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The Price of Truth. RevistaLatinoamericana de Teología 77 (2009) 121-135 Martha ZechmeisterCJ Centro de Reflexión Teológica, San Salvador
It would be reasonable to expectfrom a systematic reflection that it should offer a balanced vision of all the aspects of a particular subject and that it should give answers to the most important questions that it generates. Readers will see that, in this article,that is not the case. At the end of these reflectionsthey may have more questions on the subject of ‘truth’ than when they started. And that is the first thing that I want to share with you: the fundamental conviction that we shall not come close to truth if we try to repress whatdisquiets and perturbs us, or if we try to control it too quickly. We shall come close to truth, rather, if we hold it as a value to endure disturbance and to expose ourselves to it. Introduction.‘Paying the price.’1 The process of getting to know the truth always happens from a specific perspective. Our coming close to the truth happens from a subjective point of view, conditioned and limited by many factors. Part of this process is precisely to take account of one’s own perspective and to make it explicit. I want to begin there, and for that reason I shall speak about my own personal and biographical starting-point. The subject of these reflections, ‘The Price of Truth’, came to me in thinking about a book called ‘Paying the Price.’ The book comes out of a full and well-documented investigationinto an assassination committed in 1989, whose victims were six Jesuits and two women from the Central American José SimeónCañas University, The crime was committed by soldiers from the ‘BatallónAtlacatí’ but the order came ‘from above’, from government circles. The victims paid the price of bearing witness to the truth – exactly as Mgr. Romero had done ten years before. They denounced and made public before the international community what was happening in the country. They unmasked the crimes of a fascist-style government which drowned with brutal violence the people’s legitimate call for more just and human conditions of life. The logical consequence was the hatred of those whose vital interest was precisely to conceal this reality. As the final consequence of their life-project, their vocation as Jesuits, they suffered the same fate as Jesus. Putting themselves, as he did, on the side of the victims of injustice crying to heaven, and making themselves their voice, cost them their lives. ‘What is truth?’ asked Pilate, after he had interrogated Jesus. St. John’s Gospel tells how this really strange interrogation developed. (Jn.18:33-40)Pilate begins by asking Jesus ‘Are you 1
Teresa Whitfield, Pagando el precio. Ignacio Ellacuria y el asesinato de los jesuitasen El Salvador. San Salvador 1998