Changed by Solidarity in El Salvador and Honduras

“This is the tree.

The tree was the witness.

It received their blood.”

These words, spoken by the people of the village of San Francisco Hacienda, a rural area 27 miles east of San Salvador, transformed Sister Carol Curtis’s understanding of the meaning of true community. Sister Carol went to El Salvador in early December 2022, participating with “The Roses in December” delegation of the SHARE (Salvadoran Humanitarian Aid, Research and Education) Foundation and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) to mark the 42nd anniversary of the martyrdom of the four U.S. churchwomen in El Salvador. San Francisco Hacienda is the closest village to the site where the four churchwomen were murdered in 1980.

The “Roses in December” martyrs: Cleveland Ursuline Sister

Dorothy Kazel, Maryknoll Sisters

Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, and lay missionary Jean Donovan, were abducted, raped and brutally murdered by the U.S.-supported Salvadoran military for their ministry and dedication to those living in poverty. They were called “subversives” because they were accompanying refugee families who had fallen victim to the escalating violence and oppression that eventually led to civil war. On the night of December 2, 1980, the four women were ambushed on their way home from the airport and killed in this remote area, their blood spilling out on the ground by the tree.

After a ceremony at a small church to honor the women, at the exact site of their murders, the Salvadorans pointed out the tree and said, “This is the tree. It is a protected tree, a national monument, because the tree was the witness. It received their blood.”

It was a powerful moment for Sister Carol. The interconnectedness of all living things, including the earth, became real for her as never before.

Sister Carol reflected, “That is where I got my first sense of what solidarity is. It is not just something you create; it is something that is there. And it was created, in this case, by the presence of these women, the four martyrs, who were with the people. They hadn’t even been working in that area, but they were killed there. This diocese calls itself the Diocese of Martyrs, and view keeping the four women in remembrance as a responsibility they have. All of sudden I got a whole new sense, a different sense of what community is. This IS community. This is these people’s understanding of what community is. This is the natural embrace of people with the earth.”

The ties to Sister Dorothy Kazel, a fellow Ursuline Sister, became even more tangible when Sister Carol was invited to carry Dorothy’s photo during several processions and ceremonies, as they knew that Sister Carol is an Ursuline and therefore “kin” to Dorothy.

The words of St. Francis of Assisi came back to her on this trip: “The world is my cloister…and my soul is the hermit within!” Having lived as a cloistered Carmelite nun for 25 years before joining the Louisville

Ursulines, Sister Carol now found herself connected to this Cleveland Ursuline, a continent away and four decades past, by their shared charism of Saint Angela Merici and the Ursulines. Sister Carol’s “cloister” had become the world, and all that God creates.

The SHARE delegation visited more villages in El Salvador and Honduras, and Sister Carol, who is the Ursulines’ Social Concerns liaison, chose to visit projects that were related to migration, water rights and land access.

The 50+ year ministry the Ursulines share with Peru has kept the community connected with, and aware of, the power dynamics of multinational corporations, weak and/or corrupt governments and politicians, and how that impacts the poor and vulnerable, particularly by way of economic exploitation and the stunning amount of violence and deaths without accountability. In El Salvador alone, almost 50,000 people have been arrested or disappeared in the past few months, and their families do not know where they are. Many environmental protestors have been murdered for their efforts.

Another pivotal moment for Sister Carol was attending Mass where Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot and killed. She states, “It brought home that the work of justice is the work of the gospel. And it has opposition. And the work of defending human rights, people’s rights to water and land, triggers opposition that has political power and terror behind it.”

And then there was the waterfall.

The delegation visited the San Pedro River in Honduras, which flows into the Guapinol River, where the Guapinol Eight had been protesting, two of whom were murdered in January 2023. The Hondurans took the group to a beautiful waterfall on the river. Everyone got out and explored, then came back down, eventually sitting on boulders in the middle of the river next to the waterfall.

In the distance, you could see the yellow walls of a mining company. It had been built on a nature preserve, but the government had sold the rights of the preserve to a mining company. Representatives from neighboring villages came out to the river to talk to them, to explain why they were fighting the mine.

And then it dawned on Sister Carol.

They were having a conference in the middle of the river.

And the river has a voice.

The waterfall.

Just as the tree was the witness, the waterfall and the river gives witness.

And Sister Carol felt it—the sense of community. She could feel that it was more integrated here, in this culture. Sister Carol saw that the respect we give to family, to kin, to neighbors, is given equally here to the tree, the river, the waterfall. A true earth community.

Sister Carol now says, “Going into this journey, I was aware of the issues—mining, human rights, political corruption, gang violence and indigenous communities being threatened. When I got there, what I found was the solidarity. Like the gospel says, ‘We are all members, each one of the other.’ Boundaries are not essential—it is really our connection. The importance of being a witness as part of our Christian responsibility is one I am exploring.”

The tree.

The river.

The waterfall.