El Salvador (Part 1)

In my last post, I wrote that I was about to leave for El Salvador, the only country in the world named after Jesus Christ.  I was pretty anxious.  This was my third time visiting El Salvador.  Both my previous visits had been overwhelming to the point that I found myself unable to write at any length about the visits here on this blog.  The experiences had simply been too much for me to process.

In the center of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, there is a cathedral.  In the basement of the cathedral is a small chapel and a crypt containing the body of Oscar Romero.  Romero was the archbishop of El Salvador in the late ’70s and the first few months of 1980.

Today, Romero is a hero among left-leaning Christians.  But, when he was first appointed, he was viewed as a conservative choice for archbishop.  His appointment was a concession to conservative Catholics who were worried about liberation theology and communism.  But, a few months into his tenure as archbishop, Romero’s good friend, Rutilio Grande, was murdered by the government for his work in peasant communities.  Grande himself had been involved in liberation theology and had been speaking out against intimidation tactics used against fellow priests.

Romero was deeply affected by the murder of his friend and began to speak out against the violence.  The Salvadoran government had a tight grip on the media.  But as Archbishop, Romero had a weekly sermon that was broadcast live across the country.  He used this platform to list the names of those murdered as well as the names of those responsible.

 

Romero himself was shot in March of 1980 with a single bullet to the heart while he was conducting mass in a hospital chapel.

At his funeral at the national cathedral, a large crowd of a quarter million gathered downtown to pay their respects.  Government snipers opened fire on the crowd.  Fleeing for their lives, the people tried to seek shelter in the already packed cathedral.  Here you can see some film footage.

On three occasions, I have been to this cathedral and to the crypt below it.  The first time, while I was in the crypt, two homicides took place outside.  One was almost literally on the steps of the cathedral.  The other was a block away.  During my second visit to the cathedral, I heard multiple gunshots from outside the cathedral, though I do not know if anyone was injured or killed.  In the 1980s, government snipers were the shooters.  Today, it’s the gangs.

How do you talk about such things?  How do you talk about a country that is not at war, but has a violent death rate equal to that of countries that are in the middle of wars?

I think I’ve finally found the words.

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I think it is best to start with the Cold War.  The United States and the Soviet Union were squaring off, trying to see which ideology would dominate the world: communism or capitalism.  That struggle had an enormous impact on the history of Latin America, most memorably Cuba.  In 1961, communist rebels under Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed military dictator, Fulgencio Batista.  The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nearly erupted in full-scale nuclear war when the USSR attempted to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.  As a result, the US government became quite paranoid about other Latin American countries going the same way as Cuba.

The United States Government had always felt pretty comfortable working alongside Latin American dictators.  The dictators cleverly gave special privileges to US based businesses.  The dictators in a very literal way were good for US businesses.  This meant that every dictator had a strong ally with deep pockets in Washington DC.  But with the fall of Batista and the rise of Castro, the US government doubled down on their strategy to prop up right-wing dictators.  This happened through gifts of both weapons and military training.

One of the main tools the United States used to fight the Cold War was a school called The School of the Americas.  In 2000, it was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Though established in 1946, it received a mandate in 1961 to help with “anti-communist counterinsurgency training.”  Supporters of the school say that it was instrumental in keeping communism at bay.  Critics say that its graduates were responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in the Western Hemisphere during the 20th century.  There also is strong evidence that torture used to be a part of the curriculum.

The school trained several future Latin American dictators in addition to legions of military officers.  Many soldiers from El Salvador studied there including Domingo Monterrosa and the officers of his infamous Atlacatl Battalion.  This Battalion went on to play a major role in El Salvador’s Civil War.

 

The beginnings of a civil war had been simmering in El Salvador through the ’70s, but the assassination of Romero brought things to a full boil.  Various militias and guerrilla groups that had been operating independently decided to work together under one umbrella organization: The FMLN.

I don’t know much about the details of the civil war that followed.  But, I do know that it generally followed this pattern:

1.  Salvadoran government forces commit an atrocity that makes it into the US media.
2. The US government “punishes” the Salvadoran government by withholding aid.
3. The FMLN makes gains in the war and looks like it might win.
4. The US government reverses its position and sends more aid to the Salvadoran government.
5. The Salvadoran government pushes back the FMLN and commits further atrocities.

In the above assessment, I only mention atrocities committed by the government forces.  This is not the complete story.  The FMLN did some awful things as well.  Following the war, a Truth Commission tried to get a grasp on what had actually happened.  They concluded that 85% of the war crimes had been committed by the Salvadoran government, 5% had been committed by the FMLN/guerrillas and 10% were impossible to determine.  Every other estimate that I have seen arrives somewhere near those numbers.

I want to talk about two specific atrocities committed by the government, both by means of the Atlacatl Battalion, the military unit that I mentioned earlier.

A year and a half after the assassination of Romero, in December of 1981, the Atlacatl Battalion entered the small village of El Mozote, near the border with Honduras.  They were looking for supporters of the guerrilla.  I don’t really know how the killing started, but over the course of three days, the Atlacatl Battalion killed every resident of El Mozote: men, women and children.  Roughly 1000 civilians lost their lives in the massacre, though some estimates are higher.  Rufina Aymara was the only witness to escape.  She devoted the rest of her life to sharing her story.

I’ve been to El Mozote twice.  I highly recommend this exhaustive (and emotionally exhausting) article on the massacre.

Matthew 2:18 played in my head as I walked around the mass grave where the children are buried.
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

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The second atrocity I’d like to mention is the attack on the UCA, a private Catholic university.  The massacre at El Mozote took place towards the start of the civil war in rural El Salvador.  In contrast, the massacre at the UCA took place in 1989, at the end of the war.  It also took place in the capital city.

Some members of the faculty of the UCA had been rather critical of the Salvadoran government.  And so, in the dark of night, the Atlacatl Battalion entered the university and murdered 6 Jesuit professors from the religion department as well as a domestic worker and her daughter who happened to be on campus at the time.

I have visited  the UCA twice.  The blood-stained bathrobes and pajamas of the professors are on display mere feet from where they were killed in a room called “The Hall of Martyrs.”  That is how the professors are viewed at the UCA.  To many Salvadorans, the deaths of these professors have a religious significance.  They were martyred for their faith… not murdered…

The building next door is a chapel.  Most Catholic places of worship have a series of 14 images known as “The Stations of the Cross.” The images traditionally depict a series of 14 scenes from the last few hours of the life of Jesus Christ.  The chapel at the UCA does not have 14 images of Jesus on his path to Calvary.  Instead, it has 14 images on the back wall of the sanctuary… 14 images of torture victims… victims of the Salvadoran government.

If you were to ask a typical North American Protestant about the significance of the suffering that Jesus Christ endured, the most likely response would be something like this: “Jesus suffered for my sins so that I don’t have to suffer for my sins.”

The images on the back wall of the chapel of the UCA express a different sentiment.  “Our suffering under a brutal military regime is similar to that which Jesus himself suffered under a brutal military regime.  He became one of us.  He suffers alongside us.”

I have no desire to challenge the beliefs expressed at the UCA.  I merely wish to present them as factually as possible.

But, speaking for myself, as I walked past the rose garden where the 6 professors were killed, I could only think of Genesis 4:10.  “The Lord said, ‘What have you done?  Listen!  Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.'”

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The attack on the UCA took place on November 16, 1989, exactly one week after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The US and its allies had already won the Cold War.  Earlier, the US had been willing to tolerate quite a bit of evil from its allies.  But, as the Cold War wound down, the US became more and more interested in holding its allies accountable.  Change wasn’t immediate, but two years and two months later, the peace accords were signed.

There were two main components to the peace accords.  Firstly, the two sides became political parties.  To this day, they fight with each other.  In place of bullets and kidnappings, they use laws and votes.  The second component to the peace accords was a general amnesty for all political violence that took place during the war.  The assassination of Romero… the massacre at El Mozote… the murder at the UCA… all would go unpunished.

Stay tuned for Part 2…