LAWG celebrates—and I personally celebrate—that yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.Res. 761, introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern and 33 co-sponsors. This resolution remembers and commemorates the lives and work of the six Jesuit priests and two women who were murdered in El Salvador nearly twenty years ago, on November 16, 1989.
At the time of the murder, I had just spent two years living in El Salvador, coordinating delegations of North Americans to El Salvador to learn about the reality of life in El Salvador during the civil war and the impact of U.S. tax dollars on the lives of Salvadorans. I had regularly brought delegations to meet with the Jesuits, now murdered. My husband was still in El Salvador and spent the days after the Jesuits' murders helping to keep safe other Salvadoran church people who were also the target of the Salvadoran military and the paramilitary death squads. He assisted in getting them out of the country, under UN protection; and, after attending the funeral for the murdered Jesuits, he eventually had to leave himself.
The Jesuit case was a catalyst for shifting opinions in the U.S. Congress, and helped to spark the peace process that brought the long and vicious civil war to an end. LAWG joins in commemorating this important historical event.
The resolution urges the United States today to collaborate with El Salvador's new government on the unfinished tasks to which the Jesuits were committed—the "efforts to reduce poverty and hunger and to promote educational opportunity, human rights, the rule of law and social equity for the people of El Salvador." We join in this call.
To see the resolution click here.
