Summary
Dr. Francisco Acosta's testimony
Dr. Acosta
testified that he was born on the slopes of the Guazapa Volcano, in the
municipality of Suchitoto in northern El Salvador. Guazapa was a
community of poor campesinos and farmers, and his family, made up 14
brothers and sisters, was Catholic. Twenty-eight haciendas, big
farms, on the other side of the slope were owned by a few rich
families, most of whom were connected with the military. Life was
difficult, and he had to work hard to buy his first pair of shoes at
the age of fourteen. Dr. Acosta was sent to attend the Catholic
seminary in San Vicente. After that, he moved to the capital of San
Salvador until he was forced to flee his country. He has been
living in Maryland for the past six years.
Dr. Acosta
joined the seminary with the goal of becoming a priest.
Initially, he had a “[s]trong feeling to become a priest because . . .
I saw how welcome in the community the priests were. My sister is
a nun and she encouraged me to go to the seminary.”
During his time
in the seminary in San Vicente, he had as a professor Father Rafael
Palacios who become his mentor. Palacios went to Chile and
Argentina and he explained to Dr. Acosta that a different kind of
society was possible. Death quads killed Father Palacios some years
later.
In 1969, the Asociación Nacional de
Maestros Salvadoreños (ANDES)/National Association of
Salvadoran Teachers led a big strike. Among the strikers were some
teachers from the seminary Dr. Acosta attended who were
protesting the abuses they had suffered at the hands of the
paramilitary forces, called Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista
(ORDEN)/National Democratic Organization. Many of his own
teachers were involved in the strike, and he knew their grievances were
legitimate. Dr. Acosta participated in the strike, and it caused
some tensions between the seminary’s authorities and himself. His
bishop and the Church did not come out in support of the teachers;
instead they spoke against the strike. This, in addition to other
contradictions between the Church’s teachings and its practices, led
him to leave the seminary.
Dr. Acosta then
enrolled at the Central American University (UCA), so that he could
work with the Jesuits there. He was provided a scholarship that
allowed him to study sociology. Dr. Acosta testified: “One day I met
with Father Ignacio Martin Baro,
a prominent professor at the UCA (who was later murdered), and I
thanked him for the scholarship I had been given. Father Martin Baro
told me, ‘you do not have to thank me. Your parents, your grandparents,
all your ancestors already paid for your scholarship.’ I thought that
was so true – you see my mother is an Indian.”
Dr. Acosta
helped to establish the Fundación Salvadoreña de Vivienda
Mínima/Salvadoran Foundation for Minimum Housing, which worked
to provide homes for the poor. The Foundation was formed after a
terrible hurricane had destroyed many homes, and he and others from the
UCA volunteered to help build new houses for those who had been left
homeless. He worked there for eleven years, during which time the
Foundation organized people to build approximately 15,000 homes.
Monsignor Romero visited one project of 600 homes in Soyapango. Romero
held mass for the people who were participating in the project,
and afterwards joined Dr. Acosta at the same table for lunch. Dr.
Acosta said, “He struck me as a very humble person . . . somebody with
authority sharing food with us. . . that was life-changing for me.”
Dr. Acosta
then
recounted Romero’s transformation after the murder of Father Rutilio
Grande. For some time, Dr. Acosta went to work in
Aguilares with
Father Enrique Sanchez and later with Father Rutilio Grande. Among his
assignments was to bring communion to some 200 peasants in El Paisnal,
Fr. Grande’s hometown.
“[T]he killing
of Rutilio Grande, who was a friend of Romero, a man of faith,
a man of
integrity, started to change Bishop Romero quickly.”
Dr. Acosta
recalled how, after Fr. Grande’s death, Romero called on the Carter
Administration, in one of his homilies broadcast on radio, to stop
sending weapons to El Salvador. Dr. Acosta listened with his
community of 450 families as they worked on the houses. When Romero
called on the Carter Administration to stop sending weapons because
they were being used to kill the brothers and sisters of El Salvador,
everyone stopped working and started to applaud. “Oh my
goodness. I really remember that. How I had the feeling
that there was no other voice than Bishop Romero.”
Acosta then
narrated the persecution of his family and Romero’s personal assistance
to him.
His 13-year-old
niece, Yanira Caceres Arevalo, had gone to the store in Suchitoto to
buy school supplies, and also picked up several copies of Orientacion,
the official Catholic newspaper. This newspaper, as well as the
Catholic radio station YSAX, were the only sources of reliable
information because the government had almost total control of the
media . The National Police stopped Yanira. They took her
to police headquarters in Suchitoto and detained her. His
grandmother, Feliciana Alvarez de Arevalo, went to get her, and she
also was detained.
The next day,
both his niece and grandmother were released. They were told: “Go
home, you have a lot of work to do there.” When they reached
home, they found that his two aunts, Angelina Antonia Arevalo and Teresa de Jesus Arevalo, had
been killed. They had been shot and chopped to pieces with a
machete.
Later, men in
civilian clothes picked up one of his cousins, Elias Acosta Rivera, who was
a labor organizer for the Federacion Cristiana de Campesinos
Salvadorenos/Christian Federation of Salvadoran Peasants. Two
days later his body was found by dogs. His tongue had been cut
out. Dr. Acosta also recalled how a cousin, Geremias Melgar, and
his nephew Otsmaro Acosta
Rivera, were gunned down two kilometers away from his parent’s
house. His father, Pedro
Acosta Melgar, found them, and buried them in the local chapel
because it was extremely dangerous to bring them to the cemetery in
Suchitoto. “I can tell you more and more stories like these,” said Dr.
Acosta.
He then
recounted the attempted murder of his brother and the murder of another
one of his nephews. In February of 1980, he heard Major Roberto
D’Aubuisson say on television that Acosta’s brother, Jorge Alberto Acosta, was one
of the most influential subversives in northern El Salvador.
“[O]nce Roberto D’Aubuisson said something, something would happen for
sure.” Three days later, around 4 o’clock in the morning, more
than 20 gunmen surrounded his brother’s house on the Guazapa Volcano
and opened fire. Seven M-16 shells were picked up by the family.
Luckily, neither his brother nor his brother’s family were killed or
injured.
Dr. Acosta
said
he then sought help to get his brother to a safe place. But
everyone was too afraid to help, afraid that the security forces would
come after them. That week Mario
Zamora Rivas, the Attorney General of El Salvador, was
killed and every body was afraid. So Dr. Acosta went to
Bishop Romero. Msr. Romero said: “Look, I understand. Leave
him here at the seminary. . . We will take care of him and your cousin Otsmaro Caceres will
help.” His brother was sheltered in the seminary for three weeks,
and was then able to make his way to the Mexican Embassy where he could
request political asylum. His request was granted and he made it
safely to Mexico.
Otsmaro Caceres Arevalo, who
was a seminarian, was celebrating his first mass when the death squads
came for him. They shot 12 people along with Otsmaro. Dr. Acosta
testified: “It was [recently] decided that the name of the school in
his community should be changed to his name. I am really proud of that
kind of thing happening. The terrible irony is that I spoke with my
brother Jorge two days ago, who continues to organize people in El
Salvador, while Monsignor Romero and my cousin Otsmaro are not alive.”
Dr. Acosta then
spoke about the days before Romero’s assassination:
I saw Bishop Romero
three days before he was killed. . . at 10 o’clock at night driving by
himself. I thought to myself, how can this man, who has a death
threat, be driving by himself at 10 o’clock in the evening? Sure
enough, he was killed three days later.
Dr. Acosta was
in classes at the University of Central America when he found out that
Romero had been killed. “We were in class when my classmate and member
of the Human Rights Commission, Patricia
Cuellar, said “Monsignor Romero has just been killed”. Everybody
in the class was in shock and in twenty minutes, the whole University
was empty. “And my feeling at the time [was] ‘oh my goodness, my
goodness. If someone like him can be killed, the rest of us, we
are like chickens.’”
Dr. Acosta then
described the chaos of Romero’s funeral. He saw people trampled
underneath the masses, including many elderly people. He recalled
his feeling of total helplessness -- that there was nothing he could do
to help those who had been trapped under one another. His brother
Amadeo’s daughter, Evelyn
Acosta, who was only thirteen, got lost in this bedlam.
They found her two days later.
Dr. Acosta then
recounted his decision to leave El Salvador, what he did while he was
abroad, and upon his return.
Dr. Acosta’s
neighbor had warned him not to sleep at his house, that it would be too
dangerous for him. So he began sleeping in different places, even
under the bushes on a coffee plantation. After days of this, he
returned to his house and found that it had been broken into. When the
intruders did not find him, they had gone next door. Six of his
neighbors were killed.
At that point,
he said he had to decide whether to continue working with the poor, to
join the guerrillas and take up arms, or to flee his country. He knew
he could no longer continue doing what he had been doing because it was
not safe. But he was morally opposed to killing another human being.
His father, Pedro Acosta Melgar,
had always taught him to resolve conflicts peacefully, and he felt that
“two wrongs do not make a right.” So he decided he would have to leave
his country. Before he left, knowing that students and intellectuals
were begin targeted by the death squads, he buried some of his books in
the backyard, The rest he gave to Father Segundo Montes, who
had agreed to safe-keep his books and records while he was gone. He made his way to
Mexico and eventually to Canada and then to the United States.
When he returned to El Salvador 10 years later, he found that four of
his former professors, Jesuit priests, had been killed, including Fr. Ignacio Martin Baro and Fr. Segundo Montes, as well
as Fr. Amando Lopez, Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria.
Francisco,
center, at a public education event with Febe Elisabet Velasquez, a
labor leader who was murdered in 1989, and Adrian Esquino Lisco, Chief
of the Salvadoran Indians, 1987.
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After
he left El
Salvador, he did extensive public speaking in Mexico, Canada and the
United States to educate the public about human rights violations in El
Salvador. While he was in the United States, he was asked by
several members of Congress and the State Department to serve as a
liaison between the Salvadoran Embassy, the military attaché,
and the FMLN in order to facilitate negotiations to end the civil
war. Acosta was able to bring the parties together to begin a
dialogue. This process ultimately led to the UN-brokered Peace
Accords two years later.
In
1990, he
decided to return to El Salvador with his U.S.-born wife, Barbara Dole
Acosta, and his children. He wanted to do something to honor
Romero’s memory. They decided to create a new university in his
name. They raised some money and, in 1992, taking advantage of
the mood created by the Peace Accords, the Archbishop
Romero University was formally recognized as a legal entity. The
University, located in La Aldeita in Chalatenango Province, initiated
classes in 1994 and now has almost 800 students and 52 professors. The
university has graduated over 160 new professionals. Dr. Acosta
testified that this University is part of the realization of Romero’s
vision, when the Archbishop said,
“If they kill
me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.”
Dr. Acosta was
then asked what meaning this trial had for him. He answered: “I am
really pleased to be able to be in this chair . . . in front of a
judge. Because this is a strong effort against impunity.”
Recalling
that
he lost 72 family members during the 12 years of the civil war, Dr.
Acosta went on to say that names that had never been mentioned in the
Truth Commission process were mentioned in this trial; names that had been buried have now
been recovered and recorded for history. “I think that
that after justice is done, I will be able to forgive but not
forget, and it is time to move on. I think that giving this
testimony before a federal judge and before all of you here in Fresno,
California, provides a sense of closure for me to my family and for the
Salvadoran Society. Thank you so much.”
PEACE,
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