El Salvador

 

According to Ready and Schirmer, in less than ten years, from 1979 to 1988 over 60,000 civilians [were] killed and 7,000 ‘disappeared’.  My writing is about the Co-Madres resistance to these killings and disappearances of innocent children and husbands.  The first committee of Co-Madres from El Salvador was founded in 1977 by a small group of women.  They bravely walked blood-stained streets in demonstration, wearing black dresses and white kerchiefs.  For the past twenty-five years the Co-Madres have worked to, as Renny Golden writes, “document torture, rape, and mutilation, matching pictures of once comely teenagers with the bruised and smashed bodies dug from shallow graves.” 

 

What Archbishop Romero’s murderer might say

Behind the Gun

 

I am telling you this only because

you do not know my true name…

I am the one who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero. 

Yeah, I know others have claimed this too,

but they just wanted the glory.

I… I only wanted to stay alive.

You know, kill or be killed, as they say.

I can’t tell you who was really behind

the whole thing.  I mean, I know it was

over 20 years ago and the chance of someone

being um, prosecuted, is very small,

but I would be the first person they would

come after if their names were revealed.

But… I can tell you why they wanted the

Archbishop dead.  In El Salvador at that time,

it was, uh, 1980… many people were being

taken directly off the streets, by police and other

government, um, officials?…  Si, oficiales.

They were taken and beaten, tortured…

You know, um, things like what they called

the Airplane.  It was when… how to describe it?

They put your hands behind your back, like this…

bend your knees so that your feet touch your hands,

then tie them together and hang you that way…

but uh, if you weren’t killed, you were often

put in prison without any charges for months

or years.  The police said that these people

were part of a conspiracy against the government,

but they knew this wasn’t true.  I believe all these

things were done, and sometimes are still being done,

because the police and government want to prove

their power, to scare people so that they won’t

stand up for themselves.  Archbishop Romero

urged the women who lost sons and husbands

to work together, fight against those in power.

He had too much influence. That’s why he had to go. 

I still remember his face on that day, um, March…24.

He was saying mass in the Chapel,

praying for all the people who sat in front of him.

He was crying, I remember, his eyes closed,

no sign of peace on his face.  I remember thinking,

you know, to help me do what I was about to do,

At least he will no longer feel pain, and then I just

raised the gun to his heart and shot him.

I will not lie to you, Archbishop Romero

was not the first person I had ever killed,

and he wasn’t the last, but I always felt worse

about him.  He was a holy man… how could God

ever forgive me?  His death was pointless too…

the women who Archbishop Romero spoke to

still kept their group, the Co-Madres.

When their office was bombed in 1989, they

just found another place.  Some of them

were kidnapped and raped, but they still refused

to give away the names of other women. 

Perhaps through Archbishop Romero’s

death they found strength? 

I like to think so.

             

- Erin Soos