Nearly 25 years after Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador was killed while celebrating Mass, the man responsible for plotting his assassination was held accountable in a court of law. It is the first judicial, public inquiry to find anyone responsible for the assassination of the archbishop.
Late in the afternoon of Sept. 3, following five days of stirring testimony, Judge Oliver W. Wanger of the Fresno federal court ruled that Alvaro Rafael Saravia, a retired Salvadoran air force captain, was responsible for the wrongful death of the archbishop. Saravia had been living in California when the suit was filed.
The plaintiff, an undisclosed member of the Romero family, was awarded $10 million dollars in the civil case --- $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $7.5 million in punitive damages.
The judge ruled that Saravia had been proven to be an "aider, abettor and co-conspirator" in the murder of the archbishop by finding the driver and assassin and paying the assassin 1000 colones (about $200 in U.S. dollars).
More significantly, the judge --- who was nominated to the federal bench by President George Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 1991 --- ruled that Archbishop's Romero's death was a "crime against humanity." The ruling carries broader implications, because it finds that the archbishop's death was one of a pattern of planned killings by the Salvadoran government, the military and police forces against targeted groups of civilians.
The judge found that the Salvadoran government at the time of the archbishop's assassination was essentially controlled by the military propagating "systematic and continuous violations of human rights to perpetuate the concentration of land and wealth." Among the violations were ongoing government sanctioned kidnappings, murders, tortures and disappearances to create a national state of "intimidation, coercion and repression."
In this climate of fear the role of Archbishop Romero, said the silver-haired judge, was to be a "voice that stood for independence and that wouldn't be intimidated or silenced."
Judge Wanger also ruled that the Salvadoran government had not acted in "good faith" to pursue "honest investigations" following the prelate's death. The government and the court system "abdicated their judicial function" by fabricating and distorting evidence, said the judge. He said the distortions went as high up as the Salvadoran Supreme Court. Because of this and ongoing fears of reprisal by the plaintiff, the statue of limitations on the case had not expired, the judge ruled after rigorously questioning counsel and witnesses.
The monetary award set by the judge most likely will be symbolic. Saravia, whose last known address was in Modesto, went into hiding soon after the suit was filed against him. His whereabouts remain unknown. He was not present at the hearings nor did he have legal representation, but the judge determined that Saravia had been properly served with legal documents and the case could be heard in absentia.
He was tried under the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act and the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act --- which allow civil suits for summary killings and torture against defendants in the United States, even when the crime was committed outside this country.
The key witness was Amado Garay, who served as Saravia's driver in El Salvador. He testified, at times tearfully, that he drove the assassin to the hospital chapel in a red Volkswagen. Following the single shot that struck the archbishop in the chest, the sniper told Garay to drive away slowly.
Later, when Garay drove Saravia to a meeting that included Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, leader of right-wing death squads, Saravia said to D'Aubuisson: "Mission accomplished." D'Abuisson founded a right wing political party with a paramilitary arm before his death from cancer in 1992. The party is now known as Arena, from which the current president hails.
During the Fresno hearing witness Atilio Ramirez Amaya, a Salvadoran judge, also detailed a murder attempt against his life for trying to investigate the archbishop's assassination. He fled the country for nearly ten years.
Written evidence, including Saravia's diary, was introduced to show that the plot to kill the prelate was called Operacion Piña (Operation Pineapple) and was financed by wealthy landowners.
The archbishop, whose weekly homilies were broadcast throughout the country by radio, was an outspoken critic of escalating human rights abuses in El Salvador and a voice in defense of the country's poor. On the eve of his assassination he pleaded with soldiers to disobey orders and stop the repression of their own people. He was gunned down March 24, 1980.
His funeral, attended by more than 100,000 people, was interrupted by explosions and shots fired into the crowd. About 40 people were killed, some by trampling, and several hundred were wounded.
Reconciliation begins
As Judge Wanger gave his oral ruling, nearly 50 people sitting on wooden courtroom benches in the small space reserved for the public, nodded their heads in quiet agreement. They had come from Fresno, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. As soon as the judge adjourned, they jumped from their seats hugging one another and crying.
Three times the group cheered "Monseñor Romero --- Presente!" a traditional chant, referencing remarks by the archbishop that if he was killed he would be resurrected in the people.
"The truth has finally come out," said Eduardo Gonzalez, immediately following the ruling. "We're free of oppression, free from fear and free from the pain of not having had justice for so many years. It's a historic day for peace and justice in El Salvador and the world. Now true reconciliation can begin," added Gonzalez, executive director of Clínica Monseñor Oscar A. Romero in Los Angeles.
Neris Gonzalez, once a catechist in El Salvador, showed the scars on her right arm from cigarette burns by members of the national guard when she was 22 years old. She retold the story of being raped and violated repeatedly for two weeks in 1979 leading to the death of the eighth month old baby in her womb.
She said her interrogators persecuted her for teaching poor campesinos to count so that they wouldn't be cheated of their pay when selling their crops. "We are not ignorant," said the Chicago resident. "Peace comes with justice."
Nuvia Magaña, community center coordinator of Clínica Monseñor A. Romero, said listening to the witnesses brought up piercing memories.
"It is painful looking at the statistics and the graphics. For us they have faces, names. They were our friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, parents," said Magaña, whose brother survived being tortured at the hands of the national police. The Fresno verdict, she said, "is a very small step in our search for justice in El Salvador. They did such great horrors and this hearing is very small. But it is great. It is immense."
Added Eduardo Gonzalez: "With all these deaths there's been a great feeling of emptiness, despair, and sadness. For nearly 25 years, it's been a wound in our lives. Today we will begin healing that."
The case would provide North Americans with an opportunity to reflect on U.S. policy in El Salvador which gave some $6 billion in aid to the Salvadoran government, said Nancy Spear, member of the Pico-Union Shalom Ministry of the United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
"It's difficult to feel that my country has been a part of something that is now being labeled a crime against humanity," she said. "This country needs to acknowledge that and take responsibility for that." Spear added she was proud the case had been heard in the U.S.
Others lamented that Saravia could not be tried in El Salvador given a sweeping amnesty law that exempts anyone who participated in political crimes before 1993; some hope this ruling will put pressure on the government to repeal the law.
"We're finding justice in U.S. courts, but we should be doing this in El Salvador. Salvadoran judges can find strength in this ruling," said Carlos Mauricio, who survived capture by an army death squad in 1983 and now lives in San Francisco. He is founder of the Stop Impunity Project.
Isabel Cárdenas, a parishioner at Christ the King Church in Los Angeles and co-founder/advisor of the Salvadoran American National Association, said she hoped the ruling would help move forward the cause of sainthood for Archbishop Oscar Romero. He died for his people and his death now represents all those who suffered, she said.
Death's impact
Romero's death had far-reaching consequences for the country, testified political science and Latin American studies professor Terry Lynn Karl of Stanford University during the hearing.
Karl said Archbishop Romero had served as a bridge builder trying to build consensus between the moderate right and the moderate left. His death left a significant void, and soon thereafter, hard liners within the military ousted more moderate military forces, and began to kill civilians with suspected leftist ties in much greater numbers.
In February 1980, about 237 civilians were murdered for political reasons; by June 1980, it became at least 1,000 a month. Massacres also began to take place in which groups of 600-800 campesinos were murdered at a time.
What happened in El Salvador, said Karl, "is one of the most egregious examples of state terror in the history of Latin America."
A leftist guerilla force emerged following government targeting of civilians, and the country descended into 12 years of civil war. By the war's end in 1992 more than 75,000 civilians had been killed and a third of the population had been displaced from their homes, including the exile of more than a million people.
During the Reagan administration the U.S. provided the Salvadoran government with large-scale aid to halt the spread of communism in Central America.
But witnesses testified that wealthy landowners were resisting agrarian reform and other economic reforms that would give the majority poor and illiterate Salvadoran population the opportunity to receive better wages and engage in greater participatory democracy.
Case implications
The suit against Saravia was filed by the San Francisco based Center for Justice and Accountability and the San Francisco office of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe.
Lead counsel Nicholas van Aelstyn said he hopes that if Saravia is found that the U.S. government will seek his deportation, thereby sending the message that Salvadoran perpetrators of human rights abuses will not find safe haven in the United States.
The hearing in Fresno is the second against Salvadoran military officers. In July 2002 a West Palm Beach, Florida, jury found retired Salvadoran generals Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides liable for torture and other human rights abuses and ordered them to pay $54.6 million in damages. Carlos Mauricio and Neris Gonzalez were two of the three plaintiffs.
The next suit has been filed against Nicolas Carranza, now living in Memphis, for allegedly overseeing military squads that killed thousands of civilians while he served as El Salvador's vice minister of Defense and Public Security in 1979 and 1980 and as director of the Treasury Police from 1983-84. Carranza has denied any wrongdoing.
Human rights law professor Naomi Roht Arriazi of University of California Hastings College of the Law testified before Judge Wanger that historically the same patterns of repression tend to re-emerge if countries don't deal with the issue of impunity and reform its judiciary. However, cases that are tried in foreign courts enable judges of integrity living in the country where the crime was originally committed to assert their right to uphold the laws of their land. |