María Julia Hernández
María Julia Hernández (born January 30, 1939 in Villa de San Francisco , Francisco Morazán Department in Honduras , † March 30, 2007 in San Salvador ) was a Salvadoran human rights activist who campaigned particularly for the victims of the civil war in El Salvador . She was a founding member and first director of the human rights office "Tutela legal" of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador.
Life
Hernández was born in Honduras . Her parents were from El Salvador and returned shortly after Hernández was born. As a teenager she trained as a health assistant ( barefoot doctor ) in a church institution . She remained unmarried and worked all her life for the church and its work in the simple population of El Salvador and Guatemala .
During her work, she collected evidence of massacres and political murders of the population for 30 years , conducted interviews with the survivors and compiled information about the dead in a book. This “book of the dead” grew more and more into a lexicon about political violence.
A formative experience for Hernández was the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero by members of a right-wing death squad during a mass. In this he had called on the army to stop the death squads that attacked real and supposed opponents of the regime. Hernández had worked with Romero, who was called to be bishop in 1977. It was then that a 15 year wave of violence began, in which a relatively small number of left-wing guerrillas faced the ruling class, the armed forces and the government of El Salvador. Most of the 75,000 victims of violence were farmers who offered non-violent resistance to state power . The archbishop's assassination also sparked the civil war that lasted until 1992.
Julia Hernández died of a heart attack at the age of 68. An obituary in the Washington Post recognized her as "the mother of victims of violence and a fighter for the truth."
Reception and award
In 1991 Hernandez received the " Pacem in Terris Award ". This is after the encyclical of the same name Pope John XXIII. named, which called on all people of good will to keep the peace among the peoples.
A German religious book dedicates a page to her under the heading "Samaritan woman of the mountains".
Web links
- María Julia Hernández, 68, Rights Advocate in El Salvador, Dies , The New York Times , April 4, 2007
- Maris Julia Hernandez in: Encyclopaedia Britannica (English) Retrieved December 18, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Human Rights Activist Maria Julia Hernandez , The Washington Post , March 31, 2007 (English)
- ↑ Reli concrete 2, Koeselverlag p. 134
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hernández, María Julia |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hernández, Julia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Salvadoran human rights activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 30, 1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Villa de San Francisco , Francisco Morazan Department , Honduras |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 30, 2007 |
| Place of death | San Salvador |