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Home / Awards / Servitor Pacis Award / 2000 THE SERVITOR PACIS AWARD RECIPIENTS 2000 - José Isidro Rodriguez Mr. José Isidro Rodriguez was 13 year old when he drew a picture showing circling helicopters dropping red pellets over a landscape of mountains. It showed bodies flowing down a river, shooting soldiers and bleeding people. His mother died in what is known as the 1980 masacre of the Sumpul river, on El Salvador’s border with Honduras, during the country’s 12-year civil war. The boy, then 11, hit by bullets and shrapnes three times, found his way to safety and later to a refugee center in San Salvador where an American priest offered him the first slot in an orphanage he had started in Zaragoza, El Salvador. What Mr. Rodriguez suffered is now etched in El Salvador’s history. Today, Mr. Rodríguez, who grew up in the orphanage, is now the mayor Zaragoza. He is Zaragoza’s first Mayor from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the former guerrillas’ political party. He joined the group only after the fighters laid down their arms under peace accords signed in 1992. The war that killed 70,000 Salvadorans, Mr. Rodríguez said, left him with a visceral aversion to arms. It also infused him with a sense of civic duty. Hence, since his election as Mayor three years ago, Mr. Rodríguez has not had to look hard for work to do. Nearly half the town did not have electricity, and 70 percent of the residents lacked piped-in water. To undertake public works, Mr. Rodríguez raised taxes and improved their collection. Today, Zaragoza is a better place to live. Mr. Rodríguez’ aversion to arms and his sense of civic duty has given El Salvador a generation to improve the lot of most of its citizens--and bridge the persisting great divide between rich and poor--before social unrest, and the threat of more violence can set in again. In recognition of his outstanding contribution and untiring commitment to building a community of justice and peace in El Salvador, the Path to Peace Foundation is pleased to bestow upon Mr. José Isidro Rodríguez the title “Servitor Pacis”---Servant of Peace.
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