What would Oscar Romero say to Barack Obama?

[EFerrari]

What would Oscar Romero say to Barack Obama?
Mar. 24, 2011
By Scott Wright



Today, March 24, we commemorate the anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama visited Romero’s tomb in the cathedral of San Salvador, to conclude his first visit to Latin America and El Salvador.

It is an occasion that lends itself to reflection -- and action -- as Christians, human rights organizations, and people committed to peace and justice -- and to remember the legacy of Romero, the prophet-martyr of Latin America.

snip

We recall Romero’s words to President Carter, in 1980, pleading with him not to send U.S. military and economic support to the Salvadoran government:

"Instead of favoring greater justice and peace, your government’s contribution will undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for respect of their most basic human rights."

If Romero were alive today, we are confident he would express the same concern to end U.S. military and economic support to governments that violate human rights and enable transnational corporations throughout the continent of Latin America to privatize the land, natural resources, water, and social services for profit to the detriment of its peoples.

http://ncronline.org/news/remembering-oscar-romero-time-war

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, presente.

[Myrina]

1. Better yet, what would Cesar Romero say?

:shrug:

[EFerrari]

2. Today is the anniversary of the day Oscar Romero was killed

by the US backed Salvadoran military for standing up to the death squads from the pulpit. They shot him in the heart as he raised the chalice at Mass.

He was a great humanitarian who gave his life for his people. Or, whose life was taken by US funded assassins. Our tax dollars at work, again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

[ananda]

4. Oscar Romero was a great man.

Thanks for this reminder.

[EFerrari]

6. A unique human being. In his position, he didn't have to risk himself.

He could have stayed safe and ignored the carnage like so many others did.

[Judi Lynn]

15. That had been the pattern, one which appeared to be set in stone,

the people so weak against the guns and bullets of the ruling class.

More which relates to your comment:

The Death and Life of Bishop Romero
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
March 18, 2010

~snip~
Yet, Romero was an unlikely martyr for justice. He had begun his rise to power in the Salvadoran Roman Catholic Church as a lowly, rather naïve and very conservative priest who was elevated to the episcopacy partly because he was thought to be an obedient servant for the wealthy Salvadoran elite.

Romero was expected to protect the elite's tradition of maintaining power and control, by any means necessary, over the exploited working classes, especially the rural peasants, most of whom were practicing Catholics who had been told for centuries to look to the after-life for their reward.

However, these campesinos had begun to show signs of revolt, finally demanding freedom from their centuries of oppression. They formed quasi-revolutionary groups deriving inspiration from Jesus's gospels praising the poor and rejecting greed.

Romero watched the Salvadoran security forces resort to torture, extra-judicial killings and disappearances to silence and intimidate the liberation movement, including young clergy assigned to Romero's archdiocese. Each night, mutilated bodies were dumped along the streets.

More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/031810b.html

[EFerrari]

17. The traditional job of the archbishop was to explain to the people why

their misery was God's will. In exchange, he was feasted by the rich and obliged by the government.

Romero broke with that tradition. Astonishing, really. :)

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. I will admit to having that thought as well

[Judi Lynn]

14. Then you have a great deal of time on your hands, clearly. n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

21. Not really, just a fertile mind

I originally read it as Cesar Romero...and then realized that was not what was there.

[Judi Lynn]

13. It wouldn't have been something he gave his life to say, in defense of humanity.

Archbishop Oscar Romero
The Last Sermon (1980)

~snip~
Fuentes confirmed that, during two weeks of investigations he carried out in El Salvador, he was able to establish that there had been eighty-three political assassinations between 10 and 14 March. He pointed out that Amnesty International recently condemned the government of El Salvador, alleging that it was responsible for six hundred political assassinations. The Salvadorean government defended itself against the charges, arguing that Amnesty International based its condemnation on unproved assumptions.

Fuentes said that Amnesty had established that in El Salvador human rights are violated to a worse degree than the repression in Chile after the coupe d'etat. The Salvadorean government also said that the six hundred dead were the result of armed confrontations between army troops and guerrillas. Fuentes said that during his stay u l El Salvador, he could see that the victims had been tortured before their deaths and mutilated afterward.

The spokesman of Amnesty International said that the victims' bodies characteristically appeared with the thumbs tied behind their backs. Corrosive liquids had been applied to the corpses to prevent identification of the victims by their relatives and to prevent international condemnation, the spokesman added. Nevertheless, the bodies were exhumed and the dead have been identified. Fuentes said that the repression carried out by the Salvadorean army was aimed at breaking the popular organizations through the assassination of their leaders in both town and country.

~more~
I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

More:
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. That's OK, that was my first thought, too.

Showing my age.

(sigh)

[EFerrari]

20. Reportedly, Father Romero didn't take himself too seriously

and I doubt he would mind pulling up the "Romero" file for anyone. :)

[bobbolink]

3. I'm sure you know he was speaking to a very different situation.

In fact..

"The church is obliged by its evangelical mission to demand structural changes that favor the reign of God and a more just and comradely way of life. Unjust social structures are the roots of all violence and disturbances. … Those who benefit from obsolete structures react selfishly to any kind of change."
- Archbishop Oscar Romero, November 1979. Today is the 31st anniversary of his martyrdom. (Source: U.S. Catholic)

Archbishop Romero lived in a violent country much the same as Libya is today. He did NOT rebuke the rebels who took up arms. He rebuked the power structure.

His words can be taken and used by people for their own purposes, and the fact is, he is sadly not with us today, and we can't know exactly what he would say.

But from his quote above that I posted, and from his life, I would guess he would reluctantly support the action in Libya.

I wish he was here to tell us himself. :cry:

[EFerrari]

5. I'm not arguing Libya by proxy here.

I was thinking that it's sad that the School of the Americas, whose graduates were responsible for this death, is still open for business and that our closest "allies" in Latin America are still the most brutal governments of the region.



There will be a protest again in Washington -- April Days of Action @ http://www.soaw.org/

[bobbolink]

7. I see. Given your previous contention against my posts, I took it that was what you were getting at

Thank you for clarifying.

A pox on the School of the Ameica's house. :hi:

ps.... I would also imagine he would have some things to say to Obama about Gitmo. :cry:

[EFerrari]

11. I try to be more interested in what happens to people

than in my DU scorecard. lol!

:hi:

[bobbolink]

12. please see my ps

[EFerrari]

18. And CAFTA, too, which is the new instrument of exploitation.

The government of poor El Salvador is being faced with "reinbursing" Pacific Rim Mining for millions of dollars of "future profit" if they deny them mining rights -- that require indigenous people to be kicked off their land.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Thanks for the timely heads up on the imminent Washington demonstration.

No effort is ever wasted over this movement to awaken the US American people to the deeper, larger, more serious reality.

[suffragette]

10. K&R

[cali]

19. ugh. I hate people using the dead as their puppets. It's a revolting

tactic.

[Judi Lynn]

22. President Funes thanked President Obama publicly for taking the time to honor Bishop Romero.

Obama visits tomb of slain Salvadoran archbishop
By JIM KUHNHENN and ANY CABRERA
Associated Press

~snip~
During an official dinner afterward, Funes noted Obama's visit to the tomb during his toast to the U.S. president.

"It's a gesture the people of El Salvador will never forget," Funes said. "Thank you for this gesture and your soldarity."

~snip~
He became "the voice of the voiceless" and every Sunday condemned from the pulpit the massacres and killings of innocent civilians in military operations. For conservatives of the country, the archbishop was a subversive.

"Brothers, you are our own people, killing your own brothers," he said in his last sermon at the Cathedral of San Salvador, where he is now buried in the basement, a floor below the altar. "No soldier is obliged to obey an order that goes against the law of God."

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/22/2745535/obama-visits-tomb-of-slain-salvadoran.html

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. Probably something similar to what this guy said and would say.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. Mohandas Gandhi

Or, this guy:

Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence. César Chávez

[EFerrari]

25. Fringe characters.

Too bad. :)

This morning Alan Nairn was talking a little about the migration of the "Salvador option" and how we're seeing it to a degree in Yeman, where our government arms and funds the local War on Terra, and those resources are put to work against the populace.

[Judi Lynn]

24. We definitely know what Bishop Romero said to Jimmy Carter. It's on record.

New information has just been published:

"Learn from History", 31st Anniversary of the Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 339
Posted - March 23, 2011
By: Kate Doyle and Emily Willard

~snip~
The documents are being posted as President Barak Obama leaves El Salvador, his final stop on a five-day trip to Latin America. Obama spent part of his time in the country with a visit to Monsignor Romero’s tomb last night. Although the United States funneled billions of dollars to the tiny country in support of the brutal army and security forces during a counterinsurgency war that left 75,000 civilians dead, the president made no reference to the U.S. role, seeking in his speeches instead to focus on immigration and security concerns. The day before his visit to Romero’s gravesite, Obama had told an audience in Chile that it was important that the United States and Latin America “learn from history, that we understand history, but that we not be trapped by history, because many challenges lie ahead.”

Just weeks before his murder, Archbishop Romero published an open letter to President Jimmy Carter in the Salvadoran press, asking the United States not to intervene in El Salvador’s fate by arming brutal security forces against a popular opposition movement. Romero warned that U.S. support would only “sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people which repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights.” Despite his plea, President Carter moved to approve $5 million in military aid less than one year after the archbishop’s murder, as Carter was leaving office in January 1981.

Included in the posting are documents reporting on a secret, behind-the-scene effort by the United States to enlist the Vatican in pressuring Romero over his perceived support for the Salvadoran left; an account of the archbishop’s powerful March 23, 1980, homily, given the day before his assassination; a description of the murder by the U.S. defense attaché in El Salvador; and an extraordinary embassy cable describing a meeting organized by rightist leader Roberto D’Aubuisson in which participants draw lots to determine who would be the triggerman to kill Romero.

Although the declassified documents do not reveal the extent of the plot to kill Romero or the names of those who murdered him, details in them support the findings of the 1993 report by the U.N.-mandated Truth Commission for El Salvador. Released shortly after the signing of the peace accords that ended the war in El Salvador, the report identified D’Aubuisson, Captains Alvaro Rafael Saravia and Eduardo Avila, and Fernando (“El Negro”) Sagrera as among those responsible for the assassination. On March 25 of last year, Carlos Dada of El Salvador’s on-line news site El Faro published an extraordinary interview with Alvaro Saravia, one of the masterminds of Romero’s killing. In the interview, Saravia revealed chilling details of the plot to murder Romero; see a transcript of the interview, “How We Killed the Archbishop......"

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB339/index.htm

[EFerrari]

26. I wonder if Jimmy Carter ever thinks of Romero.

Or if he has ever written about him and that time.

[Judi Lynn]

27. Oh, boy! He has to have some real regrets, doesn't he? He made a HUGE mistake.

From Bishop Romero's Wikipedia:

In 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta came to power amidst a wave of human rights abuses by paramilitary right-wing groups and the government. Romero criticized the United States for giving military aid to the new government and wrote to President Jimmy Carter in February 1980, warning that increased US military aid would "undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights". <1> Carter, concerned that El Salvador would become "another Nicaragua" ignored Romero's pleas and continued military aid to the Salvadoran government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

Two months after Jimmy Carter got the letter from Bishop Romero, the man was assassinated. How could anyone live with that?

It's not as if he hadn't told him, and hadn't begged for help, for all those 75,000 murdered people.

[EFerrari]

28. I deeply admire President Carter.

He did a lot without the backing of the party establishment and since his retirement, has been a force of nature in the world for human rights.

He was the most humane president in my lifetime.

[dipsydoodle]

29. K & R

.