El Salvador Delegation
5-8-14

AGENDA:
12:30 PM-Welcome
12:35 PM-Group Reflect:What is an issue you are currently engaged in in your local community?
1:00 PM-Francisco Mena:Context of El Salvador from Peace Accord up to present day
1:15 PM-Bob Lasalle-Klein:Setting up the overview of Blood & Ink - Intro + Chapter 1
1:35 PM-Q&A
1:45 PM–End

Next Meeting: June 24th at 4pm ET and July 17th at 3:30 pm ET

Group Reflection – What is an issue you are currently engaged in in your local community?

  1. Jamie Schombs – Loyola School – Just recently had a hunger banquet in NYC and homelessness and hunger have been things folks are passionate about in NYC
  2. Matt Cuff – Jesuit Conference – Criminal justice reform; recently got back from a trip in LA to visit Homeboy Industries and Jesuit Restorative Justice project
  3. Bob Lasalle-Klein – Holy Names University – 26 years ago founded a Catholic Worker focused with Central American refugees and immigration; hoping to do a book on immigration next year – on the board for CRISPAZ, and looking into partnering with KBI to do future delegations from border all the way down to El Salvador
  4. Luke Hansen – America Magazine – Issues of mass incarceration; when he was a JV, he was working with this issue and it has stayed with him through the years; writes about Guantanamo Bay for America magazine; also interested in issues surrounding the role and treatment of women, LGBTQ in the Church
  5. Maura Toomb – St. Peter’s Prep – Recently held a summit on urban violence at the school—looking at root causes, healing, etc.
  6. Jeff Peak – Creighton University – just and humane immigration reform

Francisco Mena – Peace Accord up until today –

  • The peace accord was something that was celebrated and a lot of Salvadorans were looking forward to; they brought the war to an end, but they did not necessarily bring peace
  • The accord was signed, and soon after, the legislature passed the amnesty law; this law has prevented true progress from happening in El Salvador; in the 90s, people paid little attention to the law (the fact that there hadn’t been much thought about reconciliation, that the people who had engaged in the massacres weren’t receiving psychological assistance to re-enter society); now, all of these issues are greatly impacting El Salvador
  • More people have left after the war than during the war – tied to problems not being dealt with responsibly
  • Crime is a big problem in a lot of areas of Salvador; unfortunately, people living in poverty are the ones paying the major price for this
  • In order to have peace and progress, we need to have justice. This has not been done.
  • No one has served significant time for the crimes that have occurred.
  • Migration has greatly increased
  • El Salvador is the third largest population in terms of people who are disappeared
  • 6 out of 10 women who leave from the Central American region are raped on their way to the US
  • Having said that, there are some positives:
  • Freedom of speech—can speak out without worry of being persecuted
  • Importance of looking at migration as the complete journey, not just as a US border issue
  • Obviously, things have changed, and there is a new government
  • Impunity still exists
  • Lack of proper procedures to transition from the war El Salvador went through to peace
  • Strong lack of wanting to reconcile or even give a chance to people who commit crimes
  • El Salvador is still very young in its democracy – all a tie-in to the lack of justice in El Salvador
  • Question from group – Has mental illness stemmed from the long war of violence?
  • Not really, people just transitioned from using weapons in war to using weapons in everyday life; you don’t see a lot of PTSD in El Salvador, violence has just been a way of doing business as usual
  • The difference between violence and dangerous – they are not the same; Salvadorans are very friendly and want to get to know you. Resolution of conflict through violence, however, is a normal part of life.

Bob Lasalle-Klein

  • Jon Sobrino – When I first came to them, I thought the goal was to make them Europeans, but with time, they revealed who Christ is to me…
  • Why were the Jesuit Martyrs killed? What military objective could that possible serve?
  • The Jesuit martyrs, their housekeeper and her daughter were assassinated on the order of the highest level of the Salvadoran military; possibly the President signed off; the US military may have had advanced knowledge of this
  • Why?
  • “Dialogue is treason!”
  • When the war started, there were 14 families who owned most of the country; by the end of the war, the military had greater power and money
  • Much of the money flowed from the US military into the Salvadoran military’s hands; they didn’t want the war to end
  • US was shocked by the ability of the FMLN offensive to launch themselves into downtown
  • That night, Lt. Espinoza ordered to kill Ellacuria and the other Jesuits; Espinoza was a graduate of a Jesuit high school, he would have to kill his former teacher, Segundo Montes
  • Espinoza was troubled by this; he decided to cover his face with grease to cover who he was; in tears by the command to kill the Jesuits
  • The UCA created a dilemma – it was a Centrist institution that had the children of all of the elite attending there – telling people that peace was the way out of this, and a peace with justice at that, was dangerous to the military
  • “The most explicit testimony of the Christian inspiration of the UCA will be its service of the oppressed people” – statement from one of the key UCA documents; in the official documents on the university
  • This would be done through looking at what was going on
  • What was going on?
  • “The US was prepared to make a ‘pact with the devil’ to achieve its strategic goal.” – 1991 Pentagon study
  • Question from group – What suggests that US may have had advanced knowledge of the assassinations?
  • The battalion that carried out the assassinations were with US military just prior
  • Major Eric Buckland testified that he participated in a meeting a week prior to the assassinations with his counterpart in El Salvador with the plans for the Ellacuria assassination
  • Under pressure, Buckland recanted, but he did come out with the fact that he knew who did it
  • Church context
  • The call of Vatican 2 ended with Gaudium et Spes; they were all tasked to “read the signs of the times in light of the Gospel”
  • John XXIII called to “open the windows of the Church” to the modern world
  • Gaudium et Spes gives us an idea of what that engagement with the world might look like:
  • Human dignity: the Church and those believing in the Gospel must be committed to promoting human dignity
  • Common good: The common good trumps the individual good
  • Rightful autonomy of human affairs from the Church: separate Church and State, the Church is not the government, but it pushes the government
  • Salvation and the promotion of justice: All Jesuit and collaborators called to the “service of faith and the promotion of justice”
  • Post-Vatican 2, the Latin American Bishops take up the challenge to “read the signs of the times”
  • “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.”
  • Why are they reaching out to their pastors for this? Because the government and business elite are listening
  • How should they respond to this? Discernment – God has made a preferential option for the poor
  • In the context of oppression, that becomes a context of liberation
  • Gustavo Gutierrez:
  • Socio-political liberation
  • Human liberation
  • Salvation or liberation from sin for communion with God
  • Spirituality is at the core of Gustavo’s work
  • Spirituality of liberation finds its way into the UCA
  • It calls for (from Jon Sobrino, SJ):
  • 1. Honest confrontation with the reality of the crucified people
  • 2. Fidelity to taking the crucified people down from the cross (being able to stand up to people speaking about against step 1)
  • 3. Entering into a transformative relationship with the crucified people
  • From Denial to Honesty about Development (Religious Liberation)
  • New form of colonialism – Cold War – Truman Document
  • The 2 sides of the Truman Doctrine are containment and development
  • The US uses development (often through USAID) to promote political goals
  • In 1960s, there is a huge effort to through off military rule; to throw off local military rulers, who are often supported by the US
  • The US at the time was pairing with local military leaders and military run repressive governments that were willing to cooperate with US foreign policy
  • People began to sour on the idea of “development” as a neo-colonial strategy; this is where the term liberation starts to emerge. Taking a step forward from a little better GDP with business as usual to actual participation in government.
  • Church gets onboard with this
  • How does UCA get onboard?
  • 1965 – UCA states goal is “socio-economic development” and by 1969, this changes to “integral liberation and confrontation with the reality of the crucified people”
  • 1969 Jesuit Retreat
  • What are you doing for justice? The point is not to be a star for the world, the point is to open your heart. Because if you do, God will take you places you can’t imagine. This is where they are with the Jesuit Retreat
  • Come up with a final document stating, We are called as the Central American Jesuits to:
  • “Redemption and liberation” of Central America
  • “Community, mutual respect, simplicity”
  • Willingness to put self and Jesuit institutions at service of poor
  • Facing up to the reality
  • The Central American Jesuits have been very generous but realistic about this. They want the truth told, but they do not want vengeance. They have made it very clear that the amnesty law was a mistake.
  • The Church and the Jesuits in El Salvador are 2 very different things; the archbishop of El Salvador has put up road blocks to prevent justice from taking place. For example, he ordered the closing of the Tutela Legal, the human rights branch of the Church there, which had major documentation on the war.
  • The UCA is a different UCA today as well. The martyrs of the UCA were incredible; the way they do things now is different; the context is different.