Reflection on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Murders of the Eight Martyrs of El Salvador

Twenty years ago, a right wing death squad with links to the government of El Salvador murdered two Salvadoran women and six Jesuit priests. There is evidence that the individuals involved had received training at the School of the Americas. Whether or not they had connections to the SOA, these men brutally killed eight people because these people were critical of the right wing dictatorship that was governing that country. Ignacio Ellacuria and his friends were proponents of The Theology of Liberation and had every right to advocate their vision of the transformation of Salvadoran society. (I also advocate a theology of liberation, but I think that we need to re-envision it given the obvious failings and brutality of the Marxist ideology that informs certain strands of this theology.) The murderers, connected to a government supported by the US government, acted as many acted during the bloodiest century in history—they valued ideology more than human rights, power more than human dignity, and violence more than imagination.
Some think that the murder of the eight martyrs justify the closing of the School of the Americas rather than its reform. In this blog, I will not weigh in on that matter. I do not want to detract from the necessary prayer for peace that this occasion summons. No American who stands within our living American tradition can justify the murder of eight people and all Christians, all people of faith, all people of good will remember the passing of these eight prophets as testimony to the need to continue our task of building the Kingdom of God.