On this day in 1989, an elite battalion of the Salvadoran Army, trained at the School of the America’s, massacred 6 priests working to end the Salvadoran military government’s scorched earth war on peasants, working people & leftist guerrillas. 
The US-trained & armed Atlacatl Battalion, who were fresh from US Army Special Forces training, forced their way into the home of 5 Jesuit priests, forcing them to lie face down, then shooting each one in the back of the head.
The soldiers then shot an infirm Salvadoran priest in his bedroom and then killed the witnesses, the Jesuits’ housekeeper and her teenage daughter, as they cowered in the guest room.
Salvadoran Army Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano, who planned the assassination, said that the Jesuits were "fully identified with subversive movements” because they assisted the poor, who were suffering greatly from the decade-long civil war, which killed 80,000 people.
Following the murder, the death squad sprayed the building’s facade with machine gun fire and left a sign attempting to frame leftist guerrillas for the massacre.
The murders of the priests attracted international attention and increased international pressure for a cease-fire, representing one of the key turning points that led toward a negotiated settlement.
Most of the Salvadorian military leadership responsible for the atrocities committed during the civil war have still never been brought to justice.
