six of many...

Heavy day. Full of really necessary learning, but not easy to swallow. We visited a college university here in San Salvador where, near the end of the war, six priests were assassinated by the military.

During the war here in El Salvador there were three main entities: the military, fighting to maintain the system of the time (supported by the US), the guerrillas, fighting for change, for a balancing out of the status quo (often seen as 'communists'), and the civilians. The priests fell into the civilian category - but they were Christians. They were theologians, professors at the university; they were question askers. Through their support and development of liberation theology they presented a Christ that favors the poor, that calls for an end to suffering.

And this was enough for them to be lumped in with the guerrillas, to be considered a threat to the state. Enough for the El Salvadoran military, backed by ours, to consider brutally killing them justified.

That weekend in Nov, 1989 marked the first military action in the capital and included a US supported military "campus check" (which would later be determined as having been used to plan the killings). Two days after the check, the military returned in the night, drug the priests out of their home, shot them, broke open their skulls and spread their brains on the front lawn (the lawn, now a rose garden, shown in pic). Brain matter on the lawn - a strong symbol sent to the people that the military would do anything necessary to kill the ideas, kill any thinkers considered revolutionary.

To know that it happened is saddening, and angering. And looking through the pictures of the tortured bodies was sickeningly heartbreaking...but to know that our government was part of it - that they encouraged the killing of priests who were speaking out about human rights...that seems even harder to swallow.

Much to think about.