On November 16, 1989, a shocking act of violence rocked the small Central American nation of El Salvador. In the middle of the night, members of the Salvadoran military descended upon the University of Central America and brutally murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper's daughter. The senselessness of this act reverberated in the United States, where tensions ran high over its role in financing El Salvador’s violent military regime.

Appalled by not just this attack but also the years of violence that preceded it, Congressman John Joseph Moakley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, spearheaded an investigation into the Salvadoran government’s handling of the murder case. Moakley was no stranger to the country’s troubles. In the years following the beginning of its civil war in 1979, Moakley began lobbying for changes to U.S. aid policies so that American funds would not end up in the hands of the perpetrators of human rights violations. While violence persisted, he championed for immigration reform that would allow Salvadorans to escape the war and enter (and stay in) the United States legally. During the course of the Jesuit murder investigation, Moakley began to focus on ways that the United States could help El Salvador achieve lasting peace, including through further aid reductions or prerequisites. He celebrated the signing of peace accords in early 1992, but continued to monitor the economic and political situation in El Salvador throughout the 1990s. He made his last trip to El Salvador in November 1999, less than two years before his death, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the murders and to visit the people whose welfare had become so important to him.

This site illuminates Congressman Joe Moakley’s career-defining efforts to bring peace and justice to El Salvador, a country whose violent civil war pitted a right-wing military government against left-wing guerilla rebels, with innocent civilians caught in between.