Volume 26, Issue 1, 2016
Rachel Hatcher
Pages 37-59
Reconciliation and the Two Deaths of Monsignor Romero
Divergent Memories of the Salvadoran Right and Human Rights Community
Scholars of transitional societies argue that reconciling different narratives of the past is important to progressing toward reconciliation more generally. This article uses this argument as a starting point to explore the distinct narratives/memories of Monsignor Romero’s assassination that exist in the public sphere. The human rights community and left-leaning press’s memory of Romero is deep. This sector remembers the indisputable facts of the assassination—who, what, where, when—but also those things that the right disputes—by whom and why. The right’s memory, by contrast, acknowledges only the most basic facts of the assassination while avoiding questions of causality and blame. This points to a continued lack of reconciliation in El Salvador. Using Romero’s assassination to explore views on reconciliation, this article argues that it is clear that the reconciled version of the violent past exists in a country transitioning away from conflict must be detailed and deep.