Donate Tweet Search Monseñor Romero’s Resurrection: Transnational Salvadoran Organizing Héctor Perla Jr. ( /author/Héctor Perla Jr. ) November 18, 2010 Si me matan resuscitaré en el pueblo salvadoreño. —Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero Shortly before his assassination on march 24, 1980, El Salvador’s legendary Monseñor Romero declared, “If they kill me, I shall be reborn in the Salvadoran people.” In the years that followed, President Reagan’s support for El Salvador’s death squads sowed seeds of blood, displacing thousands of people from their homeland. Today Salvadorans are a truly transnational people with an estimated quarter of the population living outside the country’s borders, mostly in the United States. In an unexpected fulfillment of the archbishop’s prophecy, the seeds sown during the war have taken root and are now bearing fruit in a new generation of Salvadorans that has taken up Romero’s struggle for justice— both in El Salvador and in the United States. This new generation of social justice activists has a concrete legacy to draw upon: a transnational network and a particular model of organizing, one that emphasizes building human bonds with non-Salvadorans. This approach to pressuring the U.S. foreign policy establishment—unique in contemporary Latino politics—owes its existence to the Salvadorans, Salvadoran Americans, and North Americans who in the 1980s established a vibrant transnational movement to stop U.S. support for El Salvador’s military dictatorship and to help the many Salvadoran refugees fleeing the country’s civil war. Although the activist networks are smaller today than they were at the movement’s peak in the 1980s and early 1990s, they have been reactivated on several important occasions during the last decade, most recently in 2008–9. Ahead of the Salvadoran presidential election in March 2009, Salvadoran and Salvadoran-solidarity groups pressured the Obama administration to issue a clear statement of respect for El Salvador’s democratic process. After months of intense grassroots organizing, these efforts culminated the week before the election, with official statements of neutrality from the State Department and U.S. Embassy in El Salvador. In part as a result of these efforts the election brought into office Mauricio Funes, the candidate of the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). Monseñor Romero’s Resurrection: Transnational Salvadoran Organizing ... https://nacla.org/article/monseñor-romero%u2019s-resurrection-transnat... 1 of 7 10/24/20, 2:50 PM