Romero U. opens college doors for rural poor - catholic Romero University in El Salvador

Paul Jeffrey

CHALATENANGO, El Salvador -- In this war-torn area north of San Salvador, Catholics are building a university in a cow pasture.

Named for this country's martyred archbishop, Monsenor Oscar Arnulfo Romero University is Central America's first rural university, an institution designed to serve the people of the countryside, so close to Romero's heart.

Romero's "great ideal was to promote a better life for the peasants, for people who have few resources and opportunities. It was his longing," said Bishop Eduardo Alas of the Chalatenango diocese.

The university developing here is distinctive among new Catholic colleges and universities in the region for the accommodations it makes, in both tuition and scheduling, for the rural poor and those who must work while attending school.

Alas has joined local residents working to reconstruct Chalatenango -- the scene of some of the war's cruelest violence -- as well as to slow down the brain drain caused by students traveling to the capital to study and never returning. The group founded Romero University to provide rural residents the opportunity to study close to home and to avoid spending the time and money it takes to travel to the nation's capital.

Romero University opened three years ago in a rented house. Today the school has land of its own and some 270 students gathering in recently finished classrooms. A library and laboratory building are under construction.

Because much of Chalatenango was under rebel control during the civil war, university founders first approached leaders of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) guerrilla movement -- now respectable politicians -- to ask for financial help. According to Chalatenango native Francisco Acosta, one of the founders of Romero University, FMLN officials said they would participate only if they could control the school's finances and select the faculty. Acosta said the group rejected the FMLN's conditions.

The Catholic diocese of Chalatenango soon came to the rescue, financing one-third of the 16-acre campus located near the village of Aldeita, created by Romero just four days before his 1980 assassination.

The diocese plans to get a return on its investment. In addition to majors in law, education, agronomy and veterinary science, Romero University plans to add a philosophy department that will allow Catholic seminarians to complete part of their studies here.

Romero University Rector Fr. Gabriel Rodriguez said that by providing seminary training in Chalatenango the church will help prospective priests "to live the reality of the countryside while they do their university studies, which will help them later as priests adapt to their environment."

Studying here will also reduce the time they have to spend in the country's interdiocesan seminary at San Jose de la Montana, where the conservative archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Saenz Lecalle, has purged progressive faculty and imposed a curriculum in line with his Opus Dei background.

While Alas described the Chalatenango school as an "alternative," he denied that it is a reaction to the changed environment at San Jose de la Montana. "This is a new initiative that has nothing to do with the posture of other bishops," he told NCR.

Besides training priests, the church's involvement in the university will help develop the social commitments of young professionals at a time when free market economic policies are having a severe impact on the poor in El Salvador and region-wide. "We don't form professionals just to go out and earn a salary, but to be of service," Rodriguez said.

The most popular major here is law. According to Alfredo Lobo, an educator and another Romero University founder, lawyers traditionally "seek out the big cities, but we're forming a social conscience in them." He said lawyers at Romero University, for example, provide a key service by helping peasants obtain legal land titles.

El Salvador has experienced an explosion of new universities in recent years, a trend beginning in the late 1980s when President Jose Napoleon Duarte encouraged the creation of alternatives to the politically progressive University of El Salvador and the Jesuit-sponsored Central American University. While some of the new schools have been created for political reasons, others are simply businesses, "created for mercantilistic reasons, exploiting the student market that exists rather than delivering an alternative to the people," complained Felix Orellana, Romero University's vice rector of humanities.

Several universities in the capital have opened rural branches recently, but Rodriguez said that the main campuses in San Salvador continue to absorb most of the institutional funding and attention.

Late in 1995 the government decided to crack down on the proliferation of new universities, and in June of this year Education Minister Cecilia Gallardo de Cano began a formal review of the country's 45 institutions of higher learning. In October she announced the closure of four schools for failure to meet strict minimum standards. More closures are expected early next year.

While Rodriguez supports the government's campaign of quality control for university education, he said Romero University has to hurry to get its basic infrastructure in place to meet the education ministry's strict requirements. "Our neck is in the guillotine," he said. The institution's founders want to keep tuition low -- currently under $30 a month. To fund library construction, currently underway, the school stacked up a debt of $85,000 at 15 percent interest.

The Catholic diocese of Milan, Italy, donated several computers to the school this year, and Rodriguez said school officials are looking for additional support abroad. Acosta, who now lives in Maryland, is appealing to U.S. Catholics.

Lobo said the school is looking for scholarships to send promising graduates abroad for further study, with the understanding they will return to teach at Romero University.

International donations are essential, Rodriguez said, if the university is to offer income-based tuition rates and scholarships that will allow the school to serve the poorest of the poor in Chalatenango.

Such international solidarity would help Romero University avoid the fate of many church-sponsored educational enterprises in the Third World, where quality education often ends up as a privilege of the rich rather than a right of all.

Bishop Alas said he's aware of that danger. "In many ways this university is a reaction against the tendency that higher education is something that belongs only to the elites," he said. "Our university is an alternative to this trend. As such it is really a pastoral ministry. We have designed the university to serve everyone here, so it is not likely it will become an institution that serves just the elite classes. It's a place for people who do not have access to the other universities, who cannot afford to quit their jobs and pay a lot to travel to the capital and rent an apartment there. We've put it out here in the countryside within reach of the people."

In that way, Romero University is different from the other two Catholic universities established in neighboring Central American countries during the 1990s.

Redemptoris Mater Catholic University of Nicaragua was formed in 1993 by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the archbishop of Managua. The government of President Violeta Chamorro gave the university a recently finished office building and campus in which to begin operations. The institution, far more expensive than Romero University, places a heavy emphasis on conservative Catholic practice and is an intentional alternative to the progressive Jesuit-run Central American University in Managua.

Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic University of Honduras opened its doors in 1993, offering primarily business and technical degrees. Originally sponsored by the entire episcopal conference of Honduras, the project was soon dominated by Tegucigalpa Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodriguez and a group of wealthy Catholic business leaders. Its relatively high tuition has kept it from filling all the spaces on its three campuses.

Here in the mountains of northern El Salvador, students at Romero University come not from the urban upper and middle classes, but from poor and middle-class families with roots in rural life.

With classes on Saturday and Sunday, Romero University students can keep regular jobs and still get a university degree. This policy makes higher education more accessible to women, especially single mothers.

Agronomy student Wendy Carranza said the school offers women "a different paradigm than that in many other schools."

Carranza says the school has already developed a reputation for being tough. "Just because you're the son of someone important doesn't help you here," she said. "It's a university where, God willing, you'll graduate because you've learned something."

COPYRIGHT 1997 National Catholic Reporter
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