Blood in the Fields: Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform

368 Pages·2020·3.906 MB·English

by  Matthew Philipp Whelan

BLOOD
IN THE
FIELDS

Matthew Philipp Whelan
BLOOD
IN THE
FIELDS
Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching,
and Land Reform
The Catholic University of America Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2020
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standards for Information
Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
∞
Thanks to Carolyn Forché for permission to publish lines from
her poem “Ourselves or Nothing” from the collection The Country
Between Us.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Whelan, Matthew Philipp, author.
Title: Blood in the fields : Óscar Romero, Catholic social teaching,
and land reform / Matthew Philipp Whelan.
Description: Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Summary: “Examines the life and martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar
Romero in El Salvador through the lens of agrarian reform, arguing
that his advocacy for the just distribution of land drew heavily on
Catholic Social Doctrine and its conviction that creation
is a common gift”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019048962 | ISBN 9780813232522 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780813232539 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Romero, Óscar A. (Óscar Arnulfo), Saint, 1917–1980.
Classification: LCC BX4705.R669 W43 2020 | DDC 282.092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048962
For Natalie

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms xv
Introduction 1
Part 1. Gift of the Earth
1. “ You Possess the Land That Belongs to
All Salvadorans” 31
2. The Grammar of Creation 85
Part 2. Work of Human Hands
3. Land Reform and the Politics of Common Use 143
4. The Land of the Savior 190
Part 3. Body of Christ
5. The Witness of Óscar Romero 253
Epilogue 305
Bibliography 313
Index of Names 335
General Index 341

Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
The seeds of this book were first sown during my time as a volunteer
with Peace Corps Honduras’s Hillside Family Farming project from 2000
to 2002. In Honduras, I lived in a small hamlet in that country’s central
highlands and worked with farmers growing maize, beans, and squash
for subsistence as well as coffee for cash income. While there, I often
heard stories about the Jesuits of the Aguán valley of Northern Honduras,
who supported agricultural cooperatives and worked with their neigh-
bors to help secure access to land to farm—similar to Óscar Romero’s
friend, Servant of God Rutilio Grande, SJ, who was slain at the outset of
Romero’s ministry as archbishop of San Salvador.
Where I lived in Honduras, like in the Aguán—and like in Romero’s
El Salvador—there existed a tension between the valley and the hills: be-
tween the extensive agricultural plantations, owned by few people, and
dedicated to export agricultural production, on the one hand, and the
smallholdings of the countless families struggling—or luchando (fight-
ing), as they put it—to secure a livelihood on that nation’s denuded and
eroded hillsides, on the other. As I worked with my friends and neigh-
bors or walked the hamlet’s paths, the vast fields of caña (sugar cane)
below were often perceptible through the pine trees. The contrast be-
tween the valley and the hills seared itself into my mind along with the
question, how to hold the tension between these spaces together? It was
during this time that I first traveled to El Salvador, to the sites associat-
ed with Romero’s life and death, and it first began to dawn on me how
ix