Search Results

It is well known that since the year 1518 Hernán Cortés was in New Spain. Also well known is how Adelantado Francisco de Garay, governor of the island of Jamaica, was granted the governorship and captaincy-general of the province called Pánuco, through which runs the Palmas River, next to or a part of New Spain. At this same time, Licentiate Alonso Zuazo was in the city of Santiago on the very island of Fernandina, where he had previously been governor, but in the time of which the governor was Adelantado Diego Velázquez. When Francisco de Garay learned the news he realized that, even though he carried sufficient powers and royal provisions from the lord emperor, to enter his territory of Pánuco, now settled and occupied by Hernán Cortés, would be impossible without some risk and much opposition.

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.

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 search for the getaway driver, Amado Garay, who testified against Alvaro Saravia and Roberto D’Aubuisson in 1987 but was not seen again. Through a coincidence, this team discovers that Garay is under witness protection in the United States. The legal team begins a complicated and frustrating effort to confirm whether Garay remains in witness protection and how to get in contact with him. The team also suspects that Roberto Santivañez, who made public disclosures about D’Aubuisson and others during the 1980s, could be under protection as well.

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.

The chapter describes the legal team’s last trip to El Salvador before trial, during which they interview a witness who describes Archbishop Romero as a military target. The team prepares for trial by securing the testimony of several witnesses from El Salvador and the United States who can describe the overwhelming importance of Romero’s life and the profound loss of his death, which helped precipitate the start of the civil war. The team also speaks with a new contact, Gordon Ellison, who worked in the 1980s with the head of the Salvadoran Special Investigative Unit and accompanied officials on the original search for the getaway driver, Amado Garay. As trial approaches, the legal team decides to ask Garay to testify live at the trial.

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.