THE legacy of six murdered Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter lives on in El Salvador.
Jesuits from Central America and other parts of the world, along with hundreds of parishioners, commemorated the 25th anniversary of the murders.
For demanding social justice in a country marked by abject poverty, and in the midst of a civil war, the six Jesuits were considered the left’s ideologues by the right-wing sectors of the country.
“Twenty-five years later it is clear that the victims of the war in this country need justice; we also need more economic equality,” Jesuit Father Rodolfo Cardenal, former vice rector of Central American University, site of the 1989 murders, said.
On November 16, 1989, in the midst of the biggest offensive launched by the guerrillas of Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a commando unit of the Salvadoran army, killed Jesuit Fathers Ignacio Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno and Joaquin Lopez.
Elba Ramos, the cook and housekeeper, and her 16-year-old daughter Celina Ramos also were murdered.
The week-long commemoration of their deaths included talks, cultural activities and radio and television programs, culminating on November 15 with a Mass celebrated by Jesuit Bishop Gonzalo de Villa Vasquez of Solola, Guatemala.
Jesuit provincial for Central America Fr Rolando Alvarado Lopez said from the pulpit: “The spirit rested in our Jesuit martyrs and in hundreds of women and men, catechists, peasants, students and in all those martyrs who, by their actions, were trying to be like Jesus.”
The 1980-92 Salvadoran civil war left an estimated 75,000 dead and 8000 missing.
A marketing student at Central American University Ivette Escobar said the priests’ deaths were not in vain, and the legacy she had taken was to continue the struggle for the defence of the poorest in the country.
“They were an example of how one should pursue justice for others,” she said, while making a colourful rug with the faces of the murdered priests.
The Jesuits’ killers still have not been brought to justice.
In May 2011, a Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant against nine Salvadoran officers accused of plotting to kill the Jesuits, five of whom were Spanish citizens by birth.
But El Salvador refused to extradite the defendants, arguing that the 1993 amnesty law did not allow it.
Human rights organisations have said crimes against humanity should not be included in amnesty laws.
CNS
