The recent decision by Salvadoran authorities to remove a painting of St. Oscar Romero from a prominent location at the country's main airport and move it to a more secluded location has sparked backlash from Catholics and opinion leaders who have criticized the way the country handles its national symbols while seeking to rebrand it as a safe, tourist-friendly destination.
The 18-foot-wide painting depicts various scenes from St. Romero's life, including his meetings with people whose relatives had been abducted by the military.
The painting was commissioned in 2010 to mark the 30th anniversary of the San Romero murders and was placed in the departure hallway at San Salvador airport, in full view of passengers heading to their gates.
Passengers at the airport noticed that the mural was no longer in its original location and had been replaced with a large poster welcoming tourists to El Salvador, “land of surfing, volcanoes and coffee.” The initial report of the mural's disappearance was published on May 20.
Authorities initially offered no explanation for the painting's removal, drawing criticism from some Catholic leaders.
“The destruction of a mural alluding to Father Romero at El Salvador's airport is, in the opinion of the ruling party, an act of 'damnatio memoriae' (damage to memory) perpetrated against a former political opponent,” Father Juan Vicente Chopin Portillo wrote in an opinion piece, criticizing local bishops for not speaking out about what later turned out to be the removal, not destruction, of the painting.
Father Chopin wrote that he called on priests across the country to “mention Father Romero in their sermons and ensure that his legacy is based on Christian virtue and faith, not on walls.”
The Salvadoran government was silent on the matter for a few days, but on May 27 announced that the painting had been moved to a small museum at the airport that also displays other works by local artists. Government supporters said in X that the painting had been given better lighting.
“We are a sovereign nation,” President Najib Bukele wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) account. “We will display our artworks wherever we see fit.”
The Salvadoran president was referring to a post on X by U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, who said on May 26 that he was “deeply saddened” to see the mural removed from its original location.
“Whenever I travel to El Salvador, I always stop in front of that painting and reflect on what San Romero means to me and to millions of people,” he wrote.
Critics of President Bukele said the paintings were moved without respect for local laws.
A 2012 decree from the Salvadoran Ministry of Culture gave the painting special status as a national cultural asset, meaning its location cannot be changed without a technical review procedure.
Carlos Colorado, a Salvadoran-American lawyer who runs a blog about St. Romero, said he was concerned that El Salvador's current government was downplaying the bishop's contributions to the country's history.
St. Romero served as archbishop of San Salvador in the late 1970s, a tumultuous period that led to a full-scale civil war and left more than 75,000 people dead.
As a bishop, St. Romero opposed political violence, defended military victims, and urged soldiers not to act against their fellow countrymen in poor rural areas.
Archbishop Romero was shot and killed while celebrating Mass at a hospital in San Salvador on March 24, 1980. His beatification Mass on May 23, 2015 was one of the largest public events in El Salvador's history, drawing an estimated 250,000 people. He was canonized by Pope Francis on October 14, 2018.
El Salvador's airport was named after the legendary archbishop in 2014 and is called Aeropuerto Internacional San Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez in Spanish.
Colorado told OSV News that Bukele's administration appears to be trying to “whitewash” this period in El Salvador's history.
Recently, the Salvadoran government destroyed a monument to the 1992 peace agreement that ended El Salvador's civil war to build a park.
“President Bukele is trying to change the image of the country, and that's probably a good thing insofar as people think of El Salvador as a gang-infested place, a place that's just emerging from conflict,” Colorado told OSV News. “But he seems to be taking a heavy-handed approach.”
The painting of St. Romero was unveiled in 2010 during a ceremony in which the Salvadoran government apologized for the bishop's murder at the hands of right-wing death squads in 1980.
The move has made the country safer as the country cracks down on gangs, but it has also resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of innocent people, and some Salvadorans worry that their government is not paying enough attention to human rights issues.
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