This week in religion history: El Salvador death squad rapes and kills U.S. nuns

[Judi Lynn]

This week in religion history: El Salvador death squad rapes and kills U.S. nuns
Canadian Press | Dec 2, 2012 1:00 PM ET



1980: Three American Catholic nuns along with a lay missionary were beaten, raped and shot to death by an El Salvador government death squad early in the country’s more-than-decade-long civil war. The four men convicted of the crime later said that they were following orders from higher up, and a 1993 UN report concluded that there was a cover-up over the incident by top military and political officials in country’s U.S.-backed, right-wing regime. Also in 1993, a U.S. State Department report said, “This particular act of barbarism did more to inflame the debate over El Salvador in the United States than any other single incident.”

http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/12/02/this-week-in-religion-history-el-salvador-death-squad-rapes-and-kills-u-s-nuns/

[life long demo]

1. I remember that

It was terrible as was everything else going on in El Salvador

[BlueMTexpat]

2. What was even more terrible was the reaction of the Raygun Admin!

I will never forget how outrageous that was. Ever.

And so it was that the Reagan folks tried to blame the four slain churchwomen for their own deaths. Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Alexander M. Haig, Reagan’s Secretary of State, shamefully attempted to sully the reputations of the four martyrs while the Reagan administration made little effort to see justice served. Ambassador White sent a secret cable to Secretary Haig expressing his dismay. “It is amazing to me that the [State] Department can state publicly that the investigation of the nuns’ deaths is proceeding satisfactorily,” he wrote, “This is not backed up by any reporting from this embassy. I reiterate for the record that in my judgment there is no sign of any sincere attempt to locate and punish those responsible for this atrocity.”

Said Congressman Robert G. Torricelli (D-NJ): “It is now clear that while the Reagan administration was certifying human rights progress in El Salvador, they knew the terrible truth that the Salvadoran military was engaged in a widespread campaign of terror and torture.”

http://morallowground.com/2010/12/02/on-this-day-1980-american-nuns-kidnapped-raped-murdered-by-american-trained-salvadoran-death-squad/

[polly7]

4. Dear God, I'd never heard before they tried to place the blame on the nuns

themselves. How absolutely shameful.

"Maura Clarke wrote: "My fear of death is being challenged constantly as children, lovely young girls, old people are being shot and some cut up with machetes and bodies being thrown on the road and people prohibited from burying them." She continued: "One cries out: Lord how long? And then, too, what creeps into my mind is the little fear, or big, that when it touches me very personally, will I be faithful?"

After the women’s deaths, the recently appointed American ambassador, Robert White, was on hand for the exhumation of their bodies from their temporary grave. He became a bitter critic of Washington policy in the region and was fired by the Reagan administration in 1981 shortly after it took office. White believed that rebellion was understandable after decades of injustice and that outside factors, such as interference from Havana and Moscow, were overemphasized by those backing the Salvadoran government

The killings of the four women became a point of contention between supporters and opponents of U.S. government policy. At hearings in 1981, Alexander Haig, Reagan’s secretary of state, referred to the women being killed in an "exchange of fire," a statement their families regarded as a smear.

Before she was appointed Reagan’s UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick was quoted as saying: "I don’t think the government was responsible. The nuns were not just nuns, the nuns were political activists."


20 years later, families recall devotion of slain nuns http://irishecho.com/?p=50730

[BlueMTexpat]

5. I remember it all too well and

never - ever - forgave Jean Kirkpatrick for that gratuitously awful thing to say.

If you have never seen the film "Salvador," please do. It very much gives the flavor of the era, has cameos of the nuns and the assassination of Archbishop Romero among other things. James Woods is not one of my favorite actors for many reasons, but he does an outstanding job in this film, IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_(film)

There were so many horrific events that took place during the Reagan Administration (with that Administration's blessing) that when Bush II came back in 2000 with so many of the Reagan appointees and their ilk, I could not bear the idea of reliving anything like that again. Unfortunately, we all were forced to and we're still paying for it, just as we continue to pay for the Reagan era policies.

Had Romney been elected this year, it would literally have been the worst of the worst.

[hrmjustin]

3. May they rest in peace.