Feb 20, 2010 
They say a blog posting of more than 500 words goes largely un-read. I’ll run that risk. I
wish I really could deliver this message directly and in-person to Mr. Mousavi. He reminds me of
one of my heroes. And heroes can inspire vision and determination, resilience and
courage, which I wish for this unlikely Iranian popular leader.
Dear Mr. Mousavi,
I do not know you personally and with media restrictions in your country none of us can know you well. Yet I hold you in deepening respect for your clarity and courage, knowing that holding your truth and staying your course places you and your family at risk. Ever since I first heard your story, a figure from history – halfway around the world from you and now more than a quarter century ago – keeps coming to mind. I want to introduce you to each other. His name is Oscar Romero, archbishop of El Salvador at the time he was martyred.
The 1970’s in El Salvador were turbulent, a wealthy elite controlling the government and military, with substantial aid from the United States strengthening that leverage, funding an apparatus of repression on a restless and ever more assertive peasant population. The church was viewed as a “wild card” – with an important, often overlooked ecclesiastical reality true throughout Latin America: there were, in effect, two Roman Catholic Churches: the official hierarchy, the priests of the large and often opulent urban churches, amply supported by the largesse of the hacienda owners and corporate class, headed by the archbishop; and, the so-called popular church, small chapels in small towns and rural areas with young, often radicalized priests, and an increasingly politicized peasant population. Liberation Theology – biblical and theological reflection focused on the “liberating acts of God” foundational to the biblical narrative – had deep roots in El Salvador; and, Christian Base Communities were thriving – biblical reflection groups gathering in peasants’ homes who “found themselves” studying a Bible 80% of which was written from the perspective of the oppressed, the victims of injustice. There was, at the grassroots, an awakening.
On February 23, 1977, Oscar Romero was appointed archbishop, a decision met with the blessing and delight of the landed rich and their patron government, but the disappointment and dismay of the popular church and its Marxist-influenced priests, fearful that a growing peasant community-organizing movement would lose its momentum. Romero, known as conservative and passive, bookish and scholarly, would surely make no waves, no challenge the tightening grip of the establishment on the poor. Less than a month after his appointment, his friend and Jesuit priest Rotulio Grande became the first of six priests to be assassinated over a two year period. Romero is reported to have said, looking down at Grande’s bloodied body, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought, ‘if they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path’.”
1979 was the critical and pivotal year in El Salvador: The people took to the streets, the military and often more vicious and indiscriminate paramilitary and rightwing death squads, responded with relentless brutality, and Romero, as he stated on several occasions, “became converted by the poor.” He began to speak out ever more frequently and boldly against poverty, school closings, press censorship, denial of public assembly, attacks on churches, and torture. He began to develop an international reputation. The Salvadoran government and elite were concerned.
On March 24, 1980, while celebrating mass at a small hospital chapel, Romero was killed by a single shot to the heart, just one day after a passionate sermon in the cathedral church where he had pleaded with Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repressive human rights violations.
2009 was a critical and pivotal year in El Salvador: The story across three decades is complex, but on June 1, 2009 Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena took office as the newly democratically-elected president of El Salvador. The unlikely irony is that the revolutionary movement in opposition to the ruling government in 1979, a government widely viewed as complicit in Romero’s assassination, was the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) – widely viewed in the U.S. as Communist-leaning, anti- U.S., and a security threat to our country – is President Cartagena’s political party.
In my reading about your country, and I trust I will be accurate and fair, the 1970’s were turbulent in Iran as well. Am I remembering accurately? Suspicious and alarmed by perceived ties to Germany during World War II, Britain and the USSR invaded your country to gain access to its railway system and subsequently replaced Reza Shah with his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Wasn’t it 1951 when Mohammed Mossadegh was elected prime minister becoming immediately and enormously popular for his populist ideology, particularly his nationalizing of Iran’s oil fields? How tragic (let me apologize if I may) that President Eisenhower, spurred by Britain, launched Operation Ajax, headed by Kermit Roosevelt – a relentless disinformation campaign, a massive budget to fund bribing public, religious and military leaders, and which succeeded in precipitating Mossadegh’s arrest on August 19, 1953. Reza Pahlavi returned to power bringing rapid modernization but also swift and crushing attack on all political opposition.
As in El Salvador (I am fascinated by the parallels) wasn’t 1979 a critical and pivotal year in your country? Ayatollah Khomeini, imprisoned and then exiled in the mid-1960’s, led the Islamic Revolution, paralyzing the country and the economy leading to the overthrow of the Shah. You know all too well the new constitution that yielded primary power to the Supreme Leader, an Islamic cleric, who controlled the military, the judicial system, police forces and radio, television and print media outlets. The president, publically elected, had and still has limited and conferred powers.
After the protracted Iraq-Iran War – in which you lost 500,000 to 1,000,000 persons, perhaps 100,000 soldiers victim of Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare, in which my country has shameful complicity – the more pragmatic Akbar Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami, if I am reading history correctly, brought stability, greater freedom of expression, economic expansion, and broadened diplomatic initiatives, all without making a break from the ideology of the revolution. The unexpected election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, I gather, prompted a sharp reversal of those democratizing trends, a return to hard-line policies, sparked by the incendiary rhetoric of Ahmadinejad.
Last year’s contested re-election of Ahmadinejad was widely covered by the media. The brutal strategies of retaliation against the astoundingly massive and persistent public protests have circumvented government censorship and come to our attention. Your courage, persistence and outspokenness and your steady encouragement of protest – as a candidate who only could only have run having been thoroughly vetted by the mullahs; viewed, like Oscar Romero, as “safe,” in alignment with the revolutionary agenda, one who, if elected, would maintain in-place policies. Surprise!
Have you been “converted” by the people, empowered by their study witness, emboldened by their literally placing their bodies on the line? Is there an “Oscar Romero in you”? Your country has a legacy of pride, resilience and independence. Speaking truth to power is hardly new for your people. They need a leader like you. I pray you not come to his bloody end and that change not take three decades. Thank you for listening to my words of high regard, affirmation and encouragement.
In Solidarity and Hope,
Howard Friend
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