The people of San Salvador have processed every November 16 for the past 20 years to remember and honor the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter who were murdered by the Salvadoran military. In a remarkable turnabout, the government bestowed the country’s highest award on the murdered Jesuits. The right-wing governments that have run the Central American country since its civil war always preferred to keep the case at a safe distance in the past. The new government led by a former journalist from a leftist party made an abrupt, 180-degree turn.

“We want this to be an act of recovering our collective memory,” President Mauricio Funes said in the ceremony. “For me, this act means [we] pull back a heavy veil of darkness and lies to let in the light of justice and truth. We begin to cleanse our house of this recent history.”

Funes was educated by the Jesuits; he presented golden medallions to relatives of the priests “for extraordinary service to the nation.”

The big surprise of the day came from the minister of defense who said the army was prepared to ask for forgiveness and that he was willing to open military archives to judicial investigators. For more on this story, see the account from the Los Angeles Times.