Monsenor Romero and Canadian democracy

The long promised and eagerly anticipated post about Monsenor Romero.

Monsenor Romero was a Salvadoran archbishop who defended the poor and spoke out publicly against the military repression under which he and his people lived. In 1980, at the age of 63, he was killed by assassins paid for by the right-wing military government. His murder sparked the civil war that tore the country apart for twelve years.

He wasn't always radical. In fact, Romero was chosen to be the Archbishop of San Salvador because of his conservative views. He didn't start speaking out until three years before his death when government hit-squads assassinated his friend, the progressive Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande. Romero surprised everyone by taking up Grande's cause. He became an outspoken government critic and mobilized people to protest the poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture that characterized the country at the time.

Portrait of Monsenor Oscar Romero (1917-1980)

On March 24th, 1980, the government came for him. It was Easter and he was giving a Mass in which he had called upon the government to honour human rights and stop its tactics of repression. Hired guns crashed through the doors of his church. Romero was standing at the altar, arms raised, the body of Christ in one hand and the blood in the other. They aimed over the crowd and fired into his heart. They chose to kill him that way because the people called him the heart of the popular movement. 

The clothes he was wearing on March 24th, 1980

The altar where he gave Mass

The door the assassins entered by

Romero's funeral drew unprecedented crowds to mourn and protest government repression. The police fired on them, and that was the beginning of the civil war.  


Romero led a movement, defended the vulnerable, and dared to speak out against the policies of his government. What happened to him was an extreme example of a government silencing its critics, repressing democracy, and violating human rights. As I write this post, I can't help but think that there are some parallels to what's happening in Canada. Not in terms of state-sanctioned violence, but in terms of the silencing of criticism, the repression of democratic values, and the erosion of our human rights infrastructure. 


Harper's latest budget attacks so many things Canadians hold dear. Gender equality, human rights, free speech, compassionate healthcare, and wilderness have all suffered funding cuts. You can't tell me that Canadians don't care about human rights, or healthcare for refugees, or nature. We're proud of our history as peacekeepers, of our healthcare system, and of our country's striking natural beauty. Our clean rivers, majestic forests, towering mountains and sweeping plains define us to the world just as much as our historical commitment to multilateralism and freedom of speech that Harper's government has done so much to destroy. The Tories say that it's inappropriate for the government to fund groups that disagree with it. They are wrong. Canadians want to know that their government hears every point of view, especially the points of view of the +60% of people who didn't vote for them. It IS appropriate for government to fund groups that disagree with its policies - that's the sign of a mature, stable democracy. 


Clearly the federal Tories have neither of those attributes. Consider their embarrassing reaction to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, or their decision to audit charities that engage in "political activity" and receive American funding. They can't abide internal criticism and they have an even stronger, disturbingly xenophobic aversion to critical outsiders. Why shouldn't Canada be held to a higher food security standard than Ethiopia? Why shouldn't Americans care about the state of our policies? We care about the state of theirs. If the Harper government were honest it would add the Fraser Institute, an unabashedly political conservative think tank in BC that receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Koch brothers, to the list of organizations up for audit. Instead, the government's targeting environmental and human rights based charities that dare to criticize its policies.


How long can a democratically-elected government attack the systems and values of democracy before the people throws them out?