Bill Ford is the older brother of Ita Ford. He works as a lawyer on Wall Street in New York City. In the past 10 years, he has been instrumental in pushing for an investigation of the murder of his sister and the other three women, and in advocating for the concerns of their families. Ford was interviewed in New York by Joe Nangle, OFM, executive assistant at Sojourners.
-- The Editors
Sojourners: It has been 10 years since your sister Ita and the other three church women were martyred in El Salvador. What was it like for you in the early days of the tragedy?
Bill Ford: My youngest child, John Francis, was born on November 29, 1980. We had brought him home from the hospital the day before we got the first call from [then-president of the Maryknoll Sisters] Melinda Roper. My wife, our other five kids, and I were all in John's room, admiring him, when the call came.
Melinda Roper told us that the women were missing, that we should prepare ourselves for the worst. I was stunned, because you just don't think anything is going to happen to Americans in a foreign country. Obviously that was a very naive view of the world.
One of the first things I did was call Robert White in El Salvador, at the suggestion of Melinda Roper. And I got through to him -- it was the first time in my life that I'd ever spoken to an American ambassador. White told me that there was probably less than a 15 percent chance that the women were still alive.
But he said that if they were, they were being held by the army or some government-related group, and it would take a tremendous outcry to have them freed. He said that he was doing everything he could there and that we should do what we could. So I spent the next 24 to 36 hours on the phone. I called everyone I knew and asked them to make calls.
And then we got the second call saying that the women were dead.
It's hard to say in a few words or a few paragraphs what the 10 years have meant. In many respects I know Ita better now than I did 10 years ago, as I meet people whose lives she touched.
Ita has changed in the 10 years from being a younger sister. I always felt that I knew better because I was her older brother. But it's become obvious to me that she was the giant and I was the mouse, or the flea, in the relationship.
The violence of Ita's death was particularly hard for my daughters and my son to accept, and some other young people I know. In many respects it was easier to talk about Ita's death outside the family than inside the family. When you were talking about Ita's death to a group of strangers, there was some detachment, and it was easier to handle. It was very difficult in the beginning, for the first four or five years, to talk about Ita's death when you got home and shut the door. But I think we're working our way through that.
My sister and her children still want to hold Ita very privately. They get very upset when they hear Ita described as a martyr, because in one sense this makes her public property and takes her out of the family. I see Ita as a sign, as a symbol, as a light to be used to help the Salvadoran people.
But there's something about a violent death that doesn't go away. In one way or another I think about this every day. It's not something that I'd say I dwell on every day; but something happens every day to remind me.
Sojourners: How has your life changed as a result of Ita's death?
Ford: First of all, I realize now that 10 years ago I was a very naive person. I read The New York Times and shook my head as I read about various killings or human rights violations around the world, but they seemed very remote from my life. I guess Ita, among other things, served the purpose of being the family conscience: Since Ita was doing good, the rest of us could go on living our own lives, which were pretty insular.
In the 1970s, I was busy raising a family, starting a law firm, getting a legal practice off the ground. I was substantially untouched by the world around me, other than as I bumped up against it in the practice of law. But Ita's death, and then a trip to El Salvador and the subsequent conversations with the State Department -- which could be out of a novel by Kafka -- opened my eyes to the fact that the United States is such a powerful force in the world. And it is really up to us whether or not this powerful force is going to be for good or for evil. Clearly this powerful force in El Salvador has been a force for evil.
I also did not realize how deep the fear of communism was in so many people. As I went and spoke after Ita's death, particularly as I spoke to people of approximately my own age and class, most of them, of course, were sympathetic with the fact that my sister had been killed. But most of them just regarded the Salvadoran situation as a communist threat. They felt that while it was regrettable that the women were killed, we still have to contain communism.
I think that a tremendous amount of evil has been done in the world in the name of "anti" -- whatever the "anti" is. And certainly anti-communism as a belief, or as an ideology, has been a cover for a tremendous amount of evil.
El Salvador was a place where the Reagan administration drew the line in the sand. There was an attitude that goes back 50 or 100 years: Central and South America are our "backyard" and we should be able to control what happens there. Talking to the people in the State Department, talking to the people in the embassy, it was clear that they saw this struggle as an East-West struggle, as a struggle to contain communism. And the fact that our support of an army in El Salvador was causing such death and destruction and sorrow never seemed to penetrate their consciousness.
People in the embassy went down there with preconceived ideas. They spent very little time out in the field talking to Salvadorans, because, as they would tell you -- and they were correct -- it's a dangerous place. Most of the conceptions that the United States Embassy has of El Salvador are gotten from a particular class of people who have an interest in the status quo or from reading Salvadoran newspapers.
One of the most ironic things is that the U.S. Embassy will continuously deride religious groups, particularly North American religious men and women, as naive. But these "naive" people are out living with the people. They are suffering with the people, they're accompanying the people in this time of terrible tragedy, and they are the ones with the best information and intelligence, because they are right there in the middle of it. The people who live in this bunker that is the U.S. Embassy, who get filtered or selected information, are the people who are being misled and are naive. It's hard to make them realize it.
Sojourners: Speaking about the embassy and the State Department, you said before that some of your conversations with them were almost Kafkaesque. Could you give an example?
Ford: In the beginning the State Department wanted the families to hire a lawyer, because they said that the Salvadoran judicial system was weak and corrupt. They said we should be prepared to pay the lawyer a fee of between $150,000 and $250,000. There would be three components to the fee: one-third would be a fee to the lawyer; one-third would be a bribe to the presiding judge; and one-third would be the relocation expenses of the lawyer, who would have to flee the country after the trial. They made no bones about this. The fellow with whom we had some of these discussions was [then-Assistant Secretary for Interamerican Affairs] Langhorn Motley. The families refused to do this, principally because it was an effort to shift the responsibility for the case from the United States government to the families.
Next they wanted us to approach [San Salvador] Archbishop [Arturo] Rivera y Damas and ask him to hire a lawyer. They said -- this is unbelievable -- the diocese had an interest because the van in which the women were riding, which was destroyed by the soldiers, belonged to the diocese. It was Langhorn Motley who said this. The diocese of San Salvador, which doesn't have two nickels to rub together, was somehow supposed to raise $150,000 to hire a lawyer. At that point, at that particular meeting, I broke down.
Motley wasn't a bad person in the way that I think [his successor] Elliott Abrams was malevolent. But he permitted discussion of some of the stupidest things. This was the kind of interchange we were having with our own government.
Sojourners: As a lawyer, you became very involved in pressing for an investigation of the murders. How do you feel now about the case?
Ford: The five guardsmen who were on the scene, and who probably pulled the triggers, were sentenced in May of 1984 to 30 years in jail. (There's no capital punishment in El Salvador.) However, the people who ordered and directed the crime -- I think the phrase is the "intellectual authors" of this crime -- have never been prosecuted. And the chances of them being prosecuted are obviously diminishing with the passage of time.
Nobody whom I have ever spoken to in El Salvador -- outside of the United States Embassy -- believes that five low-ranking guardsmen would take it upon themselves to kill four North American missionaries. It flies in the face of common sense. Our own government is not interested in pursuing this investigation. Before the trial in May 1984, when the families were pressing for an investigation into who ordered this crime, [then-U.S. Ambassador Thomas] Pickering told us to be patient, that they wanted to do nothing to disturb the trial, that once the trial was over there would be an investigation into higher orders. And of course it never happened.
Sojourners: In terms of the case, it seems from what you're saying that you feel that it's at a dead end, that there will never be a prosecution of the "intellectual authors" of the crime.
Ford: Not until the United States government comes to a realization that the struggle in El Salvador is not between the Left and the Right, or between Marxists and moderate Republicans. It's a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. There has to be some kind of a sea change in the U.S. policy.
[Salvadoran President Alfredo] Cristiani is now touted as a moderate. It has to be remembered that Cristiani joined the ARENA Party in 1982 at the height of the death squad murders. I have never heard any statement attributed to Cristiani in which he denounces or distances himself from [extreme right-wing leader Roberto] D'Aubuisson. Cristiani, as far as I can see, is just a face man for a murder machine.
The decade of the '80s began with the murder of [Archbishop Oscar] Romero in March of 1980 and the murder of the church women in December of 1980. And it ended in November 1989 with the murder of the six Jesuits and their two co-workers. In one sense I think there's been progress, because the deaths of the women focused attention on El Salvador. But in another sense, the murders of the Jesuits by the army are an almost complete rerun, if you will, of the deaths of the women.
With the murders of the church women, as with the murders of the Jesuits, the U.S. Embassy sought to soft-pedal and divert attention from the roles of the officers in the Salvadoran army. In both cases the U.S. Embassy has acted as an apologist and a public relations arm of the Salvadoran army, explaining to the outside world what a difficult situation the Salvadoran army finds itself in. And I think that both tragedies confirm the immorality and the bankruptcy of the United States policy.
We are supporting a machine which every observer agrees has killed at least 40,000 -- and maybe 80,000 -- of its own people.
Sojourners: Reflecting back 10 years, why do you think Ita was killed?
Ford: I think that Ita was killed to threaten other men and women religious who were working in the country. The Salvadoran government does not want witnesses to what it is doing. Over a 10-year period, it has harassed to greater or lesser degrees all the members of outside religious communities who come in -- because these people can go back to their own countries and say what's going on.
Sojourners: How often have you been to El Salvador?
Ford: I've been there seven times. I made my last visit this summer.
I go there for a number of reasons. First of all, it's good for me to go at least once a year to visit Ita's grave, just to get a sense of renewal. And it's good to talk to the people whom Ita knew and with whom she worked, because it recharges my batteries.
And I also go because I work with the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, which is trying to reconstruct, or give advice in the reconstruction of, the Salvadoran justice system. The justice system is in a shambles, because all the judges feel threatened by the army and will not willingly take on cases involving the army. They are threatened, they are ill-equipped, they are unprepared, and between 20 and 30 judges have been murdered in El Salvador. In fact the first two judges who worked on the church women's case were murdered.
Sojourners: What do you believe is the continuing legacy of Ita, Maura, Jean, and Dorothy?
Ford: I have met dozens of people, both in El Salvador and in the United States, who have told me that their lives have been changed after hearing about the deaths of the women. In some cases it's almost like the death of [President John F.] Kennedy. People of a certain age can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.
The women are a sign, a reminder, an inspiration. Their deaths have seized the feelings and the emotions of a lot of people. And their lives and deaths are an important symbol in the debate as to what should be done about El Salvador. It's important to draw attention to what we should be sending to such regions. The four women represent the best that America sends out, and guns and bombs represent the worst.
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