San Salvador

In 1986, during the civil war, my dad was here as a Catholic chaplain working for the Los Angeles archdiocese...20 years later I walked into the city hoping to retrace his inspiring footprints. My first stop was the chapel where Archbishop Ocscar Romero was shot and killed while saying Mass. Sitting in the chapel I was waiting for some powerful emotion and nothing came, but I began thinking about people like Romero who risk their lives in order to spread a message.

Romero encouraged the poor to stand up against the government, but in doing so he made himself a target. Where does this courage come from...the courage to fly a message into the sky knowing that the hungers are below watching? Faith. In his words and actions it was clear that the human fear he felt was overpowered by his faith. It acted as a cloak allowing him to continue advocating for the poor despite the danger he faced.

I was able to visit the cottage where he lived the last year of his life, and a wonderful woman named Lydia shared stories of his life and showed me gruesome pictures of his assassination. When he was killed he died instantly, but it was the pain in the faces of those around him that got caught in my throat. He represented courage and love, and with his death the Salvadoranians took the torch into their own hands. In their eyes there was fear and sadness, but also determination...they placed his body in the back of a truck, but his message stayed with them.

When my dad was here he spent time with Ignacio ¨Nacho¨ Martin-Baro, a Jesuit priest who worked closely with the left during the war. He told the group my dad was with that he knew he would be killed doing the work he believed in, and 3 years later he, along with 5 other priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were all killed by military officials.

The peace treaty that ended the war was signed in 1991, but problems still remain, and the poor are still suffering under the ARENA government. Knowing that my dad was here, reading the history, and talking to people who lived through it have made my visit to El Salvador an extremely rich experience.