Читать книгу Archbishop Oscar Romero - Emily Wade Will - Страница 11

(1931–1935)

In January 1931, after Oscar arrived at San Miguel’s minor or preseminary—it also housed a small major seminary—it didn’t take long for his classmates to learn he played the concert flute.17 His father had allowed him to bring along the valuable silver instrument.

“Play it for us!” some of the boys insisted one afternoon as they chatted in the dorm room.

Just then Father Benito Calvo, the priest who had accompanied Oscar on the arduous trek to the city, passed the doorway. He served as one of their teachers.

“What’s the excitement about?”

After the boys told him, he also encouraged Oscar to play a tune.

Feeling shy and awkward, Oscar opened the small leather case and assembled the instrument. He decided on one of his favorite pieces. Soon he lost himself in the lilting notes, and his nervousness lifted. When Oscar finished, the boys burst into applause.

“That’s impressive, Oscar!” said classmate Mauro Yánes.

“I wish I could play the flute,” said his friend Alberto Luna.

“Do you also sing?” asked schoolmate Fausto Ventura. When Oscar nodded yes, Fausto said, “I love to sing. Let’s sing together sometime.”

“Boys,” Father Calvo interjected, “have you heard we sometimes entertain ourselves here by putting on musical performances and plays? A Catholic high school in the city, run by the Marist brothers, will also ask us to provide an evening’s program for them. Fausto, we’ll arrange for you and Oscar to sing a duet.” He turned to Oscar. “Might you be willing to play your flute at the high school sometime?”

Oscar smiled. “I would like that.” Already he felt welcomed and appreciated in his new home. If his brothers and sisters never quite understood him, his classmates did.

Actually, except for San Miguel’s stifling heat and the pesky mosquitos that made some students and faculty so sick with malaria they had to withdraw, everything about his new home in the flat lowlands agreed with Oscar.18 He liked his classmates, his teachers, and the seminary itself—an inviting and compact campus in the center of the bustling, growing town of about 17,500 people.

Oscar trekked over the mountains to this destination, then the San Miguel minor seminary that Oscar attended. (1998 photo, Emily Will)

Some forty students, ages thirteen to eighteen, lived and studied at the preseminary, and a limited number of older students attended the major seminary. The dorms, classrooms, chapel, and dining hall formed a horseshoe around an airy tropical garden. The terra-cotta tile roofs on the long, low white buildings lent a cozy appearance. There was enough land to assign each seminarian a small plot to grow vegetables. The students also helped tend the fruit trees on the property—grapefruit, lemon, avocado, papaya, and others.

Oscar found his days full and challenging. He and his classmates rose at five thirty each morning. They washed, dressed in their long, black cassocks—Mamá had tailored Oscar’s first one—and meditated and prayed until six-thirty mass in the chapel. Afterwards, they changed into yellow tunics over pants, ate breakfast, and attended classes from eight until noon, with ten-minute breaks between each fifty-minute class.

The students sat together for the noon dinner, with the teacher-priests at nearby tables. After the meal, one of the priests read from the classics. The stories engaged Oscar and his classmates and introduced them to a range of literature from various cultures. They returned to classes from two to four in the afternoon, followed by an hour of recreation. The day ended with supper, homework, and devotions.

Rebel Hair

Oscar, thirteen, and some eight to ten other boys from around El Salvador formed the youngest, or first-year, class. Oscar quickly became friends with Rafael Valladares, a witty, outgoing youth a few grades ahead of Oscar. Rafael, a bishop’s nephew from Opico, a town in western El Salvador, had attended an excellent private elementary school and soon became top student. Before long, though, Oscar, with some extra math tutoring, began to rival his friend in scholarship.

Rafael churned things up with his teasing and joking. He teased Oscar about his prominent nose, proclaiming, “It looks like a cuma,” a curved machete.

A nickname was also in the making. Oscar had been cast as an elderly manservant in a play to be given at the Marist high school. The evening of the performance, a local woman came to help the students with costumes and makeup. She brought a bottle of white talcum powder to “gray” Oscar’s head. Oscar’s hair was so bushy, however, that as she sprinkled it with talc, the powder settled to his scalp where it couldn’t be seen.

“Ai-yai-yai! With this boy I’m going to go through the entire container!” she said in mock complaint.

Oscar’s thick, unruly hair had already drawn his classmates’ attention, but after this event Rafael nicknamed him cabeza de súngano, the equivalent of something like “shaggy head” or “mophead.”19

Rafael had persuaded classmates to join him in producing a student newsletter. In one issue, he penned a short rhyming couplet, supposedly in Oscar’s name, using the indigenous town names—Cacahuatique and Chaparrastique—by which Ciudad Barrios and San Miguel were still sometimes referred:

Como un arbusto oloroso

nací por Cacahuatique.

Y cresco súngano y hermoso

aquí por Chaparrastique.

Like a fragrant bush

in Ciudad Barrios I was born and bred.

And here in San Miguel

I grow into a handsome mophead.20

Oscar took Rafael’s ribbing in the good-natured vein in which it was intended. Not so another classmate, who socked Rafael after Rafael turned his wit on him. But the joker knew he had it coming. “Already I’m being crucified,” Rafael said with a laugh. Oscar dished out some teasing of his own but, unlike Rafael, knew when to stop.

After the priests learned Oscar could type, they sometimes asked him to put this skill to use for them.21 Father Antonio Aguadé, in particular, who handwrote the articles he contributed to the diocesan newspaper, would ask Oscar to type them. Oscar didn’t mind doing so, although it meant missing the hour of outdoor activity. Later Father Aguadé repaid the favor by taking Oscar out of some classes to teach him to play the harmonium, a reed organ.

Oscar, second from right, and three minor seminary classmates. (photo credit, Zolia Aurora Asturias and Eva del Carmen Asturias)

Oscar also developed his singing voice at the preseminary. At one of the Marist school performances, he and Fausto Ventura pleased the audience with their duet of the well-loved song Golondrinas yucatecas, “Yucatecan Swallows.” Its sentimental lyrics compare youth with springtime when swallows arrive and nest, and old age with winter, when both dreams and swallows depart.

Family Environment

Oscar and his classmates would do just about anything for their main teachers, Father Antonio Aguadé, who also served as rector, and two young priests Fathers Benito Calvo and José Burgoa. They were from Spain, members of the Claretian order. Spanish priests in general bore a reputation for rigidity and strictness, but the youthful Calvo and Burgoa joined their students in their joking and fun. All three guided their charges through friendly support rather than rigid discipline.

After Father Aguadé’s death in 1960, Romero would describe him as “the kind father, the good teacher, the sincere friend, the tireless writer” who desired first and foremost to nurture his students’ gifts.22

Minor seminarians on an outing. Oscar, looking to his right, stands between the priests, one of whom is Monseñor Daniel Ventura Cruz. Rafael kneels in front of Oscar. Bernardo Amaya holds his hat in one hand and rolled-up towel in the other.(photo courtesy of Father Bernardo Amaya)

Fathers Calvo and Burgoa took the boys on frequent outings, often to the nearby Grande River and sometimes to Lake Olomega or beaches along the Gulf of Fonseca. Father Burgoa taught many of the boys to swim, an activity Oscar enjoyed and did well.23 Sometimes they hiked the nearby volcano, climbing all morning to reach a chapel part way up.

Oscar and his classmates welcomed such breaks from their rigorous studies. In his five years of minor seminary studies, Oscar took classes in Spanish grammar, literature and rhetoric (composition and speech), Latin, Greek, introductory French and English, algebra and geometry, world and Salvadoran history, vocal music, including Gregorian chant, botany, zoology, human anatomy and physiology, philosophy, theology, religious practice, and law—both Roman and canon, or church, law.

The preseminarians also served as altar boys and learned how to celebrate mass. They’d practice saying “dry masses,” that is, without the Communion wine and wafers.

Oscar wasn’t totally cut off from his family. On extended holidays, such as Holy Week, he’d trek to Ciudad Barrios to visit his family. He also occasionally saw any two of his five brothers after they hiked through the mountains—usually at night to avoid the daytime heat—to deliver his clean, ironed clothes and to pick up his dirty ones. Sometimes, though, family friend and merchant Juan Martínez transported Oscar’s laundry during his weekly buying trips to San Miguel with a cart and horse.

One day in early 1935, as Oscar, seventeen, neared the end of his minor seminary studies, he had a worrisome discussion with his brothers Gustavo, twenty-three, and Rómulo, thirteen, when they came to San Miguel on the laundry run.

“Papá had to mortgage the farm,” Gustavo told Oscar.

Oscar knew of his family’s growing financial troubles over the past couple of years, but news of the mortgage was unexpected. “Papá loves El Pulgo. This must break his heart. Do you think he’ll be able to pay it off?” Even as he said it, Oscar had a sinking feeling Papá might lose the farm, the main source of the family income. “I didn’t imagine it’d come to this.”

Troubles Near and Far

Oscar was aware of tumult in the whole of El Salvador in these years of the early 1930s. Indigenous people and peasants in western El Salvador rebelled in 1932, fed up with hunger and lack of land. During the previous generation or two, owners of large coffee plantations had taken over their communal lands.

The ruling class responded to the revolt with a wholesale massacre. During La matanza, “the massacre,” as it has come to be known, El Salvador’s military exterminated an estimated thirty thousand people—2 percent of the country’s population at the time. The atrocity would keep people silent for a long time.

In addition, the country reeled from economic upheaval after the onset of the worldwide Great Depression in 1929. Coffee prices began to plummet that year and by 1932 had dropped to one-third the average pre-Depression price.

“The government hasn’t paid any of its employees, not even the teachers,” Gustavo said.

“They haven’t paid Papá for the telegraph or Mamá for the mail,” Rómulo added. “Papá is drinking a lot.” Tears clouded his eyes.

Oscar, eyebrows arched, looked to Gustavo, who nodded to confirm Rómulo’s assertion.

“Not good.” Oscar frowned. “How’s Mamá?”

“She’s worried, of course, though she doesn’t say anything to Papá about his drinking,” Gustavo said.

“And you know the people who rented out part of our house?” Rómulo asked. As soon as Oscar nodded, he burst out, “They’re not paying their rent!”

“It’s a bad time for everyone,” Oscar said. Then, as he remembered Gustavo was looking for work, he turned and asked him, “What have you heard about that opening at the Potosí gold mine?”

“It involves work with the chemist,” Gustavo said. “I think I have a chance of getting it. I should know soon. The pay’s not bad; I’d be able to support myself. One less mouth for Papá and Mamá to worry about.”

“Will Papá manage the farm work without your help?” Oscar asked.

“It’s a good question because he can no longer afford to hire workers at busy times, like the coffee harvest,” Gustavo said. “But our younger brothers are getting bigger and stronger. They’re able to do more at the farm so my absence shouldn’t hurt.”

“Well, let’s hope you get the job at the mine and that this year’s crop is good,” Oscar said. “Looks like I have lots to pray about. And promise me you’ll both pray as well? You should say three Hail Marys each bedtime and three each morning when you awake.”24

Oscar knew he’d be continuing seminary studies, but he didn’t yet know where. It was up to the bishop of San Miguel diocese, Juan Antonio Dueñas y Argumedo, to decide. The bishop, who was his friend Rafael’s uncle, might want him to stay on at the San Miguel seminary.

Alternately, Bishop Dueñas could have Oscar wait and begin studies at a new seminary due to open in 1936 in San Salvador, intended to serve not only future priests of El Salvador but also of Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Or the bishop might decide to take advantage of a scholarship to send Oscar to Rome, as he had done with Father Monroy.

Whatever the future, Oscar had to think about earning money for his expenses. Fortunately, Gustavo was hired as chemist’s assistant at the El Mineral Potosí, a gold mine not far south of Ciudad Barrios. Gustavo helped Oscar and his younger brother Mamerto get short-term work there.

With straps slung across their foreheads to support the leather pouches on their backs, Oscar and Mamerto spent full workdays picking up ore-containing rocks and flinging them into the ever-heavier sacks. They earned fifty cents a day and were paid every two weeks. It was grueling.

After four weeks, Oscar told his brother, “Okay, let’s go. With what we’ve earned I have enough to buy my books and the few other things I need.” Mamerto didn’t argue with him.

Oscar graduated from minor seminary as a confident eighteen-year-old at the end of 1935. He had blossomed under the guidance of the Claretian brothers and with his classmates’ camaraderie and acceptance. He had formed friendships that would last a lifetime. He had also acquired a broad base of knowledge and started to hone the musical and oratory gifts he’d use when he eventually became a priest.

17. Most of the information in this chapter is a gift from the prodigious memory of Father Bernardo Amaya, who studied at the San Miguel minor seminary at the same time as Romero, but in an older class. Father Amaya, interviewed by the author in 1998, when Amaya was retired and living in San Salvador, recalled such details as the couplet Rafael Valladares wrote about Oscar and the opening lines of the song Oscar and Fausto Ventura sang at a Marist school performance. Amaya had also served on two occasions as parish priest in Ciudad Barrios, Oscar’s hometown, and thus came to know the family. Oscar’s brothers Arnoldo, Mamerto, and Gaspar Romero also provided useful information.

The specific words spoken in this chapter’s conversations are the author’s creative device to enliven the information; they adhere as closely as possible to what the author learned in interviews.

18. Father Amaya said he had suffered a severe bout of malaria while a preseminarian. He also spoke of seminary director Father Benito Ibañez, who had to leave after a year due to malaria.

19. The súngano is a brown fruit about the size of a large grapefruit with yellow or orange fibrous or “hairy” flesh. With the scientific name Licania platypus Fritsch, it’s also known as sunsa in parts of El Salvador and by various other names in the region, including zapote cabelludo, or “shaggy zapote.”

20. Romero recalled Valladares and his newsletters in a tribute written upon his friend’s death: “In those unforgettable years in the shade of the Claretian Fathers, Valladares sowed joy, initiative, culture, piety. His fondness for journalism shone in the two newsletters he began: ‘Amanecer’ [Dawn] and ‘El Ideal’ [The Ideal].” Romero y Galdámez, “Murió como santo porque vivió como sacerdote,” Chaparrastique, no. 2379, September 2, 1961, 1,8.

21. Oscar’s father noted in his small notebook that he purchased a typewriter in 1925, the year Oscar turned eight.

22. In this tribute to Father Aguadé, Romero wrote of his teacher: “He left us with this indelible memory: he strove to encourage our good qualities and talents. I’ll be grateful my entire life for the time he complimented me on a little beginner’s speech I gave in one of those evening events we organized in honor of our teachers. I felt his words of encouragement were so sincere they seemed to point out to me my responsibility to make good use of the gifts God gives us for God’s own glory.” Romero y Galdámez, “Murió el Padre Antonio Aguadé,” Chaparrastique, no. 2304, February 20, 1960, 1,8,12.

23. Oscar learned to swim as a child in streams and rivers near his home.

24. Oscar’s counsel to pray three Ave Marias at bedtime and upon awakening come from a 1939 postcard that Oscar, twenty-two, wrote to Arnoldo on his birthday: “My dear, often-thought-of Noldo, On September 13, you will celebrate your birthday, so I’m writing you this pretty postcard to congratulate you. To always be happy, you should always do three things: Go to mass on Sundays, always take Holy Communion, love the Virgin Mary, praying to her three Hail Marys upon going to bed and rising. If you do this, God will dearly love you. If you don’t, you won’t be happy. I send you a hug. Your brother Oscar”