Ignacio Ellacuria 1930 – 1989

Ignacio Ellacuria Beascoechea was a Spanish-Salvadoran Jesuit philosopher, theologian, and the long-time rector of the Central American University in San Salvador. A pupil of Xavier Zubiri, whose unfinished writings he edited, he developed a philosophy of historical reality and a Latin American liberation theology that took the situation of the impoverished majorities of the continent as the privileged locus of philosophical and theological reflection. As rector he made the university an outspoken voice for negotiated peace in El Salvador's civil war. He was assassinated by an army unit, along with five Jesuit colleagues and the housekeeper and her daughter, in November 1989.