Ciudad Perdida: el funeral de monseñor Romero

An immersive audio journey through the memories of San Salvador's historic center.

"To fight for an oppressed past is to make this past come alive as the lever that drives the work of the present: destroying the sources and conditions that link the present to the violence of that which seemed finished, ending this history and setting in motion a different future."

-Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters 1997

"Ciudad Perdida: el funeral de monseñor Romero" is a crossmedia project that rescues eyewitness accounts of the massacre that occurred during the funeral of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero. The funeral was scheduled for March 30, 1980 in the cathedral. Between 50,000 and 150,000 people accompanied the funeral rite in and around the Plaza Barrios. They were greeted with bombs and gunshots. Amidst the chaos, bombs and gunfire, 40 people died and around 200 were wounded.

Three audio tours focus on different survivors and different aspects of the figure of Romero, in addition, the narrator and director of the project also intertwines the event with her family history marked by the armed conflict. With this project, we invite the audience to listen to the stories of those who were there, and we place special emphasis on the stories of women, who tend to be left out of the history of the armed conflict.

The project can be experienced as locative audio walks, as a virtual map or as a podcast.

In 2022, the project was nominated to the prestigious journalism prize “Premio Gabo” and so listed as one of the best 50 journalism works of Iberoamerica.

This project was produced by Alharaca with the support of PNUD, Centro Cultural de España, COSUDE; in alliance with Espacio de Memorias y Derechos Humanos, Antifaz, La Radio Tomada and Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen.