The Aftermath of Falling Walls

Convivium, 21 November 2019

Bloodshed rarely ends the instant freedom rings out. When the Berlin Wall fell, tyrants still murdered the innocent.

Thirty years after the breaching of the Berlin Wall, there has been much attention to the victory of freedom in the Cold War. The Cold War would not formally end for another two years, when the evil empire itself, the Soviet Union, would be erased from the map and thrown onto the ash heap of history.

The Cold War is rightfully remembered as a time of resolve in the face of evil, the triumph of the peoples who were under the paw of the Russian bear but were not crushed. The role of the West, led by the NATO alliance, was also critical, first containing communism and then defeating it. 

Yet the Cold War – like all wars – was corrupting, too. In the fight against Soviet communism exported around the world, it became easy for tyrants of different kinds to enlist the support of the West in the name of fighting communism. Such was the case in El Salvador. 

While November 1989 for the world means the Berlin Wall, in El Salvador it means the martyrdom of six Jesuit priests, and a turning point in its civil war. Remembering them is a reminder that in war, even wars fought for noble causes, the innocent always die.

From 1980 to 1992, El Salvador was engulfed in a ruthless civil war. The anti-communist military government was backed by the United States. The guerrilla rebels – the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) – wanted to replicate in El Salvador the communist triumphs in Cuba and Nicaragua. 

Government forces engaged in a wide array of human rights violations; most notorious were the death squads with carried-out assassinations not only of FMLN guerillas, but also those who were critical of government policies. Most notable among the latter is St. Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who was shot at the altar while celebrating the Holy Mass.

A government death squad shot its way on Nov. 16, 1989, into the residence of Jesuit priests on the campus of the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador. They made the six priests lie on the ground and shot them in the back of the head. The residence’s housekeeper and her teenage daughter were also murdered. The brutality and brazenness of the nighttime assassinations shocked the world.

The six priests murdered were Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno and Joaquín María López y López. The housekeeper was Julia Elba Ramos. Her 16-year-old daughter was Celina Mariceth Ramos.

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