Who’s Defending Monsignor Romero?

Revista Envio
El Salvador
http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3717

Twenty-seven years of impunity after an assassination classified

“a crime against humanity” by a US judge. Seven years of
contempt by the Salvadoran state, as it sidesteps the
recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights. And since October 2007, a secret dialogue between the
ARENA government and the Archdiocese of San Salvador to reach
an “agreement.” So who’s defending Monsignor Romero?

Elaine Freedman

In March 1983, Brazilian bishop Pedro Casaldaliga wrote in his

diary, “There is no way I can understand it, or rather I understand
it too well: the photograph of the martyr Monsignor Romero with
John Paul II on placards, which is utterly normal for the Pope’s
visit, has been banned by the mixed government-Church of El
Salvador commission. The martyr’s image hurts the persecuting
and murderous government, and it’s natural it should hurt it. That
it should hurt a certain sector of the Church is also natural, sadly
natural.”

On October 11, 2007, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero again hit

the headlines in La Prensa Gráfica: “Government asks Church for
agreement on Romero case.” And once again, recent events
related to the case of Monsignor Romero, the martyred priest who
said he would be resurrected in his people, are all too sadly
natural.

The truth commission’s verdict

The report issued in March 1993 by the three members of the
Truth Commission—a former Colombian President, a former
Venezuela Foreign Minister and a former president of the Inter-
American Court of Human Rights—included the following six
conclusions on the assassination of Monsignor Romero:

1. Former Major Roberto D’Aubuisson gave the order to kill the

archbishop and gave precise instructions to members of his
security service, acting as a “death squad,” to organize and
supervise the assassination.

2. Captains Alvaro Saravia and Eduardo Avila, together with

Fernando Sagrera and Mario Molina, were actively involved in
planning and carrying out the murder.

3. Amado Antonio Garay, the driver of former Captain Saravia,

was assigned to drive the gunman to the Chapel. Mr. Garay was a
direct witness when, from a red four-door Volkswagen, the
gunman fired a single high-velocity .22 calibre bullet to kill the
archbishop.

4. Walter Antonio “Musa” Alvarez, together with former Captain

Saravia, was involved in paying the “fees” of the actual assassin.

5. The failed assassination attempt against Judge Atilio Ramírez

Amaya was a deliberate attempt to deter investigation of the
case.

6. The Supreme Court played an active role in preventing the

extradition of former Captain Saravia from the United States and
his subsequent imprisonment in El Salvador. In so doing, it
ensured, inter alia, impunity for those who planned the
assassination.

Case shelved in El Salvador

Five days after this report was issued, the Salvadoran Legislative
Assembly promulgated the General Amnesty Law for the
Consolidation of Peace. Known as the 1993 General Amnesty
Law, this legislation exempted the perpetrators of atrocious and
aberrant human rights violations from penal and civil
responsibility, unacceptably annulling the rights of thousands of
victims of those crimes.

Based on this Law, Judge Luis Antonio Villeda Figueroa definitively

dismissed the case against Alvaro Saravia on March 31, 1993. He
did not rule on Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) founder
Roberto D’Aubuisson, arguing that he was never a formal suspect
and that his death in 1992 had released him from any criminal
responsibility. With that the penal process on the homicide of
Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero was closed and the case
shelved, like so many others.
Six months later, the director of the Archdiocese of San
Salvador’s Legal Protection Office, María Julia Hernández, and the
Monsignor’s brother, Tiberio Arnoldo Romero y Galdámez, took
the case to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (OAS/IACHR).

The IACHR proceedings took seven years and were characterized

by zero collaboration from the Salvadoran state in handing over
information; it even asked that the case be dropped. Meanwhile,
the petitioners were joined by the Center for Justice and
International Law (CEJIL), a nongovernmental, nonprofit
organization with consultative status at the Organization of
American States and the United Nations. They all stood firm in
not accepting an amicable solution unless the Salvadoran state
fully accepted its responsibility and pledged to take the
necessary measures to investigate and punish those responsible
for the crime.

The IACHR’s ruling

The IACHR ruled on the case on January 4, 2000. The
investigation had included a number of irregularities, including
the fact that the National Police went to the crime scene almost
four days after the fact and provided no information or evidence
whatsoever to help in the investigation; the testimony of
Saravia’s driver, Amado Antonio Garay, who confessed to having
transported the gunman to the site of the assassination, was
rejected by the Supreme Court; there was no proper investigation
of Major D’Aubuisson, Captains Saravia and Eduardo Ávila or
civilians Eduardo Sagrera, Mario Molina and Walter Antonio
“Musa” Álvarez, despite the existence of important incriminating
elements; eyewitness Pedro Martínez was forcibly disappeared 20
days after he had picked up the injured Monsignor Romero to get
him to the hospital; the attempt to kill Judge Atilio Ramírez
Amaya, the judicial official in charge of the case just three days
after Romero’s death; and the failure to investigate the
kidnapping and subsequent death of “Musa” Álvarez, whom the
IACHR accused of helping pay the killer.

The IACHR ruling concluded that “the sluggish pace of justice was
not spontaneous. In this case it came about as the result of
strategic and concerted actions that kept the Supreme Court of
Justice, the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Republic and the
Courts from acting impartially and seeking a fair trial with due
process guarantees.” It ruled that the Salvadoran state was
responsible for the denial of justice in the case and issued three
recommendations to it:

1. The holding of a complete and effective judicial investigation to

identify, try and punish all of the direct perpetrators and planners
of the violations established; 2) make reparations for all the
consequences of those violations, including the payment of just
indemnity; and 3) adapt its internal legislation to the American
Convention, with the aim of nullifying the 1993 General Amnesty
Law.

“If I talk, El Salvador trembles”

Like all OAS member states, El Salvador is obliged to comply with
the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights. According to the established agreements, the
countries have a period of approximately three months to initiate
compliance, but by July 2007 there was still no indication that the
Salvadoran state was taking any steps in that direction.

However, some 4,000 kilometers north, in Fresno, California,

former Salvadoran Air Force captain and right-hand man to Major
Roberto D’Aubuisson, Alvaro Saravia, was convicted by a civil
judge in September 2004 for his participation in planning the
crime. He was judged under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the
Torture Victim Protection Act. In an unprecedented ruling, Judge
Oliver Wagner called the assassination of Monsignor Romero “a
crime against humanity.” Saravia, who had been living in the
United States since 1987, did not attend the proceedings or send
any legal representation.

Two years later Saravia was interviewed by the newspaper El

Nuevo Herald, “from a country in Latin America,” just weeks after
he appeared in a bookshop in Honduras. Saravia asked for
forgiveness and showed a willingness to reveal the names of the
others involved, including the man who pulled the trigger. “I’d tell
it all if they’d guarantee my life, a job, a country where I could
live... If I talk, El Salvador trembles.”

Back home, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Sáenz Lacalle, told El

Nuevo Herald that he received “the message with Christian joy
and surprise.” He added that “God always pardons when there is
true repentance and a desire to make amends. How good it is
that someone with such a heavy load on his conscience can
unburden it and find the peace and friendship of God.” These
events were not followed up by either the state or—barring its
granting of pardon—by the Church. Saravia’s declarations,
however, were another reminder that there was still much to
investigate.

Adding fuel to the fire:

D’Aubuisson the “Meritorious Son”
In early 2007, ARENA, the National Conciliation Party (PCN) and
the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) joined forces to approve the
honoring of two deceased citizens as “Meritorious Sons” of El
Salvador. One of them was former President José Napoleón
Duarte, icon of Salvadoran Christian Democracy; the other was
ARENA founder Roberto D’Aubuisson.

This would have been D’Aubuisson’s second public recognition in

recent years, the first being a plaza and monument built in his
honor using public funds from the municipality of Antiguo
Cuscatlán, whose mayor is an activist in the governing party.
These works were unveiled on June 22, 2006, by Elías Antonio
Saca, President of both El Salvador and ARENA’s executive
committee.

The proposed honor and the monument before it were flagrant

provocations for those victims still waiting for compliance with
the IACHR’s second recommendation of material and moral
reparations. On the day of the vote, members of the Christian
base communities, human rights groups and individuals who
sympathize with Monsignor Romero turned up at the Legislative
Assembly to support a written demand that the initiative not be
approved, presented by Maria Julia Hernández on behalf of the
Archdiocese’s Legal Protection Office.

At the same time, CEJIL and the International Federation of

Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) sent letters to the various
Assembly benches asking them not to approve the conferring of
this honor. It was rumored that several US congress people also
got in touch with Salvadoran legislators in an effort to stop the
initiative.

Under such pressure, the PCN withdrew its support. It was also no
secret that there were serious disputes within the PDC, given that
D’Aubuisson had participated in the torture and exiling of Duarte
during the 1970s. In the end the PDC requested a change to the
legislative agenda to avoid the vote, which the head of the
ARENA bench, Guillermo Gallegos, justified as follows: “We did it
to avoid any damage... The bill goes back to the commission, but
we could approve the recognition sometime in the future.”

Although the project was frustrated by national and international

pressure, the proposal added further fuel to the fire and again
highlighted the government’s unwillingness to assume its
responsibility in the Romero case.

How to compensate for the crime?

David Morales, the Legal Protection Office’s legal adviser in 1990-
1995 and 2005-2007 and currently the lawyer representing the
victims, explained that the Office and CEJIL requested a hearing
at the IACHR in July 2007. Its purpose was to follow up on its 2000
ruling because in a joint working meeting the state of El Salvador
had “denied its responsibility in the assassination of Monsignor
Romero and rejected both compliance with the Commission’s
recommendations and the idea of discussing a reparations
proposal presented by the petitioning institutions.”

Among other forms of reparation, that proposal included holding

a public ceremony in which the state would recognize its
responsibility and ask for forgiveness, creating a plaza in memory
of Monsignor Romero, prohibiting any homage to those
responsible for his death and including the IACHR
recommendations and conclusions in the Salvadoran school
system’s history study plans.

October 2007:
The Washington hearing
The hearing to follow up on the IACHR’s recommendations took
place in early October 2007. Representing the Archdiocese, David
Morales presented a missive from the Salvadoran ecclesiastical
hierarchy stating that a dialogue had been initiated between the
government and the Church in which the two parties expressed
“a willingness to continue listening to each other” and to take as
much time as needed to do so. At the same time, he mentioned
the state’s non-compliance with the recommendations and stated
that Monsignor Romero’s case had become “an international
symbol of impunity.”