Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas”
| Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” (UCA) | |
|---|---|
| motto | Universidad para el cambio social ("College for Social Change") |
| founding | September 15, 1965 |
| place | San Salvador |
| country |
 El Salvador
|
| Students | 8,700 / teaching staff 340 |
| Website | www.uca.edu.sv |
The Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” (UCA) is a private, non-profit university in San Salvador ( El Salvador ).
The campus is located in the Antiguo Cuscatlan district, it has around 22 manzanas (15.4 hectares ), seven auditoriums, six large auditoriums, three auditoriums, a library, laboratories, IT, sports centers and other facilities such as the Instituto de Derechos Humanos (IDHUCA), Radio UCA and a printing house (it publishes, among others, Prueba de Aprendizaje y Aptitudes (PAES) and Semanario Proceso ).
The students study at ten chairs for Licenciada / o, five chairs for engineering, four chairs for teaching, two chairs for technology, ten chairs for postgraduate studies.
history
From 1870 it was part of the liberal emancipation and state building in Central America to push the church out of public education so that state schools and universities were founded. Later the Roman Catholic Church and its orders established their own educational institutions. The UCA was founded in September 1965 by the Society of Jesus . From its founding, the government and entrepreneurs promised to create a college for graduates of the Catholic colleges from the oligarchy, as an alternative to the state Universidad de El Salvador , which was accused of spreading Marxist ideas and destabilizing the social order.
For this reason, the government of Colonel Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo passed a law in July 1965 that sanctioned private universities in El Salvador.
When it was founded, the following chairs were established: economics, industrial engineering and business administration. From 1969 human sciences chairs such as psychology and literature were added.
In 1970 the current campus was built with a loan from the Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo . In the mid-1970s, under the direction of Rector Román Mayorga Quirós, progressive doctrinal opinions on social and political issues also found their way into teaching. This can be seen against the background of the Second Vatican Council , which also shaped the Society of Jesus.
In 1976, Professor Ignacio Ellacuría harshly criticized the government of Colonel Arturo Armando Molina in an editorial in the university magazine ECA for abandoning a plan for redistributive agrarian reform. The government then stopped the already low funding of the university, which was taken by the far-right El Salvador as a license to attack the institution.
On February 3rd, 1977 Óscar Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, and his understanding of pastoral matters found sympathy and support in the UCA. One of Romero's friends in the UCA was Jon Sobrino , who helped make the UCA a center of Latin American theology of liberation . In March 1977 the priest Rutilio Grande SJ was murdered, threats were made against the Jesuit community of the university and bombings were carried out on the university campus.
In 1979 Ignacio Ellacuría took over the management of the university and continued the project of the social university. He promoted the examination of the social reality in El Salvador in studies and placed a main focus on the obligations that he saw on the part of the university towards the population. When the social conflict in the civil war became armed, it was Ellacuría who championed the path of dialogue and negotiation.
Fall 1989
Negotiations between the insurgent FMLN and the government began on September 13, 1989 under the Alfredo Cristiani Burkard government. On October 31, 1989, nine people, including union official Febe Elizabeth Velasquez , were killed in a bomb attack on the Federación Nacional de Sindicatos de Trabajadores Salvadoreños (FENASTRAS) union. On November 6, 1989, Ellacuría received the Premio de la Fundación Comín for the UCA in Barcelona .
On November 11, 1989, the FMLN began its third offensive and attacked the residential areas of the Salvadoran elite, Colonias San Benito and Escalón in northern San Salvador, under the slogan “Todos al tope” (roughly: “Go all out”). The Salvadoran Air Force ( Fuerza Aérea Salvadoreña ) then bombed the densely populated slums in northern San Salvador. Several hundred people died in the process.
Unfounded suspicion of guerrilla activity
On November 11, 1989, the FMLN blew up a UCA gate and crossed campus. The following day, a post was set up by the Salvadoran Armed Forces ( FAES ) to oversee the comings and goings in the UCA. From November 13, 1989, access to the UCA was blocked by the FAES . On the same day, Defense Minister René Emilio Ponce ordered Colonel Joaquín Arnoldo Cerna Flores, head of the General Staff, to conduct a search of the UCA campus. According to his own statements, Ponce ordered this search because he had been informed that there were 200 guerrillas on campus. Cerna Flores left the search to Lieutenant José Ricardo Espinoza Guerra, who carried it out with a few hundred men from the Atlacatl battalion . Lieutenant Héctor Ulises Cuenca Ocampo from the DNI secret service appeared at the entrance of the UCA to accompany the search. Espinoza Guerra personally leads the search of the priests' living quarters. No evidence of the presence of guerrillas was found, neither war nor propaganda material. Espinoza Guerra reported the result of the search to Major Hernández Barahona, who later reported it to Colonel Cerna Flores in the General Staff.
The November 16, 1989 massacre
On November 16, 1989, the Batallón Atlácatl special military unit carried out an attack on campus. During this nightly attack, the perpetrators invaded the Jesuit community. The attack was primarily aimed at Ignacio Ellacuría , the rector or chancellor of the university. He returned early from a trip on November 13th. The command was ordered not to leave any witnesses. Therefore, everyone in the Jesuits' living quarters was murdered on November 16, 1989:
- Ignacio Ellacuría , Chancellor of the University
- Ignacio Martín-Baró, Deputy Chancellor
- Segundo Montes , head of the Instituto de Derechos Humanos
- Juan Ramón Moreno, head of the theological library
- Amando López, philosophy professor
- Joaquín López y López
- Elba Ramos, cook
- Celina Ramos, the cook's 16-year-old daughter
Jesuit professors Jon Sobrino and Jon Cortina survived because they happened not to be in San Salvador at the time of the crime.
The perpetrators had received training from US elite units in night combat three days earlier. To the murder, which took place at night, some of the elite soldiers - allegedly without the knowledge of the US instructors - took their trainers' night vision devices with them.
.jpg)
The Atlácatl battalion, whose commanders were trained at the US military academy School of the Americas , had murdered around 900 civilians in the El Mozote massacre in 1981 . This event is considered to be the greatest war crime in the history of Central America.
Chancellor
Ignacio Ellacuria's successors were:
- Francisco Javier Ibizate SJ
- Francisco Estrada SJ
- José María Tojeira, SJ
- Andreu Oliva, SJ
courses
- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
- Licenciatura in Law
- Licenciatura in social communication
- Licenciatura in Philosophy
- Licenciatura in Psychology
- Licenciatura in Theology
- Teaching qualification special education
- Teaching qualification preschool
- Teaching English
- Teaching theology
- Diploma in philosophy
- Faculty of Economics
- Licenciatura in Economics
- Licenciatura in Business Administration
- Licenciatura in Contaduría Pública (Auditor)
- Licenciatura in sales (marketing)
- Licenciatura in technical marketing
- Licenciatura in Controlling
- Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
- Electrical engineer
- Engineer mechanical engineering
- Civil engineering
- Engineer manufacturing technology
- Chemical engineering
- Computer science
- architecture
Postgraduate courses
- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
- Doctorado in Ibero-American Philosophy
- Master in Political Science
- Master in Communication Science
- Master in Business Law
- Master in Constitutional Law
- Master in Local Development
- Master in Ibero-American Philosophy
- Master in Education Policy
- Masters in mass psychology
- Masters in Healthcare
- Faculty of Economics
- Masters in Banking
- Master in Management
- Masters in Engineering and Architecture
- Master in environmental management
Award
In 1990 the UCA received the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de Comunicación y Humanidades in recognition of its advocacy for freedom and human rights.
Individual evidence
- ↑ IDHUCA ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Semanario Proceso ( Memento of the original dated February 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Truth Commissions Digital Collection: Reports: El Salvador ( Memento of August 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
- ^ Teresa Whitfield: Paying the Price. Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador . Temple University Press, 1994 p. 343.
- ↑ informe anual 1989–1990
- ↑ Thomas Sheehan: Friendly Fascism. Business as Usual in America's Backyard , in: Fascism's Return. Scandal, Revision, and Ideology since 1980 , ed. v. J. Richard Golson, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, pp. 260–300 ( PDF ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check Original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. ); see. there note 12.
