The decade of the 1980s that began in El Salvador with the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, ended on November 16, 1989, with the slaughter of the Jesuit community of the Central American University in San Salvador. These Jesuits, in particular their rector, Ignacio Ellacuría, were hated by the oligarchy and the military for naming and denouncing the “idols” of wealth and national security that underlay a brutal war against the poor.  

The deaths of such prominent figures attracted international attention. But for friends of the Jesuits, it was notable that they were joined in death by two ordinary Salvadoran women—so typical of the tens of thousands of anonymous victims of violence and oppression. As army assassins roused the sleeping priests, forced them into the garden, and then sprayed them with machine guns, they were surprised to discover the two women: Elba Ramos and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Celina. They shot them as well.  

Elba and her husband had met while working on a plantation in Santa Tecla. When she later found work as a cook for the Jesuits at the university, her husband was hired as a night watchman. Though they lived in a small house at the university entrance, they had surmised, in light of a guerrilla uprising in the city, that it would be safer that night to sleep at the Jesuit residence. It was a fatal mistake.  

Elba’s husband later planted roses in the garden where his wife and daughter had died.  

“Rest in peace Elba and Celina, beloved daughters of God. May their peace give hope to us who are still alive and their memory not let us rest in peace.” 

—Jon Sobrino, SJ