La Verdad: A Witness to the Salvadoran Martyrs by Lucía Cerna and Mary Jo Ignoffo (review)

This testimonial book engages a reader’s mind and emotions. It foregrounds the brutal assassination of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the Salvadoran military before dawn on November 16th, 1989, a well-documented episode of the civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992). It focuses on the Salvadoran government’s cover-up and the FBI’s actions to silence a witness—the cleaning employee Lucía Cerna—who saw the priests’ attackers and was sure they were military men in uniform, and not guerrillas as the government claimed. Some of the priests, scholars at the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, were critical of the government and the US-supported armed forces, calling for a negotiated solution with the rebels of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FLMN). The philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría, president of the UCA, understood the university’s mission as intimately connected with knowing the national reality in order to transform it. He was the main target of the army raid.

The co-authored text allows readers to hear Cerna’s voice telling la verdad, the truth about her life and role as a witness. California historian Mary Jo Ignoffo’s short essays on Salvadoran history and the role of US political intervention provide ample and solid context. Cerna’s recollections of her deprivation as a child are the first powerful testimony of endurance. She survives because of her success in school, even when she must go to work as a servant at age 14. Employed at the UCA to clean the Jesuits’ offices, the respect she receives empowers her and gives her a sense of obligation as a witness to the dreadful crime. On November 15, 1989, Cerna, her husband Jorge, and their young daughter spent the night in a house facing the priests’ residence on the grounds of the university, having fled their neighborhood because of a major guerrilla offensive. Awakened by the military activity, she observed uniformed soldiers in the moonlight and heard Father Martín-Baró cry out. Her husband stopped her from rushing to the scene, and the family spent hours crouching in silence, realizing they would be killed if their presence became evident. At daylight Lucía identified each of the bodies scattered in the yard and immediately went to inform Father José María Tojeira, provincial of the Society of Jesus in Central America.

This was the truth that placed Lucía, Jorge, and their child in danger. Tojeira arranged for diplomats to take them out of the country, but once in Miami the family found itself under the control of the FBI, taken to a hotel, and interrogated for six days, sometimes in sessions of 12 hours. At first, their captors brought fast food to their room most of the time, but later Lucía and Jorge were kept hungry. A Salvadoran “doctor” arrived to continue the interrogation, threatening the couple with atrocious actions and insulting them. The “doctor” turned out to be Lt. Col. Manuel Antonio Rivas, who knew who had directed the priests’ execution.

After six days of intense pressure, Lucía and Jorge recanted their testimony, hoping to be sent back to their country. They were released and received help from some prominent members of the Jesuit order to relocate to Alabama and then to California, where they still live. In 1993 an amnesty law annulled the sentences for all war crimes in El Salvador. Thinking of her ordeal, Lucía exclaimed: “After Miami I knew they didn’t want truth” (p. 101).

Ignoffo identifies the inherent contradictions of the US military and other government positions during the crime investigations in El Salvador...