Salvadorans await justice in civil war killings as one of its first victims sainted
Salvadorans await justice in civil war killings as one of its first victims sainted
Archbishop Óscar Romero, an advocate for the poor, was one of 75,000 killed by the country’s US-backed military
Anna-Catherine Brigida in San Salvador
Sun 14 Oct 2018 04.00 EDT
When Guadalupe Mejía began searching for her husband – a community leader who had been forcibly disappeared by Salvadoran armed forces in 1977 – it was Óscar Romero who encouraged her to speak out despite the danger.
“Unite and that’s how you’ll be able to find your loved ones,” Mejía, 75, remembers the archbishop of San Salvador telling her and other bereaved women. “He supported us and was always beside us in everything we did.”
Romero earned powerful enemies for speaking out against military death squads and advocating for the rights of the poor – and on 24 March 1980 he was shot dead while celebrating mass, marking the beginning of the country’s 12-year civil war.
But as Salvadorans celebrate his canonization, pride and joy are tempered with anger and pain: 75,000 people were killed during the civil war, the majority at the hands of the US-backed Salvadoran military.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/14/el-salvador-oscar-romero-civil-war-saint-justice
LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142178702
