On August 30, died at 71 years in a clinic in San Salvador, where he was born, and after a hard disease Franzi Hato Hasbún, at that time Secretary general of the Presidency of the country.
He began his professional life as an educator in the College of the external Jesuits of San Jose, where he established a deep relationship with Ignacio Ellacuría, with whom he would later become a team in the UCA — the Central American University — as an educator and Responsible for projects of cooperation and international relations, deploying a great activity in Europe. In collaboration with the School of Journalism UAM-EL PAÍS, boosted the teaching of journalism in this center.
He was a loyal follower of Archbishop Oscar Arnulf Romero and Ellacuría. The contact with them and with the Jesuits, Jon Cortina, Jon Sobrino and so many others, marked decisively and irreversibly his life. After the murder of most of them, he was consecrated to prolong the wake they left behind. He participated in the guerrillas, in which he assumed diplomatic and international relations activities, and strove to promote a peace agreement, which seemed unattainable.
achieved this, and as a professed admirer of the Spanish transition and the democratic transformation of its armed forces, encouraged Spain’s participation in supporting the peace agreements and later in the work of Onusal, the UN mission for its fulfillment , in which Spanish military played a decisive leadership role.
The peace agreements of 16 January 1992, to which it contributed so discreetly as decisively, made possible the creation, in September of that same year, of a new party, the FMLN, in which the five guerrilla groups were integrated. This party (with the permanent advice of Hato) did not take long to consolidate a broad popular support, coming to govern the capital, San Salvador, and, later, the country, with Mauricio Funes first and with Salvador Sánchez Cerén now. Both had always in Hato a collaborator as effective as selfless.
Person with a wonderful family, as loved by him as lovable by others for his inexhaustible capacity of affection and welcome, has been for those who knew a permanent example of kindness, generosity, patience, lucidity and sense of justice. It has been said that if there is a reason why God has, by force, that to exist is so that he can have in his environment people like our teacher, our friend, our brother Hato. It’s hard not to think like that.
LUIS CÉSAR RODRÍGUEZ
