"Romero" Cathedral Shut Down

by Jim Shapiro and Jon Reed

ed. note: The whole world knows that on Nov. 16 a Salvadoran death squad brutally murdered six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter, along with seven students at the Catholic University of San Salvador. What is less known is that Salvadorans have lived with this kind of government-sponsored terrorism for decades.

The following report, sent to AGENDA before the recent massacre, illustrates the kind of terror Salvadoran citizens have faced for years without significant media coverage. Since 1980 over 70,000 civilians have died. Analysts say right-wing death squads and the military are responsible for the majority of those deaths.

The Nov. offensive by the FMLN was, in part, a response to the Oct. 31 death squad bombing of the union offices of FENESTRA {National Federation of Salvadoran Workers) in which 10 Salvadoran union members were killed and 36 wounded. The FMLN was also responding to an Oct. 16 attack on a crowd of people in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador, an attack which most of the world heard little or nothing about from the media.

SAN SALVADOR - A squad of heavily-armed Air Force personnel dressed in civilian clothes on Oct. 1 6 fired upon a large crowd of people gathered at a church-sponsored peace vigil in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral of El Salvador in San Salvador. In a terrifying scene that could have been lifted out of the recent Hollywood movie "Romero," several thousand demonstrators were forced to scramble for safety through the open doors of the Cathedral. Three of the snipers were subsequently disarmed and captured by the crowd, who discovered Air Force military identification papers on the men. A short time later the assailants were turned over to the national police by Edgar Palacios, a Baptist minister and director of the CPDN, the National Dialogue for Peace. The National Dialogue is a broad-based coalition of church and grassroots groups calling for a negotiated end to the country's 10-year civil war. Moments after releasing the Air Force gunmen, Palacios and a number of people accompanying him were fired upon by another sniper unit.

Since the late 1970s the Metropolitan Cathedral has served as a sanctuary for people fleeing government repression. Most recently a group of wounded FMLN combatants had taken sanctuary in the church, demanding that the government allow them to leave the country to receive needed medical treatment.

Several days after the sniper attack on the peace vigil, Salvadoran Archbishop Rivera Damas shocked the church and peace community by announcing the closing of the Cathedral for several years "for repairs" in a move widely regarded as a capitulation to military and ruling ARENA Party pressure. Government and military leaders have consistently denounced the Catholic Church for allowing peace activists and "subversives" to use the Cathedral as a site for rallies and vigils.

According to critics of the closing, this action directly contradicts the philosophy of former Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated in 1980 under the orders of ARENA Party founder Major Roberto D'Aubuisson. Before his death Romero promised that the Cathedral would always remain open to provide sanctuary for persons fleeing persecution. The closing of the Cathedral is particularly ironic in light of large scale commemorative activities planned for next March to mark the tenth anniversary of Romero's assassination. Romero's tomb is located inside the Cathedral and has become a shrine and important symbol for millions of Salvadorans.

Archbishop Damas has also been criticized for undertaking expensive remodeling work on the Cathedral, remodeling work which Romero said would be immoral to spend money on as long as the majority of Salvadorans were living in abject poverty. Church and community leaders are urging people to write Damas and ask him to reconsider the closing of the Cathedral.