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’