WASHINGTON (ABP) — A Baptist peacemaker who lobbied Congress to stop the United States’ funding of one side in El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war has died.
Amparo Lopez Palacios, 69, discovered only weeks before her Nov. 14 death that she was suffering from advanced lung cancer. She died peacefully at a Washington hospice surrounded by her husband and three children.
 Amparo Lopez Palacios died Nov. 14 after a short bout with lung cancer. (Family photo) |
The Palacios were forced to flee El Salvador in 1989 — under U.N. troop protection — and they moved to Washington. There, the activists lobbied Congress to end aid to a Salvadoran military responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of civilians through death squads that terrorized the countryside for a dozen years.
Some of the war’s most infamous acts included the March 1980 assassination of Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot through the heart while celebrating mass two months after asking President Jimmy Carter to cease military aid to El Salvador. Later that year, forces allied with the government raped and murdered three American nuns and a laywoman.
As executive director of the Washington office of Debate for Peace, Amparo Palacios lobbied members of Congress to end the United States’ role as a silent partner to El Salvador’s military. U.S. aid finally ended after a Salvadorean National Guard death squad killed six Jesuit priests in 1989.
The Palacios were present at the United Nations General Assembly when El Salvador’s warring factions signed a peace treaty in 1992.
Edgar Palacios is now associate pastor of Christian education at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington and a mission pastor for the Latino community. Calvary’s senior pastor, Amy Butler, remembered Amparo Palacios as a “brave, courageous voice for justice,” a “trusted friend” and the “funniest person at the party.”
Palacios’ untimely death “leaves a huge hole in the Baptist peacemaking community,” according to a statement from the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.
“Her lifelong work for peace rooted in justice took her from the war-torn streets of El Salvador to the halls of the U.S. Congress where she advocated tirelessly for policies that would support the safety and healing of the Salvadorian people,” the group said. “Her deep personal gentleness belied the immense violence she had experienced throughout her life.”
The BPFNA remembered Palacios as “a friend to all who struggled” and called her life “a lasting witness to all of us who would work for peace.”
Miguel De La Torre, associate professor of social ethics at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, called her life “a cause for celebration.”
“In the midst of satanic forces that devoured the lives of Salvadorians during the 1980s, she lived the gospel message,” said De La Torre, an ordained Baptist minister. “Not only did she fearlessly stand against the thugs of El Salvador, but also the powers and principalities in D.C. who provided the resources to the forces of death.”
“The life she lived is a testimony to the liberating good news,” De La Torre said. “May she be an example to all of us.”
Since 1996 Palacios had been a family support worker at the Family Place, a drop-in center that serves expectant parents and families with small children.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.