A Shot in the Cathedral

"Prizewinning novel Disparo en la catedral follows a San Salvador journalist through an eight-month period leading up to and following Archbishop Romero's assassination. Verbatim texts of Romero's homilies incorporated into text. Bencastro's work as a playwright evident in copious dialogue. Competently translated. No supporting materials, but good for classroom use given historical context"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

When Rogelio Villaverde finds himself destitute and desperate for employment, he leaps at the chance for work with The Tribune, a small newspaper in San Salvador. The jumbled pieces of his life begin to fall neatly into place with his new job, a new love interest - Lourdes, a new lease on life. But the recent military coup d'etat brings curfews and martial law. Rogelio's work with the newspaper plunges him into the political melee. He is forced to discard his political ambivalence and take a position. He can no longer remain indifferent in the face of the chaos that has overtaken the lives of everyone around him. His anti-government sentiments peak with the assassination of Archbishop Romero and the aftermath, when soldiers opened fire on the throngs of mourners. Rogelio's first instinct is to escape the madness and accompany his boss and friend into exile. But destiny takes another radical twist, and chilling events seal Rogelio's fate. He is compelled to remain and join the struggle for justice and freedom in his homeland.

Publishers Weekly

Originally published in Mexico in 1990, Bencastro's dramatic, powerful first novel focuses on the military coup d'etat in El Salvador in 1979, and the new ruling junta's brutal repression of the people through massacres of peasants, political assassinations and the kidnapping, torture and execution of tens of thousands of students, workers and ordinary citizens. Its young, idealistic narrator, newspaper reporter and painter Rogelio Villaverde, returns to El Salvador from the U.S. to search for his parents and two brothers, who, he later learns, have fled to Honduras. His girlfriend, Lourdes, a poet and teacher of fiercely proud Mayan ancestry, goes underground to avoid capture by the police. His boss, Dominguez, arrested and beaten by government security forces, is saved at the last minute, only to see the newspaper offices bombed. The plot highlights a real-life figure, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Archbishop Oscar Romero, voice of the oppressed, who was assassinated during a mass in 1980 after protesting the U.S. government's aid to the right-wing regime. Bencastro, a native of El Salvador who has lived in Virginia since 1978, interpolates news bulletins, letters, poems and Romero's homilies into the narrative to create a vivid newsreel of a country disintegrating. (Sept.)