Romero Text Explorer

A text analysis tool for Oscar Romero's homilies (1977-1980). Search for any word or phrase in Spanish and see how its frequency changed over the three years of Romero's preaching.

Quick Start

# 1. Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/bdhamilton/romero.git
cd romero

# 2. Set up Python environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 3. Run the web app
python app.py
# Open http://localhost:5000

The text explorer is the main page. Browse all homilies at /browse (includes known data issues and links to PDFs on the Romero Trust site).

There's also a CLI tool for terminal use:

python ngram.py pueblo                         # raw count
python ngram.py "pueblo de dios" --norm words  # per 10k words
python ngram.py justicia --norm homilies       # per homily

To rebuild the database from scratch (downloads from Romero Trust, ~20 minutes). This backs up the existing database first:

python scripts/build_database.py

Data Source

All homilies sourced from The Romero Trust, which provides PDFs and audio recordings of Romero's preaching. When complete, this site will just act as a window back to the Romero Trust website--a different way of viewing their data, rather than a duplication of their data.

Coverage:

• 197 homilies from March 14, 1977 (his first homily as Archbishop) to March 24, 1980 (day of assassination)
• Spanish text extracted for 193 homilies (4 missing — audio-only or special events)
• English text extracted for 194 homilies (3 missing)
• Audio recordings for 172 homilies (~87%)