In October 2013, President Higgins visited El Salvador’s Monument to Memory and Truth, a memorial to those killed in the conflict, with the names of 30,000 people murdered or “disappeared” etched on a long wall.
The President paid his respects to Archbishop Romero, whose name is included among the names on the monument.
The President also identified the name of his friend, the Salvadoran lawyer Marianella Garcia, who first drew his attention to the killings in El Salvador in 1978. Garcia was raped and murdered by soldiers a year after a fact-finding mission to the country led by Mr Higgins to investigate a massacre at the rural village of El Mozote.
The President was met at the wall by Flora Cuneguna Pena, president of an organisation named after Garcia that represents families of the victims of human rights abuses. She lost three sons and a daughter in the civil war.
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