BEING PEACE: The Life and Work of Marta Benavides of El Salvador

• Main Author: Fenly, Leigh
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Digital USD 2009
• Subjects: peacebuilding; Women PeaceMakers; El Salvador; Peace and Conflict Studies; SCAR
• Online Access: https://digital.sandiego.edu/ipj-research/30; https://digital.sandiego.edu/context/ipj-research/article/1032/viewcontent/Marta_Benavides_El_Salvador.pdf

In the following pages, you will find narrative stories about a Woman PeaceMaker, along with additional information to provide a deep understanding of a contemporary conflict and one person’s journey within it. These complementary components include a brief biography of the peacemaker, a historical summary of the conflict, a timeline integrating political developments in the country with personal history of the peacemaker, a question-and-answer transcript of select interviews, and a table of best practices in peacebuilding as demonstrated and reflected on by the peacemaker during her time at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice. Marta Benavides of El Salvador is one of the surviving activists from the original group of human rights and peace advocates who began their work during the 1970s and the rising climate of repression. A leader of an ecumenical revolution focused on bringing peace to her country, the ordained pastor who chose “to live and not die for the revolution†has been bringing people at all levels – politics, the arts, law enforcement, religious, cultural, gender, agriculture and labor – together to defend human rights and develop a culture of peace. During the early 1980s, Benavides was head of the Ecumenical Committee for Humanitarian Aid (CEAH), a group sponsored by her close friend Archbishop Óscar Romero to support victims of violence. With the committee, she established the first refugee centers for people displaced by the violence. Almost two years after Romero’s assassination, Benavides went into exile and worked for the next decade from Mexico and the United States to bring an end to the war in her home country. With Ecumenical Ministries for Development and Peace, she developed programs to promote understanding and reconciliation among peoples and groups and end intra- and inter-family violence. She also built networks of international solidarity for a negotiated peaceful political solution to the conflict in El Salvador. In 1992 after the peace accords were ...