Assassination of a Saint : the plot to murder Óscar Romero and the quest to bring his killers to justice /

Eisenbrandt offers a thorough accounting of the evidence available against those who committed the 1980 murder of the Archbishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. The author is an attorney who, while working as a member of the trial team at the Center for Justice and Accountability, participated in the civil suits against the alleged perpetrators in US courts. The author explains the larger historical and political context, including the decades-long civil unrest in El Salvador, which played against the backdrop of the Cold War and the long history of US support for ruthless, oftentimes US-trained, military leaders who were given free rein to govern by force at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran lives. Archbishop Romero was initially supported and respected by the right-wing oligarchy that controlled the country. However, as human rights violations became more severe, as Romero's colleagues were killed, and as he became a lone public voice of information and opposition to the death squads and those who supported them, he became a target himself. Regardless of the degree to which the perpetrators of human rights violations in El Salvador are brought to justice in the US and in El Salvador, this volume is important for the preservation of historical memory. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. --Kristin Sorensen, Bentley University

In 1980, El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while offering mass; the murder remains unsolved. Eisenbrandt (human rights attorney, Canadian Centre for International Justice) relays the efforts of the U.S. nonprofit human rights organization Center for Justice and Accountability in the partial untangling of this mystery. Using the investigation as a framework, Eisenbrandt weaves the history of El Salvador with the social and international dynamics (including those of the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations) that precipitated the assassination and the subsequent civil war that spanned 1980-92. This story of clashing trajectories includes the transformation of Romero from an Archbishop seen as safe for the regime to one who came to see that the demands of the Gospel required that he vigorously oppose that very regime. Then there is the regime itself, which saw any sort of moderation as an existential threat and the clergy as communist provocateurs. In Eisenbrandt's telling, it is clear why Romero was so beloved, that his death marked a tragic turning point, and that the pursuit of justice remains unfinished. VERDICT An intriguing story filled with tragic "if-only's" and powerful -examples of courage.-JW © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.