La Matanza in El Salvador and its Impact on the 1970-1990 Civil War

David Palacios

U.C. Irvine

June 2020

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El Salvador’s economy in the 1920s and 1930s depended almost exclusively on coffee exports. As the Great Depression struck global markets, many countries limited the amount of imported goods such as coffee. El Salvador’s economy suffered and the resulting downturn especially plagued the peasant population. According to historian Hector Lindo Fuentes, “issues of land, labor, local political control, market fluctuation, racism and militarism … imploded in open revolt.”1 These combined issues influenced what Salvadorans called “La Matanza.”

Violent uprisings appear throughout El Salvador’s history. Two important events that shaped El Salvador’s past and present include the 1932 Peasant Massacre (La Matanza) and the

1970-1990 Civil War. La Matanza occurred because the peasants had their land taken by landlords who refused to pay them a livable wage. This inspired many poor peasants to take arms against the landlords to gain back the land and wages they deserved. In response, landlords looked towards the military to defend their property, culminating in the violence of La Matanza.

As the peasant massacre transpired in 1932, the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS) led by

Farabundo Marti began spreading its ideas to the peasants, which challenged the legitimacy of

General Maximiliano Martinez’s regime and encouraged him to orchestrate La Matanza as a way to quell resistance. In the end, La Matanza led to the deaths of over forty thousand peasants and political dissidents.

This research project addresses the events that led up to La Matanza and also introduces many key figures, including Farabundo Marti. As a revolutionary leader during La Matanza, he helped bring the Communist Party to El Salvador through the International Red Aid, an

1 Héctor Lindo-Fuentes and Erick Ching and Rafael A. Lara-Martinez, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador: The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton, and the Politics of Historical Memory (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 28.

Palacios 2 organization that spread revolutionary ideas throughout Central America.2 Even after Farabundo

Marti’s death, his ideas did not disappear, instead they influenced the creation of the Farabundo

Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 1980. The ideals and memories of the 1932

Massacre impacted the nature of the 1970-80 Salvadoran Civil War, during which many citizens opposed the militaristic government in power. Even though the government attempted to propose social reforms, there was not enough public support for them because the people feared that it would give the regime more power.

The social reform that General Martinez created in El Salvador after the massacre, known as the Mejoramiento Social (Social Betterment), had different departments that tackled specific issues affecting different provinces. The Instituto de Colonizacion (Institute of Colonialization) looked to bring together the rural population and government officials to help improve work conditions for the working class.3 To complement that department, General Martinez also created the Instituto de Vivienda Urbana (Institute of Urban Living).4 This department’s main goal was to handle any issues that affected the larger cities in El Salvador. Initially, these two departments took charge of handling these social reforms. In the 1970s, a new institute was created called the Instituto Salvadoreño de Transformacion Agrarian (the Salvadoran Institute of

Agrarian Transformation). This institute focused on the quality of life for peasant farmers in the country. It studied their take-home income and basic living conditions to determine if the government could positively affect change in their lives. This new agency flourished out of the two departments created by General Martinez.

2 Rodolfo Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International in Central America, 1920-1936 (Oxford: Macmillan in Association with St Anthony’s College, 1993), 142. 3 “Historia.” Instituto Salvadoreño de Transformación Agraria (ISTA). Accessed March 17, 2020. http://www.ista.gob.sv/inicio/institucion/historia. 4 Instituto Salvadoreño de Transformacion Agraria, Mejoramiento Social Informacion.

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Historiography

Scholars struggle to interpret La Matanza (the Killing) of peasants that occurred in 1932 in El Salvador. Jeffrey Gould attributes the conflicting interpretations to the fact that the terror experienced during the killings forced people to repress some of the memories of the time period.5 Some people maintained a memory of the government helping them rebuild El Salvador in the 1930s, rather than a memory of pain and suffering. Gould argues that the surviving peasants of La Matanza aligned themselves with the Communist Party because the party was seen as a stronger alternative to the regime.6 Gould also notes that the only way a communist society can work in El Salvador is that everyone is willing to do their part to make sure the work is done. Therefore, peasants moved away from the military regime after witnessing the atrocities the regime committed and moved towards other forms of government.

In contrast, scholar Hector Lindo-Fuentes argues that communism did not play a major role in starting La Matanza, citing a lack of historical evidence. Rather he argues, “the leadership of El Salvador’s communist party did not believe El Salvador was ready for revolution” because there was not enough support in El Salvador for the communist party.7 Support was primarily based in the peasant populations. Both Lindo-Fuentes and Gould agree that the survivors of La

Matanza do not have similar explanations for the event’s causation. Gould attributes this lapse in memory to the fact that the Martinez regime launched a social reform called Mejoramiento

Social (Social Betterment).8 This social reform disguised the atrocities committed during La

Matanza, allowing the regime to present itself as the party that rebuilt the damage caused by La

Matanza. La Matanza became an important point in the 1970-1980 Salvadoran Civil War

5 Jeffrey Gould and Lauria-Santiago Lauria Aldo, To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). 6 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 24. 7 Lindo-Fuentes, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, 74. 8 Lindo-Fuentes, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, 63.

Palacios 4 because it followed a similar sequence of events. The Civil War grew out of discontent for the ruling military regime and their lack of progressive social reforms.9

Peasants and Politics before La Matanza

No single event ignited La Matanza, instead it culminated from multiple historical processes dating back to the late 1800s. Wealthy Salvadoran landlords recognized the economic gains made by previous colonial powers in the country.10 The fertile lands claimed by the indigenous Pipil tribe became territory desired by wealthy landlords. Their vast amounts of wealth and political influence in the government allowed them to enact two significant laws involving land privatization: the Law of Abolition of Native Communities (1881), and the Law of Abolition of Common Lands (1882).11 The Law of Abolitions of Native Communities effectively prevented the indigenous peasant populations from settling on indigenous lands without permission from the owner. Going one step further, the Law of Abolition of Common

Lands denied a collective group of people to own a portion of land. Instead, any collective lands had to be under the ownership of one person, which generally meant the wealthy landlords.

Through these acts, the government forced poor peasants to cede the lands their ancestors had passed down and allowed landlords to exploit the native lands for their benefit.

The landlords’ acquisition of property created a sense of anger throughout the peasant population. Historian Rodolfo Cerdas-Cruz describes the landlords’ action as “a blatant and

9 Jeffrey Gould, Solidarity Under Siege: the Salvadoran Class Struggle, 1970-1990 (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 47. 10 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 91. 11 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 91.

Palacios 5 brutal act of seizure, concealed behind a legal facade.”12 The peasants knew that the seizure of this land was for economic gain; they knew the landlords did not care about the land’s historical value to their communities. Socially, these laws extended the exploitation and subjugation of these people since they did not have the time nor the resources to fight back against the landlord's influence.13 Economically, peasants depended on these communal lands since it gave them the necessities they needed to survive.14 Due to their colonial past, these people also understood this privatization of land as an attack on their only source of income in El Salvador’s export economy.

Coffee represented El Salvador’s main export product in the early 20th century, making up 95.5 percent of the country’s exports.15 As Cerdas-Cruz notes, this heavy reliance on one export item left the country vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market, creating an uncertain and unstable economy. When the Great Depression began in 1930, countries like the United

States and Great Britain limited the amount of coffee imported from El Salvador, effectively leaving the country's economy in chaos.16 The peasant population suffered due to their lack of funds and resources, the government continued to support the wealthy with reforms that benefitted them.

As the wealthy stayed living in their luxurious estates, the peasants in the country were left suffering as a consequence of the Great Depression. Since the country introduced laws against vagrancy that specifically targeted peasants, the landlords used the law to gain a source

12 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 91. 13 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 93. 14 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 88. 15 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 88. 16 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 88.

Palacios 6 of cheap labor.17 These laws fostered a sense of hostility between the peasants and landlords because the peasants were forced to work on land they considered their own. The peasants also could not afford to purchase enough food to feed themselves and their families; instead, they had to acquire food at the landlord’s managed company stores called “tienda de raya” using tokens they earned at work.18 Their payment was not in the common Salvadoran currency called a colón. Landlords used this currency throughout the country, but the tokens that landlords gave their peasants made them stay on the estate and go into debt through credit at the store.

Landlords effectively forced debt-peonage on the peasants, since the prices for goods were extremely high and peasants accumulated large amounts of debt. If a peasant died, the debt was passed on to their descendants as their “inheritance,” which only exacerbated the process of debt- peonage.19

Tremendous tensions emerged between peasants, landlords, and the government. As historian Hector Lindo-Fuentes explains, “issues of land, labor, local political control, market fluctuation, racism, and militarism [created] a highly volatile situation.”20 These were some of the factors that fueled the peasants' desire to launch an uprising against the local elites. Overall, the biggest problem faced by peasants was the lack of control in their life and the decisions made by elites on their behalf.21 Only the wealthy landlords benefited from the policies enacted by the

Salvadoran government. As these peasants began to prepare for a possible uprising, they needed to find a way to gain the resources necessary for a successful revolt.

17 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 89. 18 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 90. 19 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 90. 20 Lindo-Fuentes, Remembering a Massacre, 49. 21 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 99.

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Among the only organizations assisting the peasants was El Socorro Rojo Internacional

(International Red Aid). Miguel Marmol, founder of the Communist Party of El Salvador, described how the International Red Aid “[helped] the communist armies raise funds by means of collections, such as the sale of lapel buttons and communist literature.” Farabundo Marti initially established the organization, but he never saw himself as an authoritative figure. Marmol described him as possessing “an aggressiveness that would distress anyone, [and] a spirit that identified with the cause of the humiliated.”22 Marti’s father was a landlord, but his family did not believe in oppressing the peasants that worked their farmlands. Marti himself did not identify with the wealthy class, instead, he identified with the peasants since he had worked with them on his father’s estate as a child. This allowed him to sympathize with the working class and understand their discontent with the landlords.

Before founding the International Red Aid, Marti studied Political Science at the

University of El Salvador, beginning in 1920.23 However, Marti grew unhappy and disinterested in the education he received at the University. He did not see his classmates discussing affairs that were happening during the time, nor did they question what they were learning. Instead,

Marti began to read about the past anarchist movements and communist texts like those of Karl

Marx and Vladimir Lenin.24 He then dropped out of university and decided to fight alongside the other peasants in the countryside. At the time, he was allowed to travel to the United States and

22 Roque Dalton, Miguel Marmol (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1987), 218. 23 Dalton, Miguel Marmol, 221. 24 Dalton, Miguel Marmol, 221.

Palacios 8 worked alongside other fellow communists and learned how their organizations functioned. He took what he learned in the United States and founded the International Red Aid in El Salvador.

While the peasant populations found their voice through Marti, many soldiers in the armed forces placed their loyalty in General Martinez instead of the President. General Martinez was born in 1882 to a mestizo family of working-class farmers. Coming from a working-class family, he was raised to believe in Roman Catholicism due to the legacy of Spanish colonialism.

But as an adult he believed in the idea of theosophy and reincarnation. His ideology viewed the killing of an ant as a serious crime, one similar to killing a person. As he became older, he decided to join the armed forces. His military career began in 1903 and he ultimately earned several medals and honors as he gained promotions until he reached the rank of captain in 1906.

Through his promotions in the military he began to gain more recognition within the military and earned the opportunity to teach at the Salvadoran military academy. Through this platform he gained the faith of many of the young officers that eventually rose the ranks as he did before them.

The Presidential election in 1931 offered the chance for change in El Salvador, with

Arturo Araujo as the elected incumbent president before his inauguration. Although he promoted many liberal policies to restore the economy after the Great Depression, he lacked the support of the military. He decided that General Martinez could help him gain support from the armed forces and legitimize his presidency. He chose him because most of the armed forces were loyal to General Martinez because he trained many of them. Many citizens of El Salvador viewed

President Araujo as a corrupt politician because he constantly held lavish parties in the presidential palace. Another indicator for the people was the fact that he made General Martinez the minister of war. The President in El Salvador was not assumed to be the commander and

Palacios 9 chief of the armed force, instead that power was given to the minister of war. Martinez appreciated becoming commander and chief of the armed forces because it placed him next in line for the presidency, allowing him great power in the case that something happened to

President Araujo.

In late 1931 junior officers began to revolt against the government due to unpaid wages and they launched a coup d’état against the president. According to Marmol, “The moment came when an urgent meeting was called to consider a series of secret reports that had reached the

Directorate of the Party and that made clear that a coup to overthrow the Araujo government was close at hand, probably inspired by the Minister of Defense himself, General Martinez.”25

On December 2, 1931, these officers began to take over many small police stations and military barracks leading the president to head to the western part of the country in hopes of finding military supporters. Once he reached the western part of El Salvador he contacts General

Martinez, who leads him to believe that he has been taken prisoner. Through this ploy the

President makes the decision to leave the country, allowing General Martinez to become

President of El Salvador.

In the midst of this crisis the Communist Party wanted to initiate a peasant uprising in hopes of gaining greater power. However, Farabundo Marti argued that “it wasn’t so important that General Martinez seized power, that in any case our actual chances of avoiding it were very slim and that a nationwide insurrection was too much of a price to pay in order to prevent the ascent to power of a dictatorial government.”26 Marti reasoned that even if the Communists and the peasants attempted to launch an uprising during Martinez’s coup, it would not produce the

25 Dalton, Miguel Marmol, 228. 26 Dalton, Miguel Marmol, 229.

Palacios 10 result they wanted. No matter what form of reaction the Communists took against Martinez’s ascension to power, his rise to the presidency was unavoidable.

The peasant population became restless due to the living conditions they faced on the farms and plantations before the Martinez regime. The political instability that the Martinez regime presented gave the peasants a path towards a revolt against the government. In 1932, the peasants launched an uprising against the Martinez regime during which they took key military barracks and police stations in the Western portion of El Salvador. For the Communist Party, it was an optimal opportunity to support the uprising and hopefully overthrow the regime to install their own government. Although the Communist Party provided beneficial support, the peasants suffered from a large amount of disorganization. The peasants were able to hold some locations for a short period of time, but General Martinez decided to call in the Army and National Guard to regain control of the locations briefly controlled by the peasants. The Army took prisoners and executed them by firing squad, and Martinez placed the blame on the Communist for instigating the insurrection against his regime.

After General Martinez put down the uprising against his government, he led a deadly massacre against the indigenous peasants in El Salvador. The event occurred in January 1932 and became known in El Salvador’s history as La Matanza. The massacre, according to Miguel

Marmol Dalton, sought to, “wipe out every vestige of popular organization, eliminating physically the actual and potential militancy of the democratic, popular organizations, including the less radical ones.”27 The basic goal of these killings was the removal of any form of resistance to the Martinez regime. Any threat to his administration had to be eliminated. The number of people killed during La Matanza is estimated in the tens of thousands, including approximately “4,800 Bolsheviks … [and the] often indiscriminate killing of males over twelve

27 Dalton, Miguel Marmol, 302.

Palacios 11 years old.”28 The government targeted peasants regardless of the age of the person because

Martinez feared anyone capable of attempting to overthrow the government. Rather than risk another uprising, the government launched this killing as a way to mitigate that from happening again.

The military targeted the major countryside provinces in “Ahuachapan (mainly nonindigenous), Tacuba (largely indigenous), Juayua (largely indigenous), Nahuizalco

(indigenous), Izalco (bi-ethnic), and the Cumbre de Jayaque (some indigenous, mainly self- identified as non-Indian),” according to Gould29 Importantly, Martinez did not attack the populations in any of the major cities in El Salvador, such as San Salvador or Morazán. Instead, his forces targeted the poor and defenseless peasants in the West of the country to instill fear in these populations and to prevent them from launching another insurrection against his government. These provinces included large numbers of indigenous communities that still populated El Salvador. These groups were viewed by Salvadoran leaders as a problem due to their lands being under special protection. Martinez also used these killings as an opportunity to claim more land for the government or the wealthy bourgeois. He “broke up every social organization through which the demands of the Salvadoran population could have been expressed.”30 These social organizations had helped the indigenous communities with basic amenities (like toilet paper or food) as well as financial assistance. The removal of this assistance allowed General Martinez to divert these funds to the cities with larger populations and his own government, leaving the indigenous people to fend for themselves.

Miguel Marmol a leading figure in the communist party before the emergence of

Farabundo Marti and the indigenous peasants recognized La Matanza as a campaign against the

28 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 211. 29 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 211. 30 Cerdaz-Cruz, The Communist International, 125.

Palacios 12 poor by Martinez’s troops in an effort to remain in power. However, Martinez viewed the event as “a matter of ‘souls [that had been] liberated’ or ‘purified’”31 The deaths, in this view, were an opportunity for the peasants to be liberated from the horrors they faced in life. In this rationalization Martinez wanted to end their suffering and therefore he took on La Matanza as a way for them to escape. As stated earlier, his theology viewed killing even an ant as one of the worst crimes that could be committed, which brings into question his true intentions. In the end,

La Matanza provided a way for General Martinez to remove any threat to his regime.

Though deadly, La Matanza remains shrouded in inconsistent accounts. The lack of evidence from first-hand accounts is primarily due to the widespread killing by the regime.

Furthermore, the lack of accounts results from the fact that “this experience of terror also affected the way informants remembered or could not remember specific events related to the insurrection and massacre.”32 For some witnesses, forgetting the traumatic event helped them come to terms with what happened. As some decided to forget or move away from the traumatic event, for others the memory of La Matanza became clouded due to events that occurred afterwards. The decisions made by the Martinez government after the event led many people living in El Salvador to question what had actually happened.

Historian Hector Lindo-Fuentes presents the General’s subsequent course of action as “a social reform campaign called Mejoramiento Social (Social Betterment) that was designed to alleviate the suffering of the working people.”33 The main goal of this reform was to rebuild the run-down buildings that were affected during the military campaigns of La Matanza.

Mejoramento Social also aimed to improve the plantations that may have been harmed by the military operations. As General Martinez focused his attention to the physical issues like run-

31 Cerdas-Cruz, The Communist International, 125. 32 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 244. 33 Lindo-Fuentes, Remembering a Massacre, 63.

Palacios 13 down buildings, he also aimed at rebuilding the economy. A policy he created was “a retroactive moratorium on debts [which] rescued thousands of small and medium producers from foreclosure and loss.”34 His goal was to show the communities that he did not want them to suffer economically. Through this form of debt forgiveness, he tried to persuade the peasants that his regime tried to support them. He also sought to rebuild the economy and shift it away from the single export product of coffee. Some peasants who had lost everything under previous administrations may have view the Martinez government as helping them in some way.

According to historian Jeffrey Gould, the Martinez government also “provided food for the survivors and protected them against vengeance of local ladinos.”35

Jorge Mineros, my grandfather, had a positive opinion on the Martinez regime. In 1939 his family lived on a plantation located in Sonsonate, one of the regions that General Martinez targeted during La Matanza. Although my grandfather is aware of the events of La Matanza he disregards their significance and focuses instead on the positive aspects that the General gave his people. Specifically, he states “…General Martinez was a good man who truly did help the people, he fought to lower the prices of food and did not allow any landowners to have a say in the decisions relating to the peasants.”36 He saw that many of the food prices were lowered because he was regularly sent to the local market by my great-grandmother. She instructed him to buy beans, rice, flour, and other products that were expensive or hard to obtain during the early years of the insurrection. Once General Martinez instituted his reforms, they had less trouble obtaining food. He believed that General Martinez also tried to limit the amount of imports El Salvador accepted from foreign powers, instead the General tried to source many food

34 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 241. 35 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 242. 36 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 9, 2020. Interview in possession of author.

Palacios 14 products locally from growers in El Salvador.37 As stated earlier, General Martinez attempted to improve the economy and help rebuild it after the Great Depression, and using locally sourced foods allowed him to see what the country was able to grow internally and profitably. For my grandpa, the General was a good man and leader because he tried to make concessions to those people affected by his authorization of La Matanza.38 In his eyes (and his mom’s eyes), the

General attempted to improve the country after recognizing the fact that his actions were wrong.

Life after La Matanza and the Salvadoran Civil War 1970-1990

After La Matanza and the Martinez regime El Salvador never experienced a complete state of stability and order. As historian Christine Wade notes, “Between 1932-1948 El Salvador was ruled by a succession of generals whose chief concern was to maintain order and protect elite interests.”39 Even with the reforms that General Martinez put in place after La Matanza, many of his successors decided to disregard reform and instead focus on appeasing the wealthy elites. The leaders kept money in their pockets and forgot the lessons that Martinez appeared to learn. As the country shifted away from solely producing coffee, much of the land that had

“previously been available to tenant farmers for food crops turned over to cotton, cattle, and sugar, peasants had to rent more marginal lands or lost access to land altogether.”40 The loss of land reflected another problem that many farm owners faced during the early 1930s: as their land became repurposed away food products they began to produce more export products. The tenant farmers that cultivated these lands they did not gain much in return and instead had to fend for

37 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 9, 2020. Interview in possession of author. 38 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 9, 2020. Interview in possession of author. 39 Harvey F. Kline, Chrisine J. Wade, and Howard J Wiarda, Latin America Politics and Development (Taylor and Francis, 2018), 397. 40 William Stanley, The Protection Racket: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 94.

Palacios 15 themselves. According to historian William Stanely, “Government policy did little to ameliorate these hardships.”41 The government cared little for the poor people that tended the land, instead the government prioritized the wealthy who supported the military and government. The government essentially wanted to rule without any form of resistance.

Although these military regimes ruled without organized resistance, intellectuals in the country critiqued and challenged the burdens placed on the people. The regimes monitored those studying in universities and implement restrictions on dissent. In 1977, the Law of Defense and

Guarantee of Public Order “suspended constitutional protections and provided the security forces with arbitrary arrest and detention powers against demonstrators, labor activism and other suspected of ‘subversive’ speech.”42 This law essentially created a police state that tried to limit forms of resistance again the government and its policies. As historian Joaquin Chavez notes,

“The rural killing and urban massacres perpetrated by the state forces in the 1970s, most notably the mass killing of university students on July 30, 1975, in downtown San Salvador became episodes that allowed for the convergence of intellectuals”43 Some forty years after the events of

La Matanza the government focused on killing intellectuals rather than the peasants. Rather than fight back against the government led by [name] Romero it would have been safer to consent to his rule. But many intellectuals and students continued to fight and even considered “the horrific event [as] a “declaration of war” against social movements around the country”44 The crackdown on public resistance led many students and intellectuals to find other ways to undermine the government’s repression.

41 Stanely, The Protection Racket, 94. 42 Wade, Latin American Politics, 398. 43 Joaquin Mauricio Chaves, Poets and Prophets of the Resistance: Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador’s Civil War (United Kingdom: Oxford Press, 2017), 133. 44 Chaves, Poets and Prophets, 133.

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My mother, Yanira Mineros, was studying to be a teacher in the mid-1980s in order to improve education in El Salvador. Many professors, she stated, “would tell their students of the killings the military did during that time. In particular the fact that soldiers essentially raided schools and in cold blood killed any professor that was on their kill list.”45 Soldiers targeted those people accused of corrupting the youth with their anti-military ideals. This supposedly subversive activity led the military to fear another uprising led by intellectuals. According to

Mineros, “many of the teachers I had during elementary and high school years were killed during these raids,” including one teacher that she became very close to and pushed her to pursue higher education in the country.46 When she learned about that teacher’s assassination a few years after the event occurred, she began to cry and felt bad for what happened to all the affected teachers.

These assassinations obviously instilled fear in other teachers who were trying to survive in that unsteady time. Once she earned her teaching credentials, she was terrified of teaching in the classroom because of the possibility of a school raid by the military.

Beyond the attack on education, and political activism, no form of stability or control existed for the people. As Wade notes, “In 1972, the PDC coalition ticket headed by Jose

Napoleon Duarte was denied electoral victory by the Army.”47 Although the people had spoken against military rule, the army did whatever was necessary to hold onto power. During the later

1970s, Wade notes, “five revolutionary organizations, which had their roots in peasant uprisings of the previous century in labor organizations of the 1920s and in the Salvadoran Communist

Party (PCS), began working among urban laborers and peasants.”48 These groups saw history repeat itself in the repression of the people and attacks on intellectuals.

45 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 16, 2020. Interview in possession of author. 46 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 16, 2020. Interview in possession of author. 47 Wade, Latin American Politics, 397. 48 Wade, Latin American Politics, 398.

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For the Communist Party and other revolutionaries, the late 1970s was an important moment to act against the repressive government. Although “divided over ideology and strategy for a decade,” according the Wade, the five rebel groups “came together in the Farabundo Marti

National Liberation Front (FMLN) in October 1980.”49 These rebel forces united in order to launch an uprising against this murderous military regime that ruled El Salvador. They launched what Nunez describes as “the final offensive in January 1981 pitting the FMLN against the

Fuerzas Armadas (FFAA)”50 This offensive was something that initially did not target the larger cities in El Salvador. Instead, they launched their campaign within the smaller cities that were mostly inhabited by peasants and recruited them to fight back against the army. As they began to sweep through many cities, historian Mario Nunes notes, the destruction caused by the military was extensive. Through his interview of a previous gang member present during the time explains some of the things he saw as, “the door was wide open and full of bullet holes, our clothes were full of blood, there wasn’t a single live animal, everything was deserted.”51 This is one representation of how brutal the military was in terms of combating the rebel forces in the area. The military cleared out any form of resistance that stood in their way and disregarded civilian lives. Within months the insurgent forces were put down and many of them disbursed into the jungles.

In 1982 the rebel forces returned and struck at the heart of El Salvador, San Salvador. My mother relayed the story of her experience when final major offensive occurred. She recalled:

I was at a party in Sonosnate, and thirty minutes before the rebels attacked the cities, I was already on my way home. When we suddenly began to hear loud gun fire coming from all around us, your grandparents told me and your uncle to get down on the ground of our house while they went and turned off the lights. At the time we still heard gun fire coming from all sides and saw helicopters above our homes flashing their spotlights onto

49 Wade, Latin American Politics, 397. 50 Nunez, Wounded Memory, 63. 51 Nunez, Wounded Memory, 70.

Palacios 18

the ground looking for the invading rebel forces. When any were found we’d just hear a hail of gun fire rain down onto them or we’d hear pipe bombs be thrown under cars and hear explosions go off all around us. Until late into the following morning everything was quiet and once we went outside the streets were filled with blood, dead bodies, and bullet casings.52

The moment in San Salvador was scary in part because the rebels could attack anywhere to make their statement. The rebels could use any force necessary in response to the government’s violence. As historian Jeffrey Gould notes, “[the rebels’] second major offensive ultimately failed. Most writers concurred that this offensive provided evidence that to the elites and the army that the FMLN would be able to maintain the war indefinitely.53 Based on these two offensives, the FMLN simply had to retreat and rearm themselves until they were ready to strike again. My mom remembered that our family and many others living in San Salvador were constantly afraid to go out, go to work, or do anything since they never knew if they were going to be attacked again.54 Although prohibited by the government to listen to the rebel-led Radio

Venceremos, many people living in the cities listened to the radio in hopes of knowing when the next attack would occur. But my mom stated that a majority of the radio broadcasts only spoke about the victories claimed by the rebels in other regions of the country and also why they were taking actions in specific regions.55 After these attacks and many others that followed until 1992, the United States and Latin American countries stepped in to mediate the conflict. The violence eventually halted once the military regime decided to step down from power while the FMLN became a legitimate political power in the country. The country represents a form of tenuous democracy after the destruction and chaos of the civil war.

52 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 16, 2020. Interview in possession of author. 53 Gould, To Rise in Darkness, 283. 54 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 16, 2020. Interview in possession of author. 55 Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 16, 2020. Interview in possession of author.

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Conclusion

El Salvador’s remembered past remains filled with constant gang violence and the Civil

War that erupted in early 1970s. Violence continues to plague the country to this day. The violence stems in part from the large amount of inequality in the country and peoples’ attempts to bridge the gap between the poor and the wealthy. La Matanza and the Civil War occurred in their respective decades because poor people were tired of their conditions and the way they were disregarded by the wealthy. In response, many in the poor population decided to turn against the government in hopes of creating positive change in their lives. They attempted to challenge how these regimes governed in hopes of creating a government that truly represented the people. Although their efforts were met with, the people nonetheless sent their government a message that they were not afraid to fight back.

On a personal level, this project has allowed me to understand a country where my family has deep roots. Years ago, when I would go with my dad to our car mechanic, I would always hear him tell stories about General Martinez and all the good things he did for El Salvador. But when I learned more about Martinez, I came to realize that my dad’s stories portrayed Martinez in a partially correct way. Rather than take these stories at face value, I have a better understanding as to why my dad holds this positive view of General Martinez and also some recognition of the Civil War experienced by my parents. More specifically, I sought out the connections between the Civil War and the consequence from La Matanza that carried over the decades, fueling the anger against the government in power. Learning about these events allowed me to understand what my parents experienced, how they became who they are, and why El Salvador has become the way it is now.

Palacios 20

Biography

Secondary Sources:

Mármol, Miguel., and Roque Dalton. Miguel Mármol [interviewed] by Roque Dalton translated by Kathleen Ross and Richard Schaaf; preface by Margaret Randall; introduction by Manlio Argueta. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1987.

Gould, Jeffrey L., and Aldo. Lauria-Santiago. To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920-1932 Jeffrey L. Gould and Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

Cerdas Cruz, Rodolfo. The Communist International in Central America, 1920-36 Rodolfo Cerdas-Cruz; Translated by Nick Rider. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan in association with St Anthony’s College, Oxford, 1993.

Harvey F. Kline, Christine J. Wade, and Howard J. Wiarda. Latin American Politics and Development. Taylor and Francis, 2018.

Stanley, William Deane. The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador / William Stanley. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

Chávez, Joaquín Mauricio. Poets and Prophets of the Resistance: Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador’s Civil War / Joaquín M. Chávez. Oxford, UK; Oxford University Press, 2017.

Gould, Jeffrey L. Solidarity Under Siege: the Salvadoran Class Struggle, 1970-1990 / Jeffrey L. Gould. Cambridge, United Kingdom; Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Grieb, Kenneth J. “The United States and the Rise of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.” Journal of Latin American Studies 3, no. 2 (November 1, 1971): 151–172.

Primary Sources:

Revolution in El Salvador: from Coordination to Unity. San Francisco, Calif. (P.O. Box 40874, San Francisco 94140): To order, Solidarity Publications, n.d.

Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 9, 2020. Interview in possession of author.

Interview with David Palacios, Sr. conducted May 16, 2020. Interview in possession of author.

Zuniga Nunez, Mario, and Mario Zuniga Nunez. “Wounded Memory: El Salvador’s Civil War in the Childhood Memory of a Gang.” Historia Critica, no. 40 (January 1, 2010): 60–83. http://search.proquest.com/docview/743048900/.