While I was at home, I watched the movie "Roses in December" with my mom. The movie tells the story of Jean Donovan, a Catholic lay missioner who was murdered along with three nuns by the Salvadoran army on December 2, 1980. I had seen the movie before when I was a student at the Casa but that was almost four years ago. The movie was made just a few years after the women were murdered so it is very dated but it was really good to watch it with my mom because it does a good job of putting the story into the context of the war. We watched it on December 1st which was the day before the anniversary of their death. I found a reflection written by a Sister on a delegation to El Salvador with the SHARE foundation and I want to share a part of it
"It was 23 years ago today that four churchwomen were found in a shallow grave in a farmer’s field, some raped, all dead-- each with a single bullet to their head.
The description of such violence was not at all uncommon in 1980 in El Salvador- a countryside desecrated by civil war, a people not at all defeated by the horrors they lived daily. A resurrection people, fed by the blood of the martyrs and the bread of daily struggle for a better life created the peace filled scene I witnessed today--a lovely pasture populated with a smart brick chapel, a beautiful white stone monument complete with a memorial plaque and a tree that is planted in the center of an area outlined with small white rocks. A lovely space- now filled with local folks and their living memory of war and peace accords; Latin American religious sisters revisiting the core of their passion, commitment and witness; and people from the North – standing in solidarity.
Aiding and abetting the enemy, the ‘subversive acts’ of the nuns and one lay missioner were caring for victims of war and war- orphaned children. Addressing the social, political and economic disparity between the rich and the poor, teaching methods of self-empowerment, and community development were direct threats to the power structure of the ruling class. In those times threats were eliminated. "
As I read the reflection and as I watched the movie, I found myself tearing up at the images of the women´s bodies being pulled out of ditches, of people getting shot at while attending Archbishop Romero´s funeral mass, and of the children in the refugee camps. Sometimes I forget the horrorific history of this country during the civil war. This makes sense as I work with young people who were mostly born at the end of or after the war. But that does not mean that they are unaffected. A culture, a country, takes years and years to recover from such trauma.
As with the Jesuit vigil, I am reminded as to why I, a north american women, am in El Salvador. Jean Donovan gave up a very comfortable life in the states to work with refugees in El Salvador. I remember how inspired I was by this the first time that I heard of her. A woman who was inspired to walk alongside people who were being persecuted and ignored by the rest of the world. Granted, my life in El Salvador is very different than that of those lay missioners who came in the eighties. While still violent, El Salvador is not at war, and I don´t fear for my life much more than I did living in St. Louis (which is a little but not too much). But it is still good to remember who inspired me to be here, and that is all women and men from all over who gave up something comfortable and easy to fight for something that they believed was right. I will close with a quote from Ita Ford, one of the four women who was killed:
"I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for - maybe even worth dying for, something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead."
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