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

[Judi Lynn]

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.

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

[Judi Lynn]

1. List of some of the School of the Americas Graduates involved in this dirty massacre:

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

[Peace Patriot]

2. This brings tears to my eyes. I remember that terrible event so well.

And now some of the same US architects of those horrors want to do it all over again, from their launching pads in Colombia and Honduras. They've expended a lot of effort, and spent a whole lot of our money, to set it up. What they are doing is very worrisome--the more so because their object is more focused: Venezuela's and Ecuador's (and possibly even Brazil's) oil.

Notice how they have tried to seque "terrorism" into justifications for the "war on drugs" billions in military spending and installations. They actually added the word into the legislation for the multi-billion dollar booty to Colombia, though Colombia's problem is a domestic civil war (40+ years old), and the government side is far more "terrorist" than the leftist guerrillas. They also tried to justify US troops in Paraguay by this mythical "terrorist" tri-corner area, and I think may have had plans to use those troops over the border in support of the white separatists who were killing people and trying to take over eastern Bolivia (funded and organized right out of the US embassy in Bolivia--until Evo Morales threw the ambassador out, and the DEA for the same reason).

They've got a real problem justifying all these "war on drugs" billions--which of course have nothing whatever to do with stopping the drug trade. Latin Americans are getting extremely disgusted with the "war on drugs" and are turning to more peaceful methods, such as decriminalizing innocent leaves (marijuana, coca) and attacking any crime networks with good police work. And they are having good success. A "war" just destroys society--which of course the Bushwhacks are into. That's what they do--destroy a society, then, like vultures, pick over the remains. So the failed, corrupt, murderous "war on drugs" isn't selling well. Got to give it some "terrorism" cache--though Latin America is probably the safest region of the world as to Islamic extremists. But they've managed by combos of these buzz words, and a lot of war profiteer corruption (not to mention the corruption of the protected drug lords), to establish two major bases of operation for the real war--the oil war--with seven new US military bases in Colombia, and recently the securing of their old "lily pad" country, Honduras, and have also reconstituted the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean.

In Honduras (big "war on drugs" booty, and US air and naval bases), 26 leftist activists have been killed by death squads or other means--this year during the Junta. In Peru (big "war on drugs" booty; corrupt government; "free trade for the rich"), many indigenous have been killed by the police, for protesting the rape of the Amazon by multinationals. In Oaxaca, Mexico (another big "war on drugs" booty country), dozens were killed in the teacher's strike, and there has been a bloodbath in the US border areas directly caused by the US "war on drugs" (which is resulting in some re-thinking of the "drug war" in Mexico). And in Colombia (recipient of the biggest "war on drugs" booty of all--$6 BILLION--and now 7 more US military bases), thousands of union leaders, human rights activists, community organizers, small peasant farmers, political leftists and others have been slaughtered by the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads.

The carnage of US interference in Latin America didn't end in 1989. It continues. Its name then was "anti-communism." Its name now is somewhere between "anti-drugs," "anti-terror," and sometimes even the old flag, "anti-communism," but, while its purpose still includes war profiteering, the Bushwhacks--their appetite for blood in countries with lots of oil whetted in Iraq, and their ambitions frustrated in Iran--have a larger scheme for use of all of these military assets in Latin America. They may be out of power, but their war plan seems to be going forward. And it could all end up being even worse than the genocides in the 1980s, or the disgusting targeting of priests, nuns and teachers who care for the poor. They thought nothing of slaughtering a hundred thousand people in one week of bombing in Iraq, to get their oil; and thought nothing as the toll rose to a million. This is the danger of US military installations in Latin America now. Not just "dirty wars." All-out wars--by people who don't even feel the need to cover it up.

I do think they will be sneaky in Latin America, though--because what they want to do is so incredibly unjustifiable. There is evidence that they intend to instigate civil wars, as in Bolivia, and have the local fascists invite them to defend these "freedom fighters" against "communist dictators." They've already done quite a bit of work on the psyops, and now we are seeing all of the US military capabilities being significantly increased.

I've stated this concern in the Latin American Forum time and again. But I don't think it can be stated too often. And the deaths of these priests and their housekeeper and her daughter highlight once again just how serious the lack of conscience is, in some elements of the US government and our national political establishment, when it comes to Latin America. I am glad that El Salvador is remembering, and that Argentina and Chile and others are remembering, and also that the new leftist leaders of the region are no fools. It may be entirely up to them to fend such a war off, because we in the north have shown no ability to fend off Bushwhack wars. And I don't know if Obama is willing or able to head this off. Some already say he is the "prisoner of the Pentagon" on Afghanistan. The Pukes seem to have already gotten him boxed in, in several ways, on Latin American policy. His stated policy of peaceful relations is contradicted by the Pentagon's seven new bases in Colombia. (And Panama, by the way, is another front--more US bases going in there.)

[flamingdem]

3. I remember it vividly and was part of a protest in NYC in front of the NYT

after a service at ... a cathedral but I'm not sure which it was.

[Judi Lynn]

4. 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