The Groundskeeper's Story

This is the story of a groundskeeper at the University of Central America. He is the man who planted this peaceful rose garden. His wife, Elba Ramos, was the housekeeper here for several Jesuit priests who taught at the University. Elba and their daughter, Celia Marisela Ramos lived in an apartment in one wing of the building in the background.

This story is not easy to tell; it is not easy to listen to. But tell and listen we must, because each of us has a part in this story.

Senor Ramos planted this garden because his wife and daughter were murdered here 19 years ago by members of the Salvadoran military---murdered along with the six Jesuit priests living here. The priests were the primary target of the death squad. The priests---especially Ignacio Ellacuria--- were considered subversive because of their outspoken defense of the poor and their challenges to the extreme economic disparities and government oppression in El Salvador. The soldiers who murdered the groundskeeper’s wife and daughter along with the priests were from a battalion of the Salvadoran Atlacatl regiment trained by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia. I helped pay for the training of these murderers through the tax dollars I was paying as a prosperous young lawyer.

The groundskeeper’s story is told by these roses and by the walls of the building where these people lived and were were gunned down by the soldiers. It is told by the stairs those soldiers ran down on their way to kill Sra. Ramos and her daughter….the stairs my friend Michael now walks down in the warm Salvadoran sun, with birds singing in the rose garden---past the doors to the rooms where the six priests were sleeping, or reading, or praying before they were shot where they stood or were dragged outside through the doors Michael walks past….dragged out in the night to be murdered in what was to become Senor Ramos’ rose garden.

The groundskeeper tells his story through the exhibits in the museum downstairs…the portrait of Archbishop Romero (himself martyred 10 years before)----a portrait which itself was shot at and burned by the soldiers in their rage that night….the clothing worn by the priests when they were assassinated….the small glass containers with soil and blood taken from the ground where their bodies lay.

The groundskeeper’s story is told in the schoolbag, shoes and clothing of a young boy and old man who had the bad fortune of riding in the car with FatherRutilio Grande on the road from Aguilares to El Paisnol when a death squad pulled the car over and murdered them all.

It is told in the pictures of the four American Maryknoll nuns who were kidnapped right after their arrival in El Salvador as they were driving from the airport to San Salvador. They were raped and murdered by members of government military death squad.

The story is told in a glass case holding a few artifacts from the many killing fields of El Salvador----bits of bone, spent bullets that had torn through people’s bodies, part of an automobile camshaft used as a club, ammunition cartridges---the tools of killing.

The groundskeeper screams his story in the paintings in the Chapel at the University. They are called “The Stations of the Cross”, and they are but a few of hundreds of paintings created by a Salvadoran artist as a way of exorcising his memories of viewing these bodies at massacre sites while searching for the the remains of relatives and friends.

The groundskeeper’s wife and daughter were only 2 of over 70,000 victims who died during Salvadoran civil war which raged in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. The vast majority of these victims were civilians killed by El Salvador’s armed forces and paramilitary death squads. To put that into perspective, that would be the equivalent of 4.8 million of our family and neighbors here in the U.S. being killed.

The death of the Jesuits brought international outrage and condemnation upon the Salvadoran Government and pressured them to negotiate an end to their country’s civil war. The spiritual conflict continues, however. Four months before our trip to El Salvador, a Lutheran minister and his wife were gunned down in front of their congregation in a poor area in the west of El Salvador. And ARENA (National Republican Alliance), the conservative political party founded by Roberto D’Aubuisson, the former president of El Salvador who is widely rumored to have ordered the assassination of Archbishop Romero, still controls the national government.

The groundskeeper’s story ends on a note of triumph and forgiveness, however. Last year, Robert White, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador during the first years of the violence, came to speak at a University in San Salvador. Ambassador White is considered a truth teller, who has spoken out about his own anguish over the complicity of our government supporting the repressive regime in El Salvador. When Ambassador White arrived at the auditorium, it was filled with campesinos….poor people of the countryside…who had traveled long distances on crowded buses to see the Ambassador. He spoke; they listened and left. Why had they come? Because, they said, they had to find a person to forgive….a real man who symbolized for them the government of the United States. They had to make this pilgrimage of forgiveness.