Hundreds of Salvadorans have demanded this Saturday to know the truth about the murder of six Jesuit priests -five of them Spanish- and two women perpetrated by the military in 1989.
«The truth is the right of the people to know who committed these atrocious crimes (of the priests and women) and why they committed them so that they do not happen again,» said the rector of the Jesuit Central American University (UCA), the priest Andreu Oliva, according to the Salvadoran newspaper ‘El Mundo’.
Those present carried candles and flowers, as well as banners with the faces of the murdered priests. The march went through the streets of the UCA campus in the southwest of San Salvador and in the main street of the campus UCA students made colorful carpets with images of the martyrs. One large carpet bears the slogan of the 33rd anniversary of the crime: «Because the struggle is just, hope does not faint».
The Roque Dalton University Front (FURD) demanded in a communiqué «to bring to light all the atrocities committed by the army in the military dictatorships and what the neoliberal right wing has continued until today».
«The murdered priests were good people who fought for the poor, that is why we remember them and ask for justice,» said Domitila Cruz, 67, who arrived in the capital from the rural community of Bajo Lempa, some 85 km southeast of San Salvador.
UCA CAMPUS MASSACRE The massacre took place in November in the early morning hours of 16 1989 on the campus of the UCA in San Salvador, the country’s capital. Among the victims was the ideologue of Liberation Theology, the Spaniard Ignacio Ellacuría, then rector of the UCA.
Also killed were Spaniards Ignacio Martín Baró (vice rector), Segundo Montes, Amando López and Juan Ramón Moreno, as well as Salvadorans Joaquín López, Elba Ramos and her daughter Celina. All of them were killed in the middle of a guerrilla offensive on San Salvador by soldiers of the Atlacatl battalion of the Salvadoran Army.
In September 1991, a court tried nine members of the military who were listed as the perpetrators without taking into account the masterminds, according to humanitarian organizations. Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides was found guilty of all the murders and Lieutenant Yusshy René Mendoza was held responsible for the death of the minor Celina.
Both officers regained their freedom under a 1993 amnesty law, but Benavides was jailed again to complete his 30-year sentence after the amnesty was declared time-barred in 2016.
The case was reopened on January 5 of this year to try the alleged masterminds: former military officers Juan Orlando Zepeda, Francisco Elena Fuentes and Rafael Humberto Larios.
The case has also been prosecuted in Spain and in September 2020 the National Court sentenced Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano Morales to 133 years in prison.
The civil war ended on January 16, 1992 with the signing of peace agreements between the government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front guerrillas. The conflict left more than 75,000 dead, 7,000 disappeared and millions of dollars in economic losses.
