Courage and faithfulness - assassination attempt on Salvadoran missionary Alejandro Hernandez

Christian Century, Oct 23, 1996 by Robert McKenzie, Marilyn Chilcote

ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ had decided to spend the day visiting a member of his parish who was hospitalized in San Salvador, about an hour away from the village of Las Minas. It was also an opportunity to take the church's young people on a rare outing. On the way the kids asked if he would make a short side trip to Quezaltepeque, so that they could swim in this popular area. Afterwards, as the youngsters clambered back into the pickup to continue on to San Salvador, a stranger tapped on the window. "Are you Alejandro Hernandez?" When Alejandro said yes, the man pulled a pistol from under his coat, put the muzzle to the left side of Alejandro's head and fired twice, shattering the side of his face.

One of the group found a phone and called the only Lutheran pastor he knew in San Salvador. Fortunately, the pastor was home and was able to call an ambulance. It picked up Alejandro 45 minutes later for the long return trip to the city.

The doctors at the hospital to which Alejandro was taken on that day last February decided that he was going to die and so did not treat his wounds. At the urgent insistence of his brother, Santiago, he was taken to another hospital. After some hours doctors rendered the same verdict. But Santiago kept trying. A third hospital, Hospital Diagnostico, immediately gave Alejandro transfusions and performed surgery.

Four days later his condition stabilized. Several plastic surgeries were performed to hold his facial bones together and to reinsert a damaged eye into its socket. On the ninth day Alejandro briefly regained consciousness. He remembers that in those first few lucid moments, taped, wired, unable to talk and in unspeakable physical agony, he felt a great anger and yearning for revenge. Then he lapsed back into semiconsciousness.

During the hazy days that followed, he had a remarkable vision. He saw his brother, father, cousin and uncle--all victims of assassinations during the '80s. He recognized Archbishop Oscar Romero, who had been assassinated while conducting mass in 1980. Alejandro approached him. "Did you forgive your assassin?" he asked. Romero remained silent. Alejandro then saw one of his former professors, Ignacio Martin Baro, one of the six Jesuit priests killed in the 1989 massacre at El Salvador's Central American University. "Have you forgiven your assassin?" Alejandro asked. Again silence. "I remember wondering whether I was somehow out of place there, and that was why no one answered me," he says. Then he saw a small Asian figure with a slight mustache, whom he identified as Christ. He approached this figure as if to seek admission and was told that he had not been called.

Alejandro later recounted this vision to Jon Sobrino, a distinguished Jesuit theologian who's life was spared in the Jesuit massacre because he was in Southeast Asia at the time. Sobrino interpreted the vision as meaning that Alejandro had to decide on his own whether to forgive his assassin. On the 22nd day after the shooting, when the doctors had removed the bandages from his wounded head and some of the wires holding his jaw together, Alejandro was able to see and to utter his first, tentative, partially vocalized word, "Hi." At that moment he was overwhelmed by an astonishing surge of well-being. He felt grace and gratitude welling up from his battered body and soul. He knew that he was able to forgive his would-be murderer; he was free from fear and death.

"Why would anyone try to kill you?" I asked him during his recent visit to the U.S. Alejandro is a respected Presbyterian clergyman on loan to the Lutherans by the Presbyterian mission agency since his ordination in 1991. The Salvadoran Lutheran bishop, Medardo Gomez, assigned him first to serve as chaplain to the prisoners in the notorious Mariona and Ilopange prisons in San Salvador from 1991 to 1994. Had he angered the prison officials when he publicly denounced the oppressive prison conditions which routinely included torture and rape? The Salvadoran government does not look kindly on those who expose its violence. Or was it because he called former FMLN revolutionaries in his parish to accountability for their fraudulent use of funds? Maybe he was too outspoken as a member of the Permanent Committee for National Debate for Peace, a powerful force for pushing both sides of El Salvador's civil war to sign a peace accord. Nothing in his parish activities--Bible study, worship, literacy, health care--would seem to provoke an assassination attempt.

But whoever shot him and for whatever reasons, his case is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. When Alejandro contacted the judge who has jurisdiction in Quezaltepeque, he was put off with a shrug. "There are so many shootings. Maybe yours will get some attention because you are a clergyman with outside connections. I am amazed to see you alive." Death squad activity is on the increase again in El Salvador. In the past year or so, 287 former FMLN revolutionaries have been killed. A new death squad called the Roberto D'Aubuisson Band (the late D'Aubuisson, who is known to have arranged the assassination of Archbishop Romero and was never brought to justice, was the godfather of the notorious Mano Blanca death squad and the founder of the ARENA political party now in power) has published a list of intended victims, among them Bishop Gomez. The bishop has lived under the threat of death for years and at one point was forced to flee to Guatemala with members of his congregation.