Obama to visit human rights activist's tomb

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CBS News

March 18, 2011
Obama to visit human rights activist's tomb

(AP) SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — President Barack Obama will visit the tomb of slain Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero during his visit to El Salvador next week, a gesture that some say is U.S. recognition of the slain human rights activist's cause.

Romero spoke out against repression by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army during the Central American country's 12-year civil war in which at least 75,000 people died. He was gunned down March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel. The government and leftist guerrillas reached a peace treaty in 1992.

~snip~
Robert White, who was the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador in the early 1980s, said that the visit by Obama to Romero's tomb "is like a U.S. stamp of approval on the positive influence Romero's life and death have had on Latin America and the world."

The visit "is a declaration that the United States is no longer identified with oligarchic governments," added White, who is now director of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, a foreign policy think tank.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/18/ap/latinamerica/main20044877.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

1. El Salvador's long-ago civil war still colors U.S. relations

Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2011
El Salvador's long-ago civil war still colors U.S. relations
By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

SAN SALVADOR — Fighting a wave of drug-related crime that's sweeping Central America will be among President Barack Obama's top agenda items next week when he arrives in this tiny Central American nation, but neither he nor any U.S. officials will meet with El Salvador's chief public security official.

That's because U.S. diplomats say Public Security Minister Manuel Melgar has "blood on his hands," stemming from the 1985 killing of four U.S. Marines as they dined in this city's upscale restaurant district during the height of this country's civil war.

At the time, Melgar was a guerrilla chief in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the leftist rebel army that put down its weapons in 1992 and is now part of the coalition government. The U.S. backed the Salvadoran government, which was accused of using death squads to intimidate its opponents.

These days, Melgar wears suits, not khaki rebel attire. He tosses orders to civil servants like his guerrilla underlings once tossed hand grenades. But the fallout from that muggy June evening in 1985 still haunts U.S-Salvadoran relations.

More:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/16/110553/el-salvadors-long-ago-civil-war.html

[Peace Patriot]

2. I wonder what Bishop Romero would say about Obama/Clinton policy in Honduras,

if he were still alive. Hundreds of teachers, union leaders, human rights workers, political leftists, gay activists, youth leaders and others have been murdered in Honduras by rightwing death squads unleashed by the coup d'etat that was AIDED by the U.S., not only by the U.S. military base in Honduras (where the plane carrying the elected president out of the country at gunpoint stopped for refueling), but also by continual infusions of millions of dollars in aid (while LYING to the public about this). And those are only the visible aspects of Obama/Clinton support of the coup. These point to hidden support and collusion in the coup itself, especially in view of what happened next: a U.S. rigged election 'won' by the oligarchy's candidate.

----

"The visit 'is a declaration that the United States is no longer identified with oligarchic governments'..." --major Reagan bastard Robert White

----

Total lie. Obama/Clinton actively participated in propping up the Honduran oligarchy's coup d'etat, right next door to El Salvador. And they furthermore evidently kneecapped President Funes in El Salvador, who, given the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras, then withdrew El Salvador's application to join ALBA (Venezuela/Cuba organized barter trade group for Central America/the Caribbean). Funes' obedience apparently earned him this "pat on the head" visit from Obama, in Clinton's on-going efforts to "divide and re-conquer" the region.

It's notable that Obama doesn't dare go to Honduras, where Clinton tried to draw a cosmetic veil over the fascist coup d'etat and literally fixed the election for their "candidate," Lobo. Every reputable election monitoring group in the world REFUSED to have anything to do with an election held under martial law, while leftists were being murdered and brutalized. Clinton brought in groups like John McCain's (U.S. taxpayer funded) "International Republican Institute" to fake an election monitoring operation and to "endorse" that utterly rotten election.

The brave and massive leftist movement in Honduras--brutalized though they have been--would not allow Obama to visit without protest. The fascist government would brutalize them once again--and that wouldn't be the pretty picture that Clinton wants for the corporate newsstream.

And now the U.S. has built two NEW U.S. military bases in Honduras! Honduras, once again, is to be the stepping stool for U.S. aggression in the region--with the most likely initial target being Nicaragua, and El Salvador in its sights, if Funes doesn't behave like a good boy (retain U.S. "free trade for the rich," stay out of ALBA).

I'd guess that Bishop Romero would rejoice that El Salvadorans were able to elect a decent government--one that actually represents the poor majority--but would be appalled at the signs of coming U.S. aggression all around tiny El Salvador, including the fascist coup d'etat and new U.S. military bases next door in Honduras, reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, U.S. re-introduction of "Baby Doc" to Haiti and a U.S. rigged election in Haiti, continuing belligerence against Venezuela, the wholesale slaughter of the poor and their advocates in Colombia, the ATF gun-running in Mexico (domination by mayhem), lavish USAID expenditures on rightwing groups all over the region, lavish military spending on the region in the midst of a Great Depression, and other signs that the multinational corporations and war profiteers who rule the U.S. consider the Central America/Caribbean region to be their "circle the wagons" region against leftist democracy and unity in South America.

One of the coup generals in Honduras said that the purpose of their coup was "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." (--quoted in report on the coup by the Zelaya government-on-exile). He spoke the raw truth that Obama and Clinton will never cop to. "Communism" in this rightwing general's mouth = clean elections, free health care for the poor, free education through college for the poor, well thought out land reform, help to small business, use of a country's resources to help the people who live there, curtailing the power of "organized money" (as FDR put it), and government "of, by and for" the people in all respects. Venezuela is not a "communist" country. It is a DEMOCRATIC country--and that idea is what must be prevented from "reaching the United States."

[Judi Lynn]

3. Bishop Romero might be surprised to learn SOA, which educated his assassins in barbarity, continues

all these years later, regardless of the millions of people who have protested long, hard, with certain retribution from the U.S.

~snip~
When they return to their home countries, graduates of the SOA hold a rather unique and peculiar view of their countrymen. They look upon priests, social workers, journalists, and liberal intellectuals, not as assets to their societies, but as dangerous subversives, working to undermine the system that keeps these soldiers, army officers, and their sponsors in power.

Graduates of the SOA have been among the most repressive tyrants in Latin America, and their actions have been some of the most cruel and violent. In El Salvador, in 1989, a Salvadoran army patrol executed six Jesuit priests as they lay face-down on the ground at Central America University. According to the United Nation's Truth Commission Report on El Salvador in 1993, 19 of the 27 officers who took part in the executions were trained at the SOA.

In 1990, in El Salvador, populist Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated. Three-quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated in the killing were trained at the SOA. Roberto D'Aubuison, the late leader of El Salvador's Death Squad, was implicated in the plot to assassinate Archbishop Romero. He also participated in numerous murders, including a massacre in the village of El Mazote, where more than 900 men, women, and children were killed. He graduated from SOA as well.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/SOA.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Hope President Obama had time to read Bishop Romero's last sermon:

Archbishop Oscar Romero
The Last Sermon (1980)

~snip~
Fuentes confirmed that, during two weeks of investigations he carried out in El Salvador, he was able to establish that there had been eighty-three political assassinations between 10 and 14 March. He pointed out that Amnesty International recently condemned the government of El Salvador, alleging that it was responsible for six hundred political assassinations. The Salvadorean government defended itself against the charges, arguing that Amnesty International based its condemnation on unproved assumptions.

Fuentes said that Amnesty had established that in El Salvador human rights are violated to a worse degree than the repression in Chile after the coupe d'etat. The Salvadorean government also said that the six hundred dead were the result of armed confrontations between army troops and guerrillas. Fuentes said that during his stay u l El Salvador, he could see that the victims had been tortured before their deaths and mutilated afterward.

The spokesman of Amnesty International said that the victims' bodies characteristically appeared with the thumbs tied behind their backs. Corrosive liquids had been applied to the corpses to prevent identification of the victims by their relatives and to prevent international condemnation, the spokesman added. Nevertheless, the bodies were exhumed and the dead have been identified. Fuentes said that the repression carried out by the Salvadorean army was aimed at breaking the popular organizations through the assassination of their leaders in both town and country.

According to the spokesman of Amnesty International, at least three thousand five hundred peasants have fled from their homes to the capital to escape persecution. "We have complete lists in London and Sweden of young children and women who have been assassinated for being organized," Fuentes stated....

I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html

[bobbolink]

16. My goodness... a political sermon.

I so wish we still had him with us. :cry:

[Judi Lynn]

17. I would imagine no one has ever claimed this man who was watching his countrymen get slaughtered

by death squads, as he spoke in his LAST ####ing sermon ever, EVER saw it as a political statement.

It was somewhat more serious than making political points.

Absolutely the people who were shot in the plaza as they mourned his assassination still wish they had him with them, too. They weren't there to mourn the murder of a politician, as you well know.

The shooting was perpetrated by government forces as they murdered men, women, and children trying to attend the funeral at the cathedral. THEY were the ####ing POLITICAL people there.

:cry:

[bobbolink]

18. Relax. I'm well aware of all of that, and have no need to be schooled.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Right. If you were aware, you're also aware what you said didn't make sense. n/t

[bobbolink]

20. Chill, dear, Nobody is shooting at you.

[intheflow]

5. Bombing Libya is hardly honoring human rights.

I guess human rights only matter if they were fought for 30 years ago. The hypocrisy out of this administration is mind-blowing.

[Judi Lynn]

7. The man was far more than an "activist." Someone treacherous wrote that headline.

This man of the people was shot through the heart giving mass by U.S.-trained sharpshooters, in a US-backed war against the poor in his country.

[Judi Lynn]

8. I must add that government sharpshooters ALSO mowed down a mass of citizens

who turned out in a huge crowd to attend Archbishop Romero's funeral. When the smoke cleared, the government had a mountain of shoes left behind as people leaped to try to get out of harm's way, literally running out of their shoes.

Assassination and funeral

http://upload.wikimedia.org.nyud.net:8090/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/Assassination_of_Oscar_Romero.jpg/220px-Assassination_of_Oscar_Romero.jpg


Photo appeared in El País on 7 November
2009 with the information that the state
of El Salvador recognized its responsibility
in the crime.<8>

Romero was shot on 24 March 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital called "La Divina Providencia", one day after a sermon where he had called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot while elevating the chalice at the end of the Eucharistic rite. When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar along with the contents of the chalice.

Even though the Vatican under Pope John Paul II did not view Romero's closeness to liberation theology favorably (also their attitude toward his involvement in condemning the military's and the government's actions and the guerrilla's acts), it nonetheless blatantly condemned the assassination as a murder and a direct sacrilege, even while not formally recognizing him as a martyr.

It is believed that the assassins were members of a death squad trained and funded by the United States.<9> This view was supported in 1993 by an official U.N. report, which identified the man who ordered the killing as former Major and School of the Americas graduate Roberto D'Aubuisson.<10> He had also planned to overthrow the government in a coup. Later he founded the political party Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and organized death squads that systematically carried out politically-motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador. Álvaro Rafael Saravia, a former captain in the Salvadoran Air Force, was chief of security for Roberto D'Aubuisson and an active member of these death squads. In 2003, a U.S. human rights organization, the Center for Justice and Accountability, filed a civil action against Saravia. In 2004, he was found liable by a US District Court under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) (28 U.S.C. § 1350) for aiding, conspiring, and participating in the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Saravia was ordered to pay $10 million dollars for extrajudicial killing and crimes against humanity pursuant to the ATCA. Doe v. Rafael Saravia, 348 F. Supp. 2d 1112 (E.D. Cal. 2004) (providing an excellent account of the events leading up, and subsequent, to Archbishop Romero's death).

~snip~
During the ceremony, a smoke bomb exploded on the Cathedral square (Plaza Gerardo Barrios) and subsequently there were rifle-fire shots that came from surrounding buildings, including the National Palace. Many people were killed by gunfire and during the following mass panic; official sources talk of 31 overall casualties, journalists indicated between 30 and 50 dead.<10> Some witnesses claimed it was government security forces that threw bombs into the crowd, and army sharpshooters, dressed as civilians, that fired into the chaos from the balcony or roof of the National Palace. However, there are contradictory accounts as to the course of the events and "probably, one will never know the truth about the interrupted funeral."<10> This proved to be a turning point in the history of the Salvadoran conflict, a peak in the power of popular organizations aligned with the left, whose popularity declined after this event under the suspicion that they attempted to capitalize on this tragic event for political gain.

Twenty-five years later, the BBC recalled the horror:

"Tens of thousands of mourners who had gathered for Romero's funeral Mass in front of the cathedral in San Salvador were filmed fleeing in terror as army gunners on the rooftops around the square opened fire.... One person who was there told us he remembered the piles of shoes left behind by those who escaped with their lives."

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

[intheflow]

9. I'm well aware of Romaro's work and the details of his assassination. n/t

[marasinghe]

11. true. one who followed the spirit of his religion; like Francis of Assisi. (n/t)

[Catherina]

6. How about visiting some live activists? Bradley Manning comes to mind. Rec'd n/t

[Aerows]

10. You could do something...

...about the people who committed torture in our own country, rather than attempting to compare Brazil to the Middle East - Brazil is prosecuting their torturers and war criminals, have equality for women, and have recognized gay marriage since 2004.

Oh wait, I forget, last year, the Obama DoJ was fighting against gays in the military. I forget, the DoJ JUST stopped fighting against the DOMA.

Human Rights? Uh-huh. Pull my other one.

It's not that I think Republicans wouldn't be worse about it, I just hate that the person I campaigned so hard to get the presidency is so tepid in many cases, and in some cases, actively against Human Rights "Let's move forward". "We have to defend DADT, even though it's just a trend, not a requirement". "Oh, those Republicans scare me, I'd better say marriage only exists for a man and a woman".

[Judi Lynn]

12. Obama visits tomb of slain Salvadoran archbishop

Obama visits tomb of slain Salvadoran archbishop
March 23, 2011 - AP

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — President Barack Obama stood, eyes closed, in a personal moment of silence before the tomb of slain Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, whose fight for the poor during El Salvador's bloody civil war made him a national hero — and an international figure in human rights.

The visit Tuesday in the final hours of Obama's five-day swing through Latin America was a symbolic gesture that some called U.S. recognition of Romero's cause.

Obama toured the national cathedral with Monsignor Jose Luis Escobar Alas, the current archbishop, and paid respects to a man ordered killed 31 years ago by an official in El Salvador's U.S.-backed army.

Romero, now on a path to potential sainthood in the Vatican, spoke out against repression by the Salvadoran army during the 12-year civil war that killed at least 75,000 people. He was fatally shot in the heart March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel.

More:
http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/133197/Obama-visits-tomb-of-slain-Salvadoran-archbishop-.html?isap=1&nav=5030

[Judi Lynn]

13. Barack Obama, Oscar Romero, and Structural Sin

Barack Obama, Oscar Romero, and Structural Sin
Greg Grandin
March 23, 2011

In El Salvador, on the last leg of his Latin American tour, President Barack Obama paid a highly symbolic visit to the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero, shot through the heart as he raised the Eucharist chalice during a mass, in March 1980. His assassination was ordered by Salvadoran military officer Roberto D'Aubuisson, a School of the America’s graduate.

As El Faro – an important online source of independent Central American news – put it, Obama’s homage to Romero is a “truly extraordinary” gesture since D'Aubuisson not only ran private-sector financed death squads but was a founder of ARENA, an ultra conservative political party that until 2009 had governed the country for two decades and enjoyed excellent relations with Washington.

Today, El Salvador is led by President Mauricio Funes, head of a center-left coalition government that includes the FMLN, the insurgent group turned political party Ronald Reagan wasted billions of dollars and over 70,000 lives trying to defeat in the 1980s. By lighting a candle for Romero, Obama, it might be said, was tacitly doing in El Salvador what he wouldn’t – or couldn’t -- do in Chile: apologize for US actions that resulted in horrific human tragedy.

~snip~
Squeezed by Plan Colombia to the south and Mexico’s disastrous War on Drugs to the north, Central American violence has skyrocketed. Whole regions in Honduras and Guatemala are either overrun by narcos, or militarized by security forces, themselves deeply involved in criminal activity, including drugs, illegal logging, car theft and kidnapping. The explosion of biofuels production and the intensification of mining (particularly gold mining) has created an ecological disaster and generated widespread social dislocation. Protesting peasants, especially in Honduras and Guatemala, have been checked by a revived planter-death squad alliance, though now “death squads” generally go under the euphemism, “private security.” An increasing number activists are turning up dead. In February, the bullet-ridden bodies of four Q’eqchi’ Mayan community leaders -- Catalina Muca Maas, Alberto Coc Cal, Amilcar Choc, and Sebastian Xuc Coc – were found in a river.

More:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159405/barack-obama-oscar-romero-and-structural-sin

[RedCloud]

14. Camilo Torres muere para vivir

A precursor who helped inspire others of the cloth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paqOUC_MuBs

Donde cayó Camilo
nació una cruz,
pero no de madera
sino de luz.

Lo mataron cuando iba
por su fusil,
Camilo Torres muere
para vivir.

Cuentan que tras la bala
se oyó una voz.
Era Dios que gritaba:
¡Revolución!

A revisar la sotana,
mi general,
que en la guerrilla cabe
un sacristán.

Lo clavaron con balas
en una cruz,
lo llamaron bandido
como a Jesús.

Y cuando ellos bajaron
por su fusil,
se encontraron que el pueblo
tiene cien mil.

Cien mil Camilos prontos
a combatir,
Camilo Torres muere
para vivir.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Brand new documents now available to us regarding the struggle in El Salvador, & Jimmy Carter, etc :

These formerly classified documents have become public property through the efforts of the National Security Archive:

"Learn from History", 31st Anniversary of the Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 339
Posted - March 23, 2011
By: Kate Doyle and Emily Willard

~snip~
The documents are being posted as President Barak Obama leaves El Salvador, his final stop on a five-day trip to Latin America. Obama spent part of his time in the country with a visit to Monsignor Romero’s tomb last night. Although the United States funneled billions of dollars to the tiny country in support of the brutal army and security forces during a counterinsurgency war that left 75,000 civilians dead, the president made no reference to the U.S. role, seeking in his speeches instead to focus on immigration and security concerns. The day before his visit to Romero’s gravesite, Obama had told an audience in Chile that it was important that the United States and Latin America “learn from history, that we understand history, but that we not be trapped by history, because many challenges lie ahead.”

Just weeks before his murder, Archbishop Romero published an open letter to President Jimmy Carter in the Salvadoran press, asking the United States not to intervene in El Salvador’s fate by arming brutal security forces against a popular opposition movement. Romero warned that U.S. support would only “sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people which repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights.” Despite his plea, President Carter moved to approve $5 million in military aid less than one year after the archbishop’s murder, as Carter was leaving office in January 1981.

Included in the posting are documents reporting on a secret, behind-the-scene effort by the United States to enlist the Vatican in pressuring Romero over his perceived support for the Salvadoran left; an account of the archbishop’s powerful March 23, 1980, homily, given the day before his assassination; a description of the murder by the U.S. defense attaché in El Salvador; and an extraordinary embassy cable describing a meeting organized by rightist leader Roberto D’Aubuisson in which participants draw lots to determine who would be the triggerman to kill Romero.

Although the declassified documents do not reveal the extent of the plot to kill Romero or the names of those who murdered him, details in them support the findings of the 1993 report by the U.N.-mandated Truth Commission for El Salvador. Released shortly after the signing of the peace accords that ended the war in El Salvador, the report identified D’Aubuisson, Captains Alvaro Rafael Saravia and Eduardo Avila, and Fernando (“El Negro”) Sagrera as among those responsible for the assassination. On March 25 of last year, Carlos Dada of El Salvador’s on-line news site El Faro published an extraordinary interview with Alvaro Saravia, one of the masterminds of Romero’s killing. In the interview, Saravia revealed chilling details of the plot to murder Romero; see a transcript of the interview, “How We Killed the Archbishop......"

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB339/index.htm

[Judi Lynn]

21. Salvadoran killed by U.S.-trained assassins (U.S. LTTE)

Salvadoran killed by U.S.-trained assassins
5:42 PM, Mar. 25, 2011

During his recent trip to Latin America, President Barack Obama paid homage to the assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero, an El Salvadoran hero famous for standing with the poor during the war-torn 1980s. Romero was assassinated while giving mass 31 years ago.

In El Salvador, the president acknowledged Romero's heroism and bravery.

However, what he failed to mention is that the archbishop's assassination was planned and carried out by individuals trained by the United States at the School of the Americas (SOA).

The SOA is still in operation, training Latin American soldiers who become human rights abusers at an astonishing rate.

More:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110327/OPINION04/103270315/Salvadoran-killed-by-U-S-trained-assassins

[Judi Lynn]

22. U.S. played a role in archbishop's 1980 slaying - LTTE

U.S. played a role in archbishop's 1980 slaying
Published 04:10 p.m., Monday, March 28, 2011

During his recent stop in El Salvador, President Barack Obama paid homage to Archbishop Oscar Romero's acts of solidarity with the poor.

The archbishop was shot dead March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. In his tribute to Romero, Obama failed to mention the circumstances surrounding his death: a U.S.-funded civil war and the squadron of men who carried out Romero's assassination, including those trained in the United States.

They were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, now the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, based at Fort Benning, Ga., and funded with U.S. tax dollars. The school continues to train Latin American soldiers, mainly from Colombia, which has surpassed El Salvador as the most notorious human rights violator in the region.

It's irresponsible and dishonest to pay tribute to a man without acknowledging our own role in his death, and the role we continue to play in similar acts of violence in Latin America.

http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/U-S-played-a-role-in-archbishop-s-1980-slaying-1311371.php