Segundo Montes
Encyclopedia
Segundo Montes, S.J. is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, May 15, 1933 - San Salvador
San Salvador
The city of San Salvador the capital and largest city of El Salvador, which has been designated a Gamma World City. Its complete name is La Ciudad de Gran San Salvador...

, El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

, November 16, 1989) was a scholar, philosopher, educator, sociologist and Jesuit priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

. Segundo Montes was a close friend and colleague of the scholars Ignacio Martín-Baró
Ignacio Martín-Baró
Ignacio Martín-Baró, S.J. was a scholar, social psychologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest...

 and Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" , a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965...

, all of whom were murdered with Montes by the Salvadoran army, along with three other colleagues and two other employees (see The murdered scholars of UCA).

Biography

Segundo Montes grew up in Valladolid
Valladolid
Valladolid is a historic city and municipality in north-central Spain, situated at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, and located within three wine-making regions: Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Cigales...

, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, where he also went to secondary school until 1950. On August 15, 1950 he entered the novitiate
Novitiate
Novitiate, alt. noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a novice monastic or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether they are called to the religious life....

 of the Society of Jesus
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 in Orduña
Orduña
Orduña is a town and municipality of 4,057 inhabitants located in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country, in the North of Spain....

. After a year there he moved to Santa Tecla
Santa Tecla, El Salvador
Santa Tecla is a municipality in the La Libertad department of El Salvador. It is the capital of the department of La Libertad.The city was named after Saint Thecla who was a saint of the early Christian Church, and a reported follower of Paul of Tarsus in the 1st century AD...

 in El Salvador under the mentorship of Miguel Elizondo, who described him as an adolescent that hit the football so hard against the wall of the Iglesia El Carmen
Iglesia El Carmen
In 1855, one year after the city of Nueva San Salvador was founded, Colonel León Castillo started constructing a church dedicated to the Lady of El Carmen. León Castillo had been active in armies under the command of General Francisco Morazán....

 that he rattled the roof tiles.

When he fulfilled his studies in the novitiate in 1952, he followed the steps of other Jesuit students in Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

 and moved to Quito
Quito
San Francisco de Quito, most often called Quito , is the capital city of Ecuador in northwestern South America. It is located in north-central Ecuador in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes mountains...

 to study classical
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

 at the Catholic University. In 1954 he began studies in philosophy, fulfilling his licenciatura (licenciate) in 1957. He then returned to San Salvador to teach at the school Externado San José
Externado San José
Externado San José is a private and Catholic school run by the Society of Jesus in San Salvador, El Salvador.-Brief history:A recognized Catholic and private institution of basic and secondary education run by the Jesuits. It was founded in 1921 and operated as a school for boys until the 1970s,...

. In 1960 he returned to university to study theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

. He started in Oña
Oña
Oña is a municipality located in the province of Burgos, Castile and León, Spain. According to the 2009 census , the municipality has a population of 1,256 inhabitants.It is home to the monastery of San Salvador de Oña....

, where he lived for a year. He later moved to Innsbruck
Innsbruck
- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...

 where he completed the three remaining years of studies. He was ordained a priest July 25, 1963. He returned to Externado San José as a teacher and was naturalised as a Salvadoran citizen.

Segundo Montes spent most of his time in the school Externado San José or in Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA). He worked for two periods in Externado; from 1957 to 1960 and 1966 to 1976. He taught physics for many years, and he was responsible for the laboratories in the school. He was a Prefect of Discipline and Administrative Director. In between 1973 and 1976 he was Rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...

 of Externado San José, which was precisely a moment when the school was going through a deep identity crisis. The consequences of the Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...

 and the Episcopal Conference of Medellín had made Externado San José express a preference for the poor and to prioritize education that contributed to modify the social differences in El Salvador. This sort of discourse was not well received by the Salvadoran elite
Elite
Elite refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence...

s which had been traditionally served by Externado San José. Segundo Montes handled this crisis in a constructive way. He was very popular amongst students and he had many friends. This changed however as the political environment in El Salvador became more polarized later in the seventies. He was never singled out in propagandistic
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

 government pamphlets against critical intellectuals, until towards the end of his life, when his name started figuring in the lists of Jesuits that were accused of being revolutionaries. His name was commonly the third one after Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" , a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965...

 and Ignacio Martín-Baró
Ignacio Martín-Baró
Ignacio Martín-Baró, S.J. was a scholar, social psychologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest...

.

Gradually Segundo Montes started assuming more responsibilities in UCA, as a lecturer in social sciences. For a period he worked as a Dean
Dean (education)
In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...

 in the Faculty
Faculty (university)
A faculty is a division within a university comprising one subject area, or a number of related subject areas...

 of Natural Sciences. To prepare himself for academia
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...

 he travelled to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, and in 1978 he completed a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in Social Anthropology
Social anthropology
Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...

 in Universidad Complutense in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. His dissertation was about "compadrazgo" relationships in El Salvador. His field work included interviews that he performed on week ends in the western part of the country.

He returned to teach Sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 in UCA, and since 1980 he was the head of the Department
Academic department
An academic department is a division of a university or school faculty devoted to a particular academic discipline. This article covers United States usage at the university level....

 of Political Sciences and Sociology. In between 1978 and 1982 he was a member of the Editorial Board in the academic journal
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...

 Estudios Centroamericanos (ECA). He was also a member of the Editorial Board of the Boletín de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales and the journal Realidad Económico Social. He was a regular contributor to these journals. He also gave many lectures for national institutes, colleges, worker's unions, cooperatives and political parties. He was also a member of the Board of directors in UCA. He headed the team of lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

s that put together UCA's law study program. Since 1984 he headed the research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

 project on Salvadoran refugees. Toward the end of the 1980s he was the managing director of the human rights institution he founded: Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la UCA (IDHUCA), and he was preparing the program for the master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in sociology before his death.

Segundo Montes was a prolific writer. He left behind a series of articles and books. Since 1982 he wrote at least one book a year. He wrote mostly in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, and so far none of his works originally in Spanish have been translated to English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. However, his research on refugees, displaced people and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 made him well-known internationally. He visited Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 on repeated occasions to testify in the corresponding committees in the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 to defend the rights of Salvadoran refugees. His last trip to Washington was in the beginning of November 1989. In one of the halls of Congress the organisation CARECEN (an organisation for the assistance of refugees), granted him a prize for defending the rights of Salvadorans.

Segundo Montes' Social Anthropology

Segundo Montes did research and wrote on social stratification
Social stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...

, land ownership, the possibilities for democracy and the military. His work on these issues is still a dominant influence on the theoretical frameworks employed by researchers to analyse Salvadoran reality. He is a common reference for studies in power distribution and the effects of emigration on Salvadoran society. Among his published articles was an analysis of economic, political, and other motives for Salvadoran emigration to the United States, addressing claims by the United States government that Salvadoran immigrants were economic refugees and thus did not qualify for political asylum.

The political implications of Montes' commitment to his ideas met strong opposition from the conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 religious and political forces in El Salvador. This opposition led to Montes' murder by the Salvadoran Army
Salvadoran Army
The Salvadoran Army or Ejército Salvadoreño is the land branch and largest of the Military of El Salvador. In 2006 the government of El Salvador approached the Israeli ambassador to El Salvador seeking assistance in modernizing its army.-The Football War:...

 in 1989 at his residence in UCA along with five other fellow Jesuit priests (among them Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" , a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965...

 and Ignacio Martín-Baró
Ignacio Martín-Baró
Ignacio Martín-Baró, S.J. was a scholar, social psychologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest...

) and two employees (see The murdered scholars of UCA). Their murder marked a turning point in the Salvadoran civil war (see History of El Salvador
History of El Salvador
The history of El Salvador has been a history of struggle against conquistadors, empires, dictatorships and world powers to be free. El Salvador was one of the regions that resisted the Spanish invasion led by Pedro de Alvarado who had to fight Atlantica and retreat several times back to Guatemala...

). On the one hand it increased international pressures on the Salvadoran government to sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords
Chapultepec Peace Accords
The Chapultepec Peace Accords brought peace to El Salvador in 1992 after more than a decade of wrenching civil war.The treaty was negotiated by representatives of the Salvadoran government, the rebel movement FMLN, and political parties, with observers from the Roman Catholic Church and United...

 with the guerrilla
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

.

See also

  • Segundo Montes, Morazán
    Segundo Montes, Morazán
    Segundo Montes, Morazán is a community in Morazán Department, El Salvador, formed in 1990 by repatriated refugees who had fled the country's civil war...

    — a community established by former refugees, in memory of Montes

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK