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It was with deep sadness that I learned of the death of Sally O’Neill Sanchez who has died aged 68 in April 2019, following a horrific motor accident in Guatemala. Also killed in that accident were her colleagues Ana Paula Hernandez, Daniel Tuc and Ana Velasquez.
Sally worked for the charity Trócaire, which she joined as head of programmes, aged just 28, in 1978, and which saw her engage in a consistent commitment to human development and human rights in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, in a career which lasted until her retirement in 2015. Deeply engaged with, especially, Central America, she married Honduran marine scientist Roger Sanchez in the mid-1980s, and in recent years had continued her advocacy, lecturing at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras in Tecugigalpa, where she was based from 1995 with her family, and from where she directed Trócaire’s activities in all of Latin America until her retirement.
The car accident happened when she was once again on a mission related to human rights, with colleagues from the Global Fund for Human Rights, and the Mayan People’s Congress of Guatemala.
The radio show features some extracts from her funeral mass from her friend President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins which is why the photograph on this post is that of President and Mrs. Higgins. The show also features Sally’s friends and colleagues at Trocaire and UCC.
Six weeks before St Óscar Romero was murdered while celebrating Mass in the cathedral in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, in 1980, Sally had been working for him as a translator. Following Óscar Romero’s murder, O’Neill became a central figure in an international attempt to draw attention to the gross abuses of human rights in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, each of which had descended into civil war. These abuses were symbolised by the notorious massacre in 1981 at the village of El Mozote in El Salvador, when US-trained Salvadorean Army troops killed over 800 civilians during a counter-insurgency operation against guerrillas supporting the leftist alternative government, the FMNL, which had been recognised as legitimate by France and Mexico, and, after pressure from Trócaire, by Ireland also.