Fall 2009 Stories

The Jesuit martyrs of the University of Central America (UCA), their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter were brutally assassinated on Nov. 16, 1989. The orders came from the highest levels of the military of El Salvador, with possible approval by the president of the country. U.S. Military Advisors may have had advance knowledge of the plot, and U.S. government actions certainly assisted in the cover up. Why? The answer is that Ignacio Ellacuría and the university of central America posed a real threat to ongoing bipartisan U.S. support for the government of El Salvador in the country’s twelve year Civil War.

In this essay, I will argue that the UCA’s self-understanding as a Christian university rooted in God’s preferential option for the poor was concretized through its decade-long advocacy for peace and a negotiated solution to the war. I will examine the interaction of this position with U.S. counterinsurgency in El Salvador. I will demonstrate that Ellacuría, his fellow Jesuits, and the UCA faculty and staff were considered traitors by elements of El Salvador’s military-civilian elite for their advocacy of negotiations. And I will explore how the threat of negotiations led to the deaths of Ellacuría and his colleagues.

"IT’S THEM OR US!"
Around 11:00 p.m. on Nov. 15, 1989, the director of the Salvadoran Military Academy, Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno, summoned a young graduate of the Jesuit High School of San Salvador and ordered him to murder Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., well known president of the University of Central America (UCA), and to leave no witnesses. Lt. José Ricardo Espinoza Guerra protested, telling his superior, according to later judicial testimony, that “this was a serious problem.” Living with Ellacuría was the young lieutenant’s former high school principal and teacher, Segundo Montes, S.J. Knowing he might face Fr. Montes, Espinoza asked for a bar of black camouflage grease with which to disguise himself, and about three hours later he gave the order to kill the priests. Espinoza testified that he left the Jesuit university residence as his troops riddled the helpless victims with bullets, his eyes filled with tears.

On the U.S. side, Maj. Eric Warren Buck- land, senior U.S. military advisor to Salvadoran Psychological Operations, faced a similarly complex dilemma. Several weeks earlier his Salva- doran counterpart, Col. Carlos Armando Avilés Buitrago (Chief of Psychological Operations for the Salvadoran Joint Command), revealed that a group of high-ranking Salvadoran military officers was planning to assassinate Fr. Ellacuría and some other Jesuits. According to the major, Avilés recruited Buckland to accompany him on a mission from Col. René Emilio Ponce, Chief of Staff and second ranking officer of the Salvadoran Military High Command, in order “to solve a problem with Col. Benavides.” When they arrived, Buckland was told to wait outside, but Avilés later reported that Benavides said Ellacuría “was a problem,” and that “they wanted to handle it in the old way by killing some of the priests.”⁵ Maj. Buckland did nothing to prevent the planned murders, however. He later testified that he thought, “if Chief of Staff Ponce assigned a senior colonel (Avilés) to address the problem,” then it meant the assassinations “would not happen.” The major would soon realize he was being played.

One month after the murders, on Dec. 20, 1989, Buckland learned from Avilés that Col. Benavides had indeed ordered an Atlacatl commando unit to assassinate Ellacuría and his companions, and that an active cover-up was underway. The major would come under intense pressure from the U.S. Embassy, the FBI, and his own military superiors, to back away from his story. Indeed, a week after his Jan. 12, 1990 testimony, Buckland would recant the portion admitting prior knowledge of the plot to assassinate Ellacuría and the other Jesuits. Newsweek later reported, “The administration didn’t want that story to come out, because it ‘wasn’t productive to the conduct of the war'.” Buckland continued to insist, however, that Avilés said Benavides had ordered the assassinations, information the major had already shared with his sister Carol Buckland, a CNN reporter, first by telephone and later in a letter dated Dec. 25, 1989. This testimony would play an important role in breaking through the wall of lies supporting the cover up, and protecting those who had ordered and committed the murders.

The truth is that, like so many other soldiers before and after, Lt. Espinoza and Col. Buckland were small players in a larger geo-political drama of power and corruption. We now know that the Jesuits were murdered under orders by the highest levels of the military of El Salvador, with possible foreknowledge by the President of the country, Alfredo Cristiani. At the time of this writing, 20 years after the assassinations, the Spanish National Court has reserved the right to indict former President Cristiani for criminal activity in the cover-up. U.S. officials, which, as we have seen, may have had advance knowledge of the plot, certainly assisted in the cover-up that followed. And three quarters of the officers involved in the killings were trained in counter- insurgency tactics by U.S. personnel from the School of the Americas located at Fort Benning, Ga., while Atlacatl commandos interrupted training after just three days with U.S. Special Forces on Nov. 13, 1989, in order to commit the assassinations!

The 1993 report of the U.N. Commission on the Truth for El Salvador adds some crucial pieces. Around 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., “Col. Ponce called over Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides and, in front of the four other officers, ordered him to eliminate Fr. Ellacuría and to leave no witnesses.” It adds that Ponce “ordered him to use the unit from the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion which had carried out the search two days earlier.” Thus, rather than thwarting the plot, Col. Ponce turned out to be its author, and Col. Benavides the organizer! As we have seen, U.S. advisors first admitted, then denied, advance knowledge, and were in the company of the killers immediately before the assassinations. Lt. Espinoza and Maj. Buckland were simply pawns in a deadly game.

But why implicate virtually the entire command structure of the Salvadoran military in order to kill one priest and a handful of associates? The answer is that Ignacio Ellacuría, and certain faculty of the University of Central America were considered serious threats to continued U.S. support for the government of El Salvador, and its campaign to suppress Salvadoran civil society and its growing demands for more just economic conditions, and political freedoms. As Col. Benavides told the former Jesuit student, Lt. Espinoza, in giving the order to assassinate the Jesuits, “This is a situation where it’s them or us; [and] we are going to begin with...the university and Ellacuría...”

"THE MOST EXPLICIT TESTIMONY OF THE CHRISTIAN INSPIRATION OF THE U.C.A. WILL BE...[ITS] SERVICE OF... OPPRESSED PEOPLE..."
The trailhead of the path followed by Ignacio Ellacuría, the Jesuits, and their lay collaborators at the University of Central America can be said to begin with the worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops at Vatican II (1962-1965). Its signature document, Gaudiem et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, sent the leadership of churches on every continent home with the mandate “...of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in light of the Gospel.” (GS 4) Barely three years later, Aug. 26-Sept. 6, 1968, the Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops at Medellín, Colombia took up the Council’s mandate, declaring, “A deafening cry pours from the throats of millions of men and women asking their pastors for a liberation that reaches them from nowhere else.” The final document reflects the bishops’ epoch-shaping discernment that God was calling the Latin American church to embrace what has come to be called in Catholic social teaching, “the preferential option for the poor.”

Building on the use of “integral development” by Pope Paul vI to critique developmentalist strategies that changed little and legitimated an oppressive status quo, Medellín asserts, “If development is the new name for peace, Latin American underdevelopment, with its own characteristics in the different countries, is an unjust situation which promotes tensions that conspire against peace.” This criticism is concretized by Medellín’s use of the word “liberation” to highlight and clarify its claim that fundamental social and structural "change will be essential in order to liberate the authentic process of Latin American development and integration."

Why implicate virtually the entire command structure of the Salvadoran military in order to kill one priest and a handful of associates? The answer is that Ignacio Ellacuría, and certain faculty of the University of Central America were considered serious threats to continued U.S. support for the government of El Salvador, and its campaign to suppress Salvadoran civil society and its growing demands for more just economic conditions, and political freedoms.

Accordingly, the document insists that God’s call to live out a preferential option for the poor implies real economic, political, and cultural change.

A little more than a year later, the Jesuits of Central America gathered at the diocesan seminary during Christmas 1969 for a Province retreat to prayerfully discern how to respond to Medellín’s prophetic interpretation of Vatican II. The team, which included Ellacuría, used the long-neglected tradition of group discernment described in Deliberatio primorum Patrum²² the official account of the 1539 discernment by Ignatius of Loyola and his companions to found the Jesuits. “Following the parameters of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius,” the team sought to achieve prayerful consensus on the fundamental principles for how to renew the Province and its works by constituting it as a single subject united “in communal reflection and prayer.” The retreat concluded by recommending the Province develop an apostolic plan to implement the option for the poor in its internal life, its apostolic works, and Central America as a whole. Juan Hernandez Pico, S.J., suggests that it was officially first here that “the Jesuits committed themselves to ... attend to the cries that were coming from the unjustly impoverished and oppressed majorities of Central America, putting aside disordered affections for established works and lifestyles [in order to promote] ... efficacious action on behalf of the poor.” From this point forward, the Central American Jesuits began to see the UCA as a Catholic university whose Christian character would be defined in part by its preferential option for the poor.

A decade later, in May 1979, following a university-wide consultation, the board of directors published a seminal statement of the UCA’s self understanding as a university. The document begins with a charter statement of the UCA’s self-understanding.

The UCA seeks to be an institutional university response to the historical reality of the country, considered from an ethical perspective as an unjust and irrational reality which should be transformed. This is rooted...in a purpose: that of contributing to social change in the country. It does this in a university manner and...with a Christian inspiration.

We should note that the call of Paul VI and Medellín to “integral liberation” has been concretized in the UCA’s mandate to work in a specifically “university manner” to transform the “historical reality of the country” guided by the “Christian inspiration” of the Jesus of the Gospels and Catholic social teaching. This formulation is closer to the original call of Gaudiem et spes (GS 4) to read the signs of the times in light of the Gospel.

The document says the UCA seeks to be a university working a) “for social change,” b) “in a university manner,” and c) guided by a “Christian inspiration.” This leads to several conclusions. First, the UCA does not exist for itself, or for its members. Its center is not within itself, nor in its students, nor in its professors, nor in its authorities. It exists for the Salvadoran people - for the majority of our people who suffer inhuman conditions. This means the work of the UCA is decidedly oriented by social outreach.

Second, the UCA must always go about its work precisely “as a university,” analyzing the reality and the causes of oppression, and the developing ideas and theoretical models for “more human and humanizing structures.” And third, the UCA’s Christian inspiration should draw attention to secular and religious values consonant with Christian faith. Thus, the most explicit testimony of the Christian inspiration of the UCA will be putting itself really at the service of the people in such a way that in this service it allows itself to be oriented by oppressed people themselves. This will make it see and denounce what there is of sin in our reality; it will impel it to create models which historically correspond better to the Reign of God; and it will make it develop typically Christian attitudes, such as operational hope, the passion for justice, the generous self-giving to others, the rejection of violent means, etc.

In the end, it was precisely their role in implementing this vision of the UCA that led to the deaths of Ellacuría and his companions. Their effectiveness in promoting a negotiated end to the decade-long civil war contributed to the collapse of U.S. Congressional support for the war, which in turn helped bring about a negotiated peace. But how and why did this advocacy contribute to their deaths?

“THE U.S. WAS PREPARED TO MAKE A 'PACT WITH THE DEVIL’ TO ACHIEVE ITS STRATEGIC GOAL...”
By May 1979, El Salvador was sliding inevitably toward civil war. A 1991 Rand Corporation study done for the Pentagon asserts that 1979 concluded a decade during which El Salvador’s sometimes contradictory forces of reform and rebellion had finally reached critical mass. It says the impoverished state of the vast majority of Salvadorans was clearly tied to the fact that “over 70 percent of the land was owned by only one percent of the population, while over 40 percent of the rural population owned no land at all and worked as sharecroppers on absentee owners’ land or as laborers on large estates.” And it asserts the stubborn refusal of successive repressive civilian-military regimes to debate the status quo simply fueled the push for land reform and a change in government, whether through elections, coup, or revolution.

The Cambridge History of Central America describes 1979-80 as the end of a "period of political monopoly by the army, which, in to- tally controlled elections, secured the election of Col. Julio Rivera (1962-67), Gen. Fidel Sánchez (1967-72), Col. Arturo Molina (1972-77), and Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-79)." For its part, the UCA enacted its new mandate through a June 1973 study exposing the Molina government as having fraudulently stolen the 1972 elections from Jose Napoleon Duarte, whose platform included the promise of real agrarian reform. Frustrated by a succession of such events, five nationalistic political-military organizations had emerged by 1979, each calling for the overthrow of the ruling regime. Two of these had roots in the home grown communist party of El Salvador, whose leader Augustín Farabundo Martí led the unsuccessful 1932 peasant revolt against the military government of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, infamous for his genocidal campaign against the indigenous population of El Salvador. Adding fuel to the fire, on July 19, 1979 the Sandinista movement led a rebellion overthrowing the repressive regime of General Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, and installing a government they said would blend socialism, capitalism, and democracy. In the U.S., however, Jimmy Carter and Democrats in Congress were facing upcoming elections, and could not accept a second Central American revolution in El Salvador open to socialist ideas. Accordingly, the overriding concerns of Central America policy under the Cart- er administration became, as stated by New York Democrat Mario Biaggi, “basic human rights,” and preventing “the threat of a Communist takeover in our own backyard.” This position hardened when Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran on Nov. 4, 1979, capturing approximately 70 hostages. Ronald Reagan hammered Carter in the media and the polls, while making an illegal arms-for-hostage deal that formed the basis of the Iran-Contra scandal.

Recognizing the gathering storm, reformist Salvadoran military officers carried out a coup on Oct. 15, 1979, recruiting a number of UCA faculty to the new government, including Román Mayorga Quirós, president of UCA, as its civilian leader. It was a last ditch effort to avoid a bitter civil war over the need for land reform, economic democracy, civil rights, and other long-simmering issues. During its ten short weeks of life, the reformist junta careened from one crisis to the next, unable to achieve civilian control, much less to enact stated objectives of purging the military of human rights abusers and corruption, and addressing land reform. Thus, on Jan. 2, 1980, after being informed that attempts to control human rights abuses by the armed forces would be rejected, Mayorga and Dr. Guillermo Ungo Revelo, leader of the op- position party, resigned from the cabinet with the other civilians during a meeting at the seminary called by Archbishop Oscar Romero. Not surprisingly, the country drifted toward war. On March 24, 1980, while saying mass, Archbishop Romero was shot through the heart by a paid assassin with government links. On Oct. 10, 1980, four of the five political-military organizations formed the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) and prepared for war. A wave of right wing death squad and military assassinations against reformist civilian leaders followed. And on January 10, 1981, the FMLN launched its “final offensive,” almost one year exactly after the Jan. 3, 1980 failure of the reformist coup.

Within days, however, it became clear that the government would not fall anytime soon. The FMLN had no unified plan and little coordination for waging a sustained war, beyond its hope for a Nicaraguan-style overthrow of a repressive regime. In the eyes of some, the failed offensive presented El Salvador and its U.S. ally with a genuine opportunity to embrace a meaningful political negotiation. U.S. Ambassador, Robert White, saw it this way and strongly promoted a “political solution.” But the incoming Reagan administration was determined to internationalize the Salvadoran conflict, using it to symbolically “draw the line” against Communism. White was immediately removed as ambassador by the new administration. And on Feb. 23, 1981, a White Paper entitled, “Communist Interference in El Salvador” was released. It argued, “The insurgency in El Salvador has [become] ... another case of indirect armed aggression against a small Third World country by Communist powers acting through Cuba.”

Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas wrote to vice-President Bush on April 6, 1981, arguing "The administration does not understand the composition and nature of the junta," and asserted that "political dialogue" and "negotiations" are "the only road to peace in our country." Two days after the White Paper, former Ambassador White asked Congress, “How do you supply military assistance to a force that is going to use that military assistance to assassinate, [and] to kill, in a totally uncontrolled way? Do you want to associate the United States with the type of killing that has been going on...in El Salvador?” But the Reagan administration’s unapologetic acceptance of this liability found an ambivalent collaborator in Congress, cementing a pattern that would continue for a decade. Negotiations were out, and the push for victory was on.

Ellacuría and the UCA, however, had a different solution. In March 1981, a month and a half after the failure of the “final offensive,” Ellacuría came out in favor of “A Process of [Political] Mediation for El Salvador.” On April 27, 1981 he wrote to the board that “the social outreach of the UCA should now ground itself in the perspective of [promoting] a political solution and...a process of mediation” for the civil war. He insists this commitment must be carried out in a thoroughly “university manner” through the activities of the president; the editorial, production, and distribution work of the University’s overall communications center, its press and journals; and through community service. He proposed a vigorous agenda of public contacts including open events like “round tables, conferences, congresses, etc.,” ongoing contacts with leading “politicians, economists, religious, military figures, etc.,” and the addition of a university radio station and weekly newspaper designed to provoke the “national collective consciousness” of Salvadoran civil society to reflect on current events.

This commitment to negotiations, however, proved to be dangerous. In 1983 the ARENA party, through what the CIA describes as its clandestine “paramilitary organization,”⁴⁷ made a direct threat on the lives of all who would dare to advocate dialogue: “Dialogue is treason to the fatherland, and so we warn all the parties, political and military forces interested in negotiating the future of the country, that the eyes and the guns of the true patriots of El Salvador are on them.”⁴⁸ Within days a bomb exploded at Ellacuría’s Jesuit residence, and flyers were found claiming responsibility for the group who had issued the warning: the Secret anti-Communist Army (ESA).

For its part, the U.S. vigorously opposed serious negotiations throughout the decade as incompatible with U.S. counterinsurgency goals in the region. In her study of U.S. foreign policy in El Salvador from 1976-1993, however, Cynthia Arnson notes that by late in Reagan’s second term, congressional support⁴⁹ for the government of El Salvador and its brutal war began to wear thin. Also, the geo-political situation was changing. On Aug. 7, 1987 Costa Rican President Oscar Arias led the Central American presidents to a framework for a comprehensive regional peace (for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize). By 1989 the ongoing military stalemate between the FMLN and the military, the emphasis of the Esquipulas agreements on ending guerrilla insurgencies, and the collapse of the Cold War as a linchpin for U.S. foreign policy were rapidly eroding congressional support for U.S. counterinsurgency in El Salvador.
Then, on Jan. 23, 1989, the FMLN surprised everyone with a proposal to postpone upcoming presidential elections for six to eight months (Sept. 15, 1989), to implement a series of guarantees for a free and fair election, and to abide by the results.⁵⁰ The Duarte government rejected the proposal, but the first Bush administration (1978-1982) encouraged a reconsideration. Three weeks later, on Feb. 20-21, 1989, the FMLN met in Mexico with 13 political parties and proposed to renounce the armed struggle and incorporate into the political process. After a brief period of hope, however, negotiations collapsed. The military party, ARENA, was confident of victory in the upcoming elections, which it eventually won with 54 percent of the vote on March 19, 1988. The FMLN, which had been planning an offensive since 1987, began a series of assassinations against government officials, and the far right escalated its ongoing campaign of violence and murder against reformist civilian leaders.

Ellacuría and the UCA remained a powerful voice both in El Salvador and the North in favor of negotiations, which made him a threat to economic and political interests on the far right, and to the military leadership. Why? The Pentagon report explains that right wing land owners remained virulently opposed to land reform.⁵¹ Military leaders were largely corrupt, enjoyed impunity for violations of human rights, and “did not wish to win the war because in so doing it would lose the American aid that has enriched it for the past decade.”

Ellacuría and the UCA, however, remained a powerful voice both in El Salvador and the North in favor of negotiations, which made him a threat to economic and political interests on the far right, and to the military leadership. Why? The Pentagon report explains that right wing land owners remained virulently opposed to land reform. Military leaders were largely corrupt, enjoyed impunity for violations of human rights, and “did not wish to win the war because in so doing it would lose the American aid that has enriched it for the past decade.” The government depended on U.S. aid for survival and shared a commitment to defeat the FMLN, but there was little confidence and often outright opposition among the civilian-military elites to aspects of U.S. counterinsurgency promoting reforms directed at disenfranchised peasants. Thus, on March 3, 1989 the Crusade for Peace and Work denounced the “tiny group of satanic brains led by Ellacuría and a pack of communist hounds” ruining the country. On March 14 a grenade exploded at the University’s emergency electric power plant. On March 18 a paid advertisement denounced the “deceptive Jesuits Ignacio Ellacuría, Segundo Montes, and others, who with their doctrines, are poisoning many young minds.” On April 16 the Armed Forces High Command published an ad charging Segundo Montes with defending the FMLN’s use of land mines, and placing him with “groups and individuals who insist on defending the terrorism of the FMLN-FDR and its front groups.” On April 20, Col. Juan Orlando Zepeda said the UCA is a “refuge for terrorist leaders, from where they plan the strategy of attack against Salvadorans.” And on April 28, three bombs exploded at the UCA printing press.

The threat of negotiations and peace nevertheless continued to build. When the new president, the businessman Alfredo Cristiani, took office on June 1, 1989, he revealed a surprising five-point plan for talks with the FMLN that did not make surrender a precondition. Talks began Sept. 13-15, 1989, in Mexico, and continued Oct. 15-17 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Both sides agreed to a third meeting Nov. 20 and 21, 1989 in Caracas, venezuela. During the next few weeks, however, El Salvador was plunged into a murky sea of assassination and irresponsible rhetoric, and the meeting never took place. On Nov. 11, 1989 the FMLN invaded the capital and threatened to take over the city. The military decided to assassinate civilian leaders, trade unionists, and others they saw as FMLN supporters.⁵⁴ And on Nov. 16, 1989, members of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion assassinated Ellacuría; Ignacio Martin-Baró, S.J.; Segundo Montes, S.J.; Amando López, S.J.; Joaquín López y López, S.J.; Juan Ramón Moreno, S.J.; a friend and community housekeeper, Elba Ramos; and her 15-year-old daughter, Celina.

What, then, does the Pentagon report suggest is to be learned from the U.S. involvement in this disturbing story? It concludes that the Salvadoran government, the right wing land owners and their allies, and the Salvadoran military knew that they “had America trapped,” and understood the U.S. was prepared to make a kind of “pact with the devil” in order to insure that El Salvador not fall to the FMLN. Given the current insistence by former U.S. vice-President Cheney and others on torture as a legitimate weapon in the war against terror, the Pentagon report seems prescient in pointing to the potential threat to basic and enduring American values posed by the practical aspects of U.S. counterinsurgency and anti-terrorist policy. The Pentagon report asserts that making victory for an inept and corrupt ally the cornerstone of U.S. counterinsurgency objectives in El Salvador helped to defeat its efforts to promote development and human rights. The report concludes, “In attempting to reconcile these objectives, we pursued a policy by means unsettling to ourselves, for ends humiliating to the Salvadorans, and at a cost disproportionate to any conventional conception of the national interest.”

For those interested in the future of the Catholic university, it must be said that the commitment of Ignacio Ellacuría and the UCA to the option for the poor led them to confront violent, powerful, and dehumanizing forces with a reasoned and compassionate plea for negotiations and peace. In the end, the sanity and humanity of this approach proved a dangerous threat to ongoing U.S. support for an immoral ally in a brutal and unnecessary civil war. Twenty years after these deaths, we have come to appreciate the risks to individuals and institutions that concretize a commitment to the dignity of every person, especially the marginalized, through effective opposition to the sometime follies of U.S.-financed wars on foreign soil.

Endnotes

1. This article synthesizes elements addressed in much greater detail and depth in a manuscript by the author, who will be the Winter–Spring 2010 Bannan Fellow at SCU (Blood and Ink: Ignacio Ellacuría, Jon Sobrino, and the Jesuit Martyrs of the University of Central America).
2. Martha Doggett, Death Foretold: The Jesuit Murders in El Salvador (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1993), 65. Cited from “Narración de los Hechos” prepared by the Jesuits of Central America, which appeared in Estudios Centroamerica- nos 493-494 (Nov.-Dec. 1989): 1125-1132.
3. United Nations Security Council, “From Madness to Hope: The 12-year war in El Salvador,” Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador (March 15, 1993): 47. This report may be accessed at http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/salvador/ informes/truth.html
4. Sworn statement by Eric Warren Buckland, Jan. 11, 1990, hand-written addendum, Washington, D.C., at 10 (on file at Lawyers Committee for Human Rights). Cited in Doggett, 225
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 226.
7. Ibid., 143-145, 166-168, 221-236.
8. Ibid., 228.
9. U.N. Security Council, 45-54.
10. The Center for Justice and Accountability, “El Salvador: the Jesuits’ Massacre Case.” May be accessed at http://www.cja. org/cases/jesuits.shtml.
11. See the stories of Lucía Barrera de Cerna and Major Buck- land in Doggett, 218-228.
12. Leo O’Donovan, “Martyrs in El Salvador,” Washington Post, 16 November 1999. Cited in “The Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador,” Congressional Record, volume 145, Number 163 (Wednesday, November 17, 1999, Hon. James P. McGovern of Massachusetts in the House of Representatives, Tuesday, November 16, 1999), 30451-42.
13. Doggett, 281.
14. U.N. Security Council, 50.
15. Extrajudicial statements of Lt. José Ricardo Espinoza Guerra and Lt. Yusshy René Mendoza vallecillos. Cited in Doggett, 65.
16. Universidad Centroamericana Simeón José Cañas “Las fun- ciones fundamentales de la universidad y su operativizacion,” in Planteamiento universitario 1989 (San Salvador: U.C.A., Febrero 1989), 53.
17. Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops, “Poverty of the Church,” in The Church in the Present-Day Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council: II (vol. 2) Conclusions, second ed. (Washington, D.C.: Division for Latin America. 1973), 2.
18. Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Dec. 30, 1987, #42 ; also Pope Benedict xvI, Address of His Holiness Bene- dict XVI to the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Fifth General Conference, Brazil,, May 13, 2007, 3.
19. “Document on “Peace,” in Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops, 1
20. Examples include documents on: “Justice,” 3, 4; ““Educa- tion,” 2, 9; “Youth,” 1;, ““Catechesis,” 6; “Lay Movements,” 2, 4, 9, 13; “Poverty of the Church,” 2, 7 in Ibid.
21. “Document on “Justice,” 11 in Ibid.
22. Constitutiones societatis Iesu I, 1-7; in Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesus, Monumenta Ignatiana, Series III. See: Jules J. Toner, S.J., “The Deliberation That Started the Jesuits: A Commentario on the Deliberatio primorum Patrum, Newly Translated with a Historical Introduction,” Studies in the Spirituality of the Jesuits, vol. vI, no. 4 (June 1974).
23. “Documento final de la reunión de San Salvador,” 1, in “Reunión-Ejercicios de la viceprovincia Jesuitica de Cen- troamerica, Diciembre 1969,” Reflexión teologico-espiritual de la Compañia de Jesus en Centroamerica, II (San Salvador: Archives of the Society of Jesus, Central American Province, Survey S.J. de Centroamerica), 183.
24. Pico, Juan Hernandez, S.J., Historia Reciente de la Provincia de Centroamerica (1976-1986) (San Salvador: Ediciones Cardoner, 1991), 8, 9.
25. Universidad Centraoamericana José Simeón Cañas, “Las fun- ciones fundamentales de la universidad y su operativización,” in Planteamiento universitario 1989 (San Salvador: Universi- dad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, 1989): 37-121.
26. Ibid., 47. My emphasis.
27. “Las funciones fundamentales,” 48-49.
28.  Ibid., 49.
29.  Ibid., 50.
30.  Ibid., 53.
31. Benjamin C.Schwarz, American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and El Salvador: The Frustrations of Reform and the Illusions of Nation Building (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation,, National Defense Research Institute, 1991), 82.
32. Ibid., 44.
33. For a study of the motivations of rural peasants and military commanders from both sides of the civil war see Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
34. Edelberto Torres Rivas, “Crisis and Conflict, 1930 to the Present,” in Central America Since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 101. For a study of the next period of Salvadoran elections see Álvaro Artiga-González, Elitismo competitivo: Dos décadas de elecciones en El Salvador (1982-2003) (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2004).
35. Juan Hernández Pico, César Jerez, Ignacio Ellacuría, Emilio Baltodano, and Román Mayorga, El Salvador: Año Político, 1971-72, (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1973).
36. Congressional Record, March 25, 1980, 6623. Cited in Cynthia J. Arnson, Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America, 1976-1993, second ed. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 40-41. For a more complete study of this concept see William M. Leo- Grande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- lina Press, 1998), 149-282.
37. Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 112-13. For a study of the FMLN and the war see Hugh By- rne, El Salvador’s Civil War: A Study of Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishing, 1996).
38. Testimony of Hon. Robert E. White, U.S. Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Inter- American Affairs, U.S. Policy Toward El Salvador, March 11, 1981 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), 133. Cited in Teresa Whitfield, Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 146.
39. These words were used by Reagan’s first Secretary of State Alexander Haig in briefings for Congress and the National Security Council. See William LeoGrande, “A Splendid Little War: Drawing the Line in El Salvador,” International Security 6, no. 1 (Summer 1981): 27, and Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schus- ter, 1991), 344.
40. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, “Communist Interference in El Salvador,” Special Report No. 80 (Febru- ary 23, 1981). Cited in Arnson, 56.
41. Letter of Apostolic Administrator of San Salvador Arturo Rivera Damas to vice-President George Bush, April 6, 1981. Cited in Montgomery, 1995, 147.
42. Testimony of Robert White, U.S. Congress, House, Com- mittee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Opera- tions, Foreign Assistance and Related Programs Appropriations for 1982, Hearings, Part 1, 97th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981) 3, 17. Cited in Arnson, 58-59.
43. “Ignacio Ellacuría, “Un proceso de mediacion para El Sal- vador,” Estudios Centroamericanos 36, Nos. 387-388 (Marzo 1981) 3-16. Reprinted in Ignacio Ellacuría, Veinte años de historia en El Salvador (1969-1989), vol. 2 (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1991), 937-949.
44. Ignacio Ellacuria,S.J., “La Proyeccion Social de la UCA Hoy.” Appendix to Minutes of the Board of Directors of the University of Central America, (San Salvador: Archives of the University of Central America, Jose Simeon Canas, April 27, 1981) 3.
45. Ibid., 5.
46. Ibid., 1-3.
47. “Communicado del Ejercito Secreto Anticommunista (ESA),” Estudios Centroamericanos 418 (September 1983), 834. CIA/State Department, “Briefing Pope on Right-Wing Terrorism in El Salvador,” October 27, 1993. U.S. document declassified November 1993, Washington, D.C. Cited in Whitfield, 292.
48. “Communicado del ESA, atribuyéndose las acciones terroris- tas del 6 de septiembre de 1983,” Estudios Centroamericanos 419 (October 1983), 903. Cited in Whitfield, 292.
49. Arnson, 226.
50. Montgomery, 213-14.
51. Schwarz, 46-50.
52. Ibid., 21.
53. The attacks cited in the paragraph are from the Jesuit Law- yers Committee chronology of “Attacks on El Salvador’s Jesuits.” Summarized in Doggett, 308.
54. U.N. Security Council, 50.
55. Schwarz, 82.
56. Former vice-President Dick Cheney, “Keeping America Safe,” (Remarks made at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research), May 21, 2009. May be accessed at http://www.aei.org/speech/100050.
57. Schwarz, 84.