MovieChat Forums > Romero (1989) Discussion > Too Left-Winged for My Tastes

Too Left-Winged for My Tastes


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This movie was overtly biased if you ask me, not that I'm a fan of the salvadoran gov't or the USA, both bullies in my book.

......Roaming Nevada's ~extra-terrestrial highway~........

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Give me a break. This film told the story of a revolutionary and nothing else. It is politically charged because that is the nature of the story but I don't think it is biased. This is a powerful film and tells the story of an absolutely amazing person, nothing else.

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Indeed. As Stephen Colbert put it, truth has a well-known liberal bias...

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It's been some time since I've seen Romero, but I recall thinking at the time that its depiction of the atrocities was milder than what was being reported. Then again, the time frame was, I suppose, fairly early in the prolonged war.

Also, if I recall correctly, the film was made with support from the Paulists and would therefore approach the subject from the angle of Catholic social teaching.

For those of you who are too young to remember, here's a an excerpt of a fairly recent article. Note too that the eyewitness is a Salvadoran soldier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007 012801353_pf.html


José Wilfredo Salgado says he collected baby skulls as trophies in the 1980s, when he fought as a government soldier in El Salvador's civil war. They worked well as candleholders, he recalls, and better as good-luck charms.

In the most barbaric chapters of a conflict that cost more than 75,000 lives, he enthusiastically embraced the scorched-earth tactics of his army bosses, even massacres of children, the elderly, the sick -- entire villages.

It was all in the name of beating back communism, Salgado, now the mayor of San Miguel, said he remembers being told.


(SNIP)

Salgado said he once thought that the guerrillas dreamed of communism, but now that those same men are his colleagues in business and politics, he is learning that they wanted what he wanted: prosperity, a chance to move up in the world, freedom from repression.

Read the rest of the article, if you can.

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by - liberalmedia on Fri Jun 6 2008 13:02:31

José Wilfredo Salgado says he collected baby skulls as trophies in the 1980s, when he fought as a government soldier in El Salvador's civil war. They worked well as candleholders, he recalls, and better as good-luck charms.


Wow, is this for real? This guy is the mayor of my city (in El Salvador), he is known to be down-to-earth and tough, he was also the target of an assassination about 6 years ago, his bodyguard was killed and he came out unscathed. BTW, he's a millionaire today, owns a furniture store franchise.

If this allegation is true why isn't he in jail or before the Hague court?





......Roaming Nevada's ~extra terrestrial highway~........


My Favorite Quote in a Movie:
~The Titanic~ "Half the people in this ship are going to die”………… "Not the better half..”



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It's implied that Salgado was a common soldier, not a commander. See the entire article (at link) and the quotations below.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007 012801353_pf.html

Salgada's mentor, the vaunted Col. Domingo Monterrosa, ordered the attack in El Mozote, which Salgada said he now considers "a genocide." Yet Salgada displays a huge painting of himself and Monterrosa -- who was killed during the war -- in the foyer of San Miguel City Hall. Perhaps it will make people ask questions about the war, Salgada said, though he's sure "people hate me" for displaying it.

If Monterrosa had lived, Salgada said, he should have been prosecuted for "war crimes like a Hitler." But he tempered his historical indictment, saying that "those were different times."


Just today I was talking to an American who was a Senate staffer during the 1980s, and he said that in his experience the senators, no matter which party they belonged to and which stance they took on funding to the Salvadoran military, wanted an end to the massacres. What actually took place will be debated forever, or ought to be.

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All crimes were pardoned at the peace accords.

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Really? I don't see much of that and i looked for it.

There is an awkwardness in the fact that Romero died while jimmy carter was president after the 1980 election and the movie made in 1989 right after reagan and during Bush 1 meaning they could use it to bash reagan. It is believed that reagan's election win and soon to be nomination gave the military in El Salvador the testicles to make such an extreme move as to kill the archbishop but that opportunity for bias is never used here.

For example in oliver stone's movie "Salvador" a military dork gives this big speech that finally someone in Washington will have the "balls" to ok these atrocities. This movie doesn't take advantage of that opportunity.

As far as being concerned about innocent people dying, people not having food to eat or getting their land strolen from them? I would hopoe we can universally agree that is wrong.

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In the movie, right after Romero hears a priest's confession for believing in Liberation Theology (Read this by then-cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_co n_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html.) and says that it is not a sin, the movie becomes very liberally biased. Liberation Theology is Marxist, and Marxism is sinful; the Vatican has remained unwavering in its condemnation of it. Just as a minority of voters believed in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, a better economy or "change" is not the end-all, save-all of today's most terrible injustices like abortion, where over a million Americans are murdered in the U.S. alone every year. Economic disparity is not the sole root of injustices, and our savior is not a reformed government. Only Christ Himself is a our savior. We must worship Him first and above anything else; then the secondary goods, which it seems the people in this movie seek first over God, will automatically follow.

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The Pope was wrong to condemn Liberation Theology and he should reconsider. Not all Christians agree that Liberation Theology is a sin, nor your blanket assertion that Marxism is a sin. In fact, when the Marxist diagnosis of the class struggle is reformed by replacing violent class overthrow with nonviolent civil disobedience and love of one's enemies it is quite Christian. Numerous theologians have made this point, among them Anabaptist John Howard Yoder. See especially his book For the Nations.

Liberation Theology was essentially the theology of the U.S. civil rights movement as taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a movement that arose out of black churches. Many white church leaders living in the South during those times condemned the civil rights movement as unchristian and they have since seen the error of their ways and recanted.

You are right to point out worship of Christ must focus upon him and not a given political philosophy. But worship of Christ without following his teachings of liberation of "the least of these" is not true worship.

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All films are biased. All art is biased. They all tell a story from their creators' point of view. Your post, parolina, is biased. There's nothing wrong with any of this. I might not agree with any of it, but so what? It's all a presentation of someone's point of view. For ANYONE to claim their thoughts or creations are not biased is absurd.

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For anyone looking for an in-depth analysis of American involvement in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America, check out "Our Own Backyard" by William M. Leogrande.

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This movie is about the growth of personal integrity and moral courage in a man faced with the choice of living comfortably or responding to the much more demanding call of his conscience and his faith in response to the injustice he witnessed. Unlike most politicians, he chose the latter, and he willingly paid the price.

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