After Barack Obama's Visit

Monsignor Oscar Romero was assassinated on March 24, 1980, by order of Major Roberto D’Abuisson, founder of the ARENA party and organizer-leader of the death squads. That is an irrefutable story that will never be forgotten.

Barack Obama, a young 19-year-old at the time, was interacting with Hispanics while in Los Angeles; he was about to enter the University of Colombia in New York, where he would graduate with honors and would later go to Harvard.

It was in the academic environment that he learned about the Salvadoran Monsignor Romero, the universal Voice of the voiceless, the one who was able to give for others the greatest thing we have as humans: life.

Barack Obama, who was also marked by disdain for minorities, understood the complex reality of his ancestors’ struggles in the generations that preceded him and the exploits in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s demanding human rights.

He understood Martin Luther King’s fight and he was touched when he found out about his sacrifice for others and his assassination, about the disdain for his race. But he didn’t hold a grudge; during his road to the presidency, he demonstrated that one cannot achieve much by stirring up the past but, yes, one can do a lot for the future so that the past does not repeat itself.

On this visit, we saw an easy-going Barack Obama, who wasn’t using the cameras to release megalomania or to send a message to his Republican adversaries or his own collaborating team members. He was clear, and he did not create false expectations like many people had predicted.

The author of the Audacity of Hope, the social worker from Chicago, Illinois, who became the president of the United States, was pragmatic. He encouraged the abandonment of paternalism. He never referred to the accusations of the imperialistic character of his nation. He respected protocols where necessary and he avoided doing so when he deemed it unnecessary. He called his counterpart Mauricio Funes a strategic partner. He maintained that there must be an effort by Salvadorans to reactivate the economy and to strengthen democracy. He announced greater levels of cooperation and he was careful to make promises on the migration issue; he knows that in spite of it being an electoral promise, its becoming concrete depends upon his nation’s domestic policy.

Standing in front of Monsignor Romero’s tomb to reflect and to light a candle will be registered as a strongly symbolic act, worthy of imitation by those whose arrogance takes control of them and blinds them; they do not accept that the world has changed.

Many analysts outdo themselves in empty praise or accurate commentaries of his visit. But nobody will be able to deny that, just as the humblest of this nation show their appreciation of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, there was a North American chief of state who came to recognize in Romero the prophetic announcement to always revive in the Salvadoran people.

Rigoberto Chinchilla is a Salvadoran journalist awarded journalist of the year in 1999 by APES.