MISSIONER NEWSLETTER – Fall 2024

Sarah Bueter, El Salvador

In September, environmental defender Juan López was murdered while returning home from church in the city of Tocoa in Honduras. López was a member of the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods, which advocates preserving local forests and rivers.

TOCOA, HONDURAS—This our season of creation calls for a reflection on Juan López, a renowned environmentalist and pastoral agent, who was murdered on Sept. 14, 2024 while leaving his church in Tocoa, Honduras.

In response, the SHARE Foundation—which supports and accompanies the people of El Salvador and Honduras in their struggle for social justice and sustainable development—organized an emergency delegation to meet Juan’s family and community in Tocoa from Sept. 21-28.

Having known the community for several years, I joined the delegation in solidarity, representing the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.

I knew Juan since 2018, but as a leader so frequently thrust into the spotlight, he didn’t interact much with me. We shared occasional Masses, town hall meetings, and house visits with him and his San Isidro Labrador parish. The last time we spoke was in 2022, during my thesis research on extractive industries and theology. Juan and I shared Mass together and afterward a big hug over tamales and sweet coffee.

The murder of López is the most recent in a series of violent attacks against activists in the region, with three other members of his group killed last year. The organization has faced ongoing threats and harassment due to its opposition to mining and hydroelectric projects.

Juan was a person with a certain kind of interior density, who knows exactly in Whom he is rooted. Perhaps it was from this deep interiority that he could so easily unite faith with justice. Juan could just as easily write canticles of creation as he could denounce a mining mega-project or do pastoral work.

In September, I visited his community reeling with grief and very real fear. This is what they shared: how he celebrated with them, how he appeared exhausted on their stoops in the middle of the night after a long day of travel, how they loved him, how they fed him soup and tortillas while he slept a few meager hours in a hammock before returning to his labor. People pulled out photos: Juan with their arms wrapped around him, Juan celebrating a first Communion, Juan embraced by his two daughters and wife.

There was an integrity in how Juan lived as a father, husband, pastoral agent, community leader, elected councilor, poet. He could unite the intellectual without losing its roots in reality. He could denounce evil in its manifest forms and equally celebrate life in its quotidian beauty.

For someone who looked death in the face so often (experiencing death threats, bribery attempts, slander campaigns, illegal imprisonment, arrest warrants), it’s a wonder Juan was never corrupted by death, never became embittered, resentful, despairing.

That is what stands out most about Juan: he was rooted in something profoundly good. In the world of social justice, I have met many angry people. Sometimes peacemakers are affected by the very forces of death they try to overcome, until their peacemaking, becoming hostile and resentful, resembles that which they fight against. That was not Juan.

Yes, Juan denounced. Injustice, corruption, extractives. But even more so, Juan announced goodness. He affirmed life.

Henri Nouwen writes, “[O]nly a loving heart, a heart that continues to affirm life at all times and places, can say ‘no’ to death without being corrupted by it. A heart that loves friends and enemies is a heart that calls forth life and lifts up life to be celebrated. It is a heart that refuses to dwell in death because it is a heart always enchanted with the abundance of life.”

Surrounded by injustice, corruption, narco-trafficking, and impunity, Juan refused to dwell in death. Instead, he celebrated life. He was an evangelist. His poetry, homilies, radio broadcasts, town hall speeches, at their core, read like doxologies. He spoke of justice for campesinos, nonviolence, ethical participation in civic life, solidarity in social justice, and care for creation.

Proclaiming justice before an illegal mining project, within a climate of weak rule of law, narco-trafficking, corruption, and impunity, is perilous. Global Witness—an organization that investigates and campaigns to prevent natural resource-related conflict and corruption and associated environmental and human rights abuses—documents (again) the growing number of environmentalists assassinated around the world in 2023. The reality of the poor in 21st-century Latin America is the reality of extractivism; to be poor is to be plundered of resources for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful countries like our own. For those who defend the poor, death is a foreseeable reality.

Long before his martyrdom, Juan had already given up his life: he was already living in Christ Resurrected when they killed him. Only now are we coming to terms with what Juan already knew.

To be on the side of the poor like Christ is to be crushed. Crushed, but not defeated.

This is what Juan leaves us, what love looks like, a love greater than the preservation of one’s self. It is a celebration of life in abundance, and it is rooted in integrity and tenderness, in very small things that are most often overlooked, in acts considered too mundane to make a difference, or in a people too small to be taken seriously. And it will win out. Love will win out.

¡Juan López, presente!

Sarah’s reflection for the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns:

Solidarity with the Community of Tocoa, Honduras, in the wake of the murder of Juan López

To stay informed on the situation facing the Santa Maria Five where Sarah lives in El Salvador, and be ready to respond should these environmental leaders not be acquitted.

Take the Pledge! Solidarity with Salvadoran Water Defenders

For more information on environmentalists assassinated globally:

GLOBAL WITNESS ANNUAL DEFENDERS REPORT 2023/2024

Please support my mission in El Salvador with a donation through the link below.

I also invite you to walk with me as a “COMPANION IN MISSION.” Companions in Mission are friends and generous donors who give financial gifts on a regular (usually monthly) basis. For more information, visit Become a Companion in Mission. Thank you so much for your generosity!