La Matanza in El Salvador and its Impact on the 1970-1990 Civil War David Palacios U.C. Irvine June 2020 Palacios 1 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. Palacios 3 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