2 start fund in name of slain Jesuit

If Rev. Ignacio Martin-Baro had not been killed that morning in1989 -- dragged out of bed and executed by troops of El Salvador'sarmy -- he would have been at the end of an experimental computerlink to Boston College, tapping messages from his campus in SanSalvador in the dawn of the Internet age.

Father Martin-Baro was a Spanish-born priest, one of six Jesuitsat the University of Central America who were shot by soldiers of theUS-trained Atlacatl Battalion, along with their housekeeper and herdaughter. It was one of the more shocking atrocities in the laterstages of El Salvador's 12-year civil war.

Father Martin-Baro's memory lives on in a fund organized byBrinton Lykes and Ramsay Liem, the two Boston College psychologistswho would have "logged" onto an experimental computer conference todiscuss their common interests in the hidden injuries of war.

Like its namesake, the Ignacio Martin-Baro Fund for Mental Healthand Human Rights bridges social activism and academic psychology,supporting the victims of political oppression in nearly a dozencountries, mostly in Latin America, but ranging from South Korea toSouth Africa.

The grass-roots projects supported by the fund are grounded in anamalgam of psychology and political analysis that Liem calls"cultural and community psychology."

According to its mission statement, the Martin-Baro Fund "fosterspsychological well-being, social consciousness, and community-basedaction in response to violence, repression and social injustice."Lykes said this approach melds the treatment of individuals inwar-torn societies with analysis of political conditions, "drawingconclusions, taking sides."

For psychologists, this is an unusual approach, said Liem, whotrained as a clinical psychologist but in the 1970s became frustratedwith what seemed to him an excessive focus on the "illnesses" ofindividuals, disconnected from social forces.

In the mid-1980s Lykes and Liem met psychologists from Chile,Argentina and Guatemala who were working with the victims ofpolitical imprisonment and torture during Latin America's "dirtywars," and with the surviving family members of persons who had "beendisappeared."

Liem said Father Martin-Baro, a university vice rector and theleading analyst of public opinion in El Salvador, had been trying toformulate "an understanding of the problem as well as of thetreatment of the problem . . . an approach focused not just on theperson who is the casualty, but on the continuing conditions ofviolence."

The practice of analyzing a troubled society, drawing conclusions,taking sides, did not endear Father Martin-Baro and his colleagues tothe Salvadoran government and the army, which was fighting for itslife in November 1989 against an offensive by rebels of the leftistFarabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The murder of the Jesuits at the University of Central Americabecame a rallying point for a loose international network of culturalpsychologists. The Martin-Baro Fund was established in the SanFrancisco and Boston areas, and was then incorporated under theumbrella of the New York-based Funding Exchange, which supportsprogressive social projects.

Among projects supported by the fund last year were a women'scommittee in Chajul, Guatemala; a health center in San Salvador; twoprograms in Lima; a women's center in Belgrade; and a humanrights center in Seoul.

This year the fund expects to distribute about $55,000. Grantsare small, in the $5,000 to $7,000 range, but often crucial, Liemsaid: "A lot of the organizations we support would never getanything. They're just out of the loop."

Lykes said "the Jesuit connection" at Boston College has beenimportant. The BC president, Rev. Donald J. Monan, played a role inpushing the US government to press for an investigation of themassacre in which Father Martin-Baro died. Lykes cited the"willingness of the institution to take a position on education forjustice."

In a recent ceremony the fund honored MIT anthropologist MartinDiskin, whose research centers on the plight of Salvadoran peasants.Accepting the award, Diskin spoke of the "hidden injuries of being apoor Salvadoran. Hidden wounds do not disappear as awareness fadesin the media," Diskin said.