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I know I shit on religion a lot, because religion is often shit. But that doesn’t mean all religious leaders are shit. Óscar Romero was not shit. He was good. A Catholic Archbishop, he spoke out against human rights violations in El Salvador, and the military government killed him for it.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 24, 1980--
The Salvadoran Civil War began in October 1979 with a military coup d’état. El Salvador has a long history of massive socioeconomic inequality and government corruption. The right-wing junta was supported by the U.S., because they were fighting left-wing insurgents and America doesn’t give a fuck how shitty you are if you’re opposing commies; they’d give you money, weapons, and training to help murder a shit-ton of civilians.
American-trained death squads terrorized the populace. The country quickly devolved into a nightmare. Anyone who even dared to question official government policy in any way was assumed to be a rebel and subject to murder. And yet, many peasants were in support of the rebels because they’d been living in crushing poverty their entire lives with no end in sight. A military that kept a tiny minority of powerful elite living in wealth while they starved in squalor was ripe recruiting ground for a variety of guerrilla movements.
Amidst the government’s violent repression of the populace, Archbishop Óscar Romero spoke out. In February of 1980 he wrote an open letter to President Carter begging him to cease American military support of El Salvador’s junta. He explained to the American president that “Political power is in the hands of the armed forces. They know only how to repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy” and that American involvement only served to “sharpen the injustice and repression” against those who were “struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights.”
So they fucking killed him.
The day before his death, Romero delivered a sermon where had called upon the Salvadoran soldiers to disobey orders to murder the nation’s civilians. Then, on March 24, 1980, Romero celebrated Mass at a small hospital chapel. As he finished his sermon, military gunmen entered the chapel. One or two shots were fired. A bullet entered Romero’s heart and he died. President Carter called it a “shocking and unconscionable act” and I know we mostly like the guy but that was some serious fucking hypocrisy.
The following week, over a quarter million mourners attended Romero’s funeral. During the ceremony, smoke bombs exploded then gunfire from multiple snipers erupted, some of whom were on the roof of the National Palace. Witnesses said it was government security forces that threw the bombs and that the snipers were from the army. About 50 people died from gunshots and being trampled in the panic.
There was no official investigation into the assassination, and no one was ever arrested. The Salvadoran Civil War lasted a dozen years, resulting in almost a hundred thousand dead and disappeared, and creating a million refugees.
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Sermon where *he had?
I've known quite a few El Salvadoran refugees. All sponsored by the Catholic Church I was attending back when I had religion. Their stories were desperately sad, and us, ignorant upper-middle-class mostly white privileged kids were fucking clueless to their trauma.