Remembering María Julia: Defender of Human Rights in El Salvador

“Our struggle to exercise these rights here in El Salvador continues, we will keep searching for this truth and justice in El Salvador's courts. I don't know when, but one day truth and justice will flourish in our country for the victims who abandoned this utopia with their blood.”
  - Dr. María Julia Hernández

Dr. María Julia Hernandez, long-time director of Tutela Legal, The Salvadoran Archdiocese's human rights office, and defender of the victims of horrific human rights violations, died March 30^th four years ago. 


SHARE worked with María Julia, Tutela Legal, and the Archdiocese on many human rights initiatives over the years, including human rights campaigns during the war, coordination with the movement of refugees repopulating communities in the late 1980s, and working on the initial design for a memorial wall dedicated to the civilian victims of the war. SHARE brought María Julia on tour in the U.S. to promote and fundraise for the construction of the memorial wall. Says SHARE Executive Director José Artiga, “María Julia is one of our most prominent women leaders in El Salvador. She worked closely with all the Archbishops, and was a defender of human rights who promoted denouncements, justice, and reparations.”

In honor of María Julia Hernández, Wednesday March 30^th 2011 members of Tutela Legal organized a mass and forum in the Crypt of the National Cathedral, where María Julia, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and a number of other priests and religious persons are buried. María Julia is one of the only women buried in the Crypt. A group of forty people gathered to commemorate her life, including members of COMADRES, the Committee of the Mothers of the Disappeared, and many others who knew her. In the spirit of María Julia, during the opening prayer, one of the priests proclaimed, “We are gathered here for the dignity of all, no matter their social class.”

Decorating María Julia's tomb
with flowers

Following the mass, Luis Morales and Dr. Aceda Díaz shared reflections about María Julia's personality, work, and legacy. María Julia first became involved in working for human rights after meeting Archbishop Romero in 1977 at a gathering of student groups. Archbishop Romero called on the students to aid the victims of disappearance and genocide, and María Julia decided to accompany him in this work. She took on a preferential option for the victims, committing the rest of her life to defending human rights.

In 1983, María Julia took leadership of the newly formed Tutela Legal. She and her team worked tirelessly and systematically to investigate, record, and denounce massacres, murders, disappearances, and other human rights violations, and to protect victims. While these atrocities stopped happening systematically with the end of the war, they remained covered by silence, impunity, and the amnesty law. María Julia continued to work for the truth to be known and acknowledged. Together with Tiberio Arnoldo Romero, brother of Archbishop Oscar Romero, she brought the case of Archbishop Romero's assassination to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. She also played an instrumental role in coordinating the exhumations of the El Mozote Massacre, bringing irrefutable evidence to light. She helped facilitate the planning and construction of the Monument to Truth and Memory as well, a memorial wall with the names of nearly 30,000 civilian victims killed or disappeared during the war.

Violence and Impunity in El Salvador

The LA Times published an excellent article today about gang violence in El Salvador. As violence along the border in Mexico increases, El Salvador continues to have one of the highest murder rates in the world; in fact, the article cites that the country's murder rate is five times that of Mexico. Half of the murders in El Salvador are committed by youth, and the National Civil Police state that 70% of the victims are youth between the ages of 15 and 39.Some of the violence can be attributed to gang violence. LA Times journalist Tracy Wilkinson interviews a Spanish priest, Father Antonio Rodríguez, who runs a violence-prevention program in a parish in the impoverished Mejicanos neighborhood in San Salvador. Father Rodríguez asserted that "gangs used to protect the neighborhoods, their turf, and attacked only outsiders." However, with current President Antonio Saca's ineffective and draconian Iron Fist policies toward youth involved with criminal activity and the rise of the number of gang members in prison, gangs now "strike anywhere...because they need to support their incarcerated associates and families."

The article points out hundreds of murders each year are committed by members of the police force, private security guards, and assassins hired to carry out "social cleansing." Meanwhile, impunity reigns as few murder cases are rarely solved. El Salvador has a long history of providing impunity for the worst human rights offenders: war criminals during the country's bloody Civil War are protected by a blanket Amnesty Law. Given the prevailing sense of impunity coupled with dire poverty, is there any wonder that the death tolls keep climbing?

To read the article, click here.

*Photo by José Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images though the LA Times.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator

SOAW lobbies Sánchez Cerén to withdraw ES from the School of the Americas

School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) activists visted El Salvador this week to ask President-elect Mauricio Funes' new government to withdraw military officers from the School of the Americas/WHINSEC, reports IPS. Lisa Sullivan, Latin America Coordinator for SOAW, expressed hope that when Mauricio Funes takes office on June 1, there is a possibility that his government will stop sending troops to the School of the Americas.
There are currently 37 Salvadoran military officers studying at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA, but El Salvador has a long, ugly history with the military academy. The IPS article included frightening links between the School of the Americas/WHINSEC and the gristly murders during the Salvadoran Civil War:

• 19 of the 26 Salvadoran soldiers and officers involved in the murders of the Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper's teenage daughter at the University of Central Americain 1989 were SOA alumni.
• Three of the five Salvadoran troops who raped and killed three U.S. nuns and a Catholic layworker in 1980 were SOA alumni.
• Two of the three Salvadoran troops implicated in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 were SOA alumni.
• 48 of the 69 Salvadoran military officers "cited by the U.N. Truth Commission for human rights violations had been trained at the SOA."

Other famous Salvadoran alumni of the SOA include Domingo Monterrosa (pictured at right), commander of the Atlcatl Battallion that murdered over a thousand women, men, and children in the infamous El Mozote Massacre, and Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of the ARENA party and suspected founder of many of the paramilitary death squads in El Salvador.

Mary Anne Peronne, another SOAW activist, stated that when the SOAW representatives met with Vice President-elect Salvador Sánchez Ceréen, "he admitted that he was unfamiliar with WHINSEC, but that he would take the information provided by the activists very seriously."

To learn more about the SOA, visit the School of the America's Watch website.

*Photo of SOAW Vigil from madison.org.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator

ARENA names Cristiani as head of party

ARENA named formed president Alfredo Cristiani as the head of the party late last week. Cristiani, whose family is part of the 14 families who make up the oligarchy, was elected President of El Salvador in 1989, marking the beginning of ARENA's twenty-year rule over the country. His presidency was marred by scandal and corruption. In 1989, the Salvadoran army shot and murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper's teenage daughter at their residence in the Central American University. Recently, the Center for Justice and Accountability filed a criminal case in Spain against Cristiani and fourteen members and former members of the Salvadoran military for their involvement in crimes against humanity and state terrorism. In January of this year, a Spanish judge formally charged Cristiani and the members of the military for their roles in the murders of the Jesuits and the women.

The naming of Cristiani to ARENA's party leadership came just ten days after current President Tony Saca announced that a former president of El Salvador would not take over party leadership. However, many party members blame Saca for ARENA's loss in the recent presidential election to the FMLN and for "using the party for his own particular interests." In a veiled criticism of Saca, Cristiani emphasized the importance of "returning to the party's roots."

*Photo: Cristiani speaks as Rodrigo Ávila and Tony Saca listen behind him. Photo from El Faro.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator

Past is Present in El Salvador

"Perhaps, like fear, stress, and salt, a national sense of guilt would, in moderation, be healthy."

Jon Santiago from the Huffington Post recently visited El Mozote, a small town in the Morazan department of El Salvador, where he learned about the infamous massacre of nearly 1,000 people by the Salvadoran military in 1981. After describing in brutal detail the events that transpired, the writer criticized the US government's involvement with the Salvadoran civil war. He points out that both El Salvador and the United States have new, left-leaning governments and asks, "Hopes are high right now, why not drive them even higher? Why not internalize, and fully recognize, all of our past mistakes rather than bury them amidst generalizations that serve only to excuse?"

The writer noted that the story of El Mozote should not be forgotten and should be passed down to future generations to avoid such horrendous mistakes. He ruminates, "Perhaps, like fear, stress, and salt, a national sense of guilt would, in moderation, be healthy."

To read the full article in the Huffington Post, click here.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator

Spanish judge will hear the UCA murders case

A Spanish judge has agreed to investigate 14 Salvadoran military officers, and possibly former Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani, for the murders of six Jesuit priests and two women at the Central American University (UCA) in 1989. The ruling was in response to the Center for Justice and Accountability's (CJA) lawsuit against Cristiani and the former military officers filed in November 2008.

Although far from an indictment, for many, the judge's decision already feels like a victory for the cause of justice in El Salvador. In 1992, El Salvador's government passed an amnesty law that provides amnesty to all perpetrators of war crimes during the country 12-year Civil War. Spain is able to prosecute the perpetrators of the Jesuit case under a legal principle called "universal jurisdiction," through which Spain has pursued other high profile cases, including an attempt to extradite Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for torture.

The Hartford Courant reports that Benjamin Cuellar, director of the Human Rights Institute in San Salvador, said his group "doesn't oppose the prosecution but believes justice can be achieved only in Salvadoran courts." However, it does not seem that the amnesty law will be lifted in El Salvador anytime soon. With the presidential election quickly approaching, neither of the two candidates have agreed to lift the law. Mauricio Funes, the FMLN presidential candidate, has stated, "We cannot change the past of hate, of confrontation. The future, we can build differently." Almudena Bernabeu, an attorney for CJA, cites the impunity of war criminals as sources of El Salvador's current "crime-ridden status." She asserts, "When a society develops the idea that they will never be punished no matter what they do, it perverts the society."

To read the Hartford Courant's article, click here.

To learn more about the Jesuit murders case, click here.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator

Reopening of Jesuit Priests Murder Case - Interview with Diane Orentlicher and Douglas Farah

Click on the link below to listen to this radio show on WAMU in Washington D.C. The interview discusses the infamous and tragic murders of the six Jesuits priests and two women in November 1989, and it discusses the reopening of this case and the outlook for the process. The guests are Diane Orentlicher, Professor of International Law and Director of War Crimes Research Office, American University, and Douglas Farah, former Washington Post Correspondent in El Salvador from 1987-1990.

Click here for the link to the radio show.

- Lars Joon Flydal, Grassroots Education and Advocacy Intern

Salvadoran Archbishop: "El Salvador's Problems Should Be Resolved in El Salvador."

The Salvadoran Archbishop, Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, spoke out against the recent criminal complaint against former Salvadoran president, Alfredo Cristiani, and 14 other former military members for the murder of the six Jesuit priests and two female employees in El Salvador in 1989. The Archbishop responded to the news by commenting, "El Salvador's problems should be resolved in El Salvador." However, many argue that the case cannot be resolved in El Salvador because of the amnesty laws that protect war criminals from the Salvadoran civil war.

Click here to read the article in the National Catholic Reporter.
Look for the quote from SHARE's executive director, José Artiga!

- Posted by Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator, SHARE Foundation

Justice for the Slain Jesuits in El Salvador?

Spanish human rights lawyers have filed a complaint against former Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani and 14 former members of the Salvadoran military for their involvement in the deaths of the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper's daughter almost twenty years ago and the resulting cover-up by the Salvadoran government. Alfredo Cristiani was president when the priests and the two women were murdered on the Central American University campus in November 1989. The priests were symbolically shot in the head for being a part of a group of intellectuals who openly criticized the Salvadoran government during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). Despite the investigations of and the international outcry over the murders, Alfredo Cristiani and those involved with the case have remained free due to the amnesty laws in El Salvador for those involved in war crimes during the Civil War. However, most of the priests who were murdered were Spanish, so the Spanish High Court may decide to charge them with crimes against the humanity and seek their extradition.

Click here to read an article from the NY Times.
Click here to read an article from CNN.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator