PVC 1991 Delegation – Part Twelve: Fr. Rafael Sivatte

 

The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.

Tuesday, 15 October 1991 - 4:10 PM - Fr. Rafael Sivatte at the UCA

We are seated once more in the library of the Monsignor Romero Center on the campus of the Central American University. As I look around, I note that the machine-gunned volumes which had last year been exhibited open on chairs along the one wall are now in glass covered display cases lining the same wall. The scorched and mutilated portrait of Archbishop Romero, glass stalactites still appended to its frame, is also enclosed and glass covered once again. These are mute reminders of the night of slaughter which took place here nearly two years ago.

George introduces our group to Father Sivatte, who greets us graciously. We have asked him specifically to speak about the recently concluded trial of those accused of murdering the six Jesuits and their two housekeepers.

"I am delighted to be able to receive you. I am Vice Rector of the University and Assistant to the director of the Monsignor Romero Pastoral Center. I also give classes in Old Testament and in theology, and I assist Father Sobrino [Father Jon Sobrino, who had escaped the massacre two years before because he was out of the country at the time.] in editing "Letters to the Churches," a bi-weekly journal published by the University. I have been here two years since they killed my associates.

PVC 1991 Delegation – Part Eleven: ONUSAL

The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.

 

Tuesday, 15 October 1991 - 2:20 PM - ONUSAL (United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador)

The ONUSAL headquarters is located in the Sheraton Hotel, high atop the ridge overlooking Escalon [an elite neighborhood in San Salvador]. As the van makes its way through the broad streets of this wealthy neighborhood, with its lavish mansions hidden behind high brick walls and barbed wire barricades, we wonder how many poor peasants will be able or willing to make this daunting trip in order to denounce the injustices they have experienced. The entrance to the Sheraton courtyard is guarded by armed soldiers who are not certain at first if they want to let us pass. We are more uneasy entering what is supposed to be a UN safe haven than we have been at any other visit this year.

Once in the lobby we are kept waiting for ten to fifteen minutes, then taken to one of the upper floors and seated around a conference table in an office which had quite obviously until recently been a regular hotel room. Jake introduces the group to the ONUSAL representative, Ingrid Kircher, a young woman from Austria who mentions that she had worked for Amnesty International before joining this mission.

"ONUSAL is part of the whole peace process. There were two major initial meetings: in April 1990 both sides committed to continuing negotiations; then in May 1990 in Venezuela they set up the agenda for the negotiations. The first agreement which was concluded, signed on 26 July 1990, covered human rights and provided for an observer mission to be set up after a cease fire had gone into effect. But the commission in April 1991 decided that both sides to the negotiations and the people themselves wanted the mission set up as soon as possible.