Abstract

Mysterious Death of Fr. Carney

Last September 19, the Honduran armed forces staged an elaborate press conference in Nueva Palestina, a ramshackle jungle settlement in Olancho province, just thirty miles from the Nicaraguan border, to announce that its counterinsurgency forces, had liquidated a ninety-six- strong guerrilla column. Not all had died in battle; ten were said to have starved in the jungle after military intelligence detected them and the army cut off their food supply. Among the latter was a 58-year-old American Jesuit from St. Louis, James Francis Carney. Honduran Army also produced three emaciated "deserters" to fill in the details of the by-now familiar Sandinista conspiracy. The foreign journalists, shuttled into Nueva Palestina aboard army helicopters, were skeptical. The first person to comment on the missing facts was the soft-spoken Superior of the Jesuits in Honduras, the Spanish-born José Maria Tojeira, whose doubts coincided with those of the Carney family in the United States.