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Over three decades, there have been several investigations of Romero’s murder that have uncovered significant information but never led to a trial. In 1980, Judge Atilio Ramirez Amaya attended the autopsy and started gathering evidence but the police who normally assisted were entirely absent, and three days later an assassination attempt caused Ramirez Amaya to flee. Later that year, authorities raided an estate called Finca San Luis, arrested several extremists, including Roberto D’Aubuisson, and seized documents showing death squad operations, including a datebook called the Saravia Diary that contained a page titled Operation Piña that is thought to describe Romero’s murder. In the next few years, the U.S. embassy developed an insider military source who claimed to have attended a planning meeting for Romero’s assassination. In 1987, the getaway driver for the operation, Amado Garay, testified before Salvadoran judge and implicated Roberto D’Aubuisson and Alvaro Saravia in the plot.

This chapter provides an overview of the recent history of El Salvador, with a focus on the importance of coffee as a crop that built fortunes for a small group of families. The wealth concentrated in the hands of oligarchs led to massive economic inequality throughout the twentieth century, and an uprising in the 1930s was put down in such a brutal manner that it stifled opposition for decades and came to be known as the Matanza. This chapter chronicles U.S. government support for anti-Communism and counterinsurgency efforts that created the death squads in El Salvador, continued military repression amid growing cries for reform in the 1960s and 1970s, the rise of insurgent groups targeting the oligarchs, and the bloody response of the military and death squads. After a reformist military coup in 1979, Roberto D’Aubuisson and civilian supporters carried out a public crusade denouncing advocates of reform as Communists, with the country getting closer to civil war.

This chapter describes the filing of the legal case against Alvaro Saravia as well as several unnamed “Doe” defendants, designations intended to be filled with the identities of death squad financiers with connections to the United States. The chapter presents the documentation and evidence that describes the alleged funding of the death squads, including the Saravia Diary and a U.S. embassy cable about a group called the “Miami Six”. It transitions to a discussion of how, as a full-scale civil war raged, many of the Salvadoran oligarchs teamed up with Roberto D’Aubuisson to create the ARENA political party while the U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan greatly increased economic assistance to the Salvadoran military responsible for so much of the repression.

This chapter describes the launch of the legal team’s investigation with a trip to El Salvador to look into those who financed the death squads. The most promising lead comes from allegations by Hector Regalado, a known associate of Roberto D’Aubuisson, who spoke with contacts of the legal team. Through a description of the trip and trial testimony about the Saravia diary, the chapter provides further evidence about the financiers, and points to evidence about an ARENA party founder, Billy Sol.

As the chapter describes the legal team’s continuing search for Alvaro Saravia, it provides the background on Saravia’s criminal past in El Salvador that led him to come to the United States. Salvadoran authorities finally launched a serious investigation into the Romero assassination leading to the testimony of the getaway driver, Amado Garay, and the arrest of Saravia in Miami. Roberto D’Aubuisson and others infuriated the U.S. government by undermining a case to have Saravia extradited to stand trial in El Salvador. With Saravia still facing immigration problems, a U.S. embassy official took advantage of Saravia’s predicament to get information from him about Romero’s murder. Those details largely matched the findings of a Truth Commission report issued a few years later, after the end of El Salvador’s civil war.

This chapter describes the legal team’s interactions with the getaway driver, Amado Garay, who gives them the surprise of a lifetime when he calls out of the blue and confirms that he is in witness protection. He agree to cooperate in the case and soon provides testimony in the form of a deposition under oath, in which he repeats much of the story he told in 1987 implicating Alvaro Saravia in Romero’s murder. Garay provides many more details about the group he was in, calling it a death squad in which the people were well-armed, and stating that he was a driver for Roberto D’Aubuisson on several occasions. With Garay’s testimony, the legal team finally has recorded testimony from a witness under oath confirming that Saravia was involved in killing Archbishop Romero.

This chapter describes the trial in Fresno, California against Alvaro Saravia, in which several Salvadoran witnesses testify about their experiences with Archbishop Romero, including the investigating judge Atilio Ramirez Amaya and the getaway driver, Amado Garay. Despite the evidence collected during the investigation, the team decided not to bring any others into the case as defendant, which means that the trial focuses on Saravia’s responsibility and the impact of Romero’s death. After five days of testimony, the judge holds Saravia liable for Romero’s murder, calls Roberto D’Aubuisson the mastermind of the operation and orders Saravia to pay $10 million in damages.

This chapter chronicles the surprising post-trial revelations by Alvaro Saravia, who comes out of hiding to give an interview to a Miami newspaper. Saravia then contacts the legal team, starting a months-long dialogue that eventually leads to a sit-down meeting with two members of the team in Honduras. The legal team refuses to negotiate with Saravia unless he reveals everything he knows about those responsible for the Romero assassination and the financing of Roberto D’Aubuisson’s death squad, and although the meeting ends without an agreement, Saravia does make some interesting disclosures.

This chapter examines ARENA in El Salvador and argues that, like the UDI in Chile, its success was the product of authoritarian inheritance and counterrevolutionary struggle. The first section discusses El Salvador’s long history of right-wing military rule. The second section examines the October 1979 coup and the resulting establishment of a left-wing Revolutionary Governing Junta. The third section discusses the intense counterrevolutionary response that the junta triggered. This included large-scale death squad violence, with future ARENA founder Roberto D’Aubuisson playing a key role. The fourth section examines the formation of ARENA in response to an impending transition to competitive elections. The fifth section shows how D’Aubuisson’s role as a high-level official in the pre-1979 military regime endowed ARENA with several valuable resources. The final section discusses how ARENA’s origins in counterrevolutionary struggle served as a powerful source of cohesion.