Sale!

Death Foretold: The Jesuit Murders in El Salvador

Amazon.com Price:  $24.22 (as of 02/05/2019 01:20 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

The case of the six Jesuits and two women murdered at Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador on November 16, 1989, has come to signify, by extension, a class-action suit on behalf of the 70,000 people tortured and executed over the course of a decade by the Salvadoran Armed Forces, with the complicity of the government. The identification of all those accountable for the Jesuit murders―the intellectual authors in addition to the triggermen―would provide a first step toward purging and reforming a system that has made a majority of these crimes conceivable. This report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which served as legal counsel to the Jesuits since December 1989, documents the story of the Jesuit murders in the most comprehensive history and analysis thus far.

Martha Doggett establishes the background leading up to the murders―the preceding years of human rights abuses and of political distortions promulgated about the Jesuits. She then sifts through the evidence of the crime, scrutinizes the subsequent efforts at cover-up, analyzes the process of the trial itself, and identifies the high-level officials considered in the end accountable for ordering and concealing the truth about the murders. She concludes that a number ofcivilians in addition to military paraticlipated and that the decision used to be made some time before the night of the particular murders. Drawing on primary and journalistic sources, investigative reports, U.S. and Salvadoran government documents, and interviews conducted by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and other organizations, Doggett traces the military’s repeated obstruction of justice and the ambivalent responses by U.S. officials courting political expediency. She observes the effects of international protests (including the report by U.S. Congressman Joe Moakley) and outlines the limitations inherent in El Salvador’s legal system.

Bringing the chronicle up to the present, this volume includes the first published English-language translation of the portion of the Truth Commission report dealing with the Jesuits’ case, an analysis of the Truth Commission’s conclusions, and reactions to the amnesty and release from prison of all persons convicted for the crime. Appendixes include chronologies of the case and of attacks on El Salvador’s Jesuits; lists of the names of the entire persons figuring in the case and profiles of the defendants; the report of the Lawyers Committee’s trial observer; and a list of previous publications on the case by the Lawyers Committee and UCA, in addition to reports of trial observers from other organizations.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » Central America » El Salvador » Death Foretold: The Jesuit Murders in El Salvador

Recent Products