Last Wednesday I tried calling Father Ignacio Martin Baro, as I usually did when I was in El Salvador. Talking with him was always a welcome respite from the government and rebel spin doctors with their self-serving versions of events. “He’s at home,” said a voice on the other end of the line. “You’ll have to see him tomorrow.” I did see Martin on Thursday. He was lying on the lawn behind his residence, clad in a familiar dark blue T shirt that seemed to be one of only three he owned. Most of his gentle, bearded face had been torn away by an M-16 bullet. Next to him was Father Segundo Montes, director of the University of Central America’s human rights project, and a few feet away sprawled the school’s rector, Father Ignacio Ellacuria. The priests’ cook, Elba Julia Ramos, lay nearby, her brown dress curled around her waist. Inside the house were more bodies: Fathers Amado Lopez and Juan Ramon Moreno, both Spaniards; Father Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, a Salvadoran; and the cook’s 15-year-old daughter. By midday the bodies were still lying beneath the sun, and the potent stench of lifeless flesh, which I associate so closely with El Salvador, was already fouling their once peaceful place of refuge. For 25 years the Jesuits had taught El Salvador’s young and struggled to bring peace to the country. Ellacuria’s fierce hawklike face fairly shouted his fury at those responsible for the war’s 70,000 dead, right wing and left. He had managed to anger both. Martin cared about the simple people; he would spend his weekends offering Mass and teaching first aid in the impoverished countryside. I found him a reliable source of information, especially because he oversaw the country’s least biased public-opinion polls. A few years ago, a colleague asked Martin if there was any hope for El Salvador. “The only hope,” he said, “is in the people who have been able to survive.” Sadly, Martin did not.
