The Politics of Religious Brotherhood

Abstract

When six members of the transnational brotherhood of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) were murdered in cold blood in El Salvador in November 1989, the Jesuit community in the United States responded with a powerful combination of outrage and embarrassment bordering on guilt. The Jesuits assassinated at the Universidad Centroamericana were killed because their devotion to the Jesuit mission of “the service of faith and pursuit of justice” was seen by the leadership of the Salvadoran military as a direct threat. And they were killed by a Salvadoran military that was receiving in support of its war against an insurgent guerilla force over $1 million per day from the United States government. Using all of the substantial institutional resources at their disposal, Jesuits in the U.S. worked to pressure the Salvadoran government to hold accountable “the authors of the crime” within the military’s high command, while at the same time they worked to pressure the U.S. government to shut off the military aid that had been used to murder their fellow Jesuits. “Their” government was killing “their” brothers, and the Jesuits in the U.S. mobilized a complex, transnational political response out of both communal solidarity and national responsibility.