Honoring the UCA Martyrs: The Costliness of Jesuit Education
By Marcus Mescher, Assistant Professor of Theology, Xavier University
Standing in the rose garden at the UCA — the Jesuit University of Central America in El Salvador — last weekend, I was hit by the costliness of Jesuit education. On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, Elba, and her teenage daughter, Celina, were dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and murdered. This barbaric event followed fifteen years of death threats issued against the Jesuit community plus countless letters, phone calls and radio announcements calling for the expulsion or killing of the Jesuits. More than a dozen times, soldiers placed bombs around the UCA campus — in the library, printing press and computer center — to discourage and destabilize the Jesuits’ approach to education.
The Jesuits were prophetic in denouncing the threats, kidnapping, torture and violence that affected countless communities in El Salvador. They lamented the death of 75,000 Salvadorans who were killed in the 1970s and 1980s. They wrote, taught and preached about the inherent dignity and rights of all, and demonstrated a preferential commitment to the poor and excluded. They called to end the twelve-year-long civil war through dialogue and peace-building.
Because they resisted the oppressive policies of the government, the Jesuits were regarded as subversive, disloyal and dangerous. The Jesuits refused to be silenced and paid the price with their lives. Last week, more than 30 faculty, staff and students from several Jesuit colleges and universities traveled to the UCA to honor them.
I have been to El Salvador before, but representing Xavier University last week was an especially powerful experience. We did more than commemorate the lives and deaths of Joaquin Lòpez y Lòpez (age 70), Ignacio Ellacuría (age 59), Segundo Montes (age 56), Juan Ramón Moreno (age 56), Amando Lòpez (age 53), Ignacio Martín-Baró (age 47), Elba (age 42) and Celina (age 15) Ramos (the women who stayed the night in the Jesuit residence because they thought it was safer than venturing home; they were killed following a military directive to “leave no witnesses”). We reflected and prayed with photographs of their bloodied bodies, wincing at the brain matter strewn over the grass, an intentional act to signal the risks of speaking out like these scholars, teachers and pastors. We gathered in silence in the rose garden, appreciating the beautiful blooms, proof that new life and the hope of resurrection triumph over violence and death. I am in awe of what the Jesuits sacrificed in love for the people they taught and served.
The line we kept hearing is that there will never be justice without paying a price. Not justice as vengeance or retribution, but justice as right-relationships and restoration. Healing wounds in and around us takes courage and compassion. Rev. Greg Boyle, S.J. (founder of Homeboy Industries) reminds us, “If we don’t welcome our own wounds, we will be tempted to despise the wounded.”
Even though I was thousands of miles away from home, I spent a lot of time thinking about the wounds that my students and colleagues carry. How can I create the conditions for vulnerability and tenderness so that people are not tempted to run from their wounds?
It was a gift to have this week in El Salvador as a retreat from the busyness and stress of the academic routine, especially as we near the end of the semester. Class preparation, grading and meetings can fill our consciousness, squeezing out bandwidth for concern for the people we encounter on a daily basis. “Stay awake and stay hungry,” we were told. It’s our job to become more aware of reality so that we can take responsibility for transforming it.
Rev. Jon Sobrino, S.J. — the lone survivor of the slaughter of the Jesuit community at the UCA — has reflected that his Jesuit brothers were killed because they challenged the idols of wealth and power and told “ the truth about the situation [of the ordinary Salvadorans, the poor and oppressed], analyzing its causes, and proposing better solutions.”
Sobrino adds, “This is essential work for a university and central to our faith. If I have learned anything during these years in El Salvador, it is that the world in which we live is simultaneously a world of death and a world of lies … These Jesuits wanted to free the truth from the slavery imposed on it by oppressors, cast light on lies, bring justice in the midst of oppression, hope in the midst of discouragement, love in the midst of indifference, repression and hatred. That is why they were killed.”
As a professor at a Jesuit university, I’ve been thinking about how I can better honor the legacy of the UCA martyrs. What are the idols in my cultural context that need to be unmasked and destroyed? What lies keep members of my campus community from defending the dignity and freedom of all? What are the main obstacles to faith, hope and love? In what ways do I focus more on academic rigor or prestige than conversion to the primary objectives of Jesuit education: humanization, reconciliation, and liberation. The Jesuit value of Magis is not about doing or having more, but creating a world that more closely reflects God’s hope for the fullness of life for all, aspiring toward a truly global common good. As the late Rev. Dean Brackley, S.J. proposed, the measure of our success lies in who our students become, evidenced by their “downward mobility” in showing up to the marginalized and excluded, taking responsibility for healing a broken and sinful world.
Today, many people think that college is a commodity, reducing it to preparation for a profession, or focusing on the “return on investment” in the cost of tuition. But the costliness of Jesuit education requires much more. Our core Jesuit values rooted in reflection and discernment, care for the whole person, being women and men for and with others, and living a faith that does justice are much more than charisms that distinguish us from other institutions. They mark a way of proceeding that seeks to be ever more attentive and responsive to God’s presence and power in and around us, so that we can be partners in building a more inclusive and equitable society. The Jesuits provide a vision of partnership so that unilateral doing for is replaced with mutuality and accompaniment, a journeying together. Together, we create the path leading us forward.
The theme for this year’s 30th anniversary commemoration of the UCA martyrs was llenan de luz la historia: “they fill history with light.” So, too, we are called to be a light for others in our time and place. And to reveal the light within others, meant to be shared with all.
This week, when I came back to campus in Cincinnati, I reflected on my experience in El Salvador with my students. I recounted the sobering statistics I learned about rampant deforestation and pollution, domestic violence and sexual assault, extortion and murder. I also talked about the gratitude and generosity of those we met, the cariño (affection) and courage they witness.
I was especially impressed by the UCA students, whose vision for the future and diligent work ethic fills me with hope. On Saturday, the anniversary of the attack on the Jesuit residence, the UCA campus was filled with music, food and fun. We played soccer with Salvadorans in a tournament hosted by the University for the community. We watched as UCA students created beautiful alhombras (colorful salt rugs shown in the three images above) to remember the Jesuits and their companions, to honor the lives lost to fear, hatred and violence, and to shine a light on current social problems like violence against women and children and family members who have disappeared because of gangs or dangerous migration routes.
The culture of student engagement and empowerment evident at the UCA sparks a holy envy in me for what I hope for my own students. It is the reason, I explained, why my students do not sit for a final exam or complete a term paper for their final assignment. Instead, they are tasked with an advocacy project on any topic of their choosing so that they can apply what they’ve learned in the course (in theology and ethics) to make a difference on our campus.
Through this project, my students have to strategize how to overcome ignorance, indifference and inaction. They have to contend with complacency with an unjust status quo. They have to move people from awareness to action. They have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to push past the “I do me, you do you” mentality that shirks personal accountability and social-environmental responsibility. They have to do more than work for justice but, as Jon Sobrino asserted last week, they have to luchar (struggle, fight) for justice. It won’t come without a cost. While I was away from campus, students submitted proposals for these projects, describing their plans to concentrate on issues like mental illness and suicide ideation, intimate partner violence and human trafficking, poverty and environmental sustainability. They won’t solve these problems by the end of the semester, but they will shoulder some responsibility for creating a path that leads us toward hope and healing. Our students fill our campus with light.
In his remarks recounting who his Jesuit brothers were and why they were killed, Sobrino told us last week that they were “the critical conscience in a society of sin.” Sin might be easier to detect in a civil war, but our responsibility to be a conscience and a soul in a social context marked by so much division, distrust and despair is not any less urgent.
Sobrino’s final line in his presentation to those gathered at the UCA called each of the martyrs by name: Joaquin, Ignacio, Segundo, Amando, Ignacio, Elba and Celina. “May they rest in peace,” Sobrino said, before adding: “And may they not let us rest in peace.”
I know that I will do my best to stay awake and stay hungry. I will work hard not to be distracted or discouraged. This is the gift and task of Jesuit education. This is what it means to embrace the costliness of love, a love that excludes no one: a love that fills the past, present, and future with light.
