This Date in UCSF History: Central America Week

Originally published in Synapse on March 15, 1984.

Thousands of Bay Area residents are expected to join peace activists around the country during Central America Week. The week culminates a long period of activity by the Central America Peace Campaign, a coalition of peace and political organizations which oppose U.S. policies in that beleaguered region. 

A “National Day of Advocacy” on March 20, highlights the week’s events during which thousands of coalition lobbyists plan to converge on Washington. 

On March 24, demonstrations commemorating the fourth anniversary of the murder of El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero have been scheduled across the country. 

Here in the Bay Area, Peace Campaign sponsors include Catholic Social Services, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, the American Friends Service Committee, the Commission on Social Justice and other organizations. 

Monica Moore, a coalition spokesperson, said groundwork for the March 20 lobbying effort has been in progress for months. It has involved getting as many individuals as possible to sign “proxy cards.” 

These cards contain a pledge of opposition to the possibility of direct U.S. military involvement in Central America. They also oppose three points of current U.S. policy: U.S. military aid to the government of El Salvador. CIA supported attacks on Nicaragua. Continued deportation of El Salvadoran refugees.

The completed pledge cards will be presented by the lobbyists to the congressional delegates from their respective districts. 

Cindy Buhl, spokesperson for the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, which is involved in coordinating the week of peace activities on a national level, said, “The idea behind these cards is for people who are lobbying to be able to show the support of their communities.” 

Buhl estimated that between 1,000 and 2,500 lobbyists from 150 different locales around the nation, will participate. Moore explained that the purpose of the Day of Advocacy is to raise awareness about Central American issues. 

The effort is along the lines of San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn’s October 1983 message, urging people to use the democratic process to communicate to their legislators their thoughts on U.S. Central American policy. 

“We’re using the democratic process in every way possible to voice our opposition to U.S. policy,” she said. 

Romero march and service The March 24 event includes a processional followed by an interfaith service in honor of the late Archbishop Romero, who has become something of a legendary figure to common citizens and opposition forces in El Salvador. 

He was assassinated by a “death squad” in 1980 while he recited mass for cancer patients at a small chapel in San Salvador. 

“Romero was a (political) conservative when he was appointed (to the post of archbishop),” according to Moore. “But over time he underwent a political evolution, becoming a strong spokesperson for human rights and the rights of the poor.” 

The archbishop was critical of government policy in El Salvador and frequently urged the United States to withhold military aid and to refrain from direct intervention in his nation’s affairs. 

Considered a martyr by the El Salvadoran people, many of whom are devout Catholics, Romero’s memory was honored by Pope John Paul II on his visit to Central America last year. The march and service fall just one day before national elections in El Salvador — elections which have been boycotted by the leftist opposition, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). 

The FMLN fears that if it directly participates in the elections, its candidates will be targets for assassination. The rebels also consider fair voting procedures, under conditions of civil war, widespread terror and intimidation by right-wing death squads and a U.S. troop build-up on the border with Honduras, to be an impossibility. 

A recent acknowledgement by one of El Salvador’s leading political parties, the Christian Democrats, of widespread voter fraud in the 1981 presidential race, seems to lend credence to such fears. 

One of the two leading presidential candidates for the March 25 election is Roberto d’Aubuisson, leader of the rightist ARENA party. d’Aubuisson has been linked with death squad activities and allegedly arranged Romero’s murder.