after this event Rafael nicknamed him cabeza de súngano, the equivalent of something like “shaggy head” or “mophead.”19
Rafael had persuaded classmates to join him in producing a student newsletter. In one issue, he penned a short rhyming couplet, supposedly in Oscar’s name, using the indigenous town names—Cacahuatique and Chaparrastique—by which Ciudad Barrios and San Miguel were still sometimes referred:
Como un arbusto oloroso
nací por Cacahuatique.
Y cresco súngano y hermoso
aquí por Chaparrastique.
Like a fragrant bush
in Ciudad Barrios I was born and bred.
And here in San Miguel
I grow into a handsome mophead.20
Oscar took Rafael’s ribbing in the good-natured vein in which it was intended. Not so another classmate, who socked Rafael after Rafael turned his wit on him. But the joker knew he had it coming. “Already I’m being crucified,” Rafael said with a laugh. Oscar dished out some teasing of his own but, unlike Rafael, knew when to stop.
After the priests learned Oscar could type, they sometimes asked him to put this skill to use for them.21 Father Antonio Aguadé, in particular, who handwrote the articles he contributed to the diocesan newspaper, would ask Oscar to type them. Oscar didn’t mind doing so, although it meant missing the hour of outdoor activity. Later Father Aguadé repaid the favor by taking Oscar out of some classes to teach him to play the harmonium, a reed organ.
Oscar, second from right, and three minor seminary classmates. (photo credit, Zolia Aurora Asturias and Eva del Carmen Asturias)
Oscar also developed his singing voice at the preseminary. At one of the Marist school performances, he and Fausto Ventura pleased the audience with their duet of the well-loved song Golondrinas yucatecas, “Yucatecan Swallows.” Its sentimental lyrics compare youth with springtime when swallows arrive and nest, and old age with winter, when both dreams and swallows depart.
Family Environment
Oscar and his classmates would do just about anything for their main teachers, Father Antonio Aguadé, who also served as rector, and two young priests Fathers Benito Calvo and José Burgoa. They were from Spain, members of the Claretian order. Spanish priests in general bore a reputation for rigidity and strictness, but the youthful Calvo and Burgoa joined their students in their joking and fun. All three guided their charges through friendly support rather than rigid discipline.
After Father Aguadé’s death in 1960, Romero would describe him as “the kind father, the good teacher, the sincere friend, the tireless writer” who desired first and foremost to nurture his students’ gifts.22
Minor seminarians on an outing. Oscar, looking to his right, stands between the priests, one of whom is Monseñor Daniel Ventura Cruz. Rafael kneels in front of Oscar. Bernardo Amaya holds his hat in one hand and rolled-up towel in the other.(photo courtesy of Father Bernardo Amaya)
Fathers Calvo and Burgoa took the boys on frequent outings, often to the nearby Grande River and sometimes to Lake Olomega or beaches along the Gulf of Fonseca. Father Burgoa taught many of the boys to swim, an activity Oscar enjoyed and did well.23 Sometimes they hiked the nearby volcano, climbing all morning to reach a chapel part way up.
Oscar and his classmates welcomed such breaks from their rigorous studies. In his five years of minor seminary studies, Oscar took classes in Spanish grammar, literature and rhetoric (composition and speech), Latin, Greek, introductory French and English, algebra and geometry, world and Salvadoran history, vocal music, including Gregorian chant, botany, zoology, human anatomy and physiology, philosophy, theology, religious practice, and law—both Roman and canon, or church, law.
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
