Bishop Oscar Romero and Real Tyranny

31 years ago today, Bishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by pro-government forces in El Salvador. His crime? Daring to use the church pulpit to denounce a government that was openly, with US government help, targeting, torturing, and killing their opponents and demanding some rights for the "least of these," as Jesus might have termed the poor of Romero's country. This week I will be serving with a pastor in Oaxaca, Mexico who fled El Salvador during those times. Times when he says you could not sleep because of the noise of people crying in the night for relatives who were tortured for resisting the government. Times when bullets flew indiscriminately with just one mission, to kill. As we remember Bishop Romero, it just might do us good to recall what real tyranny looks like. It is not a government making you get health insurance, and it is not a government taking away your right to have a union ask your bosses for a raise. Oscar Romero and many of his Christian brethren of El Salvador who also died trying to serve the poor of this small Central American country knew first hand what government tyranny looked like.