Education & Distance Learning Enthusiasts- Salvadorans mark martyr's legacy; priest believed people `deserve the kingdom here,' says relative - World

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Salvadorans mark martyr's legacy; priest believed people `deserve the kingdom here,' says relative - World - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter - April 5, 2002

Most Salvadorans agree that the significant turning point in the late Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero's ministry took place when his close friend, Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande, was assassinated for speaking out against the harsh economic conditions of El Salvador's poor.

From that point forward, Romero began to identify more closely with the plight of the poor and speak out publicly against their oppression.

March 12 marked the 25th anniversary of the martyrdom of Grande and March 24, the 22nd anniversary of Romero's martyrdom.

Grande was gunned down, along with an altar boy and an elderly helper, in a rural village. The priest was one of many clerics who had received death threats at that time for their work among the poor.

Ana Grande, 22, a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood and a graduate of Mount St. Mary's College, recently traveled to El Salvador to mark her great-uncle's legacy.

She recalled how, galvanized by the Second Vatican Council and the historic 1968 Latin American bishops' meeting at Medellin, Colombia, her great-uncle started analyzing the conditions of poverty for the majority of Salvadorans from the point of view of the gospels.

He believed that "people deserve better. They deserve the kingdom here," she told The Tidings, newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese.

Through the Bible, Grande saw the chance to empower El Salvador's most humble people. The country's military thought differently. As he was traveling between the small towns of Aguilares and Paisnal, each of which had a church where he served as pastor, Grande was assassinated along with the two helpers accompanying him. He was 49 years old.

His death marked the beginning of escalated military oppression in El Salvador against those who challenged government policies benefiting the few wealthy families controlling the country's assets. The repression would eventually claim Romero's life and the lives of some 70,000 Salvadorans during 12 years of civil war that ended with the signing of peace accords in 1992.

During her trip to El Salvador, Ana Grande and some 1,500 Salvadorans processed the several miles between the two towns to commemorate and honor Grande's memory.

Although she was born a couple of years after his death, her great-uncle's life has profoundly affected her own, Grande said. "I am the product of that solidarity movement," she said.

With a degree in political science, Grande now works as a community organizer for Nick Pacheco, a Los Angeles City Council member. She also serves on the board of the Salvadoran American National Association, and does not want to forget her family's roots.

Unfortunately, she said, the process to create better infrastructure, housing, living wages, and educational opportunities in El Salvador has lagged because of discord between political parties and the devastation of Hurricane Mitch.

But she finds some measure of hope in this generation of Salvadoran youths who did not have to grow up in the midst of of civil war, and in her own Salvadoran-American generation many of whom are able to pursue college degrees in the United States. She hopes Salvadoran-Americans will help to rebuild El Salvador.

"Explore your roots, then go and do something," Grande said she tells her peers. But she also admonishes them: "Don't just come back with a guayabera in your hands," meaning return with more than just a shirt on your back.

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