for November 16
Anniversary of Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador
and their Companions

During the night of November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests and two women were murdered by the Salvadoran army on the campus of the Central American University in San Salvador.

If you’ve ever seen news photos of the scene of the deaths of Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martin-Baró, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Joaquin López y López, Amando López, Elba Ramos and Celina Ramos it is hard not to look away quickly. Yet we must remember them, even if doing so requires facing some difficult truths.

The eight were killed by the Salvadoran army. That army, along with the government it served, was trained and funded by the US government, not for the protection of the Salvadoran people but to serve US interests. So our remembering these deaths must include our sorrow and repentance for what was done—is still being done—in our names and with our tax dollars. The human costs of US policy toward El Salvador in the 1980s reverberate in the lives of people denied asylum today at the US southern border. We should not turn away from opportunities to repair the damage done to the people of El Salvador that remain before us today.

The deaths of the Salvadoran Jesuits and their companions were audacious and brutal, but that should not distract us from why they died. Statues and stories of martyred saints often dramatize the tortures they endured: Sebastian, pierced by arrows. Bartholomew flayed. Lucy, with her eyeballs on a platter. Sometimes we’re told, ‘don’t be such a martyr about it,” which means to quit whining and get on with what we’re supposed to do. But neither silent endurance nor torture are what martyrdom is really about. We need to remember not how these eight people died; but how they chose to live.

In November 1989, the Jesuit superior in San Salvador is said to have refused international assistance in seeking to identify and punish who killed his companions. “They lived as Salvadorans,” he said, “and they died as Salvadorans. Their deaths will remain unpunished, along with the 70,000 other civilian deaths.” 

Too many of those deaths were unnoticed outside El Salvador, but among the 70,000 killed were Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980 and US missionaries Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford and Dorothy Kazel in December 1980. When we remember those deaths too, it is hard not question whose interests were being served by allowing the war in El Salvador to drag on for so long.

The six Jesuits killed November 16, 1989 chose to live on the side of the poor of El Salvador. Like Archbishop Romero and the four women killed in 1980, they spoke up for those who were ignored and worked for reform and a just peace. Elba and Celina Ramos, who chose to remain with Jesuits on that November night, believed it was safer for them there than at home. To live among people who suffered, to choose to be on the side of the suffering, even to choose to keep company with people who made that choice, was a dangerous in El Salvador in the 1980s.

The deaths of Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martin-Baró, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Joaquin López y López, Amando López, Elba Ramos and Celina Ramos remind us that what matters most—what was for them, a matter of life and death, which is to say, a matter of eternal life—is the company we chose to keep. Whose side are we on? If we choose the side of the poor, the powerless, or even just the company of those who come to their assistance, we may become dangerous too. As was Jesus, in the eyes of the powerful of his day.

We remember Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martin-Baró, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Joaquin López y López, Amando López, Elba Ramos and Celina Ramos on the anniversary of their deaths because that was the moment that made their lives a completed statement. But let us not focus on their final suffering. Let us remember instead how they lived and let us honor their memory by choosing to be on the same side that they did, each day that we have the opportunity to do so.
—BJ Brown