María Cristina Gómez - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

María Cristina Gómez was a Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

primary school teacher and community leader

Community leader

A Community Leader is a designation, often by secondary sources , for a person who is perceived to represent a community. A simple way to understand community leadership is to see it as leadership in, for and by the community...

in El Salvador

El Salvador

El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

who was abducted and murdered on April 5, 1989.

Christian mission

A member of Emmanuel Baptist church in San Salvador

San Salvador

The city of San Salvador the capital and largest city of El Salvador, which has been designated a Gamma World City. Its complete name is La Ciudad de Gran San Salvador...

, Gómez was a national leader both of Baptist women and in the teachers' union. She was a founder of the National Coordination of Salvadoran Women (known by its Spanish-language initials CONAMUS), founded in 1986. Since then, CONAMUS has addressed the issues which directly affect poor women in El Salvador, including domestic violence, rape, economic survival, lack of political participation, and social inequality. In 1989, CONAMUS opened a clinic to respond to women who were victims of domestic violence and rape. In her spare time, Gómez went out into the rural villages and taught the peasant women to read so that they in turn could teach their children, principally in order to be able to read health and farming leaflets and improve the quality of their lives. However, some people in authority became concerned that the previously illiterate peasants would learn more about their rights, and would begin to demand them.

Abduction and murder

According to witnesses, on April 5, 1989, as Gómez was returning from the John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

School in Ilopango

Ilopango

Ilopango is a town in the San Salvador department of El Salvador. It is a few miles east of the nation's capital, San Salvador. It is located near Lake Ilopango, the country's largest lake at 72 square kilometers....

, El Salvador, heavily-armed men dressed in civilian clothing forced her into a car. An hour later, she was pushed alive from the car in front of hundreds of witnesses near a cemetery in Antiguo Cuscatlan

Antiguo Cuscatlan

Antiguo Cuscatlán is a municipality in the La Libertad department of El Salvador, southwest of San Salvador and to the east of Santa Tecla. Antiguo Cuscatlán is considered the richest and most urban municipality inside the "Metropolitan Area of San Salvador" as well as in the whole country.It...

, on the outskirts of San Salvador

San Salvador

The city of San Salvador the capital and largest city of El Salvador, which has been designated a Gamma World City. Its complete name is La Ciudad de Gran San Salvador...

. Four shots were fired at her and she died immediately.

On examination, her body showed signs of torture and burns, most likely caused by chemicals such as acid. The murdered teacher had been taken from an area that was the operational base for the Salvadoran Air Force

Air Force of El Salvador

The Salvadoran Air Force the air force of the Armed Forces of El Salvador, and is independent from the army and navy. It was formed on 20 March 1923 during a period of heavy interest in aviation in El Salvador. In 1947 after signing the treaty of Rio...

. General

General

A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....

Juan Rafael Bustillo

Juan Rafael Bustillo is a former General in the Air Force of El Salvador and is known for planning the murder of six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her daughter at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" in El Salvador on November 16 1989.Bustillo was born in San Miguel in 1935,...

, the then-head of the Salvadoran Air Force, has been implicated in the murder. The National Association of Salvadoran Educators (ANDES) has stated that General Bustillo had publicly threatened Gómez on previous occasions.

ANDES ordered a two-day shutdown of all educational activities to protest Gómez's murder, and demanded that the country's chief prosecutor begin proceedings to bring those responsible to justice. Leaders of the National Union of Salvadoran Workers (UNTS) also said they believed Bustillo had ordered the killing.

An organization known as the Movement for Bread, Work, Land and Liberty (MPTL) staged a protest, calling on the people to resist the new nation-wide wave of repression that marked the weeks following the Nationalist Republican Alliance

Nationalist Republican Alliance

The Nationalist Republican Alliance is a conservative political party in El Salvador. It was founded on September 30, 1981, by Roberto D'Aubuisson, in order to oppose the reformist military junta that was ruling El Salvador at the time...

's (ARENA) I electoral victory. The protesters ended their march at the vigil that was held for the murdered schoolteacher.

In its defense, the Salvadoran government denied any involvement, stating instead that the apparent intent behind Gómez' abduction and murder was primarily to discredit the Air Force (which is in charge of the area in which the murder occurred). Government officials added that Gómez had never been officially arrested by any government agency, and that she had never even been questioned by the authorities.

Legacy

After her death, her church commissioned a local artist to paint a wooden cross with scenes from Gómez's life, portraying her work among the poor women of El Salvador. Images of this cross have become internationally recognized, as they are used by churches and schools around the world to tell the story of Gómez's life and death.

Gómez was married to Salvador Amaya and had several grown children.

External links

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