Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 7660 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 human-rights abuses by El Salvador’s govern- ment and paramilitary forces were declining. Yet shortly after 10 p.m. on November 15, Colonel René Emilio Ponce, chief of staff of the Armed Forces of El Salvador, in collusion with the country’s highest ranking military officials, ordered Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides to eliminate the Jesuits at the university, specifi- cally Ignacio Ellacuría, the university president Robert Lasalle-Klein, professor of religious studies and philosophy at Holy Names University and cofounder of the Oakland Catholic Worker, is the author of Blood and Ink: Ignacio Ellacuría, Jon Sobrino, and the Jesuit Martyrs of the University of Central America (Orbis, 2014); this article is adapted from the book. The killings sent shock waves through the United States Congress, which was moni- toring human rights in El Salvador. For the past decade, Congress had been funding the right-wing Salvadoran government’s civil war against rebels demanding political and economic reform. However, these appropria- tions depended on official certifications by the Reagan and Bush administrations that Mourners during the funeral for Archbishop Romero, San Salvador, March 30, 1980 The Making of El Salvador’s Company of Martyrs R O B E R T L A S A L L E - K L E I N Twenty-five years ago,on November 16,1989,six Jesuit priests and twowomenweremurderedbyUS-trainedSalvadoranspecialforces onthecampusoftheUniversityofCentralAmericainSanSalvador. Blood and Ink Photograph by Harry Mattison