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Proceso 1174
December 14 2005
ISSN 0259-9864
Editorial: Father Jon de Cortina (1934-2005)
In memoriam: The father of the Communities
In memoriam: Jon Cortina
In memoriam: Jon Cortina
In memoriam: Jon Cortina
In memoriam: Jon Cortina
Document: Pro-Busqueda Association
Father Jon de Cortina (1934-2005)
Father Jon de Cortina died in the
city of Guatemala, on December 12th. Eventually, it will be possible to analyze
this case and the impact caused by these sad news. But first, it is necessary to
have a serene disposition to speak about this man of faith, this professor, this
unconditional defender of the human rights of both the less fortunate and the
most vulnerable sectors of El Salvador. Right now, with the heart rather than
with the mind, we can say that this man gave the best to those who needed him,
without selfishness and without expecting anything in return. He worked for the
poorest sectors of El Salvador.
If anything has to be said about Jon de Cortina, is that he was a good man, that
is, a good man that worked for a society dominated by hunger, exclusion, and
violence. The goodness that he brought was not an abstract goodness, it was not
a pose, it was a committed goodness that grew from the inside. It was a goodness
of confrontation, a belligerent attitude against those –the military men, the
politicians, the oligarchs- that refused to find a fair and a democratic
coexistence. Someone has to be brave to face the powerful ones, to live in the
areas of conflict in Chalatenango during the civil war, and to defend the cause
of the children that disappeared in that context. Jon de Cortina was brave
enough to do all that and more. Neither the threats, nor the bullets kept him
away. He was tired, but he kept going. Following the line of Monsignor Oscar
Arnulfo Romero, he defended without fear those who were helpless.
Goodness and bravery made Jon de Cortina a man of solidarity with those that
were excluded, he worked for their fundamental human rights. It was that
profound solidarity what led him to weave the threads of his life with the lives
of communities in the North-East area of Chalatenango, specifically with the
community of Guarjila, and once the civil war was over he started fighting for
those children who disappeared in those years of terror. In this sense, Jon de
Cortina was a pioneer in the construction of a true sense of reconciliation
during the post-war period, that is, a reconciliation based in the truth, in
order to ease the pain of those people whose rights had been violated during the
lost decade of the eighties.
He made it possible to live a life within the essence of the Christian values.
His commitment was fed by a profound Christian inspiration –in the best values
of the Jesuit tradition- in which he found his spiritual strength in order to
face the different challenges that the national reality brought along. He was a
man with an exceptional talent, he knew how to be at the height of the
historical circumstances of the country without losing perspective about the
needs of the most vulnerable social groups. Even before the war, his life was
linked to the reality of the Salvadoran rural inhabitants. First in Aguilares,
later, in Jayaque, he was dedicated to his work in the UCA. If in his role as a
professor he was an outstanding man because of his academic efficiency in the
area of engineering, in his field work he was outstanding because of his
dedication in his activities with the rural communities in Chalatenango, where
the inhabitants considered him one of them.
The life of Jon de Cortina was an intense life, without a doubt. Intense because
of his capacity to give himself away to these communities, and intense because
of how committed he was in his work. He was a very active man. With his 71 years
of age, he kept giving the best of him in his work with the Pro-Busqueda
organization as well as in his weekly trips to Guarjila –the place where he
spent most of his time-. He knew that there were many things to do connected
with aspects such as reconciliation, justice, and solidarity. He knew that the
key factor here was to keep working in order to build a different society,
different that the one of the post-war period. On November 24th of this year he
was affected by a cerebral hemorrhage when he was still fighting for a fairer
society. His agony was also a battle, a battle to live perhaps to give more of
his energy and his work to those in need.
When he died, he left an empty space in the UCA and in El Salvador. The rural
communities of Chalatenango will miss his advice, his reflections, his words of
wisdom. They will have to live from now on without his presence. They have,
however, the legacy of his memory, the legacy of his words and his commitment,
his unconditional commitment. Their challenge is to keep that legacy alive, to
turn his memory, into an every-day experience. In the UCA, nothing will ever be
the same without Jon de Cortina. His energy as a man of knowledge, as a
dedicated professor, as a researcher, as an ethical individual are just a memory
now, as well as his passion for justice. The community of this university has to
work with this memory, with his legacy in order to keep fighting for the rights
of the less fortunate. Obviously this is not just any legacy. It is a valuable
legacy that has to be followed, that has to be a productive feature.
Jon de Cortina was something good that happened to this country and its people.
To know him and to work with him made better human beings out of those who had
the privilege to be around him.
No one can thank him enough for what he did for El Salvador. However, the best
way to thank him, the best way to honor him is to keep working for his cause in
the defense of the rights of the victims of the war, especially those rights of
the children that disappeared during that civil war. Other commitments would
have to be added to this one: to build a society that can truly found
forgiveness within itself and with the past. This was one of the dreams in both
the heart and the mind of Jon de Cortina. To honor his memory is to work and
make this dream come true.
The father of the Communities
Jon de Cortina fought against death. Many years ago he
decided to dedicate his life to others. He ran many risks and he lived in
danger, he lived in a time when people with a purpose were hunted down, when
bombs were actually placed in the UCA and throughout the roads that lead to
Chalatenango, Arcatao, San José de Las Flores, Guarjila, and Los Ranchos. Today,
on December 12th, he died at the age of 71. when I told father Jose Ellacuria
that Jon had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, he said “that is the end of all the
people that fight for justice”. This is the most profound truth about Jon’s
death.
Very rarely I have seen so many tears, so heart felt, like I have today here in
the UCA among the people that worked with him, and especially among those who
worked with him in the communities. One hour after I found out about his death,
they asked me to speak about Jon in the YSUCA.
Spontaneously, and without giving a lot thought to this, I called him “the
father of the communities”. The people of the rural areas, men and women, cry
now for him as one cries the death of a father.
Jon went to Aguilares in 1977 after Rutilio Grande was murdered, when very few
priests were willing to take his position. Since then, Rutilio Grande called him
“Father Tilo”, as the people of the area did –and he rebuilt twice the three
crosses that were placed where he was killed along with a child and an elderly
person, three crosses that were destroyed many times by barbarians with no
feelings-. Back then, in those times of oligarchic repression and security
bodies, Jon had his first meaningful experience with a poor country, a suffering
country whose dignity had been disrespected –and with the sense of hope left by
Rutilio Grande-. That touched him deeply.
The eighties, the years of the war, arrived. Many times we heard him speak about
the horror of the war, about the death of the tortured rural inhabitants, about
their generosity, about their hope for liberation. This liberation never
arrived, but the Peace Accords did, the main ingredients were the Accords and
not the peace, nor the reconciliation, nor the justice.
After some time in Jayaque, when it was possible to return to the conflict area
in Chalatenango, he was in San Jose de Las Flores and in Guarjila, where he
lived and worked for 20 years. There, in 1994, before the pain of the mothers
and families that had lost their relatives during the war, especially their
children, who had been stolen away from them, he decided to work even harder to
find them. Jon was hurt by the pain of the mothers that had lost their children.
He founded Pro-Busqueda, and was able to see how more than 300 children found
their families. He kept telling the following story: “A very old lady –I cannot
remember her name- who was almost blind because of diabetes, said that she did
not want to lose her eye-sight in order to be able to see her son, because she
was sure that she would find him”, and Jon made everything he could to cure her
from her diabetes so that she could see her son. That was what made him happy.
It is not necessary to explain his pain. The last words I remember that Jon said
were “they have to ask these people to forgive them”. He pronounced these
astonishing words with an absolutely serious expression.
Jon learned a lot through his work for the children that disappeared in the
country. He kept repeating that “after such a long war in El Salvador, with so
much blood left behind, a genuine sense of peace has not arrived yet. Impunity
is still here, and part of our job is to end with it”. And he demanded that this
territory had to reach acceptable standards to be called a “country”, to speak
about “economic progress”, or “democracy”, because, otherwise, these words were
just a farce, and insulting lie. “The victims have the right to be compensated,
morally speaking as well as technically speaking. A compensation in the
technical sense of the word will be a difficult thing to get, but at least
someone has to ask for the people’s forgiveness”.
Pro-Busqueda is today a symbol of a prophetic denunciation. It was able to get
the approval of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the OAS against
the Salvadoran State in the case of the Serrano Cruz sisters. This is a sign of
denunciation against the impunity and the corruption of the judicial
institutions. But most of all, it is a sign of reconciliation.
The obituaries say that Jon de Cortina was a defender of the human rights. But
he was more than that. Not because of his profession, but because of his
vocation; not because of ethics, but because of love, he defended the people
because he loved them.
This is the Salvadoran Jon Cortina. In a meeting that we had with the Jesuit
priests of Central America, about 20 years ago, father Ignacio Ellacuria was
chosen to talk about El Salvador. And he began his speech with these words “To
speak about the Salvadoran population, father Cortina would have to be here, not
I”.
Jon was also a prestigious professor at the UCA for 30 years, he was a promoter
of the seismological studies and the safe structures. For the Jesuits, he was a
very dear friend, with a unique sense of humor, an ingenious man.
If I were to say what are my personal thoughts about him, I would say that we
went to the same school, we went to the same novice school in Orduña and in
Santa Tecla; we studied engineering and philosophy ay the University of Saint
Luis, and theology in Frankfurt. In the same year, 1974, we came back to El
Salvador, to work at the UCA, and we shared many things within the community for
many years. Jon was such a dear friend. It was easy for Jon to get into our
hearts. That is what many people say now. That is why they cry his death, and
that is why there are many dear memories of him. That is why he has not died at
all. His departure left an empty space, but his memory gives us strength to live
and to work, to share, and to wait.
The document that brought us the news of his death in Guatemala uses just the
right words to describe the situation: “Rest in peace after a tenacious battle”.
We ask the Lord that the memory of Jon allows us not to rest in peace. We have
used his words to say good-bye to him: “The most important thing is to be close
to the people. We will never be able to talk if we are not with them. And once
we are with them, our job has to be to give them hope, to encourage them”.
As a good Salvadoran, as a follower of the Christian faith, and as a Jesuit, Jon
Cortina loved Monsignor Romero”.
Jon Sobrino
December 12th, 2005.
Jon Cortina
When a friend dies, we usually talk about an irreplaceable
loss. And it is right to think so, but that is not quite enough some times. It
is also necessary to say, precisely at the moment when life ends, that such life
has created something that no one can take away from us. And these are the
rewards of a lifetime of sharing, a life of solidarity is always larger than
anything else. And that is exactly what can be said about Jon de Cortina, that
splendid Jesuit priest that for so many years walked hand in hand with the
Salvadoran people, with generosity and hope. His years of service and love for
the Salvadoran population are more important than the loss that we now feel.
Death is, in part, a separation, but it is also, and at the same time, a
definitive consecration of an authentic presence inside our lives and inside our
history. A presence that becomes more intense when we think about the person who
has left us. It is a presence with the power to transform things.
Jon was a generous friend, a comrade that probably never thought about how much
people would love him, and so many people at the same time. It simply happened.
He was against injustice, he was close to the weak, and he put his extraordinary
intelligence and his sensibility at the service of others. As an engineer, he
worked during his doctoral thesis in the construction of complex bridges for the
developed countries. In El Salvador, during the civil war, he rebuilt a bridge
over the Sumpul River, which people were still using, utilizing enormous iron
beams using just pulleys and human strength. Without any machines or any tow
trucks. As our people would say, he did this with sheer intelligence, along with
his will and the muscles of the people that needed that open communication
access. That was a symbol of everything that Jon was: a sensible and an
intelligent man committed to the people, a man encouraged by the strength and
the passion of our people. In Aguilares he replaced Rutilio Grande and the
priests that had disappeared, those that had been deported and rescued by the
international pressure, people that were all a team for the martyr of El Paisnal.
He saw how many good people died, he had to be there for those who were
suffering, he had to risk his own life because of the wolves that chased the
people who asked for justice. The closer he got to the people that suffered, the
more strength that God gave him.
He went to Jayaque, he loved and he shared; and when the doors were opened so
that the church was able to go back to the blood-filled areas of Chalatenango,
he was the first one to go there to love the people of San Jose Las Flores,
Guarjila, in a very special manner. That became his new home and his workshop.
Once again, he gave love to the people, creativity, development, he was close to
them. When talking to the people he felt the pain of the fathers and the mothers
who had lost their children during the war, and that is why Pro-Busqueda was
born, that organization filled with a sense of humanity and love for the
Salvadoran roots.
Everything happened because, among other things, he was faithful to the Company
of Jesus and the UCA. Jon was a splendid Jesuit, who united his generous and his
sincere personality to the creative and the imaginative spirit of San Ignacio of
Loyola. He shared more time with his religious community, in mass, but he also
wanted to share the words of Jesus with the humblest people of our country. He
went to the country during the weekends, but he also wanted to celebrate Mass
with other religious groups. He was a Jesuit full of faith, that lived his life
intensely, he was not afraid of death. He knew, just like Saint Paul, where his
faith was.
The UCA was his active rear guard, his Jesuit destination where he multiplied
himself in many directions. The place where he combined his thoughts with his
actions. A strong location where he enjoyed how the analytical words of the
university were able to go beyond the official silence. The place where the hard
working professionals were educated, those professionals that want to work for
the people. The place of a technical struggle, filled with algorithms, that did
not only defeat the resistance of materials (his students do not forget him),
but that also allowed him to plan and promote structural solutions to the
seismic problems of the country. This was the reason of his hope, where he
worked, where he found his foundations and his towers at the same time with his
strength and his professional stature.
The story of Jon Cortina is a long story filled with cordiality and commitment,
with struggle and hope, with energy and love. A good Jesuit, a good citizen, a
good Salvadoran. All of his profiles were blended, and everything was
permanently boiling in the existence of this friend of many that now has
definitively become part of our lives. He has been purified by what we call
death, something that is nothing but the way to the Kingdom of God. Jon is
forever now part of our lives, a permanent sense of encouragement and his
goodness is now part of that history where evil is defeated, where nothingness
is defeated.
Jose M. Tojeira
Jon Cortina
The political legacy of Jon de Cortina
Reporter You have walked beside the people during the war, you have been a
prisoner, the Atomic Commission of Canada and the NASA have used your research
studies, you are a Jesuit priest, you now have the Salvadoran nationality, who
is Jon Cortina?
Jon Cortina A person that intends to help, to serve. That is why I became a
Jesuit priest. And I like to help and serve the humble people. I am not saying
that I can do this well, but I try. (Jon Cortina in an interview with “El Faro”,
a digital newspaper).
The death of Jon Cortina happened when in El Salvador all of the attention is
focused on the electoral campaign. A journalist of the Co Latino newspaper
indicated that the death of the Jesuit priest, born in Bilbao, happened when the
Legislative Assembly – basically ARENA and the PCN- refused to declare a day in
the memory of the people who disappeared after being arrested during the war.
This coincidence is a very curious event. It indicates that the national
politics are missing something that Jon Cortina had plenty of: a commitment with
the victims.
“We want the truth to be revealed, we want to contribute with the historical
memory of this country. The victims have the right to be compensated as
requested to the Commission of the Truth, and this has not happened, a material
and a moral compensation. The material compensation is not an easy task, but at
least they have to ask for the forgiveness of the victims and restore the
dignity that was stolen away from them”. With those words, Cortina explained
what was his commitment with the moral compensation to the victims of the war.
This was how he became one of the promoters of the Pro-Busqueda organization, an
institution dedicated to work with the children that disappeared during the war.
He also coordinated, very enthusiastically, the project of a group of
organizations to build a monument dedicated to the victims of human rights’
violations along the last three decades of the 20th Century in El Salvador.
Cortina assumed that everything that had to do with the victims was his personal
duty.
He lived in Chalatenango, one of the areas that suffered more devastation during
the war, and where some of the poorest people of El Salvador live. In fact, the
report on human development of the Development Program of the United Nations (PNUD,
in Spanish) indicates that Chalatenango is one of the departments of the country
with the lowest index of human development. Between Guarjila, his classes in the
UCA, and his work in Pro-Busqueda, Cortina organized his schedule. He was close
to the poorest sectors of the country in the area that had more needs. Cortina
used to say that if there was anything good in the Theology of Liberation it had
to be its intention to allow the poor to be heard. This is something that the
Salvadoran politics have forgotten about. Cortina had his own explanation for
this: “What happens is that most people do not like to hear what the poor have
to say”. Most people like to hear the light messages that disguise reality and
that describe a country that only the people with privileges enjoy.
Some people assume that El Salvador is a secular State. However, its politicians
carry God in their mouths. Some of them end their empty speeches asking for
divine blessings for the assistants. Others have been involved in critical
debates about how it should be an obligation to read the Bible in the public
schools. Others have publicly appeared as members of different types of
churches.
But, will that kind of faith be able to see the God that lives within the people
that suffer? When asked about the loss of solidarity, Cortina once responded
that “it is necessary to organize the people and make a commitment with them.
And this is not the time for the Church to do so; the Church is more interested
in celebrating Mass than in the need to walk with the people. They tell them
that they have to receive Communion, but people do not even know what that
means. And if the Church walks along with the people it will only be able to do
300 Communions. This is just like believing that God is in the largest
construction projects: the disease of the stone. The bishops want to build
churches right away, when the most important thing is the people. They do not
care if the people live like stray dogs, as long as they have people singing in
the churches”.
Therefore, this is not about carrying Good on our lips when it comes to giving a
speech or making a statement to the press. It is possible that the strong
conservative tendency that prevails right now is able to provide moral and
religious values in no time at all. But the politicians will have to learn to
see God in the people that suffer. In the victims. And not to use them for their
political campaigns, but to act precisely because there are too many victims and
this has to stop. It is not necessary to go and live in Guarjila to see this or
to do something.
This is simply about admitting that “we all have the obligation to give
something to someone”. In reference to the religious people, he once said that
“it is necessary to spend some time, at least a few days with the poor, at least
six months living with the poor, living with three cents in houses filled with
mice and cockroaches, to see the children digging into the garbage, to see all
of those things because maybe that could change their perception of the reality
in the world”. These thoughts suit the politicians perfectly, because they seem
to live in another country.
These politicians are the ones that do not understand why the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights condemns the Salvadoran State for its indifference in
regard to the case of the Serrano sisters, a couple of girls that disappeared
during the early Eighties. The condemnation, according to Cortina “is a very
important first step, but it is not a definitive move, now a long and a complex
process must follow. We need the support of the Supreme Court of Justice and the
support of some of its congressmen in order to reveal what were the crimes
committed during the military regime. In this country it is very difficult to
get the right wing to accept anything of the sort. The inertia that leads to
impunity is a very critical factor in El Salvador. This is a long-term battle,
we need at least from five to ten years more to see any changes. Our wish is
that this sentence becomes a first step to reach our goal in the future, that
is, the social rejection of the torturers, the murderers, and most of all, the
social rejection of all of those who gave the orders and those who covered-up
their decisions”.
This commitment with the victims and with the historical truth defined John
Cortina. That is what the Salvadoran politics has to learn. Right now this
country’s sense of politics is far away from both the victims and the truth.
Most people do not want to hear anything about the victims because they feel
uncomfortable. That is why they rater turn the page of the Peace Accords as fast
as possible.
Jon Cortina
Human beings are the most important communication media.
Then come the media
The media at the service of the people. This title phrase of our reflection
belongs to don Pedro Casaldaliga, and it refers to a present need that is
frequently forgotten: to go back to the essentially human character of
communication. The so called information society does not even see what the
problem is, it is still a fundamental problem, even if it is obvious. This means
that human beings are all about relations and communication.
This nature means at least three things:
1. A person and a community are the subjects of communication, and, therefore,
they are the objective and the sense of the media.
2. Communication has to be a service that responds to the need that people have
of getting truthful information, their need to express themselves, their need to
have a sense of belonging, and the need to know that they are not alone.
3. The goal of social communication must be humanization. And a process of
humanization takes place when the media make it easy for the citizens to
participate if they are well-informed, when there is a true sense of
communication between the media and the audiences, when the reality of the
majority becomes the main topic, when communication is at the service of the
truth and against the lies, at the service of justice, and against injustice.
Monsignor Romero, Ignacio Ellacuria, and Jon Sobrino have created a well-rounded
definition of the character of human communication. Ellacuria indicated that “if
the UCA intends to have an influence on the transformation of the society, among
the other media, through the creation of a collective conscience, it is obvious
that it needs to use the social communication media. The media should not be
used to look for a vague and an ambiguous way to contribute with the expansion
of culture, but with the definitive purpose of making a contribution to the
actions that lead to a true social transformation” (The fundamental duties of
the university and its operating capacity, p. 34). Monsignor Romero considered
the media as “instruments at the service of the people for the transformation of
the society” (February 15th, 1980). Sobrino believes that “without a spirit of
truth it is not possible to establish a true human communication” (The
liberation of the oppressed truth). From these perspectives, we cannot just
simply talk about the power of the media, but about the authority (trust and
credibility) that they might have when they become instruments at the service of
the people (giving people the chance to express themselves, making it happen for
the voices that remain unheard), at the service of the truth (searching for the
truth, communicating the truth, and defending the truth). In this sense
communication is not just about reaching others, but about getting to them with
the best for the others.
The media also at the service of those that apparently do not exist, at the
service of those that remain in silence. This is not just about the media at the
service of the people in general, but about placing at the center of the stage
those voices that have remained silent. The unknown martyrs belong to this
group. Those men and women that died fighting for justice, the many victims of
repression, the victims of the armed invasion, the victims of oppression (the
innocent victims). Human communication has to enable the victims to take a
stand, to have a name, to have a face, to have an identity, to have a history.
Monsignor Romero is an exemplar point of reference in this type f communication.
That is why many have said that his homilies were the first report of the truth
that El Salvador ever got to know, unmasking the mechanisms of horror and those
responsible for them, giving a name to the victims. Several communities in our
country do something like that when they commemorate the death of the martyrs,
those that died during the war. The YSUCA does something like that as well when
it increases its capacity to listen to the “echo” and manages to create an
“echo” around those unknown martyrs. In December, for example, we were present
in the commemoration of the martyrs of the southern area of Tierra Blanca, in
Usulutan. In a solemn manner, the community ended with that sense of
forgetfulness and silence, and revealed the names. We were the echo of 89 names:
Santos Villanueva, Noe Rivas, Jose Rodriguez, Andrea Reyes, Gregoria Hernandez,
Israel Padilla, Francisco Beltran, Ignacio Alfaro, Jesus Merino, Idalia Padilla,
Jesus Aleman, Susana Martinez, Paz Ramirez, Ramon Flores, Lorenzo Correas,
Maximino Chicas Mejia, Felicita de Melgar… The list goes on and on. Behind every
name there is a personal story, the story of a family, the story of a community,
a story of pain, a story hidden away and forgotten. The community dignifies that
story with the truth, with a memory, and with thankfulness.
This is exactly what father Jon Cortina did. He has been close to those in pain,
to those who suffered because of the children that disappeared during the war,
he helped many families to find their sons and daughters. Father Cortina did not
want these people to remain as silent victims, to remain ignored. He encouraged
and supported the relatives of those who disappeared to speak about the truth.
Neither the Law of Amnesty (which only encouraged a sense of forgetfulness and
impunity), nor the indifference of the State’s institutions have managed to
minimize the will of father Cortina to work for the truth and for justice. In
this sense, father Cortina is also a major point of reference for those media
that, before the presence of the victims, intend to help the weak; that before
the presence of the propaganda and the lies, are looking for the truth; that
before the presence of forgetfulness and those lies that have been kept
undercover they are looking for a sense of history, for the reconstruction of a
historical memory.
The wish of the YSUCA: “Human beings are the most important communication
media”. This consideration means that it is necessary to value from an ethical
perspective the existence of an audience that is more than just a listener, a
viewer, a reader, more than a client. To value the existence of these audiences
as specific individuals, as people with rights, with responsibilities, with
needs, people able to discern in a critical manner what are the situations the
country is going through. This also means to commit and create a collective
conscience with ethical and political criteria able to favor and restructure the
society over a foundation of equality and justice. A collective conscience able
to keep a strong sense of history as an antidote to forgetfulness.
These reflections are the result of 14 years of work. A time during which the
YSUCA has been growing and maturing with a kind of communication at the service
of the poor, at the service of the civilian participation, at the service of the
truth. A kind of communication that creates a sense of community, of people that
can express themselves through the radio, and a sense of solidarity (a voice
with you). A kind of communication inspired in the way in which Jesus of
Nazareth was, in the way he acted: his compassionate character (he can be moved
to the very depths of his being when he sees the crowds suffering with anguish,
helpless); in his attitude willing to unmask those who exploit the people in the
social or in the religious circles; in a scandalous solidarity of the excluded.
A kind of communication that demands a certain profile to communicate: an
utopian, a critical, a reasonable, a careful person, able to negotiate, with a
good sense of the profession. That is the kind of communication that we want.
Carlos Ayala
Jon Cortina
What you left to us (Part I)
The reward of the great men is that,
a long time after their death,
no one is entire sure if they have died.
JULES RENARD
Dearest Jon,
You went away a few days ago, and left in the IDHUCA a profound sense of sadness
and pain. However, we do not feel abandoned, confused or defeated. On the
contrary, we feel satisfied, blessed, and happy to have known you. We are happy
because we shared dreams, efforts, joys, anger, anguish, life, and hope for so
many years. You lived intensely in everything you did, and you knew how to share
that feeling. You gave life and an identity to all of the children you were able
to locate, and you made it possible for their families to meet them. You worked
with humble people, almost the living dead, that were looking for their
children, those children that were taken away from them by the criminals of the
war. You gave them a reason to live, you gave hope, and a sense of encouragement
to the people that were disenchanted because of so many “memories of peace”. You
were able to get specific results in your crusade, and unmasked those that lived
in impunity. Those that dared to say things like “That accusation about the
disappearance of the children actually sounds like a story written by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, or something like that. It never happened. Where are the
children? Are they in a secret orphanage? Or did we eat them? Did we baked them,
steamed them, barbecued them? I really do not understand why those stories keep
circulating” (General Mauricio Vargas, when interviewed by the San Jose Mercury
News, in 1995).
That was not the only thing you left to the IDHUCA. If not, look at the report
of what we are saying and how we feel about it at this time.
“Father Cortina is gone, but we always remember him dearly as a great friend;
joyful, happy, with a big smile. He left to us an important lesson: we should
not give up, we should face the difficult situations and try to reach our
goals”. “Most people read about history, but just a few make history. Father Jon
made history in El Salvador together with other great ones like Rutilio, Romero,
Ellacuria, Montes, Martin-Baro; he made history together with his beloved people
in San Jose Las Flores and in Guarjila; and with all of the victims of the war,
the victims of misery and impunity. His story is our story, and his struggle
must be our struggle”. “It is difficult to count the images I have of this man
because of the many times I saw him walking by the hallways in the IDHUCA.
However, I can talk about the times when I saw him through my window in my
office, and what I saw was a man walking in the pathway where only the man who
love justice walk by, those who fight endlessly, those who do not rest, and
those who try to achieve the structural changes that a country needs”.
“If I stop and try to think what kind of country is where I want to live in, I
repeat to myself that I want to live in a country where I am allowed to feel
what other people feel, a place where I am able to reach values such as
solidarity, respect, justice, and commitment. I think that this was what El
Salvador meant for Jon de Cortina. Without a doubt, his actions and his
commitment with the people that suffer have left an invaluable trace in each one
of those who knew him, and in the history of this country”. “I feel sad because
I know that I will not see him anymore. But I am sure that his charm, his
rebelliousness, his strength, his example, and his struggle will remain alive
forever. He was not an inseparable friend of mine, but it usually took just a
few minutes to see what a great man he was, a man that I will forever admire and
love”. “Very few men and women restlessly fight to find happiness for others. It
is a mission. We have only one mission in this world. Father Jon knew what his
mission was, and, with his example, the legacy that he leaves to us now is to
keep fighting for the human rights of those people that have no hope that they
will ever live a decent life”.
“There are no pathways traced, a person traces its own pathway by walking on it…
And on that pathway you walked, you opened a door in a hostile territory. You
lighted the torch that helped us see where we were going when there was
darkness. Many children did not have an identity and you lighted up their
lives”. “He followed Jesus, he accomplished his mission, he cultivated a fertile
land, he recognized the prophet and he walked by him, he gave his life to those
who needed him, he served with joy, he fought against impunity, he worked hard
in his search for justice and truth. Jon has left us and he is now with
Monsignor Romero, with the martyrs, with Jesus, and he is saying ‘mission
accomplished’”.
“El Salvador is in desperate need of positive leaderships and good examples. Jon
showed to us that to defend the human rights it is not necessary to have money
or to have a specific nationality, he showed to us that all we need is will.
This is how he lived his last 50 years. As militants of this cause, we see in
him a positive leadership: the capacity to feel indignation for certain small
details, to feel love and solidarity; the ability to transform indignation into
specific actions –Pro-Busqueda and the Serrano Cruz case are the clearest
examples of this-; persistence and will to work, above all, the danger did not
matter, the lack of resources did not matter. That is precisely how he tried to
recuperate the lost time back in 1993. The list is endless, anybody who works in
the field of human rights knows that these elements are enough to fight the most
complex battles. That is why we will never be sure if he is really dead. That is
the legacy of Jon de Cortina, who has now met with Romero and his six former
peers”.
“Father Cortina is and will always be one of those people who makes you believe
in humankind. Why? None of his relatives ever disappeared; however, he always
knew what a mother felt when her children were taken away from her during the
war. He did not have to suffer the fears and the poverty the people in
Chalatenango had to go through, but he risked his life to walk hand in hand with
the anguished people. He was a true shepherd, and he really chose to work with
and for the poor, and with this he displayed all of his wisdom. The wisest, the
humblest”. “He knew how to make a person feel good, because he was kind and
respectful. It is easy to admire a person with these characteristics, it is easy
to respect someone like him, and become fond of this kind of person; and it is
also possible to feel the empty space that someone like him leaves behind.
Although I cannot say that I had the honor of being his friend, I thank God for
allowing me to meet him, for exchanging a few words with him, and, perhaps, for
allowing me to show him that I respected him”.
That is your legacy, Jon. Do you realize what this means? We love you and we
will miss you, but just a little bit. Because we have the fresh and the
indelible memory of that moderator of the conference with which we closed on
September 9th the Week of the Immigrant, and commemorated the 20th anniversary
of the IDHUCA. A never moderate moderator, irreverent, you stole the show by
telling anecdotes about Segundo Montes –the “Mozo”, you called him-, and when
you were moved by the children whose parents had been expelled from the country.
“Montes –you said-, would have loved to hear these testimonies because of the
human quality they reveal. He liked to teach me things, and I remember once when
we were at Izalco. He was there because he was working on an opinion poll and I
went there with him. He asked a man how long it would take to go from one
distance to another in the area, and the old man, because he was very old, I was
younger then, told Montes ‘That will take a smoke’, an amount of time unknown to
me. So Montes tried to explain: ‘That is the amount of time that he takes to
smoke the cigars he makes. That is the smoke’. He liked all of those things, so
now he would be sad, in a way, because of the testimonies and because of what
they mean, and very happy, on the other hand, seeing that the IDHUCA is working
for those immigrants, and because he would be working for their rights as well”.
We still have many things to say to you Jon, and we will go on.
Pro-Busqueda Association
We now present the report of the Pro-Busqueda Association
–founded, among other people, by father Jon de Cortina- about the State’s
performance in reference to the National Search Commission of Disappeared
Children. This document was issued on October of 2005.
The performance of the Salvadoran State in the problem of the children that
disappeared during the civil war
1. The Salvadoran State has kept the cases of the forced disappearance of
children during the war in a situation of impunity, and with this, it has
refused to acknowledge to the victims the possibility of serving justice and
truth. The intention to directly cover up this situation, and the apathy and the
indifference of the State’s officials are factors that have ignored the
constitutional and the international obligations of the matters connected with
the defense of the human rights.
2. The victims in this case, in an effort to find justice and acknowledge the
situation of the children, and with the hope to find a new scenery in the
Salvadoran justice system through the Peace Accords and the advice of the
Commission of the Truth, filed a demand in the courts, and until now they have
had no response about the whereabouts of the children, or about any
investigations, or any punishments against those responsible for this situation.
The inefficiency of the State in regard to this case created the need to found
the Pro-Busqueda Association.
3. Along the last 11 years, there have been some results about the whereabouts
of the children that disappeared during the war, some of them already met their
biological families, and some of their rights have been restored in reference to
their identities and their access to justice, but this has only been possible
because of the effort of the victims that have organized themselves trough the
Pro-Busqueda Association. The members of this organization keep being
responsible, within their pain and their limitations, for those duties that
originally belong the Salvadoran State in matters of the defense of the human
rights.
4. The judicial and the fiscal authorities have reactivated the internal penal
processes when these processes have been presented before the eyes of the
international justice, and that is why it is evident that the goal of the
State’s performance is not the investigation of the crime in itself, nor to find
justice for the victims, but the defense of the image of the Salvadoran State
before the eyes of the international protection organizations, against the
victims themselves. This kind of performance, in the opinion of Pro-Busqueda are
a continuation of the incompetent performance of the State in its duty to
investigate crime, that is the main objective of a penal trial.
5. The Habeas Corpus is still an inefficient resource to resolve the forced
disappearance cases, according to the sentences of habeas corpus issued by the
Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Court of Justice. These performances affect
the rights that the victims have to use a resource in order to establish the
legality of the arrests and the later disappearance of these children during the
civil war. Therefore, these cases have become the symbol of the denial of the
constitutional justice.
6. We consider as well that the refusal to abolish the Law of Amnesty for the
National Reconciliation, the refusal to approve the Law of the National Search
Commission, and the Law of Moral and Material Compensation, just as the fact
that the Inter-American Convention of the Forced Disappearance of People was not
ratified, are all omissions of the Legislative Assembly that once again show how
the Salvadoran State is not fulfilling its duty to resolve the human rights
violation cases that took place during the civil war, especially the violation
cases that involve children that are still missing and those that have been
found, as well as their relatives.
7. In reference to the National Search Commission of Disappeared Children, it is
important to say that the possibility of its creation and its efficient
performance have both been a light of hope for hundreds of people that had not
found their sons and daughters. Unfortunately, the analysis of Pro-Busqueda
about the experiences of the Inter-Institutional Search Commission, created by
the Executive Decree No. 45, just like the one of the Discussion Board of the
Procurator, shows that the will of the State is not to search and restore the
rights of the children that disappeared in the context of the war. The objective
of the establishment and the performance of this commission is to present to the
branches of the Inter-American System that the State has fulfilled its duty to
guarantee the human rights of the children that were the victims of a forced
disappearance crime, despite the fact that there have been no results in a whole
year of performance.
8. Therefore, the Pro-Busqueda Association for Children Disappeared Due to the
War, in connection to the extreme importance of this case with the improvement
of democracy and the situation of justice in El Salvador, has prepared this
report for the Honorable Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, though which
we hope to inform about the present situation of the Salvadoran State’s actual
performance level in reference to the encouragement of impunity in the cases of
the disappeared children, and request the adoption of measures aimed to improve
the coherence between the State’s obligations and its performance regarding the
matters of human rights in the frame of the American Convention of Human Rights
and the rest of instruments of the Inter-American system of human rights,
especially in regard to the performance of a National Search Commission.
9. We request from the Commission to prepare a report about the disappeared
children in El Salvador, in order to recommend to the State the following
aspects:
- The modification of the International Search Commission in order to guarantee
an effective search, and the fulfillment of the parameters of the human rights
about the performance of this kind of commissions.
- To promote the internal penal procedures connected with the cases of the
children who disappeared
- To admit the habeas corpus as the ideal mechanism to act upon the forced
disappearances.
- To ratify the Inter-American Convention of Forced Disappearance of People.
We also request from the Commission to make a statement about how the Salvadoran
State has not fulfilled its duties to respect and guarantee the rights of the
missing children, in the press release that will be issued by the end of period
123 (of the sessions). We request from the Commission to improve the processes
against the State of El Salvador in reference to the disappearance of the
children.
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