In November 1989, six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter, were
murdered by the army. That same week, at least 28 other Salvadoran civilians
were murdered, including the head of a major union, the leader of the
organization of university women, nine members of an Indian farming
cooperative and ten university students.

The news wires carried a story by AP correspondent Douglas Grant Mine,
reporting how soldiers had entered a working-class neighborhood in the capital
city of San Salvador, captured six men, added a 14-year-old boy for good
measure, then lined them all up against a wall and shot them. They "were not
priests or human rights campaigners," Mine wrote, "so their deaths have gone
largely unnoticed" ? as did his story.

The Jesuits were murdered by the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite unit created,
trained and equipped by the United States. It was formed in March 1981, when
fifteen specialists in counterinsurgency were sent to El Salvador from the US
Army School of Special Forces. From the start, the Battalion was engaged in
mass murder. A US trainer described its soldiers as "particularly
ferocious.... We've always had a hard time getting [them] to take prisoners
instead of ears."