Cold War Killer File: the Death Squads of El Salvador – Part 1
Although numbers of civilian casualties are inconsistent among reporting institutions, the U.N. Truth Commission cited the Christian Legal Aid Office’s report of civilian victims just for 1980-1982 as 34,131 persons. 6 In addition to high numbers of civilian deaths, human rights workers and other individuals who attempted to speak out about the rights violations were systematically targeted by the extreme-right. 7 Declassified documents show the United States’ quiet acknowledgement of right-wing terrorism amid staggering numbers of civilian causalities. Despite reports of “brutality by Salvadoran security forces,” Reagan assuaged domestic concerns and requested $135 million dollars in additional aid for El Salvador. 8
Over three decades have passed since Salvadoran human rights champion, Archbishop Oscar Romero, was shot in the heart while celebrating mass. While Romero’s death is one among thousands of civilians killed during the Salvadoran Civil War, it best exemplifies the brutality, impunity, and the role the United States played in the war. The United States played a critical role in helping the Salvadoran government try to maintain power and defeat the leftist rebels. As the previous documents have begun to illustrate, Cold War goals to contain communism were prioritized over internationally recognized laws regarding human rights. In the following section this prioritization will be explored further.
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The Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
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On March 24th, 1980, one day after his sermon calling on the soldiers to not obey the military, Romero was giving Mass in a small chapel located in a hospital called “La Divina Providencia” for a funeral of someone who been murdered a week before. The chapel was full as always because of his newfound popularity. While raising the chalice at the end of the Eucharistic rite, a gunman shot him through the heart with a sniper rifle. His blood covered the altar and he fell, gasping for breath in front of the terrified crowd. He was dead within minutes.
According to sources, just before the bullets fell Romero, he uttered the words, “One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives.”
Days before his murder Archbishop Romero told a reporter, “You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.” He added, “I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.”
It is widely believed that the killers were members of a death squad trained by the United States. In an official report by the United Nations in 1993, it was announced that an army Major by the name of Roberto D’Aubuisson, a School of the Americas graduate with counterinsurgency intelligence experience, had ordered the killing of Romero. Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia, who participated in the assassination, said the effort was led by D’Aubuisson. D’Aubuisson had publically spoken of the need to “take care” of the Archbishop, a statement which he made in the context of publically speaking of the need to kill 200,000 or 300,000 to restore order to El Salvador.
Years later, in the National Security Archive, scholars obtained a declassified document about a conversation with Roberto D’Aubuisson in which he bragged about planning the killing of Archbishop Romero, and in which he mentions a lottery between the members of his death squads in which the “winners” would be the ones to kill Romero. D’Aubuisson would found his own far-right party, the Nationalist Republic Alliance or ARENA, not long after the murder of Romero. ARENA would dominate the political scene in El Salvador until 1989.
Romero’s funeral was attended by 250,000 mourners, and was called the largest demonstration in El Salvador’s history. It was fired upon by army forces. Some who attended were shot down in front of the cathedral by snipers from the rooftops. Romero is considered the unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador. He is often referred to as “San Romero” or “Saint Romero” in El Salvador and throughout the world.
his final days as president, Carter increased military aid to El Salvador to $10 million, and sent additional American advisors. This happened after the military took over the University of Central America. With the election of US President Ronald Reagan, President José Napoleón Duarte became a symbol of “anti-communist resistance” in Latin America. Soon after the rape and murder of the church women, the FMLN would fight back in 1981. For many years the El Salvador military government carried out more and more well-known torture and murder of innocents. The media in the United States did not breathe a word of criticism.
In 1982, Ronald Reagan would approve the standards of human rights in El Salvador. In 1983, he would ask Congress to send more aid to the government, even after one of the worst massacres Central America would know: El Mozote.
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