Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Liberation Theology in Action: Stories from El Salvador

Karen Skold
August 19, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

I have had the opportunity and the privilege of traveling to El Salvador three times with the South Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a local interfaith organization founded during the Salvadoran civil war to offer sanctuary to refugees fleeing for their lives. (Our congregation actively supported this work during the war years.)

Story 1:

After the 1992 Peace Accords ended the fighting in El Salvador, many displaced and demobilized people settled in the lower Lempa River area, hoping to build new communities and a new life for themselves. South Bay Sanctuary Covenant became a partner of one of these new settlements, and every year sends a delegation to visit the Octavio Ortiz community, named after one of the martyred priests. During my visits there I have begun to understand the deeper meanings of partnership and solidarity. I would like to quote the reflections of two delegates on this subject.

John Bayer said, “One of the comments that we heard several times in the Octavio Ortiz Community was how much they look forward to our visit, and how much hope it gives them to know that a group of people so far away cares deeply about them. I had heard this before, on past delegations, but for some reason, this time it really sank in. They weren’t just saying this as a pleasantry — they really and truly meant it on a deep level. This concept of solidarity is so important, and their feelings of gratitude run deep.”

The second delegate I quote is myself: “During the good-bye breakfast with the town council, when we thanked each other, I was impressed with Mauricio’s remark that what he appreciated most about us was our humility — our willingness to come here and live with the people in the community, sacrificing the comforts we enjoy at home. His comments made me deeply conscious of the tremendous symbolic importance of our custom of living with families there during our stay. In this way, we demonstrate our commitment to a relationship of equal partnership, rather than a relationship of wealthy donors (and we are all wealthy by global standards) to recipients of charity.”

Story 2:

In the capital city, our delegation visited the Romero Museum at the University of Central America, the Jesuit University that became a center of liberation theology in the 1970s, and where 6 priests and two women were brutally murdered by the Army in 1989. The exhibit showed photographs and belongings of the martyred Archbishop Romero, and of many other priests assassinated during the terrible civil war.

I left the group to find a restroom, and was gone for longer than I planned. The closest restroom was being cleaned, so I asked a student where I could find another. As I returned, anxious to get back to the group, I took a shortcut through the Romero chapel. No one was there. I stopped short, stunned by the power of the artwork around the building’s interior. I stood with my back to the altar, surrounded by life-size line drawings of anonymous bodies, all nude, of people found tortured and murdered during the war. I had seen photographs of real atrocities back in the 1980s, when I was part of a group that tried to stop our government from funding the Army and death squads of El Salvador. But this time I didn’t react with horror and revulsion. The artist who created these drawings did so with such great love and compassion that I was profoundly moved. I thought, how appropriate, to identify these unnamed victims with the crucified Christ. I learned later that this was not an implicit message, but quite deliberate. The drawings were created to represent the twelve stations of the cross.

I was struck by the image of God as one who lives with and suffers with the poor, not some remote Being who offers the afterlife as compensation for earthly suffering. The priests inspired by liberation theology believed that they were called to serve the poor. They lived and worked with the people, risked — and sometimes lost — their lives with them. The priests told them that it was not by God’s will that they suffered, but by the actions of those who worshipped the false gods of wealth and power.

Story 3:

“Romero vive, la lucha sigue!” Romero lives, the struggle continues! This was the most prominent chant in the candlelight procession to the National Cathedral on the 25^th anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s assassination. Romero had said, “If they kill me, I will be reborn in the people of El Salvador”. I was surrounded by evidence that this had indeed happened. There were 80,000 people marching in this memorial vigil, including 1000 internationals, and at least 20 people from our partner community in the Lower Lempa region.

This year, 2007, marked the 30^th anniversary of the assassination of Father Rutilio Grande, and we timed our visit to coincide with a pilgrimage in his honor. As noted in the second reading, it was the death of Rutilio Grande that moved Archbishop Romero to denounce the oppression and repression of the poor. While driving on the road from Aguilares to El Paisnal, Father Grande, a boy, and an old man were murdered by a death squad. We marched with hundreds of others in the sweltering heat until we reached the tomb beside the road where all three were buried. The front of the order of service shows this tomb with a picture of Father Grande on it. We stopped at the tomb for songs and a homily.

Archbishop Romero and Rutilio Grande, and the other martyrs, too, live on in their people, more powerful now than during their lifetimes. It is in this sense that I can say I believe in resurrection.