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 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, 01); 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