Friday, October 24, 2014
Remembering the Martyrs, Twenty-five Years On
Reflection,
Twenty-five
years ago on November 16, 1989, eight people were murdered on the grounds of
the José Simeón Cañas University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador . Six of the victims were Jesuit priests who
taught at the university and who were vocal advocates for a negotiated
settlement of the country’s civil war.
The two other victims were the cook for the priest’s dormitory and her
daughter.[1] These murders shocked a country that had seen
plenty of bloodshed up to that point.
According
to the 1993 United Nations Security Council report submitted by the Commission
on the Truth for El Salvador, “between 1980 and 1991, the Republic of El
Salvador […] was engulfed in a war” which ultimately claimed upwards of 75,000
lives, traumatized an entire society, destroyed roads, highways, bridges,
churches, schools, hospitals, homes, and families. “In its cruelty, violence leaves everyone
defenseless.”[2]
Looking
back, I remember being unsure about who was doing what to whom, and where. Central America was in crisis throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, when civil wars in Guatemala Nicaragua
(twice, in 1978-1979 and again from 1981-1990), and El Salvador attracted a variety of
foreign involvement, in the form of money, arms, and advisors. Coup d’états, repressions, and counter-coups
marked the era. Human rights were abused
with impunity. People disappeared,
villages were destroyed, and villagers massacred. Both sides committed gross atrocities against
the other.
This
conflict highlights the nature of power – who has it, who wants it, and who
gets stuck in the middle. But war
doesn’t happen overnight. It is, as von
Clausewitz said, “a continuation of policy by other means,”[5] a
political act, as it certainly seemed to be in the El Salvador of the Cold War era.
The
roots of this latest conflict go back to the sixteenth century, when Spain conquered Central
America . El Salvador only
became an independent republic in 1838.
Before then, the Spaniards and, after independence, Salvadorans of
European descent had created a vast gap between rich and poor. The Salvadoran economy was based on agriculture,
mostly around two singular crops: first, indigo, for which demand evaporated
with the introduction of chemical dyes, followed by coffee in the 1800s.[6] By 1880, coffee had become the dominant
export crop and would figure prominently as a funding source in the civil wars
to come.[7]
According
to the Center for Justice and Accountability, indigenous peoples and mestizos[8] made
up 95 percent of the population but were reduced to virtual serfdom while a
small minority of wealthy landholders called the “Fourteen Families” ruled
through a long series of military dictatorships throughout the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. “It is
along these fault lines – between
peasant and planter, European and native – that cycles of violence have erupted throughout El Salvador ’s
troubled history.”[9]
In
January 1932, Augustin Farabundo Marti, a labor leader, led a peasant revolt
against the ruling dictatorship and the “Fourteen Families.” The response was immediate and massive. It is remembered today as La Matanza, the slaughter that took
30,000 lives, mostly those of indigenous people.[10] Thus began a perpetual struggle between the
various right-wing military dictatorships and their left-wing guerilla
opponents who rose up as a reaction to the government. Caught in the middle, Salvadoran society in
general and the peasant population in particular were vulnerable to
depredations from both sides, more so from the right-wing.
We
need to know this long and complicated history, at least in order to see our
current world in all its complexity and tragedy and as clearly and completely
as possible. In response, one might ask,
where was God? For every murder, for
every disappearance, was God present to the victims? How could God allow such a long-playing
tragedy such as that which befell El Salvador ,
Guatemala , and Nicaragua ?
We
ask such questions at our own risk.
In
the immediate aftermath of the December, 2004 earthquake and tsunami that
devastated Sumatra and most of the coastal regions of the Indian Ocean as far
away as Sri Lanka, David B. Hart wrote that, when we are confronted by “the
sheer savage immensity” of wide-spread suffering, we are permitted only to hate
death, waste, and “the imbecile forces of chance.”[11] The hidden hand of God does not send the
destruction of natural causes our way as a form of testing or punishment. Instead, we can see that God is in our
collective positive response to tragedy, in our compassion, and in our charity.
What
happened on November 16, 1989 in El Salvador was not by natural
causes.
John
Podhoretz wrote, in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown,
Connecticut, that evil is “an effort to destroy the common good by making good
appear powerless, ineffectual, weak.”[12] Evil is all of that and more. Evil isn’t just a thing that sits there as if
it were waiting for the next bus. Evil
is something we choose to do. We can
resist evil. We can choose not to do it.
The
men who murdered six priests and two women on November 16, 1989 in El Salvador
chose to do so. Worse, they were
commanded to, and did not question the command.
We can say that the murderers and their commanders were evil.[13] Such evil is on the loose around the world
today in conflicts small and large.
We
are called to remember what happened on November 16, 1989 and elsewhere in
Central America at that time because, as Father Joseph O’Hare wrote, “for us to
forget [the slain priests] or to decide that the costs of justice are too high
for us to pay would be to betray not only their memory but our faith that this
is God’s world and that God is the Lord of justice.”[14] In the same way, we are called today also to
remember if not stand with the victims in Bosnia ,
Rwanda , Syria , and with all those trapped on the slopes
of Mount Sinjar
in Iraq ;
anywhere that neighbors strike at neighbors or wherever people have died at the
hands of oppression.
In
Matthew 25, in the section regarding judgment of the nations, when the king
says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who
are members of my family, you did it to me,” he is not just talking about
feeding the hungry or clothing the naked, he also means bombing civilians and
killing those who resist evil.
At
the Communion table, Christians recall the words of Jesus Christ, who said, “Do
this in remembrance of me.” Jesus is
calling us to remember, first, that we meet in peaceful fellowship that cuts
across social and economic boundaries.
Secondly, by doing that, by sharing that meal, we build up God’s beloved
community, the kingdom of heaven, here on earth. What we do at the Communion table is the
exact opposite of what we do when we are at war.
Jon
Sobrino reminds us of “God’s eternal question,” which is this: “What have you
done to your brother or sister,”[15]
to which we would add, “or not done for them?”
Here is Sobrino again with what we hope is the last word that might
speak for all time to man’s inhumanity to mankind: “In a world of darkness with
a heart of stone it is possible to live with light and with a heart of flesh,
and that it is possible to experience in one’s own life the blessing and joy of
the beatitudes.”[16]
[1] Rev.
Stan G. Duncan , “Introduction: The Crime” in Companions of Jesus: The
Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador [Maryknoll ,
NY
[2] Betancur
B, Figueredo Planchart R, Buergenthal T. “From madness to hope: the twelve-year war in El Salvador .
Report of the Commission on the Truth
for El Salvador .”
[New York :
United Nations; 1993] http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/ElSalvador-Report.pdf,
accessed 13 October 2014.
[3] Mark
Vasallo, “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: General Considerations and a
Critical Comparison of the Commissions of Chile
and El Salvador ,” The University of Miami
[4] Ibid.,
168-169.
[5] Karl von
Clausewitz, War, Politics, and Power: Selections from On War, and I
Believe and Profess, ed. and tran. Edward M. Collins [Chicago : Regnery Gateway, 1962], 83.
[6] “Background
on El Salvador ,”
The Center for Justice and Accountability, http://www.cja.org/article.php?list=type&type=199,
accessed 16 October 2013.
[7] Donald
E. Jacobson and David B. Ehrenthal, "Chapter 3: The Economy" in A Country Study: El Salvador, Library of
Congress Call Number F1483.B55 1990, http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/svtoc.html,
accessed 17 October 2014.
[8] A person
of combined European and Native American descent.
[10] Ibid. After the massacre, the indigenous people stopped
wearing native clothing, dropped their tribal customs, and changed their names
to Spanish names, as a way to protect themselves. Today, their ancient Mayan cultural heritage
has nearly disappeared. Stan Duncan
related the following in conversation: “When I was living there, I met, on
occasion, young people (whose parents I knew) who knew nothing about La
Matanza. It was not taught in any
schools in the cities or villages I visited.”
[11] David
B. Hart, “Tremors of Doubt,” The Wall Street Journal (31 December 2004).
[13] “Most
if not all the men involved in the murders had been participating in a U.S.
Human Rights training session when they were called away for a ‘job’ they had
to do at UCA.” – Stan Duncan
[14] Father
Joseph O’Hare, S.J., “Six Slain Jesuits” in Companions of Jesus: The Jesuit
Martyrs of El Salvador
[15] Ibid.,
ix.
[16] Ibid.
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