I met Maggi in El Salvador when we were both trying to get established, she as a human rights advocate and me as a journalist. We both moved into a house in Colonia Centroamerica that Mark Fazllolah had found. It was comfortable, in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, and best of all in easy walking distance of the Hotel Camino Real, the hub of the press in San Salvador. Mark had rented an ancient, and extremely noisy, telex machine from the phone company, which he used to send stories to the Daily Telegraph in London at ungodly hours. Other than that Mark was a sweetheart.
It wasn't an easy time to get Washington to pay attention to human rights abuses. The Reagan Administration has maneuvered an acceptable Notre Dame grad, Napoleon Duarte, into the presidency and was proudly proclaiming the full flowering of democracy in El Salvador. There wasn't much interest in the victims of our democratic allies, the Salvadoran military.
Plus navigating the Byzantine labyrinth of Salvadoran revolutionary politics could be daunting.
There were five revolutionary organizations, most of which had at one time split from another. The groups were theoretically united but in practice anything but. Human rights victims were often targeted by the army because they were suspected of being rebels or their collaborators. But gaining the confidence of one group might mean losing the trust of another, as the Salvadoran left expected gringos to play by the same rules they did. I remember many late nights in our kitchen, with Maggi venting about her frustrations over a glass of Concha y Toro. But she persevered and was gradually perceived by all as a professional and an honest broker. She also leapt into El Salvador without any solid job, having to create her work as she went. Eventually her perseverance also paid off when she was hired by the prestigious and well-respected Jesuit University, UCA, and created a position that allowed her to become of major advocate for human rights. She returned to her office when the UCA reopened following the trauma of army murder of the six Jesuit priests, including the head of the UCA and her direct boss, Father Segundo Montes. She kept reporting human rights abuses and helped provide the backup that allowed the Jesuits to pressure for prosecutions of those directly responsible although those who ordered by killings have never been charged.
Finally, shocked by the strength of the 1989 guerrilla offensive, the Bush One Administration realized the war was unwinnable and allowed serious peace talks that ended the civil war in 1992. Although the role of the Salvadoran military was curtailed by the peace agreement, judicial reform hadn't been as well thought out. Maggi applied her fine intellect to analyzing those problems and distilling lessons for the future.
I left El Salvador in 1991 for northern California and Maggi, later, settled in Washington. We were lucky to have her visit us several times when she was in California and the shock of her death leaves a big hole in our lives.
I'll always remember the time spent in our kitchen in Centroamerica, the breakfasts of french toast and Cafe Listo, Maggi baking chocolate chip cookies to take to the political prisoners in Mariona prison on visiting day, her coy smile as she teased you with a piece of political gossip you wanted and that she would ultimately surrender, Maggi and Jennifer returning from their early morning runs, her dedication to Maria Luz and her sons Eduardo and Juan Carlos, the live garrobo lizard that Maria Luz brought home and which scared me half to death when I walked into it in the living room. I remember the day of the 1986 earthquake, returning to our house to find it undamaged asides from some cracks but with the kitchen floor covered by glass from the jars the earthquake had shaken from the refrigerator. And, I, an earthquake-trained resident of California, went racing outside to shut off the gas, until, I realized that we didn't have any gas lines. We rented small propane tanks to run our stove like everybody else in our neighborhood. That night we all went to Linda, Jennifer and Nancy's house where our dinner in their garage was interrupted every fifteen or twenty minutes as we ran shrieking into the street, spooked by the strong aftershocks.
Ultimately, I'll remember Maggi's fine intellect, her dedication to defending the rights of those usually forgotten and ignored, her love for her son and her family and her loyalty to her friends. May you rest in peace, Maggie. We can be proud to have known you.
Chris Norton
cnorton5@pacbell.net
