On Friday March 23, 2007 former ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, was in El Salvador. He was ambassador there in 1980 and 1981. While in El Salvador White appeared on a panel at the Jesuit University titled “El Salvador, Fifteen Years Afterwards: Another Reading.” Robert White is President of the Center for International Policy.
Former ambassador White directed his comments to a recent attempt by government party (ARENA) members in the National Assembly to name Roberto D’Aubuisson “Meritorious Son of the Nation.” While the attempt to do this failed, the intention to accord D’Aubuisson this honor shocked not only millions of Salvadorans, but also White. To those present (and later in a press interview) Ambassador White enumerated documented proofs of D’Aubuisson’s involvement in the death squads which listed people to be assassinated, and in the particular death of Romero. He offered to provide the ARENA Party this documentation.
Robert White cited the CIA, State Department and the Truth Commission of El Salvador’s Report in his documentation. It wasn’t a surprise when the ARENA Party leaders in El Salvador dismissed the documented information. Truth for many politicians is simply what you declare it to be. However it was very surprising when after Mass on Sunday March 25th the Archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, said:
“The important thing is that these things (that White says) not be private declarations but rather that they be official. If they are legal proofs, they should be presented to the court.”
The Archbishop went on to say:
“The ex-ambassador White is a very problematic person. One has to take into account these characteristics of his personality before paying attention to what he says.*
*Source: El Diario de Hoy, Monday March 26, 2007, page 6.
What is the Archbishop trying to say? These documents aren’t private opinions. They are official documentation:
These documents were presented to the Truth Commission for El Salvador, a United Nations sponsored and Peace Accords mandated commission charged with identifying the worst human rights violations during the civil war and establishing responsibility wherein it was possible. The Commission declared at the end of its study that Roberto D’Aubuisson was the intellectual author of Archbishop Romero’s death.
These are original documents from the archives of the US Government, documentation that occurred at the time the events were happening.
These documents have not been used in any trial in El Salvador because El Salvador has seen to it that no trials take place. These documents have not been used either in the trial of ex- Captain Alvaro Saravia or Robert D’Aubuisson in El Salvador because these men were never placed on trial.
In 1987 Alvaro Saravia was captured in Miami, but the Supreme Court of El Salvador prevented his extradition back to his home country to be tried. D’Aubuisson died of throat cancer in February of 1992 shortly after the end of the war and prior to the Truth Commission’s Report.
The Inter-American Court on Human Rights has demanded that El Salvador open the case of the Assassination of Archbishop Romero so that justice can be achieved. El Salvador has not done so, using the Amnesty Law of 1993 as an excuse, though it’s not an excuse accepted by the Inter-American Court.
In the September 2004 US Federal Court in Modesto, California handed down a decision against ex-Captain Alvaro Saravia of El Salvador. Saravia, who has passed the years since Romero’s assassination in the USA, was declared responsible for helping organize the murder of Archbishop Romero with D’Aubuisson and D’Aubuisson was named as the mastermind of this assassination.
Conclusion
Archbishop Sáenz Lacalle had no objective basis to suggest Robert White’s comments were of a private, not a public or official nature. In doing so he weighed in with those forces in El Salvador that deny the truth when it is inconvenient. There is one group in El Salvador that denies the involvement of its founder in Romero’s death: the ARENA Party. Who and what is Archbishop Sáenz Lacalle supporting?
In labeling former Ambassador White as a problematic person who possesses personality characteristics that detract from his credibility is malicious.
Ambassador White is held in high regard in the US and within the human rights and legal communities. Not only is this an unfair judgment, but it involves the dismissal of public documentation deemed of the highest quality by the Truth Commission and US Federal Count in Modesto, California. Again, who and what is Archbishop Sáenz Lacalle supporting?
If you believe that these ill informed and slanderous comments by the Archbishop about former ambassador’s white’s credibility regarding the involvement of Roberto D’aubuisson in the death of Archbishop Romero are unjustifiable, please send your comments to the Vatican Secretary of State. Archbishop Sáenz Lacalle’s behavior is scandalous to thousands of Catholics in and outside of El Salvador.
Ana Carrigan said
I am a journalist, a writer, and the author of a book (Salvador Witness,) about the American lay-missioner, Jean Donovan, who was killed by a Salvadoran death squad in December 1980, together with Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, and Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel. In the course of researching this book I had the good fortune to meet and get to know Ambassador White. He was one of the last people to see Jean Donovan and Dorothy Kazel alive since they had dined with him and Mrs. White at the US embassy on the evening before their violent death .
American involvement in the Salvador civil war is now widely recognised to have been one of the most painful and shameful periods of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. It was a policy that Ambassador White tried, valiantly, to influence, and if he is held in such high esteem in the US and within the inernational human rights and legal communities, it is precisely because of the principled stand he took at the time of these women’s death–a stand which, as he knew it would, cost him his job and his diplomatic career.
Ever since, Ambassador White has not spared himself to keep up the fight for justice and truth in a small, battered country, suffering the lack of both. It is admirable and entirely consistent with this history, that twenty seven years after the murder of Salvadoran Archbishop, Oscar Romero, Ambassador White would address the morally repugnant intention by the Salvadoran Arena Party to honor the memory of the notorious Roberto Aubuisson, a man who has been repeatedly named in official US documents for his close involvement in the organisation and murderous activities of the Salvadoran deathsquads and, in particular, for responsibility as the intellectual author of the murder of the great Archbishop Romero.
The behaviour, therefore, of the current Archbishop of El Salvador, who has sought to defend the indefensible–namely the reputation of a corrupt and murderous politician, who used his power to kill innocent unarmed civilians in the pursuit of an immoral civil war–such behaviour is scandalous and totally unacceptable. If the Catholic Church wishes to rescue its own tattered credibility in El Salvador and other Latin countries, then it must now take action to begin to repair the moral damage that the current holder of the Archbishopric in El Salvador has caused. The Vatican should be in no doubt that it needs to begin here and now by disavowing Archbishop Saenz Lacalle’s statements and removing him from his current post. He has no place in the diocese of his great, universally loved and revered predecessor–Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Dr. Gerald J. Donovan said
I am stunned and scandalized by the blatantly false statements of Archbishop Saenz Lacalle about the character of Robert White. As a life-long Catholic from Boston, MA., USA, I am no stanger to lies from the hierachy. However, character asassination of truth tellers and support for those who crush and murder the poor is another new low. Shame on you Archbishop and shame on your rich, greedy, brothers and sisters……
myrna said
It is sad to know about someone that is having a place at the diocese is against peace, against his brothers is Christ.
Also I do not agree with Archbishop LaCalle comments he made in regard Ambassador Robert White Calling him a problematic person Many times, when we have people like Monsenor Romero as well as Ambassador Robert White people that advocates for peace and speak up in behalf of those who do not have voice and declare the truth. There is always someone like Archbishop La calle that tries to interfere.
God BlessYou!