Mural in the Church of Agua Blanca
This January, community members from the municipality of Cacaopera commemorated the 33rdanniversary of the murder of Octavio Ortiz Luna, a
Traditional Dance
Roman Catholic priest who was assassinated on January 20, 1979. Born to peasant parents, Fr. Ortiz was born on March 22, 1944 in a town called Agua Blanca in the Municipality of Cacaopera, in the northeastern Salvadoran province of Morazán.
Fr. Ortiz took a special interest in young workers, whom he offered spiritual retreats and seminars. Ortiz had been leading such a retreat the night before
Governor Miguel Ventura Philosophizing on Liberation Theology
his assassination. At dawn on January 20, 1979, government troops burst into the retreat center, killed Fr. Ortiz and four youths, and arrested the rest. The government would claim that the retreat center was a guerrilla base.
The murder of Ortiz was characterized by Romero as part of a systematic persecution of the Catholic Church and oppression against efforts to reform a military dictatorship there to guaranty human rights for the poor masses.
