21st anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador

On November 16th, 1989, six Jesuits at the University of Central America (UCA), their housekeeper, and her daughter, were brutally murdered by the right-wing army of El Salvador. These Jesuits had gained attention (notoriety?) for speaking out against the repressive regime of the Salvadoran government, and were killed in order to silence them. Of course, their story inspired countless more people to fight for justice, and their story still continues to move people today. This event has special meaning for our house because our house is named after one of the Jesuits who was killed, Ignacio Ellacuría. Also, Erin spent a semester in El Salvador in college, and I spent three weeks there as well. If you're interested in learning more about the story, here are a couple resources.


Here's a reflection John Dear wrote last year for the 20th anniversary. My house read this out loud on the 21st anniversary on Tuesday.


The following video explores the Jesuits and what we can learn from their lives. Erin knows the main speaker from her time in El Salvador.

Ft. Huachuca Protest

Last Sunday my housemates and I protested at Ft. Huachuca, a military base about an hour outside of Tucson. The purpose of the protest was to call attention to the fort's role in writing manuals on how to torture people that were used at the School of the Americas in Georgia to train, most notoriously, military personnel from Latin America. The protest also called for an end to torture everywhere. About 100 people were protesting with us, and there were two smaller groups of counter-demonstrators: a group of motorcyclists that would ride by with American flags and another group with signs and American flags.

Our side of the protest

The entrance to the fort was barricaded with orange and white barricades

Counter-demonstrators on motorcycles

My feelings on the act of protesting are mixed. Generally speaking, I feel that it is good to speak up for what one believes in, but that protesting usually, usually, doesn't bring about significant changes. Since this was my first real protest, it was interesting to see. My attention was attracted to the counter-demonstrators, who waved lots of American flags and "Support our Troops" signs and said things to us, like, "The military is the reason you can protest!" I kept thinking to myself that maybe we should have brought some of those signs and American flags ourselves. After all, I think men and women in the US military are doing a very brave thing, and I am proud of many things about the US. Maybe our protest against torture was misunderstood by our counter-demonstrators as a sweeping denunciation of every person in the US military, I don't know. In any case, it was a strange contrast: we holding signs saying "end torture" and others holding the American flag. Why are these things on opposite sides?

Garden

Our booful garden.

Today my housemates and I finally broke ground on a garden in our backyard. We don't really have a front yard, so maybe it's our front yard, too. I don't know. Anyway, there is now about a six by three foot section of fertile soil that's maybe six inches deep. And we worked hard to get it! The only way we could dig the dirt was to use a pickaxe. (Okay, so maybe a really sharp shovel would have worked, but really, I'm convinced the pickaxe was the most effective method.) After breaking up enough of the cement-like soil, we added in some soil and manure and voila! We have soil ready for planting. We put in five flowers (not sure what kind) and I'll get some seeds from the food bank next week.