Yearbook 2010
El Salvador. According to
COUNTRYAAH, the power measurement between the government
and organized crime continued during the year. In June,
members of one of the largest crime leagues ("maras") fired
a bus on the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador, and set
fire to it, killing 14 people. The reason for the attack was
said to be that the bus company in question refused to pay
protection money to the league, which is increasingly acting
according to common mafia methods. President Mauricio Funes,
who was largely elected on a program with more humane law
enforcement policies, in turn had to use increasingly
violent methods, and critics said his methods now did not
differ much from the harsh tactics followed by his
representatives. The violence only escalated further. In
September, the two largest crime leagues staged a 72-hour
bus strike, which affected about half of all bus traffic in
the country, in protest of the president. According to
sources in the United States, the Salvadoran leagues consist
of 70,000 members, and signs suggest that cooperation
between the "maras" in Central America and the drug power in
Mexico has increased. The number of murders per 100,000
population in El Salvador rose to 61 during the year.
President Fune's tougher methods of law enforcement also
aggravated the friction within his own party, the FMLN
(Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional), where
criticism was harsh on him for what was perceived as a
general right-wing policy since he was elected in March of
the previous year. However, some political points gained
Funes in early October through his historic visit to Cuba,
with which El Salvador reestablished diplomatic relations in
connection with Fune's takeover of power in 2009.
In October 2018, Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero was
sanctified by the Pope. He was assassinated by officers at
San Salvador Cathedral on March 24, 1980, when the country
was a military dictatorship. The day before, in a
heartbreaking sermon, he had called on the military to stop
the repression in the country:
I would like to appeal, the special way, and the men of
the army. And specifically, based on the National Guard, the
policy, the barracks ... Brothers, the son of our own
people. They kill their own peasant brothers. And before an
order to kill that of a man, to prevail the law of God that
says: "Do not kill." No soldier is mandatory and more
important in order against Law of God. An immoral law,
nobody has to obey it. It is time for them to regain their
conscience, and to obey their conscience before the order of
sin. The Church, the defense of the God, the Law of the God,
the dignified human, the persona, after the remain silent
before so much abomination. And the number of God, then, and
the number of this long-suffering people, whose lamentations
rise to heaven more and more tumultuous every day.
I would like to make a special call to the men of the
army. Especially to the soldiers in the National Guard, the
police, the barracks... Brothers, we are of the same people.
You kill your own brothers, the peasants. But against an
order given by a human being, God's law has priority: "Do
not kill." No soldier has a duty to execute an order that is
contrary to the law of God. An immoral law has no duty to
challenge. The time has come to regain conscience. Follow
conscience rather than the order of sin. The church that
defends God's law, God's law, human dignity, man himself, we
can no longer remain silent to all this injustice. In the
name of God, in the name of this martyred people whose cries
daily and ever more tumultuous rise to heaven, I beg you, in
the name of God: stop oppression.
The day after, the dictatorship killed him. At his
funeral, the military staged another massacre, killing about
100 on the square in front of and inside the cathedral. Over
an 11-year period, the US-backed dictatorship killed about
75,000. The officer who issued the order for the murder of
Romero was Roberto D'Aubuisson, who himself died of cancer
in 1992. He founded the right-wing radical party ARENA,
which is today the country's second largest. (Salvadorans
await justice in civil war killings as one of its first
victims sainted, Guardian 14/10 2018)
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