2,000 Mark Slaying of Archbishop

Ten years and a day after Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was shot to death while celebrating Mass in his country, more than 2,000 people gathered Sunday on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to commemorate his assassination and to protest U.S. presence in Central America.

Rally participants included members of at least 50 church, labor and student groups. The demonstrators railed at U.S. foreign spending, saying that in the last 10 years, the country has sent more than $4 billion in military and economic aid to military-backed governments in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Panama.

The assassination of Romero, an outspoken opponent of rightist death squads and military leadership, was blamed on a former El Salvadoran National Guard intelligence officer. Protesters said that because an arrest by government-controlled law enforcement agencies is not likely, the murder remains unsolved.

“It’s not our own people funding this war (in El Salvador),” said Gladis Sibrian, of Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front-Democratic Revolutionary Front of El Salvador, the strongest of the leftist opposition groups, which the Salvadoran government has refused to recognize. “The fighting won’t end and negotiations over how to run my country are not possible until the U.S. ceases funding the Salvadoran government.”