7369 COHA Report, The Truth Commission and the Jesuit Massacre, El Salvador

The outbreak of the Salvadoran Civil War in 1980 initiated twelve years of violent conflict within Central America’s most densely populated nation.  For years, President Ronald Reagan employed a traditional Cold War platform to reinforce conservative governments, insisting that the leftist insurgency organization, the Frente Faribundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), posed a dangerous threat to global democracy. The Jesuit massacre in 1989 forced the international community to recognize the horrendous scores of crimes against humanity that transpired throughout the Salvadoran Civil War.  In 1991, the Salvadoran courts finally convicted twenty members of the military of war crimes; but this relatively small step towards justice rang hollow when all twenty soldiers were released only two years later under the terms of an international amnesty law.  Spanish Judge Eloy Velasco recently reopened the case under the universal jurisdiction law, expressing his personal objection regarding the failure to bring the militants and associated death squads to justice.  While the resurrection of the case may represent a small triumph for civic rectitude and the eight victims of the Jesuit Massacre, it is quite possible that the culprits would once again escape conviction, as few precedents are in place regarding universal jurisdiction law.