Epilogue

To this day, Álvaro Saravia remains the only person held responsible by a court of law for the murder of Óscar Romero, and his penalty is nothing more than a dollar figure he has never paid. This lamentable reality is less an indication of the significance of the lawsuit we brought and more an indictment of the tight lid that impunity has imposed whenever efforts to seek accountability have bubbled up in El Salvador. The Amnesty Law passed in 1993, five days after the Truth Commission named Saravia, Roberto D’Aubuisson, and others as the men who killed Romero, endured for twenty-three years, surviving ARENA’s departure from political power and the ascension of the former guerrilla party, the FMLN, to a second consecutive presidential term. But in July 2016, the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador’s Supreme Court, a body more independent of outside influence than the one that threw out the arrest warrant against Saravia in 1988, ruled the Amnesty Law unconstitutional. One of the judges who voted to scrap the amnesty was previously a lawyer in the archdiocese’s human rights office who investigated the abuses that Monseñor Romero denounced from his pulpit....

“You Know Better Than to Ask That”

This chapter describes the legal team’s search for the getaway driver, Amado Garay, who testified against Alvaro Saravia and Roberto D’Aubuisson in 1987 but was not seen again. Through a coincidence, this team discovers that Garay is under witness protection in the United States. The legal team begins a complicated and frustrating effort to confirm whether Garay remains in witness protection and how to get in contact with him. The team also suspects that Roberto Santivañez, who made public disclosures about D’Aubuisson and others during the 1980s, could be under protection as well.

“Informational Goulash”

Over three decades, there have been several investigations of Romero’s murder that have uncovered significant information but never led to a trial. In 1980, Judge Atilio Ramirez Amaya attended the autopsy and started gathering evidence but the police who normally assisted were entirely absent, and three days later an assassination attempt caused Ramirez Amaya to flee. Later that year, authorities raided an estate called Finca San Luis, arrested several extremists, including Roberto D’Aubuisson, and seized documents showing death squad operations, including a datebook called the Saravia Diary that contained a page titled Operation Piña that is thought to describe Romero’s murder. In the next few years, the U.S. embassy developed an insider military source who claimed to have attended a planning meeting for Romero’s assassination. In 1987, the getaway driver for the operation, Amado Garay, testified before Salvadoran judge and implicated Roberto D’Aubuisson and Alvaro Saravia in the plot.

“A Rabid Anti-Communist”

The legal team returns to El Salvador for interviews crucial for gathering evidence about the death squad financiers and understanding further details of the Romero assassination. A worker for the ARENA party in the early 1980s discloses significant information about party members and their links to violence. She confirms testimony that she previously provided to the Truth Commission and provides a new statement for the legal team detailing payments made by party faithful and insider information about the facts of Romero’s murder.

“You’re Making a Lot of Noise”

Alvaro Saravia also testified before the Truth Commission and revealed significant information about the role of oligarchs in supporting Roberto D’Aubuisson and playing specific roles in Romero assassination. The legal team uses this information and new connections with U.S. investigators to continue digging for information about the death squad financiers. The chapter also provides the historical backdrop in which former U.S. ambassador Robert White went public in 1984 to tell the U.S. Congress about the allegations of the Miami Six financing D’Aubuisson and death squad operations. The legal team attempts to develop leads on one of the men White named, Roberto Daglio. Returning to the historical evidence, the chapter chronicles other disclosures in the 1980s from former military leader Roberto Santivañez, who claimed that his former subordinate, Roberto D’Aubuisson, arranged the assassination of Archbishop Romero.

“In Violation of the Law of Nations”

In 2001, a man working with the Center for Justice & Accountability (CJA) saw Alvaro Saravia in a lawyer’s office in San Francisco, California, and recognized him as one of Romero’s killers. CJA plays a role in the international justice movement that seeks to hold accountable those who commit atrocities, and CJA has a focus on bring U.S. cases under the Alien Tort Statute. This chapter describes the history of U.S. litigation using the Alien Tort Statute and the rise of CJA as an important human rights organization with a specific focus on cases involving El Salvador. The chapter concludes with CJA’s trip to search for Saravia near his home in Modesto, California.

Afterword

Today’s El Salvador is not what Blessed Archbishop Romero dreamed yesterday even if through him “God passed through El Salvador.” This is one of the most brilliant and memorable phrases of another Salvadoran martyr, Ignacio Ellacuría, the Jesuit murdered with his colleagues and two women in 1989. God certainly walked hand in hand the length and breadth of the small country with Romero. And because of his transcendence, the legacy of this good shepherd transcended borders to become the most universal among any of us born in this land. But it is a land that continues to be soaked in blood, with the majority of its people still suffering from exclusion and inequality. As a result, people still flee El Salvador, regardless of the risks, to find safety in other lands that they do not enjoy in their own....

“Of a Magnitude That Is Hardly Describable”

This chapter describes the trial in Fresno, California against Alvaro Saravia, in which several Salvadoran witnesses testify about their experiences with Archbishop Romero, including the investigating judge Atilio Ramirez Amaya and the getaway driver, Amado Garay. Despite the evidence collected during the investigation, the team decided not to bring any others into the case as defendant, which means that the trial focuses on Saravia’s responsibility and the impact of Romero’s death. After five days of testimony, the judge holds Saravia liable for Romero’s murder, calls Roberto D’Aubuisson the mastermind of the operation and orders Saravia to pay $10 million in damages.

“We Don’t Have a Clue What the Hell Is Going On”

This chapter describes the contradictory information the legal team receives from the Department of Homeland Security and other sources concerning the whereabouts of the defendant, Alvaro Saravia, including information that he could be in Central America or in the United States. As team speculates that they could be receiving misleading data, the chapter describes an episode in the 1980s when Roberto D’Aubuisson and others fabricated a witness statement by someone nicknamed Pedro Lobo that the leftist guerrillas killed Archbishop Romero. The team meets in Miami with a key investigator who tries to develop leads not only on the financiers but also a Nicaraguan man, Ricardo Lao, who allegedly received money from Roberto D’Aubuisson to arrange Romero’s murder.

Baby Robbers, Mad Bombers, and Other Assorted Criminals

As the chapter describes the legal team’s continuing search for Alvaro Saravia, it provides the background on Saravia’s criminal past in El Salvador that led him to come to the United States. Salvadoran authorities finally launched a serious investigation into the Romero assassination leading to the testimony of the getaway driver, Amado Garay, and the arrest of Saravia in Miami. Roberto D’Aubuisson and others infuriated the U.S. government by undermining a case to have Saravia extradited to stand trial in El Salvador. With Saravia still facing immigration problems, a U.S. embassy official took advantage of Saravia’s predicament to get information from him about Romero’s murder. Those details largely matched the findings of a Truth Commission report issued a few years later, after the end of El Salvador’s civil war.