Honor Romero's Legacy

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Honor Romero's Legacy
By Elizabeth DiNovella, March 27, 2010

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador. Romero was a fearless defender of the poor during El Salvador’s brutal civil war. More than 75,000 Salvadorans died during the war, most of them killed by Salvadoran military forces, which the United States financed and trained.

In February 1980, Romero had written a letter to President Carter asking him to halt military aid to the Salvadoran government.

“In the last few days, news has appeared in the national press that worries me greatly. According to the reports, your government is studying the possibility of economic and military support and assistance to the present government junta.


“Because you are a Christian and because you have shown that you want to defend human rights, I venture to set forth for you my pastoral point of view in regard to this news and to make a specific request of you.

“I am very concerned by the news that the government of the United States is planning to further El Salvador’s arms race by sending military equipment and advisors to ‘train three Salvadoran battallions in logistics, communications, and intelligence.’ If this information from the papers is correct, instead of favoring greater justice and peace in El Salvador, your government’s contribution will undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for respect for their most basic human rights. . . .

“[A]s a Salvadoran and archbishop of the archdiocese of San Salvador, I have an obligation to see that faith and justice reign in my country, I ask you, if you truly want to defend human rights:

* to forbid that military aid be given to the Salvadoran government;
* to guarantee that your government will not intervene directly or indirectly, with military, economic, diplomatic, or other pressures, in determining the destiny of the Salvadoran people;

In these moments, we are living through a grave economic and political crisis in our country, but it is certain that increasingly the people are awakening and organizing and have begun to prepare themselves to manage and be responsible for the future of El Salvador, as the only ones capable of overcoming the crisis.

It would be unjust and deplorable for foreign powers to intervene and frustrate the Salvadoran people, to repress them and keep them from deciding autonomously the economic and political course that our nation should follow.”

President Carter did not heed Romero’s warning, and U.S. tax dollars continued to flow to the repressive regime. Romero was assassinated five weeks later while celebrating mass. A 1993 UN report named rightwing death squad leader and Major Roberto D’Aubuisson as the person who ordered Romero’s death.

This week, the digital newspaper El Faro published an exclusive interview with former Captain Rafael Saravia, who participated in the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Saravia says the D’Aubisson was behind the murder and says that Mario Molina was also involved. He is the son of Colonel Arturo Armando Molina—one of the most powerful Salvadoran military men of the twentieth century and president of the country from 1972 to 1977.

The day before his assassination, Archbishop Romero used his Sunday sermon to ask Salvadoran soldiers to stop the killings.

“I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army, to the police, to those in the barracks. Brothers, you are part of our own people. You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters. And before an order to kill that a man may give, the law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God. No one has to fulfill an immoral law. It is time to recover your consciences and to obey your consciences rather than the orders of sin. The church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, the dignity of the person, cannot remain silent before such abomination. We want the government to take seriously that reforms are worth nothing when they come about stained with so much blood. In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuously, I beg you, I ask you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!”

The next day, Romero was shot in the heart while saying mass.

The civil war in El Salvador ended in 1992 with signing of peace accords. Until last year, rightwing parties controlled the presidency. In 2009, journalist Mauricio Funes was elected president on the FMLN platform. When he took office, this is what he said:

“We’re going to change the way we make policy. And one of the most significant changes is that we will no longer have a government at the service of a privileged few. And we will no longer have a government that creates an economy of privileges for the privileged. Now, we need a government like the one envisioned by [Archbishop of El Salvador] Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who, in his prophetic message, said that the church should have a preferential option for the poor.”

This week, President Mauricio Funes issued an apology. “I ask forgiveness from the thousands of families who were affected by this type of illegal and unacceptable violence, and especially to members of the religious communities represented by the spirit of Monsignor Romero and who maintain alive his legacy of peace and respect for human rights,” said Funes. “Again, as president of the republic, I ask for forgiveness in the name of the Salvadoran state for this assassination that occurred thirty years ago and which took our best patriot from us.”

The part that always gets me about this story is the letter that Romero wrote to President Carter. Romero explained clearly why the U.S. should not be propping up a repressive military and government. President Carter had a chance to stop military aid and instead chose to train El Salvador’s brutal military.

The Progressive published this in 1981: “By the close of 1980, the United States had indeed done what it could to improve the proficiency of Salvadoran forces: The U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama, in its largest single training effort ever, had graduated some 250 Salvadoran officers and noncoms.

“The streets of El Salvador’s towns are choked with burnt out vehicles, the debris of incendiary bombs, spent ammunition, and corpses. Whole villages have been destroyed. Every labor union meeting place has been blown up, as have opposition newspaper offices, the church radio station YSAX, and the Metropolitan Cathedral, where the bodies of six murdered Democratic Revolutionary Front leaders were dynamited as they lay in state.

“How did the United States come to back such a murderous regime? Despite his official human rights advocacy, Jimmy Carter always sent mixed signals to the Salvadoran right wing. If Carter’s signals were mixed, Reagan’s are clear.”

So what kind of signals is President Obama sending now to Latin America?

One of Obama’s first tests happened in El Salvador’s neighbor, Honduras. The Obama Administration did not take forceful measures against last summer’s military coup, though Obama did say he was “deeply concerned.” Since the United States gives Honduras $100 million in annual assistance, and accounts for about 85% of the country’s total trade and 70% of foreign direct investment, the U.S. could’ve been tougher.

(And let’s not forget that the general who led the military coup in Honduras has a connection to the U.S. military. General Romeo Vasquez attended military training in Fort Benning, Georgia, at least twice.)

Hillary Clinton is now urging other nations to recognize the new president, who was elected under a government installed by a coup. Many countries in Latin America do not see the new administration in Honduras as legitimate.

“In Latin America, after decades of U.S. interference in the region, we had great expectations and hopes,” said Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in a February 25 interview on CNN’s Spanish-language channel. “Honduras was a strong blow to these expectations.”

Earlier this month, Clinton said the Obama Administration would resume aid to Honduras that was suspended after the coup, despite reports from Human Rights Watch that attacks on opponents of last year’s coup have continued since a newly elected government took office. The human rights organization says opponents have been killed, detained and attacked during the past month.

Obama probably would have lost very little political capital if he sided with democratic forces in Honduras. (It’s not the 1980s, anymore.) And he would’ve reaped a lot of good will in Latin America. Instead, he unwittingly showed us that not enough has changed in U.S. foreign policy in thirty years.