Prof Keogh brought history to life on the pages of 'Romero: El Salvador’s Martyr'

Professor Dermot Keogh, who passed away this week, was recognised as one of the country’s foremost historians, lecturing on the subject at UCC for over 30 years. This is an extract, published in the then 'Cork Examiner' in March 1981, from his book 'Romero: El Salvador’s Martyr' in which he details the massacre he got caught up in while attending the funeral of murdered Archbishop Romero in San Salvador.

Prof Dermot Keogh, who passed away this week, travelled to San Salvador in 1980 to report on the archbishop’s death for RTÉ.

After a 24-hour plane journey, I arrived in San Salvador to cover the archbishop’s funeral for RTÉ, on Friday, March 28, 1980.

Then it was a two-hour drive into the capital past the familiar Latin American sights of a procession of people carrying enormous loads for miles in the heat. Beasts of burden, no more.