We had seen just a small tickle of Salvadorans fleeing the repression of the ARENA government until March 24, 1980, but then after the assassination of Monseñor Oscar Romero, the Archbishop who had spoken out against the brutality of the regime, the trickle became a flood as bodies lay in the streets and back roads.
President Reagan, convinced that the opposition to Duarte and his army was made up of communists, poured money to a government interested only in maintaining power, unleashing a civil war that killed over 75,000 until the peace accords January 1992.
The government targeted priests, nuns, and peasants in its murderous attempts to hold power against attempts to reform the country. While the rich went to Miami for shopping trips, the poor starved. Death squads ruled, and their remnants filled the void in the dreaded MS-13 and Mara-18 gangs. We should learn from history.
Prayer for the Day
How fitting it is, O God, that we remember saints for justice in Lent,
For this Season forces us to question our own commitments;
The poor of our Nation and the world cry out to you, O Lord,
Asking how long will wealth and power deny them their justice.
Let us, O Holy One, recommit ourselves to your vision for the earth,
Where no one starves and peace becomes our reality.
In the name of the One who took on the powers of injustice,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.
A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which is being proclaimed – what gospel is that?
Monseñor Oscar Romero, murdered March 24, 1980
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,
To open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
From the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name;
My glory I have to no other, nor my praise to idols.
Isaiah 42: 6-8