Background
Rosa Judith Cisneros was born in 1938.
Rosa Judith Cisneros was born in 1938.
She was active in the fields of human rights and family planning until her assassination in 1981. Her parents were Octavio Cisneros Ambrogi and Rosa del Carmen Aguilar de Cisneros. In 1971 she presented her doctoral thesis at the University of El Salvador.
Executive director of the Salvadoran Demographic Association (Asociación Demográfica Salvadoreña), a private organization concerned with family planning.
Legal director of CREDHO, an Episcopal programme designed to assist the rural poor through agricultural cooperatives and legal help. Legal adviser to the Salvadoran Communal Union, an organisation of peasants.
Lay leader in the Episcopal diocese of El Salvador. At the time of her death the Salvadoran Civil War was in progress.
Assassinations were frequent including that of Archbishop Romero in March 1980.
Rodolfo Viera, a leader of the Salvadoran Communal Union, had been murdered in San Salvador on 3 January 1981, together with two United States labour advisers. On the morning of 18 August 1981, Rosa Judith Cisneros was leaving her house in a northern suburb of San Salvador when a carload of men halted her and dragged her to their car. An eyewitness reportedly saw her shot at close range with a submachine gun.
The men did not identify themselves, nor did any group take responsibility for the killing.
Rosa Judith Cisneros received the John Nevin Sayre award of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship posthumously in 1985. Her name has been bestowed upon an Episcopal parish and upon the Our Little Roses mission for abused and abandoned girls in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.