Salvadoran soldier arrested in L.A.

LOS ANGELES – Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos was a decorated, American-trained officer in the Salvadoran army.

But for the last year, the 43-year-old toiled away as a janitor at a West L.A.-area motel, a man with a secret who was always looking over his shoulder, his common-law wife said.

His clandestine existence came to an end Wednesday, when federal authorities announced his arrest – branding him a human-rights violator who was in the U.S. illegally.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Guevara Cerritos was among nine Salvadoran officers and soldiers implicated in one of the most notorious massacres in El Salvador’s history: the 1989 death-squad murders of six Jesuit priests.

Guevara Cerritos was convicted in El Salvador for his role in the slayings. In 1993, he was granted a pardon as part of a general amnesty that occurred after the country’s 12-year civil war.

His wife, Eusebia Mejia, 45, said her husband could never escape the shadow of the massacre and fled to the United States in hopes of getting a new start.

But when he arrived in Los Angeles – home to more than 250,000 Salvadorans – he quickly realized he would not find peace. Fearing that someone would recognize him on the streets of Los Angeles, he kept his head down and rarely went out.

“He was a real homebody,” Mejia said. “For him, it was from home to work, and from work to home. And every Sunday to church.”

But the strategy apparently didn’t work: Federal authorities said it was a tip from the public that put them on Guevara Cerritos’ trail.

He was taken into custody last Thursday as part of an effort by U.S. immigration agents to catch and deport human-rights violators.

“We will not allow the United States to be a place of refuge for aliens seeking to escape a violent criminal past,” said Robert Schoch, a special agent for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Los Angeles.

Guevara Cerritos’ arrest jolted Los Angeles’ Salvadoran community, many of whom fled human-rights abuses of the civil war.

“This goes to show that no one escapes God’s justice,” said Aquiles Magana of Carecen, an El Salvadoran immigrant rights organization.

The killing of the priests created a worldwide furor in part because Guevara Cerritos and the other assailants received training from the U.S. government, even traveling for courses at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.

The bloodshed occurred before dawn, Nov. 16, 1989, at the rectory of El Salvador’s Jesuit-run university. All but one of the priests were in nightclothes and slippers when they were shot. A dormitory cook and her teenage daughter were also killed.

Salvadoran courts ultimately ruled that Guevara Cerritos did not fire any of the shots that killed the priests, but they did find he was part of the conspiracy. He was convicted of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism and placed under house arrest for two years.

But when the amnesty set him and many other army officials free, Mejia said, his life actually took a turn for the worse.

She said Guevara Cerritos lived in fear that someone would eventually seek revenge in El Salvador. Every year, the priest killings were re-created in his hometown of San Salvador, where effigies with name tags of the nine soldiers and officers – including him – were burned.

“He didn’t come to the U.S. to hide from justice. He came for asylum, trying to seek refuge,” said his attorney, Fernando Romo.

“He said he was always looking behind his back, always concerned people would recognize him. Now he’s definitely worried they’re going to send him back.”

Guevara Cerritos is being held at a detention facility, awaiting a deportation hearing.

Romo said Guevara-Cerritos’ training as a lieutenant in the Salvadoran army helped him cross the rugged Arizona desert last year with the help of a coyote.

Mejia said the U.S. government has the wrong idea about Guevara Cerritos. Rather than being a human-rights abuser, she described him as a loving father figure to her children and gentle, God-fearing man. They lived together in Watts.

His attorney also disputed the government contention that a tip led them to Guevara Cerritos. He claims his client was trying to seek asylum and that someone in the government matched his name using the Internet and informed ICE.