garden of the Jesuit university residence and saw the bodies of four well-known priests lying dead on the grass. Inside were the bodies of two more priests. A few steps below the garden, in a room where they had asked to spend the night to avoid a city raked by fighting, lay the bodies of the priests' housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter, riddled with bullets, the mother fallen partly over the girl as if in protection when army gunmen burst through the door.

The Jesuits had researched causes and effects of the 12-year civil war, publicly suggested poverty and lack of political space were at its roots, and had called for a negotiated solution. Their deaths shocked the world and helped spur an end to the conflict.

Today, despite the passage of time, calls for accountability for crimes committed in the Salvadoran conflict are re-emerging outside the country, including in the United States.

Nineteen of the 24 accused assassins attended the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., which still trains Latin American officers; today, many are from Colombia. This week, thousands of students and other activists descend on Fort Benning for an annual procession and protest against training officers who return to countries with questionable rights records, and to commemorate rights victims. A bill to close the school, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, counts 130 congressional supporters, including nine Republicans.

The Jesuits' murders are among a series of new, high-profile cases aiming at legal redress and punishment of former U.S.-backed authorities. A seemingly dauntless network of low-paid rights workers, lawyers and victims bring cases not only in Central America, but in U.S. towns where one-time officers and death squad operatives now live, often comfortably. The history of the El Salvadoran conflict, which lasted over a decade until 1992, is being documented in a way it has never been. Legal precedent is being created, and a new generation exposed to one of the most bloody faces of the Cold War era.

More:
http://soaw.org/newswire_detail.php?id=573

[dcsmart]

5. This is a great tribute...thanks for posting this..

[CatWoman]

2. kick

:kick:

[EFerrari]

3. Kick.

[dcsmart]

4. thanks for posting this K & R

[Judi Lynn]

6. From the Washington Post, their original story on this vicious massacre:

As it happened, November 16, 1989:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



6 PRIESTS, 2 OTHERS SLAIN IN SAN SALVADOR
FIGHTING INTENSIFIES FOR CONTROL OF CAPITAL

By Lee Hockstader and Douglas Farah Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, November 17, 1989 ; Page A01

SAN SALVADOR, NOV. 16 -- SAN SALVADOR, NOV. 16 -- Six prominent Jesuit priests, including the rector and vice rector of El Salvador's most prestigious university, were killed early today along with two other persons at the house where they slept in the capital.

The priests were the most prominent victims of Salvadoran violence since 1980, when eight leftist politicians were gunned down by the military, three American nuns and a lay worker were shot dead and archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated as he said mass.

Today's execution-style slayings, which may have been preceded by torture, took place as the government armed forces unleashed heavy air and artillery attacks on strongholds established by leftist guerrillas in the massive offensive they launched last Saturday.

The attacks also appeared to cause more casualties among civilians in besieged residential neighborhoods. Fighting also was heavy in eastern and central El Salvador, where the guerrillas have taken positions in major cities.

At the scene of the killing of the churchmen, a Jesuit priest said witnesses had reported seeing more than 20 armed men in uniforms enter the house between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., apparently through a back door blown off by an explosive device. There was no fighting in the area, which was in the hands of the army and police under the state of emergency and night-hours curfew imposed by the government.

Several of the victims had been shot in the head. Four of the bodies had been left face down in the front yard of the blood-spattered house. Several had chunks of flesh gouged out, and the brains of two of the victims shot in the head lay several feet from the bodies.

Slain priest Ignacio Ellacuria, 59, was rector of the Central American University and a widely respected leftist intellectual who was frequently denounced by the far right who claimed he was a spokesman for the Marxist-led Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

Ellacuria, who was born in Spain and later became a Salvadoran citizen, received frequent death threats and had been denounced in recent days on the national radio chain that has replaced independent local news broadcasts.

The university's vice rector, Ignacio Martin-Baro, 50, also a Spanish-born Salvadoran citizen, was best known as an analyst of national and regional affairs and as the founder and director of the Public Opinion Institute, a highly respected polling organization.

A sign left near the bodies said, "The FMLN has executed the spies who turned on them. Victory or death. FMLN."

In broadcasts today, the rebel front's clandestine radio has laid the killings to a government-directed death squad and said the guerrillas would extend their offensive with renewed fury to avenge them.

Several analysts attributed the killings to the extreme right that is generally held responsible for tens of thousands of killings in the last decade. They said the murders could signal the beginning of a campaign that could discredit the rightist government of President Alfredo Cristiani -- which the United States and some local opposition leaders recently have credited with reining in the extremists.

"What is scaring me rigid is that the right wing is taking over," said a diplomat. "I think Cristiani has lost control."

More:
http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/WPnov16.html

From:
The El Salvador Martyrs
November 16, 1989

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/10th-anniv.html

~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you for marking this horrendous anniversary.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could believe our government no longer will support regimes which torture and slaughter innocents, or people with "different" political beliefs?

[Rage for Order]

7. Wait...

So now DU cares about Catholics again? When did this happen?

[Judi Lynn]

8. What the hell are you attempting to say? Either address the original article or butt out.

Some of the finest posters here ARE Catholic, or were raised as Catholics.

If you took the time to read the article you'd recognize it concerns the anniversary of a loathesome, brutal event.

We have similarly discussed the murders of Archbishop Romero, repeatedly, as well as the 3 American nuns, and their fellow layperson volunteer. We have discussed the heartless murder of American nun from Ohio, longtime Brazil citizen, who was dedicated to preservation of the forests and lives of Brazilian poor people, Dorothy Stang.

Don't add your opinion of other posters. It's discouraged here in the rules. Save that for Yahoo boards. Address the subject, or wait until you can.

[Rage for Order]

9. I didn't attempt to say anything

I said what I meant. Or have you not noticed the constant derision and mocking of Catholics on DU since at least November 2008?

Address the original article or butt out? This coming from someone who is infamous for posting links to anything except the matter at hand?

:eyes:

[EFerrari]

11. I don't know if this could occur to you but these men were not just "Catholics"

to some people. They were one of my best friend's teachers and he still can't even talk about this all these years later.

[Rage for Order]

12. I'm in agreement with you

The crimes were heinous regardless of religious or political affiliation. However, if one views the Catholic Church as a hate group - and I've seen numerous posters with this opinion - would they really be that broken up if a leader in the hate group met with an untimely demise? To be clear, I'm not ascribing this point of view to you or Judi Lynn

[EFerrari]

14. As an ex-Catholic that still thinks like one although I don't believe like one.

my own take on the Church and all its communities is complicated. I've watched the leadership go on a crusade against my gay brothers and sisters and lately, against a woman's choice here and that's so repugnant to me.

To add a wrinkle, men and women like these men were routinely lambasted by Rome for involving themselves in causes of social justice in Latin America during the Reagan dirty wars. So, they didn't represent the status quo at all, these brave good people.

[AlphaCentauri]

15. The Catholic church produces many leftist and people of conscience

but there are also those right wing fanatics like in any other religious group. We don't see many baptist, episcopalians or evangelicals murder for the causes of the poor that is an indicator that the catholic church even if it disagrees with gay marriage and abortions in the social issues is always ahead of other denominations and maybe ahead of many politicians who proclaim them selves leader of the world.

[Festivito]

17. The harsh element of the atheist crowd do not venture far from their preserve.

I'm afraid some of those vociferous crew are planted to whip support for right-wing causes and some are just duped supporters, as angry as any instigated Republican supporter.

You won't find them here. This heinous crime is felt by all, except Republicans. I recall one, years ago, while we showed movies of these killed people waving an American flag as though America's secret involvement was wanted, needed and good. The brother of that mindless waver now holds high Republican position, and still makes me sick.

Don't worry about those Catholicism haters. Some will never learn.

[EFerrari]

10. Kick

[roody]

13. Good on Funes.

[Divine Discontent]

16. God bless them - THIS is the face of INTOLERANCE of ANY kind!