On March 24th, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was presiding over mass when he was shot through the heart. His gruesome and public murder sent a signal to the people of El Salvador: None of you are sacred. None of you are safe. The Archbishops death would spark a war that would change the lives of thousands of people, including our host, Jasmine Romero. While on a quest to understand the Archbishops murder, she finds deaths in her own family that connect back to the slain priest.
Warning. This episode contains references to extreme violence. Please use discretion when listening.
The past is never dead. It isn't even past. William Faulkner.
Down a winding road on the west side of the city of San Salvador, there's a peaceful little hideaway. The grounds are covered with palm trees, snake plants, and flowering buen villiers. It's a small hospital, the hospice really where cancer patients go to live out their last days. And it was here that Oscar Romero, a quiet man with an easy smile and some seriously enviable eyebrows, made his home. It's an odd choice. Oscar is not sick, and he's supposed to be living in the heart of downtown because Oscar is one of the most important people in El Salvador. He's the archbishop, the highest ranking priest in a country that's so Catholic it's named after Jesus. And on a muggy March afternoon in nineteen eighty, Oscar Romero gathered a group of worshippers to the hospital's chapel to commemorate the life of a local grandmother. It's a ceremony he's done thousands of times He steps up to the pulpit and performs the rituals of Mass. He blesses the wine, turning it into the blood of Christ. He prepares the Eucharist, the gift of the flesh. Side a red Volkswagen has pulled up to the entrance of the church. There are two men in the car. There's no way to know if Oscar saw them, but the street is only about forty paces away from the pulpit. I think he must have seen them. Oscar raises a chalice high above his head, lifting it up to God, and mid sentence, he's shot with a single bullet through the heart. Oscar Romero died that day, killed by a twenty two caliber bullet. The bullet fragmented inside of him, destroying everything it touched. It sent a message because Oscar's killing wasn't just an act of murder. It was an act of war, an attack against the Catholic Church itself and in turn, the people of al Salvador. Oscar would go on to become one of the world's most beloved saints. There's even a statue of him in Westminster Abbey, next to a statue of Martin Luther King. But to become that Saint Oscar had to sacrifice his life. His death marked the start of one of the darkest times in Salvador in history, the Civil War, a war that would leave more than seventy five thousand people dead and send a million more across the globe fleeing the violence. My family includes both those that fled and those that died. When I started working on this story, I wanted to find out what really happened to Oscar Romero, who was responsible for his murder and all of the violence that followed, And to find out if the same forces that killed Oscar Romero were the ones that brought death to my family's doorstep. I'm Jasmine Romero, and this is Sacred Scandal, Season three, Nation of Saints. This is episode one. Oscar. Okay, let's get one thing out of the way. My name is Romero, but I am not related to Oscar Romero. I think I'm pretty sure. Well, I asked my parents and they're pretty sure. But I guess it's possible. Romero is an extremely common name in Elsalvador. In nineteen eighty one, my parents fled from El Salvador with my three older sisters to Los Angeles. Los Angeles has the largest population of Salvadorans of any place outside of El Salvador. It's also where I was born. I grew up going to MacArthur Park on Saturdays to watch my dad plays soccer. The field would be lined with other immigrant families like mine, eating elotes and trying to start over. But the ghost of Oscar Romero was everywhere. There's a statue of him in that same park, and just up the street is a clinic named after him. Los Angeles is covered in murals of his face. But in my family, Oscar Romero really wasn't a topic of discussion with.
I.
Central America has been transformational because of the politics.
Yeah, a few years ago, I went to this event in La There was a salvador and comedian with this big tattoo on her arm, and the host complimented her on it.
Her arm has got the most beautiful tattoo I have ever seen in my life, and it is of il Arsobispo Arnulfo Romero on her arm.
They started talking about the war and the meaning of Oscar Romero's life, and I remember feeling this embarrassment wash over me. These two strangers knew more about the history of my family's homeland than I did. My parents never really talked much about El Salvador or the reasons why they left. Growing up, we were so concerned with surviving the present there wasn't much room to consider the past. But I also had never really made the effort to ask what horrors did my family experience that made them leave a place that they truly love, Who was the man on those murals? And if I really wanted the answers, I knew where I needed to go. So it's one in the morning. I'm at JFK.
Way did you board my flight?
My parents are going to pick me up when I get there, and I'm very sleepy. A few years ago, my parents shocked the entire family by moving back to El Salvador to retire. They used their life's savings to build a little house in their hometown, San Miguel. I've been to Al Salvador a handful of times, mostly when I was a kid, but ten years have passed since my last visit. Looking around the plane, everyone's faces look like mine, but I still feel like an outsider stepping into a world that doesn't belong to me. I grabbed my bags and headed out into the humid air to look for my parents. They were thrilled I was coming, even if it was for work. Wonder and yes, my dad was holding up a handwritten sign that said Jasmine Roulero in capital letters. It was written inside of a pizza box, so I'm guessing they got hungry while they were waiting for me. My mom just hugged me for a long time. They both looked relaxed, which was nice and confusing. If you grew up with immigrant parents, you know what I mean. As we walked to my dad's old pickup truck, my mom kept pointing out how nice and new things look. At the last time I landed in this airport, ten years ago, it had a different name. It's now called the Oscar International Airport in honor of the dead archbishop. It feels like everywhere you look there are signs of change of a new era. The terminal I flew into is only a year old, and there's new pavement on the sidewalks everywhere, new tar in the parking lot. Leaving the airport, we drive past a forest of palm trees and tall billboards that welcome tourists to explore the new El Salvador ads for swinkie resorts at surf city, beach or day camps ziplining in the rainforest. But just past those billboards there are rows and rows of little roadside shacks, people selling fresh coconuts, bags of water for a quarter, and souvenir machites, the tool of choice for the country's working poor. El Salvador is still considered a developing nation, which just means that most of the population is living in poverty. The average Salvadoran makes four hundred dollars a month, and it's even less in more remote cities like San Miguel, where my family and Oscar Romero's family both come from. Poverty is something that both of our families knew very well. Oscar Romero was one of eight kids, just like my dad. My mom is one of nine. Both of my parents were raised in homes where the floor wasn't made out of wood or tile, it was dirt. My dad didn't even own a pair of shoes until he was fifteen. All of this is on my mind as we make the long drive back to San Miguel to visit two of my theas my aunt's there are constant reminders that this level of poverty is still very much a reality here in the new El Salvador. My Thea rents a place on the outskirts of San Miguel with one of my cousins and her young son, whose name I finally learn is Ken. The house is made out of cement blocks with a tin roof, and there are extra pieces of tin leaned up against the house. She's saving up to install them over the patio. As we settle into the plastic chairs that Mithia set out for us, A herd of cows passes by Ken waves. Mitha also takes care of my great aunt, my Godmotherasita, who I haven't seen since I was a little girl. Mathia. Pasita is eighty nine years old, and she's so thin it feels like she'll snap if I hug her too hard. She's almost completely blind, and she's hard of hearing too. It takes a minute for her to recognize me, but when she does see, she smiles a big, toothless grin and wraps her frail arms around me. She can't believe how big I've gotten. I put her hand on top of my head to show her how tall I am. We all start talking, catching up, and it feels cozy and familiar. I snuggle in next to my pass and we reminisce about the last time she saw me. I don't have any memory of these events, but the stories are familiar. The time I broke my wrist, the time I gave her my mom's purse as a present. Walking to church together. Finally, I tell her that I'm here to learn about Oscar Romero.
Inn through Plat.
To my surprise, she starts talking about him like he's an old friend. She tells me that she remembers going to see him preach, which makes sense. For twenty three years, Oscar Romero was the local priest in San Miguel, her priest. San Miguel is where he got his start in the Catholic Church. But I had no idea that my family actually knew him. Used the.
Elt sre.
She tells me that she remembers him being tall, like my dad, who's about six two, that he was the kind of priest that you could talk to about anything, that she often went to him for advice. I can hear the affection in her voice. It's a strange feeling to realize that my family was so close to such an important historical figure. It's like finding out that your dad played Little League with JFK. But being a local priest was the vast majority of Oscar's life. For most of his career, he just did the normal things that a parish priest does. Attend funerals, perform baptisms, maybe the occasional exorcism. Well maybe not that last part. Who knows. In El Salvador, the local priest is an integral part of the community. He's who you go to when you're having a problem, and that's who Oscar Romeril was in San Miguel. I keep asking my tepassy the questions, but she starts to get tired. As I'm taking her inside to rest, she mumbles something that makes my stomach turn. What a punishment they gave him, she says. Going to the capital was his ruin. It was in the capital that he gave his last mesa before being shot down. We'll be right back after this break. Being in this cozy house, it's easy to see how San Miguel could make you forget about the troubles of the world. It has a small town quality to it, isolated from the politics of the capital. Maybe that's why some of the richest Salvadorans have estates out here. I didn't even know there was such a thing as rich Salvadorans when I was a kid, and now I'm learning a lot about this hidden world that my parents never told me about. On the drive home, I asked my parents about something that I came across in my research, the fourteen families. The fourteen families, they say, oh, they're the owners. It's what Salvadorans call la the oligarchy, the rich land owning families who have run the country since the late eighteen hundreds. These families are the terretinents, the landowners that control most of the country's wealth. These families became fabulously wealthy by owning plantations that cultivated coffee, cotton, and corn. These families, they owned the stores and the goods that filled the stores, and the land that the goods were grown on. Meanwhile, the compassinos who worked on those plantations lived in abject poverty.
Lussa ladio, heern dramente in crave lamentin houstos.
This is Marisa da Martinez. She invited me to her home in the capitol and we spent an afternoon, sitting in rocking chairs and talking about her work keeping Oscar Romero's legacy alive. She's an activist who protested the unfair treatment of the working class in the seventies, and she's the co founder of the Oscar Romero Foundation. Because what happened to Oscar Romero and the history of the working class in El Salvador, they kind of go hand in hand.
And daran porlos seeing say colonees the ideas he Yeslasion Soto Campina kea Pocamari Bivier sultante.
In the nineteen seventies, when Oscar Romero was serving in San Miguel, the vast majority of the country lived this way in an insulting poverty. Competinos made less than a dollar a day, and most families suffered from malnutrition, including mine. My great grandmother who helped raise me. She had fourteen kids, only six of them survived past six months. That's the kind of malnutrition we're talking about here. And for many families, the only option to survive was to buy things on credit, credit that they got from their own bosses, the plantation ownersdotals.
I mean fila de hintel di lacinde la fila the hint parandoz it is euna.
It was a never ending cycle. Most Campsinos never learned to read because there were no schools, and so neither did their children. They lived at the mercy of the plantation owners for.
Generations loke sinica potlaying Houstisia.
And these rich oligarchic families they didn't just control the country's wealth. They were also deeply involved in the Catholic Church. By involved, I mean controlling. Now, the relationship between the wealthy and the Catholic Church didn't start in El Salvador. They've been intertwined since the first gold bar was delivered to Vatican City. But the relationship in El Salvador was particularly tight. It was a well oiled machine. The country's rich would provide lavish donations to the Church, and in return, the Church would turn a blind eye to the systemic injustice. Priests would tell the poor, your reward is waiting for you in heaven. But in the seventies some priests dared to break this protocol. That's after the break is one of the priests who dared to step out of the established oligarchy church relationship. I met him on a sweltering afternoon at his parish in Montserrat, a suburb in the hills around San Salvador. He's about eighty years old, with a thin sheet of white hair and a twinkle in his eye. He invites me, in my fixed Roerto, into his cramped office in the back of the church. On his desk is a picture of him as a young man, smiling next to a somber oscar Romero. If this is safe, Eira, It's ninety degrees with sixty percent humidity. I've already swept through two shirts. He seems totally unfazed by the heat. He offers me and Roerto some ice water. As we settle in, Roberto asks him, don't you need some water? Paparretoar just smiles.
No, tomorrow, keta Coca col.
Yeah, the old man's got swag anyway. When Barrettoar became a priest in the early seventies, the church was still doing what it had been doing since the Spaniards landed on the shores of a place called Guscatlan and decided to rename it after Jesus. Keeping their packed with the rich and the poor in their place.
O Compecinokala King and Sulugan Ilo Rico Vivienzo Cistoia.
And this is where Oscar Romero comes back into the picture, because while my tapas might remember him as a man who knew the troubles of the poor, he did not have that reputation among the country's elites.
Yes, Mother and Plata de San Miguel.
For the rich families in San Miguel, Oscar was the ideal priest, quiet shy, happy to baptize their babies and enjoy a good carna with them afterwards.
Elista and el sentido solo araci una fees in dimensium uman as in dimension politic as in dimensium.
Oscar was regarded as a gentle bookworm, and this unassuming nature it got him far. He quietly rose through the ranks from deacon to priest to Bishop of San Miguel, far from the politics of the capital. If he disagreed with the elite's business practices, he didn't share it out loud. Maybe he wrote about it in his journal, maybe he prayed on it. But Oscar's easy life in San Miguel would soon get flipped upside down. In nineteen seventy seven, Oscar's boss, a man who had served as archbishop in El Salvador for thirty eight years, decided to resign. But who would be next? The Church and the oligarchy came together to hand pick the country's next top priest. The obvious and expected candidate was the auxiliary archbishop who had been second in command, but to everyone's surprise, the Vatican announced that Oscar Romero would take the position. The nation turned their eyes to this quiet priest from the.
East, Hello the Rio.
Conveniencias digamos de fe in Lilesia.
Politic it was a politically convenient move. Oscar was known as a quiet local priest, the kind who built his career on staying away from controversy. In February of nineteen seventy seven, Oscar Romero was named Archbishop of El Salvador by Pope John Paul.
Himself stansso Fuelay Garda de Monsignor Romero.
Oscar moves to the capitol his new parish and starts leading Sunday Mass in the largest cathedral in the country. The rich pat themselves on the back for assigning a priest that they believe will watch over their interests for decad needs to come. Here's Marissa again.
La.
Porqurado alce seesuponi the via asumir elasovial.
But Oscar was stepping into a hornet's nest. There had been unrest brewing in the capitol and several protests led by Campasino groups. People were unionizing demanding better wages. The military government's response had not been pretty.
The Graciaca guando marchas solicitando pacificamente dos tortillas lejuadrons de quesouevoitres.
Marisa says that the compasinos would organize marches in the capitol asking for better wages, and that those protests regularly ended with the military shooting directly into the crowd, and when the protests didn't stop, the military started going after the leaders of the movements. People started disappearing. Oscar Romero had a habit of going out into his congregation after mass on Sundays. He wanted to get to know the people of his flock the way that he had in San Miguel. But here in the capital people were coming to him with names, the names of sons, brothers, mothers who had disappeared or been taken. Oscar had gone from baptizing babies to having to face the cries of mourning mothers. In the span of a few years, Oscar transformed from a quiet bookworm into a champion for the poor. Three years after his arrival to the capitol, he stood before his congregation as a changed man, not a puppet, but a priest with.
A message Ermano's song de matan ermanos campesinostar ure lala matar.
He gave a speech that cemented his legacy. It's a speech that's the Salvadoran equivalent of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.
Nimundo esto.
Oscar was issuing a warning, a warning to the rich that he would not be in their pockets. The speech would be the landmark of his career, and he tells the government soldiers to disobey the orders of their commanders, to stop the repression against their own people and follow God's most basic command, thou shalt not.
Kill ignombre de dios, the numbre pueblo, CuO lament maas tumultuosos lesuplico leego leon.
It's the last homily he ever gave, the very next day, before Oscar could give communion, he was shot in the heart, murdered at his own pulpit. But Oscar was just the beginning of a domino effect, one that brought us to the new El Salvador we have today. El Salvador's President, Naibukele, has won reelection today in a resounding victory that has essentially wiped out the opposition. Over the next eleven episodes, we're going to cover one of the bloodiest chapters in history, one that includes government cover ups.
So it was just outrageous that the nuns would have guns and would have exchanged fire.
A school for dictators every time there was a heinous killing in Alsawada Hills with somebody that was past grides of the School of America.
One of the biggest massacres to ever occur in the Americas.
The security forces in Al Salvador have been responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of young people. Are we really going to send military advisors in there to be part of that type of machinery?
But I'll also tell you the story of one family mine, because on this journey I discovered things about my family that still haunt us today, Mom.
What happened to your sister Margarita?
Well, they said that they took her and the next day.
She was that she was killed.
She was killed.
Ye, that's this season on Nation of Saints Sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints is a production of AJA Podcasts in partnership with Iheart's Mike Wultura podcast Network, and is hosted and written by me Jasmine Romero, produced by Jazmine Romero with help from Jorge Just, Renald Gutierres, and Aloesbres. Research and reporting by Jasmine Romero, Edited by Cyda Kevelo, Porge Just and Rose Red. Nation of Saints was recorded in New York City at the Relic Room with engineering by Sam Bear, Mixing and sound designed by Paciquinones. Original music by Golden Mines, Darko and Dieme based on Patrick Hart's original composition. Fact checking by Erendidra Aquino Ayala. Executive producers are Carman geraterol Isaac Lee, rose Red, and Nando Villa. Our executive producers at iHeart are Giselle Mansis and Arlene Santana. Sacred Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Vadros. Special thanks to Roerto Valencia, Matt Eisenbrandt, sayid Tjan Thomas, Alice Wilder, Sofia Palita Carr, Eric Mennel, Peter Bresnan, and Riemachres. The recording at the top of the episode is from Latino USA and provided courtesy of Futuro Studios. This episode is dedicated to Mythia Pacita, who passed in twenty twenty four. For more podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.