The report of the U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission "will contribute to an important, decisive, and irreversible change" in the political climate of El Salvador, according to Father Dean Brackley, a Jesuit priest at the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador.
"The fact that the founder of Arena [Roberto D'Aubuisson of the ruling National Republican Alliance party] killed Archbishop Oscar Romero is news to a substantial percentage of Salvadorans," Brackley told Sojourners in a telephone interview. "News like that will permanently change this country because it is part of a peace process with the hopes to eliminate state terror in the countryside, so that people can think freely, speak freely, organize freely, and vote freely."
Brackley, who went to El Salvador after the murder of the six Jesuits at UCA to carry on their work, said it was "unfortunate" that the report did not name the two U.S. officials who were strongly linked by the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights with the operation to kill the Jesuits.
The head of the Jesuit mission in San Salvador, Jose Maria Tojeira, expressed concern that "important names" of civilians implicated in the Jesuit assassinations did not appear in the report, according to the El Rescate Human Rights Department. And in a radio interview, Tojeira said, "Those who have been involved in so many crimes must pay a price. We favor a reconciliation law, which would offer generous pardons to those who confess their crimes. But those who do not should be judicially investigated and defeated in court."
Brackley said it was a "limitation" of the report that "it lays out the structures of the death squads but does not name names. Many feel that high officials of Arena were the sponsors of death squads." San Salvador's Bishop Rosa Chavez said the report outlined some of the "darkest history ever told."
Salvadoran society has run on lies, Brackley said. "Now the truth is the most powerful weapon in El Salvador. It is not even necessary to send people to jail -- but what is important is that the rest of the truth comes out, especially about the death squads."
Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.
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