PEACE,
International
People for Educational Advancement and Community Enhancement, International
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People for Educational Advancement and Community Enhancement, International |
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National Forest of Reconciliation
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE An Act of Social Justice in El SalvadorGraduation of 74 New Professionals from Oscar Romero UniversityJanuary 12, 2006
The new professionals received Licensure degrees in Education and Law, as well as Engineering degrees in Agrarian and Forest Sciences. Members of the Board of Trustees and the University Administrative Council awarded the degrees. As President of the Board of Trustees, I delivered diplomas to some of them, and the images of all the happy faces of the graduates was so powerful that it will stay in my memory for a while.
Someone once remarked that the arc of justice spans longer than a human lifetime. Many of those who struggled to free the slaves in the United States never lived to see them set free; countless women who began the struggle for women’s suffrage in the United States never got a chance to visit the polls. The Salvadoran landless campesino leaders such as Lill Milagro Ramirez or my cousin Elias Acosta Rivera, who struggled for agrarian reform and to eliminate the 38 large agricultural plantations in the municipality of Suchitoto in El Salvador, never saw the agrarian reform come about in my country because they were killed by those landowners in the early 80’s. But after 12 years of civil war, the peace accords called for the elimination of the large plantations, and the land now belongs to the people who work on it.
Since knowledge is power, without a doubt, the Oscar Romero University in El Salvador is an empowering force for those to whom society has an enormous social and historical debt. This graduating class is a tribute to Oscar Romero’s dream. Each new graduate brings us hope that another world is possible. Please visit our web page to find out more about the Oscar Romero University and how you can sponsor a student for Leadership and Social Justice. Sincerely, Francisco Acosta, Ph.D. (h) President of the Board of Trustees Universidad Oscar Arnulfo Romero For More Information Contact: |
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On
December 21, 2005, 74 new professionals educated at the Oscar Arnulfo Romero
University in Chalatenango, El Salvador, celebrated their graduation at a hotel
in San Salvador. This is the largest group to date of Romero U graduates. 
One
young woman came up to the stage to receive her diploma, a Licensure in
Education. As soon as I handed her the degree and shook her hand, she
immediately turned to her father and walked him over to the photographer to have
her picture taken together with him. He proudly wore a campesino hat
over his lined face, and it looked like this was probably the very first time he
had ever put on a pair of shoes, or even visited the capital, either. Even
though not many people noticed this small but meaningful gesture, I said to
myself, “This is exactly what Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero would have dreamed
of.” This photo, like many others in this graduation, represents an act of
social justice in El Salvador - one that Monseñor Romero never lived to see. 
With
these 74 graduates, there are now a total of 320 professionals, graduates of the
only rural university in this country, where the poorest or the poor live; in
fact, many of the students work part time harvesting sugar cane, earning $4
per day, and many rely on scholarships and the remittances sent from their
immigrant relatives living in the United States to get through college. 