L

TO RISE IN DARKNESS
Revolution, Repression,
and Memory in El Salvador,
1920-1932

Jeffrey L. Gould and Aldo Lauria-Santiago

Duke University Press

Durham and London
2008
f

© 2008 Duke University Press

All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States o f America on acid-free paper 00
Designed by Jennifer Hill
Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear

on the last printed page o f this book.
To the memory o f William Roseberry:
committed and
pioneering scholar,
extraordinary human being
Contents

Preface ix

One Garden o f Despair: the Political Economy

o f Class, Land, and Labor, 1920-1929 1

Two A Bittersweet Transition:

Politics and Labor in the 1920s 32

Three Fiestas o f the Oppressed: The Social

Geography and Culture o f Mobilization 63

Four “Ese Trabajo Era Enteramente de los

Naturales” : Ethnic Conflict and Mestizaje
in Western Salvador, 19 14 -19 31 99

Five “To the Face o f the Entire World” :

Repression and Radicalization,
September 19 31—January 1932 132
viii Six Red Ribbons and Machetes:
The Insurrection o f January 1932 170

Seven “They Killed the Just for the Sinners” :

The Counterrevolutionary Massacres 209

Eight Memories o f La Matanza: The Political

and Cultural Consequences o f 1932 240

Epilogue 27 5

Afterword 281

Notes 291

Bibliography 343

Index 355
Preface

When Reynaldo Patriz was a young child, his father took

him to a small finca at the edge o f the cantón. Stretching his
hand over the barbed wire fence, he pointed down toward
some underbrush and said, “ That’s where your uncles are.”
A few years went by before his father again spoke o f his dead
brothers. He explained that the family had been “ tricked by
ladinos” who had promised all kinds o f things like land to
farm and new houses. Then the National Guard came in and
shot all the males over the age o f twelve in all the cantones
ofNahuizalco. “The just were killed for the sinners.” 1 These
were the same lines that Reynaldo’s elderly neighbors used
on those rare occasions when they mentioned “ el Comu­
nismo.” That’s what they called the events o f January 1932.
When the National Guard had beaten Reynaldo’s cousin,
Juan Antonio, in a sugar mill at Izalco in 1978, his father,
normally impassive in the face o f bad news, became visibly
upset. He took Reynaldo aside after dinner: “ Look, don’t
you ever get involved in any organization. I mean it. Never!
Remember what happened with el Comunismo!”
 Juan Antonio later told him a different story about 1932. For Reynaldo’s
cousin, the peasants were getting screwed then just as they were now, and
X then everyone stood up to demand their rights. In response the National
Guard murdered thousands o f people. The time had come again to make a
stand. This time it would be different, because people all over the country
Preface and all over Central America were rising up against the dictatorships and
the rich. Adolescents and young adults like Reynaldo (then eighteen)
looked up to Juan Antonio, but the older folks in el Carrizal gave him the
cold shoulder.
These memories came rushing through his mind, as he peered through
the brush at the edge o f the ravine. It was shortly after dawn on 13 July 1980.
He could make out a platoon o f army troops advancing from the south
toward the center o f the village; led by an encapuchado (hooded man), the
troops were dragging someone through the dirt. Reynaldo heard shots and
screams from different points in the village. He waited until he saw yet
another platoon march down a path from the north. Machine-gun bursts
sounded from the south and then he heard a wailing sound. Harsh shouts,
barked like orders, reached his ears, but he could not make out the words.
He scurried down the ravine and inched his way along the stream bed at the
bottom. Furtively glancing up to make sure he could not be seen, he ad­
vanced quickly until he came to a cave.
Patriz was stunned by the military occupation o f El Carrizal, a canton o f
Nahuizalco in western El Salvador.2 He immediately connected the on­
slaught to the group o f about twenty-five young folks led by his cousin who
had been meeting, usually outside the village. He was on the fringes o f the
group that was connected to a national organization, called las Fuerzas
Populares de Liberación. Thinking about how his father had warned him,
Reynaldo thought that “ maybe” they had been “ asking for trouble.” But
this shooting was madness.
Another o f his compañeros showed up within an hour, and that reassured
Reynaldo. They agreed that they were best o ff staying put in the cave. After a
few days o f living on roots, plants, fruit from fincas, and the occasional
iguana, Reynaldo headed back to El Carrizal. His uncle told him that the
troops had killed over forty muchachos.
Reynaldo Patriz met one o f the authors o f this book in January 1998. At
first he was an informant eager to make connections for Gould’s oral his­
tory endeavor: interviewing the survivors o f the massacres o f 1932 through-
out western El Salvador. After a very short time it became clear that he was
more than a lucid informant with a sharp mind. Eventually he became a
research assistant and production assistant on an ancillary documentary xi
film project (see Afterword).
Patriz had been working for several years with the Pastoral Indígena, a
lay church group that promoted community organizations in Indian com­ Preface
munities. As a result, he had acquired a wide range o f contacts throughout
the cantones o f Nahuizalco, and in other areas he demonstrated a marked
capacity to communicate empathetically with strangers who shared his con­
dition as a pobre.3 He had also expanded his network through his work on
the municipal electoral campaign with the Frente Farabundo Marti para la
Liberación Nacional (f m l n ). Its victories in the elections in Nahuizalco and
many other western municipalities convinced most people that democracy
and its associated freedoms had achieved a relatively firm footing, and
therefore commentaries about the events o f 1932 or 1980 would not result
in persecution.
Patriz had his own agenda, notably a strong belief that the survivors o f
1932 and 1980 needed to talk publicly for both therapeutic and political
reasons about the massacres that had taken place in his village and region.
His belief in the therapeutic value o f doing so came from his own experi­
ence as a survivor o f the massacre of 1980 and his observations o f older
neighbors and their burden o f nightmarish, toxic memories. He also saw a
political value in constructing a realistic narrative o f the events o f 1932—the
preceding rural labor mobilization, the insurrection against the military
regime, and the subsequent massacres—in light o f the exceedingly frag­
mented memories o f the period and the power o f rightist discourse about
both the 1930s and the 1980s (typified by the practice o f the governing party
arena to inaugurate every presidential campaign in Izalco with the slogan
“ Here we buried communism!” ).
The interviews often became three-way encounters. This trilateral space
did not, however, resolve the problems inherent in the enterprise o f oral
history. Daniel James has underscored the oral historian’s need to grapple
with the issues o f positionality, the tendency o f the scholar to arrogate the
representation o f subaltern lives and consciousness. He also stresses the
asymmetrical power relations between interviewer and informant that en­
gender the potential for “ symbolic violence.”4 These problems are not re­
solved in this book. Despite the trilateral nature o f many o f the conversa-
 tions, the asymmetrical power relations between interviewer and informant
were never fully redressed. Similarly, Reynaldo did not have the final inter­
xii pretive word. This is a book produced in the North American academy
about Central American subjects, with all the biases that this implies. To the
extent that Reynaldo did participate in shaping the conversations and inter­
Preface preting the testimonies, his presence posed a different problem o f repre­
sentation. Patriz did have a political agenda, as a militant o f the f m l n and
an indigenous activist. Although neither identity was fixed or necessarily
congruent, his interpretations and contributions did involve “ representing”
subaltern subjects. Patriz’s intervention nonetheless made a significant dif­
ference to this project precisely because o f his agenda and his life experi­
ence, which allowed him to grasp the powerful afterlife o f 1932. It shaped
the existence o f nearly everyone he knew, yet no one possessed more than a
fragmentary understanding o f what had occurred.
In Garcia Marquez’s famous fictional account o f the massacre o f striking
banana workers in Macondo, a storm after the event swept away the town
and all memory o f the repression. As Greg Grandin has pointed out, “ the
novel can be read as an anticipatory truth commission, a revelation o f terror
to come.” 5The novelistic account o f massacre and storm also had, however,
a retrospective quality beyond the Magadalena valley o f Colombia. In El Sal­
vador a cyclone but two years after the massacres hit the west with particular
fury, killing an estimated fifteen hundred people with nearly a thousand
people unaccounted for, in effect “ disappeared.” 6 To survivors o f the mas­
sacre, the cyclone “ washed away the blood.” 7 The storm also helped to
enshrine the vastly unequal power relations in the region wrought by the
massacres. One young man from Reynaldo’s village recounted, “ I remem­
ber my grandmother telling us that she had great necessities right after a
great cyclone hit them. Everything was lost. They had nothing to eat; they
were in great need. She went to don Manuel Borges and asked if he could be
so kind as to give her some yuca for the sustenance o f her children her
family. He told her that he would be glad to give her the yuca, but in
exchange o f the legal papers o f ownership o f her land. And so for a few
pieces o f yuca her property passed to his hands.” 8 Whether or not the
testimony accurately described the loss o f property, it graphically communi­
cated how the community perceived the change in power relations, a change
that in turn structured the limits o f individual and collective memories.
Although Garcia Marquez’s fictional account inspired some research,
the events o f 1932 have generated even more scholarly interest than the
Colombian banana workers’ strike and the repression o f it.9 Yet that re­
search and analysis has been cut o ff from the survivors and their children,
to the detriment o f scholars and subjects alike. In this diálogo de sordos xiii
scholars and activists have offered a version o f what the survivors and their
families had done. The survivors have reacted with a blank stare: “We had
nothing to do with that [the insurrection].” Preface
Through his growing analytic skills (despite only an eighth-grade educa­
tion), Reynaldo developed an ability to pose his own questions and analyze
responses, both in situ and subsequently in conversation with Gould, during
the long return trips on foot from remote cantones. Certain themes related
to ethnicity and indigenous identities were best approached through Rey­
naldo’s intervention. Indeed, probably the most interesting discussions
about ethnicity occurred when Gould managed to keep quiet and let the
conversation ensue between Patriz and the informant. On those all-too-rare
occasions, when the scholar became less obtrusive if not invisible, a dia­
logue could develop, characterized by less guarded feelings and memories.
Especially when Reynaldo and the informant knew people in common, the
informant might comment, for example, that a certain indigenous family
sent its children to school “ like pure ladinitos,” opening a window into a
world o f shame and resentment.
Reynaldo at times picked up on locally specific clues and codes suggest­
ing that the informant had participated in the insurrection (or that an
informant’s father or brother had done so). A discussion would ensue
about why the informant did not admit to his or her family’s participation.
This intuition about the problem o f individual participation and memory
led to a broader recognition that in the memories o f Salvadoran indigenous
people, their agency in the insurrection has been thoroughly suppressed. It
was in the individual interviews that this suppression o f indigenous agency
became poignant, signaling the powerful role o f the military in shaping
memories.
This book confronts the tension between testimonial memories and
historical interpretation while depending on those testimonies, however
fragmented, to help formulate an analytical narrative. The enterprise avoids
crossing the line over to badJdith, in part because o f the shared commitment
o f the authors, Patriz, and others to at once respect the memories o f los
ancianos and to better understand the events o f 1932 and their long-term
political and cultural ramifications.
Ultimately the book attempts to weave into a coherent narrative individ­
 ual memories, as described in over two hundred interviews, and a myriad o f
documentary sources from archives in El Salvador, Washington, London,
xiv and Moscow. Our hope is utilitarian, namely that the narrative provides
greater understanding o f the events o f 1932 for a greater number o f people
than previous ones have been able to provide. Yet there are severe limitations
Preface to a narrative history written against the grain not only o f counterinsurgent
and insurgent documents but o f memories recreated in a society that sup­
pressed the events with particularly noxious forms o f amnesia and distor­
tion. We inevitably fall short o f creating a definitive narrative o f events.
This book intervenes on a terrain o f conflicting narratives about events
that have shaped the lives o f people who simultaneously provide crucial
material for its interpretation. They are, in Michel-Rolf Trouillot’s terms,
embodiments o f these twin aspects o f historicity: the ability to make or act in
history and the ability to narrate the past.10 This project’s reliance on oral
history to provide historiographic detail or even access to historical con­
sciousness is also somewhat problematic. As James writes, “We might say
that i f oral testimony is indeed a window on the subjective in history—the
cultural, social and ideological universe o f historical actors—then the view it
affords is not a transparent one that simply reflects thoughts and feelings as
they really were. At the very least the image is bent, the glass o f the window
unclear.” 11 These caveats are crucially important for the practice o f oral his­
tory. However, when confronted by the paucity o f documentary materials
that would allow us to reconstruct ethnographically thick descriptions or to
infer elements o f consciousness, testimonies can be employed to approxi­
mate sociological and ethnographic realities in the past. That is, if certain
codes o f understanding are established (and here the role o f Patriz was
critical), it is possible to approximate ethnic and class ideologies and rela­
tions as they existed in the past. We employ a methodology based on a
mutual interrogation o f oral and written sources and a continuous cross-
referencing between the two, moving from the micro and regional level to
the national level o f analysis.12 This methodology permits us to make a con­
tribution to the literature through the identification o f the sociological and
ethnic makeup o f those involved in the mobilization and the insurrection.
indígenas and Mestizaje

The ethno-historical dimension o f the book dialogues with the historical XV

and ethnographic literature on mestizaje in Latin America. Since the early

twentieth century mestizaje, understood as a nation-building myth o f race
mixture and a cultural process o f “ deindianization,” has contributed sub­ Preface
stantially to Central American and Latin American nationalist ideologies
and played a key role in shaping contemporary political culture. Gould has
argued elsewhere that in El Salvador during the 1920s the development o f
mestizaje, as both discourse and process o f cultural transformation, was
not significantly different from parallel developments in Nicaragua or Hon­
duras. In all three countries by the 1920s the emergence o f mestizaje as a
dominant national discourse interacted dialectically with the simultaneous
disarticulation o f the indigenous communities.13 In all three countries state
policies favoring ladino élites and the growth o f agrarian capitalism led
variously to cultural mestizaje, thicker identifications outside the commu­
nities, and a questioning o f inherited traditional forms and markers o f
communal life. In western Honduras and western Nicaragua, for example,
virtually all inhabitants had ceased to speak indigenous languages by the
turn o f the century. Similarly, by 1930 the majority o f indigenous Salva­
dorans no longer spoke Nahuatl as their principal language.
Despite some similarities, the indigenous communities o f western El
Salvador were distinct from their Central American neighbors, primarily
because o f their geographical contiguity and their level o f communal cohe­
sion. Unlike in the other countries, where mestizaje formed a key element
in a hegemonic project, in El Salvador the very intense and contradictory
subaltern response, at least initially, thwarted the project.
The development o f cultural processes o f mestizaje placed severe strains
on the indigenous communities and tended to isolate “ traditionalists” from
others. In El Salvador, unlike in Honduras or Nicaragua, some Indians
responded to the ideology and practice o f mestizaje with a discourse o f
ethnic militancy and revitalization. A contrary process developed in the
Salvadoran departments o f La Libertad, Santa Ana, and Ahuachapán. In
those departments during the first decades o f the twentieth century the
advance o f agrarian capitalism devastated the material basis o f indigenous
communities and contributed to a widespread rejection o f the indigenous
ethnic markers, such as language and dress. Yet thousands o f rural workers
 and peasants who had no notion o f indigenous identity participated in the
mobilization from 1929 to 1931. It is this contradictory response to mes­
xvi tizaje that distinguished El Salvador from its neighbors, and the ability o f
the left to engage with both groups that guaranteed its stunning organiza­
tional success in the countryside.
Preface The above discussion suggests that the use o f the term “ Indian” in the
context o f El Salvador during the 1920s and 1930s is quite problematic.
Rather than a unitary category, we confront a continuum o f indigenous
identities and communal practices across the region. Typically these ranged
from monolingual Nahuatl speakers in Santo Domingo de Guzman to peo­
ple ten miles away in Sónzacate who bore no identifiable ethnic markers yet
were considered indígenas by their ladino neighbors. Those ethnic markers
were o f extraordinary importance, as Indians and ladinos o f all political
tendencies conflated them (and still do) with indigenous identity itself. As
noted above, many people whose parents or grandparents would have iden­
tified as indigenous, especially in La Libertad and Ahuachapán, had no
sense o f indigenous identity. To the present-day observer this enormous
variation complicates analysis; in the 1930s it greatly facilitated the advance
o f mestizaje as discourse and practice, holding an example o f “ civilization”
both to more traditional indigenous populations and to ideologues o f mes­
tizaje and anthropologists.
Although it problematizes this wide variation o f identities, this book
employs the term “ indigenous” to refer to people and communities who at
the time referred to themselves as indígena or natural, as distinguished from
ladinos (or non-Indians). In other words, by focusing on ethnic ideologies
and relations as they were lived and understood at the time, this book
questions the historiographical current that opposes “ communists” to “ In­
dians,” without analyzing local forms o f identity formation in their his­
torical specificity.

El Salvador in Comparative Perspective

We explain why the Salvadoran élite and its religious and political allies had
such a difficult time establishing minimal forms o f hegemony or instituting
significant social reforms that might have prevented the tragedy o f 1932.
Recent work in Latin American agrarian history and Lauria-Santiago’s An
Agrarian Republic have revised our understanding o f the Salvadoran experi­
ence, situating it closer to the experience o f the coffee regions o f Venezuela,
Colombia, and Costa Rica.14 In El Salvador land in coffee was only some­
what more concentrated than in the other countries, and labor was not
based on a full-time proletarianized labor force or on coerced labor, unlike xvii
in Guatemala. As suggested by Jeffrey Paige, it was unique among Latin
American coffee economies owing to the efficiency o f its larger estates and
the higher levels o f concentration o f its finance, export, and processing Preface
sectors.15 The lack o f state coercion in labor relations, the persistence o f a
landed peasantry, and the presence o f an important layer o f rural farmers
and rich peasants challenge the traditional historiographical bipolar por- .
trait o f El Salvador. The recognition that the emergence o f coffee growing j|
did not result in the Jate-nineteenth-century dispossession, n f the.peasantry f
has implications for this study.
The 19 20s represented a period o f intensive capital accumulation in the
western part o f the country that affected many rural people who experienced
varying degrees o f proletarianization and dispossession. This book dia­
logues in this sense with studies o f agrarian revolt in Guatemala, Colombia,
Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Cuba, which have all found that this complex
middle ground o f peasants resisting proletarianization can be the cauldron
o f rural rebellion.
Our study o f the Salvadoran rural mobilization from 1929 to 1932 con­
tributes to the historiography en twentieth-century revolutions. In broad
strokes, it confirms the usefulness o f Timothy Wickham-Crowley’s multi­
tiered analysis o f social conditions as opposed to a strict structural analysis
o f revolutionary causes.16 It traces the origins o f two social groups, colo­
nos (resident laborers) and “ semi-proletarians” or “ peasant laborers,” and
shows how they became open to radical organization. Scholars have rarely
identified the colonos as a potential revolutionary subject. Our book sug-
gests that to fruitfully study the radical or revolutionary potential o f a par­
ticular group, we must root it and its relations in a historically specific 1
context.17 Rather than analyze the “ revolutionary” potential o f particular
classes, we suggest that the struggles over their creation and their concomi­
tant resistance to being proletarianized provide the key to understanding
radical mobilization.
As suggested above, the contradictory responses to mestizaje in the
context o f struggles over class formation provide an analytical tool for
understanding the success o f the Salvadoran mobilization. This may well
provide an interesting research path for analyses o f other social move­
ments. The successful Salvadoran mobilization o f 19 29 -32 involved highly
 uneven cultural homogenizing processes in the context o f a new phase o f
intense capital accumulation. In this sense the Cuban Revolution o f 1933
xviii offers the most promising terrain for such a culturally informed com­
parison. In Cuba communist union activists organized effectively among
both field and mill workers in the sugar industry. They forged alliances
Preface between white and black Cuban workers, including many immigrants from
other Caribbean islands.18
In both El Salvador and Cuba international politics played a role in the
revolutionary movements. The strategic line o f the Comintern pitted “ class
versus class,” combated all forms o f reformism as objectively aligned with
fascism, and promoted an anti-imperialist agrarian revolution. Although
the Comintern had little direct involvement in Cuba and virtually none in
El Salvador, the acceptance o f the line did limit the strategic and tactical
options available while doing nothing to limit the revolutionary utopian
dreams that circulated among the actors.19
The massacre o f some ten thousand people that followed the revolt o f
January 1932 also lends itself to comparison. In the Dominican Republic
(1937) and Cuba (1912), as in El Salvador, state repression had complex
cultural and political motivations that went beyond the need to militarily
suppress an insurgent movement.20 Like the killings o f thousands o f Afro-
■ Cubans in eastern Cuba .in 1912 and the massacre o f Haitians and Domini­
cans o f Haitian descent by Trujillo’s government in 1937, mass killings were
pursued by the Salvadoran state for moral, political, and ideological pur­
poses in specific geographical regions. In each case the targets o f state
repression were singled out in regionally specific ways; repressive forces
spared other people o f the same ethnic background in areas not affected by
the insurgency.21 In Cuba, Haiti, and El Salvador we would suggest, follow­
ing Greg Grandin and the Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico o f Guate­
mala, that the states did not have a strictly genocidal motive like Hitler, but
did have the “ intention” to liquidate blacks and Indians to accomplish their
counterinsurgent goals (see chapter 7).

A Usable Past: Interpretations of Revolt and Massacre

During the past seventy years four themes have dominated interpretations
i o f the revolt o f 1932 and the massacre o f some ten thousand people: politi-
{[ cal crisis, economic collapse, communist agency, and indigenous participa-
tion. Despite the richness o f decades o f discussion around these four axes,
the question o f how to characterize the revolt and its agents has remained
unresolved. xix
Journalists, military officers, and professional anticommunists wrote the
earliest accounts o f the revolt. However tainted, writings by Joaquín Mén­
dez and Jorge Schlesinger are still among the most important sources Preface
for study o f the movement. Although the authors framed their narratives
around the idea o f the movement as a communist conspiracy which gained
strength through the reformist opening created by President Arturo Araujo
(March-December 1931J, the empirical detail based on interviews and in­
surgent and counterinsurgent documents is o f fundamental importance to
any reconstruction o f events.22
During the three decades following the massacres a singular, coherent
mythology emerged that fomented commonsense notions about the danger
o f reformism and foreign communist manipulation o f peasants.23 By the
1960s a new generation o f politically committed intellectuals began to ques­
tion both the official anticommunist views and the largely dismissive inter­
pretation by the Salvadoran Communist Party (p c s ) that the revolt had been
provoked by the regime and fatally flawed by the party’s ideological devia­
tions.24 These writers, most notably Jorge Arias Gómez and Roque Dalton,
sought to dialogue with the pcs and the distortions created by the official
narrative o f the revolt.25 Although limited by their lack o f sources and
professional training, they did tap into collective memories and partici­
pants’ stories, especially from within the p c s . Arias Gomez, who set out to
produce an alternative history o f the country’s working classes, ended up
more absorbed by his work as a political activist but did publish a biography
o f Farabundo Marti (1972).26 Dalton, his political protege, became the most
important writer and poet to emerge from this period and contributed
perhaps the most important piece: Miguel Mármol’s narration o f his life
and participation in the revolt (compiled while he and Dalton were in exile
and during a visit to Prague in 1966).27 Published in 1972, Migue! Mármol: Los
sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador quickly became a classic o f Central American
literature.28 Recently Rafael Lara Martinez has criticized Dalton for con­
sciously suppressing in Mármol’s narrative the specifically indigenous role
in the mobilization and insurrection. His critique is important in that it
explains to some extent how the revolutionary left failed to understand the
role o f ethnic relations in the events o f 1932. Yet like I Rigoberta Menchd,' '
 despite its constructedness and distortions, Miguel Mármol remains a fas­
cinating and invaluable source for understanding the period.29
XX During the late 1960s El Salvador caught the attention o f a number o f
foreign scholars who deepened the research on 1932 primarily through
a study o f national newspapers and interviews with military officers and
Preface members o f the landowning class. The anticommunist commonsense o f
their informants to some extent framed their research questions. Moreover,
these scholars explicitly investigated the social origins o f the revolt de­
spite their limited understanding o f Salvadoran agrarian history.30 Thomas
Anderson’s Matanza was the first serious monographic attempt to counter
the official anticommunist hysteria and to provide a rich examination o f the
revolt and its social and political origins.31 Anderson made a significant
contribution by emphasizing both the class and ethnic dimensions o f the
movement, but his work remained limited by its narrow conceptual frame­
work and lack o f archival sources. Everett Wilson’s dissertation was also an
important contribution to the literature, providing an analytical framework
for the failure o f reformism during the 1920s.32 It remains one o f the most
empirically sound and sophisticated interpretations o f Salvadoran politics
during this period.33 Anderson and Wilson made critical contributions in
their use o f primary sources (short o f archival work) and in their analytical
integration o f a broader socioeconomic narrative that saw in the economic
crisis o f 1929 the origins o f the political crisis o f 1932. But they were not
able to fully flesh out the social origins, ideology, subjectivity, and practice
o f the rural movement.34
By the late 1970s a new generation o f Salvadoran social scientists began
to publish interpretations critical o f extant works on the revolt.35 The re­
gime forced most o f these scholars into exile, where they carried out more
systematic research with secondary sources. None were able to carry out
archival work or oral history work among the peasantry, with the notable
exception o f the Jesuit martyr Segundo Montes.36 During the late 1970s and
early 1980s the left relied on these analyses (and on Mármol) in their fre­
quent reflections about 1932. As the regime relied ever more on the violent
repression o f dissent, the rapidly expanding left moved toward a revolution­
ary strategy. In that context left militants called on their followers to “ re­
tomar las banderas de ’32,” 37 highlighting the depth o f the alliance o f the
early 1930s between urban workers and campesino. To wit, Ferman Cien-
fuegos, a guerrilla leader, cited the incorporation o f peasant smallholders
into union leadership as an example o f the left’s creativity.38 In somewhat
paradoxical fashion, revolutionary leftists recognized the negative lessons
from 1932. While recognizing the p c s ’ s creativity in forging a multiclass xxi
alliance, they criticized their forebears for their petit-bourgeois ideological
deviations and confusion, a consequence o f the weak development o f an
industrial proletariat. And even w hile lauding the role o f Farabundo Marti Preface
in pushing for a revolutionary strategy, the new left criticized the pcs for its
failure to create a political and military vanguard and for its overreliance on
Marti’s.39 The f m l n named guerrilla fronts after Feliciano Ama and Fran­
cisco Sanchez, the indigenous leaders, but in its narrative o f 1932 it tended
to subsume the ethnic dimension o f the movement within a rigid class
framework.
Although the revolutionary le ft made no scholarly contribution to the
understanding o f 1932, the newly heightened politics o f memory eventually
led to intensified research efforts. By the mid-1980s a new wave o f publica­
tions by foreign scholars began to revisit the revolt, adding significant new
sources and placing the revolt in the broader context o f social revolution.
Authors such as James Dunkerley, Hector Pérez-Brignoli, and Jeffery Paige
provided more complete and fluid conceptions o f class, politics, and the
state that eschewed singular ideological determinations. Leon Zamosc pro­
vided the first significant empirical additions to the narrative o f 1932; he
conceptualized rural Salvador as following a dependent capitalist path that
involved “ refeudalization” based on the growth o f colonos.
The end o f the civil war provided an opening for foreign scholars to
bring a deeper level o f archival research into discussions o f the 1920s and
1930s. The identification and recovery o f new regional archives and the
reorganization o f large portions o f the a g n by Lauria Santiago during the
late 1980s facilitated this work. Both Erik Ching and Patricia Alvarenga
attempted sweeping research and interpretations o f many aspects o f Sal­
vadoran politics from the nineteenth century to the 1930s. Their highly
nuanced discussions o f the revolt carefully consider municipal politics (es­
pecially indigenous politics), the previous political regimes, and the emer­
gence o f the left in the countryside. Alvarenga provided important insight
into the popular politics o f the 1920s, especially among people o f indige­
nous descent, and into popular resistance to state power in general.
The incorporation o f extensive archival and newspaper sources by these
and other authors has opened new terrain for interpretive and empirical
debates. In particular, new scholarship has emphasized the role o f ethnic
oppression and the participation o f indigenous communities in the revolt.
In an otherwise fine piece o f scholarship, Pérez-Brignoli portrayed the re­
volt as resembling an Indian jacquerie, partially inspired by the urban ladino
cadre o f the pcs but cut o ff from it. Most recently Ching’s work, building to
some extent on that o f Pérez-Brignoli, has repositioned the role o f the p c s ,
arguing that the party was incapable o f organizing the revolt and pointing
toward the movement as an indigenous-peasant revolt without a clear com­
munist ideological character.40 Although Ching and Pérez-Brignoli have
added significantly to the discussion, their work lends itself to interpre­
tations that posit two noncommunicative spheres: one communist and
the other Indian.41 Taking that view beyond the authors’ intentions, some
commentators in effect revert to the classic anticommunist position that
Marxist-Leninists manipulated innocent, aggrieved peasants.
As we will show, the portrait o f a closed, separate Indian world in the
/Salvadoran west is partial and problematic; ethnic identity was neither rigid
nor castelike. Most fundamentally, the perspective that posits a significant
cultural gulf between communists and rural Indians and that stresses the
autonomy o f the rural Indian movement misses conversations across multi­
ple, murky cultural divides. This book will narrate the remarkable story o f
how a united movement emerged out o f so much cultural difference and
conflict. It attempts to make sense o f the mobilization and the insurrection
by historicizing our analytical categories and recognizing the fluidity o f the
expressed and ascribed identities o f the participants.
This historiographical current has prompted a broader discussion
around a central question: “ Was it communist?” A negative response im­
plies communist manipulation, ineptitude, or irrelevance. But before even
engaging this question, we need to confront an epistemological one: Where
do revolutionary ideas and action come from? The classic Leninist response
"is that correct revolutionary ideas come from Marxist-Leninist science,
which reflects and influences social practice but ultimately is the sole prov­
ince o f the Central Committee. Logically, revolutionary action can only
derive from revolutionary strategy formulated by the proletarianized intel­
lectuals o f the Central Committee. Without accepting other aspects o f the
ideological tradition, those who ask “Was it communist?” tend to accept
this classic Leninist epistemology. We emphatically reject this undialectical
view o f social consciousness and social action.
 Methodologically, the assignment o f grades o f ideological purity to ac­
tors in the past seems at best an uninteresting pursuit. Rather, we reconcep­
tualize the analytical separation between organizer and organized. What
interests us is how. this powerful movement derived from the active, mutu-

uesancTthe different levels o f leftist leadership. Rank-and-file activists were

as “ authentically” leftist as the pcs Central Committee and at least as im­
portant in shaping the development o f the movement.
These historical agents did operate within a variety o f organizations, and
within them the pcs stood at the apex. Yet as we will argue, although the
pcs considered itself the revolutionary vanguard,, its self-definition did not
necessarily shape reality. Rather, tjfg Socorro Rojo Internacional (which the
pcs had created as a front group) acquired an important degree o f auton­
omy and a critical role in creatingThx .ernejghig revolutionary discourse: a -
discourse that explained how growing numbers o f rural people, Indians,
and ladinos cameTo-understand the world and their place in it. That the
leaders o f theTRCaiid the labor unions usually were also members o f the
pcs has intrinsic importance but does not allow us to reduce those move­
ments to mere party appendages. Yet there is no denying that the pro­
communist left as a whole was responsible for creating a field o f vision in
which the revolutionary seizure o f power became an option for many sub­
altern actors.
The denial o f a role to the communist left in the insurrection, regardless
o f scholarly intention, ultimately relegates the hundreds o f local-level orga­
nizers o f the movement to yet another mass grave, this one o f historical
oblivion. A cadre o f ladino and indigenous leaders, with roots in the can­
tons, haciendas, towns, and workshops, propelled this movement forward.
Often communist militants were themselves rural Indians, many o f whom
had been union activists on the coffee plantations for several years. Others
merely shared the movement’s goals: radical agrarian reform and over­
throw o f the regime and oligarchical rule.
This book shows that the revolt o f 1932 derived from the transformation 1
o f a radicalized union movement that became revolutionary under the pres-1
sure o f frustration among peasants and rural workers with the violent abro­
gation o f democratic rights, combined with a rapid increase in rates o f
exploitation and dispossession. Before December 19 31 only a minority o f
the left favored an insurrectionary strategy. As a result o f the events delin-
 eated in chapter 5, we will show that the insurrection did result ultimately
from the actions, choices, and direction o f a coherent and self-conscious
xxiv movement for social, economic, and political transformation. There is no
doubt that the pcs leadership engaged in negotiations with the military
regime, and that upon the failure o f those negotiations they decided upon a
Preface date for the insurrection, eventually postponed to 2 2 January 1 9 3 2 , when
they rose up. The discursive struggle to rescue indigenous agency from
decades o f trauma and neglect should not lead us to deny communist
agency in all its dimensions, all its creative potential, and all o f its flaws^

Chapter 1 o f the book offers a detailed analysis o f the structural trans­

formation o f Salvadoran rural society during the 1920s, marked by the con­
solidation o f two important social groups, colonos (resident laborers) and
_semi-proletarians. With the multisided economic crisis o f 1929, these two
groups, “ los occidentales,” became the critical social subjects o f the mobili­
zation in central and western El Salvador. This chapter also focuses on the
limitations o f elite hegemony. Chapter 2 examines the emergence o f reform­
ist political currents that by the late 1920s challenged oligarchic rule and
encouraged the partial democratization o f the state. This chapter delineates
how the frustration o f political and social reform at the national and munici­
pal levels directly contributed to the radicalization o f the labor movement.
Chapters 3 and 4 probe the ethnic, political, and cultural dimensions o f
the rural mobilization. They show that virtually all subaltern and. middle
groups in central and western Salvador were represented on both sides of
the .conflict. Most significantly, these chapters attempt to elucidate the dis­
cursive expressions o f ethnic militancy and populism. Chapter 4 concludes
with a discussion o f gender relations in the region.
Chapter 5 offers a detailed account and analysis o f the highpoint o f the
mobilization during the latter part o f 19 31 and January 1932. Highlighting
the relations between the grassroots and the national leadership, the chap­
ter offers a portrait o f the decision-making process that led to the insurrec­
tion. Chapter 6 presents a blow-by-blow account o f the insurrection. Build­
ing on those produced in the 1930s and 1940s, it also incorporates material
from the Comintern and Salvadoran archives. It departs from previous ac­
counts primarily in its deployment o f ethnographic and local detail, culled
from oral testimonies.
The equally complex pattern o f repression is the subject o f chapter 7.
It recounts the systematic massacres in Nahuizalco, Juayúa, Tacuba, and
Izalco o f mostly male Indians. Yet the chapter tempers the view o f 1932 as an
anti-Indian massacre through its examination o f non-Indian killings and
the mild forms o f repression employed in the heavily indigenous region xxv
south o f San Salvador. Through an analysis o f oral histories, chapter 8
probes the long-term cultural and political impact o f the massacres on the
region. Here the book shifts gears from an analytical narrative to an analysis Preface
o f stories about the revolt and repression, as well as about the loss o f two
key ethnic emblems, indigenous female dress and the Nahuatl-Pipil lan­
guage. This final chapter also describes the massacre in El Carrizal and
another equally unknown massacre in the Department o f Sonsonate in
1980. The silencing o f the massacres and the brief mobilization that pre­
ceded them is due in part to the widespread myth o f passivity o f the western
Salvadoran peasant, a direct consequence o f 1932.
We address the larger problem o f how local consciousness and national
discourse are related. The gulf between them has both reflected and exacer­
bated the tragedies o f modern Central American political cultures. It is our
hope that our book will help to illuminate the hidden crevasses that dan­
gerously lie beneath the political cultural landscape o f contemporary Cen­
tral America.

This book is the result o f a collaborative effort between the two authors who
have long been interested in the causes and consequences o f the mobiliza­
tion, insurrection, and massacre that devastated El Salvador in 1932. The
book is also the result o f a web o f collaborations with Salvadorans and
others.
Lauria-Santiago carried out extensive local and national archival research
during the early 1990s, in close collaboration with the Archivo General de la
Nación and numerous municipal governments throughout the country. Over
the next decade, working with local and national scholars, archivists, and
authorities, he helped organize and preserve a significant amount o f archives
that are now available to scholars and students. He worked especially closely
with Eugenia López o f the a g n . An Agrarian Republic, the first fruit o f his work
in the archives, provoked much dialogue in the Central American academy
and challenged decades o f received wisdom about the origins o f the coffee
economy and the class structure in the countryside from 1880 to 1920.
Lauria-Santiago stimulated wide-ranging research projects on modern Sal­
vadoran history and maintained a strong interest in the events o f 1932 based
on extensive archival research that carried into the 1930s.
 Over the years the authors conversed about the events o f 1932, recogniz­
ing the lacunae in their knowledge and the problems with extant analyses,
xxvi Thus in 2001 they decided to combine their research efforts and expand
their focus toward reinterpreting the mobilization that preceded the insur­
rection as well as the massacre itself and its political and cultural conse-
Preface quences. Gould obtained a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 2002
that permitted the drafting o f chapters 3 through 8. Lauria-Santiago drafted
chapters 1 and 2. A voluminous dialogue shaped the manuscript, involving
numerous readings, commentaries, and discussions.
We are greatly appreciative o f those collaborators mentioned above. In
addition, we thank Rebecca Tolen for copy-editing assistance. Gould would
also like to thank his colleagues at Indiana University, Daniel James, Peter
Guardino, and Patrick Dove, for their careful readings and constructive
criticisms o f the manuscript. He also thanks Carmen García-Prieto for help
with some translations, Luis Gonzalez, Mike Grove, Carol Glaze, and Dena
Williams. He is also indebted to Alexander Rabinowitch for helping him to
obtain a copy o f the Comintern files pertaining to El Salvador. Gould pre­
sented papers based on parts o f the manuscript and received helpful com­
ments from the discussants, including Virginia Burnett and Claudio Lom-
nitz. We are grateful as well for Mauricio Alvarez’s generosity in allowing us
to use family manuscripts and photos. Gould also thanks his wife Elbe and
his eldest daughter Gabriela for holding down the fort during his pro­
longed absence in 1998, and Elbe for her support and endurance o f the
difficulties o f life in Sonsonate. A very hot and crowded school and the
Salvadoran style o f basketball and soccer posed unique challenges for
Carlos and Monica. He is appreciative that they met those challenges with
grace and humor. Regrettably, Carlos, at seven, had to experience an armed
holdup with a gun pointed at his father’s head. He got over it quickly
enough and eventually worked through the experience in several writing
assignments that surely startled a few teachers in Bloomington.
We are grateful to Greg Grandin, Lowell Gudmundson, and an anony­
mous reader at Duke University Press for their perspicacious and sensitive
readings o f the manuscript. We would also like to thank Duke University
Press for permission to use materials from our previous publications. Fi­
nally, we appreciate the editorial and technical assistance and encour­
agement we received from Valerie Millholland, Miriam Angress, and Fred
Kameny.
 Chapter One

Garden o f Despair: The Political Economy

o f Class, Land, and Labor, 1920-1929

Outside the car w indow s. . . the wonderful panorama unfolds. Over and over
again we exclaim that all this is a perfect tropical garden. In places every inch of
land has yielded to human hands. . . It is a country worthy of a great people. . . ’

P
eering out o f a railroad car during the mid-i920S, Wal­
lace Thompson marveled at the Salvadoran countryside,
and like others before him eagerly compared it to England
and the United States. Foreign observers were thrilled with
the image o f tropical progress that they discovered in Salva­
dor. Commenting on a trip from San Salvador to Santa Ana,
Arthur Ruhl wrote, “ The country was rich and carefully cul­
tivated all the way, with cornfields that would make a Kan­
san gasp.” 2 Similarly, an observer found the paved streets,
handsome buildings, and cafés o f the capital radiant and
“ dazzling.” 3
Agnes Rothery, a travel writer with an analytical bent,
placed the smallholding peasant at the center o f this por­
trait o f peace and growing prosperity: “And as we continued
our drive, up the seacoast to the capital, there is presented to
us a complete picture o f that agricultural structure on which
the prosperity o f this tiny republic so solidly rests. For about
twenty years ago, the communal lands were distributed to
the small landowners. At the same time all laws providing
means o f collecting money loaned or advanced to laborers were repealed.
And every legal basis o f peonage was wiped out. Thus was established a sys­
tem o f free labor—the foundation o f any national prosperity. About seventy-
five percent o f the coffee is raised on property held by small landowners o f
the poor and the lower middle classes, and eighty-five percent o f the na­
tional commerce is in their hands. So engrossed are these industrious and
simple folk in their crops, on which their happiness and living depend, that
they have no inclination for political agitation.”4
Rothery and others underscored how the development o f the Salvadoran
... ■ —
peasantry coincided with the development o f “ free labor” and how the
peasantry itself supplied the bulk o f harvest labor for the coffee plantations.
This depiction o f a harmonious process, whereby a reasonably prosperous
smallholding class emerged from the privatization o f communal and ejidal
lands, is substantiated to some degree by the historical record. Certainly the
process that derived from the state privatization o f ejidal and communal
lands in 1881 did not directly lead to massive subaltern resistance, in large
part because indigenous and ladino peasants were the immediate bene­
ficiaries o f much o f the newly privatized land.
In this chapter we explore the contrast between this widely diffused
image o f progress and social harmony in the second and third decades o f
the century and the intense levels o f social and political strife during the late
1920s and early 1930s. Did societal fault lines exist that had been invisible to
the observers? What factors upset this social equilibrium? Scholars usually
cite the impact o f the world crisis on the coffee industry as the direct cause
o f the dramatic heightening o f social conflict in Salvadoran society. How­
ever, other Latin American societies experienced similar economic collapses
without such severe social and political effects.
Between 1900 and 1929 El Salvador experienced three intense cycles o f
rapid economic growth, each based on a doubling or tripling o f the price o f
coffee followed by a period o f decline. These booms helped to develop a
dynamic economy, much o f it oriented toward the commercial production
o f maize, sugar, and silver in addition to coffee. To observers during the
teens and early 1920s, El Salvador seemed like a “ progressive” republic on
the verge o f becoming modern, with a large and prosperous smallholding
class and formidable wealth accumulated by an agro-financial oligarchy
and a rural bourgeoisie.
Structurally the equilibrium between smallholders and the larger coffee
 it *
planters did not hold, as jhé peasantry suffered an agonizing decomposi­
tion during the 1920s. 'One direct result o f this new stage o f primitive
accumulation was that two new classes emerged. Peasant laborers, “ semi­
proletarians” with inadequate land to support their families, gradually in­
creased their commitment to hacienda and plantation labor beyond sea­
sonal coffee picking. The second group was formed by colonos, or resident
laborers, whom landlords provided with plots o f land in return for labor
service and a portion o f their crops. Not only did the number o f colonos
increase during the 1920s but they also found their relation to the land-
owners transformed substantively. At the same time that the socioeconomic
equilibrium became unstable, the Salvadoran agro-export élite was unable
to establish elementary forms o f hegemonic domination over these new
groups, in part because o f its own recent formation.
Hegemony, despite the multitude o f meanings ascribed to it, is still a
useful analytical concept. We start with the most commonly accepted mean­
ing, “ the active consent” o f dominated groups to forms o f governance
which they do not control. To achieve active consent, dominant groups
must obtain legitimacy as economic and political leaders. That legitimacy
can only be developed through the construction o f institutions and prac­
tices, a process that usually takes generations.
As several critics have pointed out, hegemonic domination does not
mean total acceptance or submission by subaltern groups. For Ranajit Guha
hegemony implies a form o f domination in which the element o f persua­
sion outweighs coercion. Logically a state could also achieve dominance
over society by having the coercion outweigh the persuasion. Guha thus
defined the character o f the colonial state as “ dominance without hege­
mony.” 51 That formulation allows him to explore how the colonial and
postcolonial state in India could rule without recourse to constant violent
repression yet without establishing long-term forms o f hegemony. Given
the conjunctural determinations o f what Guha calls the organic composi­
tion o f power, the connection between domination and subordination is
inherently unstable. In that sense dominance without hegemony is a par­
ticularly unstable form o f rule, and despite the vastly different circum­
stances between colonial or postcolonial India and El Salvador in the 1920s,
this formulation seems apposite.
For the late William Roseberry, hegemony involves a fundamental accep­
tance o f the “ rules o f the game.” Those rules are more important than
 Guija V H O N D U R A S
GUATEMALA ,7* \
C H A LA T E N A N G O A

SA NTA AN A .
Chalatenangol
Santa Ana : Lake * - '"‘“ 'A .. .
/Ahuachapán Suchitlan cabañas j
Garden A H U AC H A PÁ N ‘ CUSC A TLA N « A ^ "
Sensuntepeque'
of ' S O N SO N A T É :
: san ‘ Cojutepeque - -,
S A LV A D O R'Lake
,.
Despair Sonsonate Santa Tecla
SA N V IC E N T E
San Francisco
Gotera;
\ Salvador
:atecoluca,'

El Salvador.

consent per se, for they establish an accepted discursive framework in

. which to express dissent.6It is in this sense that Roseberry proposed that we
use the term “ hegemony” : “ not to understand consent but to understand
struggle, the ways in which the words, images, symbols, forms, organiza­
tions, institutions, and movements used by subordinate populations to talk
about, understand, confront, accommodate themselves to, or resist their
domination are shaped by the process o f domination itself. What hegemony
constructs, then, is.mot a shared ideology but a common material and
meaningful framework for living through, talking about, and acting upon
r social orders characterized.by domination.” 7
In order for élites to achieve the active consent o f the dominated and not
to rely largely upon fear and intimidation, they need to construct a linguistic
code that can be shared and through which conflicts can be expressed and
resolved. In Nicaragua, Somocismo established limited but effective forms
o f hegemony through a common language o f liberalism and obrerismo.8
Similarly, in a process that continued well into the second part o f the
twentieth century, a discourse o f mestizaje also facilitated the eclipse o f
regional subcultures and the forging o f a common identity and language
between subalterns and dominant groups.9 In Guatemala, despite a radi­
cally different ethnic composition and with virtually no effective nationalist
ideology o f mestizaje, the coffee élites established effective forms o f domi­
nation, if not hegemonic forms, through what David McCreery defined as a

L
colonial pact. Through this informal pact the state recognized the relative
political and cultural autonomy o f indigenous communities in return for
loyalty to the state and a guaranteed supply o f coffee labor. Until the revolu­ 5
tion o f 1944 that pact afforded some legitimacy to the state and to its élite
allies.10 As we shall see, Salvadoran elites tried to follow both the Nica­
raguan and Guatemalan roads, but ran into powerful obstacles, often o f Garden
their own creation. of
Despair

Coffee Expansion and Élite Class Formation

At the start o f the twentieth century El Salvador appeared to be among the

most successful o f the smaller Latin American republics. Its growing export
economy and relatively stable intermingling o f military and civilian political
elites gave observers the sense o f an unbounded potential for progress.
Observers like Percy Falcke Martin, who visited in 19 11, noted the country’s
high wages, lack o f poverty, dynamic commercial élite, intensive use o f
land, and growing number o f schools as indicators o f successes similar to
those o f Porfirian Mexico.11 For another observer, El Salvador was “ credited
with possessing the most stable government in the Isthmus, with the sole
exception o f that o f Costa Rica. . . . Salvador can lay claim to being one o f
the most progressive States o f South America.” 12 The country’s reformist
experiments in government policy toward diversifying the economy and
stabilizing state finances bolstered this impression. Some o f these initia­
tives included promoting crops other than coffee, modernizing infrastruc­
ture, increasing taxes, and creating a national guard that would keep the
military out o f local governance.
El Salvador seemed poised to become a modern, civilian-run republic
that enshrined the myth o f Central America’s most industrious population;
but those expectations were not to be fulfilled. Instead, after the late teens a
small agro-financial and banking oligarchy subordinated the state to its
interests, introducing a rule typified by labor repressive policies and ending
the experiments with reform and diversification. From 1913 to 1927 the
Melendez-Quifiónez family dynasty (during which the presidency was occu­
pied by three members o f this extended family) controlled the governmen­
tal apparatus. During this period the country also experienced a significant
opening to foreign investment and financing. The enhanced role o f the
state élite and increased monetary flows facilitated corruption. Worse
yet, the country’s capitalists demonstrated a persistent unwillingness to
reinvest much o f their wealth inside the country—indeed El Salvador’s élite
disinvested millions in profits, which it kept in banks and investments in
the United States and Europe. The weakness o f this model became visible
during the export crisis o f 1921, when coffee and silver prices and exports
plummeted. The government’s solution was to transfer a smaller state debt
from British interests to banks in the United States, in a highly controversial
loan that resulted in a bank-controlled customs receivership.13 The en­
suing spending bonanza financed by this loan marked the consolidation o f
an alliance between politicians associated with the dynasty and the agro-
financial and finance élite built around sugar and coffee processing and
export.
In El Salvador as in the rest o f Latin America, the 1920s were years
o f dizzying change and fabulous wealth, “ the dance o f millions.” By the
mid-i92os El Salvador doubled its pre-war levels o f coffee exports, eclipsing
its much larger neighbor, Guatemala, as the leading coffee exporter in Cen­
tral America. In 1926 El Salvador exported 1.1 million quintals o f coffee (or
n o million pounds), whereas Guatemala exported 932,000 quintals and
Costa Rjca 402,000. The rise in coffee prices from 10.9 cents a pound in
1913 to a high o f 24.6 cents a pound in 1926 not only conditioned the rise in
exports but led directly to previously unimaginable incomes for large-scale
owners and middle-level growers alike. A mid-sized grower producing
6.000 quintals during the mid-i920s realized profits o f nearly $100,000.
Large-scale growers typically netted profits o f $500,000 annually. Over
all, income from coffee production expanded from $3,320,000 in 190140
$14,200,000 by 1920. Income would nearly double again by the late 1920s,
nearly a fivefold increase in twenty-five years.14
Coffee production increased through the application o f scientific tech­
niques to cultivation, and as a result El Salvador achieved the highest pro­
ductivity in the region. To cite a famous case, James Hill, an English immi­
grant, increased the productivity o f his coffee trees by using fertilizers and
carefully managing the shade and pruning. Hill’s annual productivity on his
Santa Ana plantation o f four pounds a tree was among the highest in the
world, and connoisseurs considered his coffee to be o f the highest quality.15
Coffee production also increased through the incorporation o f new lands
into coffee cultivation. After a long period o f slow expansion between the
1880s and about 19x2, the amount o f land dedicated to coffee increased from
61.000 hectares in 1916 to 100,000 in the early 1930s.16 Most o f the new
coffee lands did not form part o f large haciendas or plantations. In 1920 only
the 350 largest o f the 3,400 commercial coffee farms possessed between 75
and 300 manzanas (125-500 acres), accounting for 45 percent o f national
production.17 The greatest expansion in production during the 1920s came
from even smaller commercial producers with 10 -5 0 manzanas o f coffee,
who produced about one-third o f the country’s crop. The slow but persistent
growth o f landholdings allowed some families to join the coffee élite despite
relatively modest possessions at the turn o f the century. The Guirolas, to cite
an important example, acquired many new farms that had originally been
ejidal plots.18 In 1914 they owned three coffee farms in La Libertad; by 1929
they owned twenty.19
The story o f the Guirolas was replicated throughout western Salvador,
with negative consequences for the smallholding peasantry. By the end of
the 1920s nearly all land suitable for coffee production had been planted or
at least incorporated into existing farms. The expansion frenzy was so
intense that large planters would “ bid against each other in order to in­
crease acreage or to be rid o f undesirable neighbors.” 20 The U.S. Agricul­
tural Service estimated that land values per manzana ranged from $100 (in
remote districts) to $500 (in good locations), at a time when wages were
50 cents a day.21 But the potential profits from coffee production were not
the only driving force behind the acquisition o f land by commercial farm­
ers. Land also became more valuable because it facilitated access to cheap
labor from the growing ranks o f the landless who sought subsistence plots
within the farms.22
Increased concentration o f processing, financing, and marketing ac­
companied the transformation o f production. Few processors had tire re­
sources and networks necessary for managing the increased volume o f
coffee beans and the intensifying link between the financing o f crops by
farmers and the processing and marketing stages. Beneficio owners re­
ceived the bulk o f the profits, buying beans at 6 -10 cents a pound and
selling at 20-26 cents; much o f the payment was to cover advances. This
financing system allowed the wealthiest sectors to concentrate on the com­
mercialization o f the crop. The number o f beneficios remained relatively
small and concentrated—five highly modernized large-scale processing
plants controlled 53 percent o f production. These profits also became in­
vestment streams in other fields, including significant bank and investment
holdings abroad, calculated at $25 million in 1920.23
The agro-financial élite also invested in other crops. High demand and
 high prices encouraged investors to transform former tenant-held land into
export plantations. Cotton experienced a brief i f dramatic boom during
8 the 1920s, displacing many corn-producing tenants from low-lying coastal
lands. Cotton production increased from 800 hectares in 1923 to 16,000 by
1924 and peaked in 1925 at 20,300 hectares distributed throughout six
Garden departments, producing 3,200 tons. In the eastern region, henequen ex-
of panded significantly during the 1920s. Exports increased from 255,000
Despair kilograms in 1920 to 347,000 in 1922.24 Most significantly, the agrarian élite
invested in sugar, the country’s second-most important commercial prod­
uct. During the late nineteenth century, as the state enforced more suc­
cessfully its monopoly on liquor production licenses and taxes, cane grow­
ing became an increasingly profitable activity. By 1923 cane plantings had
increased to approximately 11,000 hectares compared to 80,000 for coffee.25
As with coffee, sugar manufacturing became increasingly concentrated; the
five largest mills controlled about 60 percent o f total production.

Hard Work and a European Education:

The Contours of Elite Ideology

The upper echelons o f the planter class and agro-export élite thus achieved
astounding levels o f wealth, only magnified by the contrast o f the poverty
that ringed their domains. One observer described their extravagance: “This
moneyed class live in extreme luxury and style, in fashionable suburbs or on
large country estates. Their thirty-room houses are splendid with the finest
and most formal furnishings. They send—or more frequendy take—their
children to school in England, Switzerland, or France. And after the period
o f schooling is over, they make extensive trips abroad. . . While their estates
are scattered throughout the Republic, Salvador is small enough for them to
form a homogeneous set who dance in their own homes to music brought
by radio from Chicago, keep up smart country clubs with go lf courses and
tennis-courts, and who aid progressive programs for public improvements
o f all sorts. ” 26 By various estimates the outer reaches o f this élite constituted
some one thousand families, many o f them connected through social, busi­
ness, and kinship ties—a tiny percentage o f the country’s approximately
300,000 families in 1930.27
The transnational status o f the élite had a decisive impact on the con­
sciousness o f its members, fomenting highly salient images o f progress
and the desire to modernize Salvador at least in those aspects that directly
affected them. Moreover, the European experience pushed them toward
certain notions o f political and social modernity. At the same time, a trans­
national existence in the 1920s limited their ability to fully participate in
their modernizing mission and the development o f politically hegemonic
practices.
The Salvadoran élite resembled their Colombian counterparts o f the
upper Magdalena valley so brilliantly described by Michael Jimenez. Their
cosmopolitan experience forged an image o f modernity that excluded most
other Colombians: “ With the distinctions between the ‘advanced’ and
‘backward’ worlds gaining ground among members o f a planter class edu­
cated and traveled abroad, they came to regard the Colombian people as an
ever less apt vehicle by which to achieve modernity.” Jimenez’s fine-grained
analysis o f the limits o f élite hegemony in Colombia is relevant to the
Salvadoran case. Despite their cosmopolitan existence, neither élite con­
formed to a stereotypical view o f an effete aristocracy. Their commitment to
labor, even physical labor, was extraordinary, and might well have provided
the basis for a common language with rural workers. Jimenez points out,
however, that “ the planters no longer regarded work as a common ground
for Colombians. The hacendados celebrated their founding o f the great
estates during the second half o f the nineteenth century in the upper Mag­
dalena Valley. Having allegedly risked their fortunes, health, loved ones,
and even their own lives in a titanic struggle to overcome nature in the
tropics, these exemplar, ‘workers o f the hot country’ congratulated them­
selves for having set the nation on a new course. But most other Colom­
bians could barely measure up, in their view.” 28
A memoir o f a coffee planting family in El Salvador suggests a similar
ideological framework. The narrative o f the Alvarez family history is built
around an axis o f hard work and a related myth o f the self-made man, closer
to the prevailing discourse in the United States and to some regional Mexi­
can myths than to most other Latin American governing myths. Fresh out o f
medical school, Dr. Emilio Alvarez moved to El Salvador from Colombia to
establish a practice in 1876. He went on to become a famed surgeon in San
Salvador and invested in a small coffee finca, primarily for recreational
purposes. A younger brother, Rafael, a Liberal militant in the Colombian
civil wars o f the 1880s, after military defeat welcomed brother Emilio’s offer
o f a safe haven in El Salvador. He went on to become the manager o f the
 coffee finca. From there, through the development o f techniques to increase
productivity and an intense work ethic, the family gradually acquired more
10 holdings. Among its numerous achievements in the field o f coffee produc­
tion was the introduction o f the highly resistant izote plant to combat soil
erosion.
Garden According to Carlos, one o f Dr. Alvarez’s nephews, “ My father was
of untiring in his work, he’d go out on horseback very early to visit all the work
Despair sites and would not remember to return for lunch, returning home many
times to have lunch at 3 or 4 p.m. and many times he would not eat until the
evening; when he went to Santa Isabel he had to go through many fields as
there were still no paths at the edges o f the volcano.” Carlos’s father recog­
nized the need to install a 200,000-gallon water tank on the finca, on the
arid slopes o f the San Salvador volcano. Carlos relayed the impact o f this
undertaking on his own consciousness: “ I owe my love for work and the
dedication that I was able to place on this sort o f effort once I became an
adult to my father’s example who when I was 8 or 10 years old took me every
day and into the evening, to the building site o f the tank. I helped to insert
the aluminum screws.” 29 The narrative, passed down through the genera­
tions, reveals how the intense love o f labor and applied intelligence allowed
the family to fertilize and irrigate inaccessible, dry lands and led to the
building o f a water-powered beneficio to avoid the risks associated with
selling to export firms. Most significantly, the notion o f expanding land-
holdings through purchases at the market price, far from representing
greed, involved applying science and hard work to previously unproductive
land. The increase in the number o f quintals produced justified this vision
o f expansion.
This organizing trope o f labor and intelligence as irrigation and fecun­
dity becomes central to the story o f how the family transformed poor, even
barren land into highly productive coffee plantations. Alvarez’s project to
turn “ El Potosí” on the arid slopes o f Volcán San Salvador into a coffee
plantation elicited scorn from friends, other coffee growers, and even fam­
ily members. Don Eugenio Araujo, owner o f the famed hacienda “ la Sunza”
in Sonsonate, came to look at the land, possibly to buy it for his son
Enrique. It was the dry season and the land looked desolate, the paths rocky
and potholed. After riding all day, as the sun was setting, don Eugenio
asked, “ Where are you going to plant the coffee?” Rafael Alvarez responded
that they would plant on all the land they had traversed. After a long silence,
Araujo commented that he would not purchase the land and that it would
never be good for coffee. At the dinner table, when presented with the main
dish, duck, Araujo responded that he didn’t eat duck. The next day a neigh­
bor overheard Eugenio comment to Arturo on the train that “ don Rafael
was going to lead his family into ruin.” Don Rafael responded by calling
the family to work harder and prove all the naysayers wrong. Years later
Rafael’s son Carlos (the author o f the memoir) was riding on a train with
Arturo Araujo, the future president o f El Salvador, who asked him about El
Potosí and whether it produced coffee. “ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, ‘this year we just
picked 15,000 quintals.’ ‘In cereza?,’ he asked. ‘No, sir, in gold [peeled],’ I
answered. ‘No, it can’t be,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry but it is true, and I invite you
to visit us whenever you like.’ A visit that never took place—the good man
could not understand how it was possible that we were already producing
15,000 quintals when they had been working their Sunza for so long and
producing less than 6,000 quintals.” 30 That Araujo was eventually consid­
ered a traitor to his class—and utterly incompetent during his brief presi­
dential administration—undoubtedly enriched a narrative destined for fam­
ily consumption. It also suggests that élite divisions at times grew out of
such competition, as noted by the U.S. agricultural expert. Yet the tale also
evokes the basic tropes o f Salvadoran producers: hard work, frugality (the
ugly duckling for dinner), risk taking, courage, and manliness, measured in
quintals produced.
Several years later, as coffee prices tumbled with the world crisis, Alvarez
met with the banker Benjamin Bloom to pay him over $100,000 in interest.
He offered Bloom one o f his nationally produced cigarettes and Bloom
scowled, asking him why he smoked that brand. Alvarez answered, “ to be
economical. . . . The good ones are very expensive.” 31 This gesture, as
$100,000 was passing through his hands and at a time when he was paying
for his children’s European education, suggests that a Yankee-like ethic o f
frugality and hard work was an engrained part o f the family’s values and
practice (other members o f the élite called themselves the “ Yankees of
Central America” ). What might then have seemed like a blatant contradic­
tion between such values and European educations nonetheless obeyed a
coherent logic.
This ethos o f labor and frugality might have carried over to labor rela­
tions, rewarding hard work. Indeed it seems that the Alvarez family was
more humane in its treatment o f its workers than others, providing cheese
 and panda to finca workers in addition to the traditional beans and tortillas.
Notwithstanding this, throughout the memoir there is little recognition o f
12 those laborers who toiled alongside the jinqueros.
A variant o f the Alvarez experience and ethos o f hard work is revealed by
James Hill. The son o f an industrialist in Manchester, Hill arrived in Sal­
Garden vador “ penniless” and built up his coffee holding, until by the early 1930s
of he employed a small army o f over three thousand people to pick coffee on
Despair his fifteen farms, two hundred workers in his mills, seven hundred women
in the cleaning process, plus 250 in supervision, cleaning, cooking, and
building. He earned a reputation as one o f the most “ modern” employers,
willing to experiment with the organization o f labor in an effort to increase
productivity: “ he treated both his trees and his workpeople more thought­
fully than was the custom in the neighborhood, yet it was plain that he knew
how to drive: ‘Won’t have my people talking!,’ said Mr. Hill emphatically.
‘They can’t talk and work, too. I f they start gabbing, I put ’em on piece
work. When a man hoes I want to see his hoe sink in like this, and he jabbed
his stick in, vertically it mustn’t just scrape. A work man, in a climate like
this, ought to be sweating in half an hour. If I see a man with his coat on, I
put him on piece work.’ ” 32 Hill’s emphasis on others’ work contrasts with
the Alvarez narrative. Yet neither offers a vision in which the notion o f
“ producers” would encompass the hard work o f laborers, in a way analo­
gous to a wide range o f other ideological formulations.33 In addition to this
discursive lacuna with regard to labor, other ideological elements impeded
the construction o f hegemonic forms o f rule. In particular, the European
dimension o f the elite’s existence in all probability intensified the racial
aspects o f the ideology and in turn rationalized the treatment o f the rural
working class. In a statement o f class and racial prejudice typical o f the
period post-1932, one cafetalero commented: “The lower class . . . has no
civilization . . . is a primitive mass that instead o f forming the basis for
progress is a drag on it and a denial o f it.” 34 Racism not surprisingly
influenced labor relations, as it provided planters with a justification for low
wages and highly unequal land distribution. For elites, all dark-skinned
rural workers were “ indios.”
The American journalist Arthur Ruhl conversed with the former presi­
dent and large-scale planter Jorge Melendez about wages and labor: “ Few o f
them did what could properly be called a good day’s work, but their wants
were so easily satisfied that when they had earned enough to exist they just
stopped. When he tried to argue the matter, they just laughed at him, he
said. As it was, they got their food and quarters and about 25 cents a day.” 35
This notion that rural workers had no real use for higher wages formed part
o f the commonsense o f the Central American planter class, and like racism
it provided a coherent rationale for maintaining wages at subsistence levels.
The attitude toward wages carried over to issues o f land access. A report o f
the U.S. military attaché is instructive in this regard: “Their arguments
usually come down to this; ‘I f we sell our land to these mozos we will have
nobody to pick our coffee for us. The best thing for everybody is to keep
things as they are. As a matter o f fact we paid our mozos very high wages
three years ago. What happened? Did they improve their living conditions?
No. They simply stayed drunk two days a week longer than they do now.
These mozos are not unhappy and as long as they do not know any better,
why go out o f our way to change matters.’ ” 36 Finally the church, a classic
pillar o f élite hegemony, had a relatively weak presence in the countryside.
Although the church maintained good relations with the government, after
the Liberal revolutions it had no explicit political role. In addition, it suf­
fered from a relatively unfavorable economic situation that impeded any
significant expansion into the countryside. In most communities that did
have parish priests, they found themselves at once cut o ff from the official
church and from popular forms o f religiosity. According to the historian o f
religion Rodolfo Cardenal: “The Church authorities o f San Salvador and
their representatives in the towns [priests] played the role o f carriers o f a
dominant ideology whose pretension was to annihilate the localism o f the
towns, their traditions, and their cultural codes. They sought to implant
Catholicism, that is, uniformity o f belief and cultural rituals, ruled by codes
that were foreign to the reality o f the people. The people rejected these
pretensions.” 37 This always latent conflict between official and popular
forms o f religion was usually more intense in indigenous communities. In
short, rarely did indigenous or popular religious practices contribute to
legitimizing élite rule.
There were, however, some points o f intersection between élite and
popular ideology and practices. Generally, where clientelism functioned
well, especially in regard to land rental or credit, it was accompanied
by deference to the patron. “ It is well known that the children o f the cam­
pesinos grew up attached to the home, to the father (tata) and the grand­
father (tatita), to the father-in-law (whom they called mi señor) they offered
 appreciation and warmth.” 38 Other evidence suggests that notions o f defer­
ence to the patrono were in turn linked to a patriarchal ethos. Yet there are
14 two caveats. First, as we shall see, the nature o f such relations changed
during the 1920s. In addition, those effective forms o f clientelism tended
to involve members o f the provincial bourgeoisie more than the agro-export
Garden élite.
of This sketch o f ideological domination suggests a very weak articulation
Despair between the organizing elements. Within the élite broadly construed there
did exist some articulation between the key elements o f the discourse. First,
consider the ideological ensemble productiuism, masculinity, patriarchy. No­
tions o f hard labor reinforced masculinity, which in turn legitimated pa­
triarchy. The other ensemble, p ro g ress, European imaginary, racial superiority,
highlighted progress and modernity spurred by European education and
imaginaries, the province o f the white race and European ancestry. If the
articulation o f these ideological elements did allow for a growing level o f
élite class cohesion, the ability to articulate with subaltern groups was more
contingent on specific sociogeographical and conjunctural economic fac­
tors related to land, labor relations, and credit. The transformations o f the
1920s created far greater stresses on both the internal and the external levels
o f articulations. In sum, the agro-export élite did not successfully cohere as
a class for itself (to use the Marxian expression)—that is, as a group that
could design policies and politics benefiting its own interests and at the
same time elevating those interests as the will o f society.
Not only did the oligarchy fail to create hegemonic forms o f domination,
but it had great difficulty in creating a corresponding institutional frame­
work. The absence o f foreign involvement and economic domination fa­
vored the development o f a cohesive, nationally based agro-financial oligar­
chy. Nonetheless, it failed to establish effective political ties to the country’s
less affluent farmers, or even to those in what might be called a provincial
bourgeoisie. When the agro-export élite formed organizations in the 1920s,
they fostered predatory relations with subordinate factions. Officials in
Washington characterized both the Asociación Agrícola and the Asociación
Cafetalera as narrow and dismissive o f the needs and interests o f smaller-
scale producers.39 The largest coffee exporters from the start had a control­
ling interest in the Asociación Cafetalera, allocating to themselves control
o f the organization’s banking function.40
Everett Wilson first identified the relationship between the late geograph-
ical consolidation o f the élite and its failure to cohere politically and institu­
tionally: “ before 1920 lingering political rivalries prevented the members o f
the administrative group from consolidating the support o f any particular
economic interest and further impeded the emergence o f a clearly defined
national elite.” 41 With only a handful o f exceptions, most o f the country’s
wealthy families had stayed out o f the national political arena, relying in­
stead on local power-brokering, backroom deals, pressure, and negotiation,
but rarely playing a prominent role in electoral or factional politics.
Unlike in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, the élite did not organize a right-
wing “ conservative party.” The ninetenth-century Salvadoran Conservatives
had been soundly defeated during the Liberal revolutions. To the victors and
to the immigrants who entered the early-twentieth-century oligarchy, a
clerical-based party was unattractive. At the same time, the emerging oligar­
chy’s economic power was not coincident with ownership o f haciendas and
control over a vast rural population. And there was no pressing need for the
emerging oligarchy to organize politically. By the teens, when members o f
the oligarchy (roughly synonymous with the agro-financial élite) began to
control processing, exports, and financing as well as amassing huge for­
tunes, they found it expedient to delegate power to an established political
class made up o f judges, lawyers, and businesspeople and backed by the
military. It was only during the 1920s, as Wilson explains, that the élite
began to organize itself: “ By the end o f the decade the previously frag­
mented wealthy groups formed alliances which were the bases o f a new elite
structure.” 42
Although they did not speak with one voice in the political arena, the
oligarchs had an increasingly strong sense o f their collective social and
economic interests. They achieved their goals through two channels. First,
they allied with local and national officials in the hope that they could
control disputes over land, labor, and other resources. In addition, they
worked with political bosses and others o f the political class to gain favor,
information, and concessions in their dealings with the state, especially in
the provision o f financing and services. They therefore tended to leave
politics to a lesser alliance o f rural bourgeois and petit-bourgeois sectors
while maintaining certain veto and lobbying powers that they could exercise
at critical junctures. Informal, personal networks characterized most o f
these political relationships. Their very fluidity meant that the Salvadoran
state could not be a machine for the administration o f oligarchic interests.
Rather, patronage-based networks held the state together, accounting for
much o f the corrupt and undemocratic character o f political practices. Un­
der these conditions neither the oligarchy nor the state created a strategy to
cope with the social dislocations wrought by the boom and bust cycles o f
the 1920s.

The Agony of the Smallholding Peasantry

The land speculation boom and the growing power o f the agro-financial
oligarchy brought about a decomposition o f the smallholding peasantry.
The erosion o f the smallholding class and the concomitant rise o f new
social groups in moments o f severe economic crisis contributed to the rise
o f a massive labor mobilization for wage increases and land reform (see
chapter 3).
Most contemporary descriptions o f the rural economy around 1920 high­
lighted the symbiotic coexistence o f smallholding peasants with larger
commercial farms. Travelers mentioned the commercial connections be­
tween smallholders and larger landowners, united by the “ energy and driv­
ing force that are nationally characteristic.” 43 They noted that “ plot after
plot o f coffee ground as large as village squares . . . each owned and worked
by some peasant proprietor,” and argued that the peasants and workers
“ had never suffered from the rapacity o f large landholders.” 44 These de­
scriptions, while not entirely inaccurate for the preceding years, had be­
come anachronistic by the end o f the 1920s for a large and increasing
number o f rural Salvadorans. In particular, they failed to take into account
the social transformations that were already under way in the countryside,
particularly in the west, where the dramatic growth o f the coffee industry
increased friction between large commercial producers and the rural poor.
They also failed to account for the layered nature o f the agrarian landscape
o f the region. Colonial-era haciendas that had stepped up production and
increased employment during the early twentieth century made up one
layer. Even after some subdivision, these formidable and diversified proper­
ties often combined coffee, sugar, and grain production with cattle herding
and logging. A significant smallholder and peasant sector, which had its
origins in the process o f privatizing community and municipal lands in the
late nineteenth century, formed the second layer. Finally, the third layer
encompassed rich peasants and entrepreneur-settlers who carved medium-
sized commercial farms from municipal lands or previously uncultivated
state-owned land. By the early twentieth century these three layers so blan­
keted the western countryside that no agrarian frontier remained.45 17
The expansion o f the country’s population during the early twentieth
century compounded the effects o f the closing rural frontier. The rate o f
demographic expansion had been increasing since the late nineteenth cen­ Garden
tury, and by 1920 El Salvador had nearly two and a half times as many people of
as in 1880, when around half o f the country’s land was uncultivated.46 Despair
Despite some emigration to Honduras and the Panama Canal Zone, the
pressure on the land only increased during the 1920s as commercial use
intensified.47 In this situation peasant families had little choice but to parti­
tion their landholdings, seek wage work wherever they might find it, or
attach themselves to the farms o f larger landholders.
The rise in land values also spurred élite acquisition o f peasant land, as
did the precipitous drop o f coffee prices in 1921 and the ensuing increase in
loan defaults by smallholders.48 In fact, some observers estimated that
during the 1920s commercial landowners absorbed up to 30 percent o f
small properties.49 The economy’s vulnerability and lack o f liquid capital
meant that despite the heightened economic activity o f the 1920s, the élite
continued to rely on land investment and money lending as a long-term
strategy, given the lack o f liquid capital and the high cost o f borrowing. To
cite an important example, Emilio Redaelli, an Italian entrepreneur and
mayor o f Juayúa during the late 1920s, made loans and advances to the
Indian peasants o f the region and used these ties to mobilize labor on his
farms.50 Similarly, in Izalco the Barrientos family held mortgages on many
small plots, controlled a myriad o f small-scale transactions in coffee and
other crops that enmeshed Indian and ladino peasants in ties o f dependence
and exploitation through mortgages, and bought crops in advance at far
below market rates.51
The agony o f the smallholding class—both loss o f land and inadequate
land to reproduce the family unit—directly pushed increasing numbers o f
rural Salvadorans into wage labor to provide for increasing portions o f their
subsistence. Estimates based on the level o f sugar and coffee production
indicate that the four departments o f western El Salvador had a seasonal
wage labor force o f over 100,000 workers. The census category jornalero is
imprecise, since it excludes women and includes urban day laborers as well
as semi-proletarians. Nevertheless, the proportion o f jornaleros to a g ri-
 cultores does provide some insight into the advance o f proletarianization
in the countryside, since the great majority o f jornaleros worked for wages
i8 on fincas and plantations. In Ahuachapán the proportion was 7:1, in La
Libertad 13 :1, in Sonsonate 15 :1, and in Santa Ana i2 :i.52
The birth o f this new peasant laboring class (semi-proletarians) was
Garden largely unmentioned in public discourse. First one adult or child had to
of work more weeks on a hacienda; then another family member; and then
Despair another, until hacienda labor came to dominate their lives. The world o f
these peasant laborers took shape in the many rural setdements that were
dispersed throughout the region. Many o f those villagers found work dur­
ing the planting, pruning, and harvest seasons on the coffee plantations.
During the boom years o f the 1920s the increased availability o f wage
labor and small wage increases had partially compensated for the increased
landlessness. The wage increase was due to the demand for labor occa­
sioned by the expansion o f cotton production in the east and public works
projects. In some parts o f the country coffee pickers could make two colo­
nes ($1) a day.53 In 1929, however, the demand for public works employ­
ment began to decline just as the price o f coffee tumbled, and as a direct
result coffee workers’ wages were slashed to 30 cents a day.54
Colonos also emerged from the smallholding peasantry. The 1938 coffee
census underscores the importance o f this group: 18 percent o f the entire
rural population o f western El Salvador lived on commercial farms that
produced coffee.55 This represented about 55,000 people living on 3,000
farms, with the largest farms or haciendas employing a few hundred colo­
nos each.56 Colonato generally involved incorporating peasants into a farm
or estate in exchange for access to any combination o f meals, housing,
land, wages, water, and firewood, perhaps with rent payments in labor, a
share o f the colono’s crop, or cash payments.57 In eastern El Salvador
colonato usually entailed the payment o f a fixed rent in kind, whereas in
western El Salvador colonato also became important to farmers and hacen­
dados as a way o f securing cheap labor in addition to obtaining rent income
or crop production.58 Colono labor was cheaper, with lower cash trans­
fers, and colonos could also generate additional income for the landowner
through fees for land, housing, and the sale o f goods in the hacienda store.
In exchange for labor services at lower wages (at times no wages), estate
owners usually provided their resident workers with access to small plots
for food production. In 1929 an officer with the U.S. Agricultural Service
described the world o f the colonos: “ Every finca operator makes an effort to
have as many permanent laborers as possible. These workers known as
‘colonos’ are really one o f the most important factors in the industry; they 19
may be depended upon to work all-year-round and are trained in all the
different operations, while the ‘piece’ worker is employed only during the
picking season and his living conditions are, o f course, not as satisfactory Garden
as the permanent worker who is provided with a small house, food and of
other necessities. Many o f the larger plantations operate small commis­ Despair
saries, have their own chapels and are really small communities rather than
farms.” 59 Conditions on farms could vary significantly. Among the best-
equipped were the Hill farms, described in these terms by Ruhl: “ There was
a common kitchen, where the women made tortillas and cooked beans and
rice—the raw materials were included in their wages—and several barrack­
like rooms, built round a court and fitted with double-tier bunks. They were
dismal, flea-ridden caves, inappropriate enough, it seemed, to a climate
where fresh air and space are the cheapest things, but security is security,
and as long as the permanent laborers worked on the plantation they were
sure o f the use o f a bit o f land for a garden or a roof and enough to eat.” 60
When the decline in coffee prices began in late 1927, owners cut back on
cash expenditures and eventually turned colonos into a captive labor force:
under miserable living conditions, they were forced to work more for ac­
cess to land, but without any o f the customary benefits in terms o f steady
wages.61 As Wilson pointed out, the terms o f land tenancy changed in the
1920s. Landlords obliged all tenants to pay the terraje (rent) in advance, thus
compelling them to assume all the risk. The social critic Alberto Masferrer
condemned the new system, which involved both colonos and smallhold­
ers: “ For a number o f months this newspaper has reported the lamentable
complaints o f people who don’t dare to cultivate someone else’s land be­
cause the rental takes all the production and remains the same no matter
what the yield.” 62 Galindo Pohl recalled the situation in the department of
Sonsonate. Before the 1920s, campesinos would engage in sharecropping
with landlords to whom they would deliver one-quarter o f the crop. They
also provided several days o f free labor and were available for paid labor.
The situation then changed: “ During the 1920s the [colono] obligation to
work on the hacienda in exchange for wages had disappeared. Also in those
years campesinos began to rent lands for cash payment, which the patronos
saw with great pleasure.” 63
 Throughout Latin America during the first half o f the twentieth century,
el colonato was the system o f labor relations most conducive to social
harmony.64 Not only did the landlord or his administrator have close con­
tact with the colono, but he typically had control over every aspect o f life,
fostering strongly dependent relations. As noted above, despite profound
levels o f élite racism and arrogance, hacendados often established patri­
archal, dyadic relations with colono families, resorting to rewards and
gestures o f friendship more often than coercion to achieve their goals. Most
significantly, the hacendado guaranteed access to land and offered a degree
o f protection from the calamities that beset rural life. Colonos often carried
out the will o f the landlord in the numerous quotidian conflicts with nearby
villagers, involving land access, grazing, or water. In El Salvador as else­
where, colonato was most successful on cattle haciendas, where land was
abundant and labor requirements minimal in comparison with coffee farms
and plantations.
Many western Salvadoran colonos maintained relations o f loyalty and
subservience to their patrón through the worst o f tíre economic crisis and
mass mobilization. Yet thousands o f others broke their traditional dyadic
links to the patrón and instead allied themselves with village laborers,
whose relations with the colonos had often been antagonistic. The recent
formation o f large sectors o f this class, combined with the rapid deteriora­
tion o f wages and living conditions, were major factors in the anomalous
political and social development o f western Salvadoran colonos.

No Shelter from the Storm: The Planter Response to the Crisis

The world crisis struck El Salvador with particular ferocity. Coffee prices
plummeted from 22.2 cents a pound in 1929 to 13 cents in 1930 to 8 cents in
1931. I f living and working conditions had been poor before the crisis, by
1930 they had become intolerable. The planters responded to the precipitous
drop in coffee prices with wage cuts that affected both semi-proletarians
and colonos, By the end o f 1931 wages in the rural areas had been cut
further, to 15 -2 5 cents for a day’s work. Planters reduced wages to 50-60
percent o f their 1927 levels.65 In August 1931 the U.S. consul noted the
effects o f the steep decline: “ It is evident that the purchasing power o f the
laboring classes, especially in the rural districts, has been distinctly cur­
tailed. The ragged appearance o f die workers is notable.” 66
 The crisis squeezed western colonos in particular, from two directions:
rent and other charges increased along with the workload, as wages de­
creased. A newspaper account graphically denounced the contemporary 21
form o f colonato: “ Whoever has been one day alone in those so-called great
haciendas will have noticed how the patronos treat their colonos: for one
manzana o f land that they rent for corn production they make them pay 15 Garden
or 20 in cash, or two fanegas o f corn, and the poor colono also has to work of
the hacienda’s crops for six or eight weeks for a miserable wage . . . The Despair
disgraced colono works only for the patron . . . There are patrones that for
any reason deny part or all o f their miserable wage to the jornalero [day
laborer].” 67 In the eyes o f semi-proletarians, conditions for colonos and
other laborers deteriorated as a direct result o f planters’ responses to the
crisis. By 1931 many farmers, including the wealthiest, were charging their
workers for access to water and increasing prices in their company stores.68
In an extensive report that year, the governor o f San Salvador asserted that
many patronos had been “ abusing workers” by paying them in tokens. One
plantation owner acknowledged to the governor that he was making more
profits from his store than from his farm.69 Similarly, plantation owners
enforced their exclusive control over workers’ earnings by excluding out­
side merchants from their farms to avoid competition.70
Wage cuts were one thing. Whether or not convincingly, planters could
after all attribute them to the decline in coffee prices. Yet the extra-economic
exploitation was so blatant that campesinos could not but question any
claims by the landlords to paternalism and legitimacy. Other elements o f
campesino life on the farms similarly betrayed the elite’s lack o f concern
for even the appearance o f paternalistic obligations toward their workers.
The same report by the governor o f San Salvador castigated large-scale
landowners for their failure to provide schooling o f any sort for the families
o f thousands o f colonos and workers71 Another official report underscored
the meager food rations, the miserable housing, and the lack o f any medical
attention to workers.72 Somehow a decade’s worth o f savings, investments,
and profits o f 50-100 percent had left even the wealthiest landowners in­
capable o f navigating the impending social crisis with offers o f improved
wages.
The planters’ response to the crisis merely exacerbated the situation for
the rural poor. In addition to the pressing problems o f below-subsistence
wages, abusive working conditions, and growing land loss, Salvadorans
 22

Garden
of
Despair

Woman on country
road, 1939. Photo
by Carlos Alvarado,
courtesy of Mauricio
Alvarado.

Workers on
"El Potosí" Coffee
Plantation, 1939.
Photo by Carlos
Alvarado, courtesy
of Mauricio Alvarado.

.
 23

Garden
of
Despair

Workers on
"El Potosí" Coffee
Plantation, 1939.
Photo by Carlos
Alvarado, courtesy of
Mauricio Alvarado.

Workers on
"El Potosí" Coffee
Plantation, 1939.
Photo by Carlos
Alvarado, courtesy
of Mauricio Alvarado.
 also faced a food shortage. Throughout the late 1920s market forces, lim­
ited land for cultivation, and natural conditions made the country vul­
24 nerable to periodic food crises: while pushing many to the edge o f starva­
tion, these shortages also created opportunities for windfall enrichment for
large-scale producers and merchants, especially the Meardi family.73 Food
Garden shortages hit the western zone again in 19 31.74 This time the crisis was
of worse in the west, where an eruption o f the Izalco volcano sent heavy ash,
Despair while rain damaged crops throughout Ahuachapán and Santa Ana, wiping
out entire cornfields.75 In May the interior minister complained to the de­
partmental governors that many landlords only offered lands for corn culti­
vation with advanced cash payments: “We must urge the landowners to
agree to rent them as is customary. . . reminding them that it is patriotic to
help alleviate even in one small part the country’s difficult situation.” 76 This
remarkable response by planters and hacendados revealed their utter inca­
pacity to view the effects o f the food or larger crisis in collective, strate­
gic terms.

No Bridges Left Standing: The Limits of Élite Hegemony

By the end o f 1931 a critical moment had been reached for the rural poor.
Landowners, according to many, expected laborers to come to work only
“ for the food.” 77 In the absence o f systematic, effective practices o f wage
bargaining and given the state’s failure to respond to the growing needs o f
the rural poor, many workers and peasants in western El Salvador turned to
unions and eventually to revolutionary politics. Yet poverty, exploitation,
and hunger alone cannot explain the successes o f the Salvadoran left in
building a revolutionary movement during 1930 and 1931. In chapter 3 we
will examine the organizational practices o f the left and the rural poor. Here
we will touch on tire consequences o f the Salvadoran elite’s incapacity to
construct a discursive and institutional framework for communicating and
negotiating with subaltern sectors. Élites throughout the Americas have
always sought to maintain channels, bonds, and dependencies that divided
workers and peasants, and tied them to a status quo.78 Although individu­
ally the Salvadoran élites and especially the provincial bourgeoisie behaved
in this fashion, ultimately they failed dismally. As we saw earlier, the elite’s
racialized view o f the rural poor was an impediment to entering into serious
negotiation with the workers and to entertaining a reformist strategy that
might have allowed for a modicum o f social improvement. Finally, as Carlos
Gregorio López has shown, nationalism was not at all the province o f the
élite. Rather, middle-class intellectuals propounded a version o f national­
ism that directly challenged the undemocratic character o f the élite and the 25
state.79 Thus what was in other countries an important hegemonic form
was largely unavailable to the élite.
During the decade preceding the crisis, the Salvadoran élites had re­ Garden
mained socially distant from the rural poor and been unable to forge a com­ of
mon social or political project. This social gu lf between élite and subaltern Despair
was not merely a function o f the élite’s transnational character. Rather,
social distance was the product o f a two-way perception, and the rural poor
certainly formed perceptions o f their own, in part through the relative
autonomy o f their traditions and ideologies. People who were children and
youths during the late 1920s and early 1930s only recall two social groups,
los ricos and los pobres. Regardless o f political affiliation, that fundamental
division structured all forms o f discourse about politics and society, and the
predominant use in testimonies o f the plural category “ los ricos” over the
individual “ patrón” is a significant index o f its salience. This inchoate
substratum o f populist ideology both reflected and conditioned the social
gulf that so sharply divided Salvadorans.
More than a decade before the crisis, observers noted a potentially
dangerous distance between the owners and their workers. In 1916 Dana
Munro, the noted scholar and diplomat, observed that “ the lower classes
have no more inborn respect for authority and love o f peace than have those
ofNicaragua and Honduras . . . I f they are on the whole less prone to revolt,
this is due to the fact that they are fairly contented under present condi­
tions, and that they are held under control by a much stronger and bet­
ter organized military power then in those countries. The government is
maintained . . . not by popular respect for authority or by the will o f the
people, but by force.” 80 Another observer o f the social divide substanti­
ated Munro’s remarks during the 1920s: “The divisions among classes in
Salvador . . . are so very hard and definite that the interests o f no two o f
them coincide . . . These divisions are positive and acute in a way scarcely to
be recognized in Europe outside o f Prussia before the war. In Europe it is
not absurd to suggest that, taken all around, the interests o f all classes really
coincide . . . In Central America it would be absurd to argue that the
immediate interests o f poorer classes are one with those who rule. Some­
thing o f the Spanish conquest still remains.” 81
The élite’s precariously low level o f hegemony thus was apparent well
 before the advent o f serious rural labor organizing. Yet another observer o f
pre-crisis Salvador stated that “ the conditions to which its labor is subjected
26 to (in order to keep down that one phase o f production cost) are none too
conducive to the nocturnal rest o f a conscientious plantation owner.” 82
More significantly, the planter James Hill commented in 1927, or two years
Garden before the dramatic increase in rural organizing, on the growing pressure
of among workers for land reform and the disdain they had for the property
Despair rights o f the country’s élite: “ Bolshevism? Oh yes . . . Its drifting in. The
work people hold meetings on Sundays and get very excited . . . Yes, there’ll
be trouble one o f these days . . . They say: ‘We dig the holes for the trees! We
clean o ff the weeds! We prune the trees! We pick the coffee! Who earns the
coffee then?. . . We do!’ . . . Why, they’ve even picked out parcels that please
them most, because they like the climate or think that the trees are in better
condition and will produce more. Yes, there’ll be trouble one o f these
days.” 83 What is most remarkable about this testimony is the moment o f its
utterance, when there were no visible leftist organizations in the country­
side. The language o f class and the implied lack o f legitimacy o f a powerful
oligarch like Hill stand out sharply in the reported dialogue. Although we
do not know exactly how this radical language penetrated the countryside
before the advent o f union organizing in the late 1920s, it is likely that the
language o f obrerismo (see chapter 2) had a presence in the countryside
through the work interactions between artisans and rural people. Regard­
less o f its origins, the imagined division o f the estate—even allowing for
a dose o f paranoia in Hill—strongly suggests a subaltern sense o f the il­
legitimacy o f the landed élite.
The testimony o f the daughter o f colonos on “ San Isidro,” one o f the
largest cane and coffee producing haciendas, echoed that o f Hill: “ I moved
to El Guayabo with my parents when I was an adolescent. We were colonos
here and so were all the families in the canton. [My father] worked as a
caporal on the hacienda San Isidro. I picked coffee with my mother and we
sold goods in the hacienda market. When I got married we got a plot o f land
as colonos. My parents were very active in the union, always going to
meetings at night. They believed that they would break up San Isidro and
give us the land.” 84
In indigenous communities a memory o f land loss and o f the time
“when all the land was free” was even more powerful than among ladino
(non-Indian) campesinos. In 1918, when the Melendez-Quifiónez regime
organized the Ligas Rojas to combat the political opposition, it directly
promoted the idea o f returning the communal lands to the western indige­
nous communities.85 Although it is doubtful that any land was returned, the 27
Ligas Rojas legitimized the notion o f returning the land to its rightful
owners, and at the same time concretized an alliance between the regime
and some indigenous communities in opposition to the local ladino élite. Garden
As we shall see in chapter 4, a significant ideological current circulated of
through those communities which defended indigenous land rights. Despair
Although there were also conflicts within the Subaltern classes be­
tween Indians and ladinos and between colonos and village-based semi­
proletarians, the reconfiguring o f productive relations and the expansion o f
salaried labor tended toward healing those rifts, while exacerbating the gulf
between the élites and subalterns. Much coffee production took place on
relatively small and mid-size farms, but the transformation o f haciendas
into large-scale coffee and sugar plantations, where hundreds o f colonos
and thousands o f wage workers mobilized each year to pick coffee and cut
sugarcane, did not at all lend itself to paternalistic relations between land-
owners and workers.86
Planters’ arrogance and opulence ensured that the increasingly miser­
able wages symbolized in the phrases “ to work for the tortillas” and “work
just for the food” did not appear to rural laborers as the result o f market
forces. Although profit margins were not public knowledge, they must have
appeared obscene to the workers. These trends increased the sense o f moral
outrage and political anger among many campesinos. Modesto Ramirez,
for example, a peasant leader involved in the insurrection o f 1932, recalled
his politically formative experiences when interviewed after his arrest and
just before his execution by the police:

I have been an honest worker. I lived in the haciendas that surround the Lago de
Ilopango as a colono o f some o f the señores. The time came when they would not
even offer work nor land, and i f we got one o f these it was under the worst
circumstances and the most sterile o f plots. O f the ten fanegas o f corn that one
manzana produces we had to return five or six as payment and for the right to live
on the patron’s land we had to pay fifteen monthly days o f work without wage.
Whoever did not fulfill this obligation was expelled from the hacienda, they’d
burn the rancho [hut] we built with our own labor and at our own expense. I had
to abandon my woman and children; the work was not enough to feed them and
less to clothe and educate them. I do not know where they are. Misery separated
 us forever . . . And when have you seen that the authorities have sided with the
poor against the rich? I f we owe them they rule against us but when they owe us
28 we can’t find a court that will listen to us.87

Although Ramirez was a communist when he uttered these words, his story
and its populist inflection were relevant to nonmilitants. This testimony
Garden
condenses the forms o f extra-economic coercion, class justice, and the
of
Despair pathos o f poverty. While surely recounting an extreme form o f élite domina­
tion, nonetheless the tale reflected aspects o f colono experience that would
have been credible to Ramirez’s class brethren. In short, it provided a
diaphanous vision o f a social world o f oppression bordering on slavery.
Similarly, Alberto Shul, an adolescent from Nahuizalco, in the early 1930s
traveled throughout the west looking for a decent job. He synthesized in
one phrase his painful memory o f his joyless adolescence and the under­
lying motive for rebellion: “ We worked from six in the morning to six at
night, for a useless wage” 88
These and other testimonies o f landlord abuse encouraged the notion
among laborers and colonos that not only was the élite owning land il­
legitimately, but it really was a race apart, just as the oligarchy had sus­
pected. Sidney Mintz insightfully made the distinction between “ bad times”
and “ evil times” on the plantation: the difference resided in the perception
o f collective culpability by the landlords. Under some conditions, when
subalterns recognized the landlords’ or capitalists’ culpability in their suf­
fering, they come to “ question the legitimacy o f an existing allocation o f
power, rather than the terms o f that allocation.” 89 In western Salvador by
the early 1930s, only a minority o f the rural poor doubted that “ evil times”
reigned on the haciendas and plantations. Whether or not peasants and
rural proletarians saw the evil as somehow otherworldly—the result o f pacts
with the devil, for example—there was no question to many that the wealthy
landlords had become agents o f these evil times.
There were, o f course, campesinos in western Salvador who were defer­
ential to the members o f the élite and their claims. In particular, in towns
and villages where Indians took part in the labor movement, ladino small­
holders and workers were much less likely to join. In some towns small­
holders survived without falling into the laboring ranks, in part because of
their paternalistic ties to more prosperous farmers. Nonetheless, these pat­
terns were not consistent from town to town. In western municipalities like
Chalchuapa (Santa Ana) and the ladino cantones that straddled the border
between Sonsonate and Santa Ana, where small and mid-size holders pre­
dominated, social relations were more harmonious and participation in the
movement and revolt less visible.90 Alastair White noted in discussing the 29
insurrection o f 1932 that “ in places where the coffee-planters were not quite
so cut o ff socially from the bulk o f the rural population; where they did not
own such large estates and generally resided in the local area rather than in Garden
a city; and above all where they cushioned their workers from the blow of
caused by the fall o f coffee prices, the rebellion did not occur.” 91 Despair
Our research nonetheless has led to a paradoxical finding: despite the
significant variations in the local, municipal-level histories o f land and
labor and their differentiated class and ethnic relations, an important con­
vergence o f popular sector experiences took place during the late 1920s,
lending to the movement an element o f strength despite the continued
economic power o f agrarian elites. Certain common memories also shaped
the subaltern experience, in addition to the pervasive pattern o f relatively
rapid immiseration and a populistic sensibility. The memory and myth o f
easily available land during the nineteenth century, with a state-sanctioned
practice o f guaranteeing to communities sufficient land for their needs,
persisted among the rural poor and contributed to views o f latter-day élite
landownership as illegitimate and ill-gotten.92 These memories o f land
availability and land loss merged with a regional tradition o f collective
struggle in defense o f communal rights, shaping a widespread ideological
acceptance o f radical agrarian reform. In addition, western Salvadoran
workers and peasants were deeply rooted in the region and were not likely
to “vacate,” as occurred in other plantation zones in times o f crisis but
instead remained in the region and placed demands upon the state and
élites.93
According to Galindo Pohl, a close observer o f contemporary Sonsonate-
can urban and rural society, although the memory o f ejidal and communal
land was present among indigenous and other campesinos, more signifi­
cant was the issue o f access to land to plant the milpa: “ But while the
campesinos, as colonos or residents o f cantons and caseríos where they
possessed a plot, could plant corn, they could compensate for the ejidal
plots they sold. They did not miss as much the ejido plot but the ability to
plant corn . . . the campesinos began to complain that they could not
control the planting o f corn. In all the rural communities there had existed a
relationship o f dependence between campesinos and the land, but in that
 region there was also another important element, the association between
campesinos and corn as body and soul o f a legendary unity.” 94 Galindo
3o Pohl’s argument is significant, if ultimately unverifiable. The indigenous
campesinos o f western Salvador had elaborate rituals surrounding la milpa,
including collective labor, celebrations, and religious invocations.95 Those
Garden rituals were not necessarily based on individual or collective ownership o f
of land, yet they are hard to imagine as adaptable to land controlled by elites.
Despair Regardless, Galindo Pohl is correct to point out how the milpa was sacred
to western campesinos. As the scourge o f hunger infested the western
countryside, the élite denial o f access to land for the milpa became an act
o f profanity.
Two contrasting analytical models are both useful in understanding the
massive and radical prise de conscience o f the rural poor. First is James Scott’s
notion o f “ moral economy,” whereby peasants are moved to revolt when the
élite is no longer willing or able to provide what it had provided to the sub­
altern in the past as a means to obtain subsistence (usually land).96 The
vision offered by travelers and others o f the harmonious rural society o f the
teens and early twenties was, if nothing else, that o f a society in which élites
and subalterns accepted certain moral economic notions o f duty and obliga­
tion. During the crisis, there is little doubt that peasants, semi-proletarians,
and colonos came to view that moral economy as bankrupt.
The complex process whereby communal and ejidal land was privatized
during the late nineteenth century left memory traces that highlighted prior
indigenous control over land and the access to open spaces for cultivation
and pasture. Yet the process o f removing peasants from their means o f
production and lands was too prolonged and variegated to create a sharp
image o f primitive accumulation. As the crisis o f the late 1920s deepened, the
experience o f land loss combined with the degrading working conditions
came to resemble a new stage o f primitive accumulation. When landlords
blocked peasants from access to land and those who had lost land became
proletarians, then the memory o f primitive accumulation, their collective
expropriation, became a salient, meaningful image. This second stage o f
primitive accumulation in western Salvador and subaltern resistance then
began to be “written in the annals o f mankind in letters o f blood and fire.” 97

The next chapter outlines the political landscape o f the 1920s, revealing the
tumultuous political currents that formed a wave o f reformism and pushed
aside the dictatorial Melendez-Quiñónez regimes and directly challenged
the oligarchy. Reformist politicians, notably Arturo Araujo, drew support
from an increasingly mobilized campesinado, yet their failure to deliver on
the promise o f rights for rural labor and agrarian reform would further
radicalize the movement.
Chapter Two

A Bittersweet Transition:
Politics and Labor in the 1920s

D
uring the 1920s El Salvador experienced a transition
from authoritarian to democratic governance. In 1927
Pío Romero Bosque assumed the presidency and immedi­
ately broke with the Melendez-Quiñónez family, who had
ruled the country for fifteen years. Supported by an in­
cipient labor movement and by the urban middle classes,
Romero Bosque used his political capital to institute fun­
damental reforms that democratized the electoral system
at the national and local levels and further stimulated
the growth o f the urban labor movement and social demo­
cratic politics. Reformist political and intellectual currents
sharply critiqued the hierarchical nature o f society and sup­
ported the development o f a labor movement that carried
forth a mission o f social transformation. Yet by 1931 the
incipient coalition between the Partido Laborista, the key
reformist political party, and the labor movement had fallen
apart, and popular hopes in democratic social change had
been dashed on the hard rocks o f state repression. This
chapter reviews the political development o f the country
during the 1920s in an attempt to understand the stillbirth o f Salvadoran
social democracy.
33

Urban Economic Growth

The rapid expansion o f rural production and government spending during A

the teens and twenties also stimulated urban economic activities. The num­ Bittersweet
ber o f manufacturing and construction workers grew during these years, as Transition
the urban population expanded and San Salvador became a primary city, with
a population o f nearly 100,000. Although El Salvador had always had a large
share o f its population involved in artisanal and service work, census data
show the rapid growth o f relatively large nuclei o f artisans in departmental
capitals and some o f the larger, well-located towns, such as Izalco and
Tacuba. Many o f these artisans were directly connected to the expanding
agrarian economy: carpentry, metalwork, millwork, railroad work, and
other occupations expanded along with the traditional agricultural crops.
Haciendas always had many carpenters on their payroll; ingenios and coffee
mills required electricians, mechanics, and masons. In a protected economy
like El Salvador’s, where high import taxes raised the price o f imported
consumer goods, cheap consumer goods were in high demand and provided
opportunities for local manufacturing and repair workshops. Artisanal
production increased significantly as more workers purchased basic con­
sumer products. Cloth, shoes, clothes, soap, work tools, leather, matches,
sugar, liquor, candies, furniture, cigarettes, bread, and metal products were
common manufactured goods. Industrial and service occupations also ex­
panded dramatically during the 1920s, including longshore work, rail work,
mining, electrical and mechanical work, hauling and driving, textile work,
and typesetting. Although most o f these jobs were performed by men,
women dominated the growing textile sector as well as the markets. By the
late 1920s urban workers and artisans accounted for some fifty thousand
people, 12 percent o f the country’s economically active population.1
By the early 1920s El Salvador had 4,600 civilian employees (the largest
sector in Central America), 3,000 teachers, a large number o f commercial
and office employees, and a sizeable officer corps.2 These middle sectors
also began to organize themselves, as teachers, service, and sales and office
workers formed associations that eventually gained collective bargaining
and other rights from Romero Bosque’s administration. This emerging
 middle class and urban work force would prove significant in the formation
o f a democratic opposition to the Melendez-Quiñónez regimes.
34
All in the Family: The Melendez-Quiñónez Years

A The assassination o f a reform president, Manuel Enrique Araujo, in 1913 sig­

Bittersweet naled the beginning o f a long period o f authoritarian rule by the Melendez-
Transition Quiñónez family clan. Araujo approved measures that favored popular con­
sumption and began to consider land reform. Although its circumstances
were never clarified, it was widely assumed that the assassination was con­
nected to Araujo’s anti-oligarchic agenda. His vice-president, Doctor Carlos
Melendez, assumed the presidency provisionally and for the following four­
teen years controlled the state with his brother (Jorge Melendez) and his
son-in-law (Alfonso Quiñónez Molina), who alternated in the presidency.
Initially the regime had roots in the personalistic but relatively competi­
tive political (if not electorally democratic) system that allowed some open­
ness among members o f the country’s professional class (doctors, lawyers,
judges) and the agrarian bourgeoisie, with a power-sharing focus that pre­
cluded the continued hold o f one faction on power. Although the highest
levels o f the oligarchy looked down on the Melendez and Quiñónez families
as parvenus, during the late teens and early twenties the governing families
were able to obtain support from élite as well as middle social sectors based
on unprecedented export and internal tax revenues. The commitment o f
previous liberal regimes to the protection o f small holders declined, as the
governing clan fostered large-scale investments and subsidies for the de­
velopment o f rail, road, port, and communication infrastructure, along
with notable increases in other areas, including urban schools and a mod­
ernized military.3
Through a combination o f repression, electoral manipulation, coopta­
tion, and patronage, the clan managed to garner support from local politi­
cal bosses, provincial agrarian bourgeois, and urban entrepreneurs, includ­
ing artisans, and thereby thwart the opposition from urban middle sectors
and workers. Perhaps their greatest political feat was to neutralize threats
from a fractious military that after initial resistance became more acquies­
cent and received an increasing share o f resources in exchange. In the rural
areas the regime initially relied on the Ligas Rojas, an organization which
combined paramilitary, political, and patronage functions.
 The Ligas represented an attempt by Alfonso Quiñónez Molina, whose
campaign rhetoric underscored “ the social question,” to preempt and in­
corporate reformist organizing among workers and peasants. They were 35
loosely structured mass organizations created and controlled by supporters
of the Melendez-Quiñónez family and its official party, the Partido Nacional
Democrático (p n d ). In many localities they offered a means for negotiating A
with local factions (especially indigenous leaders) and building patronage Bittersweet
networks. The organization o f the Ligas and the regime’s drive to gain Transition
support among popular sectors had contradictory political effects. The
Ligas certainly enshrined regime violence as an effective form o f repression:
their members would beat up and even kill opposition members. Yet to a
limited degree, the regime necessarily allowed for the circulation o f dis­
courses about the “ social question.”4
The Ligas and the p n d appealed to the indigenous people o f Izalco as
part o f their drive to capture electoral support and organize las Ligas Rojas.
The p n d offered, in effect, to restore the communal lands to the indígenas
of Izalco, who had lost them “ in the name o f civilization or due to a . . . loan
shark.” 5 Although it is doubtful that any land was actually returned to the
Izalqueño Indians, the p n d did cement an alliance with the leading indige­
nous cofradía in the town. That alliance simultaneously promoted the in­
digenous organization and supported it to a certain extent against the en­
croachment o f ladino planters and farmers, particularly in disputes over
water and transit rights.6
Despite the apparent stability o f the the Melendez-Quiñónez regimes
between 1913 and 1927, they experienced serious electoral challenges in
19x8 and 1922. The first challenge to the governing clan came with prepara­
tions for the elections o f January 1919. Tomás Palomo initially combined
official backing with a promise o f democratic reforms and built a signifi­
cant base among middle-class and working-class groups. The family clan
chose, however, to perpetuate itself in power by electing Jorge Melendez
through electoral fraud and making ample use o f the violent Ligas Rojas.7
In 1921 a protest o f market women led to the regime’s first full-scale
use o f violent repression. New currency policies based on a gold standard
meant eliminating traditional forms o f currency that circulated in markets.
When mostly female vendors protested those policies in San Salvador, sol­
diers began to gun them down.8 Led by the butchers, some market workers
and vendors engaged in violent resistance, but to no avail. Simultaneously,
 shoe manufacturers and shop owners used the regime’s backing o f repres­
sion as an excuse for reneging on a settlement that had ended one o f the
36 first strikes in San Salvador. The crushing o f these two popular initiatives
alienated the nascent labor movement from the Melendez-Quiñónez re­
gime. However, throughout its reign the regime refrained from frontal
A assaults against the labor movement, and the labor movement reciprocated.
Bittersweet The Melendez-Quiñónez regime had to respond to demands from in­
Transition creasingly heterogeneous rural and urban social groups while building a
political system that would exclude all popular groups from electoral power.
This contradictory policy became difficult to sustain, as both middle- and
working-class groups became increasingly organized and vocal, in no small
part because o f the regime’s pro-worker rhetoric.9
The regime became practiced at the art o f producing desired electoral
outcomes. An observer from the period noted how “ managed elections
keep [the opposition] from power. It must be admitted presidential conti­
nuance depends often enough on electoral fraud. There is no ballot; the
bulk o f the population is practically without letters in the crudest sense.
They come to a table where there are armed officials. They give their names
and vote, sometimes under stress. But the vote is registered as the man with
the roll wills. Districts with a four thousand majority for change have a
managed majority o f two thousand for none. In the end, unless things get
too bad to be borne, and even the President’s friends at last grow dis­
contented and desert him, most people o f the educated classes satisfy them­
selves perforce with enforced order. They can at least trade and gamble
and dance.” 10
On the rural front the Ligas and the p n d provided only unstable vehicles
for the regime. Their dilemma was that any attempt to mobilize rural work­
ers and indigenous people in support o f the more centralized political
system yielded increased problems at the local level.11 With heightened
agrarian tensions in the countryside during this period a rural-based mass
organization became too risky. In the end this risk, combined with outrage
at the paramilitary use o f the Liga, led to the demise o f the organization
in 1923.
Élite support for the Melendez-Quiñónez regime was more forthcom­
ing, as “ the backing . . . came from the coffee planter’s aristocracy, which
believed in order and economic progress but saw no reason to cater to the
masses in either economic or governmental planning.” 12 Even the regime’s
conflicts with the oligarchy were setded amid the economic boom o f the
mid-i920s, when sources in the United States noted how the “ old animosity
between President Quiñónez and the most important and richest families
seem s to have been setded” when the president danced with the wife o f
Miguel Dueñas, “ by far the richest in all Salvador.” 13 But ultimately the
regim e relied on a state o f emergency and its concomitant use o f state A
repression against the opposition. Bittersweet
Transition

An Embattled Opposition

The p n d , fearing the growth o f an autonomous labor movement, also

attempted to promote an alliance with worker and artisans’ organizations.
Although the long-term impact o f the regime’s tolerance and even promo­
tion o f labor organization is unclear, there is little doubt that urban work­
ers and especially artisans found themselves in a favorable conjuncture in
which to organize and express themselves. And once the regime had ac­
cepted the legitimacy o f unions, it was difficult to deny the basic rights o f
organization, when they proved not to be docile tools o f the p n d . Although
statistics are hard to verify, according to the Pan American Federation o f
Labor there were some ten thousand organized workers in El Salvador by
1923, the largest number o f any Central American country.
The nascent labor movement struggled for autonomy, and many o f its
militants supported the political opposition to the regime. Notwithstanding
this, the populist discourse and tactics o f the regime had salient effects
on the development o f the opposition movement. Although middle-class
intellectuals played a vital role in the development o f the labor movement
throughout the 1920s, there remained latent class tensions within the oppo­
sition that thwarted its development. A judicial ruling that allowed Alfonso
Quiñónez to run again for office despite having served as acting president
ignited a protest movement led by students, artisans, and workers. That
movement soon merged with the electoral campaign o f Tomás Molina,
gathering momentum in December 1922. To grasp the development o f the
opposition movement, we will examine two accounts o f the opposition
campaign o f 1922 waged by Molina and the Christmas Day massacre that
ended it. Manuel Hernandez Quijano was a writer and critic close to the
opposition movement, Miguel Mármol a young shoemaker who became an
activist in the campaign and later a communist union leader.
 Hernandez Quijano’s narrative focuses on three political demonstra­
tions. The Quinonez demonstration, according to the writer four-thousand
38 strong, was to a “ dispassionate” observer “ shameful,” because ofits socio­
logical makeup. “ One only saw caites [a cheap sandal], palm sombreros,
dirty shirts and calzones, since they had been recruited directly from their
A farm work or from bars.” 14 The Ligas Rojas from various pueblos also
Bittersweet participated. There is a subtle contradiction in his narrative in that the Ligas
Transition Rojas, even i f coercion played some role in their organization, would not
have come to the demonstration in such a completely disorganized manner.
Rather, the class nature o f the pro-Quiñónez supporters is simply repulsive
to the writer: ignorant, dirty people who “ obeyed” but could not “ lead.”
Hernandez’s repulsion both at the role o f these regime supporters and at
the marks o f poverty on their bodies blurred his vision.
In sharp contradistinction, he portrayed the opposition demonstrators
with rapturous strokes. The large number o f demonstrators that gathered
in support o f the “ blue candidate” (the party colors o f Molina) on 17 De­
cember 1922 arrived voluntarily and almost spontaneously, as the result o f a
simple leaflet that had circulated around the capital a few days earlier. This
was the largest demonstration in the country’s history, with over twenty
thousand participants. For Hernandez the quality o f the demonstrators was
as important as the number. All the “ gremios” were represented, from the
“ academic” to the “ servant” to the campesino. They were spatially orga­
nized by their group, “ each guild with its own banner . . . and each man
with his pennant. . . and his blue button in his lapel; since one has to realize
that in the immense crowd you did not see even one palm sombrero nor one
bare foot, a sign that there went the real, the conscious ones, those that
form democracy.” 15
This remarkable portrait o f the democratic opposition sheds light on a
divide in Salvadoran political culture. For this middle-class critic, the op­
position is truly democratic and representative o f the nation precisely be­
cause o f the way it respects and reproduces class hierarchy. Each group of
society occupies its own place, without any effort to blur class lines. Indeed
Hernandez’s own class bias blurs his description, as it did in the descrip­
tion o f the ragged pro-Quiñónez demonstrators. Immediately after men­
tioning that campesinos took part and that one could see neither a “ som­
brero de palma” nor a “ pie descalzo,” he describes the blue button in each
man’s lapel. Thus the narrator not only expunges the unwashed masses
from citizenship but also excludes those male demonstrators who could not
afford to wear jackets with lapels.
The regime cultivation o f subaltern support and its use o f the Ligas Rojas 39
colored Hernandez’s vision, such that he could not conceive o f the poorest
sectors o f society as citizens. Conversely, the regime’s use o f populist lan­
guage tended to legitimize the activity o f urban and rural workers and A
campesinos. Bittersweet
On 25 December female supporters o f Molina organized another dem­ Transition
onstration several days after a pro-Quiñónez female rally had flopped. Her­
nandez writes, “At two in the afternoon, the women o f the capital began to
gather on the Avenida Independencia and just before four commenced
the most beautiful parade that we had ever seen. That multitude o f blue-
clad women with huge banners o f the same color was so imposing and
beautiful . . . A group o f girls led the march, followed by señoras and
señoritas o f the highest society, followed by the rest o f the classes, until the
market women and servants.16 They shouted in unison, “ Libertad, Liber­
tad.” The husbands, brothers, and fathers accompanied the women “ to
protect them,” and “ to help them home after the demonstration.” But the
peaceful demonstrators marched into a trap. The regime and its national
guard had placed machine guns on the rooftops o f buildings along the
route o f the marchers. At an agreed-upon moment the troops opened fire,
first in the air and then at the demonstrators. The bloodshed continued
on the streets as the Ligas Rojas, armed with machetes, attacked defense­
less demonstrators. It is impossible to establish how many died on the
afternoon o f Christmas 1922, but various sources cite the figure o f eighty.
Hernandez identified fourteen dead (six women) and thirty-nine wounded
(nineteen women). Artisans and shop employees accounted for most o f the
victims whose occupation could be identified.
The regime muzzled the press, and the official paper blamed the demon­
strators, from whose ranks it said the shots were fired. According to Her­
nandez, the regime then sent its emissaries to the provinces to spread the
official version o f opposition culpability. A few years later Jorge Melendez
offered this version to a journalist: “According to Don Jorge, those foolish
people were pushing and shouting out there and a machine-gun was fired
mto the air to frighten them, and such panic ensued that they went stum­
bling over each other, several o f their own weapons were discharged in the
confusion, and eight or ten o f them hurt.” 17 At the same time, throughout
 the country authorities locked up dozens if not hundreds o f “ Blue” activists.
With such a show o f force and repression, no one dared wear the blue
40 button o f the Molinistas.
Miguel Mármol was not an eyewitness to the massacre because he was
hiding out. Mármol had become an activist in the Constitutionalist (or
A “ blue” ) party, after observing at close-hand the treatment o f conscripted
Bittersweet troops and the arbitrary and corrupt practices o f the regime. Similarly, his
Transition labor activism pushed him alongside other artisan-workers into the demo­
cratic movement. Even after decades o f communist militancy, Mármol con­
tinued to express admiration for the political work o f “ these bourgeois I
liberals.” 18 In December Mármol was working as an electoral activist in
his home town near the lake o f Ilopango. The wave o f repression that
culminated in the Christmas Day massacre started days earlier with mass
arrests o f activists and continued for the next few weeks. Mármol’s account
o f the massacre—presumably a distillation o f what he heard at die time and
how he analyzed it through a Marxist optic later—differs little from that o f
the intellectual Hernandez, except in two details: Mármol mentions neither
the role o f the high society ladies in the demonstration nor that o f the Ligas
Rojas. For Mármol the democratic opposition was primarily a popular move­
ment led by middle-class liberals, and the enemy—the regime—represented
the oligarchy. The discursive disjuncture is significant in that it points to a
broader problem o f communication within the opposition movement. Már­
mol and Hernandez shared a deep outrage at the face o f the regime’s brutal
tactics. For Mármol, “A feeling o f impotence fell over us Molinistas, and the
most radical among us started to think that political activity like shouting
‘Viva Molina!’ and distributing leaflets was pure bull shit when the enemy
had rifles and machine guns.” 19 As the Molinista movement fell apart under
the state o f siege, Mármol gradually reinserted himself into the labor move­
ment that the regime still tolerated.
An analysis o f Hernandez’s and Mármol’s narratives suggests a division
in political culture in the Salvadoran democratic opposition that was not
clear at the time to its participants. Populist discourses that empowered the
working and middle classes against the oligarchy circulated throughout
society, promoted by the regime as well as by subalterns (see chapter 3 on
populist discourse). Gould noted in To Lead as Equals how in Nicaragua the
discursive and the political division between anti Somoza opposition and
the popular movement formed a cornerstone o f the architecture o f the
Somoza regime.20 Similar political cultural divisions across the continent
had salient effects on democratic politics. The Argentine democratic move­
ment o f the 1940s notably found little common ground with the Peronist 41
workers’ movement.21 In Costa Rica the workers’ movement and social
democratic activists found themselves on opposite sides o f the barricades in
1948.22 Our reading o f the accounts o f the demonstrations and massacre A
suggests that in El Salvador during the 1920s a similar division existed, but Bittersweet
one that was neither visible nor acknowledged by either working-class Transition
militants or the middle-class and élite opponents o f the regime. It would
only become apparent toward the end o f the decade when class divisions
tore apart the social democratic Araujista coalition, with devastating politi­
cal consequences.

Romero Bosque and Political Reform

Sometime in 1926 ex-President Jorge Melendez bragged to a British journal­

ist about how he had selected his successor in 1923: “ ‘Well, you see,’ he
said, with one o f his disarming smiles, ‘you externalize your wishes, so to say.
You let the notion get round that this or that man would be a good fellow for
president. Then everybody begins to whisper to everybody else, ‘Don Jorge
wants So-and-So,’ and they start forming clubs to support him. I f the
opposition wants to form a club, why you let them do so by all means—but
one got the notion that when election day came round there were ways o f
managing things.” 23
His brother-in-law, President Alfonso Quiñónez, expected to be able to
control the presidential succession after his own four-year term ended in
1927 in a similar manner. He expected not only to name his successor but to
force him to quit so that he himself could assume another presidential
term.24 However, pressure for political reform had been building over the
previous years across many domestic sectors as well as from the U.S. em­
bassy. The Treaty o f Peace and Amity (1923) committed the United States to
recognizing only democratic governments; therefore the embassy opposed
the efforts o f President Quiñónez to perpetuate himself in power through a
change in the constitution. By the mid-i920s urban workers, public em­
ployees, indigenous leaders, intellectuals, and liberal politicians all called
for electoral reform. Melendez opted to give his backing to the minister
° f war, Pío Romero Bosque, who had a reputation as a reformer sympa-
 thetic to the labor movement, yet had faithfully served the interests o f the
Melendez-Quiñónez clan. Because o f his reformist reputation and the au­
4* thoritarian character o f the regime, no opposition candidate emerged and
Romero Bosque won the election unopposed.
Romero Bosque’s vo lte -fa ce remains enigmatic in that there was an un­
A deniable personal factor in his decision to break with the previous regime
Bittersweet and begin a process o f democratic reform.25 Yet as we have pointed out, the
Transition pressure for reform had been increasing, and Romero Bosque realized
before and after his unopposed presidential election that he could com­
mand an important base o f support for political change. In 1926, for exam­
ple, artisans had organized the Subcomité Central de Obreros in early sup­
port o f Pío Romero Bosque’s nomination as the presidential candidate of
the oficialista Partido Nacional Democrático. Artisans and workers also or­
ganized a large demonstration (fifteen thousand people according to the
labor press) in support o f Romero Bosque’s candidacy.26
Once in power Romero Bosque quickly capitalized on that base among
the urban popular and middle-class sectors. In lune 1927 his newly formed
Partido Civista’s break with the powerful and well-established p n d par­
tially hinged upon its ability to recruit popular support in the cities. By
August this new party claimed to have organized two hundred committees
and enrolled 150,000 supporters.27 In September a convention attended by
five thousand supporters from throughout the country formally inaugu­
rated the Partido Civista.28
Romero used his political capital to institute fundamental reforms that
democratized the electoral system at national and local levels. The opening-
up o f the electoral system not surprisingly had powerful effects on local
politics and culture. To cite one example, “ obreros” (including small manu­
facturers), backed by a labor federation with some three thousand mem­
bers, had previously controlled the local government o f the city o f San
Vicente.29 The liberalization o f elections led to a local political insurgency,
with a group o f “ rebel workers” renouncing the past, “when the worker was
so happy because he could greet any Doctor or any riquito . . . ! What
imbecilic times! We don’t want an alcalde riquito . . . ; we want one who is
a worker; but a conscious worker . . . not like the workers whom los
señorones have selected in the past; we want a worker o f character who will
not let himself be handled by any señorón.” 30 This statement, rich in popu­
list vocabulary, in its local context suggests the limitations o f what passed
for “ obrero” political control on the one hand, and the emerging cultural
and political divisions within the “ obrero” camp on the other.
Romero Bosque’s first concrete step aimed to liberalize the municipal 43
elections scheduled for December 1927. The central government pressured
local officials to resolve political disputes by conciliating factions and at­
tempting to reach a consensus (and single slates), while at the same time A
encouraging elections free o f interference from public officials and “ dis­ Bittersweet
order.” 31 This “ conciliatory” style, which would also be used by Romero Transition
Bosque to manage the presidential elections o f January 1931, reflected an
attempt to overcome the intense factionalism and conflict that the clien-
telist system could no longer successfully negotiate. The policy opened the
door to a great diversity o f political challenges and conflicts involving a
myriad combination o f unsettled local issues and political factions. Gener­
ally Romero Bosque’s interventions favored popular groups against the
local version o f the “ oligarchy.” 32 In Alegría, for example, the local oligar­
chy resorted to violent repression to ensure electoral triumphs.33
Romero Bosque’s governmental reforms and the increasing marginali­
zation o f the networks associated with the p n d led to a backlash. In the first
days o f December 1927 a military revolt broke out, mobilizing workers from
the Melendez haciendas to support troops opposed to Romero Bosque.34
The coup attempt failed, and the quick military trials and executions o f its
leaders in the army, National Guard, and police sent a clear signal that
Romero Bosque would not compromise in his reform efforts.35
With Romero Bosque firmly in power, the old p n d was in crisis at the
national level, but its local supporters and clients attempted to keep sup­
porters o f the Partido Civista and Romero Bosque from office in the mu­
nicipal elections o f December 1927.36 The results o f those elections were
ambiguous, as many p n d militants joined the Romero Bosque forces in
opportunistic fashion. In Santa Catarina Masahuat a dozen workers regis­
tered a complaint over the mayor’s continued partisan activities just after
Romero Bosque had ordered local officials to not intervene in the elec­
tions.37 In La Unión a group o f citizens complained to the interior minister
that the mayor supported the election o f General José Agustín Martinez,
ordering them to vote for him and having the Guardia arrest those who
would not.38
Between 1927 and 1930 some local factions sought accommodation
with Romero’s imperatives while trying to retain their hold over municipal
 44
# Metapán

San Antonio Pajanal

A Santiago de la Frontera 'y
Bittersweet Candelaria M asa h u a tú " v Santa Rosa

Transition Chalchuapa
Texistepeque

SA N T A A N A
>, El Refugio
D EPA RTM EN T
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Ocean

Municipalities of western El Salvador.

politics. The political opening at the same time encouraged political activism
and contestation at the local level, and also opened the political door to labor
and left organizing. Similarly, the liberalization o f politics both responded to
and further encouraged popular mobilization around new candidates.39

The Failure of Reformism in Juayúa

Emilio Redaelli, an Italian with Fascist sympathies, was deeply involved in

the political and economic life o f the coffee municipality o f Juayúa, serving
as mayor in the 1920s and 19 31.40 The owner o f a coffee farm and manager
o f a major beneficio, in 1931 he became the president o f the Asociación de
Agricultores de Juayúa.41 Redaelli was only the most visible player in a long-
established network o f elite-controlled municipal politics that the Romero 45
reforms failed to dislodge from power.42 Élite control over municipal poli­
tics in Juayúa was such that in the municipal elections o f 1929 two allies,
members o f the élite, confronted each other: Maximo Rauda Salaverrfa and A
Emilio Redaelli. The overwhelmingly strong support for Araujo’s candidacy Bittersweet
in 1930 reflected a local effort to displace Redaelli’s and Salaverria’s stran­ Transition
glehold over town politics.43 Yet the triumph o f Araujo did nothing to over­
turn the local power élite.

Municipal Politics and Ethnic Conflict in Izalco

The opening-up o f municipal politics had salient i f contradictory effects

throughout the country. Nowhere were the stakes higher than in those
western towns where indigenous people competed with ladinos for control
over resources such as land and irrigation rights, while also defending their
cultural practices and political autonomy. Izalco, to cite a famous example,
had a long history o f social tensions and political conflicts between ladinos
and Indians.44The collapse and disappearance o f one o f Izalco’s two indige­
nous communities during the 1890s resulted in a complex process o f mes­
tizaje in what became known as Barrio Dolores.45 Many ladinos settled in
the town starting in the mid-nineteenth century, and by the early twentieth
century a ladino élite had, according to an observer, “ managed to dominate
the indigenous masses; for some time the local authorities are ladinos and
its flourishing progress is due to that fact.” 46
By the late 1920s ladinos outnumbered Indians, although the cultural
dividing line between the two groups remained fluid and imprecise (see
chapter 4). The surviving Indian community o f the barrio o f Asunción
managed to navigate the difficult terrain o f autonomy and subordination.
The indigenous community leadership had long attempted to obtain state
support in its disputes with ladinos. Under the Melendez-Quiñónez regime
that relationship developed into an alliance between the alcalde municipal
de indígenas and the p n d , formalized from 1918 to 1923 in the formation
and operations o f the Ligas Rojas.47
During the 1920s ethnic conflicts over resources intensified.48 Political
reform at the national level thus increased the political stakes in Izalco.
The principal ladino political boss was Tomas Sicilia, who since 1926 had
 helped to maintain ladino control over municipal politics.49 Local people
filed complaints against him in 1927 and 1928 for his attempts to keep his
46 allies in power,50 but like other p n d leaders he became a reformer over­
night, abandoning the sinking ship o f the p n d and joining the Partido
Civista as a supporter o f Romero Bosque.51
A The municipal elections o f December 1929 in Izalco involved two eth­
Bittersweet nically distinct factions both aligned with the Romero Bosque government.
Transition The “ Indians” backed Salvador Cea, whom the local Ladino élite stigmatized
as an “ inexperienced illiterate.” The “ principales personas,” allied with the
departmental governor, backed Rafael C. Valdez, a ladino “ obrero.” 52 Cea’s
candidacy received support from a group that called itself “ El Adacatl” (in
reference to the country’s mythic Indian hero)—an alliance o f Indians and
some ladinos.53 The ministry’s investigation into the elections followed a
complaint o f 18 December 1929 by the Indian leaders José Feliciano Ama and
Francisco Orozco that Tomas Sicilia had imposed Valdez as mayor. The
Atlacad faction claimed that Valdez’s victory could only have been the result
o f electoral manipulation, since Indians formed a majority. The dispute
focused on the control o f the electoral Directorio, the body that oversaw the
local elections and counted the votes. Control o f the popularly elected Direc­
torio had previously been tantamount to election. The Directorio had been
formed from the ranks o f the ladino middle class and artisans, and in his
report to the ministry the governor claimed that “ most people” backed
Valdez and that the opposing party refrained from voting when they saw his
support.54
The governor’s investigation o f the election considered Ama’s accusa­
tion that Sicilia and the members o f the Directorio had been drunk and had
expressed their intention to veto a mixed-party Directorio and to use the
police to keep supporters o f Cea out o f the voting hall. Many witnesses
brought by Ama and Orozco testified that in fact the police had kept Cea
supporters from voting. The governor ruled against the complainants and
dismissed their request that he nullify the elections. But Ama and Orozco
persisted, appealing directly to the Ministry o f Interior. The ministry did not
uncover “ bribery,” however, so the appeal was ultimately rejected.55
The electoral conflict o f 1929 was significant in that it radicalized the
discourse o f municipal and ethnic politics. Feliciano Ama’s protest is ap­
posite: “ [The fraud] opens the way to capitalist imposition which will be
fatal for the people, when, from the public offices, the yoke o f capital
oppresses the employee, the worker, and the peasant.” 56 The indigenous
cacique’s use o f expressions such as “ the yoke o f capital” in his protest
letter o f 1929 is noteworthy, since it predates any significant left or labor 47
presence, suggesting that labor organizers would find a receptive audience,
already fluent in their language o f class and populism.57 At the same time,
the description o f obrerismo as synonymous with ladinos is remarkable for A
two reasons. Throughout Central America in the 1920s obrerismo was a re­ Bittersweet
formist political expression o f artisans. The opposition obrerista-indígena Transition
points to a political divide that would haunt Central American democratic
and left movements. In Nicaragua during the 1920s, and in El Salvador and
Guatemala in 1944, democratic obreristas and labor activists found indige­
nous campesinos on the authoritarian rightist side o f the political spec­
trum. Ama’s language o f class pointed to a state o f political flux into which
the left was able to insert itself. Second, the identification o f obrerismo with
ladinos is important because it was an expression o f racism, but also be­
cause it suppressed the significant presence o f indigenous people among
the artisan class. In this sense the statement tended to reinforce the social
division in Izalco by conflating ethnicity with class. For Ama’s faction in
particular, the bitter legacy o f the electoral process o f 1929-30 was that
Romero Bosque’s democratic reforms had not reached their town, allowing
the ladinos to continue to rule over them.

Nahuizalco: Four Disruptive Ladinos and the Indian Majority

Ethnic rivalries also dominated nearby Nahuizalco’s politics. Since over

80 percent o f the population identified as indigenous, the ladino middle
class and élite politicians attempted to forge and dominate an alliance
with an indigenous faction. As in Izalco, Nahuizalco’s indigenous political
leaders were embedded in a system o f patronage, cooptation, and clientel-
ism consolidated by the p n d during the 1920s. In September 1923 a large
group o f Indians, referring to themselves as criollos del pueblo, wrote to the
Interior Ministry requesting official support for their candidate, Gregorio
Gutierrez, and stating, “ there is no way that we can accept that the mayor
comes from the ladino party since the small number o f ladinos who are
trying to put in a mayor, do so in order to enrich themselves and to domi­
nate the people in every way.” 58
Romero Bosque’s policy o f open elections brought heightened conflicts
 to Nahuizalco. For the elections o f December 1927 the ladino faction led by
Rodolfo Brito and Rafael Renderos faced the candidate o f the “ Partido de
48 Indígenas,” Pedro Mauricio, a former Liga Roja leader.59After Mauricio was
elected, Brito and the ladinos successfully lobbied the governor to remove
him because he was illiterate, causing a great deal o f resentment among the
A Indian majority. The ladino group was not able to hold on to power in the
Bittersweet elections o f 1929. The military commander o f Sonsonate advised the minis­
Transition ter o f war to consider the balance o f power in Nahuizalco: “ since for the
supreme government it is better to have four thousand Indians content and
not four ladinos for whom the municipality has served to swindle the poor
people—when I have needed people in these barracks, none o f these ladinos
has ever presented himself; they spend their lives disturbing public order in
that town. Hopefully, the Minister o f Gobernación will take into account
these arguments and not allow these individuals to make a mockery o f the
authorities.” 60
For the elections o f December 1929 Rodolfo Brito again managed to gain
control o f the town, but “ the Indians charged [him] with drunkenness and
demanded that his victory be nullified.” In response to the Indians’ re­
quest the national government dispatched the deputy departmental gover­
nor, who was so busy with his own backlog o f cases that he abandoned all
hope o f discovering whether Brito actually was a drunkard, and ruled in
favor o f the Indians simply because “ they presented more witnesses than
the opposition.” 61 Yet as we shall see, politics continued to be a flash­
point for ethnic and class conflict in both Izalco and Nahuizalco over the
next two years.

Reformism and Anti-imperialism

Ethnic conflict in western Salvador coincided with the growth o f a discourse

o f mestizaje that primarily valorized an abstract and idealized version o f the
indigenous contribution to the country’s history and culture. Mestizaje,
promoted by tire Mexican Revolution, circulated as a nation-building myth
o f gradual but inevitable race mixture and cultural “ de-indianization,” and
reinforced a dominant view o f society as increasingly and necessarily ho­
mogeneous ethnically. Throughout Latin America it allowed progressive
intellectuals during the 1920s to take an active role in nation building
by forging anti-imperial images, allowing for a greater inclusion o f sub-
altern groups in a version o f liberalism shorn o f its most egregious racism
and elitism.62
The Salvadoran writer Miguel Angel Espino expressed his understanding 49
of the roots o f nationalism in the following terms: “The dehispanicization
of the continent. . . is one o f those problems that in a hidden and latent
way has been modifying the life o f the continent. Because, it is proven A
that we are Indians. O f the five liters we have, one cup o f Spanish blood Bittersweet
courses through us; the rest is American fiber. From the crossing o f the Transition
Spaniard and the American a new race resulted; to believe this race was
Hispanicized was the error.” 63 Reformist intellectuals cited Marxist and
progressive thinkers like José Carlos Mariátegui as part o f their campaign in
favor o f respect for Indians. Rochac, the governor o f Sonsonate, wrote,
“ Central America, which has, in part, a considerable indigenous foundation
has forgotten, has completely neglected the situation o f its Indians.” Al­
though they tended to idealize a “ pure” Indian culture, their views clashed
sharply with traditional white and mestizo racism. According to Rochac,
“Everything that is admirable in the Indian is his own; it is not owing to
anyone, neither the priest, nor the teacher, nor the minister, nor the legisla­
tor, nor the magistrate. . . . The Indian is nothing less than a tender and
sensitive man—no less than the white or the mestizo.” 64
These declarations, however paternalistic, stand in sharp contrast to élite
racist discourse, which consistently portrayed Indians as inferior, backward
beings who would squander any pay increase on alcohol and retreat into
indolent barbarism i f given any land. Some intellectuals went so far as to
question the early returns o f the Salvadoran census for underestimating the
indigenous population.65 By valorizing the indigenous contribution to soci­
ety and offering solidarity with Indians, the ideologues o f mestizaje helped
to create the discursive conditions and political space for support o f indige­
nous demands, and later for the cross-ethnic revolutionary movement that
emerged between 1929 and 1931.
The discourse o f mestizaje circulated in a vibrant ideological field. Dur­
ing the late 1920s political, military, and economic intervention in the re­
gion by the United States contributed significantly to the emergence o f anti­
imperialist organizations and discourses. Even before Sandino launched
his armed resistance to the Marines in Nicaragua, in 1927, El Salvador had
distinguished itself for its opposition to any form o f intervention by Wash­
ington in the isthmus. Some o f the Salvadoran élite even opposed the
 Bryan-Chamoro treaty o f 1916, which in effect created a protectorate in Nic­
aragua.65 El Salvador’s greater political autonomy from Washington went
5° hand in hand with strong resistance by the country’s middle sectors to for­
eign control o f the country’s economic resources, especially by the United
States.67 The loan and customs receivership o f 1922 had produced great
A opposition, especially among students and artisans who thought that it
Bittersweet undermined the country’s sovereignty. Years later, resentment over the loan
Transition and receivership still generated significant popular opposition.68 Through­
out the decade intellectuals also continued to criticize the foreign-owned
railroad monopoly o f the International Railways o f Central America.69 Dur­
ing the latter part o f the 1920s opposition to intervention in the isthmus
by the United States increased, spurred on by the impact o f the Mexi­
can Revolution and the growth o f unionist and nationalist currents. Gus­
tavo Guerrero, Romero Bosque’s foreign minister and head o f the Inter­
national Court, for example, played an important hemispheric role in
resisting Washington’s policies in the region.70
After 1927 the Sandinista resistance galvanized support in El Salvador:
peasant and artisan committees raised funds for Sandino, protests were
frequent, and dozens o f Salvadoran male and female volunteers joined his
forces, including most notably Farabundo Marti.71 Anti-imperialist senti­
ment was widespread among artisans, students, and middle sectors. On
18 January 1927 artisans and students demonstrated in San Salvador against
the government in Nicaragua, then allied with the United States.72 Even Sal­
vadoran farmers raised funds to send to Sandino.73 Haya de la Torre, the
founder o f the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (a p r a ) and an
outspoken critic o f Washington’s imperialism, visited El Salvador in 1928,
giving public talks and publishing articles in the press.74 This burgeoning
anti-imperialist movement brought together urban middle sectors, workers,
artisans, and university students, and led to vigorous debates in the press,
with significant reformist and anti-imperialist editorializing. The anti­
imperialist fervor was not limited to the capital. As Reynaldo Galindo Pohl
wrote in his memoirs o f provincial life: “ In Sonsonate, it would have been
hard to find a person who did not express anti-imperialist ideas.” 75 Thou­
sands o f Salvadorans from diverse sectors attended anti-imperialist rallies.
The anti-imperialist and nationalist themes became linked to other demands
for reform, encouraging the transformation o f the Federación Regional de
Trabajadores Salvadoreños (f r t s ) into something more than a labor organi-
zation. In one demonstration alone the fr t s mobilized ten thousand
people in San Salvador, with speakers from the middle-class Liga Anti­
imperialista alternating with workers. The speakers drew broad ideological 51
connections, opposing the United States in conflicts ranging from its inter­
vention in Nicaragua to its confrontation with President Calles o f Mexico.76
Radical nationalism and anti-imperialism became important components o f A
the Salvadoran labor movement. A manifesto o f the f r t s in 1926, for Bittersweet
example, called for independence for Puerto Rico and the Philippines, inter­ Transition
nationalization o f the Panama Canal, and nationalization o f the railroads
and other public services.77
The Universidad Popular emerged from this milieu, organizing lectures,
classes, and presentations throughout the country with support from uni­
versity students and radical labor leaders. In Ahuachapán in 1928 it spon­
sored a talk by Esteban Pavletich, a Peruvian a p r is t a leader, Sandino vol­
unteer, and anti-imperialist who helped organize the movement while in El
Salvador.78 Miguel Mármol underscored the transformative experiences for
a working-class student at the Universidad Popular, which he likened to
learning how to talk and “ seeing the light at the end o f a long, dark, and
anguishing tunnel.” 79
The U.S. embassy became increasingly concerned over these displays o f
“anti-American sentiment,” blaming Mexican and other foreign agitators
while pressing Salvadoran authorities to expel foreign organizers and re­
press the anti-imperialist movement.80 The most notorious case o f repres­
sion against the movement took place on 24 November 1929, when the
police arrested all the speakers at an anti-imperialist rally in Santa Tecla.
Soldiers subsequently shot demonstrators who demanded the release o f the
prisoners.81 These events contributed directly to the formation o f a Sal­
vadoran branch o f the Socorro Rojo Internacional, a leftist organization
that aided victims o f political repression and would prove to play a decisive
role in the mobilization o f 19 31 (see chapter 3).
During the 1920s persistent public critiques o f the increasingly unequal
distribution o f wealth further challenged dominance by the élite. National
newspapers such as Patria and Diario Latino routinely editorialized about the
need for reforms in favor o f peasants, rural workers, and indigenous peo­
ple. The Heraldo de Sonsonate and other provincial newspapers also protested
against forms o f economic exploitation. One article decried how “ the ex­
ploitative companies form a menacing plague that strangles justice and
 increases the percentage o f the impoverished.” 82 Exposes o f rural labor
condemned the large landowners: “ Life on the fincas . . . is heavy, due to the
52 monotony o f the dailywork and the pitiful rations, which have been reduced
to two large tortillas and beans mixed with chicken droppings, cooked
without salt or onions; they sleep under the coffee trees.” 83 Journalists
A attacked the concentration o f land in the coffee economy and supported
Bittersweet measures in favor o f the dwindling group o f small-scale producers.84
Transition Proponents o f the Minimum Vital ideology and the student movement
also formed part o f the reformist current. Alberto Masferrer promoted his
program through his organization Unión Vitalista and his newspaper La
Patna. The movement sought to “ guarantee the basic necessities o f life” for
the country’s working classes by promoting a harmonious balance between
capital and labor and moderate land reform.85 Reformist university students
during the 1920s organized the Movimiento Renovación and the National
Association o f Students (a g e u s ). Their organizing efforts extended be­
yond the campus gates to include protests and mobilizations against for­
eign loans, high rents, trolley fees, electric rates, foreign monopolies, and
militarism.86
Although the reformist and anti-imperial movements would ultimately
fail, they did leave important legacies. The Salvadoran version o f social
democratic reformism, in particular, went further than other Latin American
variants in promoting the rights o f Indians.87 Moreover, the movements o f
the late 1920s played vital roles in focusing public attention on the rights o f
labor and on the unjust economic structures prevalent in Salvadoran society.

The Radicalization of the Labor Movement, 1 9 2 7 - 3 0

During the late 1920s there were worries at the U.S. embassy about the emer­
gence o f a leftist-controlled labor movement. The embassy repeatedly pres­
sured Salvadoran authorities to censor mail and control communication
between Salvadorans and Mexican and other Central American organiza­
tions. As early as 1927 sectors o f the Salvadoran élite joined the U.S. em­
bassy in expressing concern over the spread o f what they saw as Mexican-
supported “ bolshevism.” Although few Mexicans worked as organizers
in El Salvador, officials and landlords feared the ideological influence of
revolutionary-inspired land reforms in Mexico. Well before the birth o f the
rural labor movement, the chief justice o f the Supreme Court, Arrieta Rossi,
observed in 1927: “There is considerable unrest among the lower classes,
especially in the outlying districts where bolshevist influence is evident.” 88
The concern o f the U.S. embassy and the elites was premature but pre­ 53
scient. A radicalized urban working-class movement, now extending into
the countryside, provided the foundation for the emergence o f a revolution­
ary movement between 1930 and 1931. The transformations wrought by A
capitalist development favored the growth o f the urban labor movement, in Bittersweet
that both the introduction o f machinery and the competition between man­ Transition
ufacturing shops and larger enterprises caused significant discontent. The
rapid growth o f the urban labor movement hinged in part on artisanal resis­
tance to full-scale proletarianization, combined with resentment toward the
intensification o f labor, without a commensurate increase in wages. Where
union activists could not organize they nonetheless gained sympathizers, as
an increasing number o f the working poor deplored the conditions in facto­
ries and shops.
There was a great deal o f fluidity in the relations between artisan shop
owners and employees. A report by the fr ts in 1930 underscored this point:
“Almost all o f our workers have their own tools. Sometimes they do salaried
work for a contractor; at times they work as artisans in their own houses,
totally on their own. At times, this same worker is a contractor-boss, who
exploits the labor o f one or more workers.” 89 Miguel Mármol himself ex­
emplifies this same fluidity. After working in “ factories” in San Salvador, he
had acquired a level o f skill and knowledge o f styles that allowed him to earn
high wages and “ extra pay” in the provincial town o f San Martin because
customers specifically requested his shoes. Prompted by a desire for eco­
nomic independence, he acquired small loans to set up his own shop,
employing seven workers. In his memoir, shaped by arguments within the
left, he justified this move as necessary for political reasons—a union activist
would waste valuable time and resources struggling to survive economically
in the face o f a repressive employer: “ [The shop] was an excellent cloak
behind which to organize revolutionary activity.” 90
The f r t s report considered this petit bourgeois class position a flaw,
like the concomitant sins o f pride and shame a characteristic o f “ petit-
bourgeois consciousness.” Mármol retrospectively tried to defend the na­
scent labor movement from accusations o f an artisanal or petit bourgeois
mentality. His memoir does, however, reveal a joy in being one’s own
master and in possessing such skills as those o f a shoemaker, allowing one
 to resist being transformed into a proletarian. That Mármol at once owned
a shoemaker’s shop, employing workers, and at the same time participated
54 actively in union organizing drives was not at all an anomaly in early-
twentieth-century Latin America, or for that matter nineteenth-century Eu­
rope. As E. P. Thompson wrote: “ It is easy enough to say that this culture
A was backward-looking or conservative. True enough, one direction o f the
Bittersweet great agitations o f the artisans and outworkers continued over 50 years, was
Transition to resist being turned into a proletariat. When they knew that this cause was
lost, yet they reached out again . . . and sought to achieve new and only
imagined forms o f social control.” 91 Similarly, throughout Central America
urban artisans and manufacturing workers were in the forefront o f strug­
gles for the Central American union and o f opposition to imperialism and
intervention by the United States. They also worked for the right to organize
unions and for land reform. As Gould noted in Nicaragua, during the 1920s
“ obrerismo” had become the dominant political idiom in towns and cities,
a radical democratic ideology that stressed the opposition to the agrarian
élite and to imperialism o f “ obreros” (primarily meaning manual workers,
including shop owners). The growing differentiation o f the manufacturing
sector did not have immediate effects on this cross-class political ideology.
“ Because o f their own membership in the class o f wage earners, the lack o f
previous class conflicts in the crafts, and the objective need to standardize
prices and wages among workshops, the obreristas demanded rights for
the workers as a whole, including their own employees.” 92
Obrerismo formed part o f the gelatinous ideological field o f the artisan
and manufacturing worker. That field is often assumed to have been exclu­
sively anarchist, but the history is in fact more complicated. Laclau’s distinc­
tion o f popular democratic and class interpellations is apposite. By popular-
democratic Laclau refers to an identity in opposition to élite rule, “ united to
institutions in which democracy is materialized” (see chapter 3).93 In this
sense artisans were bearers o f this popular democratic tradition as literate
subalterns under assault from transformed production relations, the ar­
bitrariness o f authoritarian rule, and the oligarchic cultural forms o f the
society. At the same time, both artisans and manufacturing workers resisted
different forms o f proletarianization. In the end, this resistance to full-scale
proletarianization and its immediate effects was a key factor in the growth
and radicalization o f the urban movement.
In El Salvador the effect o f the world crisis, combined with the growing
introduction o f machinery into the manufacturing sector, thrust an increas­
ing number o f small shop owners into the ranks o f salaried labor or the
unemployed. Both artisans and manufacturing workers experienced the 55
impact o f what f r t s militants called “ capitalist rationalization.” In a way
reminiscent o f early-nineteenth-century Europe, the introduction o f ma­
chinery in El Salvador’s manufacturing sector both displaced the smallest A
shops and tended to increase workers’ productivity and energy expenditure Bittersweet
within the shops and factories that survived.94 Following established pat­ Transition
terns, the greater prevalence o f much machinery and the initial effects o f the
crisis led employers to hire more adolescents and children. A report by the
frts on youth labor describes Dickensian conditions: young workers in
factories and shops toiled from 5:30 in the morning until 10 in the evening
for the equivalent o f twenty-five cents, roughly half what was paid to adults.
The report stated that youths made up 90 percent o f tile, cigarette, brewery,
and commercial workers. The situation o f female youths in the factories
was even worse: “They work until they become pregnant by the boss or his
sons. They are thrown on the street for the pettiest reasons: for refusing to
accept the gallantries o f the boss, or for being seen with other men, outside
o f the factory.” In a separate report on textile workers, a union activist noted
that “ in addition to the brutal treatment, they get searched when they leave
and they don’t get a break during the whole day. Many workers are victim­
ized by bosses and foremen, who order a worker to stay after work and then
they rape her and commit all kinds o f shameful acts; the victims’ com­
plaints mean nothing to the authorities as they only favor the interests o f
the capitalists and bosses.” 95 The denunciation o f this treatment o f young
women and men did not lead to massive urban unionization. On the con­
trary, the f r t s made but weak organizational inroads among factory work­
ers. By 1930 the only exception was in La Constancia brewery, which had a
clandestine union o f one hundred members. However, what the f r t s did
gain was a growing moral authority against these inhuman working condi­
tions in the shops and factories.
Political conditions also influenced the rapid development o f the labor
movement during the late 1920s. The urban labor movement had grown
slowly during the Melendez-Quiñónez years, in response to varying degrees
of tolerance o f political unionism by the regime. Under Romero Bosque, the
government actively promoted urban unions and sought to rationalize labor
management relations. His government promulgated three important mea-
 sures: full legalization o f urban union activity; labor-management concil­
iation commissions; and an eight-hour workday for urban workers—the
56 most important measure both because employers’ resistance to it provoked
labor mobilization and because the exclusion o f the rural working class
provided an immediate entree for the f r t s into the haciendas and fincas.96
A Employers’ resistance to the promulgation o f the eight-hour day in July
Bittersweet 1929 provoked a rash o f protests and work stoppages in hotels, in bakeries,
Transition and on construction sites.97 On the docks o f Acajutla, the country’s most
important port, a general strike o f longshoremen and laborers in demand
o f the eight-hour day shut down operations. The government sent in the
National Guard to compel the workers to work, but the union continued to
protest.98
Early in 1930 the f r t s led one o f the most important strikes in the
building trades, at the site where a construction company with financing
from the United States was building the “ La Chacra” baths and a reservoir
(the Holland Water tanks). The company decreed a pay reduction from
$1.50 to $1.00 a day. In response, six militants organized a march o f over
seven hundred workers to the fr t s headquarters, where an assembly laid
out strike demands. Although the Guardia arrived, when faced with this
spontaneous but rapidly organized movement the company rescinded its
wage cut. Notwithstanding the victory and the size o f the workforce, the
union gained only twenty-five new members.99
The urban labor movement reached neither the size nor the importance
o f its contemporaries in South America and Mexico, and classic forms o f
working-class militancy did not characterize its development. Rather, the
frts educated working-class militants and prepared them to organize in
the countryside. The union federation could also reach a larger number o f
supporters ready to protest on the streets against the government and the
élite.
The U.S. embassy estimated that the “ agitators” numbered from several
hundred to two thousand. It complained that Romero Bosque’s govern­
ment could easily “ eradicate” them by arresting the leftist leadership but
lacked the will to do so. Yet Romero Bosque refused to jail urban labor
leaders as long as they stayed away from the fincas and haciendas. In
November in Santa Tecla, however, government forces broke up a demon­
stration by the f r t s under pressure from local landowners, who called for
stronger measures against “ outside agitators” and feared that the organiz-
ing would spread to their farm workers. As a result o f union organizing
around the eight-hour day and improved wages, one thousand “ leading
citizens” wrote a letter during mid-1929 to President Romero Bosque, com­ 57
plaining about his lack o f energy in quelling strikes and labor demonstra­
tions. In response, Romero Bosque tightened his policies, asking the mili­
tary to put down any attempted strikes or demonstrations. A
The élite concern was now well placed. A proto-communist left had Bittersweet
indeed won control o f the leadership o f the f r t s . A s elsewhere in Latin Transition
America, in El Salvador communists, anarcho-syndicalists, and reformists
battled for control o f the labor movement throughout the 1920s. The victory
of those aligned with the communists had much to do with their organizing
capacity, particularly in the countryside, and very little to do with either the
class composition o f the different groups or their strategy and tactics based
on their political understandings.
Although the pro-communist left dominated the f r t s by May 1930, the
movement that it controlled was far too diverse and ideologically eclectic to
coerce into party discipline. The Partido Comunista Salvadoreño (p c s ),
founded in March 1930, followed the Comintern Third Phase line, which
stated that in effect all non-communist political forces were objectively
allied with fascism and imperialism. Comintern rhetoric against social
democrats was especially venomous. The pcs counseled abstention in the
presidential elections o f January 1931. Yet the rank and file o f the labor
movement, especially the rural sector, became inspired by the electoral
campaign o f the Laborista Arturo Araujo, whom the f r t s /pcs leadership
dismissed as a “ social-fascist.”

Don Arturo, Social Democracy, and the Presidential Election

Ihe political climate o f the 1920s, compounded by the post-1929 economic

crisis, contributed to popular support for the presidential campaign o f Ar­
turo Araujo, a wealthy entrepreneur and reformist from Sonsonate. Araujo,
one o f El Salvador’s largest sugar and coffee producers, was quick to re­
spond to Romero Bosque’s opening o f the political system. Most o f his prop­
erties were in the Izalco-Armenia region;100 like many o f the country’s land­
lords, he resided in the city o f Santa Tecla. In addition to other farms and
investments, he owned the Hacienda El Sunza, Izalco’s largest hacienda,
which contained the country’s second-largest coffee and sugar mills.101
 Unlike most members o f the country’s economic élite who preferred to
do their political work behind the scenes, Araujo was an active reformer.102
58 Educated in Great Britain, where he became exposed to the Labor Party, in
1918 he gave financial support to and participated in a workers’ congress.103
He ran as an opposition candidate in the presidential elections o f 1919, as
A the Melendez-Quiñónez clan began to establish its control over the coun­
Bittersweet try’s political machinery. After the elections were allegedly stolen, the Na­
Transition tional Guard was sent to his farms to suppress efforts to organize a re­
volt,104 but the two hundred guardsmen were only able to arrest his father,
Eugenio Araujo.105 After the official candidate was installed, Araujo and
General Juan Amaya attempted a cross-border revolt that apparendy had the
support o f the Honduran government, entering El Salvador with three hun­
dred supporters. The Salvadoran army easily defeated the Araujistas, and
they had to retreat into Honduras.105 Araujo returned from exile in 1923, and
throughout the 1920s he opposed the Melendez-Quiñónez group. During
these years the “Araujistas” were identified as enemies o f the National
Guard because o f its role as the arbiter o f political control at the local
level.107 Araujo, himself active in local politics, took advantage o f the politi­
cal opening o f 1927 to increase his role. In 1929 he supported a populist
candidate in the municipal elections o f Armenia, Emeterio Torres, against a
candidate supported by the local élite, the 5 ente regularizada.108
One critical contribution o f the Araujista movement during 1930 and
19 31 was that it helped to unite urban movements with rural demands for
reform. A vivid image o f the strength o f Araujo’s base was the massive
parade o f peasants who followed him into the city o f Sonsonate as part of
the presidential campaign o f 1931: “ Don Arturo, who was at the head o f the
parade, mounted a purebred mare, imported from England, and marched at
a tight pace, with his hat in his hand, and saluted the crowd that had
gathered on the sidewalks, doorways, and balconies.. . . Some three thou­
sand men on horseback followed don Arturo, four abreast, with their hats
pulled down tight and their mounts reined in. . . . Behind this impressive
parade o f riders and horses came an immense mass o f people on foot, made
up o f peasants.” 109
Araujo’s most visible allies were Masferrer and Felipe Recinos, former
leader o f the f r t s .110Araujismo sometimes shared and at other times vied
with the left for the support o f workers and campesinos. At the local level
Araujo’s multiclass alliance represented a challenge to the old patronage
networks controlled by élites; nationally it led to a reformist political move­
ment unparalleled in Salvadoran history until the 1970s. The alliance be­
tween urban professionals and workers had roots in the decades-old politi­ 59
cal culture o f urban reformism, but its extension into mass rural support
that did not rely on patronage networks was unprecedented.
Araujo’s Laborismo, a Salvadoran version o f social democracy inspired by A
his firsthand knowledge o f the British Labour Party and the diverse ideologi­ Bittersweet
cal currents o f Central American reformism, raised hopes o f land reform Transition
among the rural poor and o f political and economic reform among urban
workers and artisans. One observer at the U.S. embassy noted “ all kinds o f
election promises which led many farmers and laborers to think that the
millennium was likely once Araujo was elected. There was rumored. . . that
the big coffee estates would be divided and every family given its acre o f
ground . . . the unrest o f the last few days may be laid partially to the rural
population’s somewhat hastily drawn conclusion that the president has
turned his back on them.” 111 Once elected, Araujo acknowledged the weight
o f these demands but was hard-pressed to fulfill them quickly, in what
became one o f the critical failures o f his administration.
Historians have often interpreted the election promises o f Araujo as a
demagogic device o f false promises by his organizers. Instead, we suggest
that the expectation o f land reform was a form o f demand making by
Araujo’s supporters and the relatively autonomous factions and organiza­
tions that mobilized in his support. While at the local level agrarian reform
was clearly a component o f support for Araujo, at the national level (and
mostly in San Salvador) Araujo was sending a different message. Whatever
Araujismo meant at the local level, in San Salvador Araujo made it clear that
he did not favor land reform, and he reduced his claims to one thing: work
for all. In his first major public message in November 1930 he explained: “ I
must state that I am not nor could I be a communist . . . but yes, I am
convinced that we must satisfy the needs o f the people or at least alleviate
their suffering. . . but we must do so from the point o f view o f the laborista
doctrine, through an equitative distribution o f work, n o t o f l a n d , as
some people have maliciously claimed that I have proposed, so that each
Person produces for his own sustenance. I know our laws that rule us and I
could not therefore promise the abolition o f private property. Laborismo
affirms ‘work for all’ as the basic principle o f all improvement o f social
conditions.” 112
 Despite its contradictions between national and local discourses, or per­
haps precisely because o f its multilayered character, Araujismo formed the
6o most dynamic element in the presidential campaign o f 1930. Rallies, dem­
onstrations, meetings, and committees were all part o f the heightened
incorporation o f thousands o f people into the country’s electoral system.
A Araujo received significant shows o f support from urban factory workers
Bittersweet and artisans in San Salvador and San Vicente, as well as his home base o f
Transition Sonsonate, where there were large demonstrations in November and De­
cember.113 He was also the only candidate to campaign in the countryside.114
Tacuba, Atiquisaya, Masahuat, Cuisnahuat, Armenia, Izalco, Juayúa, and
Sonsonate, towns that would play a central role in the revolt o f 1932, all had
strong Araujista chapters.115 In many o f these places Araujo’s supporters
quickly came into conflict with local political elites, who used anticommu­
nism against them.116 The strength o f Araujismo was evident to government
officials, who kept close tabs on the number and affiliation o f registered
voters. By December 1930 Araujo was recognized as the clear leader in the
race, with nearly 41,000 registered voters and the only strong party ma­
chine. The closest candidate was Alberto Gómez Zarate, with thirty thou­
sand registered voters and the support o f the traditional patronage ofi­
cialista networks.117
The complex role o f the military officers was paradoxically heightened
with the breakdown o f the Melendez-Quiñónez regimes. A military intel­
ligence analyst with the U.S. government thought that Araujo had enough
popular support to get elected without bringing General Hernandez Mar­
tinez into his campaign as his vice-presidential candidate, but that his
government would not last without the military’s approval.118 In a meeting
at the presidential palace, Romero Bosque brokered the agreement for
Araujo to combine forces with Martinez.119
While allowing for free elections, Romero Bosque played an important
role in attempting to position the candidates in relation to well-established
power centers like the National Assembly, the U.S. embassy, the military,
and the banks. Already in early 1930 a group o f “ prominent” citizens had
lobbied Romero Bosque to select a single candidate for the upcoming
presidential elections.120 U.S. intelligence operatives reported that the presi­
dent sought to divide the voting among many candidates to ensure that the
winner would have to meet the approval o f the National Assembly, which he
controlled. Romero Bosque personally favored Enrique Cordova, who he
thought would be easier to influence than Gómez Zarate. Sectors o f the
coffee élite also supported Cordova. Viewed as the “ official candidate,”
Gómez Zarate was the favorite o f the remnants o f the Melendez-Quiñónez 61

faction and the p n d .121

Élite groups were not happy with the electoral results and accused the
government o f fraud. To no avail, they asked the U.S. embassy to intervene A
in the election.122 The results gave Araujo a wide victory, with 46 percent of Bittersweet
the vote and much stronger majorities in the west: Transition

Araujo 101,000
Gómez Zárate 64,000
Córdova 32,000
Gen. Claramount 16,000
Molina 4,ooo123

Araujo’s sweeping victory was a testament to the power o f the democratic

opposition and labor movements that flourished during the 1920s. And yet
the hope and promise that Araujismo embodied would be shattered shortly
after he assumed office. The rank and file o f tire labor movement had
provided his margin o f victory because it was willing to disregard its sec­
tarian leaders’ vitriol against Araujo. Yet they had fought too hard and
learned too much over the previous years to shrug their collective shoulders
when the new president did not deliver tangible results.
Araujismo had to face expressions o f anti-oligarchical popular anger
which pushed hard against the pace and moderation o f its reformist pro­
gram. Events in San Miguel, eastern El Salvador, population 35,000, suggest
the depths o f that anger with which Araujo would have to contend. Popular
grievances in the city were directed against a tiny group o f landowner-
merchants who also controlled local politics. The most notable member o f
the élite was Mauricio Meardi, probably the wealthiest man in the coun­
try. He was the owner o f the Compañía Agrícola Migueleña, an unusual
entrepreneur whose vast interests bridged coffee production, processing,
marketing, retail sales, importing and exporting, construction, grain pro­
duction, and finance. In 1934 his principal company was valued at $1.5
million.124
On 22 October 1930 a guilty verdict o f stealing against José Soto, a
commercial employee o f a Meardi store, triggered a riot.125 That day six
hundred people, chanting “ abajo el capital,” marched to the courthouse to
 protest the verdict. The crowd then marched to the homes o f the judge, the
prosecutor, and prominent merchants. The next day the National Guard
62 broke up a protest meeting, arresting two leaders, Antonio Mayorga and
Heriberto Romero.
After the arrests protesters gathered in the plaza and called for a demon­
A stration that evening. Suddenly the National Guard attacked the group and
Bittersweet arrested six protesters, as the lieutenant colonel in charge o f the military
Transition contingent shot into the crowd. That night three thousand people gathered
and marched to the police garrison, demanding that Mayorga and Romero
be freed. Later the crowd attacked several élite houses and Meardi stores,
destroying and looting much o f their property and stealing $10,000 from a
safe as well as some weapons.126
On 24 October the government placed San Miguel under a state o f
siege and sent troop reinforcements. By the next day the local commander
claimed that the city was pacified. Although both “Tato” Meardi, the pri­
mary target o f the mobilization, and observers at the U.S. embassy believed
that the movement was inspired by communists, in fact the left had no
organizational role in the movement.127 If Meardi and the U.S. State Depart­
ment were o ff base about the origins o f the movement, they were right that
the violent protest was symptomatic o f serious unrest and popular anger at
the powerful merchant-planter élite and its continued control over institu­
tions o f government. That the left did not capitalize on this popular dis­
content in San Miguel revealed its geographical limitations. The dramatic
expression o f popular anger, however, and the language and iconography
through which it was expressed—“ abajo el Capital” and the specific attacks
on élite symbols—announced to all concerned parties that throughout the
country powerful forms o f populist ideology lay just beneath the surface o f
social life.
 Chapter Three

Fiestas o f the Oppressed: The Social

Geography and Culture o f Mobilization

Every night they had their comités.— Sotero Linares

They were real fiestas but they were also meetings— Ramón Vargas

T
he confluence o f popular anger against the élite, a large
cadre o f union organizers, and the strength o f anti-
oligarchical reformism created a propitious field for labor
and the left. Indeed the rapid development o f a revolutionary
movement and the decisive role o f rural subaltern groups in
transforming the leftist agenda make El Salvador in 19 29 -
31, along with Cuba in 1933, stand out in the history o f the
Latin American left. In this chapter we argue that a key to the
success o f the mobilization was the construction by the
leftist militants, rural workers, and peasants o f a new dis­
cursive, cultural, and political field as they struggled with
employers and the state.

Between Town and Country

We have seen that in 1927 urban artisans in the nascent

labor movement, operating under conditions o f relative tol­
erance on the part o f the administration o f President Pío
Romero Bosque, turned their attention to the countryside.
 Beyond the relatively benign attitude o f the government, the social and
geographic accessibility o f rural workers was the single most important
64 factor favoring the union movement. Urban workers and artisans as well
as indigenous and ladino campesinos opened new spaces o f sociability
that permitted communication o f these new, revolutionary ideas. This inter­
Fiestas action built upon and expanded existing cantonal and kin-based networks
of in the towns and countryside, and these networks expanded greatly as
the the growth o f the coffee economy threw more rural folk into the labor mar­
Oppressed
ket. The social distance between the urban artisans and rural workers
was not insurmountable; there were numerous points o f contact. Carpen­
ters, for example, worked on haciendas, and campesinos sold their goods
in urban markets. Urban youths and families participated in the coffee
harvest.1
Jorge Fernández Anaya, a Mexican who played a crucial role in the f r t s
and helped found the p c s , compared the favorable circumstances in El
Salvador with the adverse ones in Guatemala: “ It was undoubtedly very easy
to get access to a hacienda [in El Salvador] and to get them to listen to
you.” 2 He observed: “ In El Salvador, it was easier. Peons were Indians only
in some places. Not all o f the indígenas spoke Spanish but there were
always people who could translate, and in any case it was easier to speak
with Indians in El Salvador than with those o f Guatemala. They had con­
sciousness and this was important, because when we spoke to them about
the interests o f the working class, o f the laborers, they grasped the prob­
lems. . . . There was a difference between the peon and the urban worker.
But when you talked to the peons we understood each other, you could
explain, and talk all you needed to.” 3
The artisans and workers were moved by a revolutionary ideal o f equality,
without themselves becoming engaged in direct class struggle. As noted in
chapter 2, the level o f social conflict in the cities was low in 1929 and 1930.
Yet these literate workers were very receptive to the messages o f equality that
permeated all currents and stages o f union activity, from reformists to
anarcho-syndicalists to the f r t s , dominated by the p c s . Organizing among
the campesinado deepened the meanings o f that message. As in other times
and places, urban workers and artisans became enamored o f their new role
as the carriers o f revolutionary enlightenment, here rooted in El Salvador’s
radical liberalism o f the late nineteenth century.4
Urban workers and artisans played a major role in the early stages o f the
rural labor mobilization. Artisans and artisanal workers (in small manufac­
turing shops) were critical in the origins o f labor movements throughout
Europe and the Americas, and thus in this sense El Salvador was not unique. 65
Even in neighboring countries o f Central America, artisans were pioneers o f
the labor movements. In Costa Rica artisans helped organize the powerful
banana workers’ union, which launched one o f the largest strikes in the Fiestas
region’s history. In Nicaragua during the 1940s shoemakers, printers, tai­ of
lors, bakers, and other artisans journeyed to the countryside to organize the
Oppressed
workers. What made the Salvadoran case unique were the scope and suc­
cess o f the organizing drive, in part a function o f the high level o f sacrifice
demanded by the f r t s , as revealed in a report by an i s r representative in
March 1930: “ During my stay in El Salvador, I would attend a different
activity every night: elementary lessons on unionism, economic principles;
these lessons are then put into practice on Saturday and Sunday. During the
Thursday meeting, the organizers are elected and then they take propa­
ganda material and instructions to various towns and haciendas; over the
course o f these weekly visits they help to organize and then support unions.
Collections help to defray travel costs but i f that is not possible, the orga­
nizer has to carry out the mission on fo o t.. . . on Monday, the compañeros
listen to the organizers’ reports. Then, they develop new orientations and
demands based on the reports.” 5
Rotating organizers traveled between ten and fifty kilometers every
weekend. Typically they carried union and political lessons in the form o f
graphics. lorge Schlesinger’s book, written as a cautionary tale for the
Guatemalan labor movement (1946), reproduced leftist graphics to show
the insidiousness o f communist propaganda at work (see figure, page 66).
To some extent the graphics reveal reductionist Marxist-Leninist analysis in
pictures, especially the ones that describe the links between the imperial
interests o f the United States and Britain and the various presidential candi­
dates in the elections o f January 1931. Yet other graphics show an impres­
sive degree o f didactic skill in that they relate abstract ideas to aspects o f
contemporary reality. At the same time they offer a glimpse o f the mentality
of the revolutionary artisan or worker and his imagined point o f intellectual
contact with the rural masses. One graphic depicts the “ Feudal Regime”
and the French Revolution. The commentary then skips ahead some eighty
years and betrays the still-strong revolutionary syndicalist influence by sug­
gesting that with the Commune o f 1871 the proletariat gained power but
failed because there were no unions. Another graphic presents the “ Capi­
talist Regime-Bourgeois Republic.” Capital and capitalists are represented
separately at the top. Immediately below are the various types o f “ yellow”
unionists, followed by the military, “ secretarios” (higher-level bureau­
crats), and lawyers. A comment, “ all o f their titles are a gift o f the bour­
geoisie,” applies to all three groups. A street labeled Clase Pobre divides the
image. The press is the only institution above the street with links to the
fr ts. Below the street are different kinds o f taxes on the poor. Inexplicably,
the words “ death factory” are included in the list. At the bottom o f the page
are the unions and the comités sindicales.6
Although the messages were sectarian, there is little possibility that this
idiosyncratic graphic was copied from a Comintern manual, because its
explicit and implicit messages deviated from the official revolutionary ideol­
ogy. The notion that military officials, bureaucrats, and lawyers are all
“ awarded” their degrees and titles and status by the bourgeoisie, and that
the colegio sits squarely on the wealthy side o f the street, is more revealing o f
 67

Fiestas
of
the
Oppressed

Agitpropoutline of class structure of Salvadoran society, fromRevolución Comunista, by Jorge Schlesinger.

the intellectual resentment and populism o f the urban poor, most o f whom
had an elementary school education, than it is a reflection o f a Marxist view.
Moreover, the consistent message that the unions formed the key element
o f the revolutionary process and o f the “ dictatorship o f the proletariat” was
also far more akin to revolutionary syndicalism than to Marxism-Leninism.
The rough ideological framework o f the graphics reflects the ideological
tumult o f the “ maximalist” period in Europe and South America (1919-23),
in which militants gravitated from communism to a revolutionary syndical­
ist current and back again with little difficulty, given the collectively per­
ceived imminence o f the revolution.
The one schema that does give importance to the pcs and the Scorro
Rojo Internacional (s r i ) is curious in that it shows the coexistence o f the
SRi and the local union on the same hacienda, while at the departmental
and national levels the s r i maintained no formal linkage with either the
fr ts or the pcs (see figure, above). What probably struck both the activist
who drew the picture and the campesino who looked at it was the connect­
edness o f these movements that operated through space: from the hacienda
to the pueblo to the department to the capital, and then beyond the borders,
 .olosure No. 1 Despatch No 390
.e rlca n L e g a tio n San S a lv a d o r Nov. 1 0 , 1930

68 M A N IF IE ST O
DE LA UNION SINDICAL DE PROLETARIOS DE SONSO NATE*
----- 000000 -----

Fiestas A TODOS LOS TRABAJADORES Y TRABAJADORAS DE LA CIUDAD Y DEL CAMPO DE

TODOS LOS PAISES
of
C A M A R A D A S: ción: Supresión del fondo de vialidad, las ochb
the l,a Unión Sindical de Proletarios, unu ves
horas de trabajo, aumento de salario, trabajo y
pan para los desocupados, que se eiicturntron en
Oppressed más ha ocupado su puesto de .combate y de lu­
cha en 109 momentos en que se agudiza la crisis
situación de hambre, de desnudez y de miseria
pavorosas.
de toda la economía semi-feudal de este país, eco­
nomía regulada, controlada y dirigida por los fi­ Sobre la base de esas reivindicaciones eco­
nancistas do Wall Street y los estadistas de nómicas inmediatas, la Unión Sindical de Prole­
Washington. tarios, llevó a cabo una manifestación grandiosa ,
En estos momentos, en que la economía na­ el 20 de julio último culminando con la deporta­
cional está abocada y a una bancarrota total, en ción, e¡ encarcelamiento de algunos de nuestros
que se advierte que la burguesía nacional parasi­ compañeros; pero nuestra clase, fuerte en el es­
taria y semi-feudal do esto país semi-colonial, píritu de combatividad diaria, persistente, tenaz
tra^n de "justificar" ia penetración del National c implacable, no se amedrento ante los «tro-
City Bank, ¡a explotación de nuestro d ate re in­ pellos policiacos de aquella fecha; y el 2 1 de sep­
tensifica más y más. No puede :«sr tic otro rr> tiembre recién ¡'asado, acudió al mitin nacional
do, porque el National City Bank, es el orgauo fi­ que organizó la Sección Salvadoreña del Socorro
nanciero del imperialismo yanki que opera la con­ Rojo Internacional para protestar, indignados,
centración de la pequeña propiedad agraria en los por los encarcelamientos de los compañeros de
países semi-colonialcs de la América Latina en la danta Ana, Sta. Tecla, San Salvador, Tacuba.
que encuentra como niiadas a las burguesías actni- Jayaquc, Zacntocoluea, Nuevo Cuscatlán. La La­
feudales como se ve en este país y en los antilla- bor, Juayúa, Nahuizalco, Santiago Tcxaeuang03,
..nos: Cuba, Santo Domingo, Haití. Puerto Rico etc. Los Planes de Rcndcros, etc., etc., y a quienes
’ etc. ce les aplicaba, y aún aplica a algunos de ellos
<m estos momerítos !» más descarada JU STICIA
La crisis cafetalera, que ha sido provocada DE C LA SE BURGUESA. No obstante que-
por las maniobras financieras del imperialismo nuestra reunión se celebraba dentro de In mayor
yanki. no tiene solución dentro del régimen ac­ diáciplina de clase, fué asaltado por la Policía y
tual puesto que éste la pretende resolver entre­ ¡a G u a r d i a N a c i o n u l nuestro edificio so­
gando las riquezas nacionales en mano3 de los im- cial. habiendo sido encardados 3 1 compañeros
. penalistas de Wall Street y echando sobre los de los cuales fué fiajelado, herido de la cabeza y
hombros de nuestra clase laboriosa el peso de o- roto dé la dentadura, el compeñero Luis S. Ma-
sa crisis, disminuyendo, los salarios de por si • aña. por el agen*; de policía PILA R HERNAN- i
miserables, racionalizando la producción agríco­ DEZ y el cabo DONATILIO RAM IREZ, verda­
la. para echar a la calle a millares de trabajado­ deros perros asalariados de la burguesía semi-
res, quo están condenados al hambre, a la mise­ feudal y del imperialismo- yanky.
ria y a la desnudez.
El decreto fascista del 12 de agosto próxln#í
La Unión Sindical de Proletarios, que mar­ pasado, con el cusí so ha puesto en estado d é s ' '
cha. en su lucha implacable de clases, bajo las tío a la clase trabajadora, la represión güije
consignas de la Internacional Sindical Roja, di­ mental fascista llevada a cabo contra nuolj,
rectora de nuestra Confederación Sindical La­ organizaciones sindicales revolucionarlas, yj&
tino Americana y de nuestra Federación Regio­ tos otros hechos que nosotros denunciamos í
nal de-Trabajadores de El Salvador, sólo en­ nuestra dase explotada, son los síntom as^
cuentra. como único medio, para suprimir las descomposición creciente deLtógim en < '
miserias que nos impone el sistema capitalista,
la organización de hierro de nuestra dase explo­
‘ ........
tada para abatir a lóa caplotadores y
con toda chefgTá róWmHOmfftA 14 W Í-.___ .
nos económicas inmediatas de nuestra Federa­
í»
¡¡ C o n t r a l a O p r e s i ó n C a p i t a l i s t a : E Í . F R E N T E U N I C O O B R E R O y C '4 Í ^ . ^
PESX N O ü f ) -
;¡ V IV A L a U n ió n S i n d i c « l d e P r o l e t a r i o s d e S o n s o n a t e ! !
;; V IV A L a F e d e r a c i ó n R e g i o n a l d e T r a b a j a d o r e s d e E l S a l v a d o r !!
!¡ V IV A L a C o n f e d e r a c i ó n S i n d i c a l L a t i n o A m e r i c a n a !!
¡; V IV A L a I n t e r n a c i o n a l S i n d i c a l R o ja ! ! Manifesto of FRTS,
^ EL COMITE EJECUTIVO DE LA'ÜNION SINDICAL DE P. DE S. & 1930, fromU.S.
Sonsonate, Octubre de *1930.
National Archive.

especially to that land where the proletariat had seized power. After the
union militants and campesinos talked about the meaning o f the graphics,
the campesinos would then discuss conditions on their finca or hacienda.
Finally they would draw up a list o f demands to be discussed at the Monday
meetings in the urban center.
Beyond the effective use o f graphics with a largely illiterate audience,
other union practices specifically helped bridge the social distance between
the urban organizers and the rural poor. The very act o f traveling on foot to
isolated cantons was impressive to the rural people. Similarly, word o f the
struggles and successes o f the fr t s on behalf o f the campesinos preceded
the organizers. Mármol, for example, recalled that the fishermen’s union he 69

helped to organize in Ilopango went on to mobilize the workers o f a nearby

hacienda and won significant concessions, making them famous: “ from
Ilo p a n g o we went on foot to the Eastern and Western provinces, to Ati- Fiestas
quizaya, to los Amates, to Zacetecoluca, to Chalatenango, etc. The delegates of
from Ilopango were heartily applauded by everyone at those meetings.” 7 the
Oppressed
In fact many unions were organized “ spontaneously” : labor organizers
would often show up in a canton only to find it already organized. As a fr ts
document reported, “ continual pleas from the haciendas and villages to the
Federation for organizers, and many times when they arrive on the scene
they find organizations already in place, ready for action; the campesinos
state: ‘here change will rule.’ ”8
Both the spontaneous growth o f the movement and the fluidity between
town and countryside recall the Andalusian anarchist movement. Literate
village craftsmen, known as obreros conscientes, played a vital role in educating
their rural proletarian neighbors about libertarian communism and the
abolition o f the great estates on which they labored. Diaz del Moral painted
a sketch o f the rapidly expanding movement in the period after the First
World War, which was led by “ obreros conscientes” but rapidly developed a
life o f its own: “ We who lived through that time in 19 18 -19 will never forget
that amazing sight. In the fields, in the shelters and courts, wherever peas­
ants met to talk, for whatever purpose, there was only one topic o f conver­
sation, always discussed seriously and fervently: the social question . . . In a
few weeks the original nucleus o f 10 or 12 adepts would be converted into
the ioos; in a few months practically the entire working population, seized
by ardent proselytism, propagated the flaming ideal frenziediy. . . once the
village was converted, the agitation spread.” 9
The Anadaiusian obreros conscientes, the literate artisans, had a role
certainly akin to those o f El Salvador. As Miguel Mármol pointed out, the
hardest part o f organizing was the initial effort to “ crack the hard shell o f
tradition, fear and suspicion.” 10 Commenting on earlier failed attempts to
organize in the countryside, Mármol remarked that the militants had “ cre­
ated an impenetrable barrier between their ‘enlightenment’ and the ‘back­
wardness’ they ascribed to the people.” Rather, Mármol and his compa­
ñeros started directly from the immediate expressions o f need and interest
 by the fishermen and campesinos. Then, after they built up confidence and
the campesinos and fishermen articulated their needs and feelings, the
7° organization emerged, greeted like “ the rains o f May.”
The elastic borders between town and country favored Mármol, himself
o f campesino stock, and in general aided the development o f the rural labor
Fiestas movement throughout the country. Although there was a significant educa­
of tional and cultural gu lf between artisans and rural workers, the social geog­
the raphy that separated them was eased by the the tendency o f many rural
Oppressed
workers to actually reside in the same cities or towns, even if in more
marginal areas. The fluidity o f town and country was not unique to those
two areas, and in varying ways, in Cuba and Nicaragua similar patterns of
social geography also aided rural labor organization. In Cuba the massive
expansion and the seasonal nature o f the sugar industry contributed to
relatively close links between industrial and rural labor, and a demographic
circulation between town and country aided the development o f the revolu­
tionary movement o f 19 33.11 In Nicaragua, even before the cotton boom,
many rural workers and campesinos were neighbors in urban barrios in
provincial towns like Chinandega. That proximity aided in the early de­
velopment o f the rural labor movement.12 With the cotton boom and its
attendant seasonal labor fluctuations, the divide between rural and urban
declined even more. Some observers o f the revolutionary insurrections of
1978-79 ascribe importance to the participation o f seasonal cotton workers
in the urban insurrection.

La Causa and La Presa

The labor movement suffered a major reversal in December 1929, but one
that to some extent energized the movement and probably helped the left to
consolidate its control. In a nationally famous case, on La Presa, a large
plantation in Coatepeque, the National Guard evicted 345 colono families
in the middle o f a storm, claiming that the union had called for expropria­
tion and subsequently distributing the land to the colonos. In reality the
union had threatened a strike in demand o f higher wages and an end to
payments for water. But the élite family that owned the hacienda had the ear
o f the president o f the Republic.
Guillermo Borbón, owner o f La Presa, wrote to the president about the
events o f 3 March, offering a rare glimpse o f élite attempts to remain in
control o f their workers: “ For some days now, we have noticed that the
Workers’ Regional, with its base in Armenia, has intensified its campaign
o f subversive and Bolshevik propaganda among the hacienda colonos. They 7i
call on the colonos not to work on the hacienda and they hold unauthorized
meetings; their speeches try to inculcate in the colonos the idea that the
hacienda belongs to them and that they should sieze control o f i t . . . The Fiestas
(union) doesn’t only spread this propaganda at la ‘Presa,’ but all over the of
country . . . it poses a serious danger for the Nation.” 13 After Romero the
Oppressed
Bosque received Borbón’s telegram he ordered the departmental governor
to send a larger contingent to the hacienda, claiming that the workers had
“violated the law.” The local mayor reported, however, that the workers
were only demanding a wage increase: “ they acted so that they would get
paid one more real.” 14 In response to the arrests Miguel Martinez wrote to
the interior minister, underscoring the contradiction between the demo­
cratic commitments o f the government and workers’ rights: “The Federal
Executive Council demands the immediate liberty o f the (imprisoned) com­
pañeros . . . Even more, we believe that the actions hurt the freedom o f
organization, the most elementary rights that workers possess. Those mea­
sures are reactionary and strip the rights o f the exploited to organize and
push for economic improvement.” 15
Other letters from union leaders protested the arrests and highlighted
the cycle o f repression, outrage, and further action.16 The f r t s turned the
arrests o f their four compañeros into a cause célebre and mobilized mass
demonstrations demanding their release. In short, they turned a defeat into
a highly successful mobilizing issue.
Wage cuts, abysmal working conditions, and an absence o f planter hege­
mony created optimal conditions for labor organizing throughout the cof­
fee highlands. A phrase reportedly uttered by oligarchs—“ Soon they will
only come to work for the tortillas” —synthesizes the degree o f élite ar­
rogance and the severity o f the crisis facing rural labor. Beyond this gener­
alized breeding ground o f discontent, we need to turn to case studies to
better understand the mechanics o f organization. Let us consider two rela­
tively successful organizational drives, one on a hacienda and the other
based in a town surrounded by coffee fincas. These cases highlight key
characteristics o f the fr t s organizing drive: the specifically cantonal form
° f organization, the festive form o f urban meetings, and the exceptionally
important role o f lower-level caporales (foremen) in the rural unions. The
 form o f cantonal union organization was particularly appropriate. Union
members on each finca elected delegates who would then form the steering
72 committee o f the canton-based organization. At the most basic level, when
labor organizers visited the canton they facilitated the organization and
development o f the union, most importantly keeping its activities out o f
Fiestas view o f the finca owners and managers. As police surveillance shut o ff the
of possibility o f open urban meetings, the cantonal form o f organization be­
the came increasingly important. The following description o f union activity on
Oppressed
the San Isidro hacienda provides us with some insight into how the labor
movement could consolidate itself even though it did not follow a typical
path o f union organization: preliminary work, strikes, some bargaining
success, and then more growth, reaching some level o f strength before
state intervention. Notwithstanding the growing control o f the movement
by the left and an intense rhetorical pitch o f class struggle, there were fewer
than ten strikes in the cities and countryside during the first period o f rapid
growth, from November 1929 to August 19 31.17

San Isidro

Although strike activity per se was uncommon, rural workers and colonos
engaged extensively in other forms o f resistance that threatened élite politi­
cal and economic domination. In January 1931 Gregorio Cortez Cordero
organized meetings o f a hundred workers in a ravine near Hacienda San
Isidro, the region’s largest coffee- and cane-producing hacienda, near Ar­
menia. The size o f the meetings revealed that the organizing drive had as yet
only involved a small minority o f the hacienda: a population o f 2,400 people
resided on San Isidro and an additional thousand laborers toiled at harvest
time. Yet a newspaper article offered an overheated account o f the activity:
“They pass out communist leaflets and they urge workers to attack those
who do not agree with those principles. Moreover, we have reports that the
mayordomos and capataces are in dire straits as they are constantly threat­
ened when they try to carry out the hacienda’s orders.” 18 Despite its alarmist
tone, the article does highlight the union tactics at the point o f production.
Social geography favored the union organizers at San Isidro. Much o f the
workforce resided in small and relatively proximate communities, at the
centers o f different fincas within the confines o f the hacienda. Hundreds o f
other workers lived in autonomous cantons, primarily El Guayabo and Los
M an g os. Even th o u g h t h e s e families referred to themselves as c o lo n o s

because they rented land and worked on the hacienda, they differed from
traditional colonos in that they were not obliged to work and lived in their 73
own dwellings. In their communities these peasant laborers formed strong
ties o f solidarity, confronting together their dependence on the hacienda
for land and labor. El Guayabo and los Mangos were a short distance from Fiestas
the sugar fields and coffee groves o f San Isidro but outside the direct °f
control o f management, and they became sites o f intense and radical union
activism. The hacienda also employed seasonal labor from the indigenous Oppresse
municipality o f Nahuizalco and the bi-ethnic municipality o f Izalco. Over
seventeen hundred Nahuizalqueño rural laborers were already organized by
mid-1930, and thus in all likelihood contributed significantly to labor orga­
nization at San Isidro.
Although labor organizers could take advantage o f similar developments
on other haciendas, at least one characteristic that favored labor was unique
to San Isidro. Many Volcaneños, ladinos from villages on the slopes o f the
Volcán de Santa Ana, worked on the hacienda. Volcaneños had a long tradi­
tion o f taking part in revolts and resisting state authority.19 These people—
ladinos—whose physical and cultural isolation conditioned the develop­
ment o f their own Spanish dialect had a reputation for violent behavior.
Informants from San Isidro recall the important role o f Felix Ascencio.
Among other accomplishments, he reduced the number o f machete fights
among laborers. One informant recalls him addressing a worker, “ Mucha,
why are you fighting with a compañero de trabajo?” His charisma seemed to
have carried the day. Ascencio, when organizing his compañeros, used
class-rooted populist lines that remained etched in the collective memory o f
survivors from the epoch: “ Un día San Isidro será de la majada” (One day
San Isidro will belong to the crushed).20
The actions o f both Felix Ascencio and another San Isidro union activist,
Margarita Turcios’s father, highlight the role o f caporales in the labor
movement. Nominally members o f management, caporales typically re­
ceived 50 -75 percent more income than ordinary workers. But their higher
salary scale did not necessarily alienate them from the rank and file. In their
organizing they were able to make use o f their greater grasp o f the eco­
nomics o f the coffee industry, thanks in part to their literacy. Literacy not
only enhanced their ability to understand the mechanisms o f exploitation
but made them the ideal locutors o f the radical urban workers who visited
 74

Fiestas
Margarita Turcios,
of
San Isidro. Courtesy
the
of the Museo de la
Oppressed
.mVM. Palabra y la Imagen.

the fincas and haciendas. By and large, their job was not directly dependent
on increasing the levels o f productivity o f the workforce (as opposed to
ensuring the fulfillment o f basic production goals), and therefore they were
often viewed with respect by the jornaleros. Such was the case with Jesus
Guzman and Abraham Gonzalez in Los Amates (a coffee canton west of
Santa Tecla), coffee finca caporales who became the principal leaders o f the
coffee workers’ union and later o f Socorro Rojo. Gonzalez worked under
the authority o f a general foreman, and despite his union and later s r i
militancy he worked harmoniously with the management o f the finca. Guz­
man, who worked on the other main coffee finca in the canton, was respon­
sible for bringing the organization to the area, as he had befriended the
fr t s organizer from Santa Tecla, Frutos Castillo. The two worked closely
together and Castillo was a frequent visitor to Los Amates, accompanied by
Guzman.21
Miguel Velasquez was a caporal on the sugarcane, cattle, and coffee
hacienda La Labor, in the Atiquizaya region. Originally a captain in the
National Guard, he resigned for reasons that remain obscure and took the
job on the hacienda. He became extremely well respected for his many
talents in the field and his compassionate treatment o f the field hands. This
caudillo-like figure provided a powerful counterweight to the landlord,
Onofre Duran, a man who the campesinos believed had made a pact with
the devil.22 When Velasquez started organizing the field hands, even those
on La Labor who did not wish to join refused to turn him in. His reputation
spread to neighboring fincas and haciendas. Similarly, one o f the most
important labor and left figures in the country, Modesto Ramirez, had
worked as a caporal on a hacienda near Ilopango, east o f San Salvador.
Jay aq ue

The organizing drive in Jayaque, a town surrounded by mid-sized commer­ 75

cial coffee fincas, twenty-eight kilometers southwest o f Santa Tecla in the
department o f La Libertad, shared some o f the characteristics o f the San
Isidro experience.23 In particular, labor activists based in Armenia were Fiestas
fundamental in the development o f both unions. The Armenia branch o f the of
frts was important thanks both to its central location in the coffee zone the
Oppressed
and to the activities o f Gregorio (“ Goyo”) Cordero Cortez. Known for carry­
ing out his work on horseback, he is still widely remembered, perhaps more
than any other union activist in the West.24 Cordero Cortez was a founding
member o f the Sindicato de Oficios Varios in Armenia, and he owned and
operated a small farm in the canton Las Tres Ceibas. At the fr ts congress in
May 1930, when the delegates from Guayabo questioned Fernandez Anaya’s
sectarian stance against smallholders in the labor movement, they cited the
exemplary activities o f Cortez Cordero. After the mass expulsion o f the
colonos from La Presa, Goyo Cortez became the key manager o f their
defense, at the same time that he continued his organizational work.
In March 1930 a leaflet circulated that contained this text: “ Invitation. La
Unión de Trabajadores de Jayaque issues a formal call to attend a meeting
on Sunday the 16th in the house o f Manuel Murillo to discuss important
matters such as better salaries, the 8-hour day, better treatment; we are
exploited, poorer every day.” 25 Murillo, an electrician, had recently arrived in
town from Las Cuchillas near Santa Ana, where state authorities had just
crushed the labor union on the hacienda in La Presa. He probably worked
with the sindicalistas in Armenia, who had come to the defense o f the La
Presa colonos. The Murillos brought with them some resources. In addition
to his work as an electrician, he had a small finca and his wife set up a
business in town. The meetings at the Murillo household had the appear­
ance o f fiestas, with lots o f chelate (a nonalcoholic, corn-based beverage)
and tamales. Although drinking was frowned upon, there was often music
and singing. The original small group o f artisans quickly grew as rural
laborers started showing up for the Sunday meetings. Soon the house could
no longer hold the crowd and the union had to rent a small building in
town. Although somewhat less festive, the meetings in the rented building
were no less memorable. Once when Murillo was speaking to the assem­
bled members, two small campesino boys, dressed in rags, leaned against
 the open windows. He gazed up at them and spoke to the crowd: “These
hungry little kids break your heart. It’s for them that we have to struggle.”
76 Murillo also punctuated his speeches with the phrase, “We can’t go on just
working for the tortillas!” The response was always thunderous applause,
and the phrase “working only for the tortillas” was increasingly used as a
Fiestas rallying cry throughout the region. When fincas and haciendas stopped
of supplying their meager portions o f rice and beans, workers needed to pur­
the chase the food at the company store, and sometimes workers received no
Oppressed
pay once the value o f their purchases was deducted from their wages.
From the small group at the end o f 1929, the Jayaque union grew to 284
members by May 1930. Jayaque activists had also spurred the organization
o f another union composed o f fifty coffee workers in the caserío o f La Labor,
four kilometers away.26

Fiestas and Meetings

Young boys who managed to attend the meetings remember the festive air
above all else. These poor town boys witnessed the momentary transforma­
tion o f the jornaleros into animated, friendly, and thoughtful people who
became familiar with those such as Murillo and other town artisans who
occupied a distinctly higher perch on the social hierarchy. Although they
were too young to absorb many o f the details, the basic thrust o f the
message was clear enough: social equality.27 In a sense the meetings them­
selves foreshadowed a world where equality would prevail. Descriptions
from the departments o f Ahauchapán, Sonsonate, and La Libertad are re­
markably similar in their emphasis on the atmosphere in the meetings. But
there were differences between the relatively open meetings in the towns
and cities and the usually clandestine ones in the countryside. After the
anticommunist decree o f August 1930 and the accompanying wave o f ar­
rests, most meetings were clandestine and held in the countryside. The
movement baptized those meetings with the name reuniones de barranca (ra­
vine meetings). One nonparticipant in the Izalco region recalls, “ Every
night they had their comités (meetings).” Rockets or conch shell horns
announced the nocturnal meetings, typically attended by sixty to a hundred
men and women. Testimonies suggest that the reuniones de barranca were
emotionally charged and uplifting. Miguel Mármol described some o f the
meetings from 1929 and 1930 in the area around Lake Ilopango as well
attended and exciting: “The nighttime meeting we called in a place known
as Cujapa caused a sensation . . . I remember we went there from Ilopango
as delegates from our Union . . . and when our arrival was announced the 77

applause resounded all through the darkness. To get to these meetings we

had to walk over many roads and paths . . . Everybody brought their own
food and provision to these gatherings. It was moving to see peasant fami­ Fiestas
lies arrive with all their kids, their bundles o f tortillas, coffee, and some­ of
times even mats to sleep on when necessary. Whenever the union . . . had a the
Oppressed
chance to, a couple o f steers or some pigs would be slaughtered beforehand
to be shared amongst those attending.” 28
The open meetings in towns and cities exhibited an even more festive air
that often disguised and perhaps even enhanced their serious purpose. In
the cantons o f Izalco, for example, union (and later s r i ) meetings were
fiestas, and chicha and tamales were served. In Atiquizaya one informant
recalls that “ they were real fiestas but they were also meetings where all the
workers and campesinos took part.” 20 Again, cooking and eating tamales
were a high point o f the festivities. In Los Gramales, in the hacienda district
near San Julian, “ the meetings turned into parrandas [parties characterized
by drinking, music, and dance]. At most meetings, the participants sang
revolutionary songs and rancheros.”
The ubiquity o f these lively meetings is intriguing.30 It is hard to imagine
that the festivities actually camouflaged the meetings, or that more than the
occasional policeman was actually fooled. It is doubtful that dozens o f rural
folk streamed into a relatively small town to gather at the home o f an artisan
without raising suspicion. And it seems unlikely that more than a few
campesinos would attend the meeting only for the social aspects. In other
words, a purely functional explanation would not capture its meaning for
the participants. Rather, these meetings suggest the emergence o f a new
form o f cross-class sociability.31
The festive meetings recall Victor Turner’s concepts o f liminality and
communitas. Turner defined liminality as “ a state o f being in between suc­
cessive participations in social milieux dominated by social structural con­
siderations.” 32 This was a moment o f tremendously creative social possibil­
ities, prefiguring future social development and change. Although Turner’s
own studies in Africa focused on societies in which liminality formed part
of a preordained ritual process, he also saw its spontaneous gestation in
movements that emerged in response to radical structural change.33 Liminal
 (or threshold) situations are propitious for the emergence o f communitas,
which is not a geographically based or kinship-based community: “ the
7§ social bonds o f communitas are anti-structural in the sense that they are un­
differentiated, equalitarian, direct, extant, non rational, existential, I-Thou
(in Feuerbach’s and Buber’s sense) relationships. Communitas is sponta­
Fiestas neous, immediate, concrete—it is not shaped by norms, it is not institu­
of tionalized . . . Communitas does not merge identities; it liberates them
the from conformity to general norms, though this is a necessarily transient
Oppressed
condition i f society is to continue to operate in an orderly fashion.” 34
Here Turner followed the German theologian Martin Buber in drawing a
distinction between I-Thou and I-It relationships. I-Thou relationships are
unmediated by societal or ideological structures and engage the whole hu­
man being. I-It relationships are mediated by things. For Buber the I-thou
relation is inherent in the notion o f “ we,” which is in turn the basis o f
solidarity, the foundation o f human communities and a new society: “ a new
culture, a new totality o f spirit may come into being only if there will again
be true community and togetherness, actual living together and with each
other, a living immediacy between people.” 35 Buber’s constant refrain, “All
real life is meeting,” signals the usefulness o f the concept o f communitas in
the Salvadoran context precisely because it forces us to focus our attention
on the broader issue o f how these new interpersonal relationships devel­
oped between people who previously had little to do with each other and
whose cultural spheres were quite distinct. Let us further explore the fiesta
form o f meetings. First, militants extended a formal invitation to an indi­
vidual. The invitation, whether to a fiesta or to a meeting, resembled a
“ gift” in that according to local codes it had to be reciprocated. This cer­
tainly created an obligation and occasionally an excuse to authorities: “ I was
invited [so therefore I attended].” Conversely, if one was not invited, then
one would not participate in the movement—you could not, as it were, crash
a meeting or fiesta. For the invitees, both campesino and artisans, the town
festivals, as throughout the Americas, were always joyous occasions that
mixed religiosity with iconoclastic behavior tending to momentarily chal­
lenge social hierarchies. Thus the fiesta or meeting was a readily acceptable
social form available to the artisans and the campesinos. The content of
these discussions is largely lost to us, but the form o f communication and
something o f the meaning reside in the consciousness o f those who re­
member them through oral testimony. We do know that the early union
discussions in 1929 and early 1930 focused mainly on wages, working
conditions, and social equality, and that later meetings o f the Socorro Rojo
emphasized above all else the struggle for land. They also probably stressed 79
the Soviet example more frequently.
Most significantly, these meetings represented liminal moments in which
n e w social modalities emerged involving artisans, urban workers, small- Fiestas
holders, and rural workers. Previously, urban and rural folks had interacted of
in a myriad o f ways, but not as equals. These meeting-fiestas in constituting
the unions began to create a new identity o f “ proletarians” who were socially
equal. If two members passed each other on a path, road, or street they
exchanged the greeting “ Salud, camarada,” and they used the term “ cama-
rada” constantly to consecrate their new identity as equals. Whatever nega­
tive connotations the history o f communism has bestowed on this term,
there is ample evidence in testimonies that campesinos used this term with a
great deal o f enthusiasm. Thus the meetings were important in creating a
new sense o f dignity and empowerment among the rural poor. They also
provided an educational forum in which new grassroots leaders would
emerge. Sotero Linares, who lived in a canton o f Izalco, recalled, “They had
their leader in Izalco where they took classes and received instruction and
orders.” 36
The newly formed militants went to neighboring cantons and spread the
message o f rights and equality by placing the more abstract concepts into
their lived experience, just as the artisans and workers had done when
instructing them. In other words, the militants transmitted to' new recruits
hybrid understandings o f what they had gleaned from graphics and discus­
sions with the urban militants. Yet the messages were communicated along
with new categories o f understanding, including terms like bourgeois, cap­
italist, and proletarian.

Jorge Fernández Anaya, Marxism-Leninism, and Populism

Despite the stunning rapidity and extension o f the union organizing drive,
at the congress o f May 1930 its principal leader, Jorge Fernández Anaya,
delivered a devastating attack on the fr ts precisely because o f the lack o f
ideological preparation o f its militants. An indefatigable fighter who trav­
eled on foot throughout the region, he was fully aware o f the nature o f the
meetings and criticized what he considered the tendency to fetishize them:
 “There exists in all o f our compañeros a serious deficiency, and that is
organizational passivity, and proof o f that is that all o f our compañeros
8o share the belief that ’con solo reunir la g e n te ,’ with that they acquire class
consciousness.” 37 Anaya linked the “ ideological confusion” and lack of
understanding o f revolutionary theory with the petit bourgeois class origins
Fiestas o f the leadership, who were primarily artisans and rural smallholders. In
of the countryside, “ frequently the leaders are smallholders without any class
the consciousness. And they unconsciously detain the revolutionary march o f
Oppressed
union organization.” He also complained that in the cities artisans and even
“ small industrialists” ran the unions. Anaya warned, “ It is necessary to be
aware that leaders who have special interests [intereses creados] in the
moments in which the struggle acquires decisive characteristics, these are
going to betray the revolutionary movement.” 38
Paradoxically, for Anaya the movement’s rapid “ spontaneous growth”
was one o f its fundamental weaknesses: “ The masses have created the orga­
nization and have spontaneously come to the f r t s . It has been their desire
for improvement, for raises, for better treatment, etc. that has brought the
masses to the organization.” 39 Anaya argued that in fact the f r t s was not
engaged in real organizational efforts, but rather was content to allow for
spontaneous mobilization. How can we understand this sharp discrepancy
between Anaya’s blistering criticism and the reality o f the rapidly growing
labor movement? Anaya had arrived in El Salvador in November 1929. Al­
though he was the head o f the Young Communists for the Caribbean re­
gion, he was highly aware o f his own lack o f theoretical and political so­
phistication. The classics o f Marxism-Leninism had been unavailable to
him in Mexico, and he had learned much o f what he knew through conver­
sations with the Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella during the six
months preceding Mella’s assassination in 1929. Mella, it should be noted,
was a relative newcomer to Comintern discipline: he was suspected o f
ideological deviations, and some argue that the Comintern had him elimi­
nated.40 Regardless o f the causes o f the assassination, Mella’s training cer­
tainly made Anaya insecure.
Anaya’s correspondence with Comintern officials reveals his intense ef­
fort to think within the conceptual framework o f Marxism-Leninism and
his concern with his own ideological inadequacy—despite his high level o f
intelligence. At nearly every mention o f the word “ Salvadoran,” for exam­
ple, he begs forgiveness for his use o f a “ nationalist” vocabulary: “The
deportation o f Luis Villagrán and o f all the foreign revolutionaries . . . I have
to say that Villagrán was the only one, since all the rest are Salvadorans,
excusing the use o f the petit-bourgeois nationalist term.” 41 This last sen­ 81

tence reveals a struggle within Anaya as he attempted to analyze, describe,

and transform society within categories that were still strange to him. In
this sense we can see that as Anaya and other actors and groups trans­ Fiestas
formed the Third Phase Comintern version o f Marxism-Leninism to apply of
to Salvadoran reality, he felt the immense responsibility to fix the meanings the
Oppressed
of the revolutionary ideology. His critique o f the fr t s can be thus under­
stood as an effort to push the political and cultural expressions o f the
movement into fixed categories. Anaya perhaps inferred the subversive po­
tential o f communitas, present in the meeting-fiestas: that is, the egali­
tarian, creative qualities that could not be contained within what Anaya
imagined as a Marxist-Leninist party structure.42
Anaya’s refusal to accept those subversive aspects o f the meetings was
also a rejection o f what the Argentine theoretician Ernesto Laclau called
“popular-democratic interpellations” within the ideology o f the union mem­
bers. As we have seen, to Laclau the popular-democratic identity was one
opposed to élite rule, “ united to institutions in which democracy is mate­
rialized.”43 Throughout modern history various groups o f people outside the
dominant power bloc have considered themselves (in his terms “ been con­
stituted as” ) “ the people,” in antagonistic relation to the prevailing domi­
nant bloc. For Laclau people from diverse class backgrounds have histori­
cally suffered from various forms o f political and ideological domination,
and identify themselves in opposition to the power bloc as an “ other,” as an
“ underdog.” This concept forms a key element o f his theory o f populism. He
writes: “ Our thesis is that populism consists in the presentation o f popular-
democratic interpellations as a synthetic-antagonistic complex with respect
to the dominant ideologies . . . Populism begins where popular-democratic
elements are presented as an antagonistic option against the ideology o f the
dominant bloc.” 44 Laclau also argues that these “ popular-democratic” ele­
ments need to be articulated to class ideologies, and that at the heart o f any
ideological struggle is a battle over these articulations—an effort to create a
discourse in which one element condenses and expresses another. For exam­
ple, in a right-wing populist discourse the nation expresses the people who
express a race who express religiosity. In the most successful communist
discourses, such as those ofMao, Tito, and the Italian Communist Party, the
 dominant symbols o f the nation, the people, and the working classes all
expressed each other in a way that suggested a “ socialist populism.” 45
82 The on-the-ground ideological elements o f the emerging, multiclass
labor movement, and especially o f the Socorro Rojo, were filled with
populist-democratic interpellations in antagonistic relation to the domi­
Fiestas nant power bloc. Although the term “ people” was rarely employed, la­
of borers, artisans, peasants, and militants often identified themselves with
the comparable terms: los pobres, la pobreria, or los oprimidos. The most powerful
Oppressed
and ubiquitous symbol within populist discourse was los ricos, which stood
for the antagonistic bloc. Although as we shall see, Marxist class categories
came to be used more frequently by rank-and-file militants, los pobres re­
mained the dominant term in the popular idiom.
Laclau’s analysis helps us recognize two fundamental reasons for the
stunning growth o f the Salvadoran left. First, he argues that populism
emerges as part o f a crisis o f ideological domination, a consequence o f a
division o f the power bloc, “ in which a class or class fraction needs, in order
to assert its hegemony, to appeal to ‘the people’ against established ideol­
ogy as a whole; or a crisis in the ability o f the system to neutralize the
dominated sectors. ”46 He adds that historical crises occur when both causes
are present, as they certainly were in El Salvador. On the one hand, Arau-
jismo represented just such a fracture in the dominant bloc. On the other,
there were serious challenges to the old ideological system based on social
differences and hierarchies, mediated by the church and local caudillos.
Another key factor in the explosive growth o f the Salvadoran left may
have been its “ socialist populism,” its ability to express a socialist program
and goals in a populist idiom. Because o f their youth, inexperience, and
rigidity o f thought (as well as the lack o f a foreign adversary to strengthen
the “ national” element o f populist discourse), Anaya and later Farabundo
Marti could not grasp the populist dimension o f the movement. Neverthe­
less, because o f the organizational weakness o f the vanguard—the pcs was
only founded in March 1930 and may not have attained a membership of
five hundred over the next two years—the leadership was never able to
disarticulate the populist from the socialist ideological elements. Ironically,
the failure to weaken the growing articulation between the two was crucial
to the development o f the movement. O f course, many militants understood
the importance o f the fusion and doubtless ignored entreaties to purify
their base.
 The power o f Marxist discourse fused with existing populist mentality
can be glimpsed in a peasant’s account o f some five decades later: “ Social­
ism means that we are all equal, being on the side o f the suffering, having 83
medicine for everyone . . . We gotta to try to have a government o f working
folks. . . to administer the products o f labor.” 47 This passage illustrates how
a campesino could appropriate the idea o f socialism and make the concept Fiestas
appropriate to his or her reality. That kind o f dynamic appropriation o f of
political ideas is o f course fundamental to the success o f any subaltern the
Oppressed
protest movement and surely was in 1930. From an analytical standpoint,
the discourse o f the Marxist left is formed by such appropriations as well as
its more formal enunciations. A rudimentary account o f how theory relates
to practice, and a window onto the forging o f an interchange between
formal expression and its appropriation, is provided by another informant
regarding the encounter o f the ig le sia popular and campesinos in the 1970s:
“Those that have an idea [of socialismo]. But those who do not struggle,
understand nothing. I f you never go near a meeting you are lost. ” 48

Expansion and Limits of the Labor Movement

If Anaya did not capture the intrinsic importance o f meetings, his analysis
did point to certain salient characteristics o f this rapidly expanding move­
ment. In particular, his argument about the spontaneity o f organization and
recruitment was certainly valid, although his criticism o f a consequent lack
of interest in organizational work seems widely o ff the mark. The problem
was not so much that the movement grew spontaneously but rather that its
rapid expansion left the militants unable to meet the organizational needs
of the unions or to prepare for government repression.
There is no way to measure this growth with any certainty. By mid-1930
the fr t s had at least fifteen thousand members, probably doubling its
membership during the previous six months.49 The map on page 84 shows
how the labor movement progressed from December 1929 to May 1930
under Anaya’s leadership. The organized sites o f December 1929 were prin­
cipally in the provincial cities and towns, with some bases in the nearby
coffee areas. The expansion took place almost entirely in the coffee cantons
near the cities and towns and on the larger haciendas. At times the f r t s
expanded through the creation o f new unions, as we saw in the organiza­
tional progression from Armenia to Jayaque to La Labor. Typically that
 84

Fiestas
of
the
Oppressed

FRTS organizational bases, 1930.

progression moved along an urban-to-rural continuum. In other cases

town-based unions became umbrella organizations as they expanded into
the surrounding countryside. By mid-1930, for example, the Unión Sindical
de Trabajadores de Jauyúa had six hundred members and the Sindicato
Unión de Trabajadores de Nahuizalco over seventeen hundred. The unions
held rallies and meetings in the towns, but they also had functioning
branches in the cantons where workers, who returned from the haciendas
every two weeks on Sunday, would meet.
Mapping the development o f the union movement also reveals its limi­
tations. Although the fr t s had a presence outside the coffee zones, it
expanded mostly by organizing coffee workers and colonos on large es­
tates.50 The various non-coffee sites o f organization around Lake Ilopango
were an exception, owing in part to their relative proximity to San Salvador.
There was also the fortuitous circumstance that the town o f Ilopango and its
surrounding cantons produced three outstanding and nationally prominent
militants: Miguel Mármol, Ismael Hernández, and Modesto Ramirez. Their
experience o f organizing cattle ranch vaqueros, fishermen on the lake, and
other rural workers outside the coffee industry was not replicated elsewhere.
They achieved their most important success at the Hacienda Colombia,
where the union organized laborers, colonos, and terrajeros (tenant farm­
ers).51 In February 1931 a strike broke out, reported upon by a journalist,
whose voice o f reason was anomalous within the Salvadoran fourth estate: 85
“ the movement was promoted by the peones, colonos and terrajeros o f that
hacienda; they were demanding a wage increase. Really, the mayors and
some educated people have confused every act o f protest with communism. ” 52 Fiestas
of
the
The Birth of El Socorro Rojo Internacional Oppressed

Shortly after his arrival in El Salvador in November 1929, Anaya suggested

to fr ts militants that they organize a branch o f Socorro Rojo Internacional
(s r i ), with the express aim o f defending political prisoners. Anaya was a
delegate o f the Caribbean section o f the s r i , and there is no reason to doubt
that he expected to follow the model laid out in Moscow and New York. The
sr i militants’ primary tasks were to raise political consciousness among
the proletariat about the relationship o f the national bourgeoisie, imperial­
ism, and repression and to mobilize public opinion against the incarcera­
tion o f its militants. According to its statutes, the s r i was open to anyone
who accepted the notion o f class struggle. The s r i also “ struggled against
the racial oppression o f workers who were black, Indian, Chinese or other
oppressed nationalities.” 53
At the fr t s congress in May 1930, however, it was clear that most union
members did not have much sense o f what the s r i organization should
look like, much less grasp its message o f emancipation for minorities.
Delegates discussed the relationship o f the fr t s and the s r i ; all assumed
that the s r i would be founded by union militants. The delegate from “ el
Guayabo” offered the example o f the indefatigable labor organizer Goyo
Cortez. At the same time that he was organizing and sustaining locals from
San Isdiro to Jayaque, he was the head o f the s r i local in Armenia, and in
his capacity as s r i leader, he worked on behalf o f the imprisoned union
leaders o f La Presa. The message seemed to be that individuals could and
should belong to both organizations, but that the organizations had dif­
ferent objects o f struggle and should act autonomously.
There was some discussion about the differences between the union and
the s r i . The graphic o f the f r t s leader Rafael Bondanza showed the par­
ticipation in the s r i o f “ doctores” (probably meaning lawyers). As Anaya
lectured about the SRI as an organization composed o f “ proletarians, farm
 CHALATEN AN G O
86 G U A T E M A L A

SANTA ANA

Turin .SRI
Fiestas Atiquizaya
Ahuachapán
of T a cu b a ,
S ierr^oj
LA LIBERTAD
the SRI Apaneca Lake
Juayúa SRI v!?c.fln0 Coatí
loatepeque $RI
Oppressed AHUACHAPÁN -5RI [zaleo Volcan^ .
SAN SALVADOR
Nahuizalco S#l Cuyagualo .Sa" ^
•SRI El Guayabo
.SRI Armenia. SR| 3lcano
Colón San Salvador
Santa' ★ SRI
Tecla SRI SRj Lake
ti SRI Uopango
Jayaque’ SRI SR! SRI SRI SRL
SRI SRI
JayaqueHi^hlands r

Ocean

SRI organizational bases, 1931.

workers, and colonos,” a rural delegate interrupted and referred back to

Bondanza’s graphic. Given the cult o f the proletarian propounded by Anaya,
this point was polemical. Anaya, who had called for the session o f the frts
to constitute the founding convention o f the s r i , responded: “We can use
these señores as s r i sympathizers, to aid victims o f the reaction and imperi­
alism, but we can’t have the confidence in them to assign them leadership
roles and we have to make sure that they don’t get influence among the rank
and file.” Subsequently he clarified the point further: “ We only use them as
long as they are useful, but the minute they begin to work for ulterior or
egotistical goals, then we have to expel them from our ranks.” 54 This re­
sponse certainly betrays the Stalinism o f Anaya’s proletarianization policy,
rather than any s r i guidelines. Yet to the labor delegates there was an
additional message, namely that this new organization had a wider mission
than merely defense.

Repression and Radicalization, 19 30

In June 1930 the government made its first serious moves against the left.
Authorities arrested two progressive journalists and staged raids against
union activists in Joya Grande and Shaltipe, near Santiago Texacuangos, a
few miles east o f the capital. In Ahuachapán the National Guard arrested
fifty-five campesinos, whom the national authorities subsequently freed.55
police arrested workers and the unemployed in the city demonstrations 87
as well.56
The pace o f governmental action picked up dramatically in August. On
the first o f the month the authorities arrested ninety laborers in Nuevo Fiestas
Cuzcadán and Nazareth, a few miles west o f the capital, as they prepared to of
take part in a demonstration. A few days later the government announced the
Oppressed
that it had uncovered a communist conspiracy and arrested scores o f mili­
tants charged with plotting an insurrection, supposedly scheduled for 6
August. Exiled to Guatemala, Anaya in an internal report scoffed at the
charges o f insurrection, “ as if we were such imbeciles that we do things
by decrees.” 57
On 12 August, using the insurrectionary threat cited by the departmental
governors, the government issued a decree prohibiting any speeches, pro­
paganda, meetings, or rallies “ o f a communist character” and ordering the
arrest o f all communist leaders. Whether or not the authorities actually
believed that the fr t s activists were planning an insurrection, the press and
government reports stirred up a hysteria that offered a pretext for further
arrests. On 19 August the comandante de puesto in Jayaque denounced an
attempted assault on the town. His troops arrested several people and con­
fiscated fourteen machetes. On the same day Timoteo Flores, the coman­
dante de puesto in nearby Sacacoyo, arrested eight union leaders, accused
simply o f being communists.58 The mayor o f Jayaque wrote to the minister
of war two days later: “This city has been selected as a center o f communist
operations; they have met several times and they have had deomonstrations
where speakers rail against the government and the established order. They
appear to be union activists but their actions show them to be communists.
Those actions have been prohibited by law. Since these people are unknown
and come from various nearby villages . . . this city is fearful.” 59
Using the decree o f 12 August as a pretext, the National Guard attacked
labor demonstrations in ten towns and cities in western Salvador, carting
° f f to jail hundreds o f participants.60 In September 1930 in Nahuizalco,
an fr t s stronghold with over seventeen hundred organized seasonal la­
borers (including five hundred women), union members staged a protest.
1he National Guard arrested large numbers o f demonstrators and hauled
them off to Sonsonate.61 Upon release they protested again, only to be
arrested again.62
 Although most rank-and-filers were eventually released after the wave o f
arrests, the persecution itself became the target o f further demonstrations
88 demanding freedom for the remaining jailed union militants. By late 1930
rural union members were so incensed at the state repression that ideas of
insurrection began to circulate freely among the rank and file and local
Fiestas leadership.63 Anaya considered the insurrectionary current serious, espe­
of cially since Farabundo Marti was a proponent. Without directly accusing
the him o f supporting this tendency, he wrote to Marti: “The idea, let’s clearly
Oppressed
call it the insurrectionary leftist tendency, is due to a lack o f consciousness
among some comrades. This is a negative tendency. It’s not that we won’t
have to arrive at that point some time soon, but for the moment, this
[position] is due to cowardice, lack o f consciousness, and the panic caused
by the alliance between national fascism and Yankee imperialism. To not
consider our enormous responsibility to our class in these moments is to
betray it. The daily struggle allows us to reeducate and perfect our leaders
and militants.” 64Although in 1930 the national leftist leadership was able to
exert its influence against any local initiatives toward armed rebellion, the
dynamic o f arrests leading to further organization and radicalization con­
tinued. In September 1930, shortly before his return to his native Mexico,
Fernandez Anaya wrote, with a tragic prescience: “ Inevitably the revolution
in El Salvador will be bloody. The ever-growing accumulation o f concen­
trated hatred will give it a bloody character.” 65
The radicalizing impact o f rifle butts, bullets, and prison cells condi­
tioned the dialogue between the rank and file and the national leftist leader­
ship. The rank and file pushed the leadership into more militant and radical
ideological and tactical positions. This influence can be ascertained in the
transformation o f the Socorro Rojo Internacional. The largely peasant and
rural worker movement transformed the s r i from an organization de­
signed to defend the left and the labor movement against political persecu­
tion into a radical social movement. An internal pc s document from 1936
recounts the transformation of the s r i into the key revolutionary organiza­
tion in the following terms: “Although Fernández Anaya had the intention
o f organizing the pcs legally, that year we only witnessed the formation of
the s r i , into which the fr t s was almost entirely absorbed. Thus the eco­
nomic base o f the movement was converted into a combatative defensive
organization. Marti was the abnegated leader o f this process and the pcs
began to form with the most battle-hardened and experienced elements.” 66
This account, covering the history o f the revolutionary left from 1929 until
5, collapses a yearlong process into the last two months o f 1929. Beyond
the lack o f chronological precision, it fails to analyze why a union move­ 89

ment would be displaced by an organization designed to defend political

prisoners. Despite this striking lacuna, the document does confirm the
emergence o f the s r i as the leading organization o f the left, displacing Fiestas
the f r t s . of
The expansion o f the s r i during the latter part o f 1930 and throughout the
Oppressed
1931 (depicted in the map on page 86) was as dramatic as the growth o f the
frts over the previous year. The first s r i locals emerged in places where
the fr t s had bases o f support. Yet by the latter part o f 1930 the s r i had
established organizations in sites where the unions had not managed to set
up locals, notably in Izalco and Tacuba.
Under the boot o f police action, the s r i ’ s commitment to fighting re­
pression and aiding the families o f political prisoners undoubtedly exerted
a favorable impact on the mobilized rank and file. In addition to its role in
resisting the first wave o f government action, there were some less tangible
reasons why the s r i became so popular. Some informants suggest that the
name itself had great appeal for campesinos, combining the symbolic po­
tency o f the color red, the Christian associations o f the notion o f “ aid”
(socorro), and the promise o f “ external” (international) redemption. This
latter theme was echoed by leaders o f labor and the left from Juayúa, who
warned the governor o f Sonsonate that i f the government did not release
Farabundo Marti from prison, the “ international working class” would
“ learn o f the matter.” 67 Similarly, socorro, in addition to its Christian inflec­
tion, also recalled the communitas o f the festive meetings.
The s r i mobilized to gain freedom for the four union leaders, in jail for
a year, who had led the movement in La Presa. In Santa Tecla an s r i demon­
stration on 27 November provoked enough anxiety at the U.S. embassy that
officials there characterized it as a “ threatened uprising.” Seventy-five sol­
diers with machine guns blocked the demonstration. Troops captured Marti
and three other organizers.68
Those arrests led to further mobilization against repression in general
and more specifically in favor o f the release from prison o f s r i leaders, who
declared a hunger strike on 17 December. The authorities responded by
deporting Marti, which provoked two major protest demonstrations by
the s r i in Sonsonate and Santa Tecla. On 21 December 1930 troops shot
 and killed several demonstrators in Santa Tecla and arrested approximately
three hundred.69 That shooting marked the virtual halt o f leftist activity for
go the next three months. According to an internal s r i document, “ During the
period December 1930-March 1930, the section’s work was almost entirely
suspended due to the intense wave o f terror.” 70 The term “ wave o f terror”
Fiestas was perhaps hyperbole, but the killing o f unarmed demonstrators was real
of enough, as were the mass arrests.
the The dormancy o f the revolutionary movement over the next months was
Oppressed
also a result o f the ascendancy o f Arturo Araujo as a reformist presidential
candidate. In the words o f the pcs leader Max Cuenca, writing in 1932, “ In
spite o f the fact that at the time the f r t s had sufficient influence, the
working classes oriented themselves to the candidates who were sympa­
thetic to the immediate demands o f that particular period. The organiza­
tions o f the working class were not faithful to the revolutionary spirit and
most o f them aligned themselves with the leading candidate o f the bour­
geoisie, Araujo . . . the masses were informed by the propaganda o f the
leaders o f Araujo, that [after] the elections, the land would be distributed
among [the workers].” 71
The rise o f Araujo’s candidacy, which had a large base o f support among
the rural poor, combined with governmental intervention to set back tire
labor movement. This was especially true for the p c s , which pushed for an
abstentionist line. Battered by repression, with its leaders in jail, exile, or
underground, the pcs was at the nadir o f its brief existence, and its call to
abstain from the election was simply ignored by the rank and file o f labor
and the left.
The degree o f organizational autonomy o f the s r i is a matter o f some
dispute. Certainly the state authorities at the time considered it nothing
more than a pcs organization. Scholars have not considered that relations
between the pc s and the s r i merit serious attention. Despite what the
Comintern and the government might have assumed, the Socorro Rojo in El
Salvador did have a political and organizational life o f its own. Max Cuenca
referred to the s r i ’ s autonomy as a problem when he reported that Fara-
bundo Marti returned to El Salvador in February 1931, planning to reorga­
nize the fr t s and the cp as well as to control “ the independent forces o f the
s r i .”72More significantly, its relative autonomy allowed the s r i to survive
when the National Guard had beaten down the f r t s . Although communist
militants led the s r i , it remained apolitical during the electoral campaign.
Unlike the small pcs group, the s r i did not campaign against Araujo, and
unlike the fr t s it did not purge members who supported particular candi­
dates. Thus in a special report on s r i activities in May 1931 in Izalco, 9i
General Tomás Calderón underscored that the militants had supported
different candidates during the previous presidential electoral campaign. O f
course this was in keeping with the official description o f the s r i as an Fiestas
organization dedicated to the class struggle, open to all and tied to no of
political party.73 the
Oppressed
The s r i ’ s flexibility also allowed it to become the leading organization
promoting agrarian reform. Wedded to a strict interpretation o f union
activity, the fr t s failed to actively demand agrarian reform. The “ tesis
agraria” and the “ Program for Agricultural Workers” approved at the f r t s
congress in May 1930, to cite key examples, made no mention o f land
reform.74 The s r i expanded primarily because it responded to the over­
whelmingly popular demand for agrarian reform, intensified by the expec­
tations raised by Araujo’s campaign.75 His election legitimized the demand
for land reform without offering anything more than token efforts toward
relieving the intense land hunger o f the poor. The s r i thus became the
vehicle o f this newly awakened group.
Many informants throughout western and central El Salvador repeated
the same words about the SRI: “ Querían quitarles fincas a los ricos” (They
wanted to take the fincas away from the rich).76As José Antonio Chachagua,
a peasant from Ahuachapán, stated, “ the rebels’ slogan was that the colo­
nos were going to be the owners.” 77 In short, the growth and transforma­
tion o f the s r i also coincided with the radicalization o f the left’s program.
The campesinos o f central and western Salvador took advantage o f the
unfixed, nonsectarian position o f the s r i to recreate it in their own image.

Repression and Radicalization under Araujo, 19 3 1

The promise and failures o f Araujo’s government contributed significantly

to the radicalization o f the social movements o f 1931. Trapped between his
ineptitude and the crushing economic crisis in the context o f intense popu­
lar expectations, Araujo confronted enormous obstacles when he took of­
fice. Within a short period he faced an élite that would not pay taxes; a
middle class that would not allow more foreign loans; foreign banks that
would not loan money easily; a U.S. customs receivership; and an ineffective
 public service infrastructure with a long tradition o f graft and corruption. A
mobilized campesinado expected and demanded agrarian reform, but only
92 a small amount o f land was available for redistribution without confronting
the oligarchy. To add to his woes, between March and July heavy rains and a
volcanic eruption reduced the food supply in the west. Even the most able of
Fiestas reformist leaders would have cringed when facing these conditions.
of Three weeks after Araujo’s inauguration on i March, police arrested two
the SRi leaders in Sonsonate and brought them to the capital. Araujo called
Oppressed
them into his office and offered them jobs in construction, warned them
about the dangers o f communism, and told them to “ propagate Labo­
rismo.” 78 They politely responded that they would have to consult with their
organization before accepting the jobs. From its inception Araujo’s govern­
ment also employed repression. In mid-March the police attacked a demon­
stration o f two hundred unemployed workers in the capital. Before the end
o f Araujo’s first month in office, the National Guard had arrested a dozen
SRi activists in Sonsonate and in the cantons o f Izalco and Nahuizalco.79
The SRi took advantage o f the collapse o f popular expectations for agrar­
ian reform engendered by the campaign and shut o ff the limited space for
negotiation or compromise. The government’s actions against workers and
campesinos made the left’s vitriolic criticisms o f the regime that much more
credible. The s r i ’ s most notable gains were in the cantons o f Izalco, where
the f r t s had made only a limited impact during 1930. During the organiz­
ing drive f r t s militants had some success in organizing indigenous work­
ers in the canton o f Cuyagualo, where many residents worked on coffee
plantations during the planting, pruning, and harvest seasons. Other than
that limited base, however, and unlike in nearly every other town in the
coffee plantation areas, the fr t s had no organized locals in Izalco.80 Thus
the s r i ’ s sudden growth in the indigenous and bi-ethnic cantons in early
19 31 was significant. In those cantons, where semi-proletarians predomi­
nated, the organization rapidly recruited people who were eager for land
reform and deeply offended by the repressive response o f the government.
By 1931 over h alf the rural population o f Izalco consisted o f land-starved
semi-proletarians, many ofwhom had become colonos in the region’s larger
commercial farms and haciendas. Leopoldo Barrientos, one o f Izalco’s
wealthy ladino landowners, for example, had fifty-four adults as colonos and
workers in his small Hacienda Comalapa and twenty-nine in his farm in
Canton Cerro Alto.81 Many others worked on the huge haciendas in the
eastern area o f the municipality, in particular San Isidro and Los Lagartos.
The town’s social structure mimicked the vast differences in wealth so visible
at the national level. In 1928 the town had thirty-eight men with capital worth 93
more than ten thousand colones; at the bottom o f the local hierarchy were
thirteen hundred jornaleros.
Both ladinos and Indians participated in the s r i meetings, often held Fiestas
nocturnally in the cantons and on the haciendas. On 14 March 1931 the of
governor o f Sonsonate reported an arrest o f communist leaders after Fara- the
Oppressed
bundo Marti gave a “ conferencia” in Piedras Pachas, a canton just east of
Izalco.82 On 7 April police commissioners again carried out raids in Piedras
Pachas, arresting Alberto Masen.83 The city was also the center o f a major
organizing drive for May Day, when the city awoke to flags and signs that
read: “Viva the union o f workers and peasants, down with social fascism,
no to the loan, down with imperialism and its lackeys in this county, down
with the Partido Laborista, creature o f English imperialism, viva el Socorro
Rojo Internacional, viva la Federación Regional de Trabajadores, down with
the fascist decrees against the workers.” 84
This highly sectarian message was read by a sharply divided local polity.
The indigenous people o f Barrio de Asuncion had generally been gobiernistas
who supported the semiofficial candidacy o f Zárate in the presidential elec­
tions o f 1931. The ladino élite, led by Diaz Barrientos, also attempted to
manipulate the elections in favor o f Zarate.85 Ladino artisans and workers
formed the core o f Araujista support. In the eastern cantons both Indians
and ladinos also esteemed Araujo highly. His family’s “ Sunza” hacienda
had the reputation o f being a rural workers’ paradise, such did the humane
treatment afforded there to campesinos contrast with that on other ha­
ciendas and plantations. The s r i was most successful, it seems, when
recruiting disaffected Araujistas who resided in the cantons, farmed small
plots o f land, and worked on the haciendas. Landlords aggravated the
campesinos’ desire for land by breaking with past practice, as many refused
to rent out land except through cash payments.86 Within months o f the
election, prompted by their friends, family, and co-workers from the can­
tons, the indigenous people o f the barrio Asunción began to shift their
allegiance from the bankrupt p n d to the s r i .
The s r i in El Salvador adopted several other tactics that helped its or­
ganizing drive. First, as was done elsewhere (notably in the case o f the
“ Scottsboro Boys” in Alabama), it deployed a rhetoric that personalized the
 targets o f repression while also offering the promise o f an organization
capable o f defending all its members. A typical statement o f the s r i bulletin
94 read: “ Miguel Najera, o f Planes de Renderos, was brought to Police Head­
quarters. This camarada has three helpless children; The so c o r r o r o jo
in t e r n a c io n a l will help them and work so that compañero Nájera will
Fiestas be freed soon!” 87 The s r i delivered on material aid. When Alberto Másen’s
of house in Piedras Pachas, Izalco, was burned under highly suspicious cir­
the cumstances three days before his release from prison, the organization
Oppressed
committed its human and material resources to rebuilding it and turned the
day o f construction into a political meeting, attended by eighty people.88
The s r i also organized soup kitchens at a time when they were not com­
mon. One informant recalls that in the cantons o f Izalco they would place
soup bones over a fire in a large black pot labeled “ s r i .”89The group could
also claim dramatic triumphs when the authorities released their prisoners:
“ They released all o f the compañeros imprisoned in Sonsonate after 22
days; the commander o f the Guardia told them: go see if you are still so
eager to get involved! Everyone answered, ‘That’s exactly what we are going
to do.’ ” 90
Finally, the s r i developed the extraordinarily successful tactic o f threat­
ened and actual hunger strikes. The most famous was that o f its leader,
Farabundo Marti, who began his first on 6 May 1931. Ironically, he an­
nounced the strike in protest o f his treatment in prison, including his
having been denied food since his arrest on 3 May. Thus the strike began
as a way to publicize that treatment but rapidly turned into a means of
denouncing the inhumanity o f Araujo’s government for “ assassinating”
Marti. Almost daily bulletins (written by workers, judging by the spell­
ing) counted the hours o f the strike: “ Today, at 9:00 a.m. our compañero
Agustín Farabundo Marti will have completed 14 days and six hours without
eating absolutely anything . . . And while Marti is dying, assassinated,
Araujo and his henchmen gaze on and smile like heartless criminals! Com­
pañeros: o n l y w e , t h e t r u e p r o l e t a r ia n s , see in this crime the clear
and cold proof o f what this burguesote Arturo Araujo is made of. We are
called upon to save him from these vicious and heartless clutches.” 91
The s r i ’ s denunciations followed a particular logic: the police arrested
Marti without cause and treated him inhumanely. His hunger strike is there­
fore the direct responsibility o f the government and they are torturing him
by not setting him free. “The assassin Araujo and his gang o f henchmen
contemplate impassively the slow death o f our dearest camarada, knowing
th a t the trial is a complete farce.” The sheer drama and heroism o f the
hunger strike—more than two weeks without food or water—ennobled the 95
figure o f Marti. His character was such, the argument implicitly stated, that
he had no alternative but to pursue the strike. By removing Marti’s decision
to begin a hunger strike from the argument, the sr i could blame the Fiestas
government for this “ crime” o f assassination. of

Authorities hoped that the agricultural cycle would help them suppress the
Oppressed
the growth o f the s r i. In May 1931 the governor o f Sonsonate reported
that “ there is no news in this department; the communists appear to be
inactive and tíre campesinos who had joined them, due to the rains that
just started, are cultivating their fields.”92 The expectation that the plant­
ing season would slow support for the mobilizations proved to be mis­
taken. On 13 May the military commander o f Sonsonate ordered soldiers to
patrol the city streets at night, because the previous night “ communist
activity was noted in the Rafael Campo Park.” 93 Authorities also noticed
increased Ieafleting in the Izalqueño cantons o f Cuyagualo and Piedras
Pachas.94

17 May 1 9 3 1: A Lesson Learned

The sri called for demonstrations in favor o f freedom for Marti and other
political prisoners throughout its bases in central and western Salvador.
The most significant o f these demonstrations took place in Sonsonate on
17 May, in which from four to six hundred people, mostly campesinos,
participated. Many came from the new base o f s r i support in the cantons o f
Izalco. In keeping with the nonviolent symbolism o f the hunger strike, the
campesinos left their coraos (long machetes) at home. They proceeded rap­
idly and silently through Barrio Angel until they reached Rafael Campo
Park. As Victor Angulo, an s r i leader from San Salvador, began his speech,
police agents approached and informed him that the demonstration was
illegal. Rather than contest the order based on the infamous decrees o f 12
August and 30 October, the s r i leadership told the demonstrators to march
back out o f town.
After marching two blocks and now shouting slogans (“Viva el Socorro
fLojo Internacional!,” “Abajo el Gobierno Fascista de Araujo!,” and “Abajo el
Laborismo!” ), the demonstrators reached the corner o f Piedra Lisa, where
 soldiers stopped them. According to the police, the s r i leader Manuel
Mojica wrestled a rifle from an officer and then shots rang out. Witnesses
g6 reported that the soldiers fired directly at the demonstrators. The shooting
resulted in three dead demonstrators and over twenty wounded, while only
one soldier was wounded. Police arrested over sixty people.
Fiestas Not surprisingly, two radically different versions o f events were pro­
of pounded by the press and government on the one hand and the s r i on the
the other. The authorities attempted to portray the demonstrators as armed and
Oppressed
aggressive, but they presented no evidence to suggest that any o f them were
armed. Reports also emphasized that the demonstrators carried signs say­
ing “ Respetad solo a los niños,” implying that they were going to massacre
all the adults. This slogan, combined with the participation o f many Indians
and campesinos, was presented as evidence that the troops had acted in
self-defense, or at least in defense o f the imperiled citizenry. Yet o f the three
pro-government witnesses who mentioned the s r i banners, not one re­
called this slogan. Since there was no mention o f the slogan in the initial
hearing, which included official and other witnesses, there is little doubt
that it was an ex post facto justification for the shooting.
Whether the s r i activists attempted to disarm soldiers or police cannot
be determined. The s r i witnesses claimed that the police and soldiers
blocked their advance and then opened fire as the marchers retreated
down the same street. The s r i bulletin claimed that the soldiers attacked
them, trying to yank away their banners. Those who were carrying the
banners resisted. Many o f the other demonstrators raised their arms in a
sign o f surrender. Then the soldiers opened fire, as did “ burgueses” from
their balconies. Another s r i bulletin reported that the “ bourgeois,” includ­
ing Roberto Candel, were overheard gloating about their role: “ I already
screwed two o f them who were running!” 95 Although this version is also
impossible to verify, at least one demonstrator was shot in the back in front
o f Candel’s establishment. The s r i and the rest o f the left were abso­
lutely convinced that the local élite, in complicity with local authorities, was
responsible.
El Diario Latino offered one o f the few relatively neutral accounts, observ­
ing that after the police’s attempt to remove the crowd failed and troops
were called in, the stones thrown by the protestors were answered with
bullets.96Another impartial account o f the incident, by Galindo Pohl, places
all the blame for the shooting on the authorities.97 Pohl, who was a middle-
class adolescent at the time, recalls that most residents recognized the
demonstrators to be unarmed and saw no justification for the troops’s
decision to open fire. The departmental governor fell back on the argument
that the s r i had broken the law by holding the demonstration and that the 97
authorities had to “ teach them a lesson.” 98
The events o f 17 May were significant for several reasons. First, Araujo’s
government aligned itself with the forces o f repression. Several days after Fiestas
the event, Araujo denounced “vulgar agitators o f violence” who “ launched of
the masses into a struggle without glory, whose only results were corpses. . . the
Oppressed
and social disorder.” 99 Other parts o f his address did, however, suggest his
desire for dialogue. He went to Izalco to speak directly to people and then
offered an exculpatory explanation o f the events that combined populism
with the image o f the “ innocent” Indians. He claimed that the campesinos
and workers were not “ real” communists and that bourgeois elements in
Sonsonate had paid people to start the violence.100
Araujo sent a political emissary to the region to engage in pro-govern­
ment Laborista activities and ordered his ministro de gobernación, General
Calderon, to provide a security assessment o f the situation: The official
investigation, led by General de Division Tomás Calderón, helps us under­
stand how it was that military officials granted so little legitimacy to the
social question during 1931. After questioning detainees and local officials,
Calderón, who would later play a major role in the suppression o f the 1932
revolt, concluded that “ it is believed that this communist movement did not
follow a preconceived plan against the government but rather, if allowed,
would have amounted to plunder. It is class resentment whereby the im­
poverished are not satisfied with their lot and aspire to possess what does
not belong to them. [Among] the leaders all tendencies o f the last elections
are represented. Among the captured communists there is no one party
affiliation.” At the same time, and in contradiction to his dismissal o f the
social origins o f the movement, he noted that “ Communism has extended
itself a great deal; there are activities . . . throughout the department and
municipal authorities have issued edicts against them but among these very
authorities, mainly in [Sonsonate] there are some who share the framework
o f the same ideas.” 101 Calderón echoed other discourses that reduced the
movement to a childish explosion and denied its political character, a trope
that would later become the core o f how the 1932 revolt was remembered.
This reflected other simplistic responses to the movement by government
officials, who frequently construed leftist propaganda as a simple assault
on private property, “ to use force to appropriate what belongs to others.” 102
 Araujo did waver in adopting a strictly repressive approach to the leftist
threat. Yet his official endorsement o f the anticommunist decrees o f 12 Au­
g8 gust and 30 October, coupled with his tolerance o f repeated actions by the
Guardia and the police, suggest that whatever ambivalence he experienced,
his strategy toward the left was predicated on an important role for the
Fiestas Guardia and the police. In light o f his inability or unwillingness to carry out
of the land reform promises o f his electoral campaign, there was little likeli­
the hood that he could coopt the growing base o f the left.
Oppressed
For the demonstrators and their families, 17 May was a defining mo­
ment. The shooting represented a definitive rupture with Araujo’s govern­
ment, which many had supported. State violence also led many to the
conviction that peaceful protest was not an option in their struggle for
social justice. Both political consequences radicalized the s r i rank and file.
In early June an indigenous widow o f one o f the martyrs informed an sr i
leader: “ Look, compañero. They killed my compañero but here are my sons
and they will see the revolution.” 103

Addendum: Governor's Report on May 1 7 Events

At about 7:30 am on the 17th ofMay, a communist demonstration o f roughly

300 individuals entered the city from the suburbs o f “ El Angel,” led by the
leaders Manual Mojica y Argripino Guevara, who shouted vivas for the
Socorro Rojo and shouted for Marti’s freedom; these demonstrators some
o f whom were captured are all from the cantons o f Izalco and a few from
this city o f Sonsonate. When some police saw the demonstrators’ signs and
anti-government leaflets, they demanded that they disband the demonstra­
tion, but to no avail; they arrived at the Rafael Campo Park. When one o f the
leaders began to speak, then the police again ordered them to disperse and
they did so. When an escort o f the Eighth Regiment started to help the
police, some communists rushed them and tried to take a rifle away from a
soldier: there was no alternative but to open fire and thereby avoid any­
thing more serious. They were chased and pursued until they were com­
pletely dispersed; the Mayor de Plaza Colonel Juan Ortiz and six communists
were wounded in the affray. Two o f them died, the leader Agripino Guevara
and another who could not state his name because he was agonizing; the
wounded are in the city hospital where they are being attended.104
 Chapter Four

“ Ese Trabajo Era Enteramente de los

Naturales:” Ethnic Conflict and Mestizaje
in Western Salvador, 1914-1931

Vour explanation is very good tata padre, but you've got the wrong audience!. . . You should
address those of your color. Before there were cheles in our pueblo we did not know the plague
that you cursed.— Cited In Antonio Conte, Treinta años en tierras salavdoreñas, vol. 2 ,9 7

The Indians were very conscious. Juan Hernández and the other compañeros of Cuyagualo went
to San Julián to organize the laborers.— Fabián Mojica, Sonsonate, 1999

T
he events o f 17 May at once revealed and concealed the
deepening o f an ethnic dimension to the mass mobili­
zation. The majority o f the demonstrators were Indians,
yet both the left and the authorities tended to group rural
Indians and ladinos into one “ campesino” category. Over
three-quarters o f the demonstrators were adult jornale­
ros from the cantons o f Izalco and the indigenous Barrio
Asunción o f Izalco.1 But both the repressive forces and the
sri elided this ethnic dimension. The s r i denounced the
hatred o f “ campesinos” by the bourgeoisie and repressive
forces, while not singling out specific indigenous groups in
Izalco: “ Ferocious terror has been unleashed against all the
campesinos; the jails are filled and there are many wounded
inside their homes trying to heal themselves; those who are
in the hospital are treated worse than dogs; the government
has just sent more reinforcements to [Sonsonate]; they are
 on a war footing, h a t r e d a g a in s t t h e c a m p e s in o s is h o r r if ic ; to

D R E S S L I K E A C A M P E S IN O IS A L M O S T L I K E S I G N I N G A D E A T H S E N ­
100 T E N C E !”2 Why did the sri denounce hatred o f “ campesinos” rather than
hatred o f “ Indians” ? This sort o f conflation was not by any means the
special province o f the Marxist Left. El Indio, a pro-Laborista bulletin, also
"Ese made no distinction between the indigenous and ladino rural poor. For this
Trabajo social-democratic organ, indio was synonymous with the exploited and op­
Era pressed, those who started working at the age o f seven “ to earn their
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tortillas and a miserable salary to buy la manta which barely covers their
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Naturales" burnt skin.” 3 The reference here to a typically indigenous piece o f clothing
suggests that the mocito (a diminutive form o f “ peon” ) in question was an
Indian, but the remainder o f the text makes clear that it was meant to
describe a nonindigenous campesino.
Although Marxist-Leninists tended to communicate in class as opposed
to ethnic categories, this was not always so; the guidelines o f the sri did,
as we have seen, emphasize the plight o f blacks and Indians. In May 1929
the Comintern official Jules-Humbert Droz directly addressed the question
o f race to the founding convention o f the communist-led Confederación
Sindical Latinoamericana: “ Many comrades have denied that there is a race
problem in Latin America, affirming that blacks, Indians, and mestizos
have equal rights and that nowhere does one find racial prejudice, similar to
in the United States. It is true that there are no specifically racist laws but let
us consider the facts. Who are the most exploited, miserable agricultural
workers? Who are the campesinos whom the large landowners and the
foreign companies expropriate? The Indians.” 4 Droz then proceeded to
analyze how indigenous struggles to recoup land appeared as luchas de razas
and how transnational companies complicated the class struggle by intro­
ducing Afro-Caribbeans into the labor force on the continent: “ Thus the
racial factor penetrates and complicates the social question and we will
carefully study these questions___ [Race] is also an element o f instability in
political and social relations.” 5 Droz’s analysis did not necessarily penetrate
through all levels o f the Comintern, but it does indicate that within the
discursive limits o f Marxism-Leninism, a recognition o f the racial dimen­
sion o f class struggle was possible. Thus, for example, a pcs document
produced after the massacres refers to the campesino indígena son son teca as a
social subject o f the insurrection.6 The revolutionary left, however, started
out from a position heavily tinted with racist assumptions. In 1929 a Salva-
doran leftist argued: “The revolution advances from the city to the country­
side . . . It is necessary to make a concrete study o f the Indian question. We
must make the revolution in the city and then the Indian will come . . . It is IOI
the revolutionary minority that always triumphs. The indigenous layers
ultimately will be dragged into the movement.” 7 The Marxist-Leninists’ fail­
ure to distinguish between indigenous and ladino workers also reflected a "Ese
degree o f ladino racism, an assumption that the cultural practices and racist Trabajo
oppression o f indigenous people were not worthy o f special consideration. Era
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Yet there was also a more emancipatory aspect to the left’s use o f the term
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“ campesino,” one that reflected the egalitarian ethos o f the movement:
Naturales"
workers and peasants were all equal within a revolutionary movement that
fought to achieve a society where racial and class distinctions would be
meaningless. Given the high level o f local racism and ethnic animosity, the
interchangeability o f terms, by implying equality, probably helped to forge
the difficult alliance between the ladino and indigenous poor.
In another sense, the class language o f the sri denunciation was accu­
rate. For the provincial élite and military and police officials, the rebellious
rural workers, who were dark-skinned and dressed in pantalones de dril and
sombreros de palma, would all have been indios. The similarity o f male dress
and phenotype surely confused the provincial élite, and therefore the sri

would have been accurate to speak o f a generalized hatred and discrimina­

tion against “ campesinos.” Indeed the forces o f repression, strongly influ­
enced by the élite, did equate campesino with indigenous. According to
Galindo Pohl, the comandante issued an order just to shoot at those with
sombreros de palma, worn by all poor campesinos in the area.
Elsewhere Gould discussed the emergence o f national-level discourses o f
mestizaje and their impact on local conflict in Central America.8 He argued
that Salvador before 1932 was not significantly different from Nicaragua or
Honduras, where an emerging discourse o f ethnic homogeneity supported
ladino efforts to appropriate land and political power from indigenous
minorities. All three countries o f the middle isthmus underwent real or
perceived processes o f cultural mestizaje, defined here as a nation-building
myth o f racial mixture and a cultural process o f de-Indianization that often
accompanied the advance o f agrarian capitalism. This process tended to
divide indigenous communities in ways that aided ladino political and eco­
nomic pursuits. In El Salvador, as in the other countries, indigenous people
“ looked” as i f they were dropping their Indian identities. As one observer
 stated (however incorrectly), “The Indians have all been absorbed, and
nearly everyone wears shoes and stockings.” 9 Typically, national elites used
102 the putative disappearance o f “ real” Indians as a way o f undermining indig­
enous claims. This middle isthmian process was replicated in some respects
in El Salvador, but with certain fundamental differences that provide a key to
"Ese understanding the country’s mobilization, rebellion, and repression. Unlike
Trabajo in the other countries, where mestizaje formed a key element in a hege­
Era monic project, in El Salvador the very intense and contradictory subaltern
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response, tended to promote indigenous resistance. Those contradictory
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Naturales" responses had a significant impact on rural mobilization.

Religion, Resistance, and Mestizaje

Antonio Conte, a Pauline missionary, participated in several evangelizing
missions throughout western Salvador during the first three decades o f the
twentieth century. His reflections, published in 1934, allow us to glimpse
the complexities o f cultural mestizaje and in particular its relationship to
religious practices.
For the early twentieth century Conte’s understanding was quite sophis­
ticated. At first glance he merely follows the discourse o f the Jesuits in
Central America in the 1870s, underscoring the relative purity and goodness
o f Indians in contrast to the corrupt, worldly ladinos.10 He believed that
cultural interaction with ladinos had disastrous effects on the Indians. For
Conte the ladinos did not even “ bring the benefits o f civilized behavior” or
thought to the Indian communities, because they were deeply steeped in
European superstition in addition to having bad habits. In his words, “ We
do not affirm that baptized and evangelized Indians were saints . . . before
mixing with ladinos, but no one can deny that this contact has been fatal for
the Indians’ simplicity, faith, fear o f God, and obedience to the church . . •
to the indigenous superstitions (with the lives o f a cat) have been added the
ladino ones originated overseas . . . the hope to die like a saint after a
demonic life.” 11 Conte singled out wealthy ladinos in particular for his
scorn, and he returns to this theme repeatedly throughout his extensive
ethnographic observations. Commenting on a mission to San Julian in 1927
and the lack o f élite ladino religiosity, Conte wrote: “ Here as everywhere, the
wealthy are noticeably absent.” 12 Conte’s sympathy for Indians and hostility
to the wealthy set him apart from most o f the Salvadoran clergy and offered
a vantage point to observe what he labeled as ladinización. He used that term
(later adopted by anthropologists) to describe those forces that directly
undermined indigenous markers and customs. 103
Conte astutely connected the process o f ladinización to the economic
transformations that accompanied the spread o f coffee cultivation, thus
adumbrating more materialist currents o f anthropology.13 In Tamanique, La "Ese
Libertad, for example, Conte found that recent migrants from Chalate- Trabajo
nango who had bought up land on which to plant coffee formed much o f Era
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the town’s population. In Jicilapa, a nearby village, Conte noted the pres­
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ence o f Indians but commented that “ their customs and style o f dress are Naturales"
‘ladinizando’ rapidly” and opined that “ this poor race deserves a better
fate.” 14 He also noted that ladinos from the northern Salvadoran towns o f
Tejutepeque, Suchitoto, and Tenancingo had taken over lands in Ishuatán,
leaving the Indians “ in a state o f misery.. . . The Indians are now on the out­
skirts o f town or along the beaches ’aculados’ as they say along the esteros. . .
stricken by malaria and on the verge o f extinction.” 15
For Conte ladinización was a material and cultural process involving the
loss o f indigenous ethnic emblems, shaped by a dramatic shift in power re­
lations between Indians and ladinos. Although Conte’s chronology is some­
what vague, the socio-geographic description is nonetheless significant: the
ladinos’ acquisition o f recently privatized lands displaced Indians in certain
highland communities. The municipalities o f Comasagua, Sacacoyo, Tepe-
coyo, Jayaque, and San Julian in particular experienced this economic and
cultural transformation, from indigenous peasants with access to commu­
nal lands to ladino coffee finca owners and de-Indianized workers.
This part o f the country encompassed mountainous regions to the south
and west o f San Salvador. The relatively inaccessible mountain range along
the coast and the neighboring coastal flatlands had remained largely un­
cultivated. In part because o f this frontier aspect, La Libertad provided
excellent conditions that secured it the fastest rate o f growth o f coffee
production in the country during the 1890s and early twentieth century.
Most significantly, its Indian communities were small, weak, and politically
isolated. Unlike Izalco and Nahuizalco, the indigenous communities in La
Libertad had rarely established alliances with outside political factions or
Participated in the conflicts o f the postcolonial era. Further, the ejidal and
communal land systems were never extensive.
These communities so poignantly described by Conte were easy prey to
 the advancing coffee economy and culture. In his words, “ El grano de oro
les ha atraido a muchos ladinos y ahuyentado a gran parte del elemento
104 indígena” (the golden bean has attracted many ladinos and has driven o ff a
large part o f the indigenous element).16 The loss o f land, according to
Conte, led to a physical marginalization that in turn had two salient effects.
"Ese First, the poor land and living conditions afflicted the Indians physically
Trabajo and brought them to “ the verge o f extinction.” Second, political and eco­
Era nomic control by ladinos over the municipality and village life created pres­
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sures that led to the rapid decline o f indigenous language and dress. Conte
de los
Naturales" thus describes how in the highlands o f Jayaque, the physical marginaliza­
tion o f some Indians corresponded with the cultural transformation of
others. Although his chronology is not precise, the dates o f his missions
suggest that much o f the transformation in the highlands o f Jayaque oc­
curred between 1912 and 1926. Commenting on the cultural transformation
in one highland village, he reported: “ Chiltiupán o f 1926 does not resemble
the town we knew 15 years ago.” 17 A government investigation in 1913 had
already highlighted significant indigenous land loss in the region, par­
ticularly in Ishuatán. It also pointed to the widespread adoption o f non-
indigenous dress in the highlands o f Jayaque. One explanation for the
chronological discrepancy concerning the process o f ladinización could be
that the missionary focused more o f his attention on language as the key
ethnic emblem.
Language was a crucial ethnic marker. Although it is impossible to esti­
mate the number o f Nauhatl-Pipil (locally called Nahuate) speakers with
much accuracy, there is no doubt that the indigenous language o f western
Salvador was in decline by the end o f the nineteenth century. In 1901 the
Swedish ethnographer Carl Hartman wrote, based on his research in the
late 1890s, that “ the language is spoken by over one-quarter o f the in­
digenous inhabitants [of western El Salvador], in other words, by between
20-30,000 individuals.” In 1909 Walter Lehmann, the German linguist,
estimated that approximately sixteen thousand people spoke Nahuate. Ac­
cording to Conte, the language entered a rapid decline in the Jayaque high­
lands between 1912 and 1930, years o f expansion o f the coffee industry.
Thus although by 1930 the indigenous population, including the scattered
communities o f eastern Salvador, represented approximately 20 percent of
the national population (or some 300,000 people), the number o f native
speakers, including bilinguals, probably did not surpass 25,00o.18
 Oral testimony substantiates the findings o f Hartman and Lehmann and
points to a fairly obvious pattern that emerged well before 1930: Nahuatl
was weakest in those areas o f greatest contact with ladinos and with pri­ 105
mary schools. Public education in the town centers o f Juayua, Nahuizalco,
and Izalco and in several cantons before 1932 had a pronounced negative
effect on Nahuad usage. Most Indians in town and in the immediate sur­ "Ese
roundings, born between 1890 and 1910, did not converse in Nahuad with Trabajo
children or friends, using the language only on special religious occasions Era
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or with monolingual parents. In those regions where coffee plantations
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bordered or absorbed villages, Nahuad was only spoken by the eldest gener­ Naturales''
ation (born before 1880), and the generation who were young adults in 1930
were not at all conversant in the language.19
Conte’s brief description o f ladinoization encapsulates a transformadon
as a result o f which many poor highland residents by the mid-igzos would
forget that their grandparents had spoken Nahuad, dressed in indigenous
dress, and belonged to relatively vibrant communities. In 1930 he visited
Jicalapa and commented: “This indigenous population is ‘ladinizing’ right
before our eyes. Only a dozen elderly men and women speak ‘nahuate.’ We
were surprised and moved to see that children and young people have no
interest in this language, so synthetic and full o f imitative harmony.” 20
Reflecting a common élite view, Conte described the modernization o f the
village, and in so doing implied that Indians could not maintain their ethnic
markers and become “ modern.” Whether or not indigenous people in­
volved in this transition shared his perspective, it is clear that the ethnic
markers o f dress and language were becoming the sine qua non o f identity
to many Indians and non-Indians alike. Several elderly informants who
grew up in the highlands o f Jayaque during the 1920s had no recollection o f
people whom they identified as indígenas in their communities.21 All the
informants reported that the only Indians with whom they had contact,
apart from rare exceptions, were those o f Izalco, although a few identified
the more isolated cantons o f Tepecoyo as indigenous.
One informant recalled how children mocked an elderly woman, the
only Nahuate speaker in the area around Jayaque, calling her la Toña Muda
(Toña, the deaf mute). That the woman stood out as different in the eyes
° f the children reveals just how powerful the ladinización process was in
the highlands. The informants’ definition o f “ indigenous” depended en­
tirely on the ethnic markers o f dress and language. Local registries re-
 produced the erasure o f the indigenous population noted by informants
and by Conte. To cite one example: in 1919 only one birth out o f forty was
io6 listed as indigenous in the formerly indigenous municipality ofTepecoyo.22
In Gould’s study o f Nicaragua, he argued against an analysis that me­
chanically links mestizaje to proletarianization and the development of
"Ese coffee capitalism.23 Rather, he emphasized agrarian capital’s multidimen­
Trabajo sional assault on indigenous land, labor, and political autonomy. Conte
Era offers convincing evidence o f what seems like a monocausal connection
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between the development o f the coffee industry in the highlands o f Jayaque
de los
Naturales" and the loss o f ethnic markers. At the same time, his description recalls a
process that Gould described in Yúcul, Matagalpa. In this situation the Vita
family, who were Italian immigrants, in effect expropriated an indigenous
village and turned its residents into colonos on its coffee plantation: “Vita’s
proletarianization o f the Yuculeños was accompanied by a process o f la-
dinoization so thoroughgoing that the grandchildren o f [an indigenous
leader] do not recall that he was an Indian, much less a leader o f the
Comunidad Indígena. The Yuculeños between 19 16-19 50 lost contact with
the Indian villages but ten miles away. Gradually they began to look upon
the Indian women who came to pick Vita’s coffee in the thirties and forties
as people o f a different ethnic group. The Yuculeños called them the ‘man­
dadas’ for their dress, and those o f ‘lenguaje enredado’ for their Spanish-
based dialect. Thus, in one generation the Indians o f Yúcul had lost their
own ethnic identity.” 24
Despite the erasure o f a specifically indigenous identity, the Yuculeños
did maintain a separate, nonindigenous one, and in the 1960s they led a
union drive that broke the back o f the colonato system. To Die in This Way
describes this cultural transformation as one o f several strategic responses
to the multipronged assault that accompanied proletarianization. The par­
allels with the highlands o f Jayaque are striking. Both histories indicate that
the rapid growth o f coffee capitalism can dramatically affect indigenous
cultural forms. At the same time, they suggest that the rapid movement of
the subaltern group away from traditional ethnic markers did not translate
into ideological submission. On the contrary, the highlands o f Jayaque, like
Yúcul, became a hotbed o f a radical union movement. We can assume then
that the loss o f indigenous identity strictu sensu did not stifle a sense o f oppo­
sition to the local élite. To orthodox Marxists such a proposition would have
seemed almost tautological: social being determines social consciousness,
hence proletarianization transforms corporative (or ethnic) consciousness
into class consciousness. But a generation o f cultural studies scholarship
has definitively ruptured the assumption o f a causal connection between 10 7

material processes and consciousness in general, and more specifically that

between proletarianization and class consciousness.
Thus in interrogating the relationship between ladinoización and radi- "Ese
calization, To Die in This Way argued that communities such as Yúcul were Trabajo
politically and culturally open to dissident political forces precisely because Era
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of their unique history. In the highlands o f Jayaque as well, previous forms
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of cultural distinctiveness and their memories o f primitive accumulation Naturales"
distinguished these “ mestizos” from others. The combination o f memories
of accumulation and fluency in national cultural codes facilitated communi­
cation with non-Indian leftist organizers in both Yúcul and Jayaque.
If this distinctive form o f collective mestizaje was one response to agrar­
ian capitalism in both countries, migration toward tire agricultural frontier
was another response o f the indigenous people o f the Nicaraguan high­
lands under the pressure o f agrarian capitalism and the accompanying
assault on their communities. In El Salvador in the 1920s many people,
perhaps thousands, who might be described, however ambiguously, as
“ Indians,” migrated to the Honduran coast to work on banana and sugar
plantations.25 A third strategic response was to retreat into more closed
communities. Thus, for example, some highland Nicaraguan communities
made conscious efforts to have contact with ladinos and governmental
authorities only when absolutely necessary, such as for trading. In El Sal­
vador some groups and communities made similar attempts to limit their
contacts. The communities that maintained the sharpest lines o f demarca­
tion were those outside the coffee districts and those that had the greatest
means o f economic self-sufficiency. Nahuizalco, in particular, had an im­
portant handicraft industry, manufacturing petates for the army and baskets
for the coffee industry. Although by the 1920s there were few indigenous
families who avoided coffee labor altogether, the handicraft industry and
smallholding in Nahuizalco, Izalco, and Santo Domingo still provided a
material basis for many to avoid complete economic dependence on ladi­
nos. Small individual and communal plots supported the handicraft econ-
°tny, by providing access to the raw materials tule and carrizo.26 Yet by 1930 a
Protestant missionary in neighboring Juayúa reported, “ [the Indians’] lands
and property have dwindled away year by year.” 27 The economic crisis also
 affected the handicraft industry and the vast regional commerce that sus­
tained it.
io8 Santo Domingo de Guzman also was a handicraft center, specializing in
pottery. It was a prototypical case o f a community that maintained strict
barriers against the encroachment o f ladinos. The report o f the depart­
"Ese mental governor in 1913 underscored the Santo Domingo Indians’ “ hatred
Trabajo for ladinos.” 28 Father Conte, who usually found “ uncontaminated” Indian
Era communities appealing, was less than thrilled with his encounter. Report­
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ing on his mission o f 1912, he lamented alcoholism and rampant illiteracy:
de los
Naturales" “ an Indian town where they speak Nahuat and express themselves in Span­
ish with difficulty. . . We have not found a more degenerate town, caused by
chicha and la leche de tigra . . . I f we require only one ‘padre nuestro,’ no
one will get married in Santo Domingo. Several times people have told us
that it is a conquest-era town; we are now convinced that. . . it is an uncon­
querable town.” 29 Conte was frustrated at the inaccessibility o f Santo Do­
mingo to his teachings, which was primarily a result o f its residents’ weak
command o f Spanish, high level o f illiteracy, and ignorance o f the most
fundamental precepts o f contemporary Catholicism. His ethnographic de­
tails also suggest that this municipality had responded to the wave o f ladini-
zación sweeping the entire swath o f the central and western parts o f the
country with strong communal defenses o f political and cultural autonomy.
Although Santo Domingo represented the epitome o f a “ closed” commu­
nity in El Salvador, it was also quite exceptional, owing in large part to its
relative physical isolation and, more importantly, its distance from coffee
and cane lands. Cuisnahuat, to cite another relatively traditional commu­
nity, lay outside the coffee zone but closer to its borders. Santo Domin-
gueños survived through handicraft production and smallholding for basic
grains production; like the Nahuizalqueños, they had significant trading
contact with ladinos. However, unlike Cuisnahuat and in Nahuizalco, Santo
Domingo had unattractive lands that helped to dissuade ladinos from set­
tling there. Until 1932 this pueblo was unconquerable, because ladinos had
little motivation to conquer it.
Sociogeographic explanations account for the Salvadoran Indians’ unique
response to the discourse and practice o f mestizaje, which questioned the
validity o f indigenous identity and institutions in a putatively homoge­
neous, modernizing society. In both El Salvador and Nicaragua, and to a
limited extent in Guatemala and Honduras, the cultural processes o f mes-
tizaje placed severe strains on indigenous communities and tended to iso­
late “ traditionalists” from others. However, unlike in Nicaragua and Hon­
duras, the repertoire o f indigenous responses in El Salvador included a 10 9

strain o f ethnic militancy and revitalization.30 That unique response proba­

bly derived from the relative economic importance, communal cohesion,
and geographic contiguity o f indigenous groups. In Nicaragua, for exam­ "Ese
ple, the small indigenous communities o f El Chile, Susuli, and Samulali in Trabajo
the department o f Matagalpa were simply too small and too fragmented to Era
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engage in any kind o f autonomous movement. The other Nicaraguan indig­
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enous communities were too widely dispersed geographically and too much Naturales"
divided along political and generational lines. And throughout highland
and western Nicaragua and western Honduras, at the moment when cul­
tural, political, and economic institutions came under severe assault by the
state and ladino planters at the turn o f the century, the loss o f ethnic
markers and the process o f communal disintegration were already further
advanced than in El Salvador.31
Conte’s account highlighted some communities in western El Salvador
that withstood the onslaught o f ladinización. Underscoring the equivalence
of physical health, material well-being, and cultural vitality, he wrote, “ The
truth is that you have [Indians] who are full o f health and happiness and
own properties in Cuisnahuat, Teotepeque, y Jicalapa but . . . whites are
taking their land.” In particular, he singled out Cuisnahuat as a munici­
pality where Indians still maintained more o f their cultural integrity and
control over land. He relates an anecdote from the mission o f 1912 hinting
at a resurgence o f ethnic pride that both coincided with the pressures
toward ladinoization and adumbrated future forms o f cultural resistance.
In 1912 Father Carlos had just finished a sermon on amancebamiento (living
in sin). The indigenous mayor o f Cuishnahut asked for permission to ad­
dress the missionaries: “ Your explanation is very good, tata padre, but
you’ve got the wrong audience! We shouldn’t be the object o f your criticism,
rather you should address those o f your color. Before there were cheles
[whites] in our pueblo, we did not know the plague that you cursed. With all
due respect, I tell you this so that you blame the guilty and not their victims.
Good night and God bless you.” 32 Conte also underscored other expres­
sions o f ethnic pride, pointing to the intimate relation between traditional
religious practices and cultural resistance. One incident occurred in the
Jayaque highlands in 1912. The missionaries considered a locally made
 image o f San Pedro to be a diabolic semi-human, semi-animal idol, “ like
those that their ancestors adored.” 33 The parish priest “ could no longer
no stand the image” and ordered a new one from a sculptor. The local Indians
became furious: “ He must be a mason, the Judas who stole our miraculous
patron and replaced itwith a ‘chele sonso’ who looks like a gringo.” 34When
"Ese some residents reported seeing San Pedro in the forest crying and calling
Trabajo for justice, a large crowd seized the priest and carried him to the alcaldía to
Era be imprisoned. An opportune telephone call brought the montada (mounted
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troops) from Santa Tecla to save him.
de los
Naturales" The missionaries learned that such behavior was not exceptional and
that it was unwise to attack indigenous religious symbols. Conte recalled an
incident among the indigenous people o f Tacuba, who practiced highly
festive wakes for “ angels” (infants). The noise was so loud that the priests
could not sleep. Father Eugenio went outside to demand that the mourners
quiet down. He returned trembling with fear. The dueño del uelorio had threat­
ened him: “ Look here curita, i f you plan on living in peace with us, keep to
your own things, and allow us to celebrate as we please, because the angels
deserve everything!” 35
The two anecdotes suggest the confluence o f religious beliefs and ethnic
solidarity. There is a marked contrast between the positive reception o f the
missionaries and other priests and the bitterness o f the indigenous re­
sponse to any perceived assault on their practices. The use o f the term chele
sonso (white fool) in the Teotepeque account ties religious imagery to racial
pride. In much the same way, the use o f the disdainful diminutive curita
reflects a latent rage at any cultural or religious offense. And in 1913 the
Sonsonate departmental governor’s report stated that the indigenous peo­
ple o f Izalco were peaceful except when ladinos challenged their religious
beliefs or practices.36
Throughout Mesoamerica during the first decades o f the twentieth cen­
tury, indigenous communities resisted efforts by the Catholic Church to
reform their religious practices. According to the historian Rodolfo Car­
denal, “The cofradía was the first cause o f conflict. Concretely, the offi­
cial religion impugned the free administration o f the cofradfa’s goods and
properties and their venerable customs and uses considered alien to all
Catholic morality.” 37 Cardenal’s study emphasizes the enormous gu lf be­
tween the church and popular religiosity, which the church found “ incom­
prehensible and alien to true Catholicism, o f which the Church was the only
interpreter.” 38
 Nahuizalco was the scene o f bitter conflicts between official and popular
forms o f religiosity. Religious imagery was crucial to the reproduction o f
ethnic solidarity among the Nahuizalqueños. Hartman reported that at the hi
end o f the nineteenth century Nahuizalqueños worshiped ancient stone
idols, including a man-sized one at the town’s entrance known as señor de!
camino. The Nahuizalqueños forcefully opposed the efforts o f the town "Ese
priest to remove their idols. He went so far as to dynamite an idol that he Trabajo
claimed was used in human sacrifice. Yet older idols continued to form Era
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integral parts o f the agricultural cycle. During the evenings at planting time,
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the Indians lit candles and incense near the idols. Once the rains arrived Naturales"
they moved the idols from the milpas (cornfields) and buried them in river­
beds until the next planting time. Over a decade after the privatization
o f lands, the Nahuizalqueños still practiced elaborate communal rituals
around corn planting: throughout the milpa, they dug holes into which they
poured a small quantity o f chíbate (white corn flour). Once the planting was
done they placed sharpened shovels at the cardinal points o f the milpas to
protect them from hurricanes.
Two decades later Conte reported a similar distance between the Catholic
Church and everyday religious practices in Nahuizalco: “ They render abso­
lute tribute to the cross. For them, the cross is a person o f flesh and
blood . . . he sees, hears, walks, has a sombrero and lives with other
crosses.” 39 As elsewhere in western Salvador, the Nahuizalqueños remained
at odds with the local representatives o f the Catholic Church. According to
local informants, the struggle between indigenous religious practices and
the local priests continued into the 1920s. For example, in 1929 Indians
protested that a ladino had stolen their image o f the niño dios, and threat­
ened to use their machetes to retrieve it.40 More significantly, El Heraldo de
Sonsonate reported the following incident in Nahuizalco in April 1931: “The
inditos also have their bitter moments. Yesterday someone told me that four
ambitious ones have plotted to take away from the mayordomo o f the
Cofradía del Santo Entierro, el Señor and other images . . . and since the
priest gets taken in by the sacristán . . . the four ambitious ones have
decided to remove el Señor.” 41 The mayor o f Nahuizalco also supported the
attempt to remove the imagen, alleging communist infiltration o f the cofra­
días.42The alliance o f “ los cuatro ambiciosos” with the priest to appropriate
the image was consistent with Church-Indian conflicts in the rest o f Central
America.43 The intervention o f the mayor, however, was a clear signal o f
increased blurring o f the line between religious and political conflict.
 There was another religious dimension that contributed, at the very least
indirectly, to a weakening o f hegemonic structures. Since the early years o f
112 the twentieth century Protestant missionaries had penetrated throughout
the country, and by the 1920s they had managed to attract a small group of
faithful. In 1931 in San Salvador, for example, 150 children attended a
"Ese Protestant Sunday school; in Nahuizalco and Juayua, despite persecution,
Trabajo the Protestants were having limited but growing success. In 1930 forty-four
Era Nahuizalqueños attended a ceremony celebrating the Baptist congrega­
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tions’ second year o f existence.44 There seem to have been two sources for
de los
Naturales" the qualified Protestant success. First, as has been amply documented for
the period a generation later in Guatemala, some indigenous people saw
Protestant churches as a way to exit the cargo system and others saw it as a
way o f becoming “ modern,” among other things by rejecting fiestas and
the drinking that accompanied them. Protestants also offered a kind o f
critique o f wealth and power. For example, one Protestant missionary com­
mented that in luayúa and Santa Catarina Masahuat Indian landownership
was less extensive, with the result that local campesinos were living “ under
the tutelage o f wealthy planters.” 45 The Reverend Roy MacNaught was at­
tuned to the problem o f ladino racism, at least after the massacre. Upon
learning o f the death o f one o f his converts and helpers in Nahuizalco,
MacNaught commented: “As he was a faithful worker in the gospel, he had
many enemies; as he was an Indian, he had other enemies among those
who consider themselves superior to this race and cannot bear to see an
Indian prosper.”46
Father Conte recognized the subversive character o f Protestants and
paranoiacally lumped them together with Bolsheviks. For example, o f his
visit to the city o f Ahuachapán in 1930, he wrote: “The Lutheran-Bolshevik
propaganda has terribly ravaged Christ’s flock.” 47 Much o f Conte’s writing
on Protestantism amounted to crude attacks, such as imagining that Protes­
tants converted people who believed that “ if faith alone saves us, then let’s
eat, drink, and have a great time.” 48 Yet by equating the power o f the
Catholic Church with authority in the larger society, he did connect the
small Protestant advance with social contestation: “ the spirit o f darkness is
chipping away at the little remaining fear o f God that kept the residents in
line . . . it undermines the principle o f authority and opens the door to all
manner o f disorder and misdeeds.” 49
Very few Protestants supported the labor movement, and their mission-
aries lambasted communism with as much fervor as any priest. Notwith­
standing this, many testimonies linked Protestants to the mobilization. In
particular, informants in various towns claimed that the leftist labor or- 113
ganizers disguised themselves as Protestant ministers. Those testimonies
may have been influenced by the massacre o f January 1932, when Protes­
tant Indians were singled out for execution and accused o f taking part in "Ese
the uprising. There is thus little doubt that the growth o f Protestantism, Trabajo
if not necessarily another form o f religious protest by Indians, probably Era
did contribute to the generalized sense that all things ideological were up ^
for grabs. Naturales"

Language and Resistance

Religion was the key arena, but not the only one, in which ethnic solidarity
was reproduced and cultural mestizaje was resisted (though one might
argue that indigenous religious practices were one o f the highest expres­
sions o f cultural mestizaje). Language formed another field o f contention,
one absent from the struggles o f Nicaraguan and Honduran Indians (except
those o f the Mosquito Coast), since their indigenous languages had become
virtually extinct by the turn o f the century.
According to Andres Pérez, an informant whose father had been close to
the pre-1932 political and cultural leaders o f Nahuizalco, language preser­
vation was the focus o f popular mobilization. Referring to the late nine­
teenth century and the early twentieth, he related his father’s teachings:
“My dad would tell me that los abuelos claimed that they were too old to
learn another language. According to the law, no Nahuizalquefio could
speak publicly in Nahuatl. According to the governor, to speak Nahuatl
made the people backward. They visited the mayor and told him that they
couldn’t accept another language. Then they treated them like an opposi­
tion group. My grandfather told the mayor, as an Indian he shouldn’t be
against his brothers. The mayor was close to the government and told him
that those who did not accept the law were communists. The abuelos said:
We can’t accept the law. We were born in our language. They threatened to
kill many people. The weakest began to teach Spanish.” 50There is no docu­
mentary evidence to substantiate Perez’s charge about the prohibition
of Nahuatl. In fact in 1924 the national government financed a study o f
Nahuatl-Pipil in Nahuizalco. However, the development o f primary school
 education for the children o f townsfolk undoubtedly had a negative impact
on language use and probably provoked opposition from traditional sectors
íi4 o f the municipality’s indigenous population. According to the departmental
governor’s report, in 1913 the Indians in Nahuizalco did not send their
children to school, so as to avoid mingling with ladinos.51 A novelistic
"Ese version o f the introduction o f schools to Salvadoran indigenous regions
Trabajo recounts the battle to push castellanización. In Ola Roja, by Machón Vil-
Era anova, a lawyer states, “ When I was in the Sub-Secretaria de Estado, I did
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everything possible to improve the condition o f the Indians, but, to a great
de los
Naturales" extent, this did not happen due to their lack o f cooperation. Almost resort­
ing to violence, we managed to get the children to receive their classes in
Spanish. They spoke our language in school, but outside they would go
back to speaking Nahuat.” 52
Despite the resistance, by 1930 primary education had spread to some of
the cantons o f Nahuizalco and Izalco, and with it the stimulus to speak
Spanish at the expense o f the indigenous language.53 Oral testimony sug­
gests that the church strongly discouraged Nahuatl-Pipil before 1932, just
as priests prohibited the use o f Lenca in western Honduras during the late
nineteenth century.54 The contradictory attitude o f the church toward in­
digenous language undoubtedly reflected its multiple ideological currents.
Conte, for example, a Pauline, would have been furious with any priest who
attempted to denigrate, let alone prohibit, the language he loved. Yet as a
missionary he was constantly on the move, neither needing nor wanting to
forge alliances with local ladinos. Paradoxically, as Gould noted in the
Nicaraguan context, the most ardent defenders o f Indians were in areas
where they were least effective: national intellectuals who rhetorically and
even politically valorized Indians had little local knowledge o f their rela­
tions with ladinos.55
Apart from its dubious assertion about a prohibition o f Nahuate, Perez’s
testimony tells us about collective memory and perhaps indicates some
facets o f communal history before 1932. First, it suggests that the ladinos’
scorn for Nahuate and its rejection by the younger generation were felt quite
strongly, perhaps as painfully as i f the language had been prohibited. It also
suggests the political importance o f the perceived assault on the language.
Although much o f the language transformation was subtle and largely
unconscious, there was very possibly a conscious effort to resist it. For
example, Conte mentioned the eager support among village elders in the
highlands o f Jayaque in 1930 for his effort to preserve a written version o f
their dialect o f Nahuatl-Pipil.56
It is also highly plausible that an organization rooted in what had for­ 115
merly been a civil-religious hierarchy, Los Abuelos, should have considered
the attack on language vitally important. The growing loss o f language may
well have pushed many o f the elders toward a multitiered resistance, as "Ese
suggested by Pérez, including a defense o f land and political control. Fi­ Trabajo
nally, some bilingual Nahuate speakers continued to speak their native Era
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language as a deliberate expression o f pride and resistance against those
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who equated “ speaking well” with the Spanish language.57 Although most Naturales"
Nahuate-speaking parents either encouraged or accepted that their chil­
dren answer them in Spanish, some Nahuizalqueño parents as late as 1930
scolded their children for not having pride in their language.

Racism, Resistance, and Mobilization

Language and religion were thus two key sites o f indigenous cultural cohe­
sion and resistance, which in turn sustained other forms o f ethnic pride
that affected Indians regardless o f their mode o f dress or expression. Cer­
tain communal practices, for example the use o f voluntary, collective labor
in agriculture and house construction, also fostered cohesion. The indige­
nous people in Cuisnahuat socialized their male adolescents in a manner
that promoted group solidarity and cultural pride: they gathered all young,
single men between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. in a large, open house.58 and after
socializing for an hour they would sleep in this casa de solteros.
Ironically, the state fostered another form o f youthful solidarity. The
ethnographer Hartman in the late 1890s reported seeing a line o f twenty
Indians tied together with a rope, escorted by armed soldiers. When he
asked i f they were prisoners, a companion commented that they were “vol­
unteers” from Nahuizalco who were marched from their home to the bar­
racks in San Salvador. Later he found out that “when they are needed, El
Salvador’s barracks fill up with indígenas who have to fulfill their mili­
tary service. They are often more reliable and more courageous than the
ladinos.” 59 In 1913 the departmental governor commented that Nahuizal-
queños made the best troops because o f their valor and discipline.60 Rocío
Tabora finds that the heavy recruitment o f western Honduran Indians in the
early twentieth century contributed to the process o f cultural mestizaje; it
 is as yet unclear whether the military had a similar impact on Salvadoran
Indians before 1932.61 There is little doubt, however, that what appears
ii 6 to have been a segregated recruitment process both enhanced intragroup
solidarity and further ennobled masculine values o f physical force and
courage.
"Ese Evidence o f other forms o f indigenous pride and associated practices is
Trabajo scattered through the written record, and somewhat elusive. One o f the
Era clearest statements o f the discourse o f ethnic revitalization can be found in
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the words o f an inebriated Nahuizalqueño at a wedding attended by an
de los
Naturales" Italian journalist: “ When needed, El Salvador’s barracks fill up with indí­
genas who have to fulfill their military service. They are often more reliable
and more courageous than the ladino soldiers.” 62 Foreign observers also
noted signs o f indigenous pride. Wallace Thompson, for example, wrote:
“ It is an amusing turn o f the tables that much o f the independent labor that
works for extra high wages at picking time comes from the Indian commu­
nities where the aborigines have their own huts and their own bits o f farm
land. Thus, the ‘civilized’ Indians o f Salvador holds himself at a higher
value than his mixed-blood cousin.” 63
Expressions o f respect and disrespect were at the core o f indigenous
pride and ladino racism. The quality o f racism, not surprisingly, varied by
class and intensified with the degree o f political or economic conflict. Faced
with the political control o f Indians, for example, a group o f ladinos of
Cuisnahuat sent the following protest to the national government: “We, the
true Indians, the Indian kings! The pure ones. . . we know what the white
people do not. We await our time. We are the owners o f the mountains, the
valleys, the coffee plantations, the houses—everything you can see.” 64 Re­
ferring to indigenous political control o f the municipal government o f
Santa Catarina Masahuat, near Nahuizalco, a ladino resident commented:
“ the few semi thinkers that reside here wanted to put in a young white
named Escobar, a poor, but honest man. The problem is that to get a white
[elected] among all these indigestos is going to be difficult.” 65 The use of
the term indigesto, also employed in Boaco, Nicaragua, had the connotation
that Indians were nauseating.66
Informal residential segregation contributed to racism in élite and popu­
lar sectors. In a pattern congruent with that o f much o f Mesoamerica, in pre-
dominandy Indian municipalities, ladinos occupied the town center sur­
rounded by Indian barrios and villages (see figure, page 120). Poor ladinos
often inhabited separate cantons or separate valles within the cantons. Such
segregation probably contributed to the perpetuation o f deep prejudices
among ladino elites and campesinos. Many believed that Indians were malos, 117
that is, practitioners o f evil witchcraft. Some associated the indigenous refajo
(a colorful one-piece cotton garment for women) with witchcraft. Others
considered indigenous women “ filthy,” since they imagined quite erro- "Ese
neously that the women wore no undergarment beneath the refajo and did Trabajo
not wash it.67
Middle-class and élite racism often revolved around the notion o f In- , .
de los
dians as impediments to progress. In another article on the political sit- Naturales"
uation in Santa Catarina Masahuat, a reporter commented: “That town has
always been governed by illiterate men; for them progress is unknown. Yet,
through good fortune and the influence o f a few powerful men during the
years 1926 and 1927 the municipal government was formed by the capable,
educated [capacitado] sector o f the population, in other words, the ladinos
and among their other accomplishments was the installation o f drinking
water. But during the last two years, the local government was in the hands
o f Indians and progress stagnated.” 68 This idea that Indians were anti­
thetical to progress was widespread throughout the continent; it was re­
peated even by the most ardent supporters o f Indians, as we saw with
Conte.69 Even what middle-class admirers the Indians did have could not
overcome their own racist stereotypes, invariably referring to the Indians
with the patronizing term inditos (the diminutive form, insinuating the
childlike character o f Indians). Carlos Estrada o f Nahuizalco, for example,
wrote a column in El Heraldo de Sonsonate attacking the élite for their attitudes
and practices, arguing that they mistreated the “ inditos whose work helps
them to earn the money with which they travel.” 70
One o f the first middle-class reactions to the incorporation o f Indians
into the mobilization was to criticize their ignorance and gullibility. A Na­
huizalco ladino, worried about the growing strength o f the left among the
Indians after the events o f 17 May, referred to the “ unwary poor people
who . . . are stirred up by the ambitious who deceive them with chimerical
promises that will lead them only to punishment.” 71 The obvious implica­
tion o f this typical piece o f ladino discourse was that the Indians were
incapable o f reason and were easily manipulated. Ladino racism in western
Salvador before 1932 was certainly no more venomous than elsewhere in
Central America where analogous bi-ethnic communities existed, for exam-
 pie in the highlands o f Matagalpa or in western Honduras.72 The deep, es-
sentialized beliefs about Indians impeded the development o f cross-ethnic
ii 8 friendships and liaisons. Similarly, the younger generations o f the former
indigenous communities seem to have developed negative beliefs about the
older generations o f self-identified Indians.
"Ese In light o f this level o f racism, indigenous hostility toward ladinos, and
Trabajo the left’s lack o f cognitive tools to deal with cultural difference, it is re­
Era markable that a cross-ethnic labor movement emerged so successfully. The
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rural mobilization preceding the events o f May 1931 and leading up to the
de los
Naturales" insurrection o f January 1932, in addition to intensifying local forms of
racism, involved rural workers and peasants who despite their variegated
forms o f identity responded positively to the class ideology promoted by
leftist activists. Those class-rooted, populist messages and activities, as
we have seen, appealed to a wide range o f people: those who regarded
Indians as a somewhat backward “ other,” those who identified strongly
with indigenous political authority and culture, and those who simply
did not care. The positive response to the radical movement involved dif­
ferential social and political reactions to the discourse and practice of
mestizaje.
In Nahuizalco and in the town o f Izalco, traditionalists played an impor­
tant role in the mobilization. Consider the testimony o f Andrés Pérez about
his father and grandfather, like him indigenous residents o f the canton
o f Pushtan: “ My grandfather had belonged to an organization commonly
called Los Abuelos in Nahuizalco, dedicated to protecting indigenous cul­
ture, political autonomy and land. My father, Juan Pérez was one o f the few
literate people in Pushtan. He worked as a colono on a cattle hacienda, on
land that earlier had belonged to the community. When the Socorro Rojo
started organizing in the area, my father became the organizational secre­
tary. It was for him no different than Los Abuelos.” 73 Although leftist mili­
tants did not support specifically pro-Indian demands, their appeal lay in
their nonracist forms o f daily interaction and their broad, egalitarian, and
emancipatory language, which Indians interpreted as support for their po­
litical, economic, and cultural rights.74 In Pérez’s testimony we see that the
mobilization o f the late 1920s was a continuation o f the struggles o f Los
Abuelos (a consejo de ancianos) against encroachments on land and restric­
tions on religious and cultural expression.
Municipal Politics

Throughout the nineteenth century civil-religious hierarchies effectively 119

governed municipalities in the west. Rodolf Cardenal writes: “ The integra­

tion between the religious and the civil followed the same structure o f the
towns which were organized by a political-religious cargo system. . . . The "Ese
only people who could obtain political positions were those who had pre­ Trabajo
viously attained prestige, carrying out duties in the religious sphere . . . To Era
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serve the saint was to serve the people and vice versa.”75 During the first
de los
decades o f the twentieth century political pressures challenged the cargo
Naturales"
system throughout western El Salvador. In Izalco the Alcalde del Común
was effectively excluded from direct political power over the municipal
government. However, he did maintain a significant political presence as a
representative o f the indigenous population to the departmental and na­
tional governments, while holding a position at the apex o f the religious
cargoes. In Nahuizalco the situation was different, as the alcaldía municipal
had by the 1920s become completely divorced from the religious cargo
system, and no religious authority also had political authority. It seems
likely that the overwhelming demographic dominance o f the indigenous
population in Nahuizalco (over 80 percent in the 1930s) did not make a
separate polity (such as the “ común’) seem necessary. In Izalco, where by
the 1920s the indigenous community, located primarily in one barrio, was
equal or smaller than the ladino population, a separate alcaldía indígena
was a useful institution.
In Nahuizalco, the transformation of Los Abuelos into a political organi­
zation responded to the breakup o f the civil and religious hierarchy. Its
ideological tilt to the left did have political costs, most notably in municipal
politics. As noted in chapter 2 and by other historians, municipal politics
were an important site o f ethnic conflict during the 1920s and 1930s.76 The
bitter local political conflicts in Nahuizalco and Izalco spilled over into the
mobilization. In Nahuizalco the former local indigenous political élite,
made up primarily o f urban artisans, merchants, and small-scale farmers,
had engaged in decades-long conflicts (and occasional alliances) with local
ladinos. For example, a dispute over the privatization o f some remaining
communal land sharply divided the indigenous political élite between those
who allied themselves with wealthy ladinos and those traditionalists who
began to look left for allies.77
 120

"Ese
Trabajo
Era
Enteramente
de los
Naturales"

Late nineteenth-century view

of Nahuizalco. Photo by Carl
Hartman, courtesy of the Museo
de la Palabra y la Imagen.

Indian Women in Nahuizalco,

1898. Photo by Carl Hartman,
courtesy of the Museo de la
Palabra y la Imagen.
 The leftward tilt o f Los Abuelos further split the indigenous political
élite. Thus a former municipal leader, Cupertino Galicia, rejected the re­
peated entreaties o f his former political allies to join the movement.78 Ga­ 12 1

licia was a prominent member o f the cofradías and had suffered at the
hands o f the church-ladino alliance. In 1931, when he was mayordomo o f a
festival, people allied with the priest yanked the image o f the Beatísima "Ese
from him. He was also related to a prominent Nahuizalqueño union leader. Trabajo
Nevertheless, he rejected the movement.79 As a “ middle farmer,” he em­ Era
Enteramente
ployed farm laborers who joined the mobilization. Political and ethnic ties
de los
notwithstanding, Galicia and others like him watched the expansion o f the Naturales"
Socorro Rojo with apprehension, and in 1932 feared for their lives.
In Izalco, a municipality divided roughly equally between ladinos and
Indians, the indigenous cofradías played a significant role in the mobiliza­
tion. As in Nahuizalco, control over the cofradías became a flashpoint for
cultural conflict. In Izalco, though, as noted earlier, the battle for municipal
control also included struggles over water and acequias (irrigation ditches).80
The political and ethnic divide was far sharper and more complex in Izalco,
as witnessed in the presidential elections o f 1931, when ladino artisans and
workers joined indigenous and ladino campesinos in support o f Araujo
against a coalition o f indigenous people (in the barrio Asuncion) and the
ladino élite. It is therefore all the more striking that by 19 31 ladino artisans
and workers in Izalco joined indigenous campesinos in the mobilization.
As early as August 1930, the National Guard had arrested ladino and indige­
nous carpenters.81 In the critical elections o f January 1932, a ladino carpen­
ter, Eusebio Chavez, was the left-wing candidate for mayor, primarily but
not exclusively supported by the Izalqueño Indian group.82
Thus far we have focused on the “ traditionalist” response to the varied
political, economic, and cultural pressures on the indigenous communities
rooted in the towns o f Izalco and Nahuizalco. However, even in those
centers o f ethnic militancy, the lines between assimilationists and tradi­
tionalists were extremely fluid. Throughout the rest o f western Salvador the
quality o f ethnic relations was even more intricate, revealing other facets o f
the subaltern response to the processes o f cultural mestizaje and ethnic
conflict. In the cantons o f Izalco, home o f most who took part in the
demonstrations o f 17 May, many people considered “ Indians” distanced
themselves considerably from the people o f the urban barrio o f Asuncion,
who were often more closely identified with indigenous markers o f dress
 and language.83 Informants who were children in 1930 recall how their par­
ents would use indigenous work clothes and then, when they approached
122 the town limits, change into ladino clothes. Notwithstanding what appears
to have been an accelerated pace o f cultural mestizaje in the cantons (in­
cluding more language loss than in the indigenous barrio o f Izalco), there
"Ese were still sharp distinctions between indigenous families in the villages and
Trabajo poor ladinos who had migrated to the area over the previous twenty or thirty
Era years. These distinctions did not coincide with class distinctions: Indians
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and ladinos found themselves among the ranks o f laborers, colonos, and
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smallholders in roughly similar proportions.84 In the canton o f Cuyagualo,
Naturales"
however, ladino migrants had become smallholders and indigenous fami­
lies were colonos on coffee fincas owned by wealthy Sonsontecos and
Izalqueños.85 Whatever their broad class similarities, Indian and ladino
neighbors did not get along harmoniously. In the words o f an indigenous
resident o f Ceiba del Charco, an ethnically mixed canton, “The ladinos
didn’t want to be with the Indians.” 86 In bi-ethnic cantons or villages, those
involved in labor and leftist organizations were indigenous. Sotero Linares,
a ladino agricultural worker from the canton o f Cuntan (Izalco), com­
mented: “ This work was done entirely by los naturales, by the most Indian
(de los más inditos). And we who were o f mixed blood knew nothing about
it.” 87 In the bi-ethnic cantons o f Izalco, as we shall see, ethnic divisions
were highly salient in the mobilization and insurrection.
In Los Arenales, a predominantly ladino canton that borders the coffee-
producing zone o f Nahuizalco, the rebellion and repression took the form
o f a civil war rooted in ethnic differences. In the eyes o f many o f the ladino
campesinos (rural workers, semi-proletarians, and small proprietors), the
mobilization had a definite ethnic character that excluded them. Despite the
class rhetoric o f the mobilization, Indian rebels were capable o f killing their
class brethren, especially ladinos opposed to the movement. Jesús Velas­
quez, a child in Los Arenales in 1932, recalls the fear and hatred o f his
family (ladino smallholders) toward the indigenous rebels. He witnessed,
and his grandfather participated in, the massacre o f hundreds o f Indians in
El Canelo. He recalled the words uttered by his grandfather: “ Otherwise
they would have killed us.” 88
Yet regardless o f these deep ethnic antagonisms, indigenous militants
were perfectly capable o f transcending local ethnic boundaries when they
organized rural workers on haciendas or in neighboring ladino villages. As
 123

"Ese
Fabián Mojica,
Trabajo
Sónzacate. Courtesy
Era
of the Museo de la
Enteramente
Palabra y la Imagen.
de los
Naturales"

Fabián Mojica, a ladino carpenter and labor organizer, underscored in refer­

ring to his organizational work in Cuyagualo and Cuntan in 1930, “The
indígenas were very conscious. Juan Hernández and other compañeros o f
Cuyagualo themselves went to San Julián to organize the laborers.” 89 In
otherwords, militants ofindigenous origin, who experienced sharp conflict
with their ladino neighbors, had no difficulty working politically with poor
ladinos o f other locales, such as those who labored on the coffee planta­
tions o f San Julián.
Indians from Cuisnahuat, despite their aforementioned hostility toward
ladinos in the same municipality, worked in the labor movement with ladi­
nos from the village o f Los Gramales, five kilometers away.90Migrants from
Suchitoto and Ilobasco had populated that village over the previous gen­
eration. Some owned small farms and others worked on haciendas. The
workplace interaction o f ladinos from Los Gramales and Cuisnahuat Indi­
ans enabled them to overcome their cultural differences and join the same
movement. Tacuba, a bi-ethnic coffee producing municipality north o f
Ahuachapán, also became a hotbed o f radical labor. According to Conte, in
I9t5 there were approximately seven thousand Indians and three thousand
ladinos in the municipality. Estimates around 1930 increased the ladino
proportion to 40 percent.91 Ladinos occupied the town center, but they
shared the urban space with Nahuate-speaking Indians who lived in Chi­
rapa, a large, irregularly arranged barrio o f ranchos. Although the town’s
ethnic relations reflected class divisions, the surrounding countryside was
more complex, similar to that o f Izalco. Various informants described the
inhabitants o f some cantons, such as Los Arcos, as mostly ladino pobretones
°r poquiteros. Rural Tacubeños, Indians and ladinos alike, worked on the
 coffee farms, yet according to Conte relations between them were poor
during the teens and twenties. He wrote about the indigenous population of
124 Tacuba in 1915: “ Unlike their brothers in the rest o f the Republic, the
tacubeños hide from the priest. . . and are very shy around ladinos. It made
us laugh to see the children hide behind the doors o f their rancho or in
"Ese some gully when we walked by.” 92 Informants recall the sharp ethnic sepa­
Trabajo ration, symbolized by the Indians’ epithets mulatos and mulatillos, used to
Era
describe all ladinos regardless o f phenotype. Despite this deep hostility, the
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SRI, under the leadership o f three ladino brothers, was able to recruit a
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Naturales" mass following within both groups. The Cuenca family had become pros­
perous as cattle ranchers and coffee buyers. The sons were thus able to
attend the university in San Salvador, where they became exposed to radical
ideas. Their intimate knowledge o f the local sociogeographic terrain proba­
bly aided them in their recruitment efforts. The eldest brother, Alfonso,
became the pc s candidate for congressional deputy for the department
o f Ahuachapán, presumably based on his large bi-ethnic base o f support
in Tacuba.
Similarly, Julián Ortiz, an Indian jornalero from Nahuizalco, rose through
the ranks o f the s r i to become a key departmental leader. According to
General José Tomás Calderón, special delegate o f Araujo who traveled to
Sonsonate to investigate the events o f 17 May, some two hundred o f the
protesters spent the night at the hacienda where Ortiz worked: “ This indi­
vidual is indígena and one o f the most active communists o f that canton and
to whom the other indígenas blindly obey.” 93 Although Calderón was right
that Ortiz was a leader and an Indian, he was wrong about the ethnic
makeup o f his followers in El Cacao, in a hacienda region whose workers
were overwhelmingly non-Indian. Ortiz’s case is significant. In Nahuizalco,
where ethnic divisions were deep, he had become a highly successful orga­
nizer o f ladino jornaleros and a respected leader o f the s r i . The biography
o f another Indian, Francisco Sánchez, who became the principal s r i and
frts leader in the Juayúa area, was quite similar in that he was an Indian
who organized ladino and indigenous workers alike.
General Calderón likely shared the misconceptions o f the British and
U.S. embassy officials and others in the Salvadoran élite, who did not usu­
ally make any distinctions between Indians and other rural poor people in
western Salvador. Notwithstanding their view that all the rural poor were
“ Indians,” such analytical distinctions are important if we wish to under-
stand the broad appeal o f leftist organizations during the early 1930s.94 I f
we have to cast aside the notion o f an indigenous mobilization and re­
bellion tout court, what difference did these ethnic ideologies and conflicts 125
make in the mobilization? In some places and at some times, they mattered
a great deal. In particular, with the notable exception o f Tacuba, in those
areas where Indians and Ladinos lived side by side the mobilization often "Ese
appeared to be an indigenous movement, and poor Ladinos, after the insur­ Trabajo
rection, became willing recruits for the forces o f repression. Era
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In the department o f La Libertad, the historical processes o f land con­
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centration and labor relations fostered by the coffee boom, and the unique Naturales"
forms o f consciousness o f ex-members o f indigenous communities, cre­
ated a predisposition toward alliances with leftist militants. As we men­
tioned above, the Nicaraguan highland communities that the coffee in­
dustry had transformed or absorbed became centers o f the radical labor
movement four decades later. It seems probable that in La Libertad, as
in the Nicaraguan communities, the memory o f primitive accumulation—
ladino appropriation o f former communal landholdings—and the shared
cultural codes, especially language, facilitated the circulation and accep­
tance o f leftist ideas.
The radicalization o f the laboring classes in the department o f Ahuacha-
pán took place in a complex ethnic tapestry. In 1930 the department experi­
enced ethnic conflict per se only in Tacuba. Ladinización had affected a
large barrio in the city o f Ahuachapán and nearby cantons during the pre­
vious decades. In 1892 in the city o f Ahuachapán, 54 percent o f births were
listed as indígenas, yet by 1930 few i f any people in the barrio or adjacent
cantons identified themselves as Indians or possessed any ethnic markers.95
The urban and rural workers who participated in the labor movement had
only the remotest connections to an indigenous past, although it is possible
that like their comrades in La Libertad they possessed memories o f the loss
o f communal land.
In the eastern part o f Ahuachapán there was virtually no indigenous
presence.96 Father Conte, for example, related a local legend that maroons
who had escaped from Guatemala founded the city o f Atiquizaya (popula­
tion fifteen thousand in 1915). He added, “The truth is that the color o f the
skin, the hair, the mores and customs do tend to give credence to the
legend.” 97 Oral testimony from Juayúa and Nahuizalco suggests that the
people from Turin and Atiquizaya were phenotypically mulatto. The other
 primary area o f leftist recruitment, among the permanent residents o f the
coffee and sugar haciendas on the mountain slopes north o f the city, lead­
126 ing up toward Juayúa and east across the Llano de Doña María, lacked both
indigenous identity and ethnic identification in recent history.
The ethnic mosaic o f Ahuachapán posed less o f a challenge to the
"Ese left, thanks in part to a religious phenomenon. Throughout the depart­
Trabajo ment, the cult o f the Virgin o f Adelanto melded together in spiritual unity
Era many Indians from Tacuba and poor ladinos. They participated in a quasi-
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millenarian movement based across the border in eastern Guatemala. In the
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Naturales" town o f El Adelanto, Guatemala, a young virgin woman, Petrona Corado,
claimed to have returned from the dead to perform miracles. During the late
1920s and early 1930s the cult o f the Virgen del Adelanto attracted hundreds
o f Guatemalan and Salvadoran peasants to the town. The Virgin o f Adelanto
appeared throughout the area o f Ahuachapán bordering Guatemala, par­
ticularly in Caña Brava, Agua Fria, and Hechadura. Informants recall that
a white paper screen was set up in front o f the devout. Some recall that
only virgin girls could see the Virgin o f Adelanto and hear her words.
Evidence suggests that the Virgin preached a message o f radical social
change and thus became identified with the left. At least some grassroots
leftist militants participated in pilgrimages, and several informants in the
west strongly associate the cult with the radical movement. Some infor­
mants on the left and pro-Martinez commentators argued that militants
manipulated the cult in order to gather crowds to whom they could prosely­
tize without fear o f government repression. Not surprisingly, landowners
and local authorities felt much threatened by the peasants’ and workers’
passion for union meetings and for the Virgin o f Adelanto.98By late 1931 au­
thorities in both countries suppressed the cult; Salvadoran officials charged
that Socorro Rojo used it as a cover for its activities.99

Patriarchy and Violence

The cult o f the Virgin o f Adelanto attracted a large following o f women,
some o f whom also participated in the leftist movement. Indeed the partici­
pation o f women in the movement challenged the rigid patriarchal norms
and relations that characterized Salvadoran indigenous communities, and
to a somewhat lesser extent ladino communities. Ironically, the patriarchal
norms themselves, in particular those related to notions o f masculinity, also
indirectly aided the mobilization.
 We are employing the term patriarchy in its most general sense, as a
system o f customary (and judicial) laws, symbols, ideas, and practices that
support male domination over females and children. All o f Salvadoran 12 7
society was o f course patriarchal—males had unquestioned control over
women and children. There were, however, significant differences between
élite and popular sectors in their child-rearing practices and between ladi­ "Ese
nos and Indians in their codification o f male and female marital roles. To a Trabajo
significant extent, differences in male control over female sexuality formed Era
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part o f the ethnic boundaries in rural Salvador.
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Indigenous patriarchy was by no means unique to El Salvador; male Naturales"
elders ruled in most other indigenous societies (indeed in most societies of
any kind).100 In To Die in This Way Gould noted that in Central America, as
elsewhere, strict limits on female sexuality enforced indigenous endogamy,
and at the same time, “ structures o f indigenous patriarchy presented an
extraordinarily powerful symbol to even sympathetic outsiders.” 101 As in
western Honduras, ladinos often claimed that some Indians practiced in­
cest and in general ladinos considered Indians’ sexual practices barbaric.
Some indigenous practices in the early twentieth century were certainly
different from those o f other Salvadorans.102
Endogamous marriage practices like those o f other Central American
Indians were essential to maintaining indigenous patriarchy. Arranged
marriages and patrilocal residence patterns, in particular, were customary
among both Salvadoran and Nicaraguan Indians during this period.103 As in
other societies, endogamy and male control over women were central to
preserving the indigenous community, or at least so it appeared to the village
elders.104 An official publication in 1916 underscored the uniqueness of
indigenous patriarchy and its connection to community governance: “ at
times several generations live under one roof under the common guardian­
ship o f the elders, the supreme command o f the house-hold is invested in the
oldest man who constitutes, as it were, the court o f last appeal. These
‘mayores’ are called ‘ahuales’ and form the counselors o f the community.” 105
Although Father Conte was generally sympathetic toward indigenous
cultural practices, extreme forms o f patriarchy repelled him. Commenting
about Cuisnahuat in 1912, he wrote: “ For the woman, the duties, for the
husband, the rights. While she sweats, carrying goods like a pack mule up
and down hills, he struts behind her, smoking or chewing cane . . . Inside
the home, the situation is worse for the poor woman: she has to do every­
thing, while the man growls and threatens her with a whip, which he uses
 on her to show his jurisdictional power! Instead o f complaining, the unfor­
tunate slave carries about her business as if nothing has happened and even
128 is happy to know that these caresses o f her master that her parents obliged
her to marry are a sign o f unequivocal love.” 106 Although it is debatable
whether indigenous patriarchy was more oppressive in El Salvador than in
“Ese other parts o f the Americas, marriage and sexual practices were highly
Trabajo codified.107 In Panchimalco, an indigenous community south o f San Sal­
Era vador, the elderly informants o f the anthropologist Alejandro Marroquin
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recounted that in the early twentieth century the community shared a belief
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Naturales" that the eleventh day following the start o f a new moon was propitious for
procreating healthy, strong bodies, and that an earlier date in the lunar cycle
would produce “ cowardly men.” Thus according to Marroquin’s infor­
mants, on once luna, around nine o’clock, municipal authorities would walk
the streets beating a drum and at intervals shouting, “ Now is the time
to conceive, gentlemen.” From their homes people would then respond,
“ We’re working on it.” For the next eight days sexual relations were encour­
aged. After the eighth night, municipal authorities prohibited relations (an
enforceable regulation, since the thatched roofs shook during the act).108
During the 1920s the growing number o f indigenous women economi­
cally obliged to work on plantations and haciendas loosened the bonds of
patriarchy. Arthur Ruhl’s comments about James Hill’s coffee plantation
are apposite. He relates the owner’s words: “They used to do nothing, just
take care o f their babies, cook for their husbands, and potter ‘round their
places. But I kept urging them to work and now I have plenty.. . . Why, lots
o f these women go round now with silk stockings on, while they’re carrying
armfuls o f brush and dirt. Naturally, they tear ’em to pieces.” 109 Hill implied
that the women engaged in everyday resistance, which resulted in wage
increases, allowing them to purchase luxury items such as silk stockings.
We can speculate that some women workers, after such experience and
presumably after acquiring new consumer tastes, would become active in
the labor movement.
The increase in the number o f indigenous women plantation workers
also resulted in more voluntary and involuntary relations with ladinos of
different classes.110 Father Conte alluded to the sexual appetite and power o f
the landlords when he reported on the mores o f the largely indigenous
coffee town o f Jujutla, Ahuachapam “ ‘I f the boss has three, four or more
concubines, why can’t we have ours?’ say the mozos and peones.” 111 Along the
same lines, the f r t s denounced the patrons’ abuse o f the daughters o f
colonos: “ In some jincas and haciendas the patronos or their sons exercise
the privilege o f the pernada and the young daughters o f the colonos only can 12 9

develop relationships with laborers after the boss or their sons abandon
them. The girls then often become mothers o f a patron’s child.” 112 Abuse by
landlords was directed at indígenas and ladinas, provoking anger among "Ese
both groups. While the increase in élite power and the decrease in the pool Trabajo
o f indigenous men after 1932 may have colored informants’ memories o f Era
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the previous period, there is little doubt that abuse o f indigenous women by
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ladino landowners formed an especially salient image in indigenous eyes. Naturales"
Moreover, at least some o f the movement activists were products o f forced
unions.113
The left was able to count on the support o f women who pushed the
limits o f patriarchy by joining the movement in large numbers. One-third o f
the members o f the f r t s in Nahuizalco were women, and informants who
participated in union meetings in Ahuachapán and La Libertad recall a
significant presence o f women. Female participation in the labor movement
was o f great importance, because it signified a transformation o f patri­
archal relations, empowering women within the contours o f indigenous
and campesino communities. Remarkably, during the insurrection three o f
the most prominent political and military leaders were women (see chap­
ter 6). It is possible that the work o f the Pauline missionaries debilitated in­
digenous and campesino patriarchy, thus creating a precondition for female
participation in the labor movement. Conte recalls how in the Jayaque
region, “ the semi-slave women still impose their rights, lashing out against
the despotism o f the fathers and husbands.” 114
Extreme forms o f corporal punishment were common among Indian
and poor ladino families, and perhaps contributed to a predisposition to­
ward violence.115 There is substantial evidence that child rearing practices in
western El Salvador were quite severe. The Swedish ethnographer Hartman
reported on a conversation with an elderly indigenous informant at the turn
of the century: “A punishment o f yore was to hang the child by his feet from
the roof and the give him lashes with a chichicaste or light a stick under his
head so that the smoke would produce massive itching. ‘These were the
ancient methods that never failed . . . ’ an elderly man told me.” 116 Although
these practices were no longer employed, Hartman commented, a whip
always hung by the door o f the rancho. It is probable that by 1930 indige-
 nous and poor ladino children grew up in an atmosphere colored by the
violent assertion o f paternal authority. Consider the following testimony of
130 Salomé Torres, a child in the highlands o f Jayaque during the 1920s. His
mother died o f illness when he was still a child, and the pain o f that loss was
still great when his father became ill: “As my father lay dying on his petate,
"Ese he suddenly arose and hobbled over to a corner o f the hut and reached down
Trabajo to pick up a stick. ‘Salomé, come over here!’ he said to me. I was scared, but
Era I walked over to my father. He started striking me on my back and rear end
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with the stick. ‘This way you will remember me so that you will always
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Naturales" behave.’ Then he died.” 117
There is no doubt that rural Salvadoran society was (and still is) violent.
Journalistic accounts o f the time emphasized that Indians were ready to use
their machetes at the slightest provocation.118 A Canadian ship captain
relied upon common élite and middle-class knowledge when he reported
that on Saturday nights, drinking often led to bloodshed in rural cantinas:
“ In the course o f the evening it is quite common for a quarrel to break out,
and often the participants . . . ‘have it out’ with their machetes. They
stand up to one another with the utmost bravery, quite often until one of
them is killed, and showing the utmost indifference to the most appalling
wounds.” 119 This report and others evoke an intensely violent rural culture,
one that predisposed campesinos to resist violent repression as a means to
demand respect.

Deep ethnic and gender cleavages tended to exacerbate the class tensions
that pervaded western Salvador. Yet those cleavages did not affect the mobi­
lization uniformly. Subalterns responded differentiy to the powerful ho­
mogenizing discourse o f mestizaje, propelled by the thoroughgoing mate­
rial transformations discussed in this and preceding chapters. In those
communities where Indians had lost their land and political autonomy,
especially La Libertad, the obliteration o f ethnic markers proceeded at an
accelerated pace with a profound effect on local identities. Yet even this
“ assimilationist” response was not one o f complete submission to the
ladino élite. Rather, subalterns remembered how the coffee growers’ land
was acquired and resisted the growers’ treatment o f their laborers. Tradi­
tionalists offered a multi-pronged resistance to the wave o f mestizaje, per­
ceived as an assault on their land, livelihoods, and culture. Their politics of
ethnic resurgence were o f decisive importance in Nahuizalco and Izalco.
Despite its ideological insensitivity to indigenous culture the left, as the
events o f 17 May revealed, was able to connect politically with indigenous
people: with traditionalists, assimilationists, and those to whom indige­ 131
nous identity was utterly irrelevant. As argued in chapter 3, the left could
relate to these groups precisely because the groups to a significant degree
organized themselves within a broad leftist discourse. The rank-and-file "Ese
leadership thus straddled different worlds. A militant might form part o f a Trabajo
tightly knit indigenous canton and simultaneously organize ladino rural Era
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workers and attend meetings with urban workers and artisans.
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Similarly, without developing anything resembling a feminist agenda, Naturales"
the left benefited from contradictory responses to patriarchy. During the
first decades o f the century increasing female participation in the coffee
economy as well as voluntary and involuntary relations between indigenous
women and ladino men challenged the rigid prevailing forms o f indigenous
patriarchy. Rape (real or imagined) by coffee planters angered campesinos
of all backgrounds, and the left mobilized that rage into its discursive attack
on the oligarchy.
The left did not insert itself seamlessly into this mosaic o f class, ethnic,
and gender relations. Although it grew organically with the distinct groups
(Indians, women, rural workers), the leftist leaders—from the canton to the
central committee—did not possess a clear focus o f the complex society in
which it was immersed. Despite the presence o f traditionalists among the
rank-and-file leadership, the left (writ large) never understood the cultural
stakes for them, nor did it grasp the depths o f ladino racism in some
smallholder communities. The failure o f the left’s ideology to catch up with
its practice ultimately did damage to itself and to those people its militants
fought so hard to emancipate.
 Chapter Five

“To the Face o f the Entire World” :

Repression and Radicalization,
September 1931-January 1932

"Look compañero. They killed my compañero but here are my sons and they will see
the revolution.''— Indigenous widow to a p c s militant, June 19 31

L
ike “ el Norte,” the wind that blows through cities, towns,
and villages in December, the movement swept through
the region in 1930 and 1931, shaking everything in its path,
then subsiding, and then gathering force again. As in other
times o f revolutionary change, for the activists the possibili­
ties were imminent and endless. Every protest, every meet­
ing, every strike portended the “ final battle” with the enemy.
Time was telescoped for individuals and groups. One day a
campesino was invited to a meeting. The next week he at­
tended a demonstration where police roughed him up and
arrested him. He emerged from jail ready to battle to his
death with the bourgeoisie. Further repression only acceler­
ated the radicalization process and the cries for revolution­
ary resistance. When “ el Norte” came in December 1931,
blowing away the last rains and bringing out the sun, the
winds o f social change had reached gale force.
Following the events o f 17 May, Araujo’s administration
became increasingly committed to a repressive response to
the left. In early June police arrested Marti and others while
they were conducting a meeting o f three hundred in Armenia.1 Marti’s
arrest announced a period o f intense government surveillance, which only
intensified when on 13 July Araujo declared martial law.2 In August the 133
government called in the cavalry to break two municipal workers strikes in
San Salvador.3
Araujo’s ability to meet the minimal needs o f government employees, let "To the
alone launch any reforms, hinged on a loan from the United States. Con­ Face
gress turned down the loan in the wake o f nationalist-inspired protests by of the
Entire
workers and students.4 It finally approved a smaller loan, insufficient to
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meet even a reduced government payroll.5 The dispute revealed Araujo’s
political weakness, augmented by the divisions within his own party.6
The Partido Laborista began to crack under the stress o f anti-popular
repression and governmental inaction. A putatively pro-government dem­
onstration in July revealed the depth o f Laborista alienation from the gov­
ernment. Araujo brought between five and ten thousand rural workers to a
rally in the capital. After marching to the Casa Presidencial, they joined
a second demonstration o f thousands calling for the resignation o f all
Araujo’s ministers because o f their inaction on land reform.7
Araujo and Labor Party leaders faced the delicate and difficult task o f
persuading their rank-and-file supporters to stay away from s r i activities
and ensure that local authorities did not harass or arrest Laborista activists.8
Araujo him self at times directly undermined the coherence o f the Laborista
party, especially as local elites appropriated party leadership. Consider the
case o f Juayúa, a flashpoint o f leftist activity. In July four hundred un­
employed workers petitioned Araujo for assistance. When the president
visited the town in September he was greeted by Redaelli, the local boss,
and wined and dined by the local élite. Araujo promised a band, one hun­
dred barrels o f concrete for the plaza, and a school with a basketball court—
as soon as he could find the funds. For the landless and the unemployed,
Araujo offered nothing.9
The suppression o f a union meeting on a coffee plantation near Zaragosa
in La Libertad marked another watershed in the government’s relations
with the left. Some two hundred workers attended the meeting, on 23 Sep­
tember. The local landlord called on the National Guard, who arrived on the
scene. Apparently without violent provocation, the Guardia opened fire with
submachine guns, killing fourteen campesinos and wounding twenty-four.
The assault at Zaragosa was by far the most serious act o f state violence up
 to that point, and it stands out in the record o f action against the left and the
labor movement over the previous two years. State violence over the pre­
134 vious year, although not severe by Latin American standards, had the effect
o f pushing the movement in a more militant direction, and the killings at
Zaragosa did not intimidate but rather radicalized the campesinos. By No­
"To the vember the Socorro Rojo reported having recruited five hundred new mem­
Face bers in the Zaragosa area.10 The strong push toward militancy was guided
of the less by ideological interpretations o f reality than by cultural repertoires of
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Indians and peasants—including, as we have pointed out, a sense o f embat­
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tled dignity tinged with large doses o f masculine pride—which found state
repression, regardless o f intensity, to be intolerable.
In the words o f a leftist leader, “ Our campesinos will not come to any
demonstrations unless they are armed with [corvos], and you better believe
it.” 11 The government’s use o f force against the rural movement radicalized
the struggle and placed the communist leadership in a position where they
had to either accept a retreat into passivity on the part o f their peasant and
Indian militants or advance toward some form o f armed struggle. For
example, pcs leaders in Sonsonate related to the Central Committee the
rank and file’s desire to storm the city prison to free political prisoners
rather than participate in any more unarmed demonstrations.
Rank-and-file rural laborers and peasants pushed the movement toward
armed resistance. A report o f the pcs in October 1931 stated, “ to the next
call we make, they will not respond without bringing along their arms
(corvos or machetes), because it is unjust that unarmed persons get mas­
sacred . . . now, we arrive at the epo c h in which we can no longer detain
the r e v o l u t io n a r y wave that is rising everywhere, ready to conquer
po w er through life or death.” 12
Marxist terminology, especially “ bourgeois,” “ proletarian,” and “ class
struggle,” entered the language o f the mobilization through the Third In­
ternational and the p c s . As we discussed earlier, the use o f camarada as a
greeting became extremely popular among the rural militants. There is
evidence that indigenous activists directly appropriated such Marxist lan­
guage to describe their social world. Consider the following dialogue, re­
called by Eugenio Diaz Barrientos, one o f the key economic and political
figures in Izalco. In an interview with Segundo Montes in 1976 he recalled a
conversation with Felicano Ama, an indigenous cacique, landowner, and
former political ally. Ama was a driving force behind the political organiza­
tion o f the comunidad indígena o f the Barrio de Asunción.13 As we have seen,
he had expressed himself in a language of class as early as December 1929.
Yet he maintained traditional clientelistic ties through the election o f Janu­
ary 1931 by supporting the candidacy o f Zarate. He broke those ties during 135
Araujo’s administration. In response to Diaz Barrientos’s entreaties to de­
sist from his leftist political activities, Ama told him: “ Look, patron. What
you say is true in that we have been and will always be friends. But you are a "To the
capitalisto on one side and we workers on the other, the proletariat; we are Face
no longer the same, because you are capitalisto, but I will always treat you of the
Entire
with respect and you will treat us with affection.” 14
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We could look at this statement as an example o f a superficial indige­
nous understanding o f Marxism. The use o f capitalisto (common among
indigenous people) instead o f the grammatically correct capitalista certainly
could point to such a conclusion. In view o f Ama’s status as a landowner
and seasonal employer o f workers, we can see this usage as exemplifying an
imposed language that directly subverted indigenous cultural categories
such as indijgena or natural and ladino. However, there is an alternative
reading: class categories were useful if not necessary to break through the
cultural and ideological constraints imposed by the traditional categories.
The appellation patron is then interesting because it refers in El Salvador at
this time not to an economic relation but rather to a political and cultural
relation o f clientelism. Although during the previous decades the indige­
nous community had a significant degree o f political autonomy, in the last
analysis it was dependent on elite-controlled hierarchies, and its leaders
recognized this subordinate status. For example, we have noted that the
indigenous community o f Izalco over the previous decades had delivered its
votes to the officialist party. Thus to create a labor movement and contest
local power relations it was necessary to break previously harmonious rela­
tions with patronos such as Diaz Barrientos. In this sense “we are no longer
the same” signifies the transition from indigenous clients into a relatively
autonomous social and political force o f “ proletarians.” The linguistic
transformation was important, for without the new forms o f conceptualiza­
tion and vocabulary it would have been difficult to express the notion that
despite long-standing ties o f friendship, Ama now considered Diaz Barrien­
tos a political antagonist. Nothing had changed except Ama’s way o f under­
standing his position in the world, one that transcended the traditional
ethnic and clientelistic categories and that by referring to class opposition
staked a claim to independent political action.
Raymond Williams’s categories o f analysis are useful for understanding
 the changing cultural patterns o f western Salvador. For Williams, “ emer­
gent” cultural forms are the “ new meanings and values, new practices, new
i 36 relationships and kinds o f relationship [that are] continually being created.
But it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish between those which are really
elements o f some new phase o f dominant culture . . . and those which are
"To the substantially alternative or oppositional to it: emergent in the strict sense
Face rather than merely novel.” 15 Residual cultural forms are those that though
of the formed in the past are “ still active in the present.” 16
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Western Salvadoran society in the early 1930s was experiencing a rupture
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in cultural forms. Traditional patrimonial cultural forms, in Williams’s
terms, were at once residual and dominant. Yet the challenge o f radical,
emergent cultural forms that eschewed deference to the élite momentarily
broke the bonds between the residual and the dominant. In this sense, for
indigenous people in particular, residual notions o f friendship and respect
remained meaningful although they were no longer tied to a political, eco­
nomic, and cultural edifice but rather coexisted uneasily with emergent
notions o f equality.
In The Last Colonial Massacre Greg Grandin makes an important argument
about the role o f the left during the mid-twentieth century in shaping the
emergence o f different styles o f modernity and modern forms o f identity,
what he calls “ an insurgent individuality.” Arguing against a view o f the left
as a totalitarian slayer o f the individual, Grandin argues, “ Rather than
eliminating the boundaries between self and society, collective action dis­
tilled for many a more potent understanding o f themselves as politically
consequential individuals. Such insurgent individuality, I argue, was funda­
mentally necessary to the advancement o f democracy, to the end o f forced
labor, and to the weakening o f other forms o f exploitation and domination.
But this sense o f agency was defined neither by radical autonomy nor by
isolated freedom: rather, collective actions laid bare the social foundations
o f the self.” 17 For Grandin “ Latin America’s old le ft . . . bridged the fault
lines o f modernity, linking nation and the world, community and state, and
self and society.” 18 This alternative form o f modernity allowed the individ­
ual, who was torn away from traditional communal and familial relations,
to begin to relate to the broader society not only as a self-interested “ indi­
vidual” but with a new collective identity, rooted in the traditional commu­
nity but with new horizons that stretch beyond the milpa, village square, or
plantation. Commander Brodeur, drawing on Salvadoran counterinsurgent
discourse, glimpsed the emergence o f this alternative identity: “ It appears
that up to a short time ago, this low class o f labourer was content with
its lot, or at least indifferent to the appalling conditions under which it
worked . . . conditions in fact not far removed from slavery. But when here 137
and there a few managed to better themselves, realization began to dawn
upon these latter o f the unhappy, indeed unjust lot o f their class. It was to
these few slightly superior types that the principles o f Communism . . . "To the
appealed most strongly.” 19 Regardless o f the sociological accuracy o f the Face
observation—that is, regardless o f the purported economic superiority o f of the
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the local activists—the analysis does reveal how the activists acquired an
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important vantage point. This distance from communal relations allowed
them to make connections between the state and economic exploitation,
and to provide a link between their rapidly changing communities and the
oppositional forces in society—in short, to become agents o f this alternative
modernity. This divergent form o f modernity present in Ama’s discourse,
however incipient, suggests how the left was successful in attracting strong
support among indigenous populations, despite an ideological orientation
which was not particularly sensitive to ethnic forms o f identity. The repres­
sion o f 1932 cut short the flowering o f this alternative modernity, as did the
Guatemalan counterrevolution in 1954.
Even as a Marxist vocabulary expressed these emergent forms o f moder­
nity and helped to transform subaltern understandings o f their social and
political world, the indigenous and campesino linguistic appropriation also
had significant impacts on the Salvadoran left. On the one hand, the adop­
tion o f these class categories obfuscated relevant local histories and rela­
tionships, in effect contributing to the left’s blind spot with regard to ethnic
relations and the complex local histories o f ethnic factionalism in munici­
pal politics. On the other, it was clearly the rank and file that first placed
armed rebellion on the leftist agenda as early as 1930, against the wishes
and better judgment o f most leaders. Despite the revolutionary “ class ver­
sus class” rhetoric prevalent during the Comintern’s “Third Phase,” there is
no evidence that the international movement in any way supported an insur­
rectionary strategy in El Salvador.
An incident in Ahuachapán in November 1931 revealed the growing
acceptance o f an insurrectionary solution among the popular sectors, par­
ticularly in the west. In response to efforts by the Communist Party to
register their candidates for the upcoming congressional and municipal
elections, the government arrested leftist leaders in Sonsonate, Ahuacha­
fan, and Santa Ana. In Ahuachapán, according to an internal s r i report:
 “The day o f compañero Hernández’s capture more than 600 camaradas
mobilized spontaneously, camping on the outskirts o f the city, but when
138 they found out that they were not going to attack the city, they left with some
displeasure.” 20
Miguel Mármol, who was sent to stop the threatened attempt to free
"To the political prisoners, corroborated this report, underscoring the militancy of
Face the Ahuachapán rank and file: “ Our candidate for Mayor o f Ahuachapán . . .
of the told us that the barracks were under siege by a contingent o f 900 campesi­
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nos who had decided to settle accounts for the arbitrary acts by the authori­
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ties . . . He said that the urgent pleas o f the Commander o f the Regiment,
Colonel Escobar, hadn’t done a thing and that the local leaders o f the
Communist Party requested a delegate from the Central Committee to come
and quiet down the peasants and get them to go back to their homes before
it turned into a slaughter.*21 Later the pcs national leadership sent Mármol
to Ahuachapán on a similar mission to persuade militant campesinos to
avoid an armed confrontation with the National Guard. One o f the Ahua-
chapanecos threatened, he reported, that the next time he would have to
“ face our machetes even before the class enemy.” 22
This incident could be used as proof o f the distance between a rural move­
ment and the Communist Party leadership. But that interpretation would
miss a crucial point. Many campesinos—rural workers and smallholders—
lived in or near the city o f Ahuachapán.23 They were prepared to assault the
barracks to free local communist leaders, many o f whom were urban ar­
tisans. This moment also reveals how the regional mass movements con­
tinued to push the national leadership into increasingly militant postures.
The arrest o f the pcs candidates in Ahuachapán was part o f a major
national crackdown on the left during November 1931. Government author­
ities arrested hundreds o f activists in the west and around San Salvador. The
resort to massive repression during the middle o f an election campaign
revealed the inability o f Araujo’s government to deal with the left and the
growing protest movements.

The Coup of 2 December

The radicalization o f the western countryside certainly played a role in the

military coup o f 2 December that overthrew Araujo. Contemporary ob­
servers and historians have focused on the dissatisfaction o f younger mili'
tary officers with the administrative chaos, especially the failure for months
to pay the troops. The involvement o f Vice President Hernández Martínez in
the coup has also formed a central part o f this question. In June Martinez, 139
serving as both vice president and minister o f war, led a protest by the army
against the so-called código rojo. This law had allowed Romero Bosque to try
and execute the military coup conspirators o f 1927 within forty-eight hours. "To the
Incredibly, Martinez and other officers demanded the reinstatement o f the Face
military right to “ insurrection.” Hernández Martínez himself called the of the
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código rojo unconstitutional.24 Araujo refused to give in to this pressure.
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The tension between Araujo and Martinez intensified on 27 November,
when officers rejected the ten days’ backpay that Araujo offered the military.
Martinez, having been placed in charge o f the negotiation, agreed with the
rejection, arguing that it was insufficient. On 1 December Araujo, perhaps
suspecting that Martinez’s loyalty was in doubt, removed him from his cabi­
net position o f minister o f war, placing his long-trusted ally and brother-in-
law Salvador Lopez Rochac in the position. This move angered many army
officers.25
U.S. military intelligence believed that an elite-led conspiracy involving
higher-level officers had been in the works for at least a month, led by the
oligarch Francisco Dueñas. The worker and peasant mobilizations and the
possibility o f leftist triumphs in the upcoming municipal and congressional
elections played a role in prompting the conspiracy. This group did not
work directly with the officers but after the coup pressured them into ac­
cepting Martinez as president.
Initially there was confusion about the military revolt and the status o f
resistance by Araujo supporters in the police and army.26 By 4 December,
however, the directorate was clearly in control o f the state apparatus. The
new military directorate quickly found itself supported by the country’s fi­
nancial élite, who offered new loans within a day o f their seizure o f power.27
Despite the financial backing o f the oligarchy, for the left a mixture o f hope
and confusion colored the first weeks o f the military directorate regime.
The leftist leadership had apparently been aware o f the possibility o f a coup
but was unsure how to respond to it. In their first manifesto the pcs did not
condemn the new regime, but rather called on it to revoke the emergency
anticommunist laws and to expropriate land from the Melendez-Quiñónez
oligarchic group. In a similar vein, on 12 December La Estrella Roja, a paper
linked to the p c s , in its first issue offered its congratulations to the junta
 and then explained: “ In reality, the clumsy mistakes o f the Araujo admin­
istration imposed the moral obligation on the military to overthrow it, and
140 to that we add the sacking o f the national treasury by his cronies.” The
editorial suggested that the military junta could actually join forces with the
oppressed and overthrow the capitalist class: “This is the moment for your
"To the sublime mission and i f you fulfill it your heroic efforts will not be in vain.” 28
Face The pcs was in a state o f confusion about how to respond to the new
of the regime, since it was possible that the government would opt for a progres­
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sive agenda. In a report in mid-1932 Max Cuenca stated the sense o f the
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Central Committee that “ if the Party came out against the directory it would
make it impossible for the Party to participate in the municipal elections.” 29
It was indeed difficult to read the junta’s political intentions through its
actions, and its initial measures compounded the uncertainty reigning on
the left. Although the new military government did not respond directly to
the p c s , its first declaration indicated a measure o f support for urban and
rural workers. The junta gave public indications that it would eschew anti­
labor violence, and the military regime even freed some 210 political pris­
oners.30 Four days after the coup the regime allowed the Communist Party
to open an office in San Salvador with an inauguration attended by some six
hundred people. Three days later the police did shut down the headquarters
and take party lists, but allowed it to reopen as an election headquarters—
the municipal and congressional elections were postponed for two weeks.
Although the authorities in the western departments were less tolerant of
the p c s , they did allow offices to open and remain open.31
During the first weeks o f December the pcs and Martinez’s regime
shared a sense o f mutual wariness and ambivalence, but not hostility. In
mid-December Martinez brought in local leftist leaders to engage in a dia­
logue with him. He met with Gregorio Cordero Cortez, the renowned rural
labor leader from Armenia and pcs congressional candidate. Cortez re­
ported that he was “well received” by Martinez, who claimed that he would
obtain concessions from the plantation owners for the workers.32 Through­
out his political career Martinez consistently displayed a populist style. Such
a style would not have been inconsistent with a strategy o f cooptation to
neutralize the left, while enhancing Martinez’s stature with the laboring
classes. The pressure from the United States, manifested by its public re­
fusal to grant diplomatic recognition to the regime, likely prompted Mar­
tinez to keep his options open with regard to labor.
 Taking advantage o f the political lull and uncertainty, on 9 December, at
the peak o f the coffee harvest, unionized rural workers in western Salvador
began what rapidly became the first sustained wave o f strikes in Salvadoran 14 1

history. From 9 to 19 December strikes broke out in the departments o f

Santa Ana, La Libertad, and Ahuachapán in demand o f higher wages and
better working conditions. These were not “ spontaneous” work stoppages "To the
in the sense o f unorganized and unplanned actions. Rather, since March Face
19 3 1 the left (first as the s r i and then as the reorganized f r t s ) had begun to of the
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organize in preparation for strikes during the coffee harvest (October-
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February). Organizers and supporters traveled from farm to farm, spread­
ing news o f the strikes and helping to organize work stoppages in protest
against cuts in the piece rates.
These were among the first full-fledged strikes in the Salvadoran coun­
tryside. Although there had been work stoppages in the countryside before,
they had rarely lasted more than a day before they were ended by negotia­
tions or repression. While the Comintern subsequently criticized the pcs for
separating political from economic struggles during this critical period,
there is evidence that these economic strikes did have a political dimension.
At least some militants, such as Miguel Mármol, had conceived o f the strikes
as the prelude to a nationwide general strike. Further, the strikes had a
political dimension in that they directly contested power relations. Mármol
wrote about his experiences as an organizer in December 1931: “We com­
munists were traveling through the rural zones o f [Sonsonate and Ahuacha­
pán] as if the plantations and haciendas were already the peoples,’ such was
the mass support we were getting.” 33 Socorro Rojo militants wrote, “These
strike struggles in the villages against wage cuts will lead to broader and
greater strikes . . . the masses only follow the p c s .” 34 Finally, for a variety o f
reasons ranging from bankruptcy to fear, some landowners abandoned
their plantations, allowing de facto occupations by coffee workers.
Martinez’s regime, thrown on the defensive, seemed eager to negotiate
(or even ally with) the strike leaders in the west.35 In his meetings with
rural workers’ leaders in San Salvador, Martinez “ expressed a great desire to
gain from the bosses concessions that will improve the material lot o f the
workers, as, for instance, the setting up o f a school for workers on the
plantations, giving them seeds.” 36 Not surprisingly, Martinez’s sympathetic
approach to the local leftist leaders spurred grassroots activists on to fur­
ther action, as they nurtured the belief that Martinez backed their struggle.
 Numerous informants, sympathetic or not to the left, share the belief that
Martinez backed the labor movement and that activists pushed ahead with a
14 2 sense that the regime would support them. Fabian Mojica, for example,
recalls a conversation in which Esteban Morán, a ladino leftist leader of
Izalco, told him that Martinez had urged him on with the phrase “ Ese hueso
"To the tiene hormigas” (this bone has ants). Both Mojica and Morán had inter­
Face preted the phrase to mean that the system had to be overturned. Eusebio
of the Chavez, pcs candidate for mayor o f Izalco, reportedly received a message in
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December from Martínez, “ Siga adelante.” 37
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The apparent neutrality o f the regime and the timid response o f the
landowners emboldened the rural labor movement. On 20 December some
twelve hundred workers in the Santa Tecla region launched strikes on six
plantations owned by the powerful Dueñas family.38 The strike ended after
two days when the local union won an increase from 20 cents to 30 cents
per bag o f coffee. Two days later 390 resident laborers on two other nearby
haciendas owned by the De Sola family launched a strike in protest against
terraje rates—rental payments traditionally made in crops but during the
crisis made, at the landlords’s insistence, in cash.39
The strike movement followed the overall rural labor pattern o f telescop­
ing historical time, leaping over the traditional developmental stages o f
labor movements. Although these were among the first rural strikes in
Salvadoran history, they rapidly turned into a movement resembling a re­
gional general strike. The strike wave was not limited to La Libertad: in the
Santa Ana volcano region, nine hundred workers struck the Regalado plan­
tation demanding greater water rations and an increase in piece rates.
Strikes also broke out on coffee plantations in the departments o f Ahuacha-
pán and Sonsonate. A high level o f prior organization accompanied by a
broadening and deepening sense o f solidarity among western campesinos
offers one explanation for this rapid development o f the movement, atypical
o f labor history in other parts o f the Americas or Europe.
Although initial demands aimed to block piece rate cuts, the second week
o f strikes saw laborers demanding increases beyond the restoration o f the
cuts. In a strike on the Regalado plantation, the union demanded an increase
from 15 to 22.5 cents per bag o f coffee. Strikers seemed to have a precise
target: the agricultural élite. All reported strikes took place on the largest
plantations owned by the oligarchy, leaving smaller commercial farms un­
affected. Although leadership o f the left was undisputed, there was a signifi-
cant degree o f local autonomy, as evidenced by the negotiated solutions to
the plantation strikes against the Dueñas and to another on a coffee and cane
plantation o f twelve hundred manzanas owned by the De Sola family.40 143
Despite the scope and militancy o f the movement, the National Guard
adopted moderate tactics in response to the strikes. On the De Sola ha­
ciendas the guard offered sympathy for the strikers but opposed using "To the
coercion against strikebreakers. Guard members also made friendly sug­ Face
gestions about negotiation tactics: for example, that only a small number o f of the
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delegates should participate. As late as the last week in December, in re­
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sponse to a request from a cafetalero, President Martinez intervened directly
in a strike in La Libertad so as to resolve the conflict peacefully. At least
some coffee planters favored a moderate policy o f negotiation with the
strikers and the Left.41 One coffee grower in La Libertad recounted that
workers on a friend’s plantation organized a union and then went out on
strike to support demands for better food, higher wages, the eight-hour day
for adults, and the six-hour day for minors. Recognizing that this was but
one case o f a much broader movement, he wrote, “ It is worth asking: what
are the employers going to do? Are they going to ask the government to
send the armed forces to shoot up the bands o f unarmed indios? The
patrono who has that point o f view would be stupid. The longer it takes to
realize that violent measures cannot resolve the problem, the worse it will
be for him . . . We have to say to all the patronos that if they do not all come
together to face the problem, they will allow El Salvador to suffer a social
chaos which will victimize them.” 42
By late December such an enlightened view was becoming a rarity. The
more repressive sectors o f the agrarian élite attempted to regain the offen­
sive. As early as September they had started raising money for a rural guard.
Shortly before the coup the Ahuachapán branch o f the Asociación Cafetalera
de El Salvador had passed a resolution calling on the government to enforce
“ greater and more efficient property guarantees against Bolsheviks and
communists who have here become a serious threat against the tranquility
and productive activities.” 43 The association forwarded the resolution to the
new government on 8 December. By early January the regional agrarian élite
was raising thousands o f dollars a day for the National Guard. In a budget­
ary crisis, such gifts were surely appreciated by Martinez’s regime.
The refusal o f the U.S. State Department to recognize the de facto regime
also forced it into a tighter alliance with the cafetaleros, who generally got
 along well with the legations from the United States and Britain. This
combination o f State Department opposition to Martinez and élite pressure
144 offers the best explanation o f the volte face o f the regime, from a populist
overture to the left toward violent suppression o f the movement.44 Martinez
knew that he was fighting to stay in power. He indicated as much on 16
"To the December, in a conversation with a railroad manager. Martinez confessed
Face that unless the United States promptly recognized his regime, he would
of the face “ troubles which he felt certain he could not suppress.”45
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Although the transition from negotiation to repression was not linear, by
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the end o f the second week o f strikes the regime seems to have changed
its course. One incident highlighted this reversal. In response to pleas
from the Regalado family, the government sent troops with orders to shoot
strikers on their large plantation on the slopes o f the Volcán de Santa Ana.
Despite the orders the strikers were able to establish communication with
the troops and avert bloodshed. Although the strike was resolved peace­
fully, the dawn o f the new year was greeted throughout the west with the
expectation o f violence.

Municipal Elections

A political rally in El Refugio, a relatively unimportant cane and coffee

municipality in eastern Ahuachapán with fewer than two thousand inhabi­
tants, revealed the spread and depth o f pcs electoral support. In late De­
cember militants from Atiquizaya traveled the short distance to El Refugio
to support the formation o f the electoral slate o f the Partido de los Traba­
jadores. A smallholder was their candidate for mayor, and laborers on the
cane and coffee fincas were the candidates for regidores. The municipal
secretary reported no violence at the demonstration, which according to her
“ lasted a long time.” 46 However Benjamín Cárcamo, a landowner and can­
didate for mayor on the Independent ticket, described the same events in
alarming tones: “ grave events . . . by the communists, stirred up and sup­
ported by those o f Atiquizaya.” He therefore officially withdrew from the
race, “ in order to avoid fatal events.”47 Although the details are sketchy, it
seems clear that the show o f support for the candidate o f the left was strong
enough to drive away the only other candidate in the election, thus ensuring
a left victory in El Refugio. Martinez’s regime viewed this and other in­
stances o f the left’s growing electoral strength in the west and prepared to
thwart its electoral victory by any means necessary.
 On 31 December El Diario de El Salvador reported, “Armed forces have
been sent by different routes to small towns in the departments o f Sonso-
nate and La Libertad. Reliable sources allow us to inform the public that the 145
troops’ objective will be to guarantee order during the elections. Various
local commanders have requested these troops since recently they have
noted strike activity on the part o f workers, and especially those who, not "To the
having work, spend their free time spreading subversive propaganda, tak­ Face
ing advantage o f the liberties granted by the government.”48 The article of the
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both reports the facts o f the troop movement and editorializes in favor o f
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repression. The regime foreshadowed its electoral strategy several days
before it dispatched its troops to the west. On Sunday 27 December the
Ahuachapán branch o f the pcs was holding a meeting at its headquarters to
choose its representatives to the electoral board. Three hundred towns­
people waited outside for the results. According to the Cuenca report, “The
police broke into the convention and carried o ff the lists o f those workers
who registered and who had decided thereby, to vote for the communist
candidates . . . The [police] threatened to shoot i f the workers did not
retire. The government [forces] dissolved the convention right there. . . The
[pc s ] candidate for Mayor was persecuted, along with other candidates on
the list.” 49
Despite the pcs protest, local and national governmental authorities
refused to acknowledge, let alone redress, the interference with the cam­
paign. Nevertheless leftist organizations proceeded to prepare for the elec­
tions, fully aware o f the strong possibility that the authorities would impede
their municipal and congressional victories. A report in late December to
the international secretariat o f the s r i stated: “ The Party is mobilizing itself
and will go into the elections o f deputies. In the municipalities o f the
Occident and the Center triumph is assured, the enthusiasm is large, still
larger in the departments o f Ahuachapán, Sonsonate, and La Libertad. The
feelings are very excited.” 50 By the party’s own estimates, it would win 4 0 -
45 percent o f the national vote.51 Since the left was relatively lacking in
support in the eastern part o f the country, this estimate was high. Yet the
assessment that the party would win the mayoral and congressional races in
most o f the western municipalities and in the capital was eminently reason­
able.52 Through its organic ties to the unions and to the Socorro Rojo, the
Pcs was able to galvanize the support o f large numbers o f urban and rural
workers and others, despite its recent emergence from a semi-clandestine
existence.
 During the first few days o f January, in response to the threat o f fraud
and intimidation, the left developed a two-pronged strategy.53 First, the
146 frts “ suspended” the rural strikes. It withdrew the pickets so that the
workers could travel to the towns and cities to vote. The pcs and its allied
organizations instructed their rank and file to line up regardless o f whether
"To the they received permission to vote, to demonstrate party strength. The pcs
Face also prepared to continue the strikes immediately after the elections and to
of the expand the movement to other plantations. The post-election strike move­
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ment would combine trade union demands and political protest. Anticipat­
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ing an antidemocratic response by the regime, the left attempted to prepare
its rank and file for this eventuality, counseling pacific protest whenever
possible, but armed resistance when faced with state violence.
The left’s national leadership correctly assessed the regime’s sharp
rightward turn and also grasped the rank and file’s simultaneous commit­
ment to an electoral option and armed resistance against violent repression.
We get a sense o f these apparently contradictory commitments in the per­
son o f Marcial Contreras, a carpenter and pcs candidate for mayor o f
Ahuachapán. According to Mármol, “ in Ahuachapán the townspeople had
already prepared a plan—that i f victory was denied them by fraud, they
would attack the barracks and impose the popular will by armed force.” 54
Mármol implied that Contreras supported this plan. Even so, a letter of
1 January 1932 from Contreras to the departmental governor reveals how
seriously local leaders and the rank and file took the elections, suggesting
their confidence in victory and their moderate hope for free elections: “The
Communist Party has the honest desire to act with decorum and to demon­
strate to the face o f the entire world that it has the discipline and is not justa
band o f robbers, that communism pursues legitimate goals and is not
synonymous with pillage. The Party will present itself properly [during the
elections], and has prohibited any shouting o f vivas and mueras; we only
hope that the authorities will prevent the other parties from addressing
inflammatory or hurtful words at our muchachos, which we know perfectly
they seek to do . . . so that confronted with our victory, they could nullify it
due to violence.” 55
This letter allows us to glimpse the importance o f concepts o f honor and
dignity in local leftist discourse. In fact the resolve o f the campesinos to
abstain from participating in unarmed demonstrations also had something
to do with honor, dignity, and a fear o f further physical abuse. In indige-
nous areas the daily lack o f respect shown by ladinos to Indians was an
additional source o f accumulating ressentiment, which fueled the Indians’
militancy. Sheila Fitzpatrick builds on the standard definition o f ressentiment: 147

“ a state o f hostility maintained by the memory o f an offense which it aspires

to avenge . . . ressentiment (like vengeance) must always be present in the
mix o f emotions that lead people to support revolutions and commit acts o f "To the
revolutionary violence.” 56 Testimonies that offer a distant echo o f these Face
emotions include statements like “ ladinos didn’t want to be with Indians,” of the
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and “ God is not ladino.” 57 Yet it would be a mistake to assume that intense
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commitment, propelled by ressentiment and a sense o f dignity, was sepa­
rable from more ideological goals: the Indian and ladino campesinos con­
sciously struggled for land claimed by the élite, local political power, and
decent wages and working conditions.
The pcs platform for the municipal elections articulated some o f these
goals but in general betrayed an urban bias. Several planks addressed child
labor, prohibiting the employment o f niños (presumably children under
twelve) and calling for a six-hour day for those under eighteen. The plat­
form also demanded an eight-hour day for men with no corresponding
salary cuts, a seven-hour day with equal pay for women, maternity care, and
paid leave. As for the unemployed, it called for direct financial and food aid
as well as for the creation o f labor banks. Several demands related directly
to the urban poor, including 50 percent reductions in taxes in the market
and in rent (with free rent for the unemployed and those who lived in
mesones), reductions in public transportation costs, and water and electricity
for the mesones and poor barrios. Another plank provocatively attacked
military training in the schools and the “ militaristic plans o f the patronos
and the regime.”
Although some o f the labor planks were applicable to the countryside,
only one sentence specifically addressed rural labor: “ Reasonable wages,
protection, and defense o f the colonos and their right to food and lodging
even when they are not given work.” In light o f the left’s overwhelming
support in the countryside, it is striking that the immensely popular issue o f
land reform was omitted.58 In all probability this omission reflected the
urban slant o f the document; pcs militants probably considered land re­
form to be outside the purview o f municipal governments.
The preamble, however, surely resonated with the rural poor. After de­
scribing a recent past in which terratenientes used worker candidates to push
 their own interests, the party announced: “ From now on, this farce has to
stop, and the working class and peasantry must elect municipal govern­
148 ments composed o f workers and peasants who respond to the interests of
their class party, the Partido Comunista, whose immediate program is to
remove the capitalist class from control o f those organisms that it has
"To the always manipulated to impose onerous taxes on the immense masses of
Face consumers.” 59 This was a straightforward appeal to class power at the
of the municipal level, based on an identification o f the p c s , through its links to
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the fr t s and the s r i , as a legitimate class representative. This appeal would
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have been received differently in indigenous and non-indigenous commu­
nities: the issues o f local political power weighed somewhat more among
the indigenous, since traditionally local authorities had significant control
over resources, especially irrigation and land. Thus, for example, Antonio
Calvo, capitán mayor o f the National Guard in Izalco, wrote to the depart­
mental commander that according to his informants the Communist candi­
date for mayor, the candidates for regidores, and their followers were going to
“ impose their mayor without waiting for elections” on 20 December. In
Nahuizalco, before the coup, the indigenous candidate Pablo Cruz emerged
from a split along ethnic lines in the Araujista Labor Party. In early Novem­
ber 1931 Francisco Brito, a ladino destazador working with a group o f “ last-
minute Araujistas” had displaced Cruz as the candidate o f the Labor Party.
Subsequently Cruz and his Comité Laborista de Indígenas allied themselves
with the Left.60 Although the exact nature o f the shift in party allegiance is
unclear, there is little doubt that the existing strength o f the rural unions and
the s r i were important factors. Francisco Brito, along with the anfi-pcs
candidates in Juayúa and Izalco, would become the object o f rebel rage
during the insurrection. And in Cuisnahuat a slate described by authorities
as Laborista/Comunista gained much support among the majority indige­
nous population, only to have its electoral participation blocked.
Although the level o f political conflict at the municipal level was more
intense in indigenous municipalities, Contreras’s letter and Mármol’s re­
port about Ahuachapán underscore the importance o f local political stakes
to non-Indians and the reach o f the populist dimension o f leftist discourse.
The testimony o f a schoolteacher in Santa Tecla reveals something o f the
impact o f the campaign for local power on a non-Indian population: “Yes­
terday, for the first time, I saw simple campesinos come together, unarmed
and in perfect order, without malicious leaders or academic swindlers. This
inspired me and it struck me as a school teacher, to publicly give my support
and guidance towards a new democracy. . . I understand that as a member
of an oppressed class, we all suffer from misery and all have the same goal: 14 9

‘the greatest good for the greatest number o f people.’ ” 61

This curious mixture o f the language o f Lockean liberalism and radical
populism points to the broader appeal o f the movement, in turn related to "To the
the profound divisions in Salvadoran society, where, as in Mexico, school­ Face
teachers could consider themselves members o f and voices for the op­ of the
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pressed classes against a ruling oligarchy. The letter also underscores the
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sense o f order and decorum that permeated public demonstrations on the
left, a behavior that would be attested to during the elections even by un­
sympathetic observers. It is echoed in Contreras’s letter: “ to demonstrate to
the face o f the entire world that we are not a band o f robbers.”
The words o f the pcs candidate were tragically ironic: in the collective
memory o f the survivors o f the massacres, the pcs and its supporters would
be remembered as una horda de salteadores. But the words were also prescient:
three days after Contreras wrote them, the regime blocked pcs voters from
voting in Ahuachapán, and elsewhere the elections were canceled or marred
by fraud. According to the British consul, “ the suspension o f the elections
in the West was due to growing unrest o f plantation laborers produced by
the activities o f agitators and the depressed conditions o f coffee and sugar
industries.” 62 A lieutenant in the National Guard and others emphasized
that Martinez used the elections to gauge the level and makeup o f Commu­
nist support.63 The regime may also have blocked an electoral victory by the
pcs in an attempt to curry favor with the United States. There is no doubt
that it solidified its alliance with the agrarian élite.
The regime may have decided to thwart the pcs victories, but its officials
and local authorities did not follow uniform tactics. They allowed elections
to proceed in Ahuachapán, where the National Guard blocked pcs support­
ers from voting, but postponed elections in many pcs strongholds such as
Tacuba and the ladino municipalities o f Turin and Colón. Perhaps they
feared overwhelming losses in less populated municipalities such as El
Refugio, where there seemed to be little opposition to the p c s . The regime
did not want to spread its limited coercive apparatus too thinly by interven­
ing in every western municipality, and therefore the tactic o f postponement
was appropriate.
The Ministry o f Gobernación’s order to postpone the elections through-
 out the department o f Sonsonate went unheeded.64 In Juayua the govern­
ment carried out elections but prohibited the left’s participation. In Izalco
15 0 the officialist candidate Miguel Call won the election by a margin o f 758 to
1. According to official tabulations, in Nahuizalco Francisco Brito beat the
indigenous candidate Pablo Cruz by the somewhat less lopsided margin of
"To the 918 to 371.65 Given the correlation o f political forces in town—in 1930 frts
Face already had over seventeen hundred members in Nahuizalco and the munic­
of the ipality was over 80 percent indigenous—these figures are highly dubious.
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Local informants recall that the “ Communists won the elections and it was
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stolen from them.”66The regime also perpetrated fraud in the city o f Sonso­
nate. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, the former minister o f foreign relations,
wrote in his memoir about Sonsonate: “According to authorized sources,
including some semi-official ones connected to the local hierarchy, like the
director o f Police, the Communist Party candidates were ahead in the mu­
nicipal elections o f Sonsonate. But the result had been predetermined by the
authorities . . . 48 hours before the election the result was known . . . ‘Those
in charge rule’ was the justification.” 67
In San Salvador Miguel Mármol noted that election day had a festive
air. “ It was our speakers and our choruses with the little daughters of
workers and peasants singing revolutionary songs like Red Flag and the
International that created a happy, enthusiastic atmosphere.”68 The British
consul similarly reported that “ the queue o f communist voters were quite
orderly and they did not appear to be furnished with the same inducements
to vote as were offered to their opponents.” 69 Other parties had significant
followings in San Salvador, and the authorities there apparently denied the
pcs a plurality by closing the voting booths before its voters had a chance to
vote. The electoral authorities called upon the “ bourgeois” parties to vote
first. At the same time, the pcs made the mistake o f ordering its peasant
voters (from the city’s outskirts) to vote before its city supporters did. This
tactic played into government hands, as the authorities challenged and
nullified many o f the rural votes. They also blocked many rural voters within
the municipal boundaries from entering the city. When pcs leaders realized
that they might lose because o f these machinations, they ordered their
supporters to merge into the lines o f a rival party. That party protested, and
in response the authorities terminated the voting, despite a substantial
number o f voters, pcs and others, who had not yet voted. Notwithstanding
what by many accounts seems to have been a concerted effort to block its
victory in the capital, the pcs fell only sixty-three votes shy o f winning the
election.70
It was in Ahuachapán that the regime’s efforts to block a pcs victory were 151
most blatant. According to party reports, “ there was such a large majority
[on the pcs line] that they mobilized the armed forces to prevent the work­
ers from reaching the voting tables. By 4:30 these workers demanded the "To the
right to vote and rushed to the tables but police prevented them from Face
voting. . . we had about 5000 [on line]. . . the candidate was elected with 90 of the
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votes [total votes cast]. . . Delegates then instructed them to go back to their
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organizations “ and back the plantations and fincas.” 71
Miguel Mármol, the pcs leader who had originally opposed an electoral
strategy precisely because he could predict the regime’s response, sum­
marized the elections: “There was great enthusiasm during the elections.
However, their triumph in almost all o f the western part o f the country was
nullified. The result was tremendous and the fraud led to even more vio­
lence and more discontent.” 72

"Alii Comenzó El Comunismo": Violence in the West

“ Don’t pick for less than 50 cents per arroba!” Antonio Valiente, a former
union member from Turin, recalls how hundreds o f workers streamed into
the canton o f Santa Rita on January 4, the day after the election, calling on
workers to join the strike. For Valiente and other nonleftist workers and
their managers, the movement surely appeared to be an “ invasion.” In
addition, the strikers employed “ pressing” tactics to ensure unanimity in
front o f the bosses and the army. Although not unusual in the annals
o f strikes and rebellion, the Salvadoran labor movement previously had
avoided coercive tactics. The violent tone in which the strikers ordered work
to stop was a reflection o f both the anger and the seriousness o f the mili­
tants. Valiente slipped away and went home to Turin to wait out what he
correctly foresaw as a coming storm o f violence.
El Tránsito was a mid-sized coffee finca owned by the Arriaza family;
Rogelio Arriaza, forty years old and resident in Ahuachapán, was its owner
and manager. Before the coup he had belonged to a faction o f the Partido
Laborista and been a candidate for regidor in the city.73 Situated in the
canton o f Santa Rita on the northern slopes o f the Sierra de Apaneca, El
Tránsito was one o f some fifty similar fincas within the municipal bounda-
 ries o f Atiquizaya. Colonos who cultivated basic grains for consumption
and limited sale on the market resided on the fincas and formed the perma­
152 nent labor force.
According to contemporary leftist accounts, corroborated by local testi­
monies, the strike developed peacefully during the morning, and the small
"To the detachment o f guardsmen fraternized with the approximately four hundred
Face strikers. A pcs broadside explained what happened next: “ The capitalists
of the Rogelio Arriaza and Rafael Herrera Morán got the Guardia drunk so that
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they would assassinate the striking comrades.” 74 Other accounts add that
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the owners gave the Guardia “ a good lunch” before the soldiers killed
several strikers. According to Cuenca’s report to the Comintern six months
later, “They began to attack the pickets, smashing, breaking heads, and in
this way dispersed the pickets. Then they went to their houses and later they
came back with machetes and killed every one o f the soldiers.” 75 Local
testimonies support the newspaper accounts that the strikers killed two of
the six guardia: Miguel Angel Zelaya and Indalecio Ramírez.
Within hours the regime sent “ truckloads o f troops” from Santa Ana to
subdue the rebellious strikers. Antolín López recalls that from his hut in la
Montañita he looked across the slopes o f coffee plantations and saw what
seemed like a huge “ blue ant hill,” as blue-clad army troops swept through
the area. For López, “Allí comenzó el comunismo.” The strike and troop
movement represented the beginning o f “ communism,” the multi-vocal
word that would encompass all the bloody events o f January. For three days
the troops combed the hillside fincas and haciendas searching for strikers,
leaving behind burned huts and dead campesinos, including residents who
had remained neutral during the strike.76 The Guatemalan consul in Santa
Ana reported on 13 January that a cuadrilla o f Guatemalans picking coffee in
the Atiquizaya region was attacked by the National Guard, “who confused
them with the communists.” Four o f the Guatemalan coffee pickers were
killed.77 Armed with the weapons taken from the small detachment of
Guardia, some o f the strikers engaged in sporadic resistance against the
troops. According to one newspaper account: “Yesterday [5 January] there
was bloodshed in Turin, Ahuachapán. The communists . . . attacked the
armed forces with firearms. The authorities responded with firearms to
repel the attack. The first and second Comandantes were killed and several
Guardia were injured.” 78 Violence not only further enraged the rebels; it
also terrified antagonists and observers alike. One informant recalls how
elders counseled young adults tempted to join the strike movement, “ Don’t
get involved! It’s nasty out there!” 79
But it was precisely those subaltern bystanders whom the strikers ur­ 153
gently tried to reach, with methods ranging from persuasion to intimida­
tion. Although most o f the Santa Rita strikers were among those who had
attempted to vote for the pcs in Ahuachapán and Atiquizaya, few infor­ "To the
mants recall any links between the Santa Rita strike and the elections. Face
Today, seven decades later, they live and work in the same villages. There are of the
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several possible explanations for why the elections do not stand out in
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testimonies. That most informants were children or adolescents in 1932
undoubtedly helps to explain why they forget the political dimension, just
as they tend to forget the demand for a reduction o f terraje (they do, how­
ever, remember the names o f the dead guardia and the local union leaders).
Another important reason is that in subsequent official discourse the events
surrounding the elections were largely suppressed, especially any links be­
tween the elections, the strikes, and the insurrection. Beyond the ravages o f
official memory and the inadequacy o f personal memory, it is also very likely
that the strike leaders intentionally downplayed the explicitly political di­
mension o f the movement to reach the apolitical workers.
The aggressive post-electoral strike movement was a mass movement,
but it probably did not actively involve the majority o f rural workers and
semi-proletarians. In the departments o f Ahuachapán, La Libertad, and
Sonsonate there were between eighty and ninety thousand coffee pickers
during the harvest in the early 1930s.80 Although it is impossible to mea­
sure with precision, the number o f rural workers involved in unions and the
Sr i most likely did not surpass 25,000 to 30,000 in those departments.81
Thus for the local leftist leadership there were two organizational goals: to
maintain the cohesion o f the grassroots movement and to convince the
neutral workers through a combination o f intimidation, cajoling, and edu­
cation. The growing sense o f urgency and crisis pushed the movement
toward “ pressing” tactics, yet always complemented by a strategic consid­
eration: political education would come from the confrontation o f strikers
organized around immediate economic demands and the state. This two-
tiered form o f organization and struggle—an economic struggle for the
uncommitted combined with a political and economic struggle for the
committed —was not particularly clear to either subaltern or élite observers
ut the time.
 D. J. Rogers, British consul and coffee planter, writing on 7 January,
attempted to offer a broader view o f the conflict:
I54
To the onlooker, it appears that many of the planters have only themselves to
blame for this state of things. They have lived extravagantly; they have wasted
profits on expensive holidays abroad; they have borrowed heavily. With few
"To the
exceptions they have done nothing to improve the condition of their laborers,
Face
of the who live in miserable huts, roofed with palm leaves which in many cases they
Entire have to pay rent to the planters . . . Further, some planters adopt an arrogant
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against them and their families. It is in the districts where the most unpopular
planters have their estates that there is most unrest. . . Within the last week or
two labor unrest has been aggravated . . . Ahuachapán and Sonsonate are espe­
cially bad. Serious affrays have taken place between the strikers and the National
Guard, in one, which I am informed on good authority sixty strikers were killed.
It is difficult to know accurately what is going on in the west for the newspapers,
although not subject to censorship omit or minimize these matters. I learned,
however, that a body ofwell-armed men estimated at 1500 moves about from one
plantation to another intimidating workers and preventing them from picking
coffee much of which is being lost. These men claim to be adherents of President
Araujo.82

Rogers distanced himself from his own role as a coffee planter, but his
reading o f the situation was undoubtedly based on conversations with Brit­
ish and Salvadoran planters and high-level regime officials. He emphasizes
two factors: the economic conditions o f the plantation workers caused by
abusive, wasteful native planters, and the role o f “ outside agitators.” This is
a classic formulation o f counterinsurgent discourse that tells us more about
the worldview o f its formulators than about a complex social and political
reality. The report echoes the previously cited testimony that suggests the
existence o f a minority, moderate position within the coffee élite, which
may have previously been aligned with Araujismo. In Ahuachapán, for ex­
ample, the Partido Laborista was divided even before the coup, with one
group aligning itself closely to planters’ interests.83 It is a safe assumption
that Rogers reflected the views o f at least some other planters. We can
therefore hypothesize that there were still members o f the élite during the
first weeks o f January who believed in the possibility o f a negotiated solu­
tion to the conflict and recognized the necessity o f reform.84
 At the same time, it is instructive to recognize the limitations o f this
perspective. Although in an earlier report Rogers had cited labor unrest as a
cause for suspending elections in some western towns, neither he nor the 155
press made any connection between electoral fraud and post-electoral vio­
lence in the countryside. Newspapers and official reports (including those
o f the U.S. State Department) omitted entirely any mention o f the municipal "To the
elections in relation to the strikes. Face
By not recognizing the legitimacy of the strikers’ implicit demand that of the
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the electoral travesty be rectified, Rogers and others helped create a discur­
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sive field which demonized communist agitators: according to the consul,
they inflamed the masses with a program “which is the slaughter o f the
landowners and the appropriation o f their lands.” 85 Once the political,
democratic dimension was stripped from the movement, the discourse
could portray strikers as a lawless, violent, and uncontrollable mob. The
regime drew on this perspective when it refused to negotiate with the p c s ,
describing the events in Ahuachapán as “ the work o f simple rioters who
do not obey the concrete orders o f the central committee o f the Commu­
nist Party.” 86
The image o f a roving band o f agitators and strikers was not pure fear
and fancy: bands o f rebellious strikers did indeed push the pcs toward
insurrection and at the same time formed the nucleus o f the revolutionary
forces. Let us examine these simples amotinados, this “ large body o f armed
strikers” that moved from plantation to plantation. These bands emerged
in Ahuachapán after the elections and regrouped on 5 January, after the
first full-scale confrontation with troops who opened fire with machine
guns. There is no way to verify Rogers’s estimate o f fifteen hundred roving
strikers with any degree o f accuracy, but over the next few days government
troops killed anywhere between thirty and four hundred people in the de­
partment o f Ahuachapán, including armed and unarmed strikers and un­
committed campesinos. Notwithstanding the terror, there is strong evi­
dence that the bands regrouped and appeared as far west as Tacuba and as
far east as La Libertad during the following week.
Newspaper and official reports alternately described these bands as
“ Communist,” “Araujista,” and unemployed.87 What meanings lurk behind
those descriptions? In what sense were the strikers communist? By assem­
bling numerous, albeit partial, testimonies and other documentary evi­
dence, we can put together a portrait o f these rebellious strikers. On the
 most obvious level, the mobile and militant strikers had either campaigned
for or tried to vote for the Communist Party candidates in Ahuachapán,
i56 Atiquizaya, Turin, and Tacuba. Since they lacked patronage des with the
party, we can assume that there was a significant degree o f conscious back­
ing for the p c s . That support may have derived from respect for the honesty
"To the and militancy o f working-class candidates, such as the carpenter Marcial
Face Contreras. Likewise, it may have derived from support for the pcs munici­
of the pal platform and the Socorro Rojo’s well-circulated demand for land re­
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form. That support was also a logical outgrowth o f the labor-organizing
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efforts by leftist militants since early 1924 in the city o f Ahuachapán, and
starting in 1928 in the surrounding countryside. Most recently, pcs strike
leadership had solidified that political support in the December wave of
labor unrest. Finally, there is strong circumstantial evidence that the
strikers directly followed the guidelines o f the regional pcs leadership. To
wit, they followed p c s directives when they left their pickets on the fincas
and plantations in order to vote and then again when they went on strike
immediately after the elections. Thus it was not unreasonable for frightened
and hostile observers to refer to the strikers as “ Communists” even though
according to internal party documents there were only seventy members of
the pcs in the entire department o f Ahuachapán.88
What then o f the accusation that these strikers were Araujistas? The
same British consul wrote in the following week that there had been “ se­
rious affrays between the national forces and the Communists, and the loss
o f life on both sides has been considerable.” After repeatedly identifying
the “ armed strikers” as “ Communists,” he wrote: “ These men are armed
with revolvers which points to the existence o f funds coming from outside,
as otherwise they would carry machetes. They appear to be an organized
body o f men and under the leadership o f foreigners. They claim to be
supporters o f ex-President Araujo. The district in which they operate is that
in which Señor Araujo was most popular. The Communists in La Libertad
Department do not appear to be particularly in his favor . . . the labourers
themselves have no doubts about their programme, which consists o f the
slaughter o f the landowners and the appropriation o f their lands.” 89
Although the notion that foreigners were in control o f the movement
(along with the image o f hundreds o f strikers armed with revolvers) appears
to be almost a reflex o f counterinsurgent prose, the rest o f the analysis
is intriguing, and apparently based on contact with knowledgeable people.
In particular, the description o f the strikers in Ahuachapán as both Arau-
jistas and Communists, in contrast with the strikers o f La Libertad, has
some credibility, in part because o f its specificity in differentiating levels o f
support in the two departments. There is other evidence to support the 157

claims o f collaboration between Araujistas and the left, and o f Araujista

support for insurgent action in the region across the Guatemalan border.
There is no doubt that Araujo had exceptional support in Ahuachapán, "To the
where in the elections o f January 1931 he won two-thirds o f the vote; he Face
received less than 50 percent nationwide.90 In a statement in January 1932 of the
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Mario Zapata, a leading pcs student and intellectual, wrote, “ Ingeniero
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Araujo still has supporters among the campesinos; many still adore the
fetish who could not respond to them, but with the propaganda about him
being the defender o f the needy, he still has altars in the hearts o f some
campesinos.” 91
Unlike the consul, Zapata saw Araujista support as a potential problem
for the p c s . Yet he also recognized that Araujistas were involved in many o f
the popular struggles and that the insurrectionary strategy was predicated
on “ taking advantage o f the . . . Araujista agitation.” 92 However, this does
not invalidate the notion that many o f the strikers supported the former
president, who may well have been looking for a strategy to return to power.
Not only did campesinos and workers ignore past sectarian animosity be­
tween the pro-communist left and Araujismo, but so did political militants.
In several western municipalities such as Cuisnahuat, Laborista candidates
for municipal office became pcs candidates after the coup o f 2 December.
Government reports from December 1931 also refer to “ Laborista/Commu-
nist agitators.” Moreover, the pcs candidate for congressional deputy in
Sonsonate was the Laborista Tomás Mojica, brother o f the imprisoned s r i
leader Manuel Mojica.
Considering that the pcs and the left had been denouncing Araujo’s
government with sectarian invective such as “Abajo la dictadura fascista
de Araujo!” from early in his administration, it is striking that activists
could hold two such antagonistic allegiances. Nevertheless, the annals o f
subaltern protest history are replete with examples o f support for antago­
nistic political tendencies. During the conflicts between communists and
anarcho-syndicalists that raged in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico in the late
teens and early twenties, numerous rank-and-filers acted as if the differ­
ences were irrelevant and maintained twin loyalties. Many German workers
after the First World War had no trouble working together despite nomi­
nally belonging to warring communist parties (the k p d and the k a p d ).93
 The notion that these bands were made up o f unemployed field hands
also deserves attention. One newspaper account referred to “ those unem­
i 5« ployed who devote their leisure hours to disseminating subversive propa­
ganda.” 94 Other reports similarly link unemployment with rebelliousness.
At the same time, coffee growers complained to the government that they
"To the needed coffee pickers. The growers mentioned that workers from Hon­
Face duras and Guatemala had not arrived as they usually did, but neither had
of the those from other departments.95 More alarmingly, in early January coffee
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planters alleged that they were losing the harvest because o f a labor short­
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age and actively recruited more workers from Comapa, Guatemala.96At that
time strikes were breaking out all over the west. In short, the strikers were
unemployed either because they were on strike or because, in a less comba­
tive manner, they merely refused to work for the newly reduced wages.
It is notable that ethnicity was not a significant factor in these groups.
Although some indigenous coffee pickers undoubtedly took part in the
strikes, informants consistendy refer to the strikers as “ ladinos” or state
that they were non-Indians. Informants identified them as “ campesinos,”
yet they did not all live in the countryside. Rather, townspeople from Ahua-
chapán, Turin, and Atiquizaya often picked coffee, and many worked as
full-time farm laborers. There is little doubt that many o f these “ urban”
campesinos participated in the radical movement.” 97 A woman from Ahua-
chapán, twenty years old at the time, stated that the strikers were “ from the
cantones but also from the pueblo . . . they were all ladinos.” She also
remembers that female militants in town organized other women but does
not recall women involved in the strikes or insurrection.98
Our sources do not permit a complete portrait o f this pre-insurrectionary
movement—newspapers were censored and archival records are silent. We
can summarize its primary sociological characteristics: the bands com­
prised mainly male, non-Indian campesinos, including farm laborers, colo­
nos, and semi-proletarian seasonal pickers, who lived in towns and in the
countryside. Their tactics in demand o f higher wages and decent working
and living conditions ranged from using roving pickets who drove o ff non­
striking laborers to occupying haciendas. The strikers both followed and
influenced local pc s leaders, despite some allegiance to former President
Araujo.
Grassroots influence on the p c s became critical on 4 January, when party
militants and sympathizers in Ahuachapán met with the delegate o f the
Central Committee and “ insisted that he demand from the Central Commit-
tee that in view o f the fact that the Party had gained a tremendous majority
during the election campaign, they should be given orientations in order to
prepare a movement by which they could secure by force what they had 159
previously failed to secure.” 99 At this critical juncture the Ahuachapanecos,
while resisting violent repression, were clamoring for what was in effect a
regional insurrection to install their municipal authorities. Acting autono­ "To the
mously from the Central Committee, on 7 January the local leadership made Face
a direct appeal to soldiers: “ The government o f the rich has sent troops to of the
Entire
crush the workers. Comrade soldiers: you belong to our exploited class and
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must not fire one single shot against the workers. Workers, peasants and
soldiers should form workers,’ peasants’ and soldiers’ councils in order to
establish a workers’ and peasants’ government. You must disobey your
officers and commanders because they are against the workers. Name your
delegates to coordinate with us. Let’s finish o ff the officers and command­
ers and forge a red army composed o f soldiers and commanders picked
from the soldiers’ ranks.” 100 Although this dramatic call to mutiny and
rebellion probably had little effect on the government troops, it may well
have had a powerful effect on the pcs leadership in San Salvador, who by
5 January had become aware o f the government’s use o f force against the
movement. At the very least, the Ahuachapanecos placed the entire left in
the line o f government fire at the same time that the leadership in San
Salvador was still looking for ways to forestall an insurrection.
At the very moment when pcs militants in Ahuachapán were issuing
insurrectionary manifestos, the national leadership was considering the
viability o f the electoral road to power. Legislative elections were scheduled
for Sunday 10 January. Notwithstanding the extreme unlikelihood that the
regime would allow pcs victories in the legislative elections, the pcs Elec­
toral Commission continued to proceed as i f the elections were a real op­
tion. Consider the letter from the Central Committee to its comrades in
Santa Ana on 8 January. After laying out detailed instructions for pcs elec­
toral activities over the next few days, the letter stated: “ We must combat the
idea that we won’t be able to elect congressional deputies. It is an error to
argue that because we did not triumph in the municipal elections due to the
machinations o f the bourgeoisie, we should not participate in the congres­
sional elections.” 101 The letter went on to urge the Santa Ana leadership to
organize strikes, in part to elevate political consciousness and in part so that
“ the government does not concentrate all o f its forces in Ahuachapán.” 102
The two documents reveal a sharp contradiction between the strategy of
 the local leaders and grassroots militants o f Ahuachapán, who had essen­
tially declared an insurrection to insure, at a minimum, local leftist rule, and
i 6o at least some members o f the national leadership, who still maintained
hopes o f an electoral solution to the political crisis. Part o f that hope de­
pended upon negotiations with the regime. On the same day that the Central
"To the Committee laid out its electoral and strike strategy, it named a five-member
Face committee, including a congressional candidate from Ahuachapán, to ne­
of the gotiate with the Martinez regime.
Entire
The next day, 8 January, members o f the pcs delegation arrived at the
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Casa Presidencial to negotiate with Martinez, who declined to meet with
them, claiming that he had a bad toothache. Instead they had a brief meet­
ing with the minister o f war, Colonel Joaquin Valdez. According to the
report o f the delegation, the meeting started o ff on a bad note, as Valdez
disclaimed knowledge o f the events in Ahuachapán, which he said were the
domain o f the Ministry o f Gobernación. The pcs delegation then proposed
that to avoid further bloodshed the government should call o ff its troops;
in return the party would ensure that the strikes were peaceful and only
dealt with economic issues. Valdez rejected any compromise, saying that he
could not accept a pact with the pcs since it was “ a clandestine organiza­
tion.” 103 A newspaper account is at odds with the details but not the sub­
stance o f the delegation’s report: according to the paper, “ a functionary
stated that the Communist Party wanted a pact,” but the talks failed because
the government asserted, as noted above, that the events o f Ahuachapán
were due to “ rioters” whom the Communist Party could not control.104 In
other words, the pcs leadership was in no position to negotiate because it
was not directing the strikers in Ahuachapán. This view contradicts the
report o f the pc s that underscored Valdez’s ignorance (feigned or not)
about the strikes in Ahuachapán.105 Regardless o f his motives, when Valdez
abruptly left the room the message was clear: the regime was going to
continue to clamp down violently on all protest and was unconcerned about
the prospect o f further bloodshed.

A Flawed Vision, a Fatal Decision

On io January the Central Committee o f the pc s convened a plenum to
discuss the issue o f insurrection.106 The leadership was convinced—and the
day’s events would bear them out—that the legislative elections would be a
farce and that the regime would not waver in its repressive strategy. The fifty
delegates to the plenum were under intense pressure from departmental
branches in the west to move toward an insurrectionary strategy. In addition 161
to the actions and proclamation o f the Ahuachapenecos, strikes and vio­
lence were spreading to other areas in the west: on 7 and 8 January troops
crushed strikes and broke up meetings in the departments o f La Libertad "To the
and Sonsonate. According to Cuenca and Mármol, pcs and s r i leaders in Face
both departments also began to clamor for armed insurrection. tJ1e
Although analytically it is possible to separate the national leadership o f
the pcs and the s r i from those in the west who pushed for insurrection,
the historical reality was much blurrier. We argue against the notion that
Higinio Pérez or Saturnino Pérez, grassroots leaders in the cantones o f
Nahuizalco, and Francisco Sánchez, the indigenous leader in Juayúa, were
not bona fide leftists or that they were somehow operating in noncom-
municative spheres, isolated from the “ true communists” o f the capital. On
the contrary, one o f the central arguments o f this book is that the labor and
leftist movements succeeded precisely because they subverted the sharp
boundaries between city and country, educated and illiterate, ladino and in­
dígena. That said, after the elections and the anti-strike repression the great
majority o f the “westerners” saw no alternative to insurrection, whereas
some members o f the national leadership only reluctantly joined an insur­
rection that they believed was doomed.
A few pcs leaders opposed the insurrection: Mario Zapata, the student
leader and member o f the commission who met with Colonel Valdéz; Max
Cuenca, a chemist and one o f the few intellectuals in the leadership; and
Ismael Hernández, the secretary general o f the s r i .107 Both publicly and
privately, they were convinced that the insurrection would fail because o f
the superior military force and preparedness o f the government forces and
the left’s weakness in the eastern regions. Yet the great majority o f those
present at the plenum backed the insurrectionary option. For the purposes
of analysis, it is useful to break down the decision-making process into two
components. The Ahuachapanecos’ proclamation to the troops to eliminate
their officers and fight for a government o f workers, peasants, and soldiers
indicated that they had already decided to launch an insurrection or convert
a proto-insurrectionary movement into a full-fledged one. As we have seen,
the movement had its own dynamic, rooted primarily in class conflict in the
fields, political outrage about the municipal elections, and to a lesser ex-
 tent anger at the overthrow o f Araujo. Large groups o f rebellious strikers
throughout the west were either engaged in or prepared for violent conflicts
IÓ2 with the troops. They had some arms and continued to inflict limited casu­
alties on the troops. Many had survived the initial repressive wave and
regrouped in the mountains north o f Santa Rita. Indeed, on n January one
"To the report stated that nearly a thousand rebels had massed outside Tacuba,
Face ready to attack. In short, when the communist militants met in San Sal­
of the vador, they were faced with the choice o f either supporting what amounted
Entire
to the start o f an insurrectionary movement or attempting to pacify it.
World"
The plenum approved a plan that depended in large part upon support
from within the military. Its principal objective was the assault on the
military barracks o f the major cities in the west and the capital. The take­
overs would be o f three types: internal use o f troops loyal to the revolution,
external storming o f the barracks, and a combination o f internal and exter­
nal forces. In preparing for the insurrection, the pcs called for a nationwide
general strike. A handwritten document drawn up two years after the insur­
rection sheds some light on the distinction and interconnection between los
occidentales and the national leadership: “ The armed forces blocked the
strikes in the western zone and the general strike was not carried out, the
[central committee] sent a commission to President Martinez in order to
negotiate but those who met them stated that the government claimed that
the campesinos only had machetes: since it had machine guns it would not
accept an agreement: when los occidentales realized this, they launched a
battle to the end; this is what provoked the insurrection.” 108 As with al­
most all documents post-January 1932 (pcs or otherwise) the chronology is
somewhat fuzzy, but the thrust o f the argument is clear enough. This sum­
mary, substantiated by other documents, suggests that the post-election
strike wave, a continuation o f the December movements, formed part o f a
de facto pcs strategy to wrest concessions from the government. The docu­
ment also echoes other leftist accounts that argue, whether as part o f a
conscious design or not, that the intransigence o f Martinez’s government
directly provoked the insurrection and deprived the movement o f all other
acceptable options. But most significantly, the author, a survivor o f the
repression o f 1932, uses a category, los occidentales, which refers to the
western movement as a whole: the rank-and-file ladino and indigenous
workers, colonos, peasants, and the local leadership. That social subject
had emerged and grown over the previous two years. In January 1932 the
occidentales took the historical stage briefly before the military and its élite
allies smashed them into oblivion.
Although it is unclear how many o f the fifty delegates were from the 163
west, their demand for a general insurrection was heard. For the other
delegates fear o f violent, lethal repression against the western rank and file
weighed heavily in the decision to launch an insurrection. Yet in another "To the
sense, the decision was the fruition o f the ideological struggles o f the pro- fate
insurrectionary current within the p c s . In September 1930 the Mexican
militant Fernandez Anaya wrote about the principal problems o f the newly
founded p c s : “The other tendency is . . . for immediate insurrection . . .
who cannot stand the persecution or the struggle against national-fascism,
or the need to keep on organizing the masses . . . I should be clear. Marti
shares this tendency.” 109 Throughout the previous eighteen months those
who shared this (informal) tendency had argued that grassroots support for
armed violence as a response to the violent repression provided the ra­
tionale and the potential means for revolution. For this minority group and
for Marti, the decision to call for a general insurrection was the fulfillment
of a long-standing strategic objective. Since November Miguel Mármol had
argued in favor o f a general strike strategy as opposed to an insurrection.
Faced with the brewing civil war in the west, he became a proponent o f the
insurrectionary option. Ironically, he then had to convince Marti that the
moment was ripe: “The discussion was intense and heated. Farabundo
Marti [interim pcs secretary] finally agreed with my proposal, accepting
that the duty o f the party was to take its place as the vanguard o f the masses,
in order to avoid the greater, imminent danger and disgrace for us o f an
insurrection that was out o f control, spontaneous or provoked by the ac­
tions o f the government in which the masses would go alone and without
leadership onto the battlefield.” 110 Those present believed that the violence
on the election lines and in the fields had already provoked the beginning o f
a revolutionary movement that would be ruthlessly crushed by the military.
For them it was a matter o f “ honor” that they lead the insurrection. This
justifiable and palpable fear o f elimination o f their comrades in the west,
a sense o f “ revolutionary honor,” combined with more strictly ideological
factors.
Although the Comintern had nothing directly to do with the decision o f
to January, the pro-insurrectionary position found ideological support in
the fundamental postulates o f the Comintern’s “ Third Phase,” notably the
 “ class versus class” strategy. Based on an assumption that the collapse of
the world capitalist system was imminent, this strategy had some internal
16 4 coherence in the European context, however flawed and tragically divorced
from political realities. Yet it was never clearly translated to the “ colonial”
and “ semicolonial” world. Rather than present a road map to socialism, to
"To the Latin America, the Comintern exported only extreme sectarianism. Its insis­
Face tence on combating all reformist alternatives (rooted in the notion that
of the social democrats were social fascists) had devastating implications in El
Entire
Salvador. Most significantly, the pcs and its allies could not conceive o f any
World"
kind o f support or negotiation with Araujo’s government. Whether Araujo
would have been at all interested in any sort o f political truce is unanswer­
able, but he certainly was open to some kind o f dialogue with the individual
leaders o f the left, including Farabundo Marti. By the same token, accepting
the Comintern “ third phase” line foreclosed any possibility o f a formal
alliance with the Araujistas after the coup, despite some, even significant,
enthusiasm o f the rank and file for their own variant o f Laborismo and their
positive image o f the deposed president.111
The example o f the Soviet Revolution and its putative support o f course
helped the Salvadoran left to mobilize peasants and workers. But since the
coup, there had been virtually no contact between the pcs or s r i and the
Comintern. The pcs decision-making process was endogenous, as Com­
intern letters and reports made agonizingly clear. According to a Comintern
official, “ the Salvadoran comrades made it virtually impossible for us to
give them practical, concrete guidance,” because o f what he referred to as
their “ self isolationism.” 112 To pcs leaders, their pleas for assistance fell on
deaf ears.
In January 1932 most o f the pcs leadership feared losing the adherence
o f its political base, and at the same time believed that with the support of
elements in the military the “ agrarian, anti-imperialist revolution” could
triumph. Thus an ideological commitment to insurrection and fear o f los­
ing the base strongly conditioned the perceived need to lead what would
have otherwise been a “ spontaneous” revolution. Rank-and-file and re­
gional leaders in the west were determined to meet repressive force with
popular violent resistance. But again we should recall that the decision to
fight went beyond self-preservation, vengeance, and honor: political ideol­
ogy, especially the right to land controlled by the élite and to local political
control, also conditioned decisions among the indigenous, peasants, and
workers in favor o f armed resistance.
 How can we assess the pcs reading that a “ spontaneous” revolution was
inevitable, with its concomitant probability o f extremely violent repres­
sion? There is no doubt that by early January well over a thousand people 165
in Ahuachapán were committed to violent resistance against the state. In
the department o f Sonsonate, grassroots militants were pushing for an
armed assault on the prison to free their imprisoned comrades. Finally, in "To the
La Libertad the strike movement was beginning to resemble that o f Ahua­ Face
chapán. It is worth noting, however, that as late as 15 January the strike of the
Entire
movement on San Isidro (in Sonsonate, near the border with La Libertad),
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involving fifteen hundred workers, came to a negotiated settlement.113 Not­
withstanding leftist leadership o f the rebellious movements in the three
departments, a party call for a national insurrection would have been neces­
sary to convert these thinly articulated political and social forces into an
armed revolutionary movement.
The explosion o f strikes and protests also skewed the vision o f both the
pcs national leadership and the western rank-and-file leaders. In particular,
both groups failed to appreciate that their support in the west and in San
Salvador was uneven. An urban artisan or worker, for example, might have
been ready to vote for the pcs but not necessarily to participate in an armed
insurrection. The different levels o f support would become significant dur­
ing the insurrection and in its recreation in memory. Not only did the pcs
leadership fail to distinguish the quality o f its support, it proved unable to
grasp the degree o f hostility present in virtually all sectors o f society. The
campesinos who consciously ducked the revolutionary wave, like those cited
above, also posed objective limits to recruitment. The need for “ pressing”
tactics during the strike mobilizations indicated that even among their most
solid base o f support in the coffee sector, many workers remained on the
sidelines out o f fear, apathy, or antagonism. The tremendous growth o f the
labor movement obscured the existence o f this uncommitted group, who at
the very least would limit the number o f committed revolutionary troops.
The movement also had its non-élite antagonists. Ladino smallholders in
some indigenous areas often bitterly opposed the left. Many in the urban
middle class, such as professionals and shop owners, were fearful and
resentful o f the growing pride and assertiveness o f the rural and urban
poor.114 This serious underestimation o f the degree o f “ anti-revolutionary”
sentiment would have severe consequences, especially during the counter­
revolution. In short, the pcs leadership’s reading o f reality was partially, but
significantly, flawed. As Elizabeth Wood reminds us, other radical move-
 ments, such as the South African general strike o f the 1980s, triumphed or
made great progress with similar or lower levels o f popular support.115 Yet
i66 despite what would have been a strategic minority in a strike or an electoral
contest, or even a civil war, the insurrection had virtually no chance of
success in the absence o f effective support from within the military.
"To the The left did have a significant, i f poorly organized, presence within the
Face regular army. The pcs started to actively organize in the military in mid-
of the December. It also infiltrated volunteers into the military who were stationed
Entire
in San Salvador (el Zapote), as well as in Ahuachapán and Sonsonate,116 and
World"
managed to heavily infiltrate and organize the Sixth Machine Gun Regi­
ment. Clandestine groups also operated within at least two barracks o f the
regular army in San Salvador.117 A secret police report suggested that 50-60
percent o f the regular army and 30 percent o f the National Guard were
leftist sympathizers.118 Yet regardless o f the high level o f sympathy for the
left among the troops, the officer corps remained almost uniformly loyal to
the regime.
By 16 January the military had already discovered and eliminated most of
the revolutionary conspirators in its ranks.119 Following leads from the
captured soldiers, police arrested the pcs leaders Farabundo Marti, Mario
Zapata, and Alfonso Luna and captured the military plans for the insurrec­
tion and other documents. In another arrest they found seventy-five bombs.
On the 19th, according to the British consul, “ a large gathering o f commu­
nists took place in Atlacatl park about a mile and a half north o f San
Salvador, the object o f which was to be an attack on the Cavalry Barracks.
National Guardsmen were hurried to the spot and scattered the commu­
nists.” 120 As a result o f a prior accord, the revolutionaries were expecting
soldiers in the barracks to surrender and join the insurrection. Officers were
tipped off, however, and disarmed the company that was preparing to join
the revolutionary forces. Many were arrested, tortured, and killed.121 The
guardsmen then opened fire on the insurgents outside the barracks. Why
the insurgents in San Salvador initiated the insurrection early remains a
mystery, explicable only by their recognition that the military was already
prepared to execute the revolutionary soldiers in the First Cavalry Regiment.
On the morning o f 20 January, after the arrests and the regime’s declara­
tion o f a state o f siege, the pcs Central Committee convened to discuss its
options. The failure to organize the military effectively blocked the pos­
sibility o f arming the insurrection with automatic weapons and other fire-
arms. With a state o f emergency having been imposed by the military,
communication with the provincial centers became extremely difficult. A
minority o f three on the Central Committee pushed to postpone the insur­ 16 7

rection, arguing that it could not succeed because o f the disarticulation o f

the army network and the lack o f weapons, and because the police and the
National Guard had captured the plans. If the insurrection were called off, "To the
the government would lack justification for perpetrating a massacre. The Face
majority o f six on the committee claimed that the government was already of the
Entire
preparing a massacre and that the only option was to fight in defense o f the
World"
rank and file and their imprisoned comrades. In the words o f the minority
leader, the majority argued against postponing the insurrection “ because so
many o f our comrades were in j ai l. . . more arrests were being made and it
was clear that all comrades were to be shot and they thought it would be
better that all o f us should have the same destiny. None o f them showed any
logic or clear analysis o f the situation and none o f them could logically
explain why the action was justified.” 122
There is no doubt that adherence by the pcs to Marxism-Leninism,
although interpreted differently by the rank and file and by the leadership,
created an ideological field in which revolutionary violence was acceptable
to both. Yet the resistance in the west and the decision o f the Central
Committee were also contingent, emotional responses to the repressive
measures o f the state and the outrage that violence caused among its vic­
tims, their friends, and their comrades. The call to arms issued on 20 Janu­
ary 1932 evoked this sense o f outrage and the continued affronts to the
dignity o f communists and their supporters. The manifesto underscores the
causal relation between the elections and the armed resistance to repres­
sion, but most significantly it offers a glimpse o f the mentality o f the
communist leaders:

We the workers, they call us thieves . . . and steal our wage, paying us a miserable
wage and condemning us to live in filthy tenements or in stinking barracks, or
working day and night in the fields under rain and sun. We are labeled thieves for
demanding the wages that they owe us, a reduction in the workday, and a reduc­
tion in the rents that we pay to the rich who take almost all our harvest, stealing
our work from us. To the insults are added killings, beatings, jailings . . . we have
seen the massacres o f workers, men and women and even children and elderly,
workers from Santa Tecla, Sonsonate, Zaragoza, and right now in Ahuachapán.
According to the wealthy, we do not have a right to anything, and we shouldn’t
 open our mouths. . . . In Ahuachapán, after the National Guard didn’t let our
comrades vote by order o f the rich folks, they beat them. . . . Our compañeros
i68 from Ahuachapán are valiandy defending themselves with their weapons in their
hands.123

This manifesto reveals something o f the social and cultural elasticity of

"To the
the movement and the openness o f communication between its constituent
Face
of the parts. Although written by pcs leaders, it is surprisingly devoid o f jargon
Entire and clearly related to the experiences o f its intended audience. It speaks in
World" a populist idiom about ricos and basic citizenship rights. Moreover, the
themes o f honor and respect—“ they call us thieves” —resonate with and
sharply recall the pcs mayoral candidate’s protestations o f decorum. The
manifesto also calls on campesinos to seize the land o f the wealthy and “ to
defend your revolutionary conquests, with no pity for the rich.” It urges
workers to arm themselves to “ defend the proletarian revolution,” and
to form a government o f workers,’ peasants,’ and soldiers’ councils. The
ending—a direct call to the soldiers: “ Kill your officers!” —is curiously dis­
cordant and somewhat disassociated from the rest o f the text. It reads as if
its authors had immersed themselves in the daily struggles o f the coffee
workers, only to realize at the end that the soldiers would have to execute
their officers to “win” this proletarian revolution.
Another manifesto, supposedly issued on 16 January, called on commu­
nists to use “ terror without mercy” against the bourgeoisie. Miguel Már­
mol, with apparent justification, claimed that the government had prepared
and circulated this document.124 A close reading, in conjunction with an
analysis o f references to the manifesto by the Comintern and pcs exiles,
suggests that at a minimum the regime added key articles to the manifesto.
The explicit calls for using “ terror” and executing individual members of
the bourgeoisie are odd formulations for Marxist-Leninists, however rudi-
mentarily instructed. The phrase recalls the placard supposedly carried by
the demonstrators in Sonsonate on 17 May that threatened “ Respetad Solo a
los Niños” ; the government used this undocumented threat as justification
for violent repression. The instruction to turn over the best cars to the “ Red
commanders” also seems contrived.125 Whether or not falsified, the docu­
ment was successfully circulated by the government and newspapers. It
certainly conveyed a message o f terror to the middle class and wealthy and
seems also to have alienated urban workers.
Miguel Mármol recalled the day o f the insurrection. For years he had
dreamed about the day o f liberation o f the Salvadoran proletariat. Yet when
he awoke that day he recognized the dawn o f a nightmare: “ The 22nd, the
date fixed for the insurrection I was going around coordinating cells in San 169
Salvador . . . on foot, without even a penknife in my pocket. And what
hurts the most is that the revolutionary spirit o f the masses was incredibly
high . . . Already by that awful 22nd o f January, the enemy had seized the "To the
initiative from us: instead o f a party that was on the point o f initiating a big Face
insurrection, at least that’s how all the cadre in San Salvador talked about it,
we had the appearance o f desperate, persecuted, and harassed revolution-
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aries. From one moment to the next, the work was in practice abandoned
and everyone tried to save themselves from the unrestrained repression.” 126
 Chapter Six

Red Ribbons and Machetes:

The Insurrection o f January 1932

Pero un día en tu quebranto

Rompiendo el yugo te alzaste
Quisiste que fuera todo
De todos como en el cristo
Al primer soviet de américa
Lo hicieron mierda a balazos— Pedro Geoffroy Rivas, "Un Romance de Enero" (1935)

I
t was as dark as night during the daytime on 22 January;
the ash from volcanoes in Guatemala covered western
Salvador. The falling ash resembled a “ snowstorm in Can­
ada,” wrote a Protestant minister in Juayúa. Peasants were
startled to see birds collide with one another in confusion.
As the darkness o f the day turned to the darkness o f night,
the haunting whistles o f conch shells echoed throughout
the mountain valleys. On the outskirts o f Ahuachapán, Son-
sonate, Izalco, and Santa Tecla rocket flares shot up into the
thick, smoky sky. People interpreted the volcanic signs with
dread or hope, but most understood that the conch shells,
whistles, and rocket flares announced the beginning o f the
insurrection. That night and before dawn on the 23rd, be­
tween five and seven thousand insurgents assaulted the mil­
itary barracks in the departmental capitals o f Ahuachapán,
Santa Tecla, and La Libertad and took over several munici­
pal seats in central and western Salvador.1
 Who were the revolutionary fighters? Cultural details about tire rebels
have historiographical importance because o f the notable imprecision in
previous accounts, a deficiency that has had significant political ramifica- 171
tions. Indians, ladinos, and others with indeterminate and fluid ethnic and
class identities participated side by side in the insurrection. The great ma­
jority had experience working on the region’s coffee farms and haciendas: Red
the mobile strike force o f coffee workers discussed in chapter 5 made up Ribbons
most o f the insurgent troops in Ahuachapán and a minority o f the forces in ant^
Juayúa and Nahuizalco. Many informants in the Nahuizalco area claimed
that those who occupied their town came from Turin and Atiquizaya and
were distinguishable as “ mulattoes” (in both senses, as ladinos and as
people with phenotypically mulatto features). In addition to those from the
region around Atiquizaya and Turin, the insurgent forces included many
ladinos from the Ahuachapán region whose cultural identity differentiated
them from Indians far more than their physical appearance did.
Indians from the barrio o f Asuncion in Izalco and campesinos o f more
fluid identities from its outlying cantons participated in the failed attack on
the Sonsonate barracks on the night o f 22 January. Similarly, many indige­
nous peasants from the cantons o f Nahuizalco and indigenous and ladino
peasants from the cantons o f Juayúa joined the forces that occupied their
towns. Indigenous and ladino peasants in the Tacuba area defeated the
military garrison there and occupied the town for several days. Coffee work­
ers from the Cumbre de Jayaque staged the failed attack on Santa Tecla
barracks (eight miles west o f San Salvador). Many o f their parents and
grandparents had possessed indigenous identities, but the vast majority
neither wore indigenous dress nor spoke indigenous languages. Finally,
indigenous peasants from the Panchimalco region to the south o f San
Salvador and nonindigenous peasants and workers from the rural areas to
the east staged minor attacks in the area o f the capital.2

La Libertad: The Attack on Santa Teda

Two insurgent forces planned to attack the army barracks at Santa Tecla.
On the night o f the 22nd the first group o f campesinos entered the small
town o f Colón, eight kilometers northwest o f Santa Tecla. The British con­
sul reported: “The communists attacked Colón on the night o f 22nd Janu­
ary and killed the town Clerk and the Commandant and wounded the
 172

Red
Ribbons
and
Machetes

Principal insurrectionary sites.

telegraphist and some women. The attacking force was composed o f about
400 men led by an Indian belonging to the town called Lino Argueta aged 78
who had been very active in the communist cause. The inhabitants o f the
town hurriedly organized their defense and in the fight which resulted, the
Indian Argueta, although he had received three gunshot wounds in the body
and severe machete gashes in the face, still managed to encourage his men
until he collapsed dead.” 3
There appear to be two reasons for the revolutionary force’s attack on
Colón. First, the regime had suspended the municipal elections, which the
pcs had expected to win. Second, during the campaign the local coman­
dante had confiscated ninety-six corvos from the rural activists, which they
wanted to reclaim. After that confrontation the insurgent forces retreated
into the surrounding hills, where they regrouped and set out on a march
toward Santa Tecla. The force that attacked Colón came from nearby towns
and cantons in the coffee region, including Talnique, Sacacoyo, Agua Fria,
El Tránsito, and Las Moras, and it reflected the same heterogeneous mixture
that characterized the region as a whole.4
As one colum n advanced on Colón, another large colum n form ed in Los
A m ates, a coffee-rich canton ten kilom eters w est o f Santa Tecla. Doroteo
López, then an eighteen-year-old apuntador, recalls how some five hundred
campesinos had come down from the Cumbre de Jayaque and the villages o f
Comasagua and Jayaque and gathered in the plaza o f Los Amates. A couple 173
o f hours before dawn, they set out toward Santa Tecla. At dawn the two
columns merged in the coffee groves on the outskirts o f Santa Tecla. As they
started to leave the coffee finca at Las Delicias, they were met with bullets. Red
An army unit, reinforced by the National Guard, sprayed the revolutionaries Ribbons
with machine-gun fire for an hour until the nearly one thousand insurgents and
Machetes
dispersed. A large group retreated down the Carretera Panamericana. Upon
reaching Colón it engaged in a battle with a hastily organized civic guard.
After a brief skirmish the insurgents, already weakened by the encounter in
Santa Tecla, set o ff for the forested hills. The column from la Cumbre
retreated up the road. Doroteo López recalls, “At 6:30 those who survived
started their retreat. At 8 the last o f the defeated passed by.” 5 Their retreat
was not entirely chaotic: rather, some insurgent troops set up blockades
along the road to protect the retreat o f the others into the coffee-covered
highlands o f Jayaque.
The disastrous attack on Santa Tecla did not end the insurrection in La
Libertad. After their defeat at Las Delicias in the early morning o f the 23rd,
many o f the retreating rebels formed guerrilla bands that attacked various
towns and occupied plantations. A military report dated 24 January reads:
“ In the hacienda Zapotitlán there were 300 Communists gathered . . . We
were also informed that in the Hacienda Chanmico . . . there were 250
Communists who were heading towards the railroad line . . . at three in the
morning . . . the comandante o f San Julián reported that the troops had
le ft. . . and that the Communists were assassinating people in San Julián
and that they were marching towards los Lagartos. Then, the stationmaster
at Bebedero informed us that in Los Lagartos there were about 250 Commu­
nists and that from . . . Ishuatán there were about 400 Communists heading
there in groups o f 45.” °

Izalco and Sonsonate

On the evening o f 22 January insurgents marched toward Sonsonate city

from various towns and plantations to the west and north o f the provincial
capital. The insurgent force numbered over one thousand, including In­
dians, mainly from Izalco and its cantons, and many ladino campesinos
 from other towns and villages. Armed mostly with corvos, the rebel force in­
cluded some one hundred ladino campesinos from Los Gramales, a lowland
174 village near the San Julián coffee plantation district. They joined forces with a
similar contingent from the more isolated indigenous town o f Cuisnahuat.7
Margarita Turcios recalls how the campesinos o f Los Mangos, a canton
Red east o f the vast San Isidro hacienda, passed through her canton, Los Guaya­
Ribbons bos, on the evening o f 22 January. Bastions o f union activism on the San
and Isidro Hacienda since early in 1930, the neighboring ladino cantons both
Machetes
supplied recruits for the assault on Sonsonate. Turcios recalls that most of
the insurgents came from Los Mangos. Despite their leftist sympathies and
their labor activism, her father and other neighbors in Los Guayabos appar­
ently did not join in the attack.8
Throughout the day on 22 January large groups o f Indians filed out of
Barrio Abajo in the direction o f the Volcán de Izalco. Early in the evening, on
the slopes o f the volcano in the canton o f Cuyagualo, indigenous men
gathered and filed down the path through the cafetales down to Cúntun,
where they were greeted with shouts o f “Viva el Socorro Rojo Interna­
cional!” by hundreds o f indigenous people from the Izalqueño cantons of
Ceiba del Charco and Piedras Pachas. Together this group o f several hun­
dred men marched toward Izalco, where they met up with those from Barrio
Abajo and a smaller group o f ladinos, mostly artisans and jornaleros, from
Barrio Dolores.
At nine o’clock the insurrectionists, some six hundred strong, with red
bandanas hanging from their corvo sheaths, entered Izalco shouting, “Viva
El Socorro Rojo!” The British consul reported, “The inhabitants were wak­
ened by revolver shots in the center o f the town followed by blows on the
doors, upon which the communists were beating with their axes, machetes,
and clubs. Other communists ran up and down the streets beating on their
knives with stones. The leaders cried out to their friends to join them,
promising them immunity.” 9The recently imposed mayor, Miguel Call, and
Rafael Castro, a cafetalero friend from Chalchuapa, exited a cantina and
shot their revolvers at a group gathering on a street corner. The rebels raced
after them. Some shouted “Viva el comunismo hijo de puta!” When Call ran
out o f bullets, the crowd hacked him with corvos. Severely wounded, Castro
managed to find refuge, only to die from the wounds a few days later.
The revolutionary forces captured the town hall, where they installed
as mayor Eusebio Chavez, a ladino carpenter and recent pcs mayoral
 175

Red
Ribbons
and
Machetes

Looted store Izalco. Photo by Commander Victor Brodeur, National Archives of Canada, negative no. PA125138.

candidate. Other insurgents captured the local cuartel, which had been aban­
doned by the few soldiers and their commander. As in Colón, a woman led a
group under the command o f José Pashaca; the insurgents brought four­
teen wealthy ladinos to the cuartel, where they imprisoned them. Other
groups looted houses, shops, and a pharmacy.
Alfonso Diaz Barrientos, a wealthy landowner, fired on one group o f
rebels from the rooftop o f a neighbor’s house and killed several o f them.
Diaz Barrientos knew he was a marked man, given his political and eco­
nomic prominence and his former close patronage ties to the Indians and
the leftist movement, notably its leader José Feliciano Ama. Rather than
storm his house, the insurgents ignored him as they prepared to move on
Sonsonate.
Hundreds o f revolutionary troops marched toward the city o f Sonsonate
from Izalco. Other columns joined them on the road through Sónzacate; at
eleven o’clock that night over eight hundred rebels entered Barrio El Angel
from Sónzacate. Shouting revolutionary slogans, they marched through the
streets to the strategic center o f the city that housed the Eighth Infan­
try Regiment, the National Guard post, the railroad station, and the Cus­
toms House. Approximately one hundred rebels approached the city center,
where they confronted a group o f about fifty soldiers preparing to board
trucks and cars in order to move on Izalco. Colonel Bara prudently ordered
 the retreat o f his soldiers back into the barracks. He also ordered that the
vehicles be lined up in front o f the barracks. But seventeen rebels managed
i 76 to climb on board the backs o f the trucks and then stormed inside the
barracks gate, which was still open. Once inside they engaged in hand-to-
hand combat, managing to avoid the gunshots o f the army officers. The
Red soldiers o f the Eighth Regiment, mainly recent rural recruits from the area,
Ribbons did not fire on the insurgents, revealing their wavering loyalty and lack of
and military discipline. But one officer, armed with a “ Solotur” submachine
Machetes
gun, sprayed the insurgents with bullets and killed them all.
Insurgents overran the customs building, where they killed four o f the
eleven guards and then sacked the building, destroying furniture and docu­
ments. They also managed to capture weapons. Another rebel group un­
successfully attacked the National Guard headquarters. Driven back by
machine-gun fire, they suffered quite a few casualties while killing five
Guardia.10 At 7:00 in the morning on 23 January the rebels retreated toward
neighboring Sónzacate, a mile and a half east o f the city on the road to
Izalco. It is not at all clear why the insurgents retreated, since they had not
suffered large losses in Sonsonate and had acquired some armaments. In
any case Sónzacate, a bastion o f leftist support, was an obvious place to
regroup.
There the insurgents received reinforcements from villages in the area.
Late in the morning, Colonel Bara led a mixed battalion o f National Guard
and regular troops to attack the insurgents. Although most o f the rebels
were still only armed with corvos they had an overwhelming numerical
advantage. Julia Mojica (“ Red Julia” ), sister o f the imprisoned commu­
nist leader and carpenter Manuel Mojica, led some fifteen hundred to two
thousand rebels against the troops.11 Her forces were able to drive back
the government troops. According to Tito Calvo, an officer and native of
Izalco, “ Those courageous Indians almost made it to the machine guns,
one grabbed the foot o f the machine gun.” 12 After an officer and several
soldiers fell dead, the government troops retreated to Sonsonate.
This was the only significant insurgent military victory during the insur­
rection. Rather than pursue the government troops back to Sonsonate, this
large battalion o f what they called the “ Red Army” broke up, most returning
to the Izalco region and others to Nahuizalco and Juayúa. Many o f those
who returned to Izalco continued into the countryside to recruit for the
Red Army.
Juayúa

Ten minutes before midnight on 22 January an estimated six hundred cam­ 177
pesinos from the Atiquizaya region and from the cantons o f Juayúa oc­
cupied the town with little resistance.13 A group o f eighty men marched to
the telegraph office and destroyed it. Another group attacked the cabildo Red
and killed one o f its defenders while the others escaped. In the municipal Ribbons
building they destroyed much o f the archive. Benjamin Herrera, one o f the and
Machetes
leaders, scrawled his initials on the wall: “ BH, Enero 23 Juayúa 19 32.” 14
A group o f over one hundred insurgents then marched toward the house
o f the former mayor, an Italian with fascist sympathies and a long history
o f conflict with the local labor movement: “ many townsfolk also joined
them . . . so, you see, they burned down the house o f don Emilio Redaelli,
who had been mayor, they burned his house, burned his business . . . they
killed him . . . but most o f the people were from town, resentful ones,
right?” 15 The assassination o f Redaelli—shop owner, coffee exporter, and
general manager o f a coffee beneficio—came to symbolize the barbarity o f
the insurrection for opponents and bystanders throughout the country.
Campesinos still recall the corridos sung about his execution. In one ac­
count, a crowd gathered outside his house. He emerged on the balcony
with a gun in his hand, asking, “ What do you want?” The crowd shouted,
“Money!” Redaelli responded, “ Wait, I’ll bring it.” Upon his return, and
before he could dispense the money, people in the crowd started shouting,
“We want the heads o f the rich! We want the bosses’ lives!” A hailstorm o f
rocks knocked Redaelli down. The crowd surged toward him. According to
one version, someone urinated in his mouth when he begged for water;
according to another, people stomped on his face in response to the same
request.16
With more insistence and more success than in Izalco, the insurgents
called on the population to join them, using various forms o f threats and
less coercive forms o f persuasion. They obliged residents to wear red rib­
bons symbolizing solidarity with the movement. They also expected people
to address each other as camarada and to shout “ Viva el Socorro Rojo!” A
naan named Soriano, informants recall, refused to shout the slogan. Ac­
cording to one version he was a shop owner and anti-communist, and
according to another he supported the insurrection but refused to shout
because he was too tired. One rebel threatened him: “ Shout Viva el Socorro
 Rojo Internacional!” He responded, “ I f I knew this ‘Socorro,’ I would, but I
don’t know it.”
i7 8
“ Shout Viva el Socorro Rojo, hijo de puta!”
“ You’ve got the wrong mother; I don’t shout.”
“This is over!” the insurgent shouted, and his comrades killed Soriano.17
Red
Ribbons Without a doubt, a strong threat was associated with the revolutionary
and pleas for solidarity. Yet there are also versions that ascribe to the townsfolk a
Machetes
considerable degree o f voluntary support for the movement: “ since they
entered town triumphantly and took it over, many people joined them,
thinking that they were going to rule in the future.” 18 Many townsfolk who
did not form part o f the initial mobilization joined in looting stores (and
may have had primary responsibility for the killing and probable torture of
Emilio Redaelli). A sixteen-year-old colono who came to town recalls the
strange scene: “ I asked a guy on the street what was going on. He replied,
‘Be quiet! Today we are on top. Today we are doing well because we are
running the show.’ ” 1!)
The rebels appropriated seven trucks from the wealthy, and early on the
morning o f the 23rd they set out to reinforce the rebel troops in Sónzacate.
Another small group o f rebels took vehicles to Izalco to establish contact
with the movement there. That same morning the Reverend Roy Mac-
Naught peered out o f his house: “ I saw the red flag flying from the town
hall; we were under communistic rule for the first time.” 20 Who were the
leaders o f this “ communist” government? Indian and ladino jornaleros and
artisans, all with backgrounds in the labor movement, formed the local
leadership. Francisco Sánchez, an Indian jornalero who had lived in town
and had been active in the labor movement for several years, was their
most renowned leader. Benjamin Herrera, “ a green-eyed, white” jornalero,
twenty-nine years old, who resided on the outskirts o f town, was the other
main leader. Others in the leadership group included Juan Antonio Mirón, a
ladino jornalero, and Narciso Molina, a ladino tailor.21
According to the pcs leader Max Cuenca, “ Our comrades who were on
the list o f candidates took charge o f the administration o f those places,
proclaiming Soviets and raising on the public buildings the red flag, with
hammer and sickle . . . The Soviets had as an immediate task the resis­
tance against government troops and, therefore, no immediate attention
was paid to the plantations. But these local Soviets in charge o f administra-
tion immediately disposed o f grain deposits and warehouses and proceeded
with the distribution o f these.”22 Despite their memorialization in Geoffroy
Rivas’s poem (see the epigraph at the beginning o f this chapter), there is no 179
hard evidence to back up Cuenca’s assertion that the insurgents proclaimed
“ soviets.” In Juayua the pcs had not been allowed to field its candidates in
the election, and perhaps for that reason the insurgents did not install the Red
pcs candidate as in Izalco. Narciso Molino, who would have been their Ribbons
candidate, did participate in the leadership, but the principal leader was and
Machetes
Francisco Sánchez, who had established a strong following thanks to his
record o f labor activism and his ability to relate to town and country work­
ers, both ladinos and Indians. Moreover, the prison terms that the regime
had imposed on him for his militancy earned him the esteem o f the rank-
and-file SRI militants. According to various informants, although he was
from the canton o f El Zapote, he had resided in Juayua for some time and
even in the town, “ el tenia pueblo.” 23 He was the obvious choice to head the
local revolutionary government.
Sánchez gave a speech denouncing the January elections, after which a
high school student, Arturo Carvajal, shouted out, “ Cabildo abierto!,” thus
giving a colonial-era format to the local revolutionary takeover. After the
meeting, at which Sánchez was acclaimed the new mayor, Carvajal read the
new bando (official proclamation) in the four corners o f the city. The in­
surgents performed this revolutionary proclamation in venerable colonial
garb, with a festive air. A band played after each reading, and rockets were
set off.24 Once Carvajal finished reading the bando, the musicians returned
to the plaza in front o f the Cabildo. According to several accounts, when­
ever they stopped playing for very long, Sánchez ordered them to start
up again in his indigenous-based dialectal Spanish, “ Que toque el banda,
maishtra!” 25
Juayua under revolutionary rule was deeply intimidating to the area’s
élite, but quite festive to the occupying campesinos and many o f the poorer
townsfolk. Sánchez and the other leaders combined music, speech making,
and collective shouting o f slogans as markers o f the insurrection. Accord­
ing to one newspaper report, well into the night o f the 23rd the crowds
shouted, “ Vivas” to Araujo, the s r i , the Ejercito Rojo, and communism as
well as “ Death to Martinez, Death to Capitalism!” 26
Counterinsurgent documents suggest that Sánchez and his followers
Pursued their goals with logic and purpose. As the British consul reported,
 “ On the whole, the behavior o f the communists in Juayúa was more me­
thodical than might have been expected. This was due to the authority of
i8 o Francisco Sanchez. One o f his first orders was that all the liquor in the bars
should be poured out on the ground.” 27 He also provided food for his
troops by compelling fifteen townswomen, dressed in red, to prepare tor­
Red tillas from a quintal o f corn apiece. According to Raúl Sigüenza, “ On the
Ribbons 23rd they began to break into stores. They broke into the houses o f Mateo
and Roldan, Manuel Aguirre, and o f the Chinaman who sold gasoline when they
Machetes
used to sell it in cardboard boxes . . . they used it to burn down the house of
Emilio Redaelli.” 28
The occupying forces and their town supporters engaged in systematic
looting: all the goods were brought to the town hall, where the “ red”
government set up a distribution center. The Reverend Roy MacNaught saw
a political motive in the looting, as did informants who reflected on a
similar situation in Nahuizalco: “The ‘reds’ distributed the spoils with a
lavish hand; in fact, they wanted all those, who were not otherwise lined up
with them, to share in their ill-gotten gains in order that they might be
thus identified with their cause . . . men clothed in rags carrying o ff fine
clothes, bright colored, woolen blankets, hats, implements; women bear­
ing proudly on their heads sheets o f corrugated iron, measures o f corn,
bolts o f cloth; children with their pockets full o f candies, handkerchiefs and
toys . . . Thus was the town o f Juayúa sacked.” 29
Whether or not the insurgents organized looting and distribution for
recruitment purposes, Sánchez also seemed to be concerned with more
long-range redistributive goals. In other towns the revolutionaries had de­
stroyed the municipal buildings in part to eliminate the property records
and create a de facto basis for land distribution. Sánchez made a more
systematic move: “ He caused all the title deeds o f landed property and
houses to be delivered to him and then drew up a plan o f division among his
own men.” 30 Such measures responded to the level o f class mobilization
and resentment in the countryside. According to one plantation owner, “ On
Saturday night, the 23rd, a big mob o f them came through here, on the way
to attack Nahuizalco. They had no time to cut me up since they were in a
rush to get there so they made do with just shouting blasphemies at me and
threatening that I would be one o f the first to fall into their hands. In this
mob, this immense, chaotic multitude, there were like 200 o f my mozos
and those o f my brothers and neighbors. Those whom we thought were
humble and honorable, to whom we had given lands for their harvests
without charge and to whom we had paid their salaries punctually.” 31
181
Nahuizalco

Early on 23 January, when an insurgent group from Juayúa passed through Red
Nahuizalco, its members shouted to townsfolk to prepare to join the in­ Ribbons
surrection when they returned that night. During the course o f the day and
Machetes
many ladinos (who made up some 10 percent o f the population) attempted
to escape or hide. Indigenous insurgents blocked most o f the exits from
the town, but several families managed to leave and others, as in Juayúa,
attempted to hide in the homes o f the poor. Unlike in Juayúa, most o f
Nahuizalco’s urban poor were Indians and generally sympathetic to the
revolutionary movement, which they interpreted at least partially in eth­
nic terms. There are various reports that Indians shouted, “Viva los in­
dios de Nahuizalco,” interspersed with other explicitly leftist slogans. One
ladino recalled that as a child he hid in an Indian hut. An indigenous child
who lived there danced around, exclaiming joyfully “ Today we have the
ladinos.” 32
The insurgents returned earlier than expected. A ladino resident recalled
the events that unfolded at 3:00 in the afternoon: “ We realized that they had
raised the red flag on the pole over the Guardia headquarters and the plaza
was filled with about 800 Communists, listening to one o f their leaders
reading a speech. They constantly shouted vivas to Communism. Mean­
while the people, in their houses, awaited their final moment.” 33 Alberto
Shul, ill in bed, recalled his grandmother exclaiming: “ ‘A lot o f people on
horse back with red badges have taken over the alcaldía. . . It looks like they
are from Turin y Atiquizaya.’ ” Shul added: “And they looted the town.” 34
All the informants in Nahuizalqueño, like some o f those in Juayúa,
remembered the horseback-riding revolutionaries as ladinos from Turin
and Atiquizaya. These insurgents were in all likelihood the same people
who had started fighting the Guardia in the roving strike movement that
erupted during the first week o f January. There is no way o f reconstructing
their role in Nahuizalco or in Juayúa beyond the likelihood that they gave
military support to the movement.
There was no uniformity o f action in the two occupied towns. In Nahui­
zalco tire rebels burned the archives o f the alcaldía and with it all land
 records, rather than gather the titles to institute a more formal land reform.
In contrast to what took place in Juayúa, the insurgent troops broke the
18 2 locks o f the shops in town for immediate, as opposed to formal, redistribu­
tion. Ramón Esquina, a young boy in the canton o f Tajcuilulaj, a few miles
northwest o f town, recalls the night o f 23 January: “ My god! My god they’re
Red going to kill us . . . and we heard the sounds o f the locks and chains being
Ribbons smashed. The next day all o f the stores had their doors wide open and the
and people went in and took what they found: rice, coffee, sugar and then went
Machetes
off.” 35 Whether, as so many informants claimed, the communist leaders
broke open the shops to tempt the Indians into a robo is somewhat doubtful,
as hundreds o f Nahuizalqueños were involved in the takeover.36 In any
event, the open store doors tempted some less committed, impoverished
residents o f the town.
As in Juayúa, the insurgents commanded townswomen to prepare tor­
tillas for their troops. Despite threats o f bloodshed the rebels killed only
one ladino civilian, and that happened in unclear circumstances. In a man­
ner reminiscent o f the attempts to establish revolutionary legitimacy in the
other occupied towns, the mostly indigenous rebels marched through the
streets o f Nahuizalco shouting, “ We want the head o f Chico Brito!,” a
reference to the ladino mayor o f the municipality.37 The insurgents had
captured Cipriano Brito, son o f the mayor, and forced him to shout, along
with the rest o f the crowd, for his father’s head. But the mayor escaped
harm, as he managed to hide and wait out the storm.

Ahuachapán

On the night o f 22 January Luis Alfonso Castillo joined with his campesino
comrades in the s r i from the Llanos de Maria region and began to march
toward the cuartel on the eastern side o f Ahuachapán. This group o f several
hundred campesinos joined a much larger and better-armed group that had
been engaged in sporadic armed conflict with the Guardia over the previous
two weeks. From the canton o f Achapuco, a few miles west o f the city,
several hundred insurgents gathered and marched toward the city center.
Some shooting broke out near the barracks at ten o’clock, but most o f the
Ejercito Rojo waited on the outskirts o f the town until rockets announced
their first charges at around 1:00 in the morning. From one to two thousand
revolutionaries armed with corvos, picks, pistols, some mausers, and shot­
guns attacked the barracks in Ahuachapán, while a smaller group attacked
the center o f town, occupying and then destroying the municipal building.38
The insurgent leaders (“ Red Commanders” ) sent small groups to break 183

down the massive gates o f the barracks with iron pick hammers. From in­
side the imposing colonial stone structure troops sprayed the insurgents
with machine-gun fire, killing several o f them. The revolutionaries re­ Red
grouped and attacked again. More machine-gun fire and more fighters fell Ribbons
dead. Again the Ejercito Rojo regrouped. After the third failed attempt, at and
Machetes
3:30 in the morning, they retreated and joined the other group o f rebels,
who had assaulted the municipal building and headed north out o f town.
The insurgents had counted on the support o f soldiers, but the regime, days
before the insurrection, had wisely discharged all suspicious soldiers and
one officer, Vicente Hidalgo, commander o f the artillery. According to one
account, Hidalgo joined the Ejercito Rojo and fought in Tacuba.39
The revolutionary forces marched toward the town ofTacuba, where the
column from Ahuachapán joined forces with the Tacubeños to attack the
municipal building. They easily overpowered the handful o f soldiers who
were on guard and then proceeded to burn the archive and furniture, de­
stroying most o f the building. The insurgents overran and destroyed the
barracks, which were guarded by twenty Guardia, killing their commanding
officer. They captured some arms, including mausers and one machine
gun. The revolutionaries executed two or three landowners in the region,
including the retired general Rafael Rivas. Armed with a pistol, Rivas
fought until his death. According to one source, the insurgents cut o ff his
head and paraded it around town on a stake, calling on the townsfolk to
“ salute the general!” 40
Ladinos and Indians joined the local revolutionary ranks in roughly equal
proportion, reflecting the ethnic composition o f the town (60 percent indig­
enous). The Cuenca brothers, ladino university students and sons o f local
merchants, led the insurgents in Tacuba. The most compelling tasks o f the
revolutionaries were to establish and legitimate their authority, to prepare
their military defense, and to organize new assaults on the barracks in Ahua­
chapán. In Tacuba, as throughout the west, the insurgent leaders placed the
former Communist candidates in positions o f power. Abel Cuenca, denied a
mayoral victory at the ballot box, was placed in charge o f the revolutionary
government.
Over the next two days it appears that the revolutionary troops attempted
 to move on the offensive, as did their comrades in Nahuizalco, Juayúa, and
Izalco. Some insurgents marched along trails over the cordillera to Ataco in
18 4 the direction o f Juayúa. Others marched back north toward Ahuachapán.
Heavily armed government troops blocked their advance in both directions.
In one somewhat romanticized account ofTacuba under insurgent control,
Red apparently based on interviews with survivors, Rodrigo Buezo wrote in
Ribbons 1944, “ During the three following days, the working people had managed
and to impose their will on the landowners o f the region, who, filled with an
Machetes
indescribable panic . . . had to accept the exigencies and necessities of
revolutionary action.” Buezo did not portray the “ soviet” as a truly delibera­
tive body akin to the revolutionary workers’ councils in Russia during the
February and October Revolutions, in large part because their tasks were
eminently defensive. He wrote: “ Once the insurrection took control o f the
government arms and offices and the working people had organized their
own services—administration, food, etc.—then all the work was reduced to
the coordination o f the town’s defense.” 41

The Defeat of the Insurrection

The army and National Guard could not immediately set out to put down
the insurrection. In addition to the limited damage to the railroad line to the
west, the insurgents posed a threat to the capital. On the 23rd and 24th,
insurgents, including Indians from the Panchimalco area, staged nighttime
guerrilla-like attacks that were successfully repelled by government troops.
To the east they had to defeat mobilized campesinos from the leftist base
around Lake Ilopango.42
Young middle- and upper-class volunteers responded to the call for
formation o f a Guardia Cívica while their parents footed the bill for arma­
ments and additional troops from the eastern (unaffected) departments.
The five hundred armed Civic Guards who patrolled the capital and Santa
Tecla, along with the arrival o f reinforcements from eastern Salvador, al­
lowed the government forces to deal with the insurgency in the west.43 At
dawn on 24 January the armed forces under the command o f General Jose
Tomás Calderon set o ff by train to put down the insurrection. Upon arrival
in Armenia, the main commercial center o f an important plantation district,
the army provided weapons to a civilian force o f one hundred to supplement
the fifty soldiers Calderón left behind in the city. Their objective was to
pursue insurgent bands operating in the coffee region on the border be­
tween Sonsonate and La Libertad. Another regiment under the command o f
Major Francisco Marroquin marched out o f Santa Tecla to pursue the in­ 185
formal guerrilla bands in La Libertad. After securing the geographically
key town o f Colón, most o f the regiment marched westward from Colón
toward Izalco. Red
After their arrival in Sonsonate troops under the command o f General Ribbons
Jesús Bran set o ff from the west to occupy Sónzacate and Izalco. Expecting and
Machetes
strong resistance in Sónzacate, they found only a few smoldering oil stor­
age tanks. At 10:00, as they approached Izalco, they heard gunshots from
the east, where the column from Colón had begun the attack. More troops
at the nearby Caluco train station rapidly marched up the hill to Izalco.
Attacking from three sides, the heavily armed troops overwhelmed the
insurgents, who held out for an hour before fleeing into the countryside.
Commander V. G. Brodeur o f the Canadian destroyer the Skeena, who visited
the area a few days later, estimated that the troops had killed over one
thousand people in and around Izalco during this initial assault.44
A large force under the command o f Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Sa­
linas returned to Sonsonate and then moved up the steep, rocky road to­
ward Nahuizalco and Juayúa. At the intersection between the main road and
the side road to Nahuizalco, Salinas and his troops met several cars filled
with armed rebels heading down to attack Sonsonate, presumably operat­
ing with the assumption that most o f the government troops were fighting
in Izalco. Salinas’s troops rapidly dominated the insurgents, who retreated
to the town. The expeditionary force then marched on Nahuizalco, which
they retook by late afternoon on the 24th. After repelling sporadic attacks by
indigenous insurgents throughout the night, on the following morning
most o f Salinas’s troops joined those under the command o f Bran as they
marched on Juayúa.45
The revolutionary leaders had ordered their troops to cut down trees to
block the road into the town and slow the government troops’ advance.
MacNaught recalled the scene on Monday 25 January: “About 2:00 p.m., I
learned that the troops were on their way, somewhere between Nahuizalco
and Juayúa. All o f the reds went to the edge o f town to await their coming.
Everyone closed their doors and retired inside . . . The silence was intense.
The town seemed devoid o f all life. At about 3:00 p.m. the firing com­
menced. The communists armed with their machetes could make no re-
 sistance to the soldiers. At the first volley, they fled. In a few minutes, Juayúa
was in the hands o f the government forces.”46
i86 The revolutionaries staged their last stand in Tacuba. On 24 January, at
the same time that the Nahuizalqueño rebels were on their way to attack
Sonsonate, a large group o f insurgents set out from Tacuba to attack the city
Red o f Ahuachapán. According to the testimony o f Timoteo Flores, then sub­
Ribbons teniente in the National Guard, the revolutionaries encountered a military
and column moving toward Tacuba. A few soldiers were killed and some were
Machetes
injured, “ But the Communist losses were greater and seeing this disaster,
they fled to the fincas and ravines.” The following day, a contingent o f 150
Guardias set out from Ahuachapán to retake Tacuba. Flores described the
military encounter succinctly: “ It was a bloody battle. It was a huge blood
bath. As the machine guns sprayed bullets intermittently, the bandit hordes,
shouting savagely, attacked in wave after wave, wiped out without pity by the
blazing guns.” 47 Rodrigo Buezo reconstructed the events some years later,
telling a similar tale with a different choice o f modifiers:

Over a thousand rebel troops armed with 100 mausers, one captured machine
gun, and machetes awaited the attack at different points surrounding the town.
Three o’clock in the afternoon found these [insurgents] in such visibly disadvan­
tageous conditions. At that moment, one heard on the south side o f town the
unmistakable ratding o f machine gun fire. The 80 revolutionaries who guarded
the Depósito de Agua were the first to encounter the pelting o f metal. Imme­
diately, all o f the insurgent forces were redeployed and hurled themselves with
incredible enthusiasm against the enemy forces. The struggle was intense with
numerous examples o f heroism by the laborers. It was also very unequal. The
government forces, although numerically inferior to those o f the Ejercito Rojo,
were far superior technically. The combat lasted two and a half hours . . . The
[insurgent forces] were broken up and the government troops seized their posi­
tions with no obstacles . . . More dian 800 bodies o f communists—injured and
dead—were incinerated. The peasant houses were burned and it was something
to see how the women and children ran out o f the burning huts only to face death
at the hands o f the enraged soldiers.48

The bloodbath at Tacuba effectively ended the insurrection. Guatema­

lan troops blocked the escape o f many insurgents, who then fell to the
machine-gun fire o f the pursuing Salvadoran army. Government reports did
claim that rebels staged numerous attacks in La Libertad and Soyapango
(near San Salvador) during the following week. D. J. Rogers, the British
consul and coffee planter, reported the situation on 30 January: “ For the
present, the situation may be summed up by saying that there are frequent 18 7

smaller gatherings and attacks by Communists around the capital and in

the country districts; there is no fighting on such a scale as at the outset. . .
it may be said now, that the indications point to the end o f this Communist Red
rising as an organized movement, although there will probably be sporadic Ribbons
banditry for some time to come.”49 and
Machetes
Rogers’s report, like others, must be taken cum grano salís, since he had
been extremely frightened by the insurrection. Although there is no doubt
that some insurgents continued to resist during the next week, in general
such reports o f fighting are hard to verify, as the attacks and the ensuing
battles may at times have been massacres camouflaged as military skir­
mishes.50 Very quickly the military proved quite adept at altering its own
reports and manipulating a hysterical media.

Insurgent Power, Executions, and Collective Hysteria

Esto no fue comunismo, sino bandolerismo— Raúl Sigüenza, Juayúa, 2001

In addition to recounting the military actions o f the rebels and the govern­
ment troops, it is worthwhile to examine the different forms and objects o f
revolutionary violence, and the fears they engendered. Beyond the military
engagements, whose outcomes were determined by the technological supe­
riority o f machine guns and submachine guns, insurgents also engaged in
political assassinations, executing between fifteen and twenty civilians.
Newspapers publicized several executions with lurid detail in late January
and February, and these immediately became enshrined as symbols o f com­
munist barbarity in both official discourse and popular memories. The
victims fell into two analytically separate but overlapping categories: politi­
cal and class targets. Insurgents killed the recently elected mayor in Izalco
and targeted the new mayors in Nahuizalco and Colón; they executed the
former mayor o f Juayúa and the political boss o f Tacuba. These political
executions were in direct response to the electoral fraud in early January.
J hough cold-blooded, they seemed to form part o f a calculus less guided by
vengeance than by political design, with the aim o f deligitimating the for­
mer regime and legitimating tire revolutionary one.
 Three o f the political targets were also class antagonists o f a particular
type: former patrons. In addition to being general manager o f one o f the
i88 largest coffee beneficios in the west, Emilio Redaelli was a major land-
owner, former mayor, and important dispenser o f credit to smallholders.
An Italian journalist who spent some days with Redaelli in 1928 wrote,
Red “ Don Emilio knew every piece o f land and every man in the region . . . he
Ribbons knew who was whose kid, how much they earned, how much they spent,
and what they ate, how many times a day he fought with his wife, and how many
Machetes
times a week he got drunk. The brain o f don Emilio was a library in which
every Indian, every mestizo, every family, every plantation, every hut had
its file card.” 51 The journalist recalled that don Emilio was greeted in Nahui-
zalco “with great enthusiasm, [and was] extremely popular in the village
because he advanced money on the tiny coffee harvests.” 52
Given his extensive patronage network, it is likely that Redaelli and other
major landholders during the previous years o f crisis had precipitated some
o f the numerous property foreclosures that affected smallholders in the area.
In turn, there is little doubt that the economic crisis and political radicaliza-
tion ruptured conditions for reproducing traditional forms o f clientelism.
Recall Ama’s conversation with Diaz Barrientos: “ We have been and will
always be friends but you are capitalisto and we are proletarians.” To cite
another example o f ruptured clientelism, Tacubeños accused General Rivas
o f usurious interest rates on his loans, with land as collateral. Local folks
accused him o f using his political connections to get away with the out­
rageous practice o f hiding out just at the moment when a campesino came to
pay a debt and then claiming that the borrower had defaulted on the loan.53
The breakdown o f patronage networks, combined with the campesinos’
perception o f a violated moral economy that mediated their relations with
landlords, made both the political and the economic élite extremely vulner­
able to popular rage. Insurgents executed some landowners who were not
political figures, yet as with the political assassinations there is doubt about
the circumstances. The planters responded in some cases with gunfire
against overwhelming odds. In others, rebels may have executed them in
cold blood. In still others, the planters managed to escape. One wealthy
ladino in Izalco recalled, “A group o f campesinos, almost all mozos from the
hacienda showed up led by Lalo’s mayordomo who exclaimed ‘today the
patrón has his day.’54 They ransacked his house but could not find him. In
frustration, they killed the boss’s horse and mule.”
 Without minimizing the importance o f these attempted or successful
executions, it is worth noting that insurgent forces controlled the large
cities o f Sonsonate and Ahuachapán for at least one night and controlled 189

¡zaleo, Juayúa, Nahuizalco, and Tacuba for two days. In the two large cities
there were no executions, and in the other four towns there were seven
civilian deaths or executions during the period, despite the many “ class Red
enemies” to be found. In Izalco, for example, fourteen imprisoned “ class Ribbons
enemies” survived the two days o f occupation unharmed. In short, it seems and
Machetes
extremely unlikely that the Comandantes Rojos in the west ordered their
troops to indiscriminately execute the local landed élite. Whether following
their commanders’ orders o f restraint or their own conscience, the great
majority o f the thousands o f armed rebels did not plan to execute their class
enemies.
Why weren’t more civilians killed? In view o f the high levels o f class
hatred and the opportunity to kill, what caused the restraint? Local leader­
ship does seem to have played a key role in containing popular rage against
the wealthy. Although the local and national leadership did not encour­
age indiscriminate killing, they probably did target some individuals and
groups. In addition to the political targeting, one manifesto called on gov­
ernment troops and insurgents to execute military officers as part o f efforts
to seize the military garrisons. One government soldier recalled being told
by the insurgents that they had spared his life and the lives o f his wounded
comrades in Tacuba because they had no officer stripes.55 One explanation
for the relatively small number o f executions was the local leadership’s
ideological predisposition against personal violence as opposed to violence
directed at symbols o f illegitimate authority. Francisco Sanchez and Feli­
ciano Ama, in particular, reportedly shared an aversion to executing individ­
ual members o f the élite.56
Beyond the ideological aversion o f local leaders to the use o f terror, codes
of masculinity, shared across class and political lines, probably placed limits
on the number o f arbitrary killings. We have already noted that masculine
views o f unacceptable behavior on the part o f the repressive forces strongly
influenced the nature o f the mobilization. Campesinos refused to go to
demonstrations i f they were not permitted to retaliate against the violence o f
the authorities. We can thus conjecture that insurgents saw nothing mascu­
line about killing a defenseless man, let alone a woman. The insurgents gen­
erally attacked people like Redaelli, who had probably been singled out for
 assassination, after they had brandished their weapons. Like Redaelli and
Call, in the eyes o f insurgents General Rivas represented political and eco­
190 nomic exploitation; he was killed when he tried to join forces with the small
group o f National Guardsmen who resisted the insurrectionary assault.
The political executions should be understood in the context o f a pro­
Red found rupture in a patrimonial world in which residual and emergent cul­
Ribbons tural forms coexist. As Raymond Williams states, “ The residual, by defini­
and tion, has been effectively formed in the past, but it is still active in the
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cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element o f the past,
but as an effective element o f the present. Thus certain experiences, mean­
ings, and values which cannot be expressed in terms o f the dominant
culture, are nevertheless lived and practiced on the basis o f residue-
cultural and social—o f some previous social and cultural institution or
formation.” 57 The rupture o f those residual, vertical social bonds, and their
exposure over the previous three years as illegitimate, had contributed to the
popular rage against certain former patrons. The blatant destruction of
moral-economy ties that once crossed class lines thus created the condi­
tions for these executions, but at the same time limited them.
Notwithstanding the limits and form o f political executions, national
reports, fueled by fear and local hysteria, made the assassinations signify the
brutality o f “ las hordas sedientas de sangre.” Galindo Pohl recalls a par­
ticularly virulent form o f collective hysteria: “ Certain ladies were particularly
seized by hysteria. When the noise from the entrance o f the rebels had
dissipated, you could hear terrified, penetrating cries that revealed the terror
raised to the nth degree. ‘My daughters . . . my daughters . . . my daughters!’
The ladies could already see their daughters being raped, as it had been
announced.” 58 In every town that endured an insurgent attack, rumors
circulated about a noche de bodas. In Juayúa the British consul reported, “ On
the last day o f the occupation the communists, according to an eyewitness,
made a choice o f the best looking women in town, but the troops arrived the
same afternoon.” 59 The “ choices” allegedly appeared on a list that matched
women with the revolutionary leaders.60 Another contemporary account
stated that Sanchez “ waited for the moment to unleash his hordes to rape
our women.”61 The same report stated that in Izalco, “ the Indians intended
to spend the rest o f that day [the 24th] completing the sack o f the town and
violating women.” 62 According to one informant, the townsfolk o f Izalco
already knew, the day before the insurrection, o f the communists’ intention
to rape single women.63 Decades later, these images remained very much a
part o f the official story. Lieutenant Timoteo Flores, who participated in the
military offensive against the rebels in Tacuba but had no direct knowledge
o f the events o f Juayua, wrote, “ We now know that the destiny o f the señoras 191

and virgins [of Juayua] was to satiate the morbosity o f those stinking mobs
o f fanatical assassins. Then they also killed them.” 64
There is no evidence whatsoever that insurgents committed rapes. As we Red
have seen, in El Salvador the social memory o f sexual dominance and preda­ Ribbons
tion was o f both recent and venerable stock. With the insurrection, the and
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sexual fears and fantasies exploded. At the most fundamental level, the
powerlessness o f élite and middle-class urban males and the demonization
of the insurgents facilitated these fantasies. One resident commented to a
journalist a month after the events: “ We felt humiliated by the Indians . . . it
was preferable to die than to keep on living a life o f vexations not knowing
when it would end.” 65 Moreover, in Juayúa, Izalco, and Nahuizalco the
revolutionary leaders obliged middle-class women to make tortillas for
the troops. This symbolic inversion o f roles, a constant in mobilizations
throughout modern history ranging from strikes, riots, and rebellions to
revolutions, undoubtedly fueled the widespread hysterical notion among
townspeople in San Salvador and the west that the “ Indians” were going to
rape their women.
But it was revolutionary action that stimulated the rape fantasies.
Charles R. Hale has analyzed what he calls “ the ladino political imaginary”
in contemporary Chimaltenango, Guatemala, which “ refers to ideas that
[ladino] people feel deeply, that at times influence how they think and act,
but do not necessarily guide their daily interactions with Mayas.” 66 Hale
found that rape fantasies connected to an image o f the “ insurgent Indian”
lay at the core o f the ladino political imaginary: “ Ladinos rarely express
fears o f Indian ascendancy without reference to the sexualized violence and
sexual conquest that would result.” 67 In the Guatemalan case the rebellion
of Patzcia in 1944 and the insurgent movement o f 1980-81 nurtured these
fantasies, which surfaced again with the growing strength o f the Mayan
movement. Hale further argues, referring to long-standing ladino sexual
abuse o f Indians, that “ it seems reasonable to assume a cumulative histori­
cal understanding, a social memory o f sorts that reinforces this basic asso­
ciation o f anti-Indian racism with sexual dominance and predation. With
the rising contestation and self-critique o f this racism o f times past, one can
only expect that fears o f in-kind retribution would be rife.” 68
In El Salvador fears o f mass rape and coupling did not occur only in
 response to the dramatic, even traumatic, shift in power relations associ­
ated with the rebellion. We have posited a relationship between the uprising
192 and hostile gender relations between Indians and ladinos. We noted that the
growing contact between indigenous female coffee and domestic workers
and ladino foremen and patronos led to numerous liaisons and illegiti­
Red mate offspring that subalterns understood as sexual abuse o f their women.
Ribbons Somewhat mythologized, but with some historical basis, the patron’s de­
and recho de pernada (his “ right” to his mozo’s novia) synthesized the impunity
Machetes
and depravity o f the landlord class. To ladinos the sexual practices o f In­
dians often seemed barbaric; many believed that Indians engaged in in­
cestuous relations. As in Guatemala, guilt about the elite’s abuse o f sub­
altern women may well have played a role in stimulating the rape fantasies.
The cumulative ideological baggage o f gender weighed heavily on the psy­
ches o f ladinos, suddenly made vulnerable by their loss o f power. That
women were revolutionary leaders in Sónzacate, Izalco, and Colón surely
intensified their humiliation. In addition to the threats and reality o f execu­
tions, the collective rape fantasies had great ideological salience in rallying
middle-class and upper-class participation in the Guardia Cívica and as a
justification for extraordinarily brutal repression.

Memories of Insurrection and El Robo

Despite their prominence in public accounts o f the insurrection, political

executions and rape do not figure significantly in subaltern memories. This
is but one among many examples o f glaring discrepancies between the
documentary record o f mobilization, repression, insurrection, and mas­
sacre and the recreation o f those events in the memories o f the survivors.
Within those memories, indigenous agency in the insurrection tends to be
suppressed, and at times the subsequent massacre is categorized as the
work o f “ communists.” The quasi-traumatic effects o f witnessing the exe­
cution o f loved ones and the fear caused by decades o f military rule were the
primary causes o f this elision o f indigenous agency. Similarly, the events
that precipitated the insurrection, especially the electoral fraud and the
violent repression o f the prior grassroots mobilizations, were also erased
from memory.
Yet some o f the insurgent actions not only remained but stood out in
testimonies, contributing to die creation o f this memory framework. Com-
pared to the military repression, the insurgency created a minimal amount
of violence: very little in combat, fewer than twenty executions, some loot­
ing, and numerous acts o f more symbolic violence, or its threat. In sur­ 193
vivors’ testimonies those acts o f violence, coercion, and looting are given
symbolic weight at times equal to, and even confused with, the military
massacres. Red
Relatively insignificant in the broad sweep o f events, the use o f symbolic Ribbons
forms o f coercion, such as obliging townsfolk to wear red ribbons, contrib­ and
Machetes
uted to the creation o f the dominant narrative, in which the Indians were
innocent victims with no agency. In this account the insurrection is por­
trayed as little more than el robo, induced by ladino communist outsiders.
We mention this not because these actions were particularly important in
their historical context, but rather to underscore how survivors used them
as markers to stand for the generic political innocence o f Indians. Looting
in particular, and the destruction o f the municipal buildings, have loomed
large in the counterrevolutionary reconstruction o f events. They figure most
prominently in the collective memories o f survivors. It is difficult to deter­
mine the degree o f intentionality and spontaneity o f those actions. In every
occupied town the Comandantes Rojos ordered the taking o f telegraph
offices and the destruction o f the municipal archives (except the Juayúa
municipal archive). A standard target in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-
century agrarian rebellions and revolutions, the municipal archive typically
housed land records, the destruction o f which laid the groundwork for
“ free land” or “ land without owners.” Such an action was fully congruent
with the goal o f revolutionary agrarian reform and with the de facto trans­
formation o f landholding that had occurred over the month preceding the
insurrection. Nevertheless, none o f the survivors’ testimonies in any way
connect land distribution and the destruction o f the archives. Most likely
that suppression has been due to the overwhelming power o f the trope o f d
tobo, which dozens o f survivors equated with el Comunismo as a way o f
explaining how “ the just died for the sinners.” Even among elderly infor-
tnants on the left such as Raúl Sigüenza, the statement “This was not
communism, it was bandolerismo” 69 is typical, in that it posits no legitimate
political or social motive for the looting and destruction.
Yhe notion o f free land in some testimonies related in turn to prop­
erty without ownership, bienes sin dueño.70 At the risk o f oversimplification,
Within the compass o f Central American subaltern morality, it can be said
 that any claim to the sanctity o f private property is tempered by its aban­
donment: i f one abandons a possession it is morally acceptable for another
19 4 to make use o f it. What constitutes abandonment is highly subjective. Cer­
tainly the assertion o f abandonment may form part o f a justification for
theft, and there is some evidence that the abandonment o f property—
Red primarily because the residents were hiding—provided some o f the justifica­
Ribbons tion for looting during the Salvadoran uprising. Regardless o f whether this
and particular justification was employed, the looting was not entirely random.
Machetes
According to the Canadian commander V. G. Brodeur, who during the latter
days o f January received a special military tour o f the department o f Sonso-
nate, “ It was noticed that at each place visited the City Hall had been
destroyed, and no other damage caused except in residences o f rich planta­
tion owners who had already fled . . . the residence o f a rich planter. . . was
left intact though properties on either side were completely destroyed, spe­
cially all articles o f family value such as priceless old furniture and paint­
ings, this was accounted for by the fact that the above named treated his
hands in a far more generous way.” 71 Francisco Sánchez, an indigenous
communist leader from Juayua, also offered an instrumental view o f the
looting, declaring upon capture, weeks after the insurrection, “ Here, there
are only rich people present so I can say nothing. We have robbed noth­
ing, only some clothes to distribute to the poor who were going around
naked.” 72
Several informants insist that the revolutionary leaders broke the locks
on the stores to provoke looting by people who would then out o f necessity
join the insurrection. MacNaught, hiding out in his house in Juayua, shared
this perspective: “In fact they wanted all those, who were not otherwise
lined up with them, to share in their ill-gotten gains, in order that they
might be thus identified with their cause.” 73 This instrumentalist inter­
pretation is reasonable but incomplete, for in the cities o f Ahuachapán and
Sonsonate there was very little looting despite ample opportunity for it.74
Rather, insurgents and others looted mainly where the insurrection had
triumphed completely.
Beyond its instrumental uses, there was also an emancipatory, millenar-
ian dimension to the looting. Numerous testimonies suggest that many of
the insurgents shared a belief that the rich would cease to exist because their
goods would become collective property. Although such a view lay within
the broad sweep of socialist discourse, a millenarian component also in-
fused the insurgency. This can be glimpsed in a remark uttered by an
indigenous rural worker to an indigenous employer: “ You folks are going to
disappear because whoever doesn’t want to join is going to disappear and 195
whoever wants to join is going to appear.” 75 Millenarian movements pos­
sess the collective belief in a sudden transformation o f the world from evil
to perfection, wrought by divine intervention. Patricia Pessar’s recent study Red
ofBrazilian millenarianism argues that it should be understood as a cultural Ribbons
formation and as symbolic capital, contested by subaltern groups and elites and
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over centuries.76 Her study sharply criticizes Eric Hobsbawm’s classic work
on Andalusian anarchism and the Sicilian fasti for his teleological reason­
ing, that is, for linking millenarianism to a specific historical moment that
ended with the flowering o f modernity. For Pessar Brazilian millenarianism
functioned as an alternative modernity.77 Certainly this concept is congruent
with our own view that the Salvadoran left and the peasantry engaged in the
forging o f such an alternative to authoritarian capitalistic modernity.
Notwithstanding the thrust o f Pessar’s criticism, Hobsbawm’s studies
are still highly instructive. First, he reveals the connection between mille­
narianism and utopianism, which he regards as a necessary ingredient o f
virtually any revolutionary movement. For Hobsbawm the “ profound and
total rejection o f the present, evil world and the passionate longing for
another better one” 78 is the key characteristic o f millenarianism. Revolu­
tionary movements often absorb that millenarian dimenision. His descrip­
tion o f Andalusian village anarchism in the early twentieth century is ap­
posite: “ They saw a bad world which would initiate the good world, where
those who had been at the bottom would be at the top, and the good o f this
earth would be shared among all.” 79 Hobsbawm further argues that a be­
lief in the sudden and total overturning o f the social order need not be
“a temporary phenomenon, but can, under favourable conditions, be the
foundation o f a permanent and exceedingly tough and resistant form of
movement. ” 80
In El Salvador there was undoubtedly a generalized belief among rebels
that the world would be rapidly turned upside down. The phrase “ whoever
doesn’t join will disappear” is echoed in other testimonies in the west that
often include the biblical refrain “The last shall be first.” 81 Such beliefs were
not exclusive to indigenous or ladino campesinos. Even among urban,
working-class pcs supporters, there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest
ohiliastic beliefs. For example, one woman recalls a workman telling her
 that pay was not necessary, since “ tomorrow all o f this will be ours.” 82 An
eyewitness to the repression, Commander Brodeur, reported the following;
ig6 “Another interesting and illuminating fact observed was the very peaceful
look on the faces o f those dead, this fact is specially noticeable in the case of
the Indian Chief. . . In fact it was proved that all the Indians executed were
Red apparendy glad to sacrifice their lives in the hope that this martyrdom might
Ribbons bring a brighter future for the next generation . . . the case o f a young
and pregnant married woman who was informed her husband had just been
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executed by troops, her only answer being that she did not care as she was
carrying his avenger and future rebel against society.” 83
As Hobsbawm wrote, “ utopianism is probably a necessary social device
for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution
is achieved.” 84 Equating utopianism with a form o f millenarianism, he goes
on to show just how the movement itself, producing new social relations,
often creates the conditions for propagating the utopian or millenarian
current that creates the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the cause of
social transformation. Hobsbawm’s studies make no concerted effort to
examine the mutual, i f somewhat submerged, relations between religious
and political millenarianism. Indeed, if the minimal definition o f mille­
narianism includes a notion o f “ divine intervention,” and if the Andalusian
anarchists rejected divine intervention, then is the term “millenarian” even
appropriate? Pessar’s notions o f a cultural formation or cultural capital may
be particularly useful. In El Salvador, for insurgents religious beliefs and
narratives framed the dominant political imaginary. This seems to have
been explicitly so in Ahuachapán, where the cult o f the Virgin o f Adelanto
was strong. Yet in other areas without any allegiance to religious cults or
icons, militants inhabited a social world thick with traditional religious
practices. The millenarian dimension o f the movement in those areas also
had clear religious inspiration.
Although the millenarian nature o f the movement was contagious, mili­
tants nonetheless felt the need to commit wavering people to the struggle
through coercion. Thus, for example, the revolutionaries obliged people in
the occupied towns to wear red badges or ribbons. A typical testimony from
Nahuizalco, Izalco, or Juayúa underscores the demands on the townsfolk:
“They told us we had to put on these red things or they would kill us.” 85 The
report o f the British consul substantiates these testimonies: “When they
occupied the town [Juayúa] they compelled the inhabitants, under pain of
death, to put on red badges.” Similarly, there is some evidence that the
official bando read by Arturo Carvajal in Juayúa obliged town residents to
address each other as camarada.86
The tension between goals o f emancipation and methods o f coercion is a 197
constant o f twentieth-century social movements in Latin America. In far
less violent and dramatic circumstances, such as during the peasant move­
ments in mid-century Nicaragua, there was also a tension between the Red
emancipatory and democratic goals o f the movements and the forms o f Ribbons
coercion, however mild, employed by them. The use o f aggressive pickets in and
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the first cotton pickers’ strike in Nicaraguan history was analyzed in these
terms: “ In the Tonalá strike and in other forms o f protest there was a
curious relation at once authoritarian and democratic between the leader­
ship and the rank and file. In one sense, their leaders also felt compelled to
push the rank and file into action. In this way, workers abdicated full
responsibility for action.”87 Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth cen­
turies, most strikes and other forms o f social protest employed some sort o f
coercion to push wavering supporters into the insurgent camp and, at the
same time, to present a united front against their antagonists. Tactics o f this
sort have often been successful, indeed a key ingredient o f many strikes.
Most popular rebellions, riots, or social revolutionary triumphs (how­
ever brief) unleashed symbolic coercion or forms o f theater communicat­
ing to a multi-class audience that the world has turned upside down. In El
Salvador we noted that insurgent leaders compelled middle- and upper-
class women to grind corn and make tortillas. A “ lavish” funeral for a
campesino insurgent in Juayúa contrasted dramatically with the pauper’s
funeral for Redaelli. These symbolic actions crossed pre-modern and mod­
ern boundaries, as Indians had often cursed and humiliated officials in
rebellions in Mexico during the colonial period.88 Matagalpan Indians in
a rebellion in 1881 compelled ladino landowners to perform menial labor
for them.89 The Russian and Spanish Revolutions exhibited numerous in­
stances o f symbolic inversions o f power. For example, the Spanish revolu­
tionaries’ exhumation and display o f the corpses o f nuns revealed their
spiritual triumph over the demonized church, a key ally o f the counter­
revolution.90 These subversive acts are a particularly creative and at times
less destructive way o f expressing generations o f subaltern ressentiment
(see chapter 5).91
Despite their ubiquity, the meanings o f these symbolic acts have been
stripped from most testimonies o f failed revolutions, and only the coercive
elements remain etched in the officially framed memories inspired by the
 state and the counterrevolution. The Salvadoran insurrection o f 1932 is no
exception. The emancipatory aspects o f the insurrection—free land and an
ig8 end to élite domination over subaltern lives—have been buried in mass
graves, covered with the toxic sediment o f fear and propaganda.

Red
Insurgent Narratives
Ribbons
and The successful burial o f alternative memories o f the insurrection accounts
Machetes
in part for the survival o f very few coherent subaltern testimonies about the
events. This dearth o f testimonies also derives from the age o f informants
and the climate o f fear that pervaded the zone for decades. Most infor­
mants were too young to have participated in the revolt. Even so, Segundo
Montes’s study in the mid-1970s and other less comprehensive ethno­
graphic works from the same period failed to encounter any informant who
admitted participating in the insurrection. After the uprising was put down,
the military and its allies executed the great majority o f the insurgents,
along with thousands o f people who had nothing to do with the insurrec­
tion. Military rule during the next sixty years, which included leadership by
some o f the same officers who had led or participated in the massacres, also
contributed to a culture o f silence. Because o f their anomalous level of
coherence and their ethnographic and political detail, we will reproduce
significant parts o f some testimonies that refer to the insurrection, with a
degree o f coherence and detail.
As we have argued elsewhere, there has been a general tendency to deny
subaltern agency in the movement.92 In the accepted version, Indians were
not participants in the revolutionary movement, much less leaders o f it, but
rather innocent victims. In indigenous villages where the repression was
most intense, this denial surely started out as a form o f defense, but over
time it acquired the aura o f truth. The effect can be seen in the frequent
protestations that the revolutionaries came from elsewhere. The testimony
o f Andres Pérez, son o f the secretary o f the local s r i in Nahuizalco, illus­
trates this.

Andrés Pérez

Pérez’s narrative about his father’s militancy (introduced in chapter 4) re­

mains plausible, although chronologically confused, until January i 932:
“The armed forces joined forces with the Ladinos—Cheles [whites], the
 199

Red
Andrés Pérez,
Ribbons
Pushtan. Courtesy
and
of the Museo de la
Machetes
Palabra y la Imagen.

indígenas didn’t want anything to do with them. In December, the Ladinos

looted the biggest stores in Nahuizalco—you can still see the machetazos—
they said the Indians and Communists had done the robberies. On 2 Janu­
ary there was a meeting under the Ceiba—(that’s where the market was
what they called the plaza). There they were when the armed forces came
from Sonsonate. My dad said, ‘I’m going to get some water.’ He left and
thought to himself that he better not go back, so he went home. When
he reached the canton he heard the roar o f the trucks and headed for the
bush. Near the river, he heard the shots. He told his mom, ‘They killed my
compañeros.’ ‘You escaped!’ Later, he heard that they had killed all o f his
compañeros.” 93
Perez’s suppression o f the role o f his father and other indigenous activ­
ists in the insurrection renders his account incoherent. Many other testimo­
nies from Nahuizalco present similar narratives o f the events o f 23 January.
All agree that “ Turinecos” —phenotypically and culturally non-Indian—
were the main group involved in the takeover o f the town. Many shared
Andres Perez’s view that “ ladinos” did the looting. Many also blamed local
ladinos (as well as Turinecos) for cutting the locks o f stores owned by
members o f the same small community. The story o f ladino looting re­
mained compelling to rural Indians for several reasons. First, their hatred
for the ladinos, at the time and subsequently, blinded them into wishing for
a discursive vindication o f indigenous innocence and a condemnation o f
ladino guilt. Second, there certainly was outside ladino involvement in a
movement that in retrospect went terribly wrong. Finally, there is some
evidence that local ladinos, confident o f the eventual triumph o f the revolu­
tion, supported the movement during the brief occupation. That the repres­
sion spared the ladinos helped to spur the creation o f a memory according
 to which they themselves were culpable at the expense o f the slaughtered
Indians.
200 O f the over two hundred interviews with people who in one form or
another experienced the insurrection and its macabre aftermath we encoun­
tered only two who admitted to directly participating in the insurrection and
Red very few who admitted the participation o f close relatives.94
Ribbons
and
Machetes Salomé Torres
In chapter 4 we recounted fragments from Salomé Torres’s brutalized
childhood on a coffee plantation in La Libertad during the 1920s. After the
death o f his parents, he recalls, “ With my brothers and sisters we moved in
with my grandmother, una arrimada [an invited squatter] in the coffee ha­
cienda o f Angel Garcia. This patron liked to beat up his workers just because
he felt like it.” One day, Salome recalls, the patron saw his little brother in a
mango tree eating a ripe fruit. He shouted at the little boy to come down and
then beat the boy so hard that he died. Salome, then fifteen, flew into an
impotent rage and left the hacienda. A couple o f years later he was picking
coffee when a fellow worker invited him to a union meeting. For over a year
he attended meetings on various plantations where people discussed taking
over land and the need to first storm the cuarteles. On 22 January the local
leaders o f the movement informed Salome that the moment had come to
“ seize the barracks and then seize the land.” Word reached his finca that the
campesinos o f the Cumbre de Jayaque were going to attack the barracks at
Santa Tecla and then join others in an assault on the capital. He walked off
his job and joined the “ caravan” o f revolutionaries as they descended down
the mountain road that passed Comasagua. The only road that connected
the towns o f the Cumbre de Jayaque—Teotepeque, Talnique, and Jayaque—
with Santa Tecla passed by the canton “ Los Amates.” There the revolution­
ary march halted and spent the night. “ Right around 5:30 in the morning a
little red plane flew overhead . . . ordering us to rise and advance. I was
pretty far in the rear and when we got to the turn where one way goes to
Santa Ana and the other for la Cumbre they began to machine gun. I hid by
the side o f the road. Then came the order to retreat. I started running up to
the slopes. From the ridge, I could see all of the people running.”95
Although Salome’s narrative does not exhibit a great deal o f ethno­
graphic or political detail, its meaning is inscribed in the context that
 201

Red
Salomé Torres.
Ribbons
Courtesy of the
and
Museo de la Palabra
Machetes
y la Imagen.

allowed him to recount it, however dryly, and to assume responsibility for
his actions. As he was the only survivor we met who accepted his personal
responsibility as a member o f the insurgent forces, it is worth pondering
why he remembered and how he understood his participation.
Salome was lucky to survive. He hid out for days or weeks until Emilio
Chicas, a jinquero and retired military officer, decided to help him and others
obtain a safe-conduct pass in Santa Tecla. They all walked to Santa Tecla
under the protection o f a white flag. Salomé went to the church, where he
“ confessed” (without admitting “ guilt” ), perceiving correctly that to admit
participation was to invite a death sentence. Shortly thereafter he left La
Libertad and traveled to a coastal area o f Sonsonate where he was unknown.
There he worked for years on a cattle hacienda in an area that had little
involvement in the events o f 1932. He was therefore not subjected to the
communal reconstruction o f events, often heavily influenced by the military
regime, which either suppressed local subaltern agency or laid all the blame
for the tragedy on “ the communists.” Though illiterate, Salome managed
to keep up with the news through circumspect conversations and, in the
I95°s, radio. For whatever reasons, he remained immune to the barrages o f
anticommunist propaganda emanating from virtually every pore o f the Sal­
vadoran state and society.
Immediately after the triumph o f the Cuban Revolution, Salomé’s wife
told him, “You know, you should meet Miguel Landaverde. He talks just like
you.” After twenty-seven years Salome emerged from his leftist shell. Dur-
tog all that time he had heard or seen nothing to shake his early belief in the
righteousness o f the struggle for land and social justice or the perfidy o f the
landed élite, epitomized by the killing o f his younger brother. Landaverde
 and his friends, for Salome, were a select audience to whom he could
recount his tale o f January 1932.
202 The message o f Salome’s testimony was simple and direct: his participa­
tion in the insurrection was a logical outcome o f his brutalized life as a
jornalero on coffee plantations and o f the opportunity to resist. His primary
Red goal was an agrarian revolution, and to achieve that he participated in the
Ribbons assault on the military barracks. Neither boastful nor ashamed, Torres
and today recounts his participation with a straightforward matter-of-factness,
Machetes
tinged with the bitterness o f defeat and a life o f privation.

Doroteo López
Doroteo López, an eighteen-year-old in 1932, also remembers that scene in
Los Amates. His father, Victor López, was the general foreman on a coffee
finca in San José occupying fifty manzanas, and a bitter enemy o f the revo­
lutionary movement. Nicknamed ri polaco, he was despised by the local
workers for his friendship with the Guardia officers and for his fierce loyalty
to the patrones.96 Late on the afternoon o f 22 January, Abrahám López, an
SRi leader and subordinate o f Victor’s on the finca, approached his house.

Abraham told him, “ Don Victor today is the day o f the insurrection. Go hide.
Ocúltese. Today they are going to liquidate all the reactionaries. As a Communist,
I shouldn’t tell you. But you are my jefe and are good to me.” . . . But my dad was
emboldened by his ties to the Guardia and responded: “ I’m not hiding, no
hijueputa is going to do anything to me! Let them come!” Saddened and worried,
Abraham walked off. At around seven he returned: “ Don Victor I already told you
to hide. They already killed the son o f the commissioner. Go look at the plaza!” I
lived about a block from my dad, near the plaza. Since I had to work real early I
was exhausted. The shuffling o f so many feet worried me, so many people
arriving in the plaza. A bit later, my dad appeared. “ Look son, get up, we have to
hide. Now it is serious. The plaza is filled with Communists. They killed
Chavelo’s son.” We went to the ravine in a nearby big coffee grove. There had
been volcanic eruptions in Guatemala and the ash covered everything. The moon
was full and there was semi clarity. All the trees and bushes were covered with
ash and then a light rain turned everything to mud. And so it rained. Everything
was spectral. There was no wind and the air felt stale. It was a horrible sensation.
Then they came to the house. Only my father’s wife was there with their baby.
They broke down the door and shouted “Where is el polaco?”
 “ They called him over to Ta Sirena’ to get his work orders. He’ll be back
tommorrow.”
“ Let’s look for them!” 203

We saw the lamps o f the people searching for us . . . it seemed like a herd . . .
we moved even deeper into the ravine, deep into the jungle o f coffee. After a long
time, the lamps receded. We suffered in the cold, covered with mud. Red
And then we heard the conch shell whisdes. All o f their force—that enormous Ribbons
number o f people—moved to attack Santa Tecla.97 and
Machetes
A remarkable personal history framed Doroteo’s vivid recollection o f
22 January. When he was fourteen Doroteo had learned how to read and
write from a Jamaican bookkeeper while working on a coffee plantation. By
the tíme he moved to Los Amates, his ability to read and his position as an
apuntador probably translated into at least a sense o f separateness from the
jornaleros and reinforced his desire to identify with his father, who had
abandoned the family during Doroteo’s childhood. Four years after the
insurrection, he was working at a coffee beneficio in Santa Ana when he
engaged in lunchtime conversations with clandestine communist union
activists. Despite his brush with death, he had been appalled at the indis­
criminate repression. He recoiled when he heard a priest in Santa Tecla
state that “ evil has been eradicated at its roots,” at the same time that
executions o f suspected communists were a daily occurrence. Moreover,
Doroteo had broken o ff ties with his father, which to a certain extent freed
his mind from the one-sided relation that had previously dominated him.
The relatively educated union militants sparked his intellectual curiosity.
When the subject o f 1932 came up, Doroteo recounted his story. He recalls
that Virgilio Guerra explained to him, “ it was class warfare and we had to
give it to all o f our enemies.” 98 Although Doroteo did not immediately
accept that rationale, he did eventually come to accept the broad outlines o f
the Marxist view o f history and society, and for a decade he was a member o f
the clandestine p c s .
Doroteo’s testimony provides a clue to how the revolutionary upsurge
played out among the subaltern sectors of society. Although his father was a
foreman on the plantation, he could not be considered middle-class in
either cultural or economic terms. Typically, a foreman earned 50 percent
tnore than field hands, but that would barely have provided for the subsis­
tence needs o f his family. It was an ambiguous class position that did not
automatically lead to a counterrevolutionary posture. Indeed, two lower-
 1
204

Red
Doroteo López,
Ribbons
San Isidro. Courtesy
and
of the Museo de la
Machetes
Palabra y la Imagen.

level caporales in Los Amates were local s r i leaders. Yet Victor López had
demonstrated his political antipathy to the movement, and through his
friendship with the Guardia he had probably singled out some militants for
repression. Therefore at this local level he was a “ reactionary enemy,” and
along with the local comandante o f the patrulla cantonal was targeted for
execution. That the insurgents ended up killing the son o f the comandante
was anomalous. This targeting o f the son o f the comandante and (perhaps)
o f Doroteo were exceptions to the general pattern o f insurgency: elsewhere,
insurgents executed only mature adults.
Doroteo’s testimony again points to the logic o f revolutionary violence.
However mitigated by countervailing tendencies, it allowed for political
executions o f subalterns who did not occupy significant positions within
the political, military, or economic hierarchy. That logic o f terror derived
from the perceived necessity and the overwhelming collective desire to
enforce solidarity. Enforcement o f solidarity, the need for unanimity, gave
way to a desire to harm or execute those local subalterns who visibly op­
posed the movement.
Doroteo Lopez’s testimony also confirms other aspects o f the cultural
tumult that we have identified as part o f the revolutionary process. In par­
ticular, the friendship between his father and Abrahám López again reveals
the residual cultural forms that stretched across a bitter ideological divide.
As a subordinate caporal on the finca, Abrahám López appreciated the way
he had been treated at work by his superior, Victor López. Despite the
universal application o f the term camarada, at this moment o f revolutionary
rupture he still used the respectful term don, also indicating deference.5'1
Based on that workplace relationship, he twice warned López, regardless of

L
the risk that Abrahám ran by betraying the cause. Finally, the theme o f
machismo again cuts across class, ethnic, and political lines. “ No me voy a
esconder no me hacen nada ningún hijueputa. Que vengan!” The testimony 205
of Sotero Linares, a jornalero, reveals similar themes o f subaltern violence
and machismo.
Red
Ribbons
Sotero Linares and
Machetes
Linares was also a young man at the time o f the insurrection. He was
picking coffee in Cuntan, an ethnically mixed but divided canton a few
miles east o f Izalco.

The three of us were picking coffee on the finca—three cousins, one a kid and the
other two of us grown up. A picket halted us on Amoldo Vega’s finca. I showed
my corvo and asked them what they wanted. There were a lot of them so they
were able to grab me from behind and yank away my corvo.
These were the same people who had gone off the night before to Izalco and
Sonsonate to rob. I asked them what they wanted with us. Francisco Ishio an­
swered, “we’ve been working in this so long and you haven’t sought us out.”
So I told them, “you never invited us.” They always had their comités at night.
We didn’t know anything. That’s because this work was entirely done by natu­
rales, by the most Indian of them (de los más inditos). Those of us who were
mixed blood had nothing to do with it. So they took us to Anastasio Ishio, to his
father’s coffee finca. There were hundreds of men and women in the patio, almost
all Indians. They were having this huge fiesta. They were shouting all these “vivas
al Socorro Rojo Internacional” and they thought they had won. So Francisco Ishio
comes back over to us where we are tied up to a tree, and starts talking to us about
why we should have joined. So I argued back again about not inviting us. He
responded, “We owe nothing to you. We are worth something—you aren’t!”
Then his buddy Feliciano Munto came over with a new lasso and shouted,
“We’re going to hang you. What are we waiting for? Let’s hang this hijo de puta!”
“Kill me then, you won’t be killing a woman, but a man!” But they didn’t.
Then, at around 5 :oo pm two of their scouts came into the patio running. “The
troops are coming! Everyone has to hide!” So Ishio comes over to us, looks at us
and says you aren’t on our side, and I say we’ll join you. But he drags us along as
prisoners. When we get to a cafetal he lets us go and I say to him, “I need my
corvo to fight on your side. ” So he gives it to me and we escape. I told my cousin,
“If they follow us we’ll give it to them with our corvos.”100
 Sotero Linares.
Courtesy of the
Museo de la Palabra y
la Imagen.

and death make both narratives

compelling. The survival o f Doroteo and Sotero permitted a certain de­
traumatization o f the memory o f these events and allowed for a sharpened
focus oin ethnographic details. For Linares, the sharp contours o f his narra­
tive o f capture made comprehensible and justifiable his subsequent role as
part o f the repressive apparatus: he searched for communists in hiding and
when he found them he turned them over to the military authorities, most
likely for execution.
In Los Amates revolutionary violence against subalterns had a strictly
political basis. In the cantons o f Izalco a peculiarly local ethnic conflict
overdetermined this violence. As was underscored above, Indians o f the
cantons; had little problem organizing ladinos on coffee plantations, yet in
their own communities ethnic relations were strained. Class had little to do
with the problem, as most ladinos were like Sotero Linares, jornaleros with
tiny plots o f land. Anastasio Ishio, by contrast, was a smallholder, with a
coffee finca o f five manzanas. (Ishio had also been comisionado del cantón
until he was arrested for subversive activities in 1930.) Most Indian families,
like Linares’s, had relatively small plots supplemented by seasonal labor.
Nor were there extreme cultural differences between Indians and ladinos.
The ind igenous people o f the cantons were generally monolingual Spanish
speakers who donned ladino dress when traveling to Izalco. Many did not
participiate in the civil or religious hierarchy o f Barrio Abajo in Izalco.
Rather, the conflict principally derived from the status o f the ladinos as
outsiders who had moved into the cantons over the previous generation and
undoubtedly shared certain prejudices about Indians.
Linaires thus gives us a portrait o f what appeared to him to be a caste war
within one village. But his description, taken at face value, would block out
some o f the meanings o f the testimony. First, after the capture there was
dialogue, not an execution. Linares lived to tell the tale precisely because 207

Ishio released him. The dialogue is word: analyzing. Francisco Ishio simul­
taneously expressed anger and curiosity as to why Sotero had not gone to
any meetings or joined the movement. To Ishio, despite the ethnic divi­ Red
sion and perhaps because o f the universalistic message o f the movement, Ribbons
Linares should have gone to the meetings. Linares, in turn, considered the and
Machetes
movement “ Indian” and therefore antagonistic to his own individual and
group interests. The march up the slope to Cuyagualo interrupted the con­
versation. At the fiesta attended by hundreds o f men and women celebrat­
ing victory, Ishio reiterated what was both an indictment and a query. To the
response, “ You didn’t invite me,” Ishio’s exclamation, “We owe nothing to
you. We are worth something—you aren’t!” seems curious, as it did not
directly respond to Linares’s comment. But here it seems that Ishio’s dis­
course operated within a code o f respect, and that he understood Linares’s
comment that he should have been invited to have been a demand for
respect. Ishio’s shifting o f the discussion suggested the generalization o f
the issue o f respect and dignity to the entire revolutionary movement. At the
same time, and in a manner not unrelated to the discourse o f respect, it may
well have been Linares’s reassertion o f the common code o f masculinity
that spared his life. The killing o f a defenseless man who had not killed or
raped was simply not a manly act.
Linares’s testimony also reveals the moment o f rupture o f a residual code
o f mutual respect and deference. Put differently, the Indians o f the cantons
had long shown deference to ladinos and received insufficient respect in
return, i f any. This moment o f rupture between residual and emergent
cultural forms is at once similar to and different from those we have pre­
viously observed. What was different in Cuyagualo was that the tension led
to an explosive confrontation between the meaning and uses o f respect. In
other words, the traditional cultural norms could no longer function as they
had before; they needed a revolutionary' cultural transformation, symbol-
'zed in changing the appellative from don to camarada.
This desire to reconstitute social relations along new lines o f absolute
respect relates to the symbolic actions and demands for enforced solidarity
throughout the occupied zones. The insurgents had tactical reasons to
compel solidarity for the revolution, but the testimony o f Linares and others
 points to a moral imperative at this moment o f rupture. Posing the question
“ Which side are you on?” in such violent and dramatic fashion, leaving no
2o 8 room for neutrality, would have unintended political consequences, facili­
tating the ideological work o f the triumphant reaction. Given the large
number o f nonrevolutionary campesinos, workers, and Indians, the moral
Red imperative o f solidarity ran up against the kind o f resistance that would lead
Ribbons to severe antagonism.
and As the events o f January gave way to February, the conflict in the western
Machetes
Salvadoran countryside began to resemble a civil war. Yet this one was
different: one side was hesitant about killing individuals and the other
rarely hesitated before firing at those who shared the class or ethnic mark­
ers o f rebels—at point-blank range.
 Chapter Seven

“They Killed the Just for the Sinners” :

The Counterrevolutionary Massacres

Ofrecieron una contraseña y la contraseña fue balas.

— Raimundo Aguilar, Cusamuluco, Nahuizalco

atín American historiography has long recognized the

L massacre o f thousands o f rural people in western El Sal­
vador as one o f the most lethal acts o f repression in the
modern history o f the region. Despite its prominent place
in the continental hall o f infamy, the extant descriptions o f
the repression are somewhat fragmentary, with the result
that some key questions remain unresolved. Why did the
military resort to mass killing once it had quelled the insur­
rection? Given that estimates o f the number o f fatalities
range from a low o f several thousand to an oft-repeated
high o f thirty thousand, can we arrive at a more accu­
rate approximation? What was the role o f specifically anti-
indigenous racism in the killings? In recent years activists
have used the terms “ genocide” and “ ethnocide” to de­
scribe the events o f 1932.1 Was this repression genocidal?
How were the massacres portrayed and understood by dif­
ferent sectors o f society? Through a detailed account o f the
events, we will offer tentative responses to these questions.
In an attempt to grasp how survivors came to conceptualize
 the repression, we will examine the emergence o f the phrase mataron justos
por pecadores, an evocative and multivocal expression repeated by dozens of
210 informants.
A counterrevolutionary coalition involving landed élite groups, coffee
planters from mid-sized plantations, cattle ranchers, the church, and the
"They military emerged before the insurrection. The words o f one mid-size farmer
Killed probably were representative o f his class: “ We agricultores do not tolerate
the anyone putting their hands on our interests . . . it is unacceptable that our
Just
interests be touched; that is something we will not endure for any reason or
for the
Sinners" circumstance or under any pretext whatsoever. Here I am, getting ready to
defend myself, defend my property, and defend my woman.” 2 In addition to
this visceral reaction against any challenge to their property, the élite com­
ponents o f the counterrevolution shared an aristocratic ethos which held
Indians and rural workers in contempt as semi-barbarians: “ the lower class
lives and thinks the way the Roman slaves lived and thought. They compose
an infinitely low and remote stratum that does not feel the slightest need to
educate or cure itself.” 3
Under the threat o f agrarian revolution, this defense o f material interests
and the racist disdain for the rural poor would be a lethal combination.
There was also an ideological byproduct o f the repression that worked to the
advantage o f Martinez’s regime. After the defeat o f the insurrection, Gabino
Mata, a technologically advanced cattle rancher and coffee planter, sketched
this position in the following terms: “The honest agricultores, the true
workers, we do not want impure politics; we want unity, fraternity, peace and
work. In the future, politicians should be treated as communists.” 4 The
emphasis on employers as “ producers,” with the appeal to cleansing society
o f “ politicians,” were typical rhetorical gestures o f fascism.5 Although it
would be a mistake to equate these relatively inchoate ideological expres­
sions and the loose alliances with a mature counterrevolutionary movement
and ideology, it is hard to imagine that Martinez’s regime charted its san­
guinary course without those ideological and tactical moorings.6
Although the shift from a relatively neutral role in the December strikes
to violence and provocation in January was dramatic enough, it did not
prove that a large-scale massacre was imminent. The military regime’s
strategy o f provocation suggests that it did plan to crush the left into sub­
mission. With the discovery o f the insurrectionary plans o f the PCS, the
regime surely upped the ante and prepared to execute its identifiable antag'
onists. Still, there would have been no particular logic (and no evidence)
underpinning a plan to massacre unarmed Indians, peasants, and workers
and using the insurrection as a pretext. 211
On 24 January the military began its lethal campaign, which lasted for
over a month. To better approximate the various causes and methods o f the
massacres, a separation between different stages o f repression is analyti­ "They
cally useful, even i f the historical reality was far more nuanced. Stage I Killed
refers to the immediate aftermath o f the defeat o f the insurgency, the period the
Just
during which military hot pursuit coincided with the execution o f thou­
for the
sands o f people. Stage II refers to the weeks between the military defeat o f Sinners"
the insurgency on 25 January and 13 February, during which time two large-
scale massacres took place within the municipal borders o f Nahuizalco.
Stage III coincided with stage II but encompassed a much wider geographi­
cal area. From 25 January until the end o f March the military and Civil
Guards singled out many o f their victims through lists o f Communist voters
or membership lists o f the s r i .

Stage I: Military Defeat and Massacres

The first phase was extremely violent, accounting for thousands o f deaths.
Although it is hard to estimate the number o f fatalities in these days o f
battle and the immediate aftermath, General Tomás Calderon’s claim that
his troops had liquidated 4,800 “ Bolsheviks” seems fairly accurate, as it
coincides with other partial estimates.7 As we saw in chapter 6, this stage o f
repression involved mainly National Guardsmen who made ample use o f
machine guns to defeat the insurrectionary forces. The regular army, relying
on recruits from eastern Salvador (primarily ladino), joined forces with the
Guard.8 In all the battles government forces defeated the insurgents in
three hours or less o f combat. After defeating them, the National Guard
pursued the retreating rebels into the countryside. During the hot pursuit
the troops often engaged in indiscriminate killing o f males over twelve
years old. In Tacuba they killed women and children as well. The kill­
ing fields were in the areas surrounding the major sites o f rebellion: the
countryside around Ahuachapán (mainly nonindigenous), Tacuba (largely
indigenous), Juayúa (largely indigenous), Nahuizalco (indigenous), Izalco
(bi-ethnic), and the Cumbre de Jayaque (some indigenous, mainly self-
identified as non-Indian).
 212

"They
Killed
the
Just
for the
Sinners"

Feliciano Ama
before hanging,
Izalco, January 1932,
from Revolución
Comunista, by Jorge
Schlesinger.

The rural areas around Ahuachapán, Juayúa, Tacuba, Izalco, and Nahui-
zalco suffered the greatest number o f deaths, probably several thousand
during these critical first days. As one military officer wrote years later,
“ The machine guns began to sow panic and death in the regions o f Juayúa,
Izalco, Nahuizalco, Colón, Santa Tecla, the Volcano o f Santa Ana, and
in all o f the towns by the shore from Jiquilisco to Acajutla. Some towns
were razed to the ground and the workers in the capital were savagely deci­
mated.” 9 In the countryside surrounding Nahuizalco and Juayúa, in words
repeated by dozens o f informants, “ they killed all males from twelve on
up.” One ladino artisan, a Nahuizalqueño, reported, “ Well, in that mo­
ment when the government forces came in, they weren’t going around
asking any questions when they found someone, right? No, it was a mat­
ter o f killing them” 10 During the days following the military takeover
o f the occupied towns, troops perpetrated massacres o f groups o f un­
armed indigenous people. In Nahuizalco the military probably executed
over two thousand people. Cayetana Flores, an indigenous woman o f Anal
Arriba, recalled, “They began to take out the people house by house and
they marched them further up. Once they had gotten everyone from Anal
Arriba they marched them to Nahuizalco. They shot all o f them.” 11 Ramón
 213

Corpses in a common
grave, January 1932.
Courtesy of the
"They
Museo de la Palabra
Killed
the
y la Imagen.
Just
for the
Sinners"
Esquina, who was nine at the time, remembered vivid scenes and incor­
porated knowledge from conversations with survivors: “Around here the
dead were scattered all over—well now they have all turned to earth—the
corpses were everywhere in San Juan, Tajcuilulah, Pushtan, Cusamuluco. In
Nahuizalco, well there you can’t imagine how it was: they opened ditches in
the cemeteries along the sides and at the entrance where you walk in;
everywhere they made big holes. They dropped the bodies, after they shot
them and heaved them as if they were bales o f sugar cane.” 12 As Ramón
Esquina exclaimed these words, he made arm gestures as if he were heaving
bales o f cane, suggesting an industrial technology o f death. Less than hu­
man in life, in death Indians remained merely the objects and instruments
oflabor.
In Sónzacate, the site o f a fierce battle between the insurgents and the
military, Fabian Mojica, in prison in Cojutepeque at the time, recounted the
following based on conversations with survivors. “ When this guy met the
officers, he said that ‘Here in Sonzacate from the first to the last house was
Communist. In the first house lived Sr. Figueroa. They yanked him up and
shot him. And in the second house the same thing and so on.” 13
The city o f Sonsonate witnessed indiscriminate as well as targeted kill­
ings.14 Victims o f documented executions included two o f Mojica’s brothers
who were in jail. The commanding officer reports that these executions
were in response to an escape attempt, but oral testimonies point to a firing
squad that executed those prisoners who had been captured after the events
o f 17 May 1931. Twenty-five death certificates follow this pattern: “ Partida
No. 70. Alcaldía municipal sonsonate, on the twenty-seventh o f january of
nineteen thirty two. Felipe Mendoza died in the public prisons at one hour
and thirty minutes today, o f a gun wound without medical assistance. Par-
 tida No 76. Alcaldía municipal sonsonate on the twenty-seventh o f January
o f nineteen thirty two. Jorge Purito died in the public prisons at one hour
214 and ten minutes today, o f a gun wound without medical assistance. ” Several
o f those executed had been important leaders in the S R I: “ Partida No 65.
Alcaldía municipal, on the twenty-seventh o f January o f nineteen thirty
"They two. Gregorio Cruz Zaldaña, a carpenter, died in the public prisons to­
Killed day at one hour, o f a gun wound without medical assistence.” Julian Ortiz,
the the Nahuizalqueño Indian leader, and Manuel Mojica, the sri leader and
Just
brother o f Fabian and Julia “ La Roja,’’were among the others who died
for the
Sinners" within half an hour o f each other, “ trying to escape.”
Sotero Linares, a ladino campesino from a canton o f Izalco who had
been captured by the insurgents, recalled how he accompanied patrols who
combed the cafetales searching for insurgents who would then be sent to
Izalco, where they most likely were shot. Informants and written sources
state that in Izalco for several days troops executed groups o f fifty prisoners,
mostly Indians. The Canadian commander o f the Skeena, Brodeur, based on
close contact with the military in the west, reported that twelve hundred
“ Indians” were killed in Izalco.15
In the area around Juayúa, the Reverend Roy MacNaught related a con­
versation with a coffee finca owner: “A few days later a finca owner came to
me and told me about the death o f another believer. This man, Don Guada­
lupe Delarosa, was out in a coffee plantation with a group o f workers. The
soldiers came along. Among the group were some who were real commu­
nists and these accused the others. The soldiers, without further word,
lined up the whole group, twenty-two in all, and shot them then and
there.” 16 This report was atypical in its focus on Protestant “ believers” and
in its admission that “ innocent” campesinos were shot. Yet it also repre­
sents one point o f origin o f the notion that the true “ communists” betrayed
innocent campesinos. This myth o f communist treachery, the notion that
the communist leaders either abandoned or betrayed their followers, had
no basis in fact. Not surprisingly, when the military had defeated insurgent
forces, leaders and rank-and-filers ran for their lives. Francisco Sánchez,
for example, managed to escape from Juayúa as far as San Pedro Puxtla, on
the border o f the departments o f Ahuachapán and Sonsonate. Most insur­
gents who survived the initial exchanges o f fire at a certain moment also
attempted to escape from the slaughter. The military caught and executed
numerous other local leaders, in Ahuachapán and elsewhere. There is a
counter memory that evokes the tragic stoicism o f one local leader. Maria
Méndez recalls how Augusto Sarmiento, an Ahuachapaneco leftist leader,
cried out to bystanders as he was carried o ff in an open vehicle to a firing
squad, “ Goodbye my comrades!” 17 Yet such memories o f leaders (signifi­ 215
cantly, in this case, from a ladina) were largely absent in indigenous areas,
replaced by a perspective enshrined in the phrases pagaron justos por pecadores
(the just paid for the sinners) and mataron justos por pecadores. In other words, "They
those who were “ guilty” escaped and those who were “ innocent” died. The Killed
military regime, as we shall see, actively promoted this view o f communist the
Just
perfidy and indigenous innocence.
for the
The orgy o f bloodletting was equally intense in the department o f Ahua­ Sinners"
chapán, in ladino as well as Indian areas. Miguel Mármol recounted the
following testimony from highland regions o f Ahauchapán (a primarily
nonindigenous coffee area): “A driver who years later joined the Party . . .
told us a story about how he was working on a coffee plantation . . .
on the 26th or 27th o f January he was forced by an Army detachment to
drive a truck that had a machine gun mounted in the cab. In the back was a
squad o f soldiers with automatic arms. They went out on patrol . . . and
any group o f peasants that they encountered on their way, whether they
were just talking or walking, without any prior warning, from a distance o f
thirty meters or more, they’d unload their machine guns and smaller arms
on them. Afterwards, the captain who was in command, with a .45 in his
hand, forced our peasant comrade to continue driving the truck, running
over them, including the dying who were writhing in pain on the ground,
screaming.” 18 According to several informants, the military took many cap­
tured prisoners to Los Ausoles, site o f thermal hot springs outside the city
o f Ahuachapán, where they shot them.19
In Tacuba a woman recalls: “ Look, even the houses over there were left as
cemeteries, horrible!” Various witnesses state that the troops just opened
fire on randiitos, killing women and children, as they did nowhere else.
Although we can only speculate, the length o f leftist rule and the sharpness
of the insurgent resistance probably provoked the excess o f barbarity. Dur­
ing the days immediately following the military defeat o f the insurgency,
troops also indiscriminately killed ladino campesinos in Tacubeño cantons
identified as leftist, such as Los Arcos. In general, though, the killing at this
stage had nothing directly to do with political identification. That point was
driven home by Alvaro Cortez, an indigenous Nahuizalqueño: “ My father
Was a patrullero [member o f a civil patrol organized by the government]; they
didn’t ask for a declaration, they just shot him.” 20
 2IÓ

"They
Killed
the
Just
for the
Sinners”

General Tomás Calderon. Photo by Commander Victor Brodeur, National Archives of Canada, negative no. C115332.

Salvadoran soldiers. Photo by Commander Victor Brodeur, National Archives of Canada, negative no. PA125135.
The Question of Genocide

The documentary and testimonial record indicate that although the mili­ 217
tary executed many ladinos during stage I, the majority o f their victims
were Indians. The indiscriminate killing o f Indians compels a discussion o f
genocide. The anachronistic use o f concepts is often problematic. As for the "They
term “ genocide,” however, developed during the Second World War, few Killed
would dispute its applicability to the mass killings in Armenia. Yet in other the
Just
cases, such as the Indian massacres in the western United States, the use o f
for the
the term is complicated by the fact that mass repression and conquest Sinners"
formed components o f long-term practices that wavered between forced
assimilation and annihilation. Similarly, in the case o f African American
slavery, the use o f “ genocide” has become politicized. Given the precedent
o f German payment o f reparations to Holocaust victims and their families,
an admission o f genocide often raises the question o f reparations. This is
also true with La Matanza: since the 1992 Peace Accords, use o f “ genocide”
to describe the killings o f 1932 has become more widely accepted, and a de­
mand for reparations recently has been propounded by indigenous groups.
The definition adopted by the United Nations Convention on the Preven­
tion and Punishment o f the Crime o f Genocide emphasized intentionality:
“ the intention to destroy in ‘whole or in part’ a race, nationality, religion or
ethnicity.” 21 The Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (c e h ), the Guate­
malan truth commission, made their argument that the military committed
genocide in the early 1980s by underscoring the difference between intent
and motive in the u n Convention. Intention depends on knowledge that
certain actions will result in the partial or complete destruction o f an ethnic
group. For Greg Grandin, who participated in and has written about the
c e h , the Guatemalan military committed genocide, regardless o f its motive
(presumably, to destroy the base o f the insurgency), because it intended to
kill all Indians in those areas considered to be potential areas o f support.22
When the report was issued in 1999, the political élite and the military
rejected the c e h charge o f genocide, arguing that the military did not
harbor any desire to exterminate an ethnic group (e.g., it had no motivation
to do so, and Indians outside the conflict zones were spared), and that it had
acted primarily out o f concern for national security. What Grandin and the
c eh found, on the contrary, was that “ racism came to be deeply embedded
in state structures and discourses . . . The imperatives o f war, both civil and
class, accelerated nationalism, anticommunism, and racism into a mur­
derous fusion: as a ‘contextual ideological element,’ Memoria del Silencio
writes, racism allowed the army to equate Indians with the insurgents and 2 19

generated the belief that they were “ distinct, inferior, a little less than
human and removed from the moral universe o f the perpetrators, making
their elimination less problematic.” 23 "They
There are important parallels as well as significant differences between Killed
the two cases. The duration, scope, and ethnic specificity o f the Guatemalan the
Just
repression distinguish it from the repression in El Salvador. The Guate­
for the
malan campaign lasted two years and devastated nearly 600 indigenous Sinners"
communities out o f a total o f 626 affected, killing probably over 100,000
Indians, including many women and children. This difference is funda­
mental, and it would have been much more difficult for the c e h to make its
convincing argument for genocide i f the killings, as in El Salvador, had
been compressed into a month and had affected numerous non-Indians as
well. Moreover, the Guatemalan military was fully aware o f the precedents
and world condemnation o f genocide, and o f the powerful emergence o f a
discourse o f human rights. Indeed, the administration o f President Jimmy
Carter cut o ff military aid to Guatemala in 1977 because o f human rights
abuses. The Salvadoran regime in 1932, at a time when the concept o f
genocide was unknown and human rights were absent from any list of
western diplomatic priorities, could act out o f ignorance or at least with
little fear o f international reprisals.
Notwithstanding the differences, there is evidence that the Salvadoran
massacres amounted to a form o f genocide. There is no question that the
military regime o f Martinez fostered the mass killings through direct or­
ders, or that racism conditioned those orders and their execution. One
officer recalls that Martinez gave “ extremely drastic orders, without any
restriction, to the military heads o f the expeditionary force.” 24 According to
an official military history, “ Indians were put through blood and fire. Mar­
tinez’s implacable order was ‘don’t take [no dar cuenta de] . . . pris­
oners.’ ” 25 Another version o f Martinez’s order was: “ Fire first and find out
later.” 26 There is also little doubt that in those insurgent regions where
Indians made up a significant part o f the population, they were singled
out for execution. With the notable exception o f those in the region o f
Ahuachapán and Atiquizaya and to some extent in the Cumbre de Jayaque,
most o f the victims o f the first wave o f executions were Indians, even
though ladinos probably composed half o f the insurrectionary forces.
 For our analytical purposes, the distinction between intent and motive,
raised by Grandin and the c e h , is o f fundamental importance. Although
220 there is no evidence to suggest that the Martinez regime specifically planned
to kill Indians qua Indians, we argue that the cumulative effect o f the
massacres amounted to a form o f genocide, precisely because the military
"They was cognizant that the indigenous communities would be devastated by the
Killed military actions. That said, it is important to contextualize the regime’s
the actions, since in its historical consequences this particular form o f genocide
Just
was quite distinct from the kind that Guatemala experienced and from what
for the
Sinners" El Salvador would have suffered if the regime had set out to annihilate the
entire Indian population. On one level, the massive killing o f Indians imme­
diately after the military defeat o f the insurrection had much to do with their
geographic proximity to the battles and to the order attributed to Martinez,
“ Don’t take prisoners!” There was a geopolitical dimension to the repres­
sion, as there was to the insurrection. Indigenous people were more likely to
be able to seize towns such as Tacuba, Nahuizalco, Izalco, and Juayúa, in no
small part because o f the successful organizing drive among the jornaleros
in the surrounding cantons. The indigenous people were thus militarily
positioned and politically motivated to surround and seize the municipal
cabeceras. The majority o f those who attacked the barracks in Santa Tecla,
Ahuachapán, and Sonsonate were however ladinos, and many o f those
insurgents were able to retreat without immediate pursuit.27
Thus the first phase o f repression involved the large-scale killing o f both
Indians and ladinos. Although there was a much higher proportion of
indigenous than ladino people among the dead, this is less than a clear-cut
case o f genocide precisely because the liquidation was an equal-opportunity
one. The charge o f genocide, although justifiable and useful with regard to
specifically indigenous communities, is complicated not only by the num­
ber o f ladino dead in Ahuachapán but by the indeterminate identities of so
many o f the victims from the cantons o f Izalco and Juayúa and in Sónzacate,
where probably thousands o f people lost their lives. Many had adopted non-
indigenous identities, or at least had lost their traditional ethnic markers.
From the point o f view o f their executioners, however, all the dark-skinned
campesinos in these cantons and in Ahuachapán and La Libertad were
indios, a term replete with highly charged and negative, if ambiguous, mean­
ings. Although the ladinos’ use o f the term indio was unequivocally nega-
five, it was contextually aspecific, attributing a fixed identity to what was in
flux. The commander o f the Skeena, for example, identified rural poor
people as Indians, virtually without exception. Since his contacts were ex­
clusively with military officers or representatives o f the local and foreign 221
élite, it is quite probable that they shaped his subjective understanding o f
race, based on phenotype and skin color. Although Commander Brodeur
displayed none o f the racism o f his acquaintances, he probably shared with “They
them a view o f the rural poor in the west as indios, backward, ignorant, lazy, Killed
and dangerous. I f we limit ourselves to the élite understanding o f their own the
Just
racial superiority and their subjective understanding o f race as determined
for the
by phenotype and skin color rather than history or culture, we can state that Sinners"
one ethnic group led by generally lighter-skinned ladino officers ordered
the execution o f people whom they saw as darker and believed to be “ ra­
cially” inferior, even i f many o f the victims would have considered them­
selves ladinos or non-Indians. In this broader definition o f race and racism,
the regime’s primary motive—to crush the insurrection and strike fear and
terror into the hearts and minds o f the rural poor—fused with an intent
framed by racism and overdetermined by class hatred—with a result that
killed thousands o f people in a form o f genocide.

Stage II: Indian Massacres in Nahuizalco

The second phase o f violent repression was unequivocally genocidal, in that

it focused exclusively on self-identified Indians. There is no evidence to
suggest, however, that Martinez’s regime ordered or encouraged the two
principal massacres that marked this phase. The first took place in El Ca­
nelo, a canton in the coffee region o f Nahuizalco, bordering the munici­
pality o f Juayúa. There is ample testimony about the massacre but no docu­
mentary evidence which would allow us to determine the exact date or the
number killed. The testimonies suggest that the killing occurred within a
week after the military defeat o f the insurrectionary forces in Nahuizalco.
The massacre occurred at “ El Canelo,” the hacienda o f the proto-fascist
!deologue Gabino Mata, who had suffered a major scare during the insur­
rection. One account published nearly a decade later stated that the ha­
cienda had been occupied by a large group o f insurgents.28 Whether it was
or not, there is no doubt that Mata believed he was threatened by the
rebellion and that after its military defeat he decided to seek vengeance. He
gathered together his colonos and other indigenous peasants under the
pretext o f protecting them from the National Guard. Raimundo Aguilar
recalls that Mata’s mandador played a key role in the tragedy: “ He took all the
people, all the workers . . . he sent word that he was going to give them a
safe-conduct pass to save their lives. They didn’t know any better and they
believed it; they thought they were going to save their lives but once they
were there the people from the armed forces began to tie them up . . ■
like crabs, right, all o f them, and when it was time, he sent the captain to
kill them.” 29
Raimundo’s older sister screamed, “ If they kill our father, let them kill
me too!” and threw herself among the prisoners. She and her father joined
the hundreds o f indigenous peasants who fell under a hail o f machine-gun
fire as they were ordered by Colonel Ortiz to make a run for it. Pedro Lue,
then a twelve-year-old in the neighboring canton o f Sábana San Juan Arriba,
recalled, “ Don Gabino Mata gathered all his people and all his laborers and
told them ‘come here, because there is a brigade o f national guardsmen
coming to kill you.’ He wanted to cage them, the poor innocent people.
There were about five hundred o f them. He kept them inside and then sent
one o f the people to find rope to tie them up. When the troops arrived they
asked, ‘Don Gabinito, are you ready?’ He replied, ‘Yes, I am ready . . . let’s
go make justice.’ They walked off to make a cemetery . . . they killed them
all. . . Gabino Mata turned over a lot o f people.” 30 223

Another surviving eyewitness was Jesús Velasquez, a twelve-year-old

ladino boy from Los Arenales:
"They
My grandfather belonged to the commander’s patrol that got together at the
Killed
Puesto de Aguila. He came home for lunch. Look, he said to my mother, there are the
about 800 Indians being held prisoner in el Canelo, around Gabino Mata’s Just
ranch. I wanted to follow him to see what was going to happen even though they for the
forbade me to go out. Once I got there I figured out that in order to have a good Sinners"
look I had to go onto the straight road and that’s how they saw me. I thought my
grandfather or the others would hit me for being there. But in a little while a lot
o f people arrived tied together in the front and in the back. And suddenly Colonel
Ortiz came with another platoon. The troops were drunk. Ail the patrols had to
tear down the fences. The officials yelled, “ You can go!” They took o ff running.
Pe pe pe . . . sounded the machine gun. The officials ordered the soldiers to break
into a shed to look for tools for digging. It was around five in the afternoon and
already by 6 they had finished.31

Velasquez’s testimony is the only one that offers a justification for the
massacre. He repeated the words that his grandfather had said to him: “ If
we didn’t kill them, they would have killed us.” 32
It is remarkable that these testimonies, which cross a locally sharp ethnic
divide, coincide so closely in the details o f the killings. Although there
is no direct documentary evidence o f the massacre, the narratives strongly
suggest that Mata and Colonel Ortiz conspired to entrap and execute the
Indians. Martinez’s regime did nothing to punish the perpetrators, but
that afternoon o f killing was the result o f local conditions and locally
based actors.
Local forces also produced the other massacre. According to infor­
mants, the mayor o f Nahuizalco, Francisco Brito, wanted his revenge after
suffering the fear and indignity o f having a crowd o f Indians call for his
head.33 Following national governmental directives, Brito sent word by offi­
cial bando that he would issue safe-conduct passes on 13 February. Each
safe-conduct pass stated that the bearer was not a communist. One pub­
lished account, substantiated by numerous testimonies, relates that the
municipal building remained closed as the crowd o f Indian males waited
for their carnets. Some apparently became suspicious and tried to leave, but
the National Guard had blocked o ff the streets. “ Suddenly they started
shooting from the houses and the buildings surrounding the plaza. Those
familiar bursts made its repetitive noise heard. Entire rows o f those gath­
ered there fell under the bullets.” 34 Survivors recall the panic o f people
trying to escape the machine-gun fire.35
The regime and its supporters had another version o f events. According
to the strongly pro-government British consul, a coffee planter: “About a
thousand people drifted into town and gathered in the town square, osten­
sibly with the object o f procuring from the Mayor the new boleto de identi­
dad. The mayor became alarmed when he saw how many were coming and
then telegraphed urgently, twice, for help. Troops were sent from Sonso-
nate, Juayúa, and Izalco. They surrounded the town, lined up the Indians
and searched them. Then it was found that many o f them had concealed
knives and a notice calling them to Nahuizalco for the ‘day o f atonement’
388 Indians were killed.” 36
 The consul’s suggestion that the Indians were planning to stage an
attack echoed the statement o f the minister o f war that was reported in the
ofíicialist Diario de El Salvador: “ Some three hundred indians from Nahui- 225
zalco rose up against the stationed troops, who left the towns to wait for the
help o f a brigade from Sonsonate. With the speed that is required in those
circumstances, they proceeded to pacify the insurgents, but because they "They
resisted, it became necessary to use force.” 37 This version o f events appears Killed
to have been a complete fabrication, although it is possible that the local the
Just
authorities experienced fear when they saw a large number o f Indians gath­
for the
ered in the town square. The immediate response o f the regime to the Sinners"
events o f 13 February suggests that the minister o f war’s story was meant to
offer cover for the murderous actions o f local elites and military officers in
the region. On 15 February the government announced that the distribu­
tions o f boletos de id e n tid a d had been suspended for “very powerful rea­
sons.” 38 In light o f the timing o f the decision (on the 14th), the “very
powerful reasons” no doubt referred to the massacre, which the regime had
not foreseen but was willing to cover up. What had been intended as a
measure to bring the killings, or at least the indiscriminate ones, to a halt
had the opposite effect. The regime recognized that further distribution o f
passes might result in more such occurrences or might be pointless because
of the fear that would be induced throughout the region by the killings.
Although there are some reports that the authorities carried out similar tac­
tics in Juayúa and Izalco, there is no hard evidence to substantiate tire claim.
Rather, it seems that witnesses incorrecdy placed the events o f 13 February
in Juayúa instead o f Nahuizalco. For example, the Historia Militar, written by
an officer, offers a description o f an incident that is an exact replica o f the
events in Nahuizalco: “ In Juayúa it was ordered that all honest men who
were not communists present themselves to the Cabildo Municipal, in order
to distribute safe-conduct passes, and when the public plaza was packed
with men, children, and women, they closed the streets leading out o f the
plaza, and they gunned down the innocent multitude, not sparing the lives
o f even the poor dogs who always follow their indigenous masters so
faithfully. A few days later, the commander who had orchestrated the ter­
rible massacre recounted that macabre incident in copious detail in the
Parks and promenades o f San Salvador, boasting that he had been the hero
o f such an action. ” 39There is no other evidence that a massacre so similar to
the one in Nahuizalco also took place in Juayúa, and in all probability the
 document confused the two places. The officer’s reported gloating does
suggest just how cold-blooded the Nahuizalco massacre was. Even three
226 weeks after it had defeated the insurrection, the regime had no intention of
bringing murderers to justice. These two massacres, one provoked by mu­
nicipal authorities and the other by a prominent landlord and political
"They figure, revealed to indigenous survivors the extent o f ladino cunning and
Killed unambiguous evil: they remain unmitigated examples o f genocide.
the Racism increased dramatically among ladinos during this period and
Just
undoubtedly influenced the conscious decisions to perpetrate these atroci­
for the
Sinners" ties. The Reverend Roy MacNaught, the Protestant missionary stationed in
Juayúa and a staunch anticommunist, noted the transformation. On 14
February, writing from Santa Tecla before he gained knowledge o f the
atrocities o f the preceding day, he stated: “The Indians are hated now as
never before. In Nahuizalco, there is a defense league composed o f the
Ladino element. These Ladinos have rounded up male believers and had
them shot.” 40 On 3 March he wrote: “We have word that there have been
executed in Nahuizalco alone, 2500 men. One day they lined up 400 boys
and shot them. They have tortured the women to make them tell where their
husbands and brothers are.” MacNaught’s own view o f the repression had
changed from an acceptance o f firing squads in Juayúa to an expression of
horror. In his initial report he had written: “All day long (and this lasted for
several days) we could hear the shots in the plaza as the work o f execution
went on . . . We cannot say that the government was too severe.” 41 What had
changed was MacNaught’s full recognition o f the innocence o f many o f its
victims—brought home by the killing o f Protestant converts—and the role
o f blatant racism in the executions.
There is no doubt that the ethnic and class tensions in Juayúa, Nahui­
zalco, Tacuba, and Izalco were exacerbated to the point o f hysteria after
occupations by largely indigenous revolutionary forces. Those occupa­
tions, despite their relatively small incidence o f violence, burst the dam
holding back the accumulated hostility and hatred toward Indians on the
part o f the élite, which was to some extent shared by middle-class and
proletarian people. Very quickly Indian, barbarian, and communist became
interchangeable epithets. One survivor recalls townsfolk shouting, “ Finish
o ff the Indian communists!” Others recall the phrase “ Kill the Indians!” As
MacNaught underscored, many town residents mobilized into a “ Guardia
Cívica” (defense league) as soon as the troops had retaken the municipal
centers. Although the precise role o f the Guardia Cívica in the local mas­
sacres remains unclear, they undoubtedly inspired the troops to kill indios
comunistas, if they were not already so inclined. 227

There is also some evidence o f virulent racism in the officer corps. One
o f the National Guard commanders, a Colonel Ortiz, injured while breaking
up a peasant demonstration the previous year, reportedly uttered the com­ "They
mand: “ When you capture a suspect, i f he’s an Indian, shoot him, and if he Killed
is ladino, bring him in for questioning.”42 As we have seen, informants the
Just
single out Ortiz as responsible for the massacre in El Canelo.
for the
The combination o f military exigency and brutal excess, local racist Sinners"
hysteria and a desire for vengeance (and at least one racist military com­
mander), conditioned the two Indian massacres. Stage III, which coincided
with but lasted longer than stage II, involved more discriminate forms o f
killing.

Stage III: Las Listas and Other Forms of Discriminate Killing

“ Las listas” are engraved in the memory o f the survivors throughout the
west. National and Civic Guards carried around long lists o f voters who had
signed petitions to register the Partido Comunista Salvadoreño (pc s ) as a
political party in the elections. In some locales such as Juayúa, they cap­
tured and used lists o f Socorro Rojo supporters. Throughout February and
March, Civic patrols and the National Guard searched for those pcs sup­
porters, and when they found them they shot them either with or without
the benefit o f judicial trappings.43 As late as 25 February the British consul
reported, “ Executions are still taking place almost daily.” 44
A Wall Street attorney, Milo Borges, was present in San Salvador during
January 1932. In a report dated 30 January 1932 he wrote: “The Government
has been arresting all those who were listed as communists. I understand
that in San Salvador, alone, there were 9,000 men listed. They were being
arrested as rapidly as they can be located and after one or two days in jail are
taken out late at night and conducted to some isolated spot where they are
told to disperse and machine gun fire opened on them. They are usually
buried where killed. I understand about 600 have been so disposed o f in this
city alone during the past week.”45 Borges was close enough to the Sal­
vadoran élite to join a “Vigilance Committee” (along with the “young men
of the best families” ). Although his access may lend some credence to the
 228

"They
Killed
the
Just
for the
Sinners"

Prisoners before execution, Sonsonate barracks, January 1932. Photo by Commander Victor Brodeur,
National Archives of Canada, negative no. PA125136.

Executed Prisoners, Sonsonate barracks, January 1932. Photo by Commander Victor Brodeur,
National Archives of Canada, negative no. C115331.

numbers that he reports, they are hard to corroborate. They do coincide

with other accounts o f mass executions o f suspected communists in the
capital area.
Outside the capital region the numbers become even more speculative,
but there is no doubt that the lists loom heavily in memories o f 1932. People
recall the shape and size o f the lists: in some cases they were foot-long
books, the size o f municipal libros de actas. The lists formed part o f the the­
ater o f terror employed by the military, along with the rarer cases o f kan­
garoo trials. In both cases the use o f the list offered a rationale for killing, 229
however flawed. Vicente Flores o f Jayaque recalled the following episode:
“We were carrying corn from a field when we saw that they brought out a lot
of people from a finca. The Guardia stopped us. They were carrying some "They
notebooks. My father never got involved in anything and they didn’t find his Killed
name. But they gave him a good beating; they were whipping him in front of the
Just
me. I was left traumatized. Since then I have hated the Guardia; I couldn’t
for the
even look at them.” 46 Flores recalls that the Guardia lined up those who did Sinners"
appear on the list and shot them in groups o f four. Others in Jayaque recall
that soldiers walked around with lists and executed anyone whose name
appeared on them.
Although there is no documentary evidence supporting the vast amount
of testimony that soldiers used the lists to single out victims for execution,
there is documentary evidence that they did at least possess the lists. An
order issued on n February 1932 from the minister ofw ar to the departmen­
tal governor o f Sonsonate reads: “As it is indispensible to make a selection
of individuals who served in your ranks in the forthcoming recruitments, I
request that you submit to this ministry a list o f the communists in the
various places o f that department who presented themselves at the last
elections to vote for the candidates o f their party.”47 The request is some­
what elliptical. Since Sonsonate was the one department where most o f the
killings had been indiscriminate up to that point, it seems that now the
military was ready to avail itself o f the lists so as to pursue matters more
rationally, as it were, in the department. Alternatively, and far less likely, it is
possible that the military had finished its killing spree in Sonsonate, was
seriously thinking o f reconstituting its army, and thus wanted to make sure
that it did not recruit “ communists.” In either case the document does
establish the military’s cognizance and use o f voter lists.
Although the use o f electoral lists was widespread, the military also
employed other means to find its victims. Commander Brodeur reported
that on Wednesday 27 January “ the Government commenced its campaign
o f routing out Indians suspected o f being or known to be Communists, and
shooting them, after a short interrogation which consisted mainly o f the
question ‘Are you a Communist?’; and if guilty, the prisoner almost invari­
ably admitted it at once. I f there was any doubt, the suspect was placed in a
 special prison, where he was kept until sufficient evidence o f his guilt was
forthcoming. It is rumored that on one or two occasions, some o f these
230 unfortunate prisoners were allowed to ‘escape’ after nightfall, and were
immediately shot down for being at large after curfew.” 48 Brodeur was
referring to Sonsonate, and apparently the pcs voter list for that department
"They had not yet materialized. We can deduce from this that the military and its
Killed Civic Guard supporters had other means o f singling out suspected commu­
the nists. Based on oral testimony, we may assume that after the first wave of
Just
terror the military would capture primarily the rural poor for “ question­
for the
Sinners" ing.” Manuel Linares, a ladino campesino from El Cacao, Sonsonate, re­
lated the following based on the accounts o f family members who escaped
from the area near Atiquizaya, Ahuachapán: “ The repression was that they
would take your name . . . the priests would take the names o f the groups
and they would say, ‘You are a Communist,’ and the person would say, ‘No,
Father, I am not, I haven’t been involved.’ ‘You can leave.’ The priests would
then ask another one, ‘You worked with the Communists?’ and the guy
would say ‘No, well, they invited me,’ so the priests would put him with
another group. And they would be tied up and shot.”49 The testimony
supports a key sentence in Brodeur’s account, namely that the insurgents
were often willing to admit association with the revolutionary cause. The
notion o f “ invitation” to a meeting, as the reader will recall, referred to a
cultural code that made attendance something o f an obligation. The mili­
tary and the Guardia Civil were o f course profoundly uninterested in such
cultural conventions. Linares’s testimony also supports other testimonies
about the role o f the church in the repression.
Doroteo López, an eighteen-year-old in Los Amates at the time, recalled
that in Santa Tecla, Padre Ravelo fully supported the repression, and in his
sermon thanked God “ that the evil has been yanked out at the root. God
willing, it will never have life again.” 50 Salome Torres also had experience
with the church in Santa Tecla, shortly after, the insurrection: “ They took us
to Santa Tecla—we all were carrying white flags. We all went to church. It
was a Monday and they told us to come back on Wednesday. So we got to the
church and we all went to confession. The Father would ask us if we were
involved in communism. I said no. But the others who admitted it, he put a
little cross next to their name. They were shot.” 51
As we have seen, whether or not it was directly involved, the church
benefited from the repression through the elimination o f the tiny but grow-
ing Protestant presence in the west. As MacNaught recognized, the Guardia
Cívica lumped Protestants together with communists, and a large propor­
tion o f the tiny minority o f Protestant converts were singled out for execu­ 231
tion. According to some testimony, a priest saved two jailed Protestants
from their scheduled executions in return for their conversion back to the
Catholic church. Considering the high level o f paranoia about Protestant "They
penetration evident in the writings o f Conte (see chapter 4), the uprising Killed
and repression seem to have provided an expedient conjuncture for striking the
Just
back.” The singling out o f Protestants for retribution in a moment o f
for the
counterrevolution fits the pattern established in revolutionary France and Sinners"
Russia. As Arno Mayer wrote, “ Protestants and Jews were the perfect scape­
goats on whom to discharge a broad range o f anxieties and resentments
activated or intensified by revolutionary turbulence. In particular, the last-
ditchers o f the old order portrayed these most prominent and vulnerable
out-groups as incarnating a treacherous plot to desacralize, modernize, and
level civil and political society.” 53

The Spared

To recapitulate: there is little doubt that the military slaughtered over 2,500
Indians in Nahuizalco and Izalco. In their rage the officers and élite re­
garded all indigenous males as “ communists.” One terrateniente stated un­
equivocally: “There are no Indians who aren’t Communists.” Similarly, in
Juayúa and Tacuba the military executed over two thousand rural people,
many o f whom were indigenous. A large number o f ladinos and people
without indigenous identities fell to the military in those locales, as in
Ahuachapán and La Libertad.54
Notwithstanding the genocidal effect o f the killings in these indigenous
municipalities, other Indian areas in central and western Salvador were
untouched by the massacre. A striking example o f an area which was spared
genocidal repression was the heavily indigenous municipality o f Panchi-
malco. Indians from the rugged area south o f San Salvador had participated
m both the mobilization and the insurrection and yet suffered only light
reprisals. One grassroots militant who had been active in the agrarian
movement and participated in the skirmishes on the southern edge o f San
Salvador recalls that immediately after the insurrection, troops captured
him; the authorities released him after two days. His uncle, a recognized
 revolutionary leader, was captured at the same time and spent two or three
years in prison.55 This mild repression took place against the wishes of
232 some townsfolk. On 2 February the Junta de Orden Pública o f Panchimalco
protested against the release o f revolutionary suspects in the nearby vil­
lages.56There is no evidence that would help to explain why the military au­
"They thorities acted so differently toward the indigenous rebels and their homes
Killed in the Panchimalco region. It is entirely possible that Colonel Emilio hen­
the deros, in charge o f the expedition against the retreating rebels, simply had
Just
no stomach for massacres and that his superiors, recognizing that their
for the
Sinners" victory was complete, had no interest in further bloodshed. I f that explana­
tion were valid, then it would place the onus o f guilt for the latter phases of
the massacres in the west largely on local military and civilian forces. Still,
the regime never brought any o f the executioners to justice.
Santo Domingo de Guzman was an almost exclusively indigenous mu­
nicipality in Sonsonate. With an altitude o f only 190 meters, the town lay
outside the coffee belt (600-1,500 meters). Only ten miles west o f Son­
sonate, it remained quite isolated during the early 1930s, and did not serve
as a base for union or s r i activity. As a consequence, the Nahuate-speaking
Indians o f Santo Domingo suffered no repression. Residents o f Santa Cata­
rina Masahuat, another indigenous municipality that bordered Santo Do­
mingo and Nahuizalco, did participate in the leftist movement, but only a
handful o f leaders were clearly identified as part o f the insurrection. The
military hanged those leaders but apparently spared the rest o f the popula­
tion despite its proximity to the seats o f rebellion. It is likely that Santa
Catarina was spared because insurgents did not take over the municipal
building (controlled by Indians) or assault any o f the few ladino properties
in the area.
While many indigenous people from Cuisnahuat took part in the mass
mobilization, and over one hundred probably took part in the assault on the
barracks o f Sonsonate, the military did not carry out violent retribution
there. Some elders o f Cuisnahuat, another Nahuate-speaking village, recall
that San Lucas, its patron saint, saved the village and a local communist
leader by appearing just as he was being hauled o ff to be shot in Sonsonate.
We have heard o f no other explanation for why the military struck violently
in so many towns and cantons in the neighboring highlands o f Jayaque but
not in Cuisnahuat, even though it was known for having a large concentra­
tion o f Indians who militated in the ranks o f the left. As in Santo Domingo

A
and Santa Catarina, the insurgent Indians seem to have neither occupied the
town nor physically assaulted the ladino residents, despite a simmering
history o f resentment. 233
The existence o f indigenous communities that were spared violence in
no way mitigates the genocide committed against those who had supported
the mobilization and insurrection, just as the decision by the Guatemalan “They
military to spare Indians in non-conflict zones did not weaken the charges Killed
o f genocide against it. Yet in reconstructions o f the massacres, both imme­ the
Just
diately and over the next decades, the existence o f the “ spared” helped to
for the
allow the military to exonerate itself by equating insurgency, communism, Sinners"
and Indians.

The Prose of Massacre

On 29 January General Calderón announced that his troops had “ liquidated

4,800” communists. Within days he modified his statement, stating that
the communists had been neutralized, not necessarily killed. (Ten years
later he explained that he had been compelled to backtrack by the horrified
international reaction to what he had presumed to be a reassuring state­
ment, coupled with massive demonstrations in Mexico City.) From that
moment no official statements referred to the total number o f deaths at the
hands o f counterrevolutionary forces. On 25 February Rogers, the British
charge d’affaires, ratified the impossibility o f exact knowledge: “ It will
never be known how many have been killed, but the total cannot be less
than 5,000 and it has even been put as high as 12,000. Executions are still
taking place daily.” 57 An official with the U.S. embassy in 1937 reported
wide discrepancies in estimates o f the number o f dead (presumably from
those close to the seats o f power), from three thousand to seventeen thou­
sand.58 The left, with far less access to military sources, has referred to
25,000 or 30,000 deaths. General Calderon’s initial assessment o f 4,800
killed in the first phase corresponds with local estimates in Izalco, Nahui-
zalco, and Tacuba and is possibly low for the entire region. There is no way
o f estimating the number o f those killed during the subsequent phases
outside Nahuizalco (where five hundred to one thousand perished during
the massacres in town and at El Canelo).59 We would suggest that given the
impossibility o f arriving at anything approximating a scientific estimate, we
are left to rely upon the figures offered by the British and American embassy
 officials and Calderón. Taking those estimates into account, the figure of
ten thousand fatalities is reasonable.60
*34 Regardless o f the exact number, the massacre o f thousands o f unarmed
people is a historical fact. How did official Salvadoran discourse portray
this atrocity? The official and semi-official prose offers us clues about how
"They the military and the élite were able to present their version o f the events as
Killed a reality so powerful that it reshaped the very fabric o f memory o f the
the survivors. At the most general level, officialist discourse elided, distorted,
Just
or falsified descriptions o f the killings in such a way that either perpetra­
for the
Sinners" tors and victims were transposed or at the very least the distinction be­
tween them was made ambiguous. Joaquin Mendez, a journalist, traveled
throughout the west interviewing military officials and élite local people.
His account, published in April 1932, became something akin to an official
full-scale narrative o f the insurrection and repression. He masterfully ap­
plies the art o f omission, combined with implied justifications, to render
unintelligible the most blatant massacres, those in El Canelo and Nahui-
zalco. He simply does not mention the killings on 13 February in the center
o f town. He does, however, refer to Gabino Mata and events on his ha­
cienda. After a brief description o f the capture o f some o f the insurgents
from Juayúa effectuated by the troops, he inserted a short section, “ En la
hacienda de don Gabino Mata,” in which he relates an interview with a
soldier who had been sent to guard his hacienda on 27 January. The day
before, “ they had told don Gabino that on that very day they would hand
him his head. We had been there for twenty minutes when we made out a
group o f twenty-seven armed individuals . . . Maybe it was because we
caught them by surprise but they seemed to lose their cold-blooded resolve
and it seemed to us like they were surrendering. Some o f them, however,
made an attempt to attack us, so we had to shoot and kill a lot o f them. After
that—he finishes—it was demonstrated that it was true that they wanted to
kill don Gabino. And when he realized that we had saved his life, he sent for
us, to reward us, and he received us very well and gave us money.” 61 Because
o f the lack o f chronological specificity about the massacre in Mata’s haci­
enda and the imprecision o f the term muchos, we cannot be certain whether
the soldier’s account euphemistically described the mass shootings o f de­
fenseless indigenous workers, reported by numerous informants. I f it did
not refer directly to the massacre, it certainly justified it.62 Indeed, as if to
deny and neutralize his complicity in the massacre on his hacienda, a local
newspaper converted Mata into a hero. Reporting on his role in creating an
organization that mobilized financial support for the National Guard, El
Heraldo de Sonsonate lauded him: “ The cultured and philanthropic Gabino 235
Mata, hijo has fanned the flames o f patriotism in the hearts o f all good
Salvadorans and we must stand behind him.” 63 Mata became one o f the
leading spokesmen for his social class. A short time after the massacre in El "They
Canelo, he angrily denounced the situation in the countryside, where the Killed
“ danger [was] still latent. . . Communism has deep roots.” 64 Mata uttered the
Just
this declaration on 12 February, the day before the massacre in the town o f
for the
Nahuizalco, and it seems reasonable that in addition to espousing his anti­
Sinners"
democratic, populistic ideology, he was also justifying in advance yet an­
other massacre.
That Mata became a local counterrevolutionary leader is not surprising.
Yet the ennobling o f the man responsible for the cold-blooded execution o f
hundreds o f his workers is a particularly salient case o f the inversion o f
victims and executioners that characterized counterinsurgent discourse in
the months following the insurrection and massacre.65 The regime often
asserted that the brunt o f the violence was perpetrated by the insurgents and
borne by soldiers and the wealthy. Consider the following official report,
issued nearly a year after the events: “ In these towns there were robberies
and many agents o f the government and numerous residents, who, because
of their culture and economic and social position, never could have covered
themselves with the tragic red flag, were assassinated pitilessly. The country
lived through hours o f pain, o f anguish, and panic, during those terrible
days, bathed in blood; so terrible and bloody that the Government, under­
standing that pain, that anguish, and that panic joined its energies and its
firm patriotic will in a single e ffo rt. . . was able unhesitatingly to punish
those who, in an evil hour, had forgotten their noble condition o f human
beings, and had thrown themselves unbridled into criminal attacks and
punishable despoliation, in various forms and manifestations.” 66 Shorn o f
the most venomous, hysterical prose that characterized the declarations o f
January and February 1932, the report nevertheless employs the same tropes
to synthesize the dominant interpretation o f the events. By referring only to
an unspecified quantity o f military and élite deaths (“ many” ), and not to
those thousands o f deaths at the hands o f the military, the text suggests that
the insurgents were responsible for most o f the killing. That suggestion is
amplified in the second sentence: “ during those terrible days, bathed in
 blood; so terrible and bloody that the Government. . . joined its energies
and its firm patriotic will in a single effort.” The strong implication is that
236 the government responded to the bloodbath (and thus did not create it), and
then only did so to mete out just punishment. Finally, the text refers to the
dominant trope o f counterinsurgent discourse: the savage condition o f the
"They insurgents.
Killed During the days o f killing, newspapers and government proclamations
the dehumanized the massacred civilians and insurgents, portraying them as
Just
savages and their ideas and movement as a deadly disease.67 They described
for the
Sinners" the revolutionary insurgents as “ bloodthirsty hordes,” “ hordes o f vandals,”
or “ a horde o f raging savages,” 68 whose actions were characterized by saña
fiera.69They described “ communism,” the ideology and the movement, as a
disease attacking the body politic: “ el comunismo, cáncer social.” Certain
places were “ infested” by communists, and campesinos suffered from a
“virus.” The dehumanization o f insurgents worked to legitimize their exe­
cution. It would be a mistake, however, to understand such statements as a
univocal expression o f anti-Indian racism. Dominant groups had long em­
ployed images o f savagery to describe not only indigenous people but also
those from the “ dangerous” classes in Europe. Enzo Traverso writes o f the
massacre o f Communards in Paris in 1871: “ Political repression seen as the
disenfection o f the social body presupposed the dehumanization o f the
enemy, who was demoted to the level o f an animal or an inferior biological
species.” 70 Adolphe Thiers, the architect o f the massacre o f between ten and
thirty thousand Parisian Communards, wrote: “ One day it happens that a
careless jailer leaves his keys in the doors o f this menagerie, and the wild
beasts rampage with savage roars through the horrified town. Out o f the
open cages leap the hyenas o f ’93 and the gorillas o f the Commune.” 71 The
reader will note the similarity in the depictions o f French Communards and
Salvadoran insurgents.
The repetitive description o f insurgents as vandalic hordes by itself did
not justify the indiscriminate slaughter o f civilians, but one newspaper
editorial came close to such a justification: “The violent and unjustified
aggression has been met with the energy and harshness that the circum­
stances demanded; the red terror that tried to impose the enemies o f the
law has been met with the terror that must always be instilled in bandits
through a just and severe punishment.” 72 Here the equivalence o f “ terror”
and “ a just and severe punishment” suggests that the military limited its use
o f terror to those who deserved it. The term “ terror” in reference to state
actions never reappeared in officialist statements. The notion that “just and
severe” punishment referred to the execution o f “ communists” was wide­ 237
spread inside and outside the country.
The military repression “ o f great severity” —namely the mass execution
o f “ communists” —fell within the international boundaries o f acceptable "They
action on the part o f a government faced with lower-class rebellion. The Killed
fear and hatred o f the lower classes, combined with a transformation o f the
Just
mentalities wrought by the First World War, conditioned an “ inurement to
for the
violent death and an indifference to human life.” 73 Commenting on the Sinners"
markedly limited protests against the Armenian massacre, Traverso argues
that “ Europe had become accustomed to massacre.” 74 Hysteria against Bol­
shevism only increased tolerance for slaughter. Thus Martinez’s regime
suffered no condemnation from European or American governments.75 Un­
doubtedly the foreign coffee growers and merchants in El Salvador who en­
thusiastically backed the regime’s repression influenced the United States
and Great Britain. D. Rogers, the British charge d’affaires in El Salvador,
was in fact a coffee planter. According to a report by the U.S. government in
March 1932, “The British move to recognize President Martinez was se­
riously considered after his speedy suppression o f the January revolution. . .
[he] suppressed the revolt within two or three days and the British were
impressed by the way he handled the situation.” 76 According to a report in
the Neur York Times based in part on a conversation with the U.S. ambassador
in El Salvador, Rogers had publicly suggested the need to recognize the
regime “ because o f admiration for the way the Martinez regime suppressed
the recent Communist outbreak . . . Other diplomats there and the foreign
colony generally share that view and officials here [in Washington] have
great sympathy with it.” 77 There were no governmental denunciations o f
human rights violations apart from the u s s r . Moreover, the Communist
International, outside Mexico, made little effort to protest the killings in
El Salvador.78 To the extent that its organs devoted space to El Salvador,
the Comintern-allied press lambasted the decimated pcs for its sectarian,
putschist, and ultra-leftist failings.79
With the international community supportive, the left annihilated, and
the Salvadoran élite and middle-class sectors “ owing a debt o f immeasur­
able gratitude” to General Martinez, the regime was able to build upon the
counterrevolutionary narrative in a way that effectively shaped the memories
 o f the traumatized survivors o f the massacres in western Salvador. The most
striking transformation in the officialist narrative referred to the “ inno­
23 8 cents” who died. Positing an indio encañado as the blind and ignorant sub­
ject o f the insurrection laid the discursive groundwork on which the notion
o f “ innocent” Indians and their demise developed. “ Indigenous innocence”
"They allowed the regime to attempt to forge political links with the survivors
Killed despite the atrocities it had committed. Within weeks Martinez dispatched
the his propagandists to the region and circulated pamphlets such as “ La Ver­
Just
dad Sobre el Comunismo” (twenty thousand copies) and “ Hermano Cam­
for the
Sinners" pesino No Seas Comunista” (three thousand copies).80
The government’s story emerged along the following lines. First, the
previous regimes had failed to meet the needs o f the people, setting the
stage for communist infiltration. The military immediately developed an
explanation o f the revolt that blamed previous governments and absolved
the military itself from a decisive role in the massacre: “ The history would
have been very different i f those in power had been inclined to listen to the
just demands.” 81 Second, the communists fooled the poor and ignorant
Indians into fighting for something hopeless. Once the regime cast appro­
priate blame on past politicians and on the communists, and remade the
Indians as innocents, the next dimension o f the discourse could emerge,
one that resonated and probably shaped emerging local memories whose
condensation was expressed in the refrain: murieron justos por pecadores. Not
only did this statement absolve many o f the dead Indians from guilt, it also
formed the organizing principle o f the narrative that suppressed any notion
o f indigenous agency in the insurrection. The terrifying experience o f wit­
nessing the execution o f loved ones and the fear caused by decades of
military rule were the primary causes o f the suppression o f indigenous
agency. Equally important was the power o f military discourse that also
managed, by turning assassinated Indians into innocents, to neutralize its
own guilt.
There was o f course no way to entirely stamp out the survivors’ subver­
sive memories o f the bloody encaño perpetrated by the military and con­
densed by many with a variation o f the phrase: ofrecieron una contraseña y la
co n traseñ a f u e balas (they offered a password and the password was bullets).
Yet within a few years, pro-regime politicians had at the very least added
flesh to the image o f the indio encañado, which may have mitigated the effect
o f the memory o f the massacres in Nahuizalco and in El Canelo. The new
version built on the innocence o f Indians with a pithy aphorism that echoed
the subversive one: “ they offered them money, land, and even houses . . .
the house was the cemetery.” 82 This comment passed into survivors’ memo­ 23 9
ries. Ramón Esquina, a nine-year-old in 1932, synthesized the causal re­
lationship between the mobilization and the massacres in the following
terms: “ They promised them nice little white houses; the white wall was the "They
tombstone.” 83 Killed
Regime discourse continued to play on the idea o f Indian innocence. In the
Just
1935 the regime, facing a putative communist threat, issued a proclamation
for the
admitting that innocents had died in 1932 yet still exonerating the military:
Sinners"
“ Still fresh in the minds o f Salvadorans is the vision o f the sad tragedy to
which the crowds were dragged not long ago, instigated by those who
infected their hearts with the grim sentiments o f hate and impiety. And it is
enough to ask, how many were the innocent and how many the guilty?. . .
The leaders, with the arrival o f the hour of responsibility, hide the hand that
threw the stone and abandon them to their own fates.” 84
The popular, condensed explanation o f the massacre, “ the just died for
the sinners,” echoed this official rhetorical question, “ How many were
innocent and how many were guilty?” Under military rule such phrases
became the common sense o f survivors, and with their repeated utterance,
the events o f January 1932—the elections, the strikes, the insurrection, and
the killing fields—disappeared beneath the scars o f memory.
 Chapter Eight

Memories o f La Matanza: The Political

and Cultural Consequences o f 1932

My father was having breakfast when the armed forces came and, just like that, they took him.
They didn't even want to see a dog come out alive. . . There were 30 dead by the river. I was so
afraid that my body swelled up.— Maria Antonia Perez, El Canelo

Everyone was running and hiding. The soldiers just opened fire on the huts.
— José Arnulfo Lima, El Tortuguero, Ahuachapán

I was coming back with my father from the fields and a group of National Guard stopped us.
They couldn't find his name on their lists, but they beat him anyway, right in front of my eyes.
— Vicente Flores, Jayaque

I was fourteen years old and I had to flee too. They didn't ask for any declarations from anyone.
Whoever they saw, they shot.— Antonio Valiente, Turin

A poor old señor was working when they decapitated him alive, and his body still stood upright
about ten minutes or a little longer, until it collapsed . . . They looked for people the way you
hunt an animal.— Alejandro Pérez Ortiz, El Carrizal

T
he massacres o f 1932 had devastating long-term political
and social consequences for the entire country. Until the
peace accords o f 1992, Miguel Mármol’s comment in the
mid-1960s that “ El Salvador is . . . the creation o f that
barbarism” 1 accurately reflected the political legacy o f i 932:
an enormous concentration o f wealth and power in the
hands o f the agrarian élite, who evinced a mixture o f scorn
and fear o f the rural poor, and depended upon a brutally
repressive regime to remain in power.
 The political and cultural effects o f Z932 on the survivors and subsequent
generations are far less obvious. For decades there was a consensus among
scholars and activists about the consequences o f La Matanza: the killings 241
directly produced the annihilation o f indigenous culture by repressing the
Nahuatl-Pipil language and indigenous dress. Moreover, a culture o f fear
and dependence emerged in the western communities, whose principal Memories
effect was political passivity. Although there is ample evidence to support of
these propositions, this chapter seeks to significantly modify and con­ the
Massacre
textualize them. We argue that the transformation o f indigenous culture,
especially the loss o f ethnic emblems, was a complex, often endogenous
process, which began decades before Z932 and continued well into the
1970s. We will also argue that the generation o f the 1970s, the first with
access to secondary education, directly contributed to the disintegration o f
indigenous cultural forms, especially language and dress. This generational
challenge arose even as there was greater horizontal contact with ladinos,
contributing to a new wave o f cross-ethnic mobilization. In 1980 the state,
as in 1932, responded with brutality. Until recently the memories o f the
^ 8 0 massacres have also been silenced.

General Martinez's Regime

After La Matanza General Martinez’s regime took several bold steps that
alleviated the most drastic effects o f the economic crisis and allowed him to
consolidate some popular support outside his base in the urban middle
class and the élite. First, on 29 February Z932 the regime suspended pay­
ment on its foreign debt. This measure allowed it to suspend the coffee
export tax, which contributed to the coffee economy’s ability to maintain
or reinitiate productive activities and thereby generate employment. On
12 March the regime declared a retroactive moratorium on debts, which
rescued thousands o f small and medium producers from foreclosure and
loss o f their lands.
In r933 the regime created the Junta Nacional de Defensa Social, which
made very modest efforts toward redistributing land and constructing hous­
ing for the poor. In ten years the regime constructed only 253 houses and
distributed lots amounting to 29,000 manzanas.2 Despite the limited thrust
o f these measures and a tax reform, Martinez earned the enmity o f some
sectors o f the oligarchy as a result o f his concessions to the poor.3 Yet
Martinez prevailed despite oligarchic dissent, primarily because he carried
 out all these initiatives while basking in a nationalist glow, as his stance
against the United States policy o f nonrecognition attracted the admiration
242 o f even progressive intellectuals in Central America. Martinez thus rapidly
consolidated support among most sectors o f society. Perhaps most remark­
ably, he began to forge a base among the indigenous communities. In the
Memories months following La Matanza the military regime provided food for the
of survivors and protected them against the vengeance o f local ladinos. In
the Izalco an incipient military-Indian political alliance developed shortly after
Massacre
the massacres.4 Pro-Indian policies included special schools for orphans of
the massacre, support for Indians in land and water disputes, and official
recognition o f the civil and religious hierarchy that local ladinos attempted
to abolish.5 Lieutenant Alfonso Muñoz, who became the head o f one o f the
schools for orphans, attempted to intervene on the side o f the Indians,
denouncing how much they were charged for electricity when they had no
access to it, and in fact were “ charged with more insistence than were the
ladinos.” In his own words, he strove to “ reach a state o f harmony between
the naturales and the ladinos o f these regions.” 6
It is within the framework o f this military-Indian alliance that we must
attempt to understand the cultural consequences o f 1932. It exerted a strong
influence in survivors’ memories, and many elderly indigenous people in
Izalco and elsewhere have favorable recollections o f Martinez’s regime.7
Some pro-military stories circulated even before the massacres, such as
ones about Martinez’s indigenous origins and his sympathies for the pre­
insurrection labor struggles. A typical account suggested that Martinez
wanted the rural poor to engage in nonviolent protests so that he could use
their mobilization as a political weapon against the oligarchy.8 Others sug­
gested that he personally was not to blame for La Matanza. The pro-Indian
actions following the massacres gave additional credence to such stories.
The fruits o f this alliance became visible in 1944. In April a democratic
movement emerged among students, junior officers, professionals, and
urban workers. Although the military rebellion o f April failed, a h u elg a de
brazo s ca íd os in May led to the ouster o f Martinez. The next months were
a period o f relative freedom o f expression and political activity, on which
the remnants o f the working-class left and the democratic reformist stu­
dents capitalized. Under the leadership o f Dr. Arturo Romero, this alliance
seemed assured o f winning the elections scheduled for January 1945. Yet
just as the Guatemalan democratic revolution triumphed in October, the
Martinista wing o f the military staged a successful coup d’etat, immedi­
ately instituting a state o f siege. The Romerista coalition then organized
to overthrow the new military junta. Over five hundred o f Romero’s back­ 243
ers, mainly students, launched an invasion from Guatemala that was over­
whelmingly defeated in Ahuachapán.9
Although the people o f Izalco and Nahuizalco did not participate in Memories
military actions, allegiances divided sharply along ethnic lines.10 The indig­ of
enous people sided with the officialist candidate and also promised to seek the
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vengeance for 1932 against those who supported the progressive democrat
Romero. Indians in both towns wielded arms and threatened ladinos. Angel
Olivares, ofNahuizalco, recalls Indians reminding ladinos o f 1932 and then
warning, “ Now we’ll see!” 11 Indigenous support for a rightist military fig­
ure paralleled the situation in Guatemala at the same time, when many
indigenous people supported Ponce against the democratic revolution. This
seemingly anomalous support for right-wing authoritarians whose hands
were soaked in indigenous blood can only be understood in the context o f a
deep divide in the political culture o f the two countries, dramatically exacer­
bated in Salvador by the legacy o f 1932. In Salvador indigenous support
mobilized for the military regime against a ladino-dominated democratic
coalition marked perhaps the only significant indigenous political mobili­
zation until the 1970s, an anomaly amid a political culture o f fear.

Experience of Terror and the Absence of Mourning

The epigraphs at the beginning o f this chapter are among numerous testi­
monies o f eyewitnesses who recalled the sensation o f overwhelming fear in
1932. On a more prosaic level, there were other symptoms o f fear and
trauma. Lieutenant Muñoz commented that the women who came to see
him from Nahuizalco in October 1932 had a “ terrible fear o f authority.” 12
The granddaughter o f a survivor recalled that her grandmother would shout
every time children would pop the plastic bags used as liquid containers.13
Other informants describe the affect-less relations between parents (espe­
cially males) and their children. In video interviews, survivors themselves
exhibit little expression or affect in their voices and faces. Others related
that they felt fear whenever they saw soldiers on patrol. An ethnographic
study carried out during the 1970s found that people in Sónzacate were still
afraid even to walk by the municipal building.14 Another informant de-
 scribed how a female survivor died o f “ affliction.” 15 Military power certainly
forms part o f the explanation for the widespread adoption o f a narrative
244 that suppressed indigenous agency. Yet this experience o f terror also af­
fected the way informants remembered or could not remember specific
events related to the insurrection and massacre.
Memories There was little chance for individual or collective mourning, a funda­
of mental step in any healing process. On the most basic level this was because
the many people simply did not know where their loved ones lay—they could
Massacre
neither be buried nor mourned. On 5 February 1932 El Diario de El Salvador
reported: “At the moment in the department o f Sonsonate, and in many
places in Ahuachapán and some in Santa Ana, pork meat has become so
discredited that it has almost no value . . . All o f this is the consequence of
pigs eating in great quantities the flesh o f corpses that have been left in the
fields.” 16 Further evidence o f this macabre phenomenon comes from sev­
eral informants who recall that it was a long time before local folks would
eat pork again.17
In addition to the lack o f knowledge about the whereabouts o f the corpses
some informants claim that fear o f repression blocked the possibility of
proper mourning. The granddaughter o f a survivor stated: “The mourners
were afraid to have a wake for fear o f the authorities.” 18 Only in extremely
rare cases could mourners practice the novena, the most critical rite in the
Catholic mourning process, held on the ninth day following a death. An ac­
count based on ethnographic research in the late 1920s related a practice
from a previous generation: “The deceased stays in the tomb for nine days,
without being covered with earth until the people have demonstrated their
love by night and by day. . . Once this display o f love has come to an end, then
it is covered with earth.15 During the 1950s Richard Adams found that in In­
dian and ladino villages o f El Salvador the practice o f the novena, still a fun­
damental mourning ritual, involved eight days o f familial prayer and a public
gathering o f prayer and refreshment on the ninth.20 In 1932 there was no
possibility o f performing novenas for the victims. At some mass grave sites,
however, widows did place crosses and left flowers annually. In El Carrizal in
particular they maintained three “ clandestine” grave sites. One informant
recalled, “ When they had been dead for one year, the mourners would go to
see them; they would adorn the tombs, they would fix them up and fill them
with flowers. When the mourners started to die, all the enfloradas began to
disappear. Now you can’t even see the tombs that were right here.” 21
 The informants’ narratives suggest the tenuous nature o f generational
transmission o f memory and mourning; the practice o f veneration did not
survive the widows o f the victims. Rosario Lué o f Nahuizalco observed, 245
“ When the children grew up we stopped leaving flowers. ” 22 It is unclear why
that practice ceased and why the crosses were not maintained. Some infor­
mants suggest that they were dissuaded from continuing to leave flowers at Memories
the mass graves because o f a lack o f assurance that their loved ones were of
actually buried at the site.23 Another suggested that the privatization o f land the
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prevented the preservation o f the clandestine cemeteries. One informant
offered an economic explanation for an inability to mourn: “ We couldn’t
[venerate my father properly] because in order to pray properly you have to
buy coffee, bread, candles and prepare everything for the r e z a d o r a s . . . in the
case o f my father there was nothing, but in some other homes they men­
tioned him [in their prayers] but in my own home he was forgotten.” 24
Even those who could mourn their loved ones privately had no social
framework in which to mitigate grief. The inability to mourn deaths o f
loved ones was probably akin to that experienced in the U SSR during the
great purges o f the late 1930s. As the historian Catherine Merridale writes,
“Personal grief had no wider framework, no mirror in which to observe
itself gradually diminishing. In this sense, the official denial o f loss com­
pounded initial acts o f state violence . . . The social recognition o f violent
death is a crucial stage in the process by which the bereaved come to terms
with loss individually and as members o f society as a whole.” 25
There was no form o f social recognition in El Salvador, much less the
development o f a coherent narrative o f events that would allow for recovery,
that is, “ the conversion o f traumatic into narrative memory.” As Elizabeth
Snyder Hook writes, summarizing a generation o f trauma scholarship,
“ Research o f the last several decades reveals that the negative repercussions
o f trauma are compounded by the fact that, often, the survivor is rendered
incapable o f communicating his or her experience to others. The atrocities
suffered are so painful, so overwhelming, that the victim’s only means o f
psychic survival is to banish all memories o f the event from the realm o f
discourse, in effect to equate silence with an absence o f suffering.. . . Yet it
is this very dismissal o f trauma, and the resulting absence o f any testimony
to one’s experience that blocks the victims’ path to recovery.” 26
We have neither the empirical evidence nor the methodological tools to
posit traumatized memories as a key causal explanation o f the long term so-
 cial and cultural transformations wrought by the massacres o f 1932.27 Nev­
ertheless it behooves us intellectually and morally to recognize the proba­
246 bility that the survivors’ witness o f atrocity and experience o f fear did scar
them, and that their inability to mourn publicly impeded their ability to heal
themselves. To alleviate the continuing pain inflicted by trauma, survivors
Memories living under military rule had little alternative but to silence the memories
of and avoid any effort to give meaning to the deaths o f their loved ones.
the The immediate impact o f military power and discourse after 1932 strongly
Massacre
conditioned the suppression o f indigenous agency among the terrorized
population. As we have argued, there are glaring discrepancies between the
documentary evidence o f mobilization, repression, and insurrection and
survivors’ memories, which completely suppress indigenous agency in the
insurrection. At times informants categorized the massacres as the work of
“ communists,” or more frequently o f el comunismo. Ramón Esquina, an
indigenous campesino from a canton o f Nahuizalco, offered one o f nu­
merous examples o f this suppression o f indigenous agency in memories of
the insurrection: “A señor from Juayúa arrived with a mule. He was in con­
tact with some people from Turin, who appeared at around five in the
afternoon. You would see truckloads o f guardias in the surrounding areas
and the movements o f these groups before the looting. The town o f Nahui­
zalco was unjustly labeled communist by the authorities, on account of
these people who came from Turin.” 28 An informant from the canton o f El
Carrizal offered a similar testimony:

And those people from Turin decided to come to steal here in Nahuizalco; they
committed the robbery and they burned down the Alcaldía, and they took all the
loot from Nahuizalco and the hacienda. Then they didn’t say it was the people
from Turin anymore, but they blamed the people from Carrizal instead .29

These informants emphasize the agency o f non-Indians from Turin in the

revolutionary takeover o f Nahuizalco. Similarly, indigenous survivors from
Izalco and Nahuizalco consistently blamed ladinos for insurrectionary ac­
tion and exculpated Indians from any participation.
Charles R. Hale’s recent work on Guatemala is instructive in its exami­
nation o f radical changes in military strategy and the development o f a
military-inflected discourse about the repression. After depicting the geno-
cidal thrust o f the army’s initial campaign in Chimaltenango, he writes: “ By
mid-1982, it had begun to follow a different logic. The army sought not to
eliminate but to control the indigenous population, not even to eliminate
the material bases o f indigenous culture, but rather, to reshape it, with the
utmost violence if necessary . . . affirming a space to be Indian within the
constraints imposed by a fiercely militarized disciplinary state . . . repres­ 24 7
sion provided a terrifying incentive to live within these constraints, while
also advancing the perverse conclusion that dissenters were to blame for
their own demise.” 30 Military victory in Guatemala, as in El Salvador in Memories
1932, conditioned the emergence o f a narrative framework for understand­ of
ing the repression. In Guatemala the dos demonios narrative emerged that the
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posited a largely innocent indigenous population caught between two la­
dino military forces, “ equally self-interested and brutal, both victimizers o f
civilians caught haplessly between.” Although there is no direct analogue in
El Salvador, the military-inflected narrative also emphasized the notion o f
innocence, extending it to include the Indian dead and survivors and even,
in a sense, the troops. We earlier stressed how the phrase “ they killed the
just for the sinners” condensed fundamental understandings o f the conse­
quences o f the massacre.31 On the one hand it suggested the innocence o f
the indigenous victims, and on the other it created confusion about agents
and victims. According to indigenous informants, the revolutionaries were
always “ others,” for example mulattoes from Turin and Atiquizaya. The
death o f innocents clouds the salient questions o f who did what to whom
and why. At the very least, with the fatal construction indio = comunista
radically broken, the onus o f the guilt could be placed on communist trick­
ery. In this version the military were trapped into killing the wrong people.
The discursive creation o f indigenous innocence in the insurrection, play­
ing on a traditional theme, was largely successful at the cost o f suppressing
indigenous agency from the narratives o f mobilization and insurrection.
The suppression rendered the narrative o f the insurrection incoherent, al­
lowing for the military version to infiltrate local memories.
Brandt Peterson, drawing upon the work o f Suárez-Orozco, discusses a
three-part psychocultural response to terror: “ denial, rationalization, and
internalization-elaboration.” Although power and propaganda often pro­
mote a denial that an event has taken place, denial can have varied political
motivations and effects. More significantly, the response o f “ rationaliza­
tion” was widespread among survivors, in particular the contradictory idea
that those involved in an activity would be executed and yet that the exe­
cutions were arbitrary. Peterson draws a fascinating conclusion about ra­
tionalization in the context o f El Salvador post-1932 from his reading o f
Suárez-Orozco: “ The point in these rationalizations is the contradiction
 between knowing that the killing itself is or was irrational and that one
could never assure her safety on the one hand, and the insistence that any
248 behavior that might appear political must be avoided on the other. In spite
o f the acknowledgement that people who were not involved in political
activities, people who were ‘innocent’ by any measure, were none the less
Memories killed, a kind o f irrational rationalization is formed that insists that there is
of a way to insure one’s safety despite the clear evidence that no one is safe in
the the end. Thus niña Menche says that they killed everyone even though ‘there
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were lots who were not involved.’ That is why, she explains, she always told
her children to stay away from politics and organizations.” 32 This kind of
“ convoluted rationalization” formed an integral component o f the ubiqui­
tous trope o f “ mataron los justos por los pecadores.” For Peterson this kind
o f rationalization resides in “ an ultimately impossible effort to attribute
linear reason to the traumatic experience.33
In view o f the power o f the military narrative, the suppression o f indige­
nous agency, and the “ rationalization effect,” it is remarkable that there
is so much clarity and unanimity in the memories o f the El Canelo and
Nahuizalco killings. Tentatively we could argue that the collective nature of
this memory derives from the unambiguous moral position o f the mur­
dered Nahuizalqueños and the evil o f the perpetrators. Both those killed in
the canton o f El Canelo and those executed while awaiting their boleto de
identidad were innocent victims who had not been implicated in el robo and
were divorced from el comunismo. Indeed the three weeks that separated the
uprising from the last round o f killing may have removed not only the
victims but also the military and élite perpetrators from the more ambigu­
ous categories o f actors involved in the mobilization and the immediate
repression. In other words, rather than communists, looters, and ladinos,
the relevant categories became deceitful landlords, the military, and inno­
cent indigenous workers.34 In Nahuizalco the suppression o f indigenous
agency therefore did not impede survivors from identifying local sources of
evil, thus subverting the official discourse.

Magic and Miracles

Religion, magic, and martyrdom formed another realm that was immune
from official discourse. Rural people lived in worlds imbued with religiosity
and magic and often cast the narratives o f repression and survival in re-
ligious frames. To cite a common example, many survivors remembered
that the killing lasted for forty days and nights, recalling the biblical period
o f penance. 249
Indians practiced an intimate form o f saint worship. An ethnographer in
the mid-1970s reported that “ regarding the devotion for the saints . . .
among the ‘naturales’ they are considered representatives o f the divine, but Memories
they attribute to them very human needs and passions. The saints eat, sleep, of
get dressed, get angry, pray, suffer, etc. Altars dedicated to a particular saint the
Massacre
are to be found in every house.” 35 Indians and others mobilized the support
o f their saints in defense against the repression in 1932. As we saw earlier,
saintly apparitions saved entire villages from harm. In Santo Domingo de
Guzmán, an informant related the kernel o f the village’s social memory o f
1932. As a large group o f armed men approached Santo Domingo,

A man with long white hair appeared. “Where are you going?” They couldn’t
shoot him. “ We are going into that town. We are going to finish o ff that pueblo
there.” They couldn’t shoot him.
“ You must go,” said the man with the long white hair. He defended the
pueblo .36

Saints saved collectivities, in Santo Domingo and elsewhere, from the

revolutionary insurgents. In Tepecoyo the patron saint, San Esteban, ap­
peared on an unusually large white horse and halted the advancing insur­
rectionary forces. A man on a large white horse also appeared in Nahuilingo
(near Sonsonate) to halt the revolutionary advance on Sonsonate. In March
1932 the archbishop o f San Salvador offered up the apocalyptic image o f a
caballo rojo as a key symbol in its anti-insurgent discourse.37 Although we
cannot with assurance ascribe the white horse to an apocalyptic imaginary
rooted in the Bible, its function as a defender against communism does
suggest its compatibility with the emerging military discourse.
Unlike stories o f collective salvation, divine intervention saved individ­
uals from the military and not from the insurgents. Consider the case o f an
indigenous artisan o f El Carrizal: “ It was the custom o f Lázaro Patricio to
appear in the performances during the fiestas o f San Juan every year. It was
around that time, he says, when he was coming back home from rehears­
ing, that around the Finca Las Flores they caught him and took him back to
the cemetery. Then they gathered together a lot o f people and the soldiers
made a long grave. At the end they made them line up and they killed them.
 And then it was that señor Lázaro, because he had great faith in the patron
San Juan Bautista, the patron here in Nahuizalco, he begged San Juan.
250 Lázaro was already on the edge o f the grave, but in that instant that he
prayed to San Juan, he was suddenly removed from the grave. Before he
knew it, he was coming back from there and he says that when he passed
Memories the Finca las Flores, he could hear the sound o f bullets that killed all the
of others.” 38 Saints sometimes did intervene on the side o f revolutionary left­
the ists (Lázaro apparently was an s r i sympathizer). In another case Manuel
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Murillo, the union and s r i organizer in Jayaque, used the Niño de Atocha to
protect himself from the repression. Murillo held an image o f the Niño de
Atocha, the patron saint o f prisoners and pilgrims, for ninety days. When
he emerged from his state o f hiding, the authorities did not arrest him.39
Every year subsequently he would celebrate a mass in honor o f the Niño de
Atocha.
Cuisnahuat had been a center o f radical activity, and at least one hundred
o f its inhabitants participated in the attack on the barracks at Sonsonate. At
some point shortly after the insurrection, authorities arrested the local
leader Martin Bermudez and locked him up in the Sonsonate jail. His wife
prayed for three days in church to the patron saint o f Cuisnahuat, San
Lucas. Bermudez then appeared back in town explaining that he had es­
caped from prison.40
Non-Christian forms o f magic also played a pivotal role in narratives.
Informants today remember how magic permeated rural life. Miguel Ur­
bina o f Ceiba del Charco, Izalco, said there was an espíritu de brujos.41 An
indigenous informant from Pushtan, Nahuizalco, commented that those
who survived had to learn “ the bad things to defend themselves from the
military.”42 Andrés Pérez o f Pushtan counterposes magic today with earlier
forms: “My father had an uncle named José María Hernández. He practiced
witchcraft; he was a ‘brujo.’ But he wasn’t just a brujo; today a lot o f people
call themselves brujo.” 43
The magical and religious dimension o f life was important to most
sectors in society, before and after the Matanza, and there was no clear
bifurcation between modern and traditional sectors, s r i members studied
omens as others might study revolutionary texts.44 Years after the defeat
Doroteo Lopez recalled that an Izalqueño indigenous comrade at a pcs
meeting in the mid-ig30s offered to demonstrate to his fellow cell members
that magic did not involve a “ pact with the devil,” saying that “ it is a natural
thing that has nothing to do with the Satanic.” 45 That magic is still a potent
force in an otherwise thoroughly modern society challenges any facile rele­
gation o f this realm to the tradition-bound past. Then as now, brujos and 25x
brujas generally exercised their powers for good or evil in personal matters
o f love, envy, and revenge and rarely in matters o f social consequence.
Yet in moments o f severe crisis, people not surprisingly employed magi­ Memories
cal powers to try to elude death. Various accounts relate that insurgents of
about to be executed transformed themselves into animals.46 An informant the
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in El Carrizal recalled: “The grandfather o f my wife, Candelaria Reyes, told
us that the troops arrived at the home o f a señor whose name I don’t
remember. But when the troops arrived, that person was not there: he had
turned into a bunch o f bananas.” 47 Others survived by turning into mon­
keys; except when there was a crisis, such a conversion was a sign o f evil.
Andres Perez’s father recounted what happened when he went to visit
his uncle, the tío mago mentioned above: “ I went to ask my uncle three days
before the killing—what’s going to happen? He said to me yes, and the
spirit let out a laugh. Three days later they killed him.”48 For the narrator,
Pérez’s father, the spirit’s mocking laughter and the subsequent demise o f
his uncle proved the weakness o f his magical powers and the irrelevance o f
magic. Yet for many others, the overwhelming power and the terror in­
flicted on a defenseless population strongly influenced understandings o f
how people had survived. People hid out for weeks in holes in the ground,
breathing through reeds. Others hid for weeks in the rocky, cave-like region
of Los Teshcales near San Isidro. Many hid in trees. From any perspective
their survival was miraculous.
Magical survival at times related to Christian themes. In one striking
account, troops fired three volleys against an insurgent. After each volley
the rebel arose again. Similar miracles were recounted in Izalco, Colón, and
Sacacoyo. In Sacacoyo informants recall that when troops tried to execute a
local insurgent, Lucio Linares, in front o f the church, “ they shot him and
then he got up again. They shot him again, and he arose again. Then they
took him to Armenia, where they shot him again and again he arose. Finally
they burned him and buried him alive.” 49 In addition to the resurrection
theme, rising from death three times resonates with Christ’s three state­
ments on the cross. Informants in three sites related very similar versions o f
this resurrection, suggesting an important motif, a submerged and subver­
sive attribution o f saintly qualities to the revolutionaries. These tales o f
 religious faith, magic, and heroism are all about individuals; divine inter­
vention in favor o f collectivities was always against the insurrectionary
252 forces. The interventions served to ennoble the victims o f the massacre but
did little to restore any form o f agency to indigenous participants in the
movement.
Memories The magico-religious dimension o f rural western Salvadoran life is an
of important area o f research for historians and anthropologists. One o f the
the major thrusts o f the ig le sia popular was to counter “ magical consciousness.”
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Progressive priests defined this as consciousness that “ fatalistically appeals
to magical explanations and finds in a distorted vision o f God explanations
for the irreversibility o f such situations . . . As the difference between the
socio-cultural world and the natural world becomes obscured, the individ­
ual forgets that this world has been and is co-produced by himself, by
his work, and by his passivity, allowing for the development o f fatalistic
attitudes.” 50
Although the liberation theology conception o f magical consciousness is
not entirely congruent with the pattern o f supernatural belief that character­
ized much o f the Salvadoran countryside, it does point to an interesting
problem. As other scholars have argued, the iglesia popular grew out of
Catholic Action, one o f whose primary goals was to extirpate popular re­
ligiosity from the practices and ideas o f its parishioners and converts. As
the above descriptions o f magical consciousness suggest, for progressive
priests that goal remained essentially unchanged, since they viewed the
magical elements as inextricably tied to those o f passivity and resignation.
Some o f the testimony reproduced here offers, to the contrary, an alternative
view: magical or alternative religious perspectives do not necessarily directly
shape understandings o f the social world.

Violence and the Subordination of Indigenous Culture

There is no doubt that the events o f 1932 had an important impact on the
decline o f Nahuatl-Pipil in western Salvador, although not through the
prohibition suggested by contemporary indigenous and leftist militants.51
The demise o f the language has meant the loss o f at least some aspects o f a
worldview, namely those areas o f experience and communal lore that the
Spanish language could not express. Both Indians and non-Indians had
long regarded the language as the sine qua non o f indigenous identity. Thus
language loss accompanied a severe questioning o f the legitimacy o f indige­
nous identity by internal and external actors. In short, the demise o f Pipil as
a dominant idiom in western Salvador was not merely an aspect o f cultural 25 3
change, inevitable or not, but rather a catalyst o f it, both because o f its
intrinsic value as a vehicle o f cultural knowledge and expression and be­
cause o f its salience as an emblem o f authenticity. Memories
In chapter 4 we argued that Pipil usage was in rapid decline in many of
areas o f western Salvador before 1932; diere is no doubt drat the massacres the
Massacre
accelerated the pace. Oral and documentary sources, however, contradict
the lefdst and Indian activist view that governmental policies after La Ma­
tanza directiy caused the accelerated process o f mestizaje in the 1930s and
1940s, suggesting that the loss o f ethnic signs had primarily endogenous
causes. The possibility exists that bilingual speakers in particular associ­
ated the indigenous language with the killings and thus avoided speaking
it. There is some anecdotal evidence that people in Izalco were afraid to
speak the language immediately after the massacre. However, not only did
the Martinez regime refrain from prohibiting use o f the Nahuatl-Pipil lan­
guage, but at least one National Guard officer actively tried to revivify it.
Lieutenant Muñoz, the first director o f the Rafael Campo School for or­
phaned Indian children on the outskirts o f Izalco, stated in his inaugural
address in August 1932: “The taciturn heart disappears with familiar con­
versations . . . you enter into his true soul when you speak his language. We
have to revive it i f we want the labors o f the Escuela de Indígenas to be
effective.” 52 Muñoz then called for language training for the teachers o f
“ Rafael Campo,” where all instruction was to be offered in the indigenous
language. He even called for Nahuati instruction in all western Salvadoran
schools. There was not, in Salvador o f the early 1930s, an educational infra­
structure that would have permitted his plan to be realized. Yet Muñoz’s
position within the National Guard and his appointment as school director
do suggest that only a few months after the massacres the regime did not
have the ethnocidal intentions often imputed to it by militants.
The misunderstanding o f the historical record is o f course understand­
able given what seems to have been a concerted effort by the regime to cover
up all traces o f the events o f 1932 and the fear that the regime instilled in
those who might have written about the consequences o f the massacres. In
addition to the disappearance from national archives o f newspapers and
other documents related to those events, there are striking examples o f
 scholars and writers who published books and articles in the years, even
decades, following 1932 that dealt with contemporary western indigenous
254 communities and yet made no mention o f the massacres.53
Another significant source o f historical misunderstanding was a lack of
recognition that well before 1932 language loss had advanced significantly.
Memories By that year the number o f native speakers, including bilinguals, probably
of did not surpass 25,000 out o f a total national indigenous population of
the perhaps 300,000. As we noted in chapter 4, there was a correlation between
Massacre
language loss and the spread o f primary education. During the Martinez
regime many schools were built in indigenous cantons, and without doubt,
the education o f orphans and other children contributed to the declining
use o f Nahuate.54 Moreover, after La Matanza, with many adult males gone,
there were even fewer opportunities or incentives to speak or listen to the
indigenous language. As one informant stated, “At this time, most o f the
elderly folks spoke Nahuate. But since they killed the men, the women
didn’t teach it, since as women they didn’t hang out with us young folks. No
one in our canton has been interested in teaching us Nahuate.” 55 Although
this statement is hard to decipher, it does suggest that dominant gender
norms, especially regarding adult female and adolescent males, impeded
the recreation o f a bilingual linguistic community.
Bilingual speakers predominated in several cantons o f Nahuizalco and in
Barrio Asuncion o f Izalco during the 1920s. Nahuate was the dominant lan­
guage in the contiguous Nahuizalco cantons o f Anal, Pushtan, Tajcuilulaj,
and Sábana San Juan. Although village residents worked seasonally on
coffee plantations they were not colonos: their household economy was
largely based on subsistence economic activities (milpas and petate weav­
ing). In these cantons the events o f 1932 accelerated language loss, as
people were thrust into greater contact with ladinos as the spaces o f subsis­
tence economic activities closed down. When coffee plantation owners or
foremen came upon people speaking Nahuate,' they scolded them: “ hable
bien . . . no hable chapeado” (speak well, don’t speak all chopped up).56
Another informant recalled the admonition: “ Deje de hablar esas babo­
sadas!” (Stop speaking that foolishness!).57 Rosario Lué, o f Anal Abajo,
stated: “ No we didn’t speak Nahuate because it was impolite to speak it in
front o f outsiders. They could be offended.” 58
The “ outsiders” were by no means exclusively ladinos, as more and more
town-based Indians could not understand the language. Various elements

-
 255

María Antonia Pérez,

Memories
El Canelo. Courtesy
of
the
of the Museo de la
Palabra y la Imagen.
Massacre

seem to intermingle in the collective memory o f language loss. At the most

elemental level, in those cantons most affected by La Matanza, Nahuate had
become a language o f familial intimacy, and after 1932 that particular lin­
guistic community had become drastically reduced. The fear o f offending
people cut both ways. Ladinos and non-Nahuate-speaking Indians could
have taken offense at conversations they could not understand, and out­
siders scorned Nahuate speakers.59
Finally, bilingualism was not easy to maintain either individually or col­
lectively in a drastically reduced linguistic community, and people may have
seen little point in expending more energy in an exhausting life when the
payoffs seemed so paltry. There are numerous testimonies suggesting that
the generation o f children who survived the massacres had little interest in
learning or speaking the language. Maria Antonia Pérez, o f El Canelo,
recalls: “ My grandparents spoke to me in Nahuate. . . and so I learned it but
when I had to go to work I forgot it.60
Writing in 1935, Adolfo Herrera Vega, a local ladino educator who had
taught in Izalco for ten years, wrote (without any reference to the events of
1932), “ Over the last few years, Nahuat has suffered a sharp decline.” 61
Herrera Vega remarked on this phenomenon: “The most striking detail o f
this desire to forget the language is that most o f the young Indians do not
speak it and those who do are ashamed to speak it.” 62 It is difficult to assess
Herrera Vega’s account o f linguistic “ shame” in relationship to 1932, since
it was present as a linguistic factor before that year. Yet his account does
unintentionally reveal how the symbolic violence o f an educational institution,
designed to help Indian children, provoked a strong sense o f shame about
language.63 He writes, “The child arrives at school conditioned by the en-
 vironment in which he grew up; he speaks very little; answers all questions
with monosyllables, if at all. Almost always refuses to give his name . . . He
256 is habitually sad and taciturn.” 64
The school examined the students to determine their intellectual age.
One can only imagine the administration o f the Binet-Simon tests to these
Memories children, who scored extremely low. Despite Herrera Vega’s promotion of
of Pipil, symbolic violence riddled his own program for language instruction
the as he detailed the need to eliminate the children’s dialectal form o f Spanish,
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for example “ piegra, magre, pagre” (instead o f piedra, madre, padre).65The
irony o f imposing one language while wanting to save another is missed,
but the message is no less poignant as the educator explains the risk o f this
method: “The teacher has to avoid this danger: when the Indian begins to
learn Castellano, he becomes repulsed by his Pipil and considers it in­
ferior. . . . We should understand that the disappearance o f this dialect
would be a shame.” 66
The perceived need to teach standard Spanish by denigrating the indige­
nous Spanish dialect could only have created more shame about other
Indian linguistic and cultural forms. Elsewhere, Gould has touched on
different aspects o f the notion o f vergüenza as a form o f symbolic vio­
lence.67 In western Salvador, shame about Nahuate (or about how one spoke
Spanish) had a powerful impact well past the Matanza years. In Cuisnahuat
and Santo Domingo de Guzman, two municipalities outside the coffee
zone, Nahuate was the main language o f intimate communication for all
generations until the 1970s. The Army and National Guard had spared both
places in 1932. Linguistic change developed along lines quite different from
those in the massacre-ravaged areas in and around Nahuizalco and Izalco.
The first stage replicated the experience o f the rest o f the region: a younger
generation began to distance itself from the language as a result o f increas­
ing interaction with ladinos. Consider the testimony o f a Santo Domingo
resident: “ Well, I spoke Nahuate and later I learned to speak [in Spanish].
The patronos told me ‘speak well’ and so I had to learn how to speak like
they did, to speak Spanish rapidly. At that time, I did speak some Spanish
since all o f the young kids spoke it; when I went to work in Sonsonate I
couldn’t speak to people in Nahuate, only in Spanish. In the work environ­
ment, I hung out with kids and you couldn’t speak Nahuate . . . All o f them
spoke Spanish and had no interest in the other language.” 68 Despite the
radically different historical circumstances, this villager experienced lin-
guistic change very similarly to other former Nahuate speakers, albeit at a
different rhythm. More intense levels o f contact with Ladinos and in par­
ticular patrones pushed him toward increasing reliance on Spanish. 257
In the 1970s Nahuate continued as an underground idiom among some
families in the Nahuizalqueño cantons, and especially in Cuisnahuat and
Santo Domingo. Linguists and anthropologists were convinced that many Memories
families throughout the region spoke the indigenous language at home but of
denied knowledge to outsiders. The second stage o f language change, the the
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shame and scorn o f the younger generation, dealt a staggering blow to
Nahuate. It is difficult to estimate the number o f speakers in the cantons o f
Nahuizalco, but the linguist Lyle Campbell estimated that most adults in
Santo Domingo as well as some forty in Cuisnahuat spoke the language. Yet
those speakers were on the defensive. An ethnographer reported that in
Cuisnahuat during the 1970s many indigenous youths rejected and even
mocked the language o f their parents: “The young people no longer speak
Nahuate and they do not appreciate that their elders speak it. They think o f
it as a ‘bayuncada’ [silly] and they laugh at the Nahuat-speakers. They try to
erase everything that stigmatizes them as Indians.” 69
There are similar stories about d refajo, the other salient ethnic marker o f
the Salvadoran Indians. As with the indigenous language, scholars and
leftists have explained the disappearance o f this female garment (really its
decline) as a direct consequence o f La Matanza. According to that version,
racist repression drove women to wear ladino clothes. A few testimonies
from Izalco and from the coffee zone ofNahuizalco offer some evidence to
support that contention.70 Nevertheless, there is abundant documentary
and testimonial evidence that the most significant decline in the use o f el
refajo came at least two decades later. An article in National Geographic in
1944 offers visual and textual evidence that indigenous dress still predomi­
nated in the region: “Women dress in a wrap-around sarong type o f skirt
and loose blouse . . . Women o f even the more modernized villages cling
stubbornly to their sarong skirts. T will not put on a round skirt,’ they say,
speaking o f the conventional women’s dress.” 71
Indigenous women and men in El Salvador, as in the Nicaraguan high­
lands, offer several different explanations for the demise o f indigenous
garb. Most emphasize that the best fabric, imported from Guatemala at least
since the 1940s, eventually became more expensive than ladino clothes.
Others suggest that el refajo is not suitable for field or factory labor. One
 refajada claimed that her daughters did not want to wear it because it was
“ too hot.” 72 These arguments are contradicted by those who underscore
258 how much longer the garment lasts than ladino dress and note that indige­
nous women dressed in el refajo have always performed all manner o f field
and market labor. Regardless o f the validity o f the arguments, children
Memories subtly and not-so-subtly pressured their mothers to plegarse (change to
of ladino clothing).73 Women compelled their children to wear it, but by ado­
the lescence they gave up the losing battle with their daughters: “ I grew up that
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way, all o f us refajadas. But my daughters didn’t want to wear el refajo.”74
Interviews and documentary sources point to the effect o f formal pri­
mary and secondary education in leading children to pressure their mothers
to abandon their refajos; there is little doubt that the pressure derived from
a sense o f shame about their mothers’ dress.75 An informant in El Carrizal
relates, “Around the 1950s and 60s, all the women were refajadas. Refajo
use declined with more civilization and intellectual development. When a
son or daughter went to school or in meetings they were ashamed tljiat their
mothers wore refajos; there are still some around here who went through
that: they wore el refajo and then changed to dresses.” 76 Beyond rejecting a
symbol o f inferiority, it is likely that to a limited extent they had acquired
some o f the ladino prejudices about the “ filthy” and “ evil” nature of el
refajo. Ladinos considered the garment “ filthy” in both the ordinary and
sexual senses o f the word. Women supposedly did not wear what others
thought o f as undergarments with el refajo, thus offending ladino sensibili­
ties. Others believed that the garment itself was a source o f evil witchcraft.77
The cultural changes that took place in western El Salvador from 1940 to
1980 are unremarkable in the Latin American context. As has been shown in
analyses by Joanne Rappaport in Colombia, Marisol de la Cadena in Peru,
and Gould in Nicaragua, cultural mestizaje often occurs as a largely endoge­
nous process with a minimum degree o f coercion.78 What is unique about
the Salvadoran experience is that the decisive cultural changes took place
against the backdrop o f the massacres o f 1932. This violence at once condi­
tioned the emergence o f sharply unequal power relations but at the same
time provided a powerful trope that explained the cultural transformation as
a coercive process.
The new cultural power o f ladinos in turn conditioned what social psy­
chologists call chains o f shame and anger.79 Indigenous people felt shame,
for example, at speaking Nahuate in front o f ladinos and at the same time
despised those ladinos for making them feel that way. Ironically, where
indigenous people refused to submit to the scornful gaze o f ladinos, their
sons and daughters absorbed the embarrassment. Consequently, the pace 259
o f losing ethnic markers accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily
as they were rejected by a new generation that saw them as emblems o f
submission. Memories
of
the
Gender, Generation, and Mestizaje Massacre

Generational shame about language and el refajo by the 1970s had political
consequences, further dividing the surviving communities and eroding loy­
alty to emblems o f indigenous ethnicity. As we noted in chapter 4, in­
digenous patriarchy in its different manifestations played a critical role in
the development o f ethnic tensions before 1930. In particular, greater eco­
nomic contact with ladinos threatened indigenous male control over indig­
enous women, and the illegitimate and unrecognized offspring o f ladino-
indigenous unions deeply resented their fathers. After the events o f 1932 the
sexuality o f Salvadoran indigenous women continued to be an extremely
charged issue. First, hacendados, here as elsewhere, exerted their power sex­
ually. Salarrué, a ladino o f Sonsonate and a leading figure o f Salvadoran
letters, wrote the following in his novelistic rendition o f La Matanza, writ­
ten in 1933: “ Indian women still turn their heads when they see automobiles
pass them by . . . where according to them, go the enemies, the whites, the
ladinos, the damned, the ugly. But like before the battle, the Indian woman,
(impelled by a magnetic force o f pure necessity, now even greater) will
return to being the petatillo in the black market o f slavery; she will once
again allow herself to be possessed by the white and the mestizo.” 80 This
contemporaneous view o f a sympathetic ladino blames the “whites and
mestizos” for what the author suggests was a very widespread phenome­
non. Yet he also echoes a common ladino and indigenous perception that
the economic power o f los ricos turned the impoverished Indians into pe­
tatillos (literally, small grass sleeping mats). Herrera Vega, the Izalqueño
educator, also argued that there was widespread prostitution among indige­
nous women, particularly in Nahuizalco.31 Finally, an observer at the U.S.
embassy, commenting in 1933 upon a labor shortage in the coffee industry,
Wrote o f rural-to-urban migrants: “ The men prefer to become town ‘sheiks’
with a gaudy colored shirt in the evening and a casual job at a pittance less
 than farm labor,” while the women prefer to become “ ladies o f easy virtue
or become the unlawful wives o f the sheiks.” 82 In short, sympathetic ob­
2Ó 0 servers (like informants today) insinuated that misery compelled many In­
dian women to prostitute themselves.
The view from the cantons was different. Although there are some dis­
Memories crepancies in the memories o f informants about the role o f the military and
of the hacendados, several informants directly blame the hacendados for co­
the erced sex and for illegitimate births. Maria Antonia Perez, whose father was
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shot in El Canelo, argued that Gabino Mata abused widows: “ Gabino Mata
was fat and red-faced-very bad-tempered. He left many children o f poor
women. Any girl he happened to like, he just took. In Tajcuilullaj he left
many daughters. He brought about the matanza in order to keep for himself
the young women and the land.” 83 There is not enough evidence to verify
that landlords abused their female workers or servants in any significant
numbers after the massacres. There is even less testimonial evidence o f rape
on the part o f the military or political authorities at the time o f the mas­
sacres. But birth records show that in the years following 1932 the rate of
illegitimate births increased significantly.84
The products o f these unions, which Salarrué called descolorida (although
their color might have been pleasing to the mothers), carried a heavy emo­
tional load. Consider the following testimony o f a child born in Nahuizalco
in 1932: “ My grandmother was a servant for Gabino Mata. My mother used
to visit her at the hacienda. So then I was born. Three years later, my mother
died. Then my grandmother started to take me to the hacienda so Don
Gabino could get to know me. He embraced me and told me that I was his
child and he gave me his name. When I was ten years old, my grandmother
died and I was left alone. Then I was sent to Don Gabino’s hacienda to work
cutting trees. My father remembered me, you know. He embraced me, ‘My
son, my son!’ But I came there barefoot and I left barefoot.” 85 It does
not stretch the imagination to assume that those numerous children of
hacendado-indigenous sexual relations have been tormented by similar
memories (even without the intrusive probing o f academics) and that an­
guish over origins and identity has caused much shame and resentment, as
well as provided additional “ physical” evidence o f the eclipse o f the indige*
nous population.
The coming o f age o f those people born around 1932, regardless of
parentage, coincided with the decline in the more rigid forms o f indigenous
patriarchy. As in the highlands o f Nicaragua, the decline o f indigenous
patriarchy in Salvador is treated as a crucial moment in the loss o f indige­
nous identity. Some thirty or forty years ago, arranged marriages, a key 261
institution o f patriarchy and endogamy, began to die out. Not coinciden­
tally, the new generation o f the 1960s and 1970s pushed away the last
vestiges o f arranged marriage practices at the same time as young women Memories
rejected el refajo. of
The questioning o f traditional indigenous cultural forms became par­ the
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ticularly intense during the 1960s and 1970s. Beyond language and dress,
the youths contested their elders’ religious beliefs, as well as their deep
suspicion o f everything ladino. That questioning coincided with an awaken­
ing to the possibilities o f political and social change. An ethnographer in
the municipality o f Cuisnahuat, with a population o f 6,800 in 1971, identi­
fied the major political fault line in the community as being not between the
small ladino population and Indians but between generations: “ The most
important relational problems are evident between the more conservative
groups o f ‘naturales,’ who want to retain their customs, and those groups
who, on the contrary, accept foreign influences and wish to break with the
past.” 86 When the generational conflict erupted on the local political scene
in Cuisnahuat, the actors were not clearly identified with national political
forces, but a short time later some o f the youths did gravitate to the left.87

1980: The Return of Violent Repression

The cultural transformation within indigenous communities coincided

with the renewal o f social and political mobilization in the west. A leftist
message o f social and political change again came to the western towns
and villages, this time carried by a peasant organization sponsored by the
United States, radical priests, high school students, and young urban work­
ers. Although this wave o f mobilization during the late 1970s and 1980s
never approximated the levels attained in other regions o f the country, to
recognize it is nonetheless to challenge the generally accepted view o f wide­
spread political passivity in the west, the legacy o f 1932.
The generational struggle within the indigenous communities and the
concomitant intensification o f cultural mestizaje did not directly translate
into radicalization. Many indigenous youths participated neither in the cul­
tural change nor in the new movements. Others participated in the cultural
 shift with no political or social engagement. At the same time, the mobiliza­
tion affected nonindigenous areas (by the 1970s the large majority o f the
2Ó2 western population), where such cultural issues were irrelevant. Among the
non-Indians o f Ahuachapán and La Libertad memories o f the events o f 1932
had a much less pacifying influence on even the older generations. The
Memories events were at times posited more as an example o f a tradition o f struggle
of and hatred o f the military than as the imperative voiced in the cantones of
the Nahuizalco and elsewhere to “ never belong to an organization.” 88
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Throughout the 1970s student activists and unionized workers in the
western cities o f Santa Ana, Ahuachapán, and Sonsonate experienced pro­
cesses o f social and political protest like those experienced in San Salvador
and other cities, followed by repression and further radicalization. To cite
an important example, in January 1978 between six hundred and a thousand
workers went on strike at the Central Izalco, a major sugar mill between
Izalco and Sonsonate. The army intervened, crushed the strike, and im­
prisoned twenty-two union activists, some o f whom were executed after
their release.89
In Nahuizalco, Cuisnahuat, and Santo Domingo the cultural change did
allow for the circulation o f progressive ideas that previously would have
been silenced. Generational conflict also created the conditions in which
youths rejected their parents’ “ Indianness” —specifically, the surviving eth­
nic emblems—while still recognizing their own indigenous heritage. Like
the process that we uncovered in Nicaragua in the 1960s and in Jayaque in
the early 1930s, this form o f mestizaje was in some cases a precondition for
an alliance with the left.90
Yet we must not overstate the impact o f mestizaje in the west. Although
many youths rejected any form o f indigenous identity, during the 1980s an
indigenous organization, the Asociación Nacional Indígena Salvadoreña,
which promoted an agrarian reform and a culturalist agenda, appealed to
different sectors o f the population, including youth, a n ís (whose history
remains to be written) seems to have emerged from the Unión Comunal
Salvadoreño, an organization backed by u s a id and a if l d and the Chris­
tian Democratic Party. During the mid-1970s its primary function was to
obtain bank credits for smallholders and colonos. This peasant organiza­
tion established important bases o f support in the cantons o f Nahuizalco,
in Santo Domingo de Guzmán, and in the department o f Ahuachapán,
primarily among basic-grains producers. Despite its mild reformist inclina-
tions, the u c s was significant precisely because it represented one o f the
first alternatives to the Partido df Conciliación Nacional (the official party)
in the western countryside.91 By 1979 the military regime was targeting u cs 263

activists for repression. Informants cite the lack o f political or ideologi­

cal response by the group to repression as a key factor in explaining the
rapid transition from reformism to revolution among a relatively small Memories
group o f activists in western Salvador.92 Margarito Vásquez, o f Santo Do­ of
mingo de Guzman, offered an account o f this transformation: “Well, we the
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began to understand all o f this when we organized through the Unión
Comunal Salvadoreño. From there we started to get to know people from
other p laces.. . . So here we established a nucleus for communicating with
other groups . . . But later it withdrew [from the ucs] and it wasn’t referred
to under any name; I think they took it as a clandestine group. All the youth
would get together in hiding, clandestinely. This began in ’79. Many people
came, and various groups began to be organized. Some worked with one'
group, others with the other one. There were at least three groups. Later we
put things into practice.” 93 The principal difference between the radicaliza-
tion process in places like Santo Domingo and Nahuizalco and in the north­
ern and eastern parts o f the country was the complete absence o f a radical
peasant organization engaged in wage or land struggles.94 Although the
history o f the u c s has yet to be examined, apparently its limited agenda,
focused primarily on obtaining credits for cooperatives, attracted fewer
followers than did the more radical organizations in the other parts o f the
country, which developed mass followings before succumbing to state-
sponsored terrorist repression by 1980. Throughout the country, however,
the net result was the same for activists: the transition from legal, pacific
forms o f activity to support o f a violent revolutionary movement as a viable
route to withstanding the repression.95
There was less active support for the leftist alternative in the west than in
other parts o f the country. In 1980 in Santo Domingo de Guzman (popula­
tion under ten thousand), between fifty and a hundred people participated
in revolutionary organizations to some degree. In El Carrizal and El Canelo,
cantons o f Nahuizalco with a combined population o f less than three thou­
sand, some fifty to sixty youths joined communal organizations affiliated
with revolutionary groups. In Santa Ana, La Libertad, and Ahuachapán,
where unions made significant inroads in the coffee industry, more people
joined leftist organizations.
 On 15 October 1979 reformist elements in the military overthrew the
rightist military regime, the most repressive since Martinez. The civilian-
264 military regime that took over the reins o f government had a forceful re­
formist and democratizing agenda that offered tremendous hope to most
Salvadorans, including those identified with the left. But the regime proved
Memories unable to contain the paramilitary and military forces on the right, and
of some o f the guerrilla groups responded with violent resistance. On 22 Janu­
the ary 1980 an estimated 250,000 backers o f the revolutionary left took to the
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streets o f San Salvador in probably the largest demonstration in the coun­
try’s history. Soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators, killing twenty and
wounding two hundred. These killings o f unarmed protesters marked the
beginning o f a period o f unbridled violent repression that would claim over
eight thousand civilian lives over the next year.
At the moment o f the October coup, the leftist organizations in the west
were in the earliest stages o f development. Despite the far greater popular
impact o f mobilization in the early 1930s compared to that o f the late 1970s
and early 1980s, there is one key similarity: both were extremely compressed
in time. Whereas the earlier transition from union to revolutionary activity
took place over a two-year period (December 1929 to January 1932), for
most o f the rural activists in the department o f Sonsonate in 1980, a similar
transition o f political styles and loyalties was telescoped into a period of
months. In the cantons o f Nahuizalco, the first political experience that
some o f the youths had was with the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, a
semi-clandestine political and military organization that by 1981 would
form part o f the guerrilla front Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Na­
cional (f m l n ). In both the early 1930s and 1980 state violence was the
radicalizing factor that hastened the events. That said, it is not entirely clear
why the process started later in the west than in the rest o f the country.
Beyond suggesting that 1932 traumatized the population, scholars have
advanced structural arguments to explain the relative absence o f radical
activity. The boom in the coffee economy in the latter part o f the 1970s
translated into significant wage increases in the sector without the pressure
o f notable union activity. Whereas between 1971 and 1980 real minimum
wages declined in the sugar sector by 4 percent and increased in cotton by
only 3 percent, in coffee there was a 59 percent increase.96 With compelling
comparative evidence, Wickham-Crowley argues that the lowest levels of
radicalization would take place in those areas that have already experienced
proletarianization. A high proportion o f farmers to landless proletarians
would indicate an area in the process o f proletarianization and a likely
candidate for radical protest. The author thus explains the lack o f radical­ 265
ism in the western coffee-growing departments as a function o f their high
proportion o f agricultural workers to owners.97 Although these arguments
are compelling, they essentially explain why there were not many strikes on Memories
the coffee plantations. Yet they do not tell us to what degree full-time of
employment was available in the west, or to what degree coffee harvesters the
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could supplement their labor by farming or obtain other sources o f income.
Coffee pickers became militants, as we will see, but it was their lives off the
plantation that were equally salient in the process. The problem o f finding
sufficient work to do outside o f harvest times became all the more compel­
ling in areas o f extremely unequal land tenure arrangements, such as Son­
sonate, where in 1964 just over two hundred properties occupied 60 percent
o f the total land.98
Although the structural explanation helps to explain the social struggle
in the west, it is impossible to avoid some reference to 1932. In the first
place, the legacy o f the informal military-indigenous alliance and an intense
network o f surveillance led to greater levels o f local collaboration with the
military regime during the 1970s. Most significantly, this reality confirmed
the perception that the western population had been traumatized into pas­
sivity by 1932, in turn influencing leftist organizations, consciously or un­
consciously; they avoided trying to organize the region until its local mili­
tants besieged them with requests to do so. Regardless o f the reasons for
the delayed mobilization, western Salvadorans, both Indians and ladinos,
suffered the same fate as their compatriots in the rest o f the country. But
because o f the myth o f the trauma o f 1932—the notion that there was no
political or military activity in the west—the very real violent repression that
took place has been largely overlooked or forgotten.
The first killings took place in Santo Domingo de Guzman on 26 Febru­
ary ig8o. The local militants, affiliated with two revolutionary groups, were
up at dawn, expecting a military action. Soldiers surrounded the village.
During the confusion some militants managed to escape, but soldiers killed
eleven others. A few days later they executed three others identified with the
left.99 The military and its paramilitary allies then placed the village under
martial law: “ the other young men who could escape fled to Santa Ana, but
the rest o f us stayed here. The armed forces were coming, along with the
 death squads, who are from this very place, but they would cover their faces
so that no one could recognize them. That is how we were left without any
206 connections, and the people suffered for being ‘stained.’ ” 100 In Santo Do­
mingo the incipient organization connected to the Ligas Populares 28 de
Febrero barely managed to survive the intense repression by hiding out at
Memories night and bringing almost all political activity to a halt.
of El Carrizal was another center o f incipient leftist activity in 1980. Al­
the though it was only ten miles from Santo Domingo, there was virtually no
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contact with their organization. Several union members were among the
founders o f the local organization, secretly affiliated with the Fuerzas Popu­
lares de Liberación (f p l ). The two leaders o f the group had participated in
the violently repressed Central Azucarera strike in Izalco in 1978, and one
had received some military instruction in Cuba. A few others had partici­
pated in construction unions and strikes in the city o f Sonsonate. Most of
the twenty to thirty male youths affiliated with the group worked on coffee
plantations during the planting and harvest periods. According to infor­
mants, the tight relation between the finca owners and the military, ex­
emplified by the arrival o f the military in response to the slightest expres­
sion o f discontent (usually about working and living conditions or cheating
at the scales), drove home the connections between the struggle for eco­
nomic survival and the need for revolutionary political change.101 From
January until July 1980 the newly minted f p l members traveled to San
Salvador to participate in demonstrations, but otherwise maintained a low
profile.
Yet the repressive forces, as in Santo Domingo, did not allow such con­
sciousness and incipient organization to develop. The paramilitary peasant
organization o r d e n (Organización Democrática Nacional) played a fun­
damental role in the repression throughout the country, and the west was
no exception. In the Nahuizalco area, jinqueros and their ca pa ta ces formed the
leadership o f o r d e n and compelled their colonos and other workers to
join it. Their most significant role was to call for military intervention in
the canton and to finger militants once the military arrived. On 13 July 1980
two army battalions marched into El Carrizal from four directions. They
entered each house, with a list o f names. Masked men (presumably local
o rd en members) singled out suspected militants, who were immediately
executed. Thirteen died that day. Some escaped and spent weeks hiding out
in caves.102 The military maintained a massive presence o f troops over the
next weeks, however, during which time death squads executed twenty-nine
other male youths in the canton.
El Canelo, the site o f the massacre on Mata’s hacienda in 1932, became 267
another zone o f organization and repression in 1980. As in Santo Domingo
and El Carrizal, the recently formed local radical group had engaged in no
significant activities other than meetings. During the same year the death Memories
squads visited the canton. Twenty-one years later we interviewed Maria of
Eduwiges Pérez, daughter o f Maria Antonia Pérez, whose husband had the
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been shot by soldiers near the same house in 1932. Maria Eduwiges’s facial
expressions and voice betrayed the range o f intense emotions that had
afflicted her in the 1980s. She recalled how her compañero Miguel Hernández
had joined the f p l . He had buried some arms for future use and the military
had discovered the cache.

On a Thursday, July 3, my husband said to me, “ I’m going to start making the
milpa and I have to go buy the fertilizer.” He finished work early, at around n ,
and he said, “ I’m leaving now to buy the fertilizer.” He left that day, the third o f
July, and never returned after that date. Three days later they told me that they had
taken him down in Sonzácate. When they told me I went to tell his parents and
they told me they didn’t know anything and they didn’t want to get involved.
Trucks full o f soldiers were coming to set up a station here.
The death squad came on Friday. They came into my house—I was making
breakfast for my children—they told me to come out and that i f I didn’t want to
they would leave me dead. They pushed their shotgun against me. I had a base­
ball cap with the letter ‘f ’ on it—it belonged to my son. They tore it apart thinking
it had something to do with the f m l n . They said to me that i f I wanted I could
continue to sleep there . . . ‘In the night we have to come.’ What I did was I went
to stay with my brother in another cantón. They caught a lot o f the muchachos—
[they sliced] a cheek like this, or [cut off] an arm, and they would walk around
with them like that, telling them to turn in whoever they knew. They had my
husband. They had cut o ff one o f his cheeks. He lasted a long time. They killed a
lot o f people, 32 persons.103

This remarkable testimony graphically synthesizes the brutality o f the

repression. The intervening decades have done little to lessen the horror for
Maria Eduwiges or for the listener. The banality o f one moment contrasts
sharply with the brutality o f the next (as in her mother’s description o f her
husband’s death at breakfast in 1932). Her compañero goes to buy some
 268

Political Prisoners,
Memories El Salvador, 1980.
of Courtesy of the
the Museo de la Palabra
Massacre y la Imagen.

María Eduwlges
Pérez, El Canelo.
Courtesy of the
Museo de la Palabra
y la Imagen.

fertilizer for the milpa. She is feeding her children. Her child has a cap with
an “ F” printed on it. A death squad bursts upon the quotidian scene. From
that point on the story turns horrifying. The escuadraneros cut o ff cheeks, cut
o ff ears, in order to get their victims to turn over others. Beyond the imme­
diate horror o f the scenes, the very public nature o f the torture is striking.
Far more typically, the military and the death squads tortured their victims
out o f public view and then left the corpses in relatively isolated locations.104
These acts o f torture surpass any similar violent acts in 1932. I f mass execu­
tion was the modus operandi o f the earlier repression, in 1980 the military
added torture to accompany massacre. The terroristic violence o f the early
1980s found its justification in 1932. As Greg Grandin has pointed out, the
administration o f President Ronald Reagan avoided blame for its own com­
plicity with the death squads by citing their deep roots in Salvadoran his­
tory.105 Its other rhetorical move was to separate the death squads’ activity
from the purview o f the military allies o f the United States.
Testimonies from these villages offer a different perspective on death
squads. Unlike in much o f the rest o f the country, the death squads and the
military in these areas were interchangeable: the testimonies make no dis­
tinction between soldiers and escuadraneros de la muerte. Rather, escuadraneros 269
referred to the most brutal o f the soldiers or to those masked people (pre­
sumably neighbors belonging to o r d e n ) who signaled out “ subversives.”
This is an important point, as much o f the rationale for sending aid to the Memories
Salvadoran regime from Washington hinged on the distinction between the of
death squads and the military. According to the Reagan administration, the
Massacre
either aid from the United States would help to sever the military from the
death squads, or the two had nothing to do with each other in the first place.
Lacking documentary sources on these killings, we are compelled to rely
exclusively on testimonies by victims and witnesses; some potentially key
events and themes that emerge from them remain imprecise. Although it is
impossible to cite figures with any real accuracy, ample testimony suggests
that there were from 350 to 1,500 troops in El Carrizal and Santo Domingo.
Why did the army deploy so many troops for so long in villages where no
armed actions had taken place? We have no answers to these questions, but
the testimonies suggest that the military may have employed unique tactics
in the west, based on different strategic considerations. At the very least, the
military probably recognized the generational divide rooted in the experi­
ence o f 1932 and the corresponding weakness o f the left’s new bases of
support. Perhaps it also realized that a massive and public display o f execu­
tion and torture would have a devastating effect on the population as a
whole, inoculating the region against any further development o f the radi­
cal movement. Although as many scholars have pointed out, torture is a
form o f theater meant to traumatize or at least intimidate spectators, rarely
in the Latin American context was torture employed for truly “ public” con­
sumption, as in El Canelo. It is one thing to stumble upon a mutilated
corpse and quite another to see a neighbor with his arm and cheek cut o ff
before his execution.
Regardless o f the military’s intention, there is no question that the effect
o f the killings was profound. The elder generations experienced the killings
as the return o f a repressed trauma, intensifying the fear, anxiety, and loss
that witnesses o f repression elsewhere in the country experienced. In El
Carrizal informants linked the events o f 1980 with 1932. Manuel Ascencio
Pérez, whose son was executed in 1980, compared the two massacres,
concluding simply, “ Nuestra comunidad sí ha sufrido, verdad?” 106
 270

Memories
Manuel Ascencio,
of
El Carrizal. Courtesy
the
of the Museo de la
Massacre
Palabra y la Imagen.

Another informant echoed this sentiment: “And then they came and
committed the massacre here in El Carrizal; this community has always
suffered the most, suffering terribly, victims in 1930 and ’8o.” 107Another
comparison stressed the arbitrariness o f the killings and the innocence of
the victims: “The same thing happened in ’32 and ’82. They took advantage
with personal hatreds to involve and assassinate so many innocent peo­
ple.” 108 A testimony from Santo Domingo emphasizes how the terror im­
bued itself into the fabric o f village life: “ that’s when the people with the
‘long tongue’ [informants, slanderers] took advantage. They would say,
‘aaa! It’s this guy!’ and because during that time anyone who was accused
didn’t escape; they wouldn’t investigate if he was or he wasn’t. . . . The
armed forces and the death squads got him at night; in the end, they
decided who had to be killed. They raped women, they tortured, stole,
killed. They did what they wanted.” 109 As the last quotation indicates, the
testimonies o f 1980, like those o f 1932, stress the innocence o f the victims.
Yet there are fundamental differences. First, in 1980 there is a clear recogni­
tion o f the agency o f local youths. All the informants state that youths were
beginning to “ organize” to “ improve the community” and to “ struggle for
social justice.” By affording agency to the actors, the narrative maintains a
coherence and a degree o f precision that are notably absent in the 1932
accounts.
Two factors influenced this fundamental difference between the 1980
testimonies, which acknowledge i f not highlight local agency, and the nar­
rative suppression o f the 1932 testimonies. First, the 1980 interviews
are biased toward people who were involved in the “ organization.” Many of
those people still maintain involvement, allegiance, or sympathy with
the left or the indigenous rights movement, and thus militancy in the 1980s
offers a degree o f heroism to the informants and martyrdom to the
deceased—even i f neither status is recognized outside the community. Sec­
ond, the informants were in a better position than their parents or grand­ 271
parents to remember and frame events. They were young adults, with some
education; their ability to recall specifics from two decades earlier (as op­
posed to six) was more highly developed. Memories
The absence o f an ethnic dimension in the 1980 narratives marks an­ of
other fundamental difference. In 1932 the Indian-ladino binary was funda­ the
Massacre
mental in Indian areas and absent in the non-Indian areas o f mobilization.
In 1980 this lack o f ethnic identification reflects several aspects o f the
political and cultural conjuncture. Youths mobilized not as Indians but as
part o f the oppressed masses chafing under military rule. Although to some
extent this may have reflected the left’s immersion in the discourse o f
mestizaje, the silencing o f ethnicity also reflects their own generational
rejection o f their parents’ political and cultural world.110
There is a dearth o f documentation by scholars, human rights organiza­
tions, and political parties that relate to the three sites o f mass execution.
Even in the literature o f denunciation, there are virtually no references to
any o f the massacres (except one) that took place in indigenous areas o f
western Salvador.111 Why did the left and the human rights activists associ­
ated with the church fail to report on the four massacres? Part o f the reason
is that these cases only accounted for between 100 and 150 deaths during a
year in which the military and its allies executed over eight thousand civil­
ians. Yet there is perhaps a more significant reason, namely that the left
came to believe its own myth o f indigenous and western political passivity, a
result o f the trauma o f 1932.
The myth o f political passivity was based on a bedrock o f reality. The vast
majority o f indigenous people who had experienced 1932 were consciously
apolitical. A smaller number were active supporters o f the regime and only a
tiny minority supported the left. Yet as we have stated, there was most
definitely a small but growing base o f support for the left among indige­
nous youths and others, largely mobilized by a n í s .

ANIS and the Massacre at "Las Hojas"

The sole exception to the silence on massacres in the west occurred in “ Las
Hojas,” several miles from El Carrizal. According to the report o f the “Truth
Commission” : “ On February 22, 1983, elements o f the Jaguar Battalion,
 under the command o f Captain Carlos Alfonso Figueroa Morales, partici­
pated in an operation in the Canton, ‘Las Hojas’ . . . The soldiers detained 16
272 campesinos and later shot them at point blank range. . . . With the help 0f
the members o f the ‘Defensa Civil’—who covered their faces with bandanas
to hide their identities . . . they signaled out those on the list. They pulled
Memories them out o f their houses—striking them and tying them up-and then they
of took them from the cooperative along the road in the direction o f the
the Cuyuapa River.” 112 At 7:00 a.m. Adrián Esquina, the cacique, or leader, of
Massacre
a n ís , went to the military to denounce the captures o f the members o f the
cooperative. The military commander replied that they had captured some
“ subversives.” Later that morning a n ís members found sixteen corpses by
the side o f a river, with clear indications that they had had their fingers tied
together behind their back. This massacre garnered attention from the
national and even international community in part because a n ís was in a
position to publicize the killings (usually referring to seventy victims), be­
cause it directly involved an agrarian reform cooperative, and because it
occurred during a period o f declining human rights violations.113
During the 1980s a n ís attracted what appears to have been a significant
following in the cantons o f Nahuizalco and Santo Domingo, among other
sites in the west. It combined programs promoting indigenous culture and
supporting human rights and agrarian reform. No study has examined the
reception o f the cultural agenda o f a n ís during the 1980s. Their repertoire
included an appeal to the Maya, Lenca, and Nahuat peoples and to their
religious traditions rooted in “ Nana Naturaleza y el Tata Sol,” in addition to
promoting the study o f Nahuatl-Pipil. Regardless o f its relevance at the time
to those people in the west who accepted an indigenous identity, it was the
social and human rights program that gained support and led to direct gov­
ernment intervention. In 1985 the organization split into a pro-government
faction, a s id (Asociación Salvadoreña de Indígenas Democráticas), and
a n ís , which remained nongovernmental. For twenty months the divided
organization was mired in a legal batde that ended when the Supreme Court
ruled in favor o f a n ís as the legitimate owner o f the headquarters and
cooperative lands.114 The division probably led to an increase in the power
and international prestige o f Esquina Lisco, which ultimately led to bit­
ter enmities within the organization and numerous charges o f corruption
against the cacique.115 Esquina Lisco’s international prestige also kept in­
tense focus on the case o f “ las Hojas.” In 1992 the Comisión Interamericana
de Derechos Humanos ruled that the guilty officers should be brought to
justice and that the victims’ families should be indemnified.116
Although the exact connections between a n ís and the f m l n are un­ 273
clear, there is no doubt that a n i s ’ s agenda, summarized by the slogan
“Tierra, Indio, Unidad,” was congruent with the evolving posture o f the
Frente. Notwithstanding the real and potential reservoirs o f support as Memories
indicated by the relative strength o f a n í s , strategically it was impossible for of
the revolutionary left to maintain bases of guerrilla insurgency in western the
Massacre
Salvador. Notwithstanding this, throughout the 1980s a nucleus o f activists,
inspired by liberation theology and discourses o f indigenous identity, began
to organize again in the rural communities.
This group o f activists who came to the fore especially in the Nahuizalco
area in the 1990s embodied what Greg Grandin referred to as an alternative
form o f modernity, the mutually reinforcing link between self and commu­
nity (see chapter 3). Remarkably, in the early twenty-first century some
community activists, living on the margins o f impoverished villages o f
western El Salvador, tirelessly organized to benefit their communities and
sacrificed endless hours o f “ free time” to lobby government agencies and
ngos in support o f communal development. Although their utopian vi­
sions are radically scaled down from those that circulated in the country in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, their level o f commitment to a better world
reproduces the “ insurgent individuality” that we found applicable to the
mobilization o f the early 1930s and that Grandin saw correctly as a major
casualty o f the counterrevolution o f the 1980s.
The massacres o f 1980 compelled the inhabitants o f El Carrizal and El
Canelo to relive the terror that the eldest generation had experienced in
1932, a shocking reminder that they still endured the long night o f military
rule and repression begun under the Martinez regime. But when a new
dawn finally arrived in the west, the survivors o f this latest round o f mas­
sacres neither forgot the perpetrators nor accepted the oblivion surround­
ing the events o f 1932 and 1980.
Epilogue

T
he support o f a growing body o f community activists
contributed to f m l n victories in the municipal and con­
gressional elections o f 1997 and 2000 throughout western
El Salvador, including in Nahuizalco, Tacuba, and Santo
Domingo de Guzman as well as in all the departmental
cabeceras o f Ahuachapán, La Libertad, Santa Ana, and Son-
sonate. In light o f the relative passivity o f the region during
the 1980s, these victories raise the question o f how the
fm ln had acquired such political strength.
During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s the rural areas o f
Sonsonate developed politically at a rhythm different from
the rest o f the country. Several historical and ethnographic
characteristics marked the contours o f this unique politi­
cal development. Peasant and rural worker associations, as
mentioned in chapter 8, got o ff the ground much later than
they did elsewhere, yet faced the same rhythm o f repression
as elsewhere. Moreover, the iglesia popular also arrived later
in Sonsonate (though it was more active in Santa Ana and
La Libertad). For example, an activist priest arrived in Na-
 huizalco only in 1982. Yet the later presence o f the iglesia popular allowed
activists to mobilize during the war in ways not possible in other areas of
276 the country.
When the left emerged in the 1990s, it did so simultaneously with a n ew
wave o f indigenous rights activity. Initially the movements involved many of
Epilogue the same people and reinforced one another. Most o f the local activists had
participated in the Pastoral Indigenista, organized in the late 1980s as an
attempt by activists inspired by liberation theology to ally themselves with
the aspirations o f indigenous peoples. The Pastoral marked a departure
from earlier forms o f Catholic activism that were indifferent i f not hostile to
indigenous religious ideas and practices. The local rebirth o f the left during
the 1990s coincided with the reforging o f indigenous identities, linked in
turn to efforts by small groups o f community activists. Thus activists from
the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (f m l n ) joined with
others to engage in activities ranging from teaching Nahuate in schools to
founding an Indian radio station.
Although the left’s rejection o f violence beginning in the 1990s marks a
fundamental departure from its previous history, there are interesting paral­
lels with the growth o f the left in the early 1930s. In chapter 3 we argued that
the SRi profited from its ability to project a populist discourse, los pobres
against los ricos. The deep levels o f resentment o f the bulk o f the population
against the agrarian élite combined with sharp fissures within the dominant
power block to inject the labor and radical organizing drives with populist
fervor.
Before the massacres o f 1932 the procommunist left was aware o f the
discursive breadth o f its message and did not push its recently formed
categories so hard as to displace the populist idiom o f the indigenous and
ladino campesinos who formed its base o f support. The formulation o f a
leftist program could become concretized in a populist idiom: “ quitarles las
tierras a los ricos” (take the land from the rich). At the apex o f the mobiliza­
tion, the left leadership behaved more like the colonial Catholic church
faced with the impurities o f its Indian parishioners than like Stalinist appa­
ratchiks. In short, it was the left’s lack o f will to disarticulate the socialist
from the populist elements o f its discourse that ensured its growth during
the early 1930s.
During the 1990s the f m l n similarly grew in the west as a grassroots,
populist movement resembling that o f the early 1930s in its direct appeal to
the people and the poor against the élite and the authoritarian state. Indeed,
years o f military and élite rule had done very little to dry up the reservoir o f
populist sentiment. I f anything, the binary o f pueblo versus rico was as 277
strong in the 1990s as at anytime in the past, and the f m l n could make a
convincing case that it was “ the party o f the poor.” 1
We argued in chapter 4 that the left appealed strongly in El Salvador in Epilogue
the early 1930s, as it did in Nicaragua in the 1960s, to generations whose
indigenous forebears had suffered a wave o f primary accumulation. The
encounter o f the left with western youth in the 1970s exhibited similar
characteristics, in that many rejected the ethnic emblems and politics o f
their parents. Despite the devastating effects o f the repression o f 1980, a
core o f these militants remained active in the region. This core group
experienced another cultural transformation during the 1980s. In the early
1930s the left at once stimulated and enjoyed the benefits o f a shift away
from a clientelistic political culture. During the 1980s and 1990s, with simi­
lar adaptability to cultural changes, the f m l n gained politically through
the reemergence o f a movement which claimed new forms o f indigenous
identity.
In 2003 the f m l n was swept from office in nearly all the municipalities
it had won in 1997 and 2000. Objective and structural reasons account for
much o f the failure o f the leftist municipal governments to maintain politi­
cal support. With an extremely limited financial base and a national govern­
ment in the hands o f the rightist a r e n a party, the municipal governments
had limited means and space for an agenda o f social change. Yet equally
decisive in the local failures were f m l n national politics and policies that
had decidedly negative effects on local activists. In particular, the sectarian
split between the Ortodoxos (putatively leftist) and Renovadores (centrist)
wreaked havoc locally. Moreover, the political alignments made no local
political or ideological sense whatsoever: the “ orthodox” mayor o f Na-
huizalco made little effort to modify the abysmal socioeconomic situation
in the countryside, and those who most insistently demanded social change
in the cantons were those who by default were aligned with the Reno­
vadores. Regardless o f their factional alignment, no municipality led by the
fm ln offered any support for the minimum demands o f rural labor or for
the real, remaining need for land distribution. In 1999, 62 percent o f the
rural population o f the country lived in poverty and the rural minimum
wage was at most enough to supply rice, beans, and tortillas to a small
 family.2 The acceptance o f the social economic status quo in order presum­
ably to gain national legitimacy and organizational stability led directly to
278 the squandering o f political capital.
Alexander Segovia, among others, has argued convincingly that El Sal­
vador has undergone a structural shift, and that the agro-export model of
Epilogue accumulation is no longer relevant in an economy increasingly dependent
on financial operations for the élite and remesas for the people.3 The con­
sequences o f this structural shift for the rural poor o f the occidente are far
less obvious. The west, former heart o f the agro-export model, also seems
out o f step with the structural shift. Surely because o f the migratory circuits
opened as a direct consequence o f the war, Sonsonate has one o f the lowest
levels o f family remesas in the country, and it is a rare campesino family that
receives them. So there they remain, in a dysfunctional economy, with no
jobs left in the coffee economy and no available land, struggling to feed and
clothe their children. Although the lower-elevation coffee plantations have
been abandoned, the left joins the right in viewing even the most moderate
forms o f land distribution as hopelessly passe.
The Frente’s failure to capitalize on its victories was at least in part due to
its inability to fully recognize and stimulate its own sources o f strength. In
particular, its failure to support its most abnegated militants in places like
Santo Domingo and Nahuizalco certainly contributed to subsequent elec­
toral defeats. As mentioned above, a group o f campesino and indígena
activists played a vital role in the f m l n victories at the polls in 1997 in the
predominantly indigenous municipios o f Nahuizalco and Santo Domingo
Yet the leadership o f the Frente refused to fully integrate and empower
those self-identified indígenas, community activists who had provided the
key to victory—and indeed they were marginalized from an active role in
decision making.4
In Nahuizalco the socioeconomic and cultural subjugation o f Indians,
and their historic enmity with ladinos, conditioned a political struggle
within the Frente during the six years o f its municipal rule. That struggle
reached its apotheosis when campesino groups rooted in the communal
organizations o f the cantones staged an occupation o f the municipal build­
ing to protest the regime’s abuses and disregard toward the rural poor. This
violent rift in the left coalition, rooted in a profound distrust embedded in
local histories, ensured the defeat o f the f m l n in the election o f 2003.
Although this electoral defeat was qualitatively different from that o f 1932,
both defeats reflect the failure o f the national leadership to fully acknowl­
edge and engage with local memories and cultures. In 1932 the leftist
leadership, despite its remarkable achievement o f uniting ladino and indig­ 279
enous peasants, failed to fully understand the distinct levels and qualities o f
local support. During the late 1990s the left again squandered a high level o f
political support in the west because o f a failure to take into account the Epilogue
deeply conflictual history o f local communities, a recognition that would
have forced the leftist leadership to accept divisions within its own ranks
and its own culpability in the political marginalization o f those whose lives
long had been marked by exclusion.
The rebirth o f leftist and indigenous grassroots activism led to a remark­
able historical reversal: the scorned and vilified left won elections and indig­
enous identity became a badge o f pride and honor. Yet the failure o f the left
to deliver on its promise o f democratic social change also reflected an
inability to free itself from what Marx called the “ nightmares o f the past.”
The full encouragement o f social, political, and cultural democracy within
its ranks and a recalibration o f the relationship o f national leaders and
intellectuals to local actors would allow the left and Salvadoran society as a
whole to finally bid adieu to the toxic residue o f the past. Together they
might then confront the problems o f a new society as unjust and unequal as
the old one, but with none o f the structural and ideological moorings that
made it comprehensible and therefore susceptible to social transformation.
A fterw ord

Scars o f Memory: Notes On

Documentary Film, Politics, and History
Jeffrey L. Gould

S
hortly after beginning to interview massacre survivors in
January 1998, I met Carlos Henriquez Consalvi (“ San­
tiago” ), former director o f Radio Venceremos, the first clan­
destine radio station o f the f m l n . In postwar El Salvador he
had devoted himself to creating the Museo de la Palabra y
la Imagen, which in its earliest stages focused primarily on
presenting exhibitions o f images o f the war and reconcilia­
tion in towns and cities throughout the country. When I dis­
cussed the project with Santiago he suggested that we also
make video recordings o f the interviews. Without giving it
much thought, I agreed to the suggestion, assuming that
the interviews might be shown as part o f one o f the Museo’s
exhibitions.
From the beginning o f this research project, as men­
tioned in the Preface, I relied a great deal on the help o f
Reynaldo Patriz. A native o f El Carrizal with an eighth-grade
education, Patriz, in addition to offering penetrating com­
mentary on contemporary politics and culture, helped me
to break down some levels o f distrust and fear on the part o f
 informants. As a community activist tied to the progressive wing o f the
church, he had a wide range o f contacts in Nahuizalco. Further, this was a
282 propitious moment throughout the west to carry out oral history research.
For Patriz the idea o f creating a video archive o f the interviews made little
sense, and he prodded us toward developing a documentary film. Funda­
Afterword mentally, our decision to make the film derived from a recognition that the
reading public was minimal in El Salvador, and that a documentary film
would reach a much larger public than the Museo’s exhibits could. In the
fall o f 2000 Santiago and I created a forty-five-minute rough cut, weaving
together photos from the early 1930s and a narrative o f the insurrection and
massacre, based on preliminary research and on selections from interviews
mostly from the municipalities o f Nahuizalco and Izalco. We presented this
preliminary version to different audiences ranging from a secondary school
social studies class to various community groups.
These initial audience responses awakened us to the potential o f the
film. Most memorable were the reactions o f aged informants in the Casa de
Cultura o f Nahuizalco. Tears o f joy and amazement at seeing their images
seemingly blended with tears o f sorrow and rage at the narrated events. We
did not have the temerity to interview the informants about their reactions
to seeing their image on the screen or to the rest o f the footage. Yet others in
the audience did offer a torrent o f commentary, ranging from political-style
denunciations o f contemporary oppression to suggestions on how to im­
prove the film.1
A presentation o f the film to a small audience o f ladino f m l n supporters
in Izalco elicited a remarkably different reaction. First, several viewers ex­
pressed dismay that their city did not play a central role in the film, a role
that they assumed corresponded to historical reality. More significantly, one
fm ln militant denounced the film as “ the official story” because o f its
emphasis on the activities o f Socorro Rojo and the pcs in the mobilization
and insurrection. The militant exclaimed, “ For years, every time we tried to
do anything, any strike, any meeting, any protest at all and they’d accuse us
o f being Communists. In ’32 it was a question o f starving Indians; the left
didn’t have anything really to do with it. So what you are doing is providing
grist for their mill [agua para su molino].” The same militant also objected
that the documentary did not present any Indians, people with “ conciencia
indígena.”
These criticisms were provocative. The lack o f an adequate portrayal of
 283

Reynaldo Patriz,
Afterword
el Carrizal. Courtesy
Museo de la Palabra y
la Imagen.

the movement and repression in Izalco remains a fair one, yet the film does
serve as a corrective to the notion that the city was the main center o f the
movement or the main focus for the repression.2 The charge o f supporting
“ an official story” was more challenging. The commentary highlighted the
intensity o f the politics o f memory o f 1932. The militant rejected a relatively
benign portrayal o f the left in favor o f an alternative vision that absolved
the left o f real responsibility in the events. Historiographical currents that
stress the weakness o f the organized left and the “ autonomy” o f the campe­
sinos and Indians fuel this political position in the struggle over memory.
By stressing the divorce between the left and the rural subalterns, however,
this perspective inadvertently reflected and in a sense justified the military
version that the communists tricked and deceived the innocent Indians.
After this encounter in Izalco, it became clear to us that there would be no
way to present a film that would remain outside the decades-old struggle
over control over the memories and narratives o f 1932.
The commentary by the Izalqueño militant also spoke to the subterra­
nean contemporary conflict between indígenas and ladinos. The implicit
argument that Indians could not stage anything more than a spontaneous
rebellion caused by hunger betrays assumptions about them that most
social scientists would consider racist. The statement that “ true Indians”
have a specifically, discernible “ indigenous consciousness” rooted in no­
tions o f nature and communal property suggests a radically essentialized
view o f Indians. This position is all the more striking given the large num­
ber o f people in the militant’s home town who consider themselves “ indí­
genas.” For this militant, his neighbors are not Indians because they do not
exhibit certain forms o f consciousness. Since these “ non-authentic” indi-
 genas were actual or potential allies for the f m l n , the consequences o f this
cultural misunderstanding are apparent.
284 The final version o f the film benefited from these varied reactions, com­
mentaries, and discussions; it ended up substantially different from the
earlier version. Another six months o f research allowed us to expand the
A fte rw o rd geographic scope o f the project, thus creating a film that was less focused
on Nahuizalco, reflecting the expansion o f my oral history research toward
the departments o f La Libertad and Ahuachapán. In response to the charge
o f feeding “ the official story,” we sharpened the argument about the role of
the left in the mobilization and insurrection. Indeed, the film at times uses a
style o f scholarly exposition (thesis statement plus supporting evidence)
that perhaps detracts from the quality o f the documentary.3 Yet in light of
the “ stakes” that had been revealed in the preliminary showing, we wished
to make a strong case that this was not a rebellion o f hungry Indians, nor an
Indian movement “ manipulated” by communists.4
In the film and the book, we respond to the historiographic and public
discourse that posits two separate mobilizations and insurrections, one
“ Indian” and the other “ communist.” Rather, we show that the mobiliza­
tion was in fact led by a relatively large cadre o f revolutionaries, o f different
subaltern backgrounds, many o f whom were informed by communist and
socialist utopias, ideologies, and strategies. The movement as it gathered
force over three years developed an extensive anticapitalist agenda that
challenged the foundations o f élite wealth and power. An important argu­
ment o f the film and the book is that the dramatic power o f the mobilization
and insurrection derived from the active, mutually conditioning relation­
ship between grassroots activists, with varied identities, and different levels
o f leftist leadership. The union and s r i activists were as “ authentically”
leftist as the pcs Central Committee and at least as important in shaping the
development o f the movement.
The visual imagery o f the documentary supports this argument.5 The late
Pedro Lue, for example, easily and with demonstrative gestures talks about
his neighbor, Saturnino Perez, as the “ cabecilla comunista” : “ Too bad
Pedro that you’re still a kid or else I could give you this button to show that
you are one o f us.” The viewer can recognize the intimacy o f the relation
between “ communist and indigenous peasant” and the methods o f person-
to-person organization. Similarly, other witnesses offer memories o f meet­
ings at which activists discussed “ tomas de tierra,” and still others, mixing
admiration with disapproval, comment, “ querían quitarles tierras a los
ricos.” The videotaped interviews allow us to glimpse the outlines o f the re­
creation o f a communist discourse. Ordinary people in ordinary settings 285

appropriated leftist discourse and used it to create new understandings and

strategies to transform their social world. It is in the gestures, facial ex­
pressions, and phrasing that we see the way “ communism” operated as Afterword
discourse in the villages in ways more visible and comprehensible than
through the specific content o f the testimonies, let alone our film makers’
narrative.
I f the filmic portrayal o f the argument about communist and subaltern
agency is successful, a reinterpretation o f the ethnic dimension o f the mo­
bilization and the insurrection—another important contribution o f our
research—is definitely not adequately portrayed in the film. For six decades,
from the 1930s until the 1990s, the left described the mobilization and
rebellion o f 1932 in solely class terms and the right described it as a com­
munist manipulation o f ignorant rural folk (with ethnic identity unimpor­
tant). During the 1990s scholars rediscovered the indigenous nature o f the
rebellion, now seen as a revolt against a ladino élite, and the racist nature o f
the repression. Our research as presented in this book reveals that although
ethnic relations did play an important role in the mobilization, they did so
in highly complex and contradictory ways. Any attempt to view the mobili­
zation and revolt as ethnic conflict alone misses far more than it captures.
Although ethnicity as an analytical tool is essential to understanding the
movement, ethnic ideologies did not motivate a substantial proportion of
the actors. Indeed, what was remarkable about the movement was how
rural workers and peasants with very different forms o f identity responded
to and reinterpreted the class ideology promoted by the leftist activists.
These class-based messages and activities appealed to a wide range of
people: those who looked on Indians as a somewhat backward “ other” ;
those who identified strongly with indigenous political authority, signs, and
culture; and those who simply did not care.
Scars of Memory does not adequately portray these subtleties o f ethnic
difference and conflict, discussed in chapter 4. On one level this argument
about mestizaje and class conflict is simply too complex to present in a
documentary that purports to offer a comprehensive account o f the causes
and long-term consequences o f 1932. On another level, even without the
time limitations, visually it would be very difficult to capture ethnic differ-
 enees between Indians and ladinos, especially as they may have been envi­
sioned and lived at the time, in view o f the dearth o f photos and film footage
286 from the early 1930s. Also, there are no clearly distinguishing characteris­
tics o f the informants. Some o f the women wear d re fa jo , and the Central
American or academic viewer assumes that person to be “ indigenous.”
A fte rw o rd Most do not wear indigenous dress whether or not they possess an indige­
nous identity. Males who look the same may or may not be self-identified
Indians or ladinos. To fully explore the cultural differences in the contem­
porary society o f western Salvador would make an interesting project but
would necessitate a different film.
Ironically, the weakest part o f the documentary from a scholarly stand­
point—namely the description and analysis o f ethnic relations—has been
precisely the part o f the film that has become an empowerment tool used by
indigenous activists. This appropriation o f the film by community activists
is an unintended consequence o f our work. Although we foresaw that pos­
sibility when we got comments in response to the forty-five-minute rough
cut that we showed to various audiences, we could not imagine that the film
would some day be seen and ardently discussed in community centers
throughout the area.6Moreover, in 2005 indigenous groups and n g o s used
the film to substantiate their “ Shadow Report” to the Commission to End
Racial Discrimination in Geneva, critiquing a government report.7
The use o f Scars of Memory as a tool in the politics o f identity goes against
several implicit interpretive positions within the documentary. Relying in
part on the elders’ testimonies, the documentary suggests that the loss of
the key ethnic markers—Nahuatl and el refajo—was a largely endogenous
process. Contrary to the position o f the indigenous rights movement, as we
saw in chapter 8, there was no prohibition o f the Nahuatl language after the
massacre. Indigenous activists during the late 1990s pointed to exclusively
exogenous causes to exonerate, as it were, the indigenous people from any
complicity in the process o f their own cultural transformation. Neverthe­
less, it seems that the documentary has stimulated at least some reevalua­
tion o f the argument about cultural loss and cultural mestizaje.
There is yet another contradiction between the content o f the docu­
mentary and its appropriation by activists as a representation o f c o m m u n a l
history and identity. The documentary (like the book) suggests extensive
indigenous involvement in the mobilization and insurrection. The memo­
ries o f the elders, as noted in chapters 7 and 8 , deny this involvement and
 287

Commemoration of
the seventy-third
anniversary of the
Afterword
massacres, El Carrizal.
Courtesy of the
Museo de la Palabra
y la Imagen.

in fact, through a variety o f narrative processes shaped by decades o f po­

litical repression, the social memories o f the indigenous survivors o f the
massacre suppressed the indigenous subject o f the insurrection. In large
part this suppression derived from the inherited, collective necessity to
remove the indigenous dead and survivors from any agency in the narrative.
The common phrase “ mataron justos por pecadores” (they killed the just
instead o f the sinners) synthesizes this perspective. In other words, Indians
did not participate in the rebellion but became the scapegoats in the bloody
repression.
We had to grapple with this dilemma: to reproduce the suppression o f
indigenous agency as part o f the documentary would have rendered it vir­
tually incomprehensible. Although we experimented with the idea o f offer­
ing multiple narrations to reproduce the fragmentary forms o f memory, we
eventually dropped the idea in favor o f a conventional narration, and thus
we sacrifice an accurate portrayal o f the highly fragmentary social memo­
ries o f the indigenous survivors.
We also made a conscious choice—one that has been criticized by some
Central American scholars—to include a component about the mobilization
and repression in western Salvador during the 1980s. In part the criticism
reflected a common perception on both the left and the right that this
region o f the country was unimportant during the civil war, largely because
its population was still traumatized by the events o f 1932. The film—and we
believe the historical record—suggest that although the civil war per se did
not have much direct significance in the region, mobilization and brutal
repression characterized the period directly preceding it. As pointed out in
chapter 8, the commonsense understanding o f the political effects o f the
trauma inflicted by the massacres o f 1932 erased the smaller but locally
 288

Afterword

Fabian Mojica y Santiago and

Carlos Henriquez Consalvi
("Santiago"). Courtesy of the
Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen.

devastating massacres o f 1980 from public recognition (including within

the human rights community), both at the time and subsequently.
The videotaped testimonies o f the massacres o f 1980, like the testi­
monies o f the massacres o f 1932, communicate a sense o f immediacy to an
audience through their images. That immediacy in both cases derives from
the urgency o f communicating a significant, arguably traumatized memory
that had never been verbalized (at least) publicly before. In the most dra­
matic testimony from 1980, María Eduwiges Pérez had mentioned in a
previous conversation, without providing the details, that her husband had
been murdered. She agreed to discuss the murder for the video (see chapter
8). After dozens o f viewings, her expression o f anguish, horror, and con­
demnation still tear me up. Her intense, vivid testimony is powerful because
o f the arbitrariness o f the horror inflicted in such an ordinary setting. At the
same time, her testimony offers a voice o f protest against the neglect o f the
thousands o f people who lost family members to death squads throughout
the country and region. They have received neither recognition nor compen­
sation for their loss o f loved ones, income, and emotional well-being.
For those viewers who have not suffered such repression, the docu­
mentary potentially is a form o f what Alison Landsberg calls “ prosthetic
memory.” 8 Landsberg develops her argument through a discussion o f new
technologies o f memory that are vital not so much because they preserve
memory but because they create new subjective understandings o f history
 289

Afterword

Presentation of the documentary Cicatriz de la Memoria in Tierra Blanca, Usulatán.

Courtesy of the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen.

and the contemporary world. These form part o f what she calls experien­
tial knowledge. Viewers do not fully assimilate testimonies, but rather the
viewer-listener constructs a (prosthetic) memory “ triggered by the testi­
monial and yet intimately connected to one’s own archive o f experience.” 9
For Landsberg, there are critical political consequences o f using these tech­
nologies o f memory: “ Images become recognizable . . . events and issues
need to be represented in order to become politics.”
A question emerges from this discussion o f prosthetic memory, experi­
ential knowledge, imagery, and politics: from what ethical position can we
intervene in the politics o f memory o f 1932 or 1980? This project is rooted in
several propositions. As suggested above, it does have its origins to some
extent within Salvadoran civil society. Secondly, the massacres o f both 1932
and 1980 were gross violations o f human rights that demand not only
denunciation but the public testimony o f survivors. Similarly, they require
the fullest possible elucidation and analysis o f empirical research. That
said, we recognize that the record is notoriously incomplete because o f the
intentions o f the perpetrators, the impact o f their terror, and the passage o f
time. Therefore the book and film do not purport to record any definitive
 version o f events. And as suggested above, the narrative form is not par­
ticularly well suited to the task o f recording the more subtle cultural effects
2g o o f the massacres, more visible perhaps in gestures and speech. The film and
the book thus complement each other and offer the possibility o f opening
discussions among diverse audiences inside and outside El Salvador.
Afterword The response to the film underscores what many scholars and writers
have observed, namely the interconnectedness between the past and the
present. The bitter afterlife o f 1932 and 1980 makes these connections all the
more apparent. Walter Benjamin’s comment is apposite: “ For every image
o f the past that is not recognized by the present as one o f its own threatens to
disappear irretrievably.” Perhaps the animated response in western Salvador
reflects a collective “ flash o f recognition” o f a dimly outlined recurring
nightmare that when brought into focus becomes less disturbing.
In “ Scars o f Memory,” over the back-and-forth sound o f a saw, Manuel
Ascencio commented about the massacres in El Carrizal in 1932 and in
1980, when his son was murdered: “ This community has suffered, right?”
This understatement can be grasped as a commentary about the endurance
o f a community that labors on despite the horrors o f its past. Yet his facial
expression and tone o f voice, like those o f Maria Eduwiges, do not accept
this past as preordained or inevitable. Rather they denounce the murder o f a
loved one and ask that we neither forget the dead nor allow atrocities to
occur for a third time.
Notes

Bibliographic A bbreviations
ag a Archivo de la Gobernación de Ahuachapan
a g n Archivo General de la Nación, San Salvador
a g s Archivo de la Gobernación de Sonsonate
Ah Ahuachapan
a m j Archivo Municipal de Jayaque
am s Archivo Municipal de Sonsonate
cg Coleción Gobernaciones
cm Colección Ministerios
m g Ministerio de Gobernación
m id H. M. Gwynn, War Department Military Intelligence Divi­
sion, “ Correspondence and Record Cards o f the Military
Intelligence Division Relating to General, Political, Eco­
nomic, and Military Conditions in Central America 19 18 -
19 41” (1926)
So Sonsonate
u sn a United States National Archives, Washington

Preface
1 Interview with Reynaldo Patriz, El Carrizal, Nahuizalco,
1998. This account is based on many conversations with
Patriz over the period 1998-2001.
 2 A cantón is a geographical and political unit o f a municipality. In size it
corresponds to a village. The average population o f the cantones o f Nahui-
zalco is roughly a thousand inhabitants. When talking about rural people, a
292
person will often refer to the “ gente de los cantones.”
3 This was a novel experience for Gould, since in his previous oral history
research in Nicaragua he did not rely on assistants, except in the last stage o f
Notes the project, which resulted in To Die in T h is Way, he worked with Holger
Cisneros, a sociology student.
4 Daniel James, “ Between Memory and History: Reflections o f a Reluctant Oral
Historian,” paper presented at the Conferencia Sobre la Historia Oral, Buenos
Aires, 2003. Encuentro Sobre la Historia Oral, Buenos Aires, 2003.
5 Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 171.
6 State Dept report, 816.480 19 3 4 /15 ,15 June 1934, u sn a .

7 This was a common refrain o f numerous informants in the Nahuizalco area.

8 Interview with Dionisio Ramirez, el Carrizal, Nahuizalco, 1998.
9 See for example Catherine LeGrand, “ Living in Macondo: Economy and Cul­
ture in a United Fruit Company Enclave in Colombia,” Close Encounters o/Empire,
ed. Joseph, LeGrand, and Salvadore, 333-6 8 ; Eduardo Posada-Carbó, “ Fiction
as History: The Bananeras and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years o f
Solitude,” Journal o/Latin American Studies 30, no. 2 (May 1998), 395-4 14 .
10 Michel-RolfTrouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Bos­
ton: Beacon, 1995J, 24.
11 Daniel James, Doña Maria’s Story: Life History, Memory and Political Identity (Dur­
ham: Duke University Press, 2000), 124.
12 See Gould, To Lead as Equals, 7 -10 .
13 Gould, “ Proyectos del Estado-nación y la supresión de la pluralidad cultural.”
14 Lauria-Santiago’s work on the nineteenth-century development o f coffee in El
Salvador has provided a baseline to this study confirming Mario Samper’s
suggestion that El Salvador’s coffee production was not premised on the most
extreme model o f land concentration and labor control and did not stand as a
polar opposite to conditions in Costa Rica.
15 Samper K., “ El Significado Social de la Caficultura Costaricense y Salvado­
reña” ; Roseberry, “ Beyond the Agrarian Question in Latin America” ; William
Roseberry, “ La Falta de Brazos” ; Yarrington, A CoJJee Frontier; Marco Palacios,
Coffee in Colombia, 18 50-19 70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980);
Paige, “ Coffee and Politics in Central America.”
16 Wickham-Crowley’s basic argument is a revised version o f Scott’s about peas­
ant motivations for revolt: that peasants rebel when damaging economic
transformation is tied to the decline o f previously existing patron-client or
patronage networks. Wickham-Crowley adds to this the need to consider the
“ physical dislocation from land itself” experienced by peasants as a motiva­
tion for revolt.
17 The notion o f historical specificity is borrowed from Karl Korsch.
18 Carr, “ Identity, Class and Nation.”
19 Similarly, revolutionary rhetoric inspired minor insurrectionary movements in
a coffee-growing region o f Antioquia, Colombia, in 1929 and in urban Brazil
2 93
in 1935. Sánchez, Los Bolcheviques del Libano.
20 Turits, Foundations of Despotism; Richard Turits, “A World Destroyed, a Nation
Imposed” ; Helg, OurRújhtful Share.
21 The killings in Trujillo, Peru, in 1932 would provide another interesting com­ Notes
parative case. The similarity resided in the Peruvian military’s efforts to in­
flict revenge killings on an entire region (not ethnically targeted) that sup­
ported an insurrection led by the a p r a . See Villanueva and Crabtree, “ The
Petty-Bourgeois Ideology o f the Peruvian Aprista Party.”
22 Jorge Schlesinger, Revolución Comunista; Alfredo Schlesinger, La Verdad Sobre el
Comunismo; Buezo, Sangre de Hermanos; Bustamante, Historia militar de El Sal­
vador; J. Méndez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Salvador; José Tomás Calderón,
“ Breve reseña histórica del Comunismo en El Salvador,” Anhelos de un
ciudadano, ed. Calderón; Filio, Tierras de centroame'rica. The exceptions to this
rigid anticommunist bent are by Buezo and Bustamante (a military officer),
who provided the first sympathetic attempts to understand the social origins
o f the movement and condemn the mass repression carried out by the state.
23 Candelario, “ Representación de lo irrepresentable” ; Candelario, “ Patología de
una Insurrección” ; Cáceres, “ Después del 3 2 .”
24 Public statements by the p c s about 1932 before the 1960s are rare, but a set
o f internal documents offer a sense o f the party’s perspective on the events.
The documents blame the government for being consistently repressive and
promoting “ anarchy” by putting forward “ many” presidential candidates. A
strong alliance between the military and élites sought to provoke a popular
revolt throughout 19 31 with constant acts o f “ provocation,” including the
“ anarchy” o f the Araujo presidency. Popular hunger led to strikes, which when
repressed led to revolt. An understandable but “ mistaken” path was taken,
prodded by the Caribbean Bureau’s alleged line o f “ seizing power.” Instituto
Histórico De Cuba, p c s documents.
25 Larin, “ Historia del movimiento sindical de El Salvador,” Universidad 96, no.4
(July-August 1971); Marroquín, “ Estudio sobre la crisis de los años treinta
en El Salvador” ; Salazar Valiente, Luna, and Gómez, El Proceso Político Centro­
americano; López Vallecillos, “ Trayectoria y crisis del estado salvadoreño” ;
Luna, “Análisis de una dictadura fascista latinoamericana” ; Torres, “ More
from This Land” ; Luna, Manual de historia económica de El Salvador; Luna, “ Un
heroico y trágico suceso de nuestra historia” ; López Alas Rosales and Escobar
Cornejo, “ La crisis de 1929 y sus consecuencias en los años posteriores” ;
López Vallecillos, El periodismo en El Salvador.
26 Arias Gómez, Farabundo Marti.
27 See Vázquez Olivera, “ ‘País mío no existes,’ ” and Harlow, “Testimonio and
Survival.”
 28 Dalton, “ Miguel Mármol: El Salvador 19 3 0 -3 2 ” ; Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los
sucesos de ig32 en El Salvador; Pablo Benitez, “ Miguel Mármol es una memoria
política en formato testimonial (entrevista a Jaime Barba),” Diario Co-Latino, 2g
294
July 2005, http://www.diariocolatino.com/tresmil/detalles.asp?NewsID=i4x.
29 Lara Martínez, “ Indigenismo y encubrimiento testimonial El 32 según ‘Miguel
Mármol. Manuscrito. 37 páginas’ de Roque Dalton.”
Notes 30 A Harvard undergraduate, Andrew Ogilvie, traveled to El Salvador to conduct
research for his undergraduate honors thesis, which remains unpublished.
Ogilvie, “The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador.”
31 Anderson, Matanza.
32 Browning’s book is the first major attempt to understand the longue durée in
El Salvador’s agrarian history. Strongly motivated by the need for agrarian
reform apparent by the late 1960s, the book sought to posit the contradictions
between land ownership and land use.
33 Wilson, “ The Crisis o f National Integration in El Salvador” ; Anderson, Ma­
tanza; White, El Saluador; Ogilvie, “The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador” ;
Browning, El Salvador; Elam, “Appeal to Arms.”
34 Luna, Manual de historia económica de El Salvador; Bulmer-Thomas, The Political
Economy o f Central America since ig20; Dunkerley, Potver in the Isthmus; Edelberto
Torres Rivas, Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano: Procesos y estructuras
de una sociedad dependiente (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana,
1981); López Alas Rosales and Escobar Cornejo, “ La crisis de 1929 y sus
consecuencias en los años posteriores” ; Zamosc, “ Class Conflict in an Export
Economy” ; Zamosc, “ The Definition o f a Socio-economic Formation” ; Burns,
“The Modernization o f Underdevelopment.”
35 For discussions o f the revolt that emphasize peasant participation, see López
Vallecillos, “ La insurección popular campesina de 19 32” ; Segundo Montes,
“ Levantamientos campesinos en El Salvador” (although Montes, El compa­
drazgo, emphasizes ethnic relations); Montes, “ El campesinado salvadoreño” ;
Mario Lungo, La lucha de las masas en El Salvador (San Salvador: u c a , 1987);
Flores Macal, Origen, desarrollo y crisis de las/ormas de dominación en El Salvador;
Kincaid, “ Peasants into Rebels.” Most recently, Jeffery M. Paige, in Coffee and
Pow er, emphasizes the mobilization o f what he terms the “ pobretariado.”
36 Montes, El Compadrazgo. Important works by exiles include Menjivar, Acumula­
ción originaria y desarollo del capitalismo en El Salvador; Menjivar, Formación y lucha del
proletariado industria! salvadoreño; Guidos Vejar, El Ascenso del Militarismo en El
Salvador; Flores Macal, Origen, Desarrollo y crisis de las/ormas de dominación en El
Salvador; Mario Flores Macal, “ El movimiento sindical Salvadoreño: carac­
terísticas principales,” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 6 (1980), 17 -2 4 ; Rich­
ter, Proceso de Acumulación y Dominación en la Formación Socio-Política Salvadoreña.
37 Federación de Trabajadores del Campo, “ Perspectiva Histórica del Movi­
miento Campesino Revolucionario en El Salvador” (San Salvador: Ediciones
Enero 32,1979 ), 14 -15-
 38 Ferman Cienfuegos, “ El Salvador: La Revolución Inevitable,” 1982, n a c l a

archives, roll 1 4 , file 8 9 , 1 5 .

39 Ibid.
295
40 The first scholar to emphasize the ethnic origins o f the movement was Luna in
his essay “ Un heroico y trágico suceso de nuestra historia” (1964). Anderson
also sought to establish correctly the role o f Indigenous leaders and ethnic
conflict in the emergence o f the revolt. Recently Ching and Tilley have dis­ Notes
cussed ethnicity, politics, and the state during the 1920s and 1930s, arguing
that Indian ethnicity was not as decimated after the repression as thought by
some observers: “ Indians, the Military, and the Rebellion o f 19 32” ; Ching,
“ From Clientelism to Militarism.” Also see Alvarenga, Cultura y etica de la
violencia, and Pérez-Brignoli, “ Indians, Communists, and Peasants.” William
Rrehm in 1949 characterized the insurrection as “ a cross between an old
fashioned Indian uprising and a jacquerie o f starving peasants, doubled here
and there with a sophisticated veneer o f communism.” Krehm, Democracies and
Tyrannies of the Caribbean, 8.
41 See “ La Insurrección Indígena,” El Periódico Nuevo Enfoque, 24 January 2005.
This article refers to the role o f the p c s as one o f trying to “ take advantage o f
the situation so that the p c s could lead” the “ indigenous insurrection.”

Chapter One: Garden of Despair

1 Wallace Thompson, Rainboiv Countries of Central America (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1924), 94-95.
2 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 201.
3 Thompson, Rainbow Countries of Central America, 102.
4 Rothery, Central America and the Spanish Main, 78.
5 Ranajit Guha. Dominance ivithout Hegemony: History and Pourer in Colonial India
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), vii.
6 William Roseberry, “ Hegemony, Power, and the Language o f Contention,” The
Politics o f Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World o f Pow er, ed. Wilmsen and McAllis­
ter (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1996).
7 Roseberry, “ Hegemony, Power, and the Language o f Contention,” 80.
8 Gould, To Lead as Equals, 68-69.
9 See Gould, To Die in This Way.
10 McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 3 3 3 -3 4 .
11 Martin, Salvador of the Twentieth Century.
12 Koebel, Central America, 275.
13 This loan resulted in the controversial customs receivership. An agent ap­
pointed by banks in the United States controlled customs revenues and used a
large share o f these to pay the purchasers o f the bonds issued in 1922.
14 Wilson, “The Crisis o f National Integration in El Salvador,” 3-4 2 .
15 Hill, “ Raising Coffee in El Salvador.”
 16 Dirección General de Estadística, Anuario Estadístico (San Salvador, 19 11-4 0).
17 Lopez Harrison, Patria, 10 August 1931; Revista de Agricultura Tropical 1930, cited
in Wilson, “The Crisis o f National Integration in El Salvador,” 40.
zg6
18 Lauria-Santiago. An Agrarian Republic; Geraldina Portillo, “ Cafetaleros del De­
partamento de Santa Ana 18 8 2-18 9 8 ,” paper presented at the VII Congreso
Centroamericano de Historia, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 28 April 2004; Geral­
Notes dina Portillo, “ Clases y sectores sociales participantes en la agroindustria
cafetalera en el Departamento de La Libertad 18 9 7 -19 0 1” (unpublished manu­
script); Geraldina Portillo, “ La tenencia de la tierra en el Departamento de La
Libertad, 18 9 7 -19 0 1” (unpublished manuscript). Their involvement in rail­
road and bank ownership also gave them a great advantage in developing their
agricultural holdings.
19 Anuario de la America Latina (Barcelona: Bailly-Bailliere y Riera, 1914); Nomina
de las Haciendas y Fincas mas importantes del depto. de La Libertad, 1929,
Libertad.
A G N -M G -L a
20 S. L. Wilkinson, 2 5 April 1 9 2 9 , U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service, u s n a .
21 Higher prices still were paid for plots adjacent to large plantations, with some
paying from $1,500 to $2,500 for small tracts. S. L. Wilkinson to secretary o f
state, 25 April 1929, U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service, u s n a .
22 The region attracted both permanent and seasonal wage workers from other
parts o f the country and even Honduras and Guatemala during periods o f peak
demand. The massive migration o f Guatemalan workers dated back to the
1870s: Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic, chapter 6. The importance of
these seasonal workers even in 1931 is acknowledged in Larin J. Lisandro,
Gobernador de Sonsonate, Carta al Alcalde de Sonsonate, 23 December 1931,
a g n -c g -S o .
23 Diario Oficial, 14 April 1920, “ Memoria de Hacienda: Problema del crédito, falta
de liquido circulante, ¿quien se beneficia mas de escasez liquida? . . . 6 3 1 . In
19 2 1-2 2 nine exporters purchased insurance for one-third o f the country’s
total coffee exports. Wilson, “The Crisis,” 44, 6 0 ,13 0 -3 2 .
24 The market was controlled by four investors: Sue. Dorila de Letona, Atilio G.
Prieto, Peccorini Hmnos, and Samuel Quiroz. Government o f El Salvador,
Dirección General de Estadística, La República de El Salvador (San Salvador:
Imprenta Nacional, 1924).
25 MccafFerty to secretary o f state, 22 April 1925, United States Foreign Agricul­
tural Service, u s n a . Panela, crude unrefined sugar, was produced through­
out the country in small animal-driven mills and used in food and candy
production—items o f popular consumption. See Geraldina Portillo, “ Persis­
tencia de lo tradicional en la producción agrícola y artesanal de la caña de
azúcar en el Departamento de San Vicente,” paper presented at the Sexto
Congreso Centroamericano De Historia, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá, 2 2 - 2 6
July 2002.
26 Rothery, Central America and the Spanish Main, 79-80.
27 Bulmer-Thomas, The Political Economy o/Central America since 1920, 2.
28 Jimenez, “At the Banquet o f Civilization,” 284.
29 “ Los Alvarez: Recuerdos de una Familia” (San Salvador: Mauricio Alvarez
297
Geoffroy, 1995) [incl. “ Memorias de la Familia Alvarez,” written in 19 51 by
Carlos Alvarez Angel], 37.
30 Ibid., 109.
31 Ibid., 138. Notes
32 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 203.
33 See Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, and Montgomery, The Struggle /or Worker’s
Control in America.
34 “ El Café de El Salvador” (San Salvador: Asociación Cafetalera de El Salvador,
July 1932), 42.
35 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 200.
36 A. R. Harris, Degree o f Economic Development, Report no. 14, San José,
December 1 9 3 1 , Department o f State, u s n a . The report also revealed how
22

the élite used land concentration to reduce the cost o f labor.

37 Cardenal, El Poder Eclesiástico en El Salvador, 369.
38 Francisco Osegueda, “ La vida del campesino salvadoreño de otros tiempos y la
del campesino actual,” Revista del Ateneo de El Salvador 20 (1932), 12.
39 In 1926 Ambassador Caffery noted that the Asociacio'n Agricola ignored “ the
needs o f small growers in debt.” Caffery to Department o f State, 30 August
1926, State Department, u s n a .
40 W. W. Schott to Department o f State, 20 January 1930, State Department,
U S N A ; Paige, Coffee and Power; Rodolfo Castro. “ Un proceso de moderniza­

ción estatal ‘autoritario’ (1931—1939)” (unpublished manuscript, San Salva­

dor, n.d.), 10 - 12 ; Asociación Cafetalera de El Salvador Gerente, “ Carta al Sub­
secretario de Agricultura,” 28 January 1931, a g n -c m -m g .
41 Wilson’s characterization o f this élite remains the most compelling because it
stresses the inconsistency between the structural formation o f this class and
its weak political mechanisms. Wilson, “ The Crisis,” 60-63.
42 Ibid., 86.
43 Thompson, Rainbow Countries o f Central America,96.
44 Frederick Palmer, Central America and Its Problems: An Account o f a Journey jrom the
Rio Grande to Panama (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1910), no.
45 Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic, chapters 6 -7.
46 From 612,000 in 1880 to 1,437,000 in 1930.
47 For the northern and eastern regions o f El Salvador, Honduras served as
release valve for agrarian pressures. By the mid-i920s there were thousands o f
Salvadorans working in Honduras, although western El Salvador continued to
receive significant seasonal migrant workers from eastern Guatemala to pick
coffee. Thompson, Rainbow Countries 0/ Central America, 183. Wilson claims
that there were between twelve and sixty thousand Salvadorans in Honduras,
with some Honduran towns composed o f 50—100 percent Salvadoran im-
 migrants. Wilson, “ The Crisis,” 118 . Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central
America.
48 “ There is a large percentage o f small landowners, although at the present
298
there is a tendency among the large plantation owners to purchase all the
small farms which can be bought. This tendency today is more pronounced
than it has been for some time, owing to the surplus o f money these plantation
Notes owners have available through high prices for their coffee crops.” m i d , u s n a .
Another report by observers from the United States noted the tendency of
smaller growers to lose their properties because o f debt. Caffery to Depart­
ment o f State, 30 August 1926, Department o f State, u s n a .
49 Marroquin, “ Estudio sobre la crisis de los años treinta en El Salvador,” 120;
Bradford Burns, “ The Modernization o f Underdevelopment: El Salvador,
18 5 8 -19 3 1,” Journal o/Developiny Areas 18, no. 3 (April 1984), 308.
50 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate.
51 The “ Documentos Privados” kept by municipalities provide an important win­
dow into the many small transactions and obligations that tied hundreds of
peasants to a handful o f landowning families who also lent money and fi­
nanced crops.
52 The 1930 census was published in 1942. Government ofE l Salvador, Dirección
General de Estadística, Población de la república de El Salvador (San Salvador:
Taller nacional de grabados, 1942).
53 Because o f an increased demand for seasonal work and relatively high wages,
thousands o f Guatemalan and Honduran workers continued to supplement
Salvadoran hands at harvest time.
54 Gobernación de Sonsonate, “ Registro de los Individuos sin Trabajo” (1929),
Archivo de la Gobernación de Sonsonate. In mid-1931, at the time o f low­
est demand for labor in coffee and sugar production, shoemakers who had
earned three colones a day in the boom times now earned two. Common-
laborer wages were 50 cents for half a day’s work. Coffee pickers received one-
half cent a pound, which meant that the most effective pickers could earn one
colon a day, while 6 0-70 cents a day was more likely for most workers. A. E.
Carleton to Foreign Agricultural Service, Commerce and Industries Report,
15 August 1931, United States Foreign Agricultural Service, u s n a .
55 The overwhelming majority were colonos, although the figure includes a hand­
ful o f artisans and administrators.
56 There is no evidence o f significant changes in the number or proportion of
colonos during the 1930s. These data are based on preliminary calculations
based on the printed version o f the 1938 census and a more detailed manu­
script version o f the same data held in the Biblioteca del Banco Hipotecario.
Asociación cafetalera de El Salvador, Primer Censo Nacional del Café (San Sal­
vador: Talleres gráficos Cisneros, 1940). See also Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de
Sonsonate, 274, 280.
57 Outside the coffee sector, and especially in central and eastern El Salvador,
 colonato involved more traditional practices in which colonos rented land for
a fixed rent paid in corn or other agricultural products. Benjamin Muse, For­
eign Service Report, American legation, 19 September 1924, Department o f 299
State, u s n a ; S. L. Wilkerson to Foreign Agricultural Service, 25 April 1929,
United States Foreign Agricultural Service, u s n a .
58 This made colonato not much different from aparcería. Benjamin Muse, Narra­
tive Reports, El Salvador, 19 September 1924, United States Foreign Agricul­ Notes
tural Service, u s n a .
59 S. L. Wilkinson to secretary o f state, 25 April 1929, United States Foreign
Agricultural Service, u sn a .

60 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 192.

61 One o f the effects o f the crisis was that banks withheld loans to farmers in
1931, forcing them to minimize their ouday o f cash funds. A. E. Carleton, U.S.
consul, excerpt, Commerce and Industries Review, 27 January 19 31, United
States Foreign Agricultural Service, u s n a .
62 Wilson, “ The Crisis,” 118
63 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 274.
64 See Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Reuolution in Latin America, 117 - 18 , 243.
65 One notable from the region recalls an agreement among employers to lower
wages during 1 9 3 1 . Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 2 9 7 . Between 1 9 2 9 and
1 9 3 1 rural and urban unemployment also increased. Government officials

were ordered to keep lists o f the unemployed workers in the major cities and
encourage employers to hire workers and rent unused lands. Ministerio del
Trabajo al Gobernador de Sonsonate, Legajo de Cartas al Gobernador de Son­
sonate, 8 April 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o . In the relatively small town o f Juayua four
hundred unemployed workers petitioned President Araujo for relief. Ogilvie,
“ The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador, 1 9 3 2 , ” 5 3 . When Araujo offered plots
for rent on government-owned haciendas the requests came at the rate o f one
hundred for each available plot. Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 2 7 3 . See
also Solicitudes de Lotes, 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c m - m g .
66 A. E. Carleton, Commerce and Industries Quarterly Report, 15 August 1931,
United States Foreign Agricultural Service, u s n a . Even lower wages were
reported in more heavily Indian localities. Llanes, “A History o f Protestantism
in El Salvador,” 127.
67 Tesis sobre la situación internacional, nacional y de la federación regional de
trabajadores de El Salvador, Comintern 495.119.10, pp. 2 7-28 .
68 Ogilvie, “The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador, 19 32,” 53; “ Conatos Subver­
sivos Promovidos por Varios Individuos Sindicalistas en la Hacienda ‘La Preza’
Propiedad de Doña Claudia de Borbon, Coatepeque,” 1930, a g n - c m - m g .
69 S i m i l a r c l a i m s a r e a l s o f o u n d in o t h e r c o n t e x t s . T h e t a x f i l i n g s o f C o n c h a v. d e
R e g a l a d o s h o w t h a t in 1 9 3 7 - 3 8 p r o f i t s f r o m h e r s t o r e s w e r e 9 ,0 0 0 c o l o n e s ,
w h i l e p r o f i t s f r o m h e r c o m p a n y ’ s p r i n c i p a l h a c i e n d a ( S a n I s i d r o ) w e r e 6 3 ,0 0 0
p e so s. A G N -T a x R ec o rd s.
 70 Ironically this group o f small-scale peddlers, many o f whom were Eastern
European or Russian Jewish immigrants, was decimated during the repression
o f 1932 with the excuse that some labor organizers had presented themselves
300
as such. La Tribuna (Costa Rica), January-February 1932.
71 “ Informe Sobre las Condiciones de Vida de los Jornaleros del Departamento,”
1932, A G N -C M -M G .
Notes 72 Alcalde de Nueva San Salvador, “ Informe Rendido por el Alcalde Municipal y
Jefe del Distrito de Nueva San Salvador al Sr. Gobernador,” 28 April 1932,
A G N -C M -M G .
73 Gobernación de Sonsonate, “ Registro de los Individuos sin Trabajo,” April
1929, A G S.
74 Ogilvie, “ The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador, 19 32” ; Ministerio de Haci­
enda Jose E. Suay, Crédito Público, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,” 1928,
A G N -C M -M G .
75 Ogilvie, “ The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador, 19 32,” 52.
76 Ministro de Gobernación J. Novoa, “Telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate,”
1931, A G N - C M - M G ; Gobernador de Sonsonate Aristides Castillo, “ Carta al
Alcalde de Sonsonate,” 16 May 1931, a g n - c m - m g ; P. Diaz, “ Carta al Ministro
de Gobernación,” 20 August 1931, a g n - c m - m g .
77 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 296-97.
78 Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution; Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution;
Gould, To Lead as Equals; Paige, Cojffee and Power; Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian
Republic, chapter 8.
79 López, “Tradiciones inventadas y discursos nacionalistas,” chapter 3.
80 Dana Munro, The Five Republics o f Central America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1918), 106 -7.
81 Morley Roberts, On the Earthquake Line: Minor Adventures in Central America (Lon­
don: Arrowsmith, 1924), 114.
82 Thompson, Rainbow Countries o f Central America, 178.
83 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 204.
84 Interview with Margarita Turcios, El Guayabo, Armenia, 2001.
85 Wilson, “ The Crisis.”
86 Approximately 25 percent o f the country’s adult labor force had to participate
in the harvesting o f coffee in 1929. This is a projection based on the country’s
demographics, the size o f the crop, and the productivity and labor indices
provided in c e p a l et al., Tenencia de la tierra y desarollo rural en centroame'rica (San
José: ed u c a , 1980), 172.
87 Alfredo Schlesinger quoted in Castro Moran, Función política del ejercito Sal­
vadoreño en el presente sújlo, 12 5-2 6 .
88 Interview with Alberto Shul, Nahuizalco, 1999.
89 Mintz, “ The Rural Proletariat and the Problem o f Rural Proletarian Conscious­
ness,” 191.
90 Lauria-Santiago, “ ‘That a Poor Man Be Industrious.’ ”
 91 White, El Salvador, io i.
92 It wasn’t just peasants who held this memory. The editor o f Patria, Masferrer,
wrote in 1928, “About forty-five years ago the land in the country was dis­ 301
tributed among the majority o f the Salvadorans, but now it is falling into the
hands o f a few owners.” Patria, i g December rg 2 8 ,1.
93 This was so in Usulutan’s coffee regions, for example, where most workers
came from other regions o f the country. See Lauria-Santiago, “ La historia Notes
regional del café en El Salvador.”
94 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 28o-8r.
95 Carl Vilhelm Hartman, “ Estudios etnográficos sobre los indios de raza azteca
existentes en El Salvador,” Boletín de la Direccio'n General de Estadística de la Re­
pública de El Salvadori, nos. 7 - 8 (July-August 1902), 12 4 -2 6 , 146-48, trans.
Andres Bang.
96 Scott, The Moral Economy 0/the Peasant.
97 Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 875. On memories o f
primitive accumulation see Gould, To Die in This Way, 2 3 1-3 2 .

Chapter Two: A Bittersweet Transition

1 Wilson, “ The Crisis” ; Censo de Población 1930; Menjivar, Formacio'n y lucha del
proletariado industrial salvadoreño.
2 Wilson, “The Crisis,” 50; Bulmer-Thomas, The Political Economy of Central Amer­
ica since 1920, chapter 2.
3 This was considered the best-equipped and most independent o f Central
American militaries at the time.
4 See Uriarte, La esfinge de Cuscatlan, El Presidente Quinonez, and Arias Gómez, Fara-
bundo Marti. In Nahuilingo, for example, one hundred men were the founders
o f the local “ liga de amigos sinta roja” in 1918. See Alvarenga, Cultura y ética
de la violencia, for a well-documented discussion and reinterpretation o f the
role o f the Ligas Rojas. Erik Ching challenges the classic perception o f the
Ligas as a populist institution, finding instead—at least in some localities—
wealthy landowners in control o f local chapters; Ching, “ From Clientelism to
Militarism.”
5 Wilson, “ The Crisis,” 95.
6 One Guatemalan observer in 1932 noted how during die 1920s the “ masses”
had been mobilized for reform since the Quiflónez campaign against Palomo
in 1918, which saw great unrest and violence in the countryside. See “ En El
Salvador: Origen del comunismo,” El Liberal Progresista, 9 February 1932. One
author traces attempts by President Carlos Meléndez to incorporate mass
support to 1915: Castro Moran, Funcio'n política del ejercito Salvadoreño en el presente
siglo, 38 -43.
7 Uriarte, La esjtnge de Cuscatlan; Ching, “ From Clientelism to Militarism,” chap­
ters 5-6 .
 8 Dalton, Miguel Marmol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 96. According to Gó­
mez, several hundred demonstrators attacked a police station. Arias Gómez,
Farabundo Marti, 42.
302
9 Its commercial employees organized self-protection associations and gained
significant reforms from the government, including recognition o f their asso­
ciations and work rules by the late ig20s.
Notes 10 Morley Roberts, On the Earthquake Line: Minor Adventures in Central America (Lon­
don: Arrowsmith, 1924), 121.
11 In effect the U.S. embassy worried about this potential after 1918, but govern­
ment efforts to keep the Ligas in check offered reassurance. Bedford, “ Setting
the Tone,” 18 3-8 4 .
12 Franklin Dallas Parker, The Central American Republics (London: Oxford Univer­
sity Press, 1964), 151.
13 G-2 r e p o r t n o . 1 3 8 3 , 1 2 May 1 9 2 5 , m i d , u s n a .
14 Quijano Hernandez, Dejados de la Mano de Dios, 37. Other estimates place the
number o f demonstrators as high as fifteen thousand. See Arias Gómez,
Farabundo Marti, 46.
15 Quijano Hernandez, Dejados de la Mano de Dios, 40.
16 Ibid., 43-4 4 .
17 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 199.
18 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 85
19 Ibid., 88.
20 Gould, To Lead as Equals, 188-9 3.
21 James, Resistance and Integration.
22 See for example Molina, “ The Polarization o f Politics,” 163-69.
23 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 198-99.
24 Neiv York Times, 5 October 1930, 3.
25 In some ways Romero Bosque’s presidency maintained continuity with the
practices o f Melendez and Quifiónez. Romero Bosque’s own son was a broker
for payoffs to the national assembly for concessions and contracts. See Jeffer­
son Cafferey to secretary o f state, 30 April 1928, no. 1102, Department o f State,
u sn a ; Krehm, Democracies and Tyrannies, 3.
26 “ Legajo de Cartas al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 1931, a g n - c m - m g . None­

theless, as the president’s brother-in-law, Romero Bosque at this point

seemed to be a safe potential candidate for the p n d .
27 La Voz de la Nation, November 1926 thorugh September 1927.
28 Romero Bosque and Gómez Zarate were approved as their their candidates. La
Voz de la Nación, 15 September 1927. Erik Ching points out the extent o f conti­
nuity between local officials who often changed their loyalties to retain power.
Ching, “ From Clientelism to Militarism,” 277-78 .
29 Marcial Pereira, Marcial Vela, and Gonzalo Hernández to Novoa, m g , S a n
Vicente, 7 November 1927.
30 ¡Alerta!! ¡Obreros Trabajadores!, imprint, San Vicente, October 1927; a similar
 insurgent campaign was run by members o f the San Vicente élite, who em­
phasized the abuses and cronyism o f the populist Liga Roja, which for years
had controlled local elections. Vicentinos, imprint, San Vicente, 19 November
303
1927.
31 Manuel de Mendoza, Ministerio de Gobernación, “ Memorandum a los Gober­
nadores,” 22 November 1927, a g n -c m -m g .

32 On Romero’s intervention in Atiquizaya see Pío Romero Bosque, telegram to Notes

Minister o f Gobernación, 5 December 1927, a g n -c m -m g .

33 Ramón al Gobernador del Departamento, 3 November 1927, a g n - c m - m g .

34 Bustamante, Historia militar de El Salvador; Castro Moran, Funcio'n política del
ejercito Salvadoreño en el presente siglo. For the trial proceedings see Government
o f El Salvador, Procesos Relativos a la Rebelión del 6 de Diciembre de 1927.
35 Pío Romero Bosque to Gobernadores, telegram, 6 December 1927, a g n -
c m - m g . Even after the consolidation o f Romero Bosque’s government con­

spiracies against him continued; in 1929 a murder plot was discovered, but
this did not stall his reforms. Diario Latino; Neiv York Times, 17 April 1929, 24.
36 La Voz de la Nación.
37 Magdaleno Alvarez, “ Carta al Presidente de la República, Pío Romero Bosque,”
20 November 1 9 2 7 , a g n -c g -S o.

38 Samuel M. Rodríguez, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,” 28 January 1930,

a g n -c m -m g .

39 In December 1930 Romero Bosque changed the long-standing electoral law

and allowed the formation o f mixed electoral committees with representatives
o f all the major parties. Ministerio de Gobernación, “ Telegrama Circular a los
Gobernadores,” 31 December 1930, a g n -c m -m g .

40 Ching, “ From Clientelism to Militarism,” 422.

41 Borghi B. Daglio was the Italian consul to El Salvador. In 1910 he owned one o f
Sonsonate’s largest coffee processing plants in Juayúa and others in Santa
Ana, Ahuchapan, and San Pedro Nonualco. He was one o f the country’s largest
coffee exporters, controlling five million pounds in 1916. By 1930 he had
purchased a second beneficio in Juayúa (Buena Vista). Ward, ed. and comp.,
Libro azul de El Salvador, 246.
42 Erik Ching describes this clan as a network o f landowners connected through
business relations and marriage, dating to around the turn o f the century.
Ching, “ From Clientelism to Militarism,” 422.
43 Alcalde de Juayúa Francisco Rivera Cortez, “Telegrama al Gobernador de Son-
sonate,” 19 3 1, a g n -c g -S o.
44 For the dissolution o f the community o f Dolores Izalco and the Ladinization o f
the neighborhood see Lauria-Santiago, “ Land, Community, and Revolt in In­
dian Izalco, El Salvador.”
45 Roughly half o f Izalco’s population was identified as Indian in official statistics.
46 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Informe de la Visita Oficial a los Pueblos del
Departamento,” 20 September 19 13, a g n - c g - S o .
 47 Annually the indigenous organization would formally notify the national gov­
ernment o f the election o f authorities. In 1 9 2 4 two hundred males voted.
Alcalde Indio de Izalco Sotero Pasfn, “ Carta al Gobernador del Departamento
304
de Sonsonate,” 2 9 March 1 9 2 4 , a g n - c g - S o .
48 For a conflict over water rights in 1927 see “ Diligencias de Varios Vecinos de
Izalco: Eduardo Salaverria le Pone Obstáculos para Regar Sus Terrenos,” 1928,
Notes a g n - c m - m g ; for a conflict over water rights in 1929 see Izalco Francisco

Tespan, “ Carta al Gobernador del Departamento,” 17 April 1929, a g n - c g - S o .

49 “ Lista de las Personas Que Cultivan Café en la Jurisdicción de Izalco,” 1 2 July
19 2 6 , a g n -c g -S o .

50 “ Informativo Instruido a Efecto de Averiguar Varios Abusos del Secretario

Municipal de Izalco, Denunciado por la Señora Francisca Roque de Mineo,”
1928, A G N - C M - M G .
51 “ Informativo Instruido a Efecto de Averiguar Varios Abusos del Secretario
Municipal de Izalco, Denunciado por la Señora Francisca Roque de Mineo” ;
“ Diligencias Seguidas a Efecto de Averiguar Varios Abusos Cometidos por el
Secretario Municipal de Izalco Don Tomas Sicilia,” 1927, a g n - c g - S o .
52 Heraldo de Sonsonate, 14 January 1930, 2.
53 Gobernador Departamental de Sonsonate Lisandro Larin Z., “ Carta al Minis­
tro de Gobernación,” 6 December 1929, a g s .
54 The Directorio was formed by “ gente consciente” and “ obreros de la ciudad.” “ So­
bre Nulificación de Elecciones en Izalco,” 1929, a g n - c g - S o . The governor
also claimed, as a sign o f the illegitimacy o f the protest, that some o f the com­
plaints were from the cantones San Isidro and El Sunza, hinting that they were
mostly indígena hacienda workers and colonos aligned with Arturo Araujo,
already known as a reformer.
55 “ Sobre Nulificación de Elecciones en Izalco,” 1929, a g n -c g -S o.

56 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 10 December 1929.

57 Ibid.
58 Ministerio de Gobernación, “ Vecinos de Nahuizalco Piden Se Apoye la Can­
didatura de Gregorio Gutiérrez . . . , ” 27 September 1923, a g n - c m - m g .
59 “Telegramas Sobre Política y Elecciones,” 1 0 December 1 9 2 7 , a g s .
60 Telegram from M. Mora Castro to Ministry o f War, 30 December 1929, a g n -
c m -m g .
61 Ching, “ From Clientelism to Militarism,” 152. Brito was under indictment for
arson.
62 See Gould, To Die in This Way.
63 Espino, Prosas Escocidas, 20.
64 Rochac in Patria, 9 October 1929, 3.
65 See Wilson, “ The Crisis.” This stance is in marked contrast to that o f other
Central American intellectuals who welcomed the decline o f the indigenous
population, for example Salvador Mendieta.
66 See for example Neiu York Times, 9 July 19 14 ,1.
67 Some o f this was because until the early 1920s El Salvador’s main sources
o f foreign investment and trade were in Europe, especially Germany, which
bought most o f the country’s coffee.
305
68 This was still felt a few years later when Ruhl visited the country. For a detailed
discussion o f the customs receivership see Buell, The Central Americans.
69 La Epoca, 17 June 1931.
70 Neio York Times, 3 March 1928, 3; New York Times, 20 February 19 2 8 ,1. Notes
71 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 329; Diario de Ahuachapan, 10 July 1928;
Arias Gómez, Farabundo Marti.
72 U.S. Department o f State, “American Legation: General Correspondence.”
73 Diario de Ahuachapan, 10 July 1928, 5.
74 Richard Salisbury, “ The Middle American Exile o f Victor Raul Haya de la
Torre,” Americas 40, no. 1 (July 1983), 1 - 1 7 ; Jussi Pakkasvirta: “Víctor Raúl
Haya de la Torre en Centroamérica: ¿La primera y última fase del aprismo
internacional?,” Reuista de Historia 44 (2002), 9 -3 1. The U.S. and Peruvian
embassies protested and called for the suppression o f his activities. Ministerio
de Relaciones Exteriores N. Martínez Duarte, “ Carta al Ministro de Goberna­
ción,” 1928, A G N - C M - M G .
75 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 329.
76 López, “ Tradiciones inventadas y discursos nacionalistas,” chapter 3.
77 Ibid.
78 Diario de Ahauchapa'n, 5 July 1928, 1. Pavletich was Central American organizer
for a p r a , based in Peru. In 1928 he and the a p r a founder Haya de la Torre
toured El Salvador. N. Martinez Duarte, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,”
a g n - c m - m g . He was allowed to give public speeches but Romero Bosque

managed to keep him from giving a more radical anti-imperialist speech while
there. J. Caffery to secretary o f state, no. 1292, 4 February 1928, Department o f
State, u s n a .
79 Dalton, Miguel Ma'rmol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 116.
80 State Department records between 1926 and 1930 show constant attempts by
Washington to force the Salvadoran government to crack down on supposed
Mexican agents and propaganda directed against the United States.
81 New York Times, 3 December 1930.
82 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 17 February 1930.
83 Ibid., 9 January 19 31 (signed “ Sandolcao” ).
84 Choussy cited in Wilson, “ The Crisis,” 12 0 -2 1.
85 See Karen Racine, “Alberto Masferrer and the Vital Minimum: The Life and
Thought o fa Salvadoran Journalist, 18 6 8 -19 32 ,” Americas 54, no. 2 (1997), 225.
Vitalismo “ captured the imagination o f reform-minded humanitarians across
the isthmus” (225). Masferrer also linked the social reformism o f these years
with its anti-imperialism. Alberto Masferrer. “ En la hora de crujir de dientes,”
La Prensa, 3 February 1927, 1, cited in Jaime Barba, “ Masferrer, vitalismo y
luchas sociales en los años veinte,” Regio'n: Centro de Investigaciones (1997). For
 discussions ofMasferrer and Patria and their relationship to broader reformist
movements see Barba, “Masferrer” ; García Giráldez, “ El Unionismo y el Anti­
imperialismo en la década de 1920” ; Casaus, “ Las Influencias de las redes
306
intelectuales teosóficas en la opinión pública centroamericana” ; López, “Tra­
diciones inventadas y discursos nacionalistas.”
86 For a discussion o f the student movement during this period see Ricardo
Notes Antonio Argueta Hernández, “ Los estudiantes universitarios y las luchas so­
ciales en El Salvador (19 2 0 -19 31),” Sexto Congreso Centroamericano de His­
toria (Panama, 2002).
87 See for example Mayorga Rivas, “ Los indios de Izalco, terruño salvadoreño.”
One reformist governor noted the “ movimiento a favor del Indio” throughout
“ nuestra America” and complained that “ Centroamérica, que en parte tienen
un sedimento indígena considerable ha olvidado, ha descuidado totalmente la
situación de sus indios.” He thought that “ el indio de ciertas zonas de nuestro
país no es un problema, antes mejor significa una avanzada a la civilización.”
Rochac in Patria. See also López, “ Tradiciones inventadas y discursos na­
cionalistas,” for a discussion o f Maria de Baratta’s ethnographic work and
other evidence o f this revaluation o f indigenous culture.
88 Bedford, “ Setting the Tone,” 208.
89 “ Informe del VI Congreso Regional Obrero y Campesino, 1930,” Comintern
18, p. 125.
90 Dalton, Miguel Ma'rmol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 104.
91 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 831.
92 Gould, To Lead as Equals, 69.
93 Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, 107.
94 See Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 4 5 7 -5 15 .
95 “ Informe de la Industria Textil en C.H.” Comintern 4 9 5.119 .1,19 30 .
96 “ Libro Copiador de Telegramas,” 1929, a g n - c m - m g . In February a rare strike
o f colonos broke out on the hacienda El Paisnal, near Izalco.
97 Arias Gómez, Farabundo Marti, 93.
98 “ Libro Copiador de Telegramas,” 1 9 2 9 , a g n - c m - m g ; w d r to secretary o f
state, 2 7 July 1 9 2 9 , Diplomatic Correspondence no. 1 0 0 , u sn a .It appears that
the port agency instituted the eight-hour day.
99 “ Le travail et la situation des jeunesses communistes,” Comintern 495.119.1,
1930.
100 Araujo’s father disputed lands bordering between his hacienda and Izalco’s
Dolores community when this community surveyed its lands as part o f the
partition process o f the 1890s. Most o f his properties came from colonial-era
haciendas and lots purchased around the turn o f the century. See Launa-
Santiago, “ Land, Community, and Revolt in Indian Izalco, El Salvador.”
101 El Sunza produced thirty thousand quintals in 1926. In 1932 it was estimated
to produce sixteen to eighteen thousand quintals o f sugar cane from three
hundred manzanas. In Armenia he owned a large coffee farm, a cattle ranch
 (San Eugenia), and the El Carmen sugar mill. His hacienda El Triunfo in San
Julian consisted o f ten caballerías with cattle, coffee, and balsam trees. He
shared control o f the Salvador Railways with other investors.
307
102 Most accounts o f Araujo emphasize his connections to Britain, what Erik
Ching described as his Anglophilia, and his admiration for the British Labour
Party. Ching, “ From Clientelism to Militarism,” 249.
103 Wilson, “ The Crisis,” 50. Notes
104 For a discussion ofMelendez-Quiñónez’s manipulation o f these elections and
their exclusion see Ching, “From Clientelism to Militarism,” 249 -53.
105 Bedford, “ Setting the Tone,” chapter 4.
106 “ B o le t í n d e l M i n i s t e r i o d e G u e r r a , ” 8 3 3 ; D ia rio o ficia l, 1 4 M a y 1 9 2 0 ; New Y o rk

T im es, 1 6 M a y 1 9 2 0 , 4 .
107 “ Informe Anual de la Guardia Nacional,” 31 December 1 9 2 2 , a g n -c m -m g .
108 Gobernador Departamental de Sonsonate Lisandro Larin Z., “ Carta al Minis­
tro de Gobernación,” 192 9, a g n -c g -S o .
109 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 149.
110 The Partido del Proletariado Salvadoreño played a critical role in linking
Araujo to labor. The PPS was formed by reformist leaders o f the f r t s who
were expelled when the left gained control o f the organization.
111 Sectors supportive ofAraujismo initially, like the Partido del Proletariado Sal­
vadoreño, sought land reform. In the weeks right after Araujo’s electoral
victory, according to one account, peasants reportedly occupied lands in ha­
ciendas in western El Salvador. Ogilvie, “ The Communist Revolt o f El Sal­
vador, 19 32,” 44; Alvarenga, Cultura y ética de la violencia, 305; Casaus, “ Las
Influencias de las redes intelectuales teosóficas en la opinión pública centro­
americana” ; García Giráldez, “ El Unionismo y el Antiimperialismo en la dé­
cada de 1920.”
112 “ Mi primer mensaje al pueblo salvadoreño,” Diario del Salvador, 6 November
1930, repr. in enclosure 1, despatch no. 388, 6 November 1930, m id , u sn a .

113 Diario Latino; Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,”

28 November 1 9 3 0 , a g n -c g -S o .
114 Schlesinger, La Verdad Sobre el Comunismo.
115 Ibid.; Proceso Contra el Alcalde de Tacuba por Quejas de los Partidos Arau-
jistas,” 1 9 3 0 , a g n -c g -S o .
116 “ Informativo Seguido Contra Don Perfecto Eleuterio Chafoya Acusado por
Comunista ó Bolcheviquista, Atiquisaya,” 21 November 1930, A G N -C G -A h .

117 “ Lista de Electores, Inscritos y Votantes para Todo el País, Elecciones Enero
19 3 1, ” 1931, A G N - C M - M G .
118 U.S. Department o f War, m i d , “ Correspondence and Record Cards o f the
Military Intelligence Division Relating to General, Political, Economic, and
Military Conditions in Central America, 19 18 -19 4 1,” u s n a .
119 Gobernador de Sonsonate Lisandro Larin J., “ Carta al Alcalde de Sonsonate,”
1931, a g n - c g - S o ; Fred Cruse, San José, 30 April 1931, no. 3110, m i d , u s n a .
 120 New York Times, 6 January 1930, 4.
121 In November the New York Times reported an agreement reached by Romero
Bosque with all candidates that only two candidates would run, one a civilian
308
and the other a military man. Clearly this pact did not hold. New York Times, 2
November 1930, E, 6.
122 Warren D. Robbins to assistant secretary o f state, 16 January 19 31, no. 424,
Notes Department o f State, u s n a .
123 A G N -T a x Records.
124 Warren D. Robbins to secretary o f state, 31 October 1930, no. 386, Department
o f State, u sn a .
125 Bedford, “ Setting the Tone.”
126 Meardi wrote to the minister o f interior about “ el comunismo que nos ha in­
vadido guiado por grupos de extranjeros.” Detalle sobre ios sucesos ocurridos
en aquella ciudad los días 2 2 y 2 3 del mes de Oct. ppdo., 1 9 3 0 , a g n - c m - m g .
127 Warren D. Robbins to secretary o f state, 31 October 1930, no. 386, Department
o f State, u s n a .

Chapter Three: Fiestas of the Oppressed

1 Interview with Fabián Mojica, Sonzacate, 1999.
2 Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, “ El ‘Bolchevique Mexicano’ de la Centroamérica de los
veinte” (interview with Hernández Anaya), Memoria 4, no. 31 (September-
October 1990), 218.
3 Figueroa Ibarra, “ El Bochevique Mexicano,” 2 17 -18 . In an interview with
Mojica (2000) he stated that the same campesinos from the cantons o f Izalco
went to organize the plantation workers in the San Julián area. Many o f the
village residents worked on the plantations and returned home every fort­
night, especially during the coffee harvest.
4 I^uria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic, chapter 5; Mahoney, The Legacies of Liberal­
ism.
5 Report sent to the Sección Latino Americano o f the i s r , 25 March 1930, San
Pedro Sula, Comintern 495.119.11.
6 Schlesinger, Revolucio'n Comunista, 230.
7 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 13 0 - 3 1.
8 “ La Situación del El Salvador,” 10 June 1930, Comintern 495.119.3. Interview
with Fabian Mojica (Sonzacate, 1999, 2000), a carpenter from Sonzacate, who
was a rural union organizer in 1929 and 1930.
9 J. Diaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas (Madrid, 1929),
cited in Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, 87-88.
10 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 118.
11 On the social and geographical roots o f the sugar proletariat see González,
La Fiesta de los Tiburones. On the 1933 movement see de la Fuente, A Nation for
All, 13 9 -2 12 ; Barry Carr, “ Mill Occupation and Soviets: the Mobilization of
 Sugar Workers in Cuba, 19 17 -19 3 3 ,” Journal o/Latin American Studies 28 (1996),
129 -58.
12 “ Organizing was greatly facilitated by the fact that many union activists lived 309
in the same neighborhoods as the field laborers.” Gould, To Lead as Equals, 77.
13 “ Conatos Subversivos Promovidos por Varios Individuos Sindicalistas en la
Hacienda ‘La Preza’ Propiedad de Doña Claudia de Borbon, Coatepeque,”
1930, A G N - C M - M G . Notes
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Various reports in die Comintern documents purport to list all strike activity.
Several reports and references from the f r t s congress o f May 1930 discuss
two urban strikes, one in a textile mill and one at a water company. Comintern
495.119.10, p. 60. In 1931 there were two strikes in San Salvador, one involving
bus workers and the other shoe workers. There were no reported rural strikes
that got o ff the ground or lasted more than a day until late in 1931. See re­
port during the latter part o f 1932 to the Comintern by “ Comrade Hernan­
dez,” 495.119.4, p. 27. Through an analysis o f all available documentation we
have determined that “ Hernandez” could only have been Max Cuenca. “ Her­
nandez” / Cuenca formed part o f the three-person “ comité militar” appointed
by the Central Committee once the insurrection was decided upon. The other
two members were Mármol (in hiding) and Marti (executed). In addition to
this argument there are numerous points o f coincidence between the account
by “ Hernández” o f his own positions (for example at the decisive meeting o f
the Central Committee on 20 January) and those attributed to “ the intellec­
tual” Cuenca by Mármol.
18 “Actividad Comunista desarrollase ahora en San Isidro, Izalco,” Diario Latino,
23 January 1931.
19 Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic, chapter 5.
20 Interviews with Doroteo López, San Isidro, 1999 and 2001.
21 Ibid. Most o f the information on the organization in Los Amates derives from
extensive interviews with Doroteo Lopez in 1999 and 2001. Lopez (born in
1914) lived in Los Amates during the early 1930s, where his father was a
foreman on a coffee finca.
22 Onofre Durán, a successful commercial farmer and large landowner, had been
governor o f Ahuachapán and member o f the national assembly.
23 The farms o f Jayaque hired approximately 3,500 coffee pickers during the high
season (1938 Coffee Census, manuscript, Biblioteca del Banco Hipotecario). A
core o f about twenty-five highly capitalized commercial farms (most equipped
with their own powered mills) hired most o f the workers (Directorio 1924).
24 Ml informants in the general area remember him. In the town o f Armenia,
among other activities he helped to organize a soccer team.
25 Benjamin Arrieta Rossi, Gobernador del Departamento de La Libertad, “ Carta
 al Ministro de Gobernación, Dr. Manuel V. Mendoza,” 13 March 19 3 0 , a g n -

C M -M G .

26 Acta de la Quinta Sesión, Congreso f r t s , 7 May 1930, 10(12) Comintern

3 io
495.119.10.
27 Interviews with Vicente Flores, Jayaque, 2001; Jacinto Mendez, Jayaque, 2001.
28 Interviews with Ramón Vargas, Turin, 1999; Salomé Torres, El Cacao, Son-
Notes sonate, 2001; Manuel Linares, El Cacao, 2001; Miguel Lino, El Tortuguero,
Atiquizaya, 2001.
29 Interview with Ramón Vargas, Atiquizaya, 1998.
30 The relationship between celebrating and political organizing extended to the
indigenous cofradías o f Izalco, where local elites noted the connection be­
tween celebration, organizing, and the strengthening o f a culture o f solidarity.
One o f the first measures taken by the imposed mayor o f Izalco after the defeat
o f the insurrection justified his request for removing religious images from
the control o f the cofradía by explaining how “ Siendo muchas las cofradías de
imágenes entre la clase indígena que acuerpado por ello mismo hacen sus
grandes reuniones en donde no solamente se trataba de sus fiestas, sino que
se fraguaban actos que están reñidos con nuestras leyes.” Alcalde municipal
de Izalco, “ certificación de acta municipal,” 3 February 1 9 3 2 , a g n - c g - S o ;
Telegramas al Gobernador de Sonsonete, 1 9 3 2 , a g n - c g - S o .
31 Maurice Agulhon’s pioneering concept o f sociability referred mainly to sites
inhabited by urban middle sectors (including workers) and specifically those
settings removed from both the family and political institutions.
32 Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 52.
33 Ibid., 248.
34 Ibid., 274.
35 Cited in Erhard Doubrawa, “ Martin Buber, Anarchist,” Gestalt Journal, spring
2001.
36 Interview with Sotero Linares, Las Higueras, Izalco, 2001.
37 “ Sobre la Situación internacional, nacional y de la f r t s , Las Tareas Fun­
damentales, Nuestro Programa,” Jorge Fernández Anaya, May 1930, 19(126)
Comintern 495.119.10.
38 Ibid., 12(119) Comintern 495.119.10.
39 Ibid., 21(128) Comintern 495.119.10.
40 Although in Cuba there are no references to his ideological deviations, Mella
was suspected o f being a Trotskyite. He edited a journal in Mexico called El
Tren Blindado, in direct reference to Trotsky’s military leadership against the
counter-revolution that followed the rise o f the Bolshevik party in Russia. See
Pino Cacucci, “ Los Motivos Porque Asesinaron a Julio Antonio Mella,” La
Jornada (Mexico City), 19 June 2005.
41 “ Informe,” 12 August 1930, Comintern 495.119.12.
42 Marti years earlier seemed aware o f the cultural dimension o f campesino
 organizing. See Taracena’s discussion a memo by Martí to the Central Ameri­
can Communist Party in Guatemala in Taracena, “ El Primer Partido Comu­
nista de Guatemala. ”
3 11
43 Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, 107.
44 Ibid., 17 2 -7 3 .
45 Ibid., 174.
46 Ibid., 175. Notes
47 Cardenal, Historia de Una Esperanza, 452.
48 Ibid.
49 “ Informe del VI Congreso Regional Obrero y Campesino Constituyente de la
Federación Regional de Trabajadores de El Salvador,” 4 May 1930, Comintern
495.119.10, p. 106, laments the lack o f membership statistics. “ La situación
actual de El Salvador,” an internal document o f the p c s dated 10 June 1930,
gives a partial account o f rural labor organizing: Santiago de Texacuango 400;
Armenia 2,500; Ahuachapán over 1,000; Nahuizalco 1,703 (including 544
women); Juayúa 600. Comintern 495.119.3.
50 These often combined coffee with sugar production.
51 Salvador Manuel Mendoza, “ Carta al Director General de Policía,” 5 February
1931, A G N - C M - M G .
52 Diario Latino, 6 February 1931.
53 Schlesinger, Revolucio'n comunista, 211.
54 Comintern 495.119.10, p. 29 (31).
55 “ Informe del Gobernador,” 1930, a g n - c m - m g .
56 “ Cartas y Telegramas al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 19 3 1, AG S; “ Cartas y

Telegramas al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o .

57 He wrote: “ No ha habido gobernador hijo de puta que no haya enviado sus
chingaderas de telegramas acusando de subversivas nuestras organizaciones,
y pidiendo castigos ejemplares.” Jorge Fernández Anaya, “ Informe,” Guate­
mala, 12 August 1930, Comintern 495.119.12.
58 Telegrama from Comandante de Puesto, Timoteo Flores to Alcalde de Jayaque,
19 August 1930, a m J , located in Municipalidad de Jayaque. The Comandante de
Puesto ofjayaque reported also on the 19th on the capture o f “ Cabecillas Andres
Solis and Tomas Barrera, los que intentaban anteanoche asaltar esta ciudad.”
59 Alcalde de Jayaque, Telegrama al Ministro de Guerra, 2 1 August 1 9 3 0 , a m j ;
Ministro de Gobernación Manuel Mendoza, “ Carta al Gobernador de Sonso­
nate,” 1 9 3 0 , a g n - c g - S o .
60 See a report by Jorge Fernández Anaya, 12 August 1930, Comintern 495.119.12,
p. 6. Also see arrest lists for Nahuizalco and Izalco in August 1930 in Eladio
Campos, Director de Policía, “ Informes al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” August
1930, Archivo de la Gobernación de Sonsonate (a g a ).
61 Ministro de Gobernación Manuel Mendoza, “ Carta al Gobernador de Sonso­
nate,” 1930, a g n - c m - m g ; Alcalde de Nahuizalco, “ Telegrama al Gobernador
de Sonsonate,” 2 1 September 1930, a g s .
 62 Alcalde de Nahuizalco, “ Telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 21 Septem­
ber 1930, A G S; Interviews with Alberto Shul, Nahuizalco, 1999-2001; Angel
Olivares, Nahuizalco, 1998.
312
63 See for example Acta 9 del Comité Central de PC S, 21 November 1930, Com­
intern 95.119.3, referring to discussions o f insurrection among militants in
Sonsonate; “ La situación actual de El Salvador,” Partido Comunista Salva-
Notes doreo, dated 10 June 1930, mentions the campesinos’ “ deseo de ir a las man­
ifestaciones machete en manos.”
64 “ Informe Sobre el Salvador,” Jorge Fernández Anaya to Alberto Moreau, secre­
tary general o f Colonial Department, c pu sa , 8 September 1930, Comintern
495-II 9. P- 9-
65 Ibid., p. 10.
66 Comintern, Informe rendido por los camaradas de El Salvador, Santa Ana,
1936, 495.119.7, p. 1(2 3 ).
67 Legajo de Cartas al Gobernador de Sonsonate, 1931, a g s . It is quite likely that

the color red also harkened back to the state-supported Ligas Rojas (1918-22),
which had empowered indigenous people in local politics and legitimized the
use o f force in defense o f corporate political interests
68 William D. Robbins to secretary o f state, 3 December 1930, no 401, U.S.
Department o f State, u sn a .
69 Neu) York Times, 24 December 1930. The Times reported two dead and eleven
wounded, sr i reported eight dead.
70 Informe de la sección de le El Salvador rendido pro el camarada Hernandez
en la Junta del Secretariado del Caribe del s r i, 12 July 1932, Comintern
495.119.12, p. 1 (32). Hernández appears to be Max Ricardo Cuenca.
71 Cuenca report, 11 (18), Comintern.
72 Ibid., 12 (19), Comintern.
73 José Tomás Calderón General de División, “ Contestación al Cuestionario . . .
1 9 3 1 , a g n - c m - m g ; “ Informativo Sobre Averiguar los Hechos Motivados

por un Numeroso Grupo de Comunistas,” May 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o .

74 Informe del VI Congreso f r t s , Comintern 495.119.10, pp. 88-95. The thesis

and platform were drawn up by Fernández Anaya.

75 The relationship between the electoral campaign and the labor organizing was
noted by a periodical in Santa Ana, Idea Libre, which accused the “ aristocratic”
landowners o f Santa Ana o f not selling water to workers and Volcaneños as
revenge for their vote in the last elections “ so that they will obey next time.”
“ Informativo Seguido por la Gobernación Política Departamental de Santa
Ana, para Averiguar Quien Sea el Autor de un Comentario Publico en Idea
Libre del 1 2 de los Corrientes,” 1 7 April 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c m - m g .
76 The following informants either stated “ querían quitarles las fincas a los ricos’
or used a very similar phrase: José Antonio Chachagua, Achapuco, Ahuacha-
pán, 2001; Isabel Miranda, Sacacoyo, 2001; Margarita Turcios, el Guayabo,
Armenia, 2001; Cecilio Martínez, Ateos, 2001; Salomé Torres, El Cacao, 2001;
 Manuel Linares, El Cacao, 2001; Manuel Ascencio, Carrizal, 1998; María Hor­
tensia García, Ahuachapán, 2001.
77 José Antonio Chachagua, Achupaco, Ahuachapán, 2001.
313
78 Legajo de Cartas al Gobernador de Sonsoante, 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o .
79 R. C. Valdez, telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate, 20 March 1931, 7 April
19 3 1, a g n -c g -S o .

80 However the f r t s did have a presence in the area. In January 1 9 3 1 more than a Notes
hundred men led by Gregorio Cortez, union organizer from Armenia, met in
Izalco’s Barranca las Victorias on 1 9 January 1 9 3 1 . Armenia Emeterio Torres,
“Telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 1 9 January 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o .
81 “ Cartas Sobre la Revuelta Comunista y Listas de los Adheridos al Gobierno,”
1932, A M S.
82 Also arrested were Sergio De Leon and Agripino Guevara, who were known to
use their salaries for “ propaganda” purposes. Both had been arrested pre­
viously and were seen as organizers o f previous protests in Sonsonate. The
governor requested that they be found jobs in San Salvador to keep them away
from Sonsonate! Gobernador to m g , 14 March 1931, a g n - c m - m g ; Gober­
nador al Director General de policía, “ Legajo de Cartas al Gobernador de
Sonsonate.” San Salvador, 17 March 1931; “ Legajo de Cartas al Gobernador de
Sonsonate,” 1931, a g n - c m - m g .
83 Masen was reportedly the local “ secretario” o f the communist movement and
named as such directly by Farabundo Marti. Alcalde de Izalco R. C. Valdez,
“Telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 7 April 1931, a g n - c g - S o .
84 Alcalde de Izalco R. C. Valdez, “ Telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate,”
3 0 April 1 9 3 1 , 1 M a y 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o .

85 Municipal authorities in Izalco reported that large contingents o f Araujistas

mobilized in protest over alleged irregularities. The final results reported by
telegram to the governor had Izalco voters divided between Araujo (940) and
Gómez Zarate (1,367), but a later report (January 12) gave equal numbers o f
434 for each. This discrepancy was confirmed in a complaint filed by Izalco’s
Araujista Laborist party, its members representing themselves as “ ladino
farmers and artisans” who complained that the Zaratistas party had com­
mitted fraud. Other reports described the local landlord and political boss
Alfonso Diaz Barrientos paying people half a colon and drink to vote for Zarate.
“ Telegramas Sobre Politica,” 1931, a g n - c m - m g ; Alcalde de Izalco R. C. Val­
dez, “Telegrama al Gobernador de Sonsonate,” 1931, a g n - c g - S o ; “ Solicitud
del Comité Araujo,” 1931, A G S.
86 Gobernador del Departamento de Cabañas Francisco Baldovines, “ Carta al
Ministro de Gobernación,” 8 August 1931, a g n - c m - m g .
87 SRI bulletin, no 2, 25 April 1931, 2.
88 Interviews with Fabian Mojica, Sonzacate, 1999 and 2001; s r i bulletin.
89 Interview with Doroteo López, San Isidro, 2001.
90 s r i bulletin, no 2, 25 April 1931, p. 1. Marti him self managed to visit workers
 in the jail o f Sonsonate, a concession that got the warden in trouble with the
governor. Aristides Castillo Gobernador Politico de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Al­
calde Municipal de sonsonete,” 5 June 19 31, a g n -c g -S o .
3i4
91 S R I bulletin, 17 May 1931.
92 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta a Arturo Araujo, Presidente de la Repúb­
lica,” 7 May 1 9 3 1 , A G N -C M -M G .
Notes 93 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Comandante Departamental de Sonso­
nate,” 13 May 1931, 20 May 1931, a g n -c m -m g .
94 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,” 6 May 1931,
a g n- c m - m g The mobilization in this region was so extensive that even local

police commissioners like Anastasio Ishio, from Canton Cuyagualo in Izalco,

were arrested for their “ communist” activities.
95 S R I bulletin, 23 May 1931.

96 Diario Latino, 18 May 1931, ig May 1 9 3 1 ,1 June, 1931.

97 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 337-39 .
98 Ibid., 339.
99 Diario Latino, 22 May 1931.
100 Ibid., 1 June 1931. Araujo also related reports from local people from Izalco
who claimed that they thought the protest would be a “ celebration, like when
they supported Araujo,” but one that would help improve their conditions.
Indeed, this also points to the potential power o f “ communitas,” the recre­
ation o f egalitarian social bonds through festive acts.
101 José Tomás Calderón General de División, “ Contestación al Cuestionario . . .
, ” 2 1 May 1 9 3 1 , A G N - C M - M G .
102 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,” 25 May 1931,
a g n - c g - S o . Government officials confiscated the only photo negatives of

Agripino Guevara in order to keep the left from using them to denounce the
killing.
103 S R I , Comité Ejecutivo, Comintern 539.3.1060, p. 6.
104 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,” 27 May 1931,
a g n -c g -S o.

Chapter Four: "Ese Trabajo Era Enteramente de los Naturales"

1 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Ministro de Gobernación,” 27 May 1931,
A G N -C G -S O .

2 sr i bulletin, May 1931.

3 El Indio, 17 May 1931.
4 Jules-Humbert Droz, “Tesis sobre la unidad nacional y continental,” Congres
de Fondation de la Cofederation Syndicale Latín Americaines (May 1929), 468.
5 Jules-Humbert Droz, “Tesis sobre la unidad nacional y continental,” C o n g res

de Fondation de la Cofederation Syndicale Latín Americaines (May 1929), 469-

6 “ Manifiesto a las Masas Obreras y Campesinas del Salvador, Hoy 1 de Mayo
Día de los Trabajadores . . Comintern 495.119.8, 21, 1934.
 7 El Movimiento Revolucionario Latinoamericano, 303.
8 Jeffrey L. Gould, “ Proyectos del Estado-nación y la supresión de la pluralidad
cultural: perspectivas históricas.”
315
9 Lillian Elwyn Elliott, Central America: New Paths in Ancient Lands (London: Meth­
uen, 1924), 118.
10 Gould, To Die in This Way, 32 -39 .
11 Antono Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas (San Miguel: Tipografía el Notes
Progreso, 1934), vol. 2, g8.
12 Ibid., vol. 3 ,12 2 .
13 Conte shared with anthropologists certain teleological notions that Indians
would inevitably be transformed by modernization. Yet stripped o f its teleo­
logical and essentialist framework, Conte’s positing o f a process o f “ ladiniza-
ción,” wrought by highly negative material processes, was prescient. We will
employ his term in Spanish to denote a process by which people rejected or
withdrew loyalty to the ethnic emblems o f language and dress in particular.
The recognition that this change at the same time related to a perception o f
indigenous authenticity, or the lack o f it, we will call cultural mestizaje. See To
Die in This Way, 1 0 - 11,13 4 - 3 9 .
14 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2, 93. This is a very early use o f
the term “ ladinización.”
15 Ibid., 95
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., vol. 3, 87. Indeed one o f the more significant revelations ofConte’s book
remains implicit in the text. With a generally acute ethnographic eye he de­
scribes numerous indigenous communities in eastern Salvador during his
earlier missions (1906-15), but in his later missions these communities are
either not described as Indian or not referred to at all.
18 Kenneth Grubb in Religion in Central America (London: World Dominion, 1937),
offers a higher estimate. He claimed that 45,000 “ still talk and understand
Pipil” and that 30,000 speak more Pipil than Spanish. According to Grubb,
virtually all Indians understood Spanish and therefore “ the Indian language
will disappear within a generation.” Grubb offers no explanation for how he
arrived at his estimates.
19 Interviews with Pedro Lúe, Sábana San Juan, 1998; Ramón Esquina, Tajcuil-
lulah, 1998; Rosario Lue, Nahuizalco, 1999; Benito Sarco, Nahuizalco, 2001;
Celestino Lue, El Canelo, 1999.
20 Conte, Treinta años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 3 ,19 5 .
21 Interviews with Francisco Pérez, Buenavista, Sacacoyo, 2001; Isabel Saldafia,
Sacacoyo, 2001; Jésus Vargas, Tepecoyo, 2001; José Gonzalez, Tepecoyo, 2001;
Cecilio Martínez, Ateos, 2001; Vicente Flores, Jayaque, 2001; Jesús Monter-
rosa, Jayaque, 2001; Doroteo López, San Isidro, 1999, 2001; Jacinto Méndez,
Jayaque, 2001.
22 Civil Records, Archivo Municipal Tepecoyo.
23 Gould, To Die in This Way, 228 -45.
 24 Jeffrey L. Gould, “ Vana Ilusión: The Highlands Indians and the Myth o f Nica­
ragua Mestiza,” Hispanic American Historical Remeto, 1993, 393-429.
25 Wilson claims that there were between twelve and sixty thousand Salvadorans
3i6
in Honduras, with some Honduran towns composed o f 50 -10 0 percent Sal­
vadoran immigrants. Wilson, “ The Crisis o f National Integration in El Sal­
vador,” 118
Notes 26 “ Informe de la Visita Oficial a los pueblos del Departamento,” Gobernador de
Sonsonate to Minister o f Gobernación, 20 September 1913, a g n -c g -S o.

27 Roy MacNaught. “ The Gospel in Nahuizalco. Salvador.” Bulletin, no. 168 (Jan­
uary t930), 7, cited in Llanes, “A History ofProtestantism in El Salvador.”
28 “ Informe de la Visita Oficial a los pueblos del Departamento,” gobernador de
Sonsonate to minister o f Gobernación, 20 September 1913, a g n -c g -S o .

29 Conte, Treinta años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 3 ,12 7 .

30 The Guatemalan case is quite distinct. See Taracena, “ Guatemala.” However,
there were definite signs o f ethnic and religious revitalization during this same
period in Guatemala, for example in Momostenango in 1931.
31 See Gould, To Die in This Way, 26-68, and Gould, “ Proyectos del Estado-nación
y la supresión de la pluralidad cultural: perspectivas históricas.”
32 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2, 97.
33 Ibid., vol. 2, 9g.
34 Ibid., vol. 2 ,10 0 .
35 Ibid., vol. 2 ,17 3 .
36 “ Informe de la Visita Oficial a los pueblos del Departamento,” gobernador de
Sonsonate to minister o f Gobernación, 20 September 1913, a g n - c g - S o .
37 Cardenal, El Poder Edesia'stico en El Salvador, 230.
38 Ibid., 233.
39 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2 ,18 5 .
40 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 18 January 1930.
41 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 22 April 1931.
42 Alvarenga, “ Los indígenas y el Estado.”
43 Gould, To Die in This Way, 18 2-8 3.
44 Gaspar, Historia Bautista en e! Salvador, 37.
45 Llanes, “A History o f Protestantism in El Salvador.” Juayúa and Nahuizalco
each had roughly twenty adults in their congregations.
46 Roy MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism in Central America,” 26.
47 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 3 , 1 7 1 .
48 Ibid., vol. 3,16 9 .
49 Ibid.
50 Interview with Andrés Pérez, Pushtan, 2001.
51 Gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Informe de la Visita Oficial a los Pueblos del
Departamento,” 20 September 19 13, a g n - c g - S o .
52 F. Machón Vilanova, Ola Roja (Mexico City, 1948), 3 0 -3 1.
53 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 24 February 1930, reported the opening o f schools in
Talcomunco and las Higueras (Izalco).
54 Interview with Marcos Bran, Cusamuluco, Nahuizalco, 2001.
55 Gould, To Die in This Way, 195.
56 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 3 ,19 5 .
317
57 Interview with Cecilia Perez Lúe, El Canelo 2001; on the use o f the expression
“ speak well” see Schultze Jena, Indiana.
58 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2, 109. During the twentieth
century this practice may have been unique to Cuisnahuat. Notes
59 Hartman, “ Reconocimiento Etnográfica de los Aztecas de El Salvador.”
60 “ Informe de la Visita Oficial a los pueblos del Departamento,” gobernador de
Sonsonete to minister o f Gobernación, 20 September 19 13, a g n -c g -S o .

61 See Tabora, “ Género y Percepciones Etnico-raciales en el Imaginario de la

Clase Política.”
62 Hartman, “ Reconocimiento Etnográfica de los Aztecas de El Salvador.”
63 Wallace Thompson, Rainbow Countries ofCentral America (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1924), IOO-IOI.
64 Nulidad de Elecciones en Cuisnahuat, 5 May 1901, a g n -CS.
65 El Día, 2 October 1931.
66 Gould, To Die in This Way, 73.
67 There is strong evidence to the contrary. As the Swedish ethnographer Hart­
man wrote: “ Las mujeres se bañan casi todos los días su ropa se encuentra
siempre impecable aún durante la época seca del año, cuando el polvo vuela
por los caminos.” O f course “ filth” also referred to the idea that “ refajadas”
wore no undergarments. Although it is not clear exactly what was worn in lieu
o f the ladino undergarment, this notion also appears to have been false.
68 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 18 November 1931.
69 See Gould, To Die in This Way, 4 7-50.
70 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 8 December 1931.
71 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 21 May 1931.
72 Gould, To Die in This Way, 4 7-50 , 73-74 .
73 Interview with Andrés Pérez, Pushtan, Nahuizalco, 2001.
74 For a strikingly similar process in Guatemala during the 1940s and 1950s see
Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre.
75 Cardenal, El Poder Eclesiástico en El Salvador, 225.
76 Alvarenga, Cultura y ética de la violencia; Alvarenga, “ Los indígenas” ; Ching,
“ From Clientelism to Militarism.”
77 Alvarenga, “ Los indígenas y el Estado.”
78 Interview with Paulino Galicia, Cara Sucia, 1999.
79 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 17 May 1931, reports that people allied with the cura took
away the image o f the Beatísima during the middle o f a religious procession.
80 Informe sobre las Elecciones en Izalco, 14 December 1914, a g n - c g - S o .
81 Ministerio de Gobernación, Sonsonate, n August 1931, a g n - c g - S o , reported
that in Izalco Antonio Calzadillo, 34, a tailor, Candelario Gonzalez, 50, a
carpenter, and Camilo Muscio, 20, a carpenter, were arrested for possessing
communist propaganda and that Leonardo Palma was arrested for using his
 house as the meeting place. Muscio, Calzadillo, Palma, and possibly Gonzalez
were indigenous.
82 “ Report on Communist Activities in El Salvador, ” British Consul, D. Rogers to
3i8
Grant Wilson, 16 February 1932, Foreign Office 813/23 no. 24238/138. Several
weeks after the nullification o f the elections, when the rebellion broke out, the
mainly Indian rebels proclaimed Chavez mayor.
Notes 83 Some o f the complexities o f ethnic conflict and the decline o f Indian identities
in Izalco during an earlier period are discussed in Lauria-Santiago, “ Land,
Community, and Revolt.”
84 Interviews with Eulalio Chile, Cuyagualo, Izalco, 2001; Sotero Linares, Las
Higueras, Izalco, 2001; Francisco Ishio, Cuntan, 2001.
85 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 3 ,12 5 .
86 Interview with Miguel Urbina, Ceiba del Charco, 2001.
87 Interview with Sotero Linares, Las Higueras, Izalco, 2001.
88 Interview with Jesús Velasquez, San Luis, Izalco, 2001.
89 Interview with Fabián Mojica, Sonzacate, 1999.
90 Interviews with Felipe Gomez, San Julián, 2001; Luis Ramos Linares, Los
Gramales, Sonsonate, 20or.
91 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2 ,1 7 1 ; Buezo, Sangre de Hermanos,
92 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2 ,1 7 1.
93 Mendez, Los Sucesos Comunistas en El Salvador, 187.
94 Commander Brodeur, for example, who spent a week in El Salvador in late
January 1932, referred to all poor rural Salvadorans as “ Indians.” See “ Secret
Report o f Situation as It Developed at Acajutla,” V. G. Brodeur to Naval Secre­
tary, Ottawa, 7 April 1932, fo 371/158 14 . Similarly, D. J. Rogers, coffee grower
and British consul, also employed the term “ Indians” in the same indiscrimi­
nate fashion; see “ Communist Rising in Salvador, January 19 32,” Report o f
the British consul, f o 3 7 1 1 5 8 1 3 , 1 2 February 1932.
95 Gobernador de Ahuachapán a l ministro de Gobernación, 1 8 9 2 , a g n - c m - m g .
96 The report indicates no indigenous births in the municipalities o f Atiquizaya,
Turin, El Refugio, and San Lorenzo. Gobernador de Ahuachapán al ministro
de Gobernación, 1892, a g n - c m - m g .
97 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2,19 0.
98 Interviews with Miguel Lino, El Tortuguero, Atiquizaya, 2002; Miguel Jimenez,
Santa Rita, Ahuachapán, 2001; and Leonora Escalante, Santa Rita, Ahuacha­
pán. The Guatemalan government arrested Corado twice and sent her to an
asylum, the second time at the peak o f the mobilizations o f January 1932 ;
“ Una virgen roja hacia milagros,” Excelsior (Mexico) 1, no. 3 (15 February 1932),
1; “ Ingreso al asilo de alienados el Santo Angel,” El Imparcial (Guatemala),
6 February 1932, 1; telegram from Jorge Ubico to Jefe Político de Jutiapa,
5 February 1932, Jefaturas Departamentales, a g c a .
99 R, C. Valdez, alcalde de Izalco, telegramas al gobernador de Sonsonate, 13 De­
cember 1931, a g n - c g - S o ; alcalde de Cuisnahuat, telegrama al gobernador de
Sonsonate, 2 2 March 1931, a g n - c g - S o ; Partes de policía, Departamento de
 Sonsonate, July-September 19 31, a g s ; telegramas sobre elecciones y precios,
1930, a g n - c g -S o ; Alberto Engelhard, alcalde de San Julián, telegramas al
gobernador de Sonsonate, 13 December T931, a g n -c g -S o.
319
100 We are making the distinction between communities or municipalities with
traditional forms ofindigenous authorities, such as Nahuizalco, Izalco, Cuis-
nahuat, and Santo Domingo (all in Sonsonate), and other communities made
up o f people with varying identities but who were not subject to specifically Notes
indigenous forms o f government.
101 Gould, To Die in This Way, 164.
102 Jena Schultze, Indiana. To cite one unusual practice that probably continued
into the twentieth century: an indigenous bride would be assigned to a com­
munity elder with whom she would engage in sexual relations over a period o f
one month before joining her spouse.
103 María de Baratía and Jeremías Mendoza, Cuzcatldn típico: Ensayo sobre etno/onía de
El Salvador, folklore, Jollaoisa y Jallavay (San Salvador: Ministerio de Cultura,
1951).
104 Carol A. Smith has argued persuasively that there are significantly different
values attached to female sexuality within and outside Guatemalan indigenous
communities. Carol A. Smith, “ Race-Class-Gender Ideologies.”
105 Ward, ed. and comp., Libro Azul de El Salvador.
106 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2, no.
107 See Appelius, Le terre che tremano, 109 -10. For a further discussion o f the codifi­
cation ofindigenous marriage see Lauria-Santiago and Gould, “ ‘They Call Us
Thieves and Steal our Wage.’ ”
108 Alejandro Dagoberto Marroquín, Panchimalco (San Salvador: Ministerio de
Educación, 1959), 19 4-95. A similar practice existed in a western Honduran
indigenous community. See Rocío Tábora, “ Género y Percepciones Etnico-
raciales en el Imaginario de la Clase Política ‘Mestiza’ y del Movimiento
Indígena-Negro en Honduras.”
109 Ruhl, The Central Americans, 203; Hill’s comments refer to both indigenous and
ladina women.
110 Although we do not have evidence for a causal connection, there is also no
doubt that rates o f illegitimacy were quite high.
111 Conte, Treinta años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 3, 126.
112 Informe del Sexto Congreso Regional Obrero y Campesino Constituyente de la
Federación Regional de Trabajadores, May 1930, Comintern 495.ZZ9.10, p. 92.
113 Interviews with Alberto Shul (Nahuizalco), Ernesto Shul (Nahuizalco), Ramón
Esquina (Tajcuillah, Nahuizalco), and Ramón Aguilar (Cusamuluco, Nahui­
zalco). All provide anecdotal evidence o f the connection between illegitimate
origin and participation in the movement.
114 Conte, Treinta Años en Tierras Salvadoreñas, vol. 2 ,10 1.
115 We do not have the expertise to point to a definitive connection between
disciplinary practices that today would be considered “ abusive” or worse and a
predisposition toward violent responses to authority or aggression.
 116 Hartman, “ Reconocimiento Etnográfica de los Aztecas de El Salvador.”
117 Interview with Salomé Torres, El Cacao, 2001.
118 Patricia Alvarenga, in Cultura y ética de la violencia and “Auxiliary Forces in the
320
Shaping o f the Repressive System,” examines the multiple levels o f state coer­
cion in peasant society.
119 “ General Resume o f Proceedings o f H.M.C. Ships whilst at Acajutla, Republic
Notes o f Salvador, January 2 3 - 3 1 S L 1 9 3 2 ,” fo 3 7 1 / 1 5 8 1 4 . For further discussion o f
violence in rural Salavador see Lauria-Santiago and Gould, “ ‘They Call us
Thieves and Steal Our Wage,’ ” 2 2 3 -2 4 .

Chapter Five: "To the Face of the Entire World"

1 Diario Latino, 9 June 1931.
2 National Guard and local police focused on arresting leaders like Salvador and
Tomas Mujica, arrested on 12 July during a meeting in Sonzacate. Partes de
Policía, Departamento de Sonsonate, 19 31, AGS; Records o f the Foreign Ser­
vice Post, San Salvador, El Salvador, Department o f State, RG84, u s n a .
3 U.S. Department o f State, Records o f the Foreign Service Post, San Salvador, El
Salvador, Ministerio de Gobernación, 1931, u s n a .
4 Comintern 495.119.4, doc 2.
5 For a discussion o f the administrative near-collapse o f the state during this
period see Guidos Vejar, El Ascenso del Militarismo en El Salvador, and Wilson,
“The Crisis o f National Integration in El Salvador.”
6 MID, USNA.
7 Harold Finley to secretary o f state, 8 July 19 31, no. 537, Records o f the Foreign
Service Post, San Salvador, El Salvador, Department o f State, RG84, u s n a . The
demand for change led to the removal o f three ministers. See Iraheta Rosales,
Lopez Alas, and Escobar Cornejo, “ La crisis de 1929 y sus consecuencias en los
años posteriores.”
8 Presidente Araujo, telegrama al gobernador de Sonsonate,” 14 September
19 3 1, a g n -c g -S o.
9 Ogilvie, “ The Communist Revolt o f El Salvador, 19 32,” 53.
10 Letter o f Ismael Hernández (Comité Ejecutivo s r i del Salvador) al secretariado
del Caribe s r i, 29 November 1931, Comintern 539/3/1060, p. 8.
11 Ibid.
12 “ La Situación Política,” PCS document, 8 October 19 31, Comintern 495.119-71
p. 11.
13 Although it has long been assumed that Ama was the mayordomo o f the
Cofradía de Santa Ana, recent ethnohistorical work casts some doubt on that
assertion, as his name is not listed among the cofrradia leadership during the
early 1930s. Carlos Benjamin, Lara Martinez, and América Rodríguez Herrera,
“ Identidad étnica y globalizacion: Las identidades indígenas de izalco y caca-
opera,” Memorias de Mestizaje, ed. Euraque, Gould, and Hale.
14 Montes, El Compadrazgo, 266.
15 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 123.
16 Ibid., 122.
321
17 Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 181.
18 Ibid., 184.
19 “ General Resumé o f Proceedings ofH.M.C. Ships whilst at Acajutla, Republic
o f Salvador, January 2 3 -3 is t, 19 32,” fo 371/15814, p. 6. Notes
20 Letter o f Ismael Hernandez to the secretariado del Caribe s r i , 29 November
1931, Comintern 539.3.11060, p. 8.
21 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 229.
22 Ibid., 230.
23 Urban and suburban nucleation was the result o f mid-nineteenth-century state
policies as well as the forms o f settlement encouraged by the collective owner­
ship and administration o f land. See Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic,
chapter 4.
24 Diario Latino, 26 June 1931.
25 A. R. Harris, 8 December 1 9 3 1 , m i d , u s n a . It should not go unnoticed that in
the past, a president’s minister o f war had been considered the likely suc­
cessor to the presidency.
26 The Netv York Times placed the number between fifty and sixty. New York Times,
20 December 1931, E, 6; the Comintern documents cite “ dozens killed” at
the presidential palace alone. Ismael Hernández, Secretario General, Informe
236, San Salvador, 8 December 1931, Comintern 495.119.12.
27 New York Times, 7 December 1931.
28 Reprinted in El Diario de Hoy, 19 January 1967.
29 Report by Comrade “ Hernández,” Comintern 495.119.4, p. 36. This leader
somewhat feebly also claimed that the p c s had no funds to publish mani­
festoes explaining its position with respect to the regime (p. 29).
30 Report by Cuenca, Comintern 495.119.4, p. 36.
31 José D. Solis, Armenia, telegrama al gobernador de Sonsonate, 13 December
1931, a g n - c g - S o ; two accounts suggest that as late as 20 December the
regime publicly tolerated the p c s , provided that it would limit its activities to
the electoral arena. Patria, 21 December 1931; Diario Latino, 22 December 1931.
32 Report by Cuenca, Comintern 495.119.4, p. 32.
33 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 233. Schlesinger sup­
ports Mármol’s recollection by citing his own report from the period, “ en todo
su jira pudo converncerse de que las nuevas ideas toman cuerpo, porque a su
paso por todos los poblados donde hay una organización aunque sea celular,
el entusiasmo cunde y acuden presurosos a escuchar sus conferencias.” Revo­
lución Comunista, 140.
34 Comintern 495.119.4, p. 31.
35 According to the Cuenca report (38), Martínez sent invitations to “ to all those
he considered to be the leaders o f the CP in the Occident.”
 36 Comintern 495.119.4, p. 32.
37 Montes, El compadrazgo, 288.
38 Report by Cuenca, Comintern 495.119.4, p. 39.
322
39 Comintern 495.119; The De Sola coffee farms, not unlike other large units,
typically combined coffee with cattle, basic grains, or sugar, thus bringing to
the fore issues o f interest to colonos. Terraje had different meanings at dif­
Notes ferent times and in different locales. Evidence suggests that landlords, in
response to the crisis, were forcing their tenants to pay in cash for their land
plots and that this practice, in turn, pushed the tenants toward the labor
movement.
40 Cuenca Report, Comintern 495.119.4, p. 39.
41 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 319 -2 0 .
42 Diario de El Salvador, 24 December 1931.
43 J. L. Arevalo to gobernador politico, 6 January 1932. The subsecretary o f gober­
nación reproduces the letter from the Asociación de Cafetaleros, which met in
Ahuachapán on 24 November and drafted a letter to to the Ministro de Gober­
nación, 8 December 1931.
44 A letter from Farabundo Marti to activists in Honduras on 16 December 1931
expected the lack o f recognition by the United States to weaken Martinez’s
government. The actions o f the U.S. ambassador and special emissary Cafferey
should not be underestimated. On the one hand, Ambassador Curtiss pushed
to turn over the presidency to Martinez so as to provide a semblance o f consti­
tutionality. On the other, the conversations o f Curtiss and Cafferey with mili­
tary officials and members o f the oligarchy during December sought allies that
would either push Martinez out o f power or join him. That tentative interven­
tion elicited a nationalist response even from former supporters o f Araujista
like the Diario Latino that began to call for mass protests against the “ inter­
national policeman.” Dur, “ U.S. Diplomacy and the Salvadorean Revolution of
19 3 1” ; Kenneth J. Grieb, “ The United States and the Rise o f General Maximi­
liano Hernandez Martinez,” Journal 0/Latin American Studies 3, no.2 (1971), 15 1-
72; Quino Caso, “ Response to Salvador Peña Trejo’s Narración Histórica de la
Insurrección Militar,” press clipping section, Biblióteca Gallardo.
45 Dur, “ U.S. Diplomacy and the Salvadorean Revolution o f 19 3 1.”
46 Gertrudis Germán al Gobernador Político, 2 9 December 1 9 3 1 , a g a .
47 Benjamín Cárcamo to Gobernador Político, 29 December 1931, a g a .
48 El Diario de El Salvador, 31 December 1931.
49 Cuenca report, Comintern, p. 35.
50 Cuenca report, Comintern 46/53.
51 Cuenca report, Comintern, p. 50. There were at least three other parties contest­
ing the municipal elections (and then the congressional election on 10 January).
52 Several hostile commentators concurred that the p c s would have won. Schle-
singer, Revolucio'n Comunista, 149; see Diario de Hoy, 12 February 1967; and
Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 346.
53 Cuenca report, Comintern 46/53.
54 Dalton, Migue! Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 228.
55 Marcial Contreras to the Gobernador Político o f Ahuachapán, 1 January 1931,
323
aga. Although dated 1931, the context o f the letter makes abundantly clear
that it was written on New Year’s Day, 1932.
56 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “ Vengeance and Ressentiment in the Russian Revolution,”
French Historical Studies 24, no. 4 (fall 2001), cites a dictionary definition o f Notes
“ ressentiment” : “ a state o f hostility maintained by the memory o f an offense
which it aspires to avenge.” Fitzpatrick adds: “ ressentiment (like vengeance)
must always be present in the mix o f emotions that lead people to support
revolutions and commit acts o f revolutionary violence” (580).
57 Interviews with Miguel Urbina Ceiba del Charco, Izalco, 2001; Rosario Lue,
Nahuizalco, 2001.
58 Cuenca implied that the pc s relied very little on written propaganda, primarily
because o f their limited resources.
59 Circulares del Partido Comunista, 6 November 1931, a g n -c g -S o.
60 J. A. Mendoza, alcalde de Nahuizalco, to Gobernador Departamental, 2 Janu­
ary 1931, a g n - c g -S o; J. Antonio Mendoza, alcalde de Nahuizalco, to Gober­
nador Departamental, 3 January 19 31, a g n -c g -S o.
61 Schlesinger, Revolución Comunista, 139.
62 Letter from D. J. Rogers, 1/7/32, Foreign Office Documents.
63 Interview with Lieutenant Timoeteo Flores, Diario de Hoy, 12 February 1967.
64 Local officials, on the contrary, registered their own slate o f candidates on 2
January in Sonsonate.
65 J. Antonio Mendoza, alcalde de Nahuizalco, to Ministerio de Gobernación, 3
January 1932, a g n -c m - m g ; “ Telegramas Sobre Política,” 1932, a g n -c g -S o.
66 Interviews with Esteban Tepas, Pushtan, Nahuizalco 1998, 2001; Paulino Ga­
licia, Cara Sucia, 1999.
67 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 346-47. Galindo Pohl did note a certain
degree o f apathy about the election.
68 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Saluador, 234.
69 D. J. Rogers to John Simon, San Salvador, 13 January 1932, Foreign Office
A8651918. Ironically the consul, in a subsequent letter, cited a newspaper
report that affirmed the same point about the discipline o f the large group
o f communist voters as evidence o f “ receipt o f considerable payments from
Communist sources.”
70 fo 19/13 D. J. Rogers to John Simon, 7 January 1932, Foreign Office. Accord­
ing to the British consul, the candidate o f General Claramount, moderately
opposed to the regime, won with 1,109 votes, followed by the candidate o f
Córdoba with 1,102 votes and the p c s candidate with 1,046.
71 Cuenca report, Comintern 38/45.
72 Cicatriz de la Memoria: El Salvador, 1932 (Jeffrey L. Gould and Carlos Henriquez
Consalvi, Icarus Films, 2003).
 73 Petition to Alcalde Municipal o f Ahuachapán signed by Mariano Gonzalez
Medrano et al., 27 November 1932, aga.
74 Schlesinger, Revolucio'n Comunista, 157.
324
75 Cuenca Report, Comintern 39/46. Miguel Mármol also claimed that the strik­
ers had killed fourteen Guardia. Newspaper accounts suggest that the initial
confrontation resulted in two dead or missing Guardia, two wounded Guar­
Notes dia, one missing Guardia,and one dead striker. Also see El Diario de El Saluador,
6 January 1932 and 7 January 1932.
76 Interviews with Antolín López, la Montañita, Ahuahapán; Leonora Escalante
Santa Rita, Ahuachapán; Miguel Jimenez, Santa Rita, Ahuachapán, 2001.
77 Jefe Politico o f Jutiapa to Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores de Guatemala, 16
June 1932, agca. The letter includes a note from the consul.
78 El Diario de El Saluador, 7 January 1932.
79 Interview with María Hortensia García, Ahuachapán 2001.
80 This calculation is based on coffee production and labor requirements. The
May 1930 census lists 63,000 jornaleros in the three departments and another
33,000 in Santa Ana. The census categories are not broken down, but there is
an overwhelming preponderance o f jornaleros to agricultures: 17:1 in Son-
sonate, 8:1 in Ahuachapán, and 15 :1 in La Libertad. It is likely that microfinca
owners (e.g. semi-proletarians) were listed as jornaleros.
81 Tomás Calderón, minister o f war, estimated some eighty thousand affiliates,
but that figure is uncorroborated by other sources.
82 19/13, Rogers to Simon, 7 January 1932, Foreign Office.
83 Based on analysis o f two slates o f candidates for municipal office. Compare
petition to Alcalde Municipal o f Ahuachapán signed by Mariano Gonzalez
Medrano et al., 27 November 1932 (including at most one artisan—an albañil
constructor—and members o f the local professional and planter élite), and
petition to Alcalde Municipal o f Ahuachapán signed by Presentación Rodri­
guez et al., 25 November 1932 (including four artisans out o f eight regidor
candidates).
84 Even the archbishop (Alfonso Belloso y Sánchez) sent a public letter asking
capitalists to give a “ solución cristiana a problemas de los salarios de los
trabajadores del campo,” because “ sus presentes condiciones de vida son
inhumanas.” Diario de El Salvador, 17 January 1932.
85 Letter from Rogers, 1/13/32, Foreign Office.
86 Diario Latino, 9 January 1932.
87 El Diario de El Salvador, 31 December 1931.
88 Cuenca Report, Comintern.
89 Rogers to Sir John Simon, A 865/9/8,13 January 1932, Foreign Office.
90 La Epoca, 20 January 1931.
91 Buezo, Sangre de Hermanos, 60. Buezo makes the argument for Zapata’s author­
ship o f most o f the book, although this seems impossible to corroborate.
92 Ibid., 62.
93 Excelsior (Mexico), 25 January 1932. The paper reported an encounter in which
Juan Uriarte, the ministro plenipetenciario de El Salvador, remarked on the
involvement o f Araujo’s followers in the movement without blaming Araujo
325
himself. The Mexican consul direcdy blamed Araujistas.
94 El Diario de El Saluador, 31 December 1931.
95 Lisandro Larin J, gobernador de Sonsonate, “ Carta al Alcalde de Sonsonate,”
23 December 1931, a g n - c g - S o ; “ Cartas al Gobernador de Ahuachapan,” Notes
1931, AGN-CG-Ah.
96 Diario de Centro America (Guatemala), 5 January 1932. The official paper reported
that Salvadoran finqueros in the West needed thousands o f workers because
Salvadorans demanded higher wages. As noted above, there were in fact “ co-
mapas” (natives o f neighboring Comapa, Guatemala) in Ahuachapan
97 For example, one denunciation o f the Ahuahcapenco left referred to “ los de la
ciudad de Ahuachapán y los de la ciudad de Atiquizaya.” Also, Dalton, Miguel
Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador (228), describes the “ townspeople o f
Ahuachapán” as ready to seize power i f the elections were stolen from them.
98 Interview with Maria Delvina Mendez, Ahuachapán, 2001.
99 Cuenca, Comintern 39/46.
100 Schlesinger, Revolution Comunista, 157.
101 Ibid., 152.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid., 153.
104 El Diario Latino, 9 January 1932. This Araujista paper echoed the charge that the
p c s lacked control over the western militants and called on the Ahuachapa-

neco Communists to behave more like those o f San Salvador.

105 El Día (Sonsonate), 6 January 1932.
106 Cuenca cites 10 January as the date for the plenum (Cuenca Report, Comintern
39/46). Mármol cites 8 January, after the meeting with General Valdez. Schle­
singer cites a document dated 9 January, in which the Central Committee
formed Comités Militares Revolucionarios (Revolution Comunista, 157 -58 ). It
seems plausible that the Plenum met continuously during those days, but only
on the day o f the congressional elections, the 10th, arrived at the fateful
decision.
107 On Zapata and Hernández see Buezo, Sangre de Hermanos, 63; on Cuenca see
Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 240-44.
108 Legajo de Correspondencia a Julio Sanchez la noche del 20 de agosto 1934,
320, archive, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, San Salvador.
109 Letter from Jorge Fernández Anaya to Alberto Moreau, 8 September 1930,
Guatemala City, Comintern 495.119.12, p. 9.
110 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 240.
111 There is no doubt that some Araujistas were willing to join the revolutionary
left in military action. In any event, there is some evidence that they were also
organizing a revolt and supplied weapons, although most national Araujista
 leaders had left for Guatemala, where they were arrested. On 2 January notable
Araujistas who were also conspiring were arrested in Guatemala at the request
o f Salvadoran authorities: Colonel Lopez Rochac, Dr. Bias Cantizano, Salvador
326
Godoy, and Luis Felipe Recines.
112 Comintern 495.119.1, p. 5/30.
113 Diario Latino, 15 January 1932. This paper reported seven hundred workers on
Notes strike and also mentioned strikes in Acajutla and by railroad workers in Son-
sonate. “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 1.
114 Similarly, the left had little presence in Santo Domingo de Guzman or Santa
Catarina Masahuat, two o f the more traditional indigenous communities.
115 Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War, 157. The f m l n in the 1980s had
active support from perhaps one-third o f the peasantry in an important base
area. Wood reminds the reader that the great strike movements o f Great
Britain (1926), the United States (end o f the Second World War), and South
Africa (1987), involved under 20 percent o f the workforce.
116 Carta al Gobernador de Sonsonete, 1 1 April 1 9 3 1 , a g n - c g - S o : “ dedicanse a
propaganda comunista e inculcar ideas entre soldados cuartel ocatavo regi­
miento entre sus familiares campesinos.”
117 Schlesinger, Revolución Comunista, 160.
118 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 10.
119 Ibid., 11, describes officers disarming their soldiers in the Sixth Infantry bar­
racks on 19 January. Schlesinger depicts a similar event on the 16th.
120 Ibid., 1.
121 Schlesinger, Revolución Comunista, 179.
122 Cuenca, Comintern 52/59.
123 Mayor Otto Romero Orellano, “ Genesis de la Amenaza Comunista en El Sal­
vador,” appendix: “ Manifiesto del Comité Central del Partido Comunista a Las
Clases Trabajadoras de la República, 20 January 19 32” (San Salvador: Centro
de Estudios Estratégicos de las Fuerzas Armadas, 1994), 97.
124 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 296-300.
125 The PCS leader Max Cuenca and a Comintern official both refer to this docu­
ment as authentic, but the articles are slightly off. They assert that article 19
calls for the establishment o f Soviets, but in the document circulated by the
government article 18 does so.
126 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de i g j 2 en El Salvador, 247.

Chapter Six: Red Ribbons and Machetes

1 We employ the term “ insurgent” here, relying on a dictionary definition of
someone in revolt against established authority without receiving international
recognition as a belligerent force. In this sense we resist the tendency o f
the news media and the current administration to conflate insurgency and
terrorism. “ Revolutionary” implies a uniform program for change, a problem-
 atic notion. We offer a very approximate breakdown based on documentary
sources: La Libertad, 900; Sonsonate, 800; Izalco, 600; Juayúa, 600; Nahui-
zalco, 500-800; Ahuachapán and Tacuba, 1,000-2,000. In addition, hundreds
327
participated in armed actions in the areas south and east o f the capital.
2 This broad description o f the insurrection is based on several written sources:
Mendez, Los Sucesos comunistas en El Saluador; Montes, El Compadrazgo; “ Commu­
nist Rising in Salvador,” Report o f the British Consul, f o 3 7 1 1 5 8 1 3 ; Galindo Notes
Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate. It is also based on numerous interviews, many o f
which are listed in other notes to this chapter.
3 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 4. Notably, a woman named Micaella, from
the canton o f Barrancas, emerged as a leader o f the insurgent forces.
4 Mendez, Los Sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 158, also refers to the seventy-
eight-year-old former candidate, but as Isabel Zaldaña from Sacacoyo.
5 Interview with Doroteo López, San Isidro, 2001.
6 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 4. Similarly, rebels in the area around Jayaque
threatened to take the town but were driven o ff by the army contingent which
had pursued them since the attack on Santa Tecla. Diario de El Saluador, 27 Janu­
ary 1932.
7 Interviews with Luis Ramos Linares (Los Gramales); Teófilo Lopez (Los
Gramales).
8 Interviews with Margarita Turcios, El Guayabo, 2001. It is difficult to evaluate
Turcios’s claim, given that it follows a pattern o f denials o f involvement in the
insurrection throughout the region.
9 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 6.
10 Naval Intelligence officer Major Harris noted four hundred dead insurgents.
11 A woman named Micaella in the attack on Colón and another woman in Izalco
also achieved prominence among the revolutionary fighters.
12 Montes, El Com padrazgo, 280.
13 According to La Tribuna, one thousand people took Juayúa, armed with
mausers.
14 Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 52.
15 Montes, El Compadrazgo, 295.
16 Schlesinger, Revolución Comunista, 19 2-9 3; Méndez, Los sucesos comunistas en
El Saluador, 8 2-8 3; Anderson, Matanza, 136; interview with Raúl Sigüenza,
Juayúa, 2001.
17 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 383.
18 Montes, El Com padrazgo, 295.
19 Ibid., 354.
20 A. Roy MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism in Central America,” 8.
21 Interview with Raúl Sigüenza, Juayúa, 1999.
22 Cuenca report, Comintern, p. 63.
23 Interview with Raúl Sigüenza, Juayúa, 1999.
24 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 385.
 25 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 19 March 1932; interview with Cisneros; “ Communist
Rising in Salvador,” 8.
26 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 19 March 1932.
3 z8
27 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 8.
28 Interview with Raúl Sigüenza, Jauyúa, 1999, 2001.
29 MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism in Central America.”
Notes 30 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 9.
31 Quoted in Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 102. A version o f this
same testimony was reported in the British consul’s report, “ Communist
Rising in Salvador,” 8.
32 Montes, El Compadrazgo.
33 Quoted in Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 46.
34 Interview with Alberto Shul, Nahuizalco, 1999, 2001.
35 Interview with Ramón Esquina, Tajcuilulaj, 1998.
36 It is possible that outsiders did instigate the looting. See the testimony in
Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 37: “ Eso de las siete y cincuenta
minutos de la noche, llegaron a Nahuizalco, procedentes de Juayúa, tres ca­
miones cargados de comunistas. En cuanto se pusieron de acuerdo con los
ocupantes de la población procedieron a saquear las tiendas.”
37 Interview with Bertha Calderón, Nahuizalco, 2001 (Brito was Calderon’s
grandfather).
38 Interviews with Luis Alberto Castillo, Atiquizaya, 2001; Maria Delvina Men­
dez, Ahuachapán, 2001; Miguel Angel Cepeda, Ahuachapán; José Antonio
Chachagua, Achapuco, Ahuachapán, 2001; Schlesinger, Reuolucidn Comunista;
Pifleda, “Tragedia Comunista,” Diario de Hoy, 9 February 1967.
39 Gustavo Pifieda, “ La Tragedia Comunista,” Diario de Hoy, 9 February 1967;
Calderón, Anhelos de un Ciudadano.
40 Gustavo Piñeda, “ La Tragedia Comunista,” Diario de Hoy, 9 February 1967.
41 Buezo, Sangre de Hermanos, 92-93.
42 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 1 1 - 1 2 .
43 Ibid, 12. The consul reported two thousand volunteers, but other reports indi­
cate that the Guardia Cívica recruited five hundred volunteers in San Salvador.
44 Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador; V. G. Brodeur to naval secretary,
Ottawa, 7 April 1932, fo 371/15814.
45 Schlesinger, La Reuolucidn Comunista, 195; Méndez, Los sucesos comunistas en El
Saluador.
46 MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism,” 10.
47 El Diario de Hoy, 10 February 1967.
48 Buezo, Sangre de Hermanos, 94.
49 Rogers to Simon, San Salvador, 30 January 1932, in fo A 1055/9/8.
50 Among the evidence o f this continued, uncoordinated resistance: On the 30th,
after all rebel held areas had been lost and the massacres were well under way,
an attempt to attack the Alvarez beneficio was reported in Santa Ana. In the
 volcan region o f Santa Ana 150 troops were sent to capture people hiding in
the farms o f San Jose de Concha v. de Regalado, Julia de Alvarez Bros, can-
tones Potrero Grande Arriba, Calzontes Arriba, and Palo de Campana. A group
329
o f twenty-five men also attacked the Beneficio las tres puertas in the Volcan
area (owned by James Hill).
51 Appelius, Le terre die trerrumo, 105.
52 Ibid., 105. Notes
53 Montes, El Com padrazgo, 311.
54 Ibid., 271.
55 Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 126.
56 Sánchez reportedly warned landlords to hide in anticipation o f the insurrec­
tion. Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 38 2-8 3.
57 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 122.
58 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 356.
59 “ Communist Rising in Salvador,” 9.
60 Mendez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 67.
61 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 19 March 1932.
62 Ibid.
63 Interview with Lola de Olamede, Izalco, 1998.
64 Diario de Hoy, 9 February 1967.
65 Méndez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Saluador, 66.
66 Charles R. Hale, Mas que un Indio = More Than an Indian: Racial Ambiualence and
Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala (Santa Fe: School o f American Research
Press, 2006), 156
67 Ibid., 159.
68 Ibid., 161.
69 Interview with Raúl Sigüenza, Juayua, 1999.
70 Interview with Silvestre Panche, Nahuizalco, 1999. Panche refers to his father’s
remark that the insurgents “ recogieron bienes sin dueños.”
71 V. G. Brodeur to naval secretary, Ottawa, 7 April 1932, f o 371/15814.
72 Diario Latino, 2 February 1932. Millenarian beliefs also motivated some o f the
revolutionary forces. In Ahuachapán peasants rendered to the cult o f the Vir­
gin o f Adelanto, originally venerated in El Adelanto, Guatemala, near the
border. Although some claimed that the Virgin was a leftist hoax, grassroots
militants took the cult very seriously. The cult did not extend beyond Ahua­
chapán and the border region o f Guatemala, yet in other parts o f western
Salvador revolutionary beliefs were also tinged with millenarian aspirations. It
is thus quite possible that the millenarian promise, the “ last shall be first,”
may have contributed to the looting.
73 MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism,” 9.
74 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 358, notes the very limited scale o f looting
in Sonsonate. The “ montepío” and one store were the targets, despite the
ample opportunity to loot on a massive scale.
 75 Interview with Paulino Galicia, Cara Sucia, Aliauchapán, 1999.
76 Pessar, From Fanatics to Folk, 2 25-26 .
77 Ibid., 6 -7.
33°
78 Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, 57-59 .
79 Ibid., 90.
80 Ibid., 105.
Notes 81 Interview with Paulino Galicia, Cara Sucia, Sonsonate, 1-9 9 . Galicia was
twelve years old in 1932.
82 Interview with Manuela Chicas, San Salvador, 2001.
83 Commander V. G. Brodeur, “ Secret Report o f Situation, as It Developed at
Acajutla,” 7 April 1932, Foreign Office Archives, fo 371/15814.
84 Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, 60-61.
85 Interview with Gregorio Shul, Nahuizalco, 1998.
86 Diario Latino, 30 January 1932, also cited in Alfredo Schlesinger, La Verdad Sobre
El Comunismo, 95.
87 Gould, To Lead as Equals, 197.
88 Taylor, Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages.
89 Gould, To Die in This Way.
90 Fraser, Blood qfSpain, 15 0 -5 2 .
91 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “ Vengeance and Ressentiment in the Russian Revolution,”
French Historical Studies 24, no. 4 (fall 2001).
92 Gould, “ Revolutionary Nationalism and Local Memories in El Salvador.”
93 Interview with Andres Pérez, Pushtan, Nahuizalco, 2001.
94 We also encountered another informant, Ricardo Carillos o f the municipality
o f Panchimalco, whose group planned to participate in an assault on San Sal­
vador which never materialized. Interview with Ricardo Carrillos, Panchi­
malco, 2001.
95 Interview with Salomé Torres, El Cacao, Sonsonate, 2001.
96 Interview with Doroteo López, January 1999. The use o f the term “ el polaco” is
curiously early with respect to the rest o f the region. In other parts o f Cen­
tral America, particularly after the Second World War, “ polaco” was a term
that conflated “Jew” with door-to-door salesman. Not surprisingly “judio” or
“ polaco” also meant traitor.
97 Interview with Doroteo López, San Isidro, 1999.
98 Interview with Doroteo López, San Isidro, April 2001.
99 For an analagous process o f cultural change in Chinandega, Nicaragua, in a
nonrevolutionary situation see Gould, To Lead as Equals, 133-4 6 .
100 Interview with Sotero Linares, Las Higueras, Izalco, April 2001.

Chapter Seven: "They Killed the Just for the Sinners"

1 See “ La Insurrección Indígena,” El Periódico Nuevo Enfoque, 24 January 2005.
This article refers to the massacre o f thirty thousand Indians. Speeches by
indigenous activists frequently have used the term “ genocidio.” There is cur-
 rently a movement to demand reparations for the “ genocide” o f 1932; the Ama
Foundation held an “ International Forum on Genocide and Truth” in Izalco in
January 2007.
331
2 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 318.
3 “ El Café de El Salvador,” Asociación Cafetalera de El Salvador, San Salvador,
July 1932, 42.
4 Diario Latino, 3 February 1932. Notes
5 Michael Mann, in Fascists, 13, defines fascism as “ the pursuit o f a transcendent
and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism.” Mata clearly appealed
to the need for cleansing and implied the suppression o f democracy. Without
referring to paramilitary groups, the Guardia Cívica was playing an important
paramilitary role throughout the region. Finally, fascist rhetoric typically con­
sidered its subject to be the “ productive classes” (Mann, Fascists, 7).
6 Moreover, there is no question that the regime developed marked corporatist
policies tilted heavily toward Franquismo and Fascist Italy, until the United
States imposed its geopolitical will in the early 1940s.
7 New York Times, 30 January 1932. Commander Brodeur reported that on 29
January General Calderón had reported the 4,800 communists “ liquidated.”
“The Commanding Officer [Brodeur] immediately went ashore to verify this
statement in a general way, and to pay his respects to General Calderón. He
was enthusiastically embraced by the General and invited to lunch the follow­
ing day in Sonsonate, and to ‘witness a few executions.’ ” “ General Resume o f
Proceedings o f H.M.C. Ships whilst at Acajutla, Republic o f Salvador, January
2 3—3 ISt, 19 32,” FO 371/15814, p. 14.
8 Only in Sónzacate did the rebels under the leadership o f Julia Mojica register a
victory, a successful defense against a vastly outnumbered unit o f the National
Guard, which attacked them on the morning o f 23 January after a failed assault
on the Sonsonate barracks, two miles away.
9 Bustamante, Historia militar de El Salvador, 106.
10 Montes, El Compadrazgo, 254.
11 Interview with Cayetana Flores, Anal Arriba, Nahuizalco, 1998.
12 Interview with Ramón Esquina, Tajcuilulaj, Nahuizalco, 1998.
13 Interview with Fabián Mojica, Sónzacate, 1999.
14 Interview with Salvador Deras, Nahuizalco, 1999. Deras, a native ofSonsonate,
recalls that troops machine-gunned unarmed people who looked like campe­
sinos on the city streets.
15 “ General Resume o f Proceedings o f H.M.C. Ships whilst at Acajutla, Republic
o f Salvador, January 2 3 -3 is t, 19 32,” fo 371/15814, p. 12.
16 MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism,” 26.
17 Interview with Maria Mendez, Ahuachapán, 2001.
18 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador, 308. One might con­
sider the bias o f one who became a communist i f it were not for so many other
examples o f sadism and brutality.
19 Interviews with María Hortensia García, Ahuachapán; Manuel Ramos Rivas,
 Ahuachapán; María Méndez, Ahuachapán. Rivas states that he saw “ camina­
das de gente” taken by the troops to be shot in “ Los Ausoles.” García claimed
that live prisoners were tossed into the boiling springs.
332
20 Interview with Alvaro Cortez, El Canelo, Nahuizalco, 1999.
21 Weitz, A Century of Genocide.
22 Grandin, “ History, Motive, Law, Intent.”
Notes 23 Grandin, “ The Instruction o f Great Catastrophe,” 62-63.
24 Bustamante, Historia Militar de El Salvador, 106.
25 “ Síntesis de la Penetración de Comunismo en el Salvador” (San Salvador:
Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia, 1990), 113.
26 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 427. Galindo Pohl wrote that this was one
o f the “ consignas que se escuchó en círculos biene informados,” and that it
was circulated primarily to scare people.
27 The Sonsonate attackers retreated to nearby Sónzacate, where on the morn­
ing o f 23 January they defeated a mixed unit o f the national guard and
army that had attacked them. Then they dispersed, some going to reinforce
the insurrectionary forces in Nahuizalco and Izalco while others remained in
the countryside. Some o f these were ladino hacienda workers (interview with
Margarita Turcios, El Guayabo, 2001). In Ahuachapán it is still somewhat
unclear where the rebels went after the attack, but it seems likely that many
went into hiding. National guard units did pursue the Cumbre de Jayaque
rebels who attacked Santa Tecla, but it is not clear how many died and from
which causes. Interviews with Doroteo López, San Isidro, 1999, 2000; Salomé
Miranda, Sacacoyo, 2001; Juan Miranda, Sacacoyo, 2001; Jesús Monterrosa,
Jayaque, 2001.
28 Calderón, Anhelos de un Ciudadano, 228.
29 Interview with Raimundo Aguilar, Cusamuluco, 1999.
30 Interview with Pedro Lúe, Sabana San Juan Arriba, 1998.
31 Interview with Jesús Velásquez, San Luis, Izalco, 2001.
32 Ibid.
33 Interview with Alberto Shul, Nahuizalco, 2001.
34 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 433.
35 Interviews with Alberto Shul, Nahuizalco, 1999, 2001; Angel Olivares, Na­
huizalco, 1998.
36 D. J. Rogers to Grant Wilson, 16 February 1932, fo 813/23 no. 24 238/138.
37 Diario de El Salvador, 17 February 1932.
38 Diario Latino, 15 February 1932.
39 Bustamante, Historia Militar de El Salvador, 107.
40 MacNaught, “ Horrors o f Communism in Central America.”
41 Ibid., 25.
42 Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 428.
43 Several dozen suspected rebels were imprisoned in Sonsonate and Ahuacha­
pán. Some were still in prison two years later.
44 D. J. Rogers to Sir John Simon, San Salvador, 25 February 1932, British fo
docs A 1643/9/8 123.
45 Milo Borges to Severo Mallet-Prevost, 19 February 1932, 816.00 Revolutions/
333
134, Department o f State, u sn a .

46 Interview with Vicente Flores, Jayaque, 2001.

47 Letter to the departmental governor o f Sonsonate from Colonel J. Antonio
Beltran, 11 February 1932, a g s , Jefe de Estado Mayor Presidencial. Beltrán Notes
issued a similar note the day before.
48 “ General Resume o f Proceedings o f H.M.C. Ships whilst at Acajuda, Republic
o f Salvador, January 2 3 -3 ist, 19 32,” fo 371/15814, p. 13.
49 Interview with Manuel Linares, El Cacao, 2001.
50 Interview with Doroteo López, San Isidro, 2000.
51 Interview with Salomé Torres, El Cacao, 2001. That Torres and Linares live in
the same area suggests that Linares may have been merely repeating Torres’s
story. However, Linares did have an uncle involved in the leftist movement on
La Labor (between Atiquizaya and Ahuachapán) who he claims told him this
tale.
52 On official Catholic reaction to the Protestant “ threat” and its relation to
“ Bolshevism” see Cardenal, El Poder Eclesiástico, 280-82.
53 Arno Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 485.
54 Although in all these cases a certain degree o f racism based on phenotype
might have played a role. The civilian and military forces might have falsely
assumed that they were killing Indians had they bothered to think about it at
all. Rarely did they bother to talk with their victims and thus potentially dis­
cern their accent.
55 Interviews with Alberto Ventura and Ricardo Carillos, Quezalapa, Panchi-
malco, 2001.
56 Diario Latino, 11 February 1932.
57 Rogers to Sir John Simon, fo A 1643/9/8,123.
58 Memorandum by William Cochran, no 2 8 1,10 February 1937, Department o f
State, u sn a .
59 In Nahuizalco we can estimate based on the British report and on ample oral
testimony that the military executed between five hundred and one thousand
people, almost all indigenous males twelve or older in the weeks following the
defeat o f the uprising.
60 A calculation based on an examination o f birth records which suggests a
fatality number well below ten thousand is nevertheless skewed by the un­
knowable number o f coercive or noncoercive relations between indigenous
women and others during the period following January 1932.
61 Méndez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Salvador, 76.
62 In another short section, without mentioning Mata by name, Méndez alludes
to a hacendado in El Canelo who escaped on horseback from a mob o f two
 hundred Indians about to take over local haciendas when they had to return to
Nahuizalco to confront the troops. Mendez, 104.
63 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 7 March 1932.
334
64 Diario Latino, 13 February 1932.
65 See Ranajit Guha, “ The Prose o f Counterinsurgency,” Subaltern Studies, vol. 2,
ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).
Notes 66 Annual Report o f War, Navy, and Aviation, 1932, trans. in Confidential US
Diplomatic Post Records, Central America, El Salvador, 19 30-4 5, 2 March
1933-
67 Candelario, “ Representación de lo irrepresentable” and “ Patología.”
68 Méndez, Los sucesos comunistas en El Salvador, roí; Memoria de Guerra, Marina y
Aviación, 1932 (San Salvador: Imprenta Nacional, 1933).
69 El Diario de El Salvador, 27 January 1932.
70 Traverso, The Origins o fNazi Violence, i n .
71 Ibid., 1 1 1 - 1 2 .
72 El Diario de El Salvador, 28 January 1932.
73 Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence, 90.
74 Ibid., 91.
75 Although apparently there was some protest when Calderon announced 4,800
liquidated communists, a search o f the Times (London), La Epoca (Madrid),
Vossiche Zeituny (Berlin), Le Populaire de Paris newspapers in western Europe and
others in Latin America uncovered no diplomatic protests about the massacres.
76 Neiv York Times, 12 March 1932.
77 Ibid., 13 March 1932. That Washington sympathized with the Martinez re­
gime’s energetic repression did not stop it from taking a principled stand
against diplomatic recognition.
78 Other than Calderon’s statement o f a siege o f the Salvadoran embassy in
Mexico City, we have found no corroboration. The Mexican left was clearly
incensed at the killings o f communists in Salvador and passed out leaflets. The
consul o f El Salvador in Mexico had the audacity to speak at an anti-imperialist
rally, where the left challenged his rationalization o f the revolt and the repres­
sion. According to Excelsior on 28 January 1932, “ un tumulto entre partidarios
de los dos grupos” erupted.
79 See Cerdas Cruz, La Hoz y El Machete, 298-305, for the reaction o f the Com­
intern and the s r i to the insurrection and massacres.
80 March 1 9 3 2 , a g s .
15
81 Memoria del Ministerio de Fomento, Gobernación . . . (San Salvador: Imprenta Na­
cional, 1933), 8.
82 Interview with Alejandro Pérez Ortiz, Carrizal, 2002. The politician who ut­
tered these words was a Dr. Morales.
83 Interview with Ramón Esquina, Tajcuilulaj, 1998.
84 “ Statement o f the Government regarding Present Communist Activities,”
repr. and trans. 800.B, 22 June 1935, Department o f State, u sn a .
Chapter Eight: Memories of the Massacre
1 Dalton, Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de ig j2 en El Salvador, 305.
335
2 Cáceres, “ Después del 3 2 ,” in .
3 Ibid., 112.
4 Alvarenga, “ Los indígenas y el Estado: alianzas y estrategias políticas en la
construcción del poder local en El Salvador; Ching and Tilley, “ Indians, the Notes
Military, and the Rebellion o f 1932 in El Salvador.”
5 See Adams, Cultural Surveys of Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Hon­
duras, 494, on the hierarchy in the 1950s, especially the independent role o f the
cacique. In Izalco the civil religious hierarchy before 1932 formed a structure
largely independent o f the municipality and the state. In Nahuizalco, on the
contrary, until 1932 the indigenous people, over 80 percent o f the population,
often won control over the municipal government. This political control tied
to the national state probably weakened the religious dimension o f the civil
and religious hierarchy. In any event, the hierarchy did not survive the matanza.
6 Alfonso Muñoz to General Felipe Ibarra, 14 October 1932, #368, a m s .
7 The evidence for these assertions is still fragmentary, although recent work by
Erik Ching and Virginia Tilley substantiates the argument that the military
often supported the Indians against wealthy ladinos during the 1930s. Memory
studies such as Daniel James, Doña Maria’s Story: Life History, Memory, and
Political Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), Luisa Passerini, Fas­
cism in Popular Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and
Portelli, The Death 0/Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories, have analyzed the impact o f
élite domination on subaltern memory in other historical contexts.
8 Interviews with Paulino Galicia, Cara Sucia, 1999; Prudencio Hernández, La
Sabana, Nahuizalco, 1998; Carlos Alarcón, Salcoatitán, 1998.
9 See Castellanos, El Salvador, 149-67. Also see Mariano Castro Moran, Relám­
pagos de Libertad: Abril, Mayo y Diciembre 1944 (San Salvador: l i s , 2001), 109 -
254, for an extremely detailed account o f the period, with an emphasis on the
participation o f anti-Martinista officers.
10 Nevertheless two Izalqueños, General Alfonso Marroqin and Colonel Tito
Calvo, both key military players in the massacre in Izalco, joined the con­
spiracy against Martinez. According to Castellanos their distrust o f civilians
(for fear o f communist infiltration) led to the failure o f the April rebellion.
Castellanos, “ El Salvador,” 151.
11 Interview with Angel Olivares, Nahuizalco, 1998. See Alvarenga, “ Los indí­
genas y el Estado: alianzasy y estrategias políticas en la construcción del poder
local en El Salvador.”
12 Lt. Alfonso Muñoz to General Felipe Ibarra, 4 October 1932, a m s .
13 Interview with Angelica Lué, Tajcuilulah, 1998
14 Ciará de Guevara, Exploración etnográfica, Departamento de Sonsonete, 171.
15 Interview with Arsenio Pérez, El Carrizal, 2001.
 16 El Diario de El Salvador, 5 February 1932.
17 Similarly, one informant recalls stumbling across human bones and his elders
telling him: “ there are your brothers.” Interview with Esteban Tepas, Pushtan,
336
Nahuizalco, 1998.
18 Interview with Angelica Lué, Tajcuilulah, 1998.
19 Leonhard Schultze Jena, Mitos y Leyendas de los Pipiles de Izalco, trans. Gloria
Notes Menjívar and Armida Parada Fortín (San Salvador: Ediciciones Cuscatlán,
1977), 142 [orig. pubd Berlin, 1934].
20 Adams, Cultural Surveys o f P a n a m a , Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras.
21 Interview with Arsenio Perez, El Carrizal, 2001.
22 Interview with Rosario Lué, Nahuizalco, 2001.
23 An informant from the cantón, Carrizal, stated that the survivors converted
one o f these sites into a cemetery where people left flowers (interviews with
Manuel Acensio Perez, El Carrizal, 1998; Ramón Aguilar, Cusumaluco, 1999).
24 Interview with Ramón García, Cusumaluco, 1998.
25 Catherine Merridale, “ War, Death and Remembrance in Soviet Russia,” 73.
26 Snyder Hook, “Awakening from War.”
27 Peterson, “ Uncertain Remains.” In his study, rooted in fieldwork in Tacuba,
Peterson offers a highly sophisticated discussion o f lay trauma theory, arguing
against the version that posits an “ instrumental response” by the afflicted. See
chapters 3 and 8.
28 Interview with Ramón Esquina, Tajcuilulaj, 1998.
29 Interview with Arsenio Pérez, El Carrizal, 2001.
30 Hale, Ma's Que un Indio, 67.
31 Informants used variants o f this expression around the verb “ deber,” for
example “ los que debían no murieron y los que no debían nada si murieron.”
32 Peterson, “ Uncertain Remains,” chapters 3 ,10 .
33 Ibid.
34 For a thoughtful analysis o f the temporal dimension o f memories see Portelli,
The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories.
35 Ciará de Guevara, Exploración etnográfica, Departamento de Sonsonate, 209.
36 Margarito Vásquez, Santo Domingo, 2001. A version o f this account is re­
peated by nearly all elderly informants in Santo Domingo.
37 “ El Caballo Rojo” (Editorial Don Bosco, March 1932), quoted in “ Después del
1932, Ernesto Cáceres,” Boletín de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales 9, no. 2 (March-
April 1986), 106.
38 Interview with Cruz Perez, El Carrizal, 2001. It is possible, as Peter Guardino
has suggested (in a personal communication), that the name “ Lázaro” was
something o f a nickname, awarded after the events, or that the character was
in some way “ constructed” among the survivors, though he certainly has a
family lineage in El Carrizal.
39 Interviews with Vicente Flores, Jacinto Mendez, Jayaque, 2001.
40 Ciará de Guevara, Exploración etnográfica, Departamento de Sonsonate, 324; inter­
view with Jorge Pérez, Cuisnahuat, 1998 (with Patricia Alvarenga).
41 Interview with Miguel Urbina, Ceiba del Charco, 2001.
42 Interview with E. Zetino, Pushtan, 1999.
43 Interview with Andrés Pérez, Pushtan, 2001.
337
44 Interview with Alberto Shul, Nahuizalco, 1999, 2001. Shul recalls how the
elders would use a device with water and weights and then exclaim, “ Vamos a
triunfar!”
45 Interview with Doroteo Lopez, San Isidro, 1999. His nervous comrades gra­ Notes
ciously declined the offer.
46 Interview with Jesús Velasquez, San Luis, 2001.
47 Interview with Alejandro Perez Ortiz, El Carrizal 2001.
48 Interview with Andrés Pérez, Pushtan, 20or.
49 Interview with Salomé Miranda, Sacacoyo, 2001.
50 Cardenal, Historia de Una Esperanza, 2 35-36 .
51 On the view o f indigenous and leftist militants on ethnocide see Gould, “ Rev­
olutionary Nationalism and Local Memories.” Linguists employ the term
“ Nahuatl-Pipil” or Pipil to refer to a dialect quite distinct from the Mexican
variants. Locals often call the indigenous language “ Nahuate.” We will use the
local term interchangeably with Pipil in die text.
52 El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 13 August 1932.
53 de Baratta and Mendoza, Cuzcatltín Típico: Ensayo Sobre Etnojoníd de El Savator;
Herrera Vega, El Indio occidental y su incorporación social por la escuela. It is remark­
able that in Herrera Vega’s 110-page book, dealing direcdy with the condition
o f Izalqueflo Indians, the author omits any mention o f the massacre, despite
his purported sympathy for their plight. One can only assume that he was
afraid to potentially manifest any criticism o f the regime by mentioning its
role.
54 Interview with Patrocinio Hernandez, Cuisnahuat, 1998 (with Patricia Alva-
renga). This informant claimed that the local schoolteacher during the 1930s
prohibited the speaking o f Nahuate in the school, arguing that books were not
written in the language.
55 Interview with Alejandro Perez Ortiz, El Carrizal 2001.
56 Interviews with Rodrigo Malia, 1998; Pedro Lué, Sábana San Juan, 1998. Both
informants recall the same phrase.
57 Interview with Benito Sarco, Nahuizalco, 2000.
58 Interview with Rosario Lué, Nahuizalco 1999.
59 There is also some evidence that authorities around the time o f la Matanza,
especially in Izalco, cast a threatening glance at anyone who spoke the lan­
guage, which was regarded as a possible form o f subversive activity.
60 Interview with Maria Antonia Pérez, El Canelo, 2001.
61 Herrera Vega, El Indio occidental y su incorporación social por la escuela, 27.
62 Ibid., 28.
63 Pierre Bourdieu and Loi'c Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago:
University o f Chicago Press, 1992), 167.
64 Herrera Vega, El Indio Occidental y su Incorporación Social por la Escuela, 78.
 65 Ibid., 104.
66 Ibid.
67 Gould, To Die in This Way; Gould, “ Revolutionary Nationalism and Local Mem­
338
ories in El Salvador,” 161.
68 Anonymous informant, Santo Domingo de Guzman, 1999.
69 See Clara de Guevara, Exploración etnográfica, Departamento de Sonsonate. Also see
Notes Pineda Ortiz and Ramírez Cruz, “ Vision Socio-cultural de Nahuizalco,” 95;
Contreras, “ Monografía de la población Indígena de Nahuizalco.” He writes:
“ Durante la investigación todos negaron hablar el dialecto Nahuate . . . y que
es una ‘bayuncada’ hablar en ‘lengua’ . . . La verdad es que todos hablan el
Nahuate, sólo que no lo hablaban en público porque los mestizos se burlan
de ellos” (45). Lyle Campbell states: “ In Cuisnahuat there are about 40 [Na-
huatel speakers] and in Santo Domingo de Guzman the majority o f indige­
nous adults still know how to speak it, although there are few youths who have
learned it.” “ La Dialectología Pipil,” 833.
70 Interview with Juan Cestino Lué, El Canelo, March 2000. This witness claimed
that women who had relatively new refajos were afraid o f being implicated as
looters. Others suggest that one group o f indigenous village patrolmen right
after the first wave o f repression ordered women in El Canelo and Sábana
San Juan Arriba (neighboring cantones in Nahuizalco, bordering on Gabino
Mata’s plantation) to stop wearing indigenous garb.
71 Marden, “ Coffee Is the King in El Salvador,” 602. Interviews with virtually all
informants suggest that the decline o f “ refajo” use came a generation later.
72 Interview with Rosario Lué, Nahuizalco, 1999. This argument should not be
dismissed, as it is entirely possible that temperatures did increase in the area
because o f deforestation.
73 Interview, Nahuizalco, 1998. The name has been changed.
74 Interview with Maria Antonia Pérez, El Canelo, 2001.
75 One informant in particular, Carlos Shul (pseud.), claimed pride in his moth­
er’s indigenous identity, but when we spoke with his mother she reminded
him with bitterness, “ No te acordás? Me rogaste de quitarme el refajo!” Inter­
views with Carlos Shul and his mother, El Cerrito, Nahuizalco, 1999.
76 Interview with Arsenio Pérez, El Carrizal, 2001; also see Gould, “ Revolutionary
Nationalism and Local Memories in El Salvador.”
77 Ciará de Guevara, Exploración etnográfica, Departamento de Sonsonate.
78 Rappaport, Cumbe Reborn; de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; Euraque, Gould,
and Hale, eds., Memorias del Mestizaje.
79 Scheff, “ Emotions and Identity.” Also see Reddy, “Against Constructionism.”
Reddy’s following remark is worthy o f consideration in the Salvadoran con­
text: “ Shame, I would argue, also derives from thoughts about how one is seen
by others . . . Thus, shame can lead to withdrawal coupled with action aimed at
managing appearances; such action can, in turn, take the form o f emotive
utterances and behavior that drum up and intensify socially approved feelings
and play down or deny deviant ones. Local varieties o f shame are therefore, in
 many cultural contexts, a principal instrument o f social control and political
power” (347).
80 Salarme, Cataleya Luna, 172.
339
81 Herrera Vega, El Indio occidental y su incorporación social por la escuela.
82 A. J. Harris, Labor Conditions and Problems, 24 February 1933, 816.504/29,
Department o f State, u sn a .
83 Interview with Maria Antonia Perez, El Canelo, 2001. Notes
84 The civil registry in Nahuizalco shows that from 1932 to 1935, 67 percent o f
births were recorded as illegitimate. Since the pre-1932 records were destroyed
in the insurrection there is no basis for comparison, but anecdotal evidence
suggests that the rate ofillegitimacy increased. In Izalco in 1930, 60 percent o f
births were illegitimate, and in 1933 the rate was 76 percent.
85 Interview with Ernesto Shul, Nahuizalco, 1999.
86 The generational conflict in Cuisnahuat, a municipality with a large indige­
nous population, had a specifically political expression. Modernizers and tra­
ditionalists without specific national affiliations battled for control of the
municipality in the early 1970s. See Clara de Guevara, Exploración etnográfica,
Departamento de Sonsonate.
87 Interview with anonymous informant, Cuisnahuat, 2000.
88 Interview with Reynaldo Patriz, El Carrizal, 1998. On nonindigenous transmis­
sion o f memory see for example interviews with Carlos Castillo and his father
Luis Alfonso Castillo, Atiquizaya, 2001; Miguel Lino, El Tortuguero, 2002;
Vicente Flores, Jayaque, 2001.
89 Tula, Hear My Testimony, 3 3 -5 2 ; Gordon, Crisis Política y Guerra en El Salvador,
247-
90 Interviews with Reynaldo Patriz and Manuel Ascencio Perez, El Carrizal, 1998-
99; Margarito Vásquez and Manuel Vásquez, Santo Domingo, 1998; Carlos
Lue, Nahuizalco, 1998,1999, 2001.
91 The leftist-influenced Partido Acción Revolucionario had some support in the
region during the 1960s.
92 The u c s seemed to gain more support in the wake o f the agrarian reform o f
1980.
93 Interview with Margarito Vásquez, Santo Domingo, 1998.
94 The impact o f one such organization, f e c c a s , is magnificently described and
analyzed in Cabarrus, Genesis de una Revolución. Also see Wood, Insurgent Collec­
tive Action and Civil War.
95 For a state-centered analysis o f this transformation in El Salvador and else­
where see Goodwin: No Other Way Out.
96 Charles D. Brockett, Political Movements and Violence in Central America (Cam­
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 53.
97 Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America, 243-44. The ratio
o f workers to farmers in La Libertad (5.6:1), Ahuachapán (6.7:1), and Sonso­
nate (8.4:1) was far higher than in the insurgent areas, where the ratio ranged
from 0.6:1 (Chaletenango) to 2.9:1 (Usulatán).
 98 Gordon, Crisis Política y Guerra en El Saluador, 30.
99 Interviews with Margarito Vásquez, Manuel Vásquez, and Ambrosio Benitez,
Santo Domingo, 1998, 2000.
3 40
100 Interview with Margarito Vásquez, 2001.
101 Interviews with Reynaldo Patriz, 1999, 2001; Juan Francisco Hernández, 1998;
Alejandro Pérez Ortiz, 2001.
Notes 102 Based on testimony from interview with Ciro Cáceres with Patricia Alvarenga,
Nahuizalco, 1998. The account is substantiated by Reynaldo Patriz, 1999, 2001;
Juan Francisco Hernández, 1998; and Alejandro Pérez Ortiz, 2001.
103 Interview with Maria Eduwiges Pérez, El Canelo, Nahuizalco, 2001.
104 For example, on the outskirts o f San Salvador they left the bodies in a place
called “ Los Playones” ; also see Voz Popular (San Salvador), July 1979, n a c la
Archive File no. 12.
105 Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 2006.
106 Interview with Manuel Ascencio Pérez, El Carrizal, 1998.
107 Interview with Arsenio Pérez, El Carrizal, 1980.
108 Inteview with Cruz Perez, El Carrizal, 2001.
109 Interview with Manuel Vásquez, Santo Domingo de Guzmán, 1998.
110 On the left’s immersion in the discourse o f mestizaje in Nicargaua see Gould,
To Die in This Way, 228-82.
111 Remarkably, the only reference to the El Carrizal massacre was a highly dis­
torted military report suggesting that the guerrillas had initiated a reign of
terror in the canton. See El Latino, 18 July 1980, for the military report.
112 De La Locura a la Esperanza: La Guerra de 12 años en El Saluador, Informe de la
Comisión de la Verdad Para El Salvador (New York: United Nations, 1993), 76.
113 On Las Hojas see Mac Chapin, La Población de El Saluador (San Salvador: Minis­
terio de Educación, 1990). On Los Gramales, interview with Pedro Sánchez,
Tajcuilulaj, 1998. The military gunned down from fifteen to one hundred in
these incidents.
114 “ Carta Infmativa de a n í s ,” August 1987, a n í s archive, Sonsonate.
115 Interview with Consuelo Roque, Santo Domingo, 1998 (with Patricia Alva­
renga); interview with Margarito Vásquez, Santo Domingo, 2001; interview
with Manuel Vásquez, Santo Domingo, 2001.
116 De La Locura a la Esperanza, 81.

Epilogue
1 Populist sentiment was so deep that the rightist a r e n a party, as it modern­
ized, strove to maintain its own version o f the populism that had helped it to
power in the 1980s.
2 Segovia, Transformación Estructural y Reforma Económica en El Salauador, 182.
3 Segovia, Transformación Estructural y Reforma Económica en El Salauador.
4 See Gould, “ Revolutionary Nationalism and Local Memories,” 160-64, for a
 brief discussion o f the alienation o f rural activists in Nahuizalco. The discus­
sion o f contemporary Nahuizalco politics is also based on observations made
during a visit in 1999 and for six months in 2001.
341

Afterword
1 A few indigenous activists suggested thatwe give greater emphasis to “ indige­ Notes
nous culture.”
2 The principal factor accounting for this relative weakness o f the documentary
is, in turn, reflected to a lesser degree in the book. For a variety o f reasons
(including this screening) Reynaldo, Santiago, and I found it more difficult to
develop a network o f informants in Izalco. During an earlier stage o f the
research project, the Costa Rican historian Patricia Alvarenga did concentrate
her efforts here and many o f the informants were first approached by her.
3 On one level those limitations could be summarized by what I somewhat
euphemistically describe as the “ creative tension” with my collaborator, a
journalist by training who had served as director o f Radio Venceremos, the
clandestine radio station o f the Salvadoran guerrillas from 1981 to 1992. Our
differences were not so much political as disciplinary. He sought synthesis and
I pushed for explanation. To me he often responded, “ Save it for your book.”
In an interview in a major Salvadoran paper, he commented that “ if it were up
to Gould, the documentary would have been six hours long.” Although an
exaggeration, the comment was not entirely o ff the mark.
4 See “ La Insurrección Indígena,” E! Periódico Nuevo Enfoque, 24 January 2005.
5 “ Scars o f Memory: El Salvador, 19 32,” directed and produced by Jeffrey L.
Gould and Carlos Henriquez Consalvi (New York: First Run/Icarus Films,
2003). The selection o f the interviews was not consciously based on the visual
imagery.
6 Georgina Hernandez, “ El Ejerciicio de la Memoria Histórica en la Construc­
ción de las Identidades” (unpublished manuscript, 2005). This report stated:
“ it was through the documentary forum that spectators exhibited certain so­
cial practices o f identification.”
7 “ El Salvador Was Denounced before the UN Committee against Racism,”
Lutheran World Federation, 1 March 2006.
8 “ Prosthetic memories are memories that circulate publicly, are not organically
based, but are nevertheless experienced with one’s own body—by means o f a
wide range o f cultural technologies—and as such, become part o f one’s per­
sonal archive o f experience, informing not only one’s subjectivity but one’s
relationship to the present and future tenses . . . like an artificial limb they are
actually worn by the body; these are sensuous memories produced by experi­
ence.” Landsberg, “America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture o f Mem­
ory,” 66.
9 Ibid., 84.
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Index

Abuelos, Los, 1 1 5 ,1 1 8 , 1 1 9 , 1 2 1 157; indigenous population of, 12 5 -

Acajutla, 56 26; insurrection in, 13 7 -3 8 ,15 9 -6 0 ,
active consent, 3 16 5 ,17 0 - 7 1,18 2 - 8 4 ,18 6 ,18 9 , 220,
Adams, Richard, 244 326m , 332027; labor movement in,
Adelanto, El, 126 76 ,129 ; massacre in, 2 11 - 1 2 , 215,
Afro-Caribbeans, 100 230, 231; mestizaje in, xv-xvi;
agrarian reform, 29, 9 1-9 2 ,19 3 , 262, municipal elections in, 144; political
339n92 protest in, 262; repression in, 152,
Agrarian Republic, An, xxv 167-68; strikes in, 1 4 1,14 2 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 5
agro-financial élite, 5, 8 - 9 ,1 1 - 1 8 , 2 4 - Ahuachapaneco, 15 6 -5 7
2 6 ,15 4 ; anti-imperialism and, 4 9 - Alcalde del Común, 119
50; Araujo and, 58; counterrevolu­ Alegría, 43
tion and, 210; coup o f 1930 and, 139; Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Amer­
elections o f 1930 and, 61; Martinez icana (a p r a ), 50
regime and, 149; Meléndez- Alianza Republicana Nacionalista
Quiñónez regime and, 34, 3 6 -3 7 ; (a r e n a ), xi, 277, 340m
post-massacre, 240; racism of, 12, Alvarenga, Patricia, xxi
117 ,12 4 ; strikes and, 14 2 -4 3 Alvarez, Emilio, 9 -10
Aguilar, Raimundo, 209, 222 Alvarez family, 9 -12
Aguirre, Manuel, 180 Ama, José Feliciano, xxi, 4 6 - 4 7 ,13 4 -
Ahuachapán, 18, 2 4 ,15 3 ,19 4 ,19 6 , 263, 3 5 ,17 5 ,18 8 , 320013; death of, 212;
275; elections in, 14 5 ,14 9 ,15 1,15 6 , executions and, 189
 Amates, Los, 17 2 -7 3 , 200, 202, 204, assimilationists, 1 2 1 ,1 3 0 - 3 1
206 Asunción, 93, 99
Amaya, Juan, 58 Atiquizaya, 60,156
356
Anadalusia, 69 Adacatl, El, 46
anarchism, 54, 57, 64, 69,195
Bará, Colonel, 17 5 -7 6
anarcho-syndicalists, 157
Barrientos, Leopoldo, 92
Index Anaya, Jorge Fernandez, 64, 75, 79-88,
Barrio de Asunción, 45, 93, 9 9 ,12 1,
163
134. 254
Anderson, Thomas, xx
Barrio Dolores, 45
Angulo, Victor, 95
Barrio El Angel, 175
anticommunism, xix-xx, xxii, 60, 201,
Benjamin, Walter, 290
219, 226; laws and, 76, 9 8 ,139
Bermudez, Martín, 250
anti-imperialism, 4 8 -52 , 54, 9 3,16 4
bilingualism, 10 4 ,115 , 253, 2 54 -55
anti-revolutionary sentiment, 165. Sec
Bloom, Benjamin, 11
also counterrevolution
Bolivia, xvii
Antonio, Juan, ix -x
Bolshevism, 26, 5 2 -5 3 , 7 1 ,1 1 2 , 211,
Araujismo, 58, 6 0-61, 8 2 ,15 5 -5 7 ,
237
307nii2
Bondanza, Rafael, 85-86
Araujo, Arturo, n , 3 1, 9 3 ,15 5 -5 6 ,
Borbón, Guillermo, 7 0 -7 1
3070103; overthrow of, 13 8 -4 0 ,16 2 ;
Borges, Manuel, xii
p c s and, 15 7 ,15 8 ,16 4 ; presidential
Borges, Milo, 227
campaign of, 45, 5 7 -6 1, 9 0 -9 1,12 1;
Bran, Jesús, 185
repression under, 92, 94, 97-98,
Brazil, 15 ,15 7 ,1 9 5
13 2 -3 4
Britain, 6 5,14 4 , 237
Araujo, Eugenio, 1 0 - 1 1, 58
Brito, Chico, 182
Araujo, Manuel Enrique, 34
Brito, Cipriano, 182
Arcos, Los, 215
Brito, Francisco, 14 8 ,150 , 223
Arenales, Los, 122
Brito, Rodolfo, 48
Argentina, 1 5 ,4 1 ,1 5 7
Brodeur, Victor G., 13 6 ,18 5 ,19 4 , 214,
Armenia, 58, 60, 7 5 - 7 6 ,1 3 3 ,1 8 4
221, 229 -30, 33107
Arriaza, Rogelio, 15 1- 5 2
Bryan-Chamoro Treaty (1916), 50
artisans, 37, 53, 5 4 -5 5 , 63-6 5, 76 ,16 5
Buber, Martin, 78
Ascencio, Felix, 73
Buezo, Rodolfo, 18 4 ,18 6
Ascencio, Manuel, 290
Asociación Agricola, 14 Calderón, José Tomás, gi, 9 7 ,124 , 216;
Asociación Cafetalera de El Salvador, in insurrection o f 19 32,18 4 , 2 11,
H. H3 233- 34. 33in7
Asociación Nacional Indígena Sal­ Calvo, Antonio, 148
vadoreña (a n í s ), 262, 2 7 1-7 3 Calvo, Tito, 176, 335nio
Asociación Salvadoreña de Indígenas Campbell, Lyle, 257
Democráticas (a s i d ), 272 Candel, Roberto, 96
assassinations, 17 7 ,18 7 -9 0 ,19 2 ,19 3 , Canelo massacre, 221, 223, 227, 2 3 3 -
198, 204 35, 267; memory of, 238, 248, 273
capitalism, xv, i o i , 10 6 -7 colonato, 18 -2 1,10 6 , 299057
capitalist rationalization, 55 colonos, xxiv, 3 ,19 , 7 3 ,14 7 , 298056;
caporales, 7 3 -7 4 radicalization of, xvii; strikes and,
357
Cárcamo, Benjamín, 144 158; unionization of, 84; wage cuts
Cardenal, Rodolfo, 13, no, 119 and, 2 0 -2 1
cargo system, 119 Comandantes Rojos, 15 2 ,18 9 ,19 3
Carrizal, El, x, 244, 266, 269, 273 Comasagua, 103 Index
Carter, Jimmy, 219 Comintern, xviii, 57, 66, 8 0 ,10 0 ,13 7 ,
castellanización, 114 16 3-6 4 ; p c s and, 141, 237; propa­
Castillo, Frutos, 74 ganda of, 168
Castillo, Luis Alfonso, 182 Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico
Castro, Rafael, 174 (c e h ), 217, 2 19 -20
Catholic Church, 13 ,10 8 , n o - 1 1 , 112, Comisión Interamericana de Derechos
2 3 0 -3 1, 2 75-7 6 Humanos, 2 7 2 -7 3
Cea, Salvador, 46 Comité Laborista de Indígenas, 148
Chalchupa, 28 communal lands, 1 - 2 , 27, 29 -30 , 35,
Chávez, Eusebio, 12 1,14 2 10 3 ,10 7 , 283
Chicas, Emilio, 201 Commune o f 1871, 65-66
child labor, 18, 5 5 ,14 7 Communist International, 237
child-rearing practices, 12 9 -30 Communist Party. See Partido Commu-
Chile, 15 nista de Salvadoreño ( p c s )
Ching, Eric, xxi-xxii communists, ix, 69, 87, 90, 93-94, 97,
Christmas Day massacre, 37-4 0 13 7 ,16 7 -6 8 , 285; Araujismo and,
Cicatriz de la Memoria (Sears 0/Mem­ 15 6 -5 7 ; insurrection o f 1932 and,
ory), 282-86, 289-90 xxii-xxiv, 16 2 ,1 7 3 - 7 4 ,1 8 0 ,1 8 1 ,1 8 5 -
Cienfuegos, Ferman, xx 8 6,187, 202, 233, 295n40; labor
Civic Guards, 18 4 ,19 2 , 2 11, 226 -27, movement and, 57, 79; massacre of,
230. 231, 33105 203, 2 11, 214, 2 27-28 , 229 -30 , 233,
civil war, 122, 208, 287 236, 237; propaganda and, 65-68;
clientelism, 13 - 14 , 43, 4 7 ,13 5 ,18 8 , 277 Protestants and, 231; religion and,
Codero, Gregorio Cortéz, 72 113 ; strikers as, 15 5 -5 6 ; “ treachery”
código rojo, 139 of, 2 14 -15 , 238-39 , 247, 283-84.
coffee industry, xvii, 2 - 3 , 6 - 7 ,1 6 ,1 0 3 , See also Partido Communista Salva­
278, 292ni4; Alvarez family and, 9 - doreño (p c s )
ii; decline in prices and, 19 -2 0 ; communitas, 77 -7 8 , 81, 89, 3140100
labor movement and, 64; labor Constitutionalist party, 40
shortages in, 158; mestizaje and, 106; Conte, Antonio, 99, 10 2 - 6 ,1 0 8 ,1 1 1 - 1 2 ,
in 1970s, 264-65; unions and, 8 3 - 114 ,12 7 - 2 8
84; wages in, 298054 Contreras, 148-49
collective bargaining, 33 Corado, Petrona, 126
Colombia, 9, 258, xvii Córdova, Enrique, 60-61
Colombia hacienda, 84 Cortez, Alvaro, 215
Colón, 14 9 ,17 1- 7 3 . i 8 5. 18 7 .19 2 , 212 Cortez Cordero, Gregorio, 75, 8 5,14 0
Costa Rica, xvii, 5, 6, 41, 65, 2921114 Dominican Republic, xviii
cotton production, 8 ,18 dress, indigenous, 105, 241, 2 57-5 8 . See
counterinsurgent discourse, xiv, 154, also refajo
15 6 ,17 9 , 2 35 -36 Droz, Jules-Humbert, 100
counterrevolution, 165, 210, 231, 233, Dueñas, Francisco, 139
235; narrative of, 193, 2 3 7 -3 8 Dueñas, Miguel, 37
coups, military, 43, 264; o f 19 3 0 ,13 8 - Dueñas family, 14 2 -4 3
40 Dunkerley, James, xxi
Cruz, Pablo, 14 8 ,150 Duran, Onofre, 74
Cruz Zaldafia, Gregorio, 214
economic crisis o f 1931, 9 1,10 7 - 8
Cuba, xvii, xviii, 63, 70, 266
economic growth, 2, 3 3 - 3 4
Cuenca, Abel, 183
eight-hour day, 5 6 - 5 7 ,14 3 ,14 7
Cuenca, Alfonso, 124
Ejercito Rojo, 17 9 ,18 2 -8 3 , 186. See also
Cuenca, Max, 9 0 ,14 0 ,16 1,17 8
Red Army
Cuisnahauat, 6 0 ,12 3 ,12 7 , 232, 2 56 -
ejidal lands, 2, 7, 2 9 -3 0 ,10 3
57, 262; elections in, 14 8 ,15 7 ; indig­
elections, 35, 9 3,16 7 , 239, 242; Araujo
enous population of, 108-9, n 5 > 261;
and, 5 8 -5 9 ,15 7 ; f m l n and, xi,
insurrection in, 250
275, 278 -79; fraudulent, 14 9 -5 1;
Cumbre de Jayaque, 17 1, 2 11
Meléndez-Quiñónez regime and, 36,
Cúntan, 205
4 1-4 2 ; municipal, 4 3 -4 8 ,13 7 ,13 9 ,
Cusamuluco, 213
14 4 -4 6 ; o f 1931, 6 0-61, 6 5 ,1 2 1 ,1 3 5 ;
Cuyagualo, 92, 9 5 ,12 2 -2 3
p c s and, 57, go, 14 7 ,15 9 - 6 1,17 2 ,

Daglio, Borghi B., 303042 179, 227; strikes and, 15 3 ,15 5 - 5 6

Dalton, Roque, xix electoral fraud, 35, 36, 4 6 ,14 9 -5 1,
death squads, 266-67, 269 313085; violent reaction to, 15 5 ,18 7 ,
debt, national, 6, 241 192
deindianization, 4 8 ,10 1, xv. See also electoral reform, 41
ladinización; mestizaje emergent cultural forms, 136
de la Cadena, Marisol, 258 Escobar, Colonel, 138
Delarosa, Guadalupe, 214 Espino, Miguel Angel, 49
de la Torre, Haya, 50 Esquina, Adrian, 272
del Moral, Díaz, 69 Esquina, Ramón, 2 12 - 13 , 224, 239,
democratic reform, 42 246
demonstrations, 38 -4 2 , 50, 60, 71, Estrada, Carlos, 117
13 2 -3 4 ,14 6 , 266; armed, 189; ethnic conflict, 45-46 , 4 8 ,119 ,12 1,
repression of, 56 -57 , 62, 87-89, 92, 206, 259; contemporary, 283, 285
264; o f 17 May 1931, 95-98, 9 9 ,117 , ethnic identity, xxii, 206
12 1,1 2 4 ,1 3 1 ,1 6 8 . See also protests ethnic militancy, xxiv
De Sola family, 14 2 -4 3, 322039 Europe, 8 -9 , 25, 54, 5 5 ,14 2 ,16 4 , 237
Diario Latino (newspaper), 51, 96, executions, 17 7 ,18 7 -9 0 ,19 2 ,19 3 ,1 9 8 ,
322n44 204
Diaz Barrientos, Alfonso, 9 3 ,17 5 ,18 8 extra-economic exploitation, 21, 24,
Diaz Barrientos, Eugenio, 13 4 -3 5 2 7-2 8 , 5 2 ,15 4 , 200
fascism, 2io, 331115 Guardia Cívica, 18 4 ,19 2 , 2 11, 226 -27,
Federation Regional de Trabajadores de 230, 231, 33105
El Salvador ( f r t s ) , 5 0 -5 1, 5 5 -5 5 , Guardia Nacional. See National Guard
359
64-66, 68,124, 313080; Armenia Guatemala, 4 - 5 ,1 0 8 ,1 3 7 ,1 9 1 , 242-4 3,
branch of, 75; coffee industry and, 246-47; coffee production in, xvii, 6;
84; communists and, 57; criticism of, elections in, 47; genocide in, 217,
7 9 -8 1; female participation in, 129; 2 19 -20 , 233; labor movement in, 64, Index
growth of, 8 3-84; p c s and, 148; re­ 65; religion in, 112 ,12 6 ; workers
pression of, 71; S R i and, 8 5 -8 6 , 8 8 - from, 15 2 ,15 8 , 297047
89, 91, 92; strikes and, 5 6 ,14 1,14 6 Guayabo, El, 7 2 -7 3
First World War, 237 Guerra, Virgilio, 203
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 147 Guerrero, Gustavo, 50
Flores, Cayetana, 212 Guevara, Argripino, 98
Flores, Timoteo, 8 7 ,18 6 ,19 1 Guha, Ranajit, 3
Flores, Vicente, 229, 240 Guirolas family, 7
f m l n (Frente Farabundo Marti para la Gutierrez, Gregorio, 47
Liberación National), xi, xxi, 264, Guzman, Jesús, 74
273, 2 75-7 8 , 2 8 1-8 2, 326nii5
Haiti, xviii
food shortages, 24, 30
Hale, Charles R., 191, 246
foreign debt, 241
handicraft industry, 10 7 -8
foreign loans, 91
Hartman, Carl, 10 4 -5 , m >n 5>I29
French Revolution, 65, 231
hegemony, xvi, 3 - 4 , 1 3 ,1 4 , 2 4 -2 5 , 71
Frente Farabundo Martí para la Libera­
Henriquez Consalvi, Carlos, xxvi, 281,
ción National ( f m l n ) , xi, xxi, 264,
288
273, 2 75-7 8 , 2 8 1-8 2, 326nii5
Heraldo de Sonsonate (newspaper), 51
f r t s . See Federation Regional de Traba­
Hernández, Ismael, 8 4 ,16 1
jadores de El Salvador
Hernandez, Juan, 9 9 ,123
Fuerzas Populares de Liberación, x,
Hernández, Miguel, 267
264, 266-68
Herrera, Benjamin, 17 7 -7 8
Galicia, Cupertino, 12 1 Herrera Vega, Adolfo, 2 55-56 , 259
gender relations, xxiv, 13 0 - 3 1,19 2 , 254, Hidalgo, Vicente, 183
259. See also patriarchy Hill, James (John), 6 ,12 ,1 9 , 2 6 ,12 8
general strike, 5 6 ,14 2 ,16 2 - 6 3 Hobsbawm, Eric, 19 5-9 6
genocide, xviii, 209, 217, 2 19 -2 1, 226, Hojas, Las, 2 7 1-7 3
233, 330m Honduras, 17, 5 8 ,1 0 7 ,1 14 ,1 18 ,
Germany, 217 297047, 316025; indigenous popula­
Gomez, Jorge Arias, xix tion of, 1 13 ,1 2 7 ; mestizaje in, xv, 101,
Gonzales, Abraham, 74 108-9, H5
Gould, Jeffrey L., x, xxvi-xxvii, 4 0 ,10 1, Hook, Elizabeth Snyder, 245
10 6 ,12 7 , 258 hunger strikes, 94-95
Gramales, Los, 7 7 ,12 3
iglesia popular, 83, 252, 2 75-7 6
Grandin, Greg, xii, xviii, 136, 217, 220,
illegitimate births, 192, 259-60, 339084
268, 273
 Ilopango, 84 industrialization, 33, 53, 55
imperialism, 57, 85, 88; anti-, 4 8 -52 , insurgents, 136, 273, 326m
54- 93.1 6 4 insurrection o f 1932, xxiv, 8 8 ,168 -69 ,
360
India, 3 326m ; in Ahuachapán, 17 0 ,18 2 -8 4 ,
Indians, Salvadorian. See indigenous 186; causes of, 192; defeat of, 18 4 -
(Indian) population, Salvadorian 87, 2 1 1 - 1 3 , 215; dehumanization o f
Index indigenous activists, 286 participants in, 236; early support
indigenous (Indian) population, Sal­ for, 13 7 -3 8 ; ethnic dimension of,
vadorian, xv-xvi, xxii, 196, 271; as 285; executions and, 17 7 ,18 7 -9 1,
“ campesinos,” 99-100; communists 19 2-9 3, 204; indigenous agency in,
and, 137, 283-84; communities xix; indigenous participation in, 171,
spared violence, 2 3 1 - 3 3 ; cultural 19 2-9 3, 19 6,19 8-9 9 , 220; insurgent
decline of, 241, 2 52-59 , 261; cultural narratives of, 198-208; in Izalco, 170,
resistance of, 108-9, 1 15 - 16 , 13°> 17 4 -7 5 ; *n Juayua, 177 -8 0 ; ladino
262, 2 7 2 -7 3 , 279; elections and, 46, participation in, 2 19 -20 ; in La Liber­
4 7 - 4 8 ,1 1 9 ,1 2 1 ; generational conflict tad, 17 0 -7 3 ; looting and, 180,194,
in, 2 6 1-6 2 , 339n86; genocide and, 199; map of, 172; massacre and, 211;
217, 2 19 - 2 1; “ innocence” of, 2 3 8 - memory of, 239, 246; within military,
39, 247, 283-84; labor movement 166; in Nahuizalco, 18 1-8 2 ,18 5 ;
and, 28; ladinización of, 10 3 ,10 5 -6 , National Guard and, 17 3 ,17 6 ,18 4 ;
3 15 0 13 ; ladinos and, 2 7 ,4 5 -4 6 ,118 , outbreak of, 170; p c s and, 160-65,
12 2 -2 5 , 20 6 -7; lan<i loss ° f, 2 6 -27, 167; rape and, 19 1-9 2 ; in Sonsonate,
29 -30 ; language of, 10 4 -5, 17 0 ,17 3 ,17 5 ,18 5 , 332n29
Marxism and, 135; massacre of, 211, I Rigoberta Menchii, xix-xx
213, 214, 220, 221, 2 24 -2 5, 226 -2 7, Ishio, Anastacio, 205-6 , 207
231; Meléndez-Quiñónez regime Ishuatán, 104
and, 35; mestizaje and, 10 1- 2 ; mili­ I-Thou relationships, 78
tary alliance with, 24 2 -4 3, 265, Izalco, 33, 4 5 - 4 6 ,10 7 ,1 19 - 2 2 , 242,
3 3 5 n7; participation in demonstra­ 28 2-8 3; Araujismo in, 60; demon­
tions by, 96-97; participation in strations in, 97-98, gg; elections in,
insurrection by, 1 7 1 ,1 7 3 ,1 8 1 ,1 8 3 , 14 8 ,150 ; ethnic tensions in, 226;
19 2 -9 3 ,19 8 -9 9 , 2 3 1-3 2 , 246, 286- executions in, 187; indigenous lan­
87; patriarchy and, 12 6 -28 , 260-61; guage in, 105; indigenous population
p c s and, 148; racism against, 10 0 - of, 10 3 ,1 0 5 ,1 1 8 ,1 3 0 ,1 3 5 , 303046;
10 1,116 - 1 8 , 209-10, 226 -2 7, insurrection in, 17 0 - 7 1 ,1 7 4 - 7 5 ,17 8 ,
333054; religious practices of, 13, 18 9 ,19 1,19 2 ,19 6 , 206, 220, 326m ;
10 9 -12 , 249; sexual abuse of, 12 8 - labor movement in, 77, 92; language
2 9 ,13 1; sexuality of, 19 1-9 2 , 259-60, in, 2 53-54 , 256; massacre in, 2 1 1 -
3tgni02; S R I and, 93; strikes and, 12, 214, 225, 231, 233; S R I in, 89, 94
158 Izalqueño, 95
indigenous languages. See Nahuatl-Pipil
Jayaque, 7 5-76 , 8 7 ,10 3 - 10
language
lesuits, 102
Indio, El (newspaper), 100
Jicilapa, 10 3,10 9
Jimenez, Michael, 9 Lake Ilopango, 184
jornaleros, 17 - 18 , 324080 Landaverde, Miguel, 201
Joya Grande, 86 landlords, 24, 30, 57, 9 3,18 8 , 248, 361
Juayúa, 60, 8 4 ,112 , 226, 262, 299065; 322039; abusive, 2 7 -2 8 ,12 8 -2 9 ,
Araujo government and, 133; elec­ 192, 226, 260; colonato and, 3 ,19 - 2 0
tions in, 14 8 ,15 0 ; indigenous lan­ land loss, 2 6 -27, 29_ 3°> I04> I25
guage in, 10 5 ,115 ; insurrection in, land reform, 34, 52, 9 1,14 7 , 241, Index
1 7 1 ,1 7 7 ,17 9 - 8 0 ,1 8 2 ,1 8 6 ,1 8 9 ,1 9 0 - 307nii2; Araujo and, 59, 9 8 ,133;
9 1,19 6 , 220, 326m ; ladinización in, insurrection and, 18 0 ,18 2 ; SRI and,
107; massacre in, 187, 212, 214, 225, 92. See also agrarian reform
227, 231; reformism in, 44-45 Landsberg, Alison, 288-89
Jujutla, 128 language, indigenous. See Nahuatl-Pipil
Junta Nacional de Defensa Social, 241 language
Lauria-Santiago, Aldo, xvi, xxi, xxv-xxvi
laboring class, 125
Lázaro, 336038
Laborismo, 59, 9 2,16 4
Lehmann, Walter, 10 4 -5
Laborista, 97
Leninism, xxii. See also Marxism-
labor movement, 32, 6 3 ,7 0 -7 4 , 82-84,
Leninism
i2g, 161; anti-imperialism and, 51;
liberalism, radical, 64
Araujismo and, 61; artisans in, 65;
Liberal revolutions, Salvadorian, 15
festive meetings of, 76 -79, 81; for­
liberation theology, 252, 273
eign control of, 156; indigenous-
Libertad, La, 1 8 ,1 2 5 ,1 3 3 ,1 5 3 ,1 6 1 , 263;
ladino relations in, 12 3 -2 5 ; indige­
elections in, 145; f m l n in, 275;
nous participation in, 28; insurrec­
indigenous population of, 10 3 ,13 0 ;
tion and, 165; leadership of, 57; Mar­
insurrection in, 17 0 -7 3 ,18 6 , 326m ;
tinez regime and, 14 0 ,14 2 ; Meléndez-
labor movement in, 7 6 ,12 9 ; mas­
Quiñónez regime and, 36, 37, 55; rac­
sacre in, 231; mestizaje in, xv-xvi;
ism and, 118; radicalization of, xxiv,
strikes in, 14 1,14 2 - 4 3 ,15 7 ,1 6 5
5 2 - 5 7 ,13 2 ; religion and, 1 1 2 - 1 3 ; vio­
Ligas Rojas, 27, 3 4 -3 5 , 36, 38-40, 45,
lent repression of, 8 6 -9 0 ,13 3 . See also
30104, 312067
union movement
liminality, 77, 79
Labor Party, 148. See also Partido
Linares, Lucio, 251
Laborista
Linares, Manuel, 230, 3330 51
labor shortages, 158, 259
Linares, Sotero, 7 9 ,12 2 , 2 0 5-7 , 2°6,
Laclau, Ernesto, 54, 8 1-8 2
ladinización, 1 0 3 - 9 ,12 5>315 0 13 . See
214
linguistic “ shame,” 2 5 5 -5 7 , 2.58—59
also deindianization; mestizaje
Lisco, Esquina, 272
ladinos, 9 9 - 10 0 ,10 2 - 4 ,114 ,12 6 ,16 5 ,
loans, 133, 295013
191; Indians and, 27, 4 5 - 4 6 ,12 2 - 2 5 ,
looting, 6 2 ,18 0 ,19 3 -9 4 ,19 9 , 2 4 6 ,
127, 20 6 -7; in insurrection, 1 7 1 ,1 7 3 ,
32 9n74
18 1,18 3 ,19 9 , 2 19 -20 , 246; massacre
López, Abrahám, 202, 204-5
of, 220; racism of, 1 0 1 ,1 1 2 ,1 1 6 - 1 8 ,
López, Antolín, 152
13 1, 2 26 -2 7, 258; S r i and, 93
López, Carlos Gregorio, 24 -25
Lagartos, Los, 93
 López, Doroteo, 173, 2 0 2-5, 2°6, 2 3°> Marxism, 67, 8 2-8 3, 10 6 , 134-35, 137,
250 203
López, Eugenia, xxv Marxism-Leninism, xxii, 67, 80-81,
362
López, Victor, 202, 204 1 0 0 - 1 0 1 ,167
López Rochac, Salvador, 139 Masahuat, 60
Lúe, Pedro, 222, 224, 284 masculinity, 14 ,18 9 , 207
Index Lué, Rosario, 245, 254 Masen, Alberto, 93-94, 313083
Luna, Alfonso, r66 Masferrer, Alberto, 19, 52, 58
massacre o f Christmas Day, 37-4 0
MacNaught, Roy, 112 ,17 8 ,18 0 , 285,
massacre o f 1932, xi, xxv, 16 7,19 8 , 2 10 -
194, 214, 231
16, 218, 2 5 3 -5 5 , 273; areas spared
magic, 248, 2 50 -52
in, 2 3 1-3 3 ; consequences of, 240-
Mangos, Los, 7 2 - 7 3 ,17 4
41, 246; death toll of, 2 3 3 -3 4 ; as
Mantanza. See massacre o f 1932
genocide, 209, 217, 2 19 -2 1, 226,
Marcial Contreras, 14 6 ,156
233, 330m ; oflndians, 209, 211,
Mariátegui, José Carlos, 49
2 2 1-2 7 , 231; “ Las Listas” and, 2 2 7 -
Mármol, Miguel, xix-xx, 8 4 ,13 8 ,14 6 ,
30; massacre o f 1980 vs., 287-90;
15 0 - 5 1, 218; insurrection and, 161,
narratives of, 2 34 -39 , 248; religion
168-69, 309ni7; life of, 37, 51; mas­
and, 249-50, 2 5 1-5 2 ; testimonies by
sacre and, 40, 215, 240; strikes and,
survivors of, 2 2 2 -2 3, 229, 238, 240
14 1,16 3 ; union movement and, 5 3 -
massacre o f 1980, xi, 241, 261, 265-73,
54, 69-70, 76
277; massacre o f 1932 vs., x, 287-90
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, xii
mass arrests, 40, 76, 87-88, 89-90
marriage practices, 127
mass graves, 244
Marroquin, Alfonso, 335010
mass killing, 37-4 0 . Sec also massacre
Marroquin, Francisco, 185
o f 1932; massacre o f 1980
Marti, Farabundo, xxi, 88-89, 9°> 93>
Mata, Gabino, 210, 2 2 1-2 3 , 234 -35,
218, 322044; arrest of, 13 2 -3 3 ,16 6 ;
260
hunger strike of, 94-95; on insurrec­
Matagalpa, 106,109, ir 8 ,197
tion, 163; populism and, 82; Sandino
Mauricio, Pedro, 48
and, 50
Mayer, Arno, 231
martial law, 133, 265
Mayorga, Antonio, 62
Martin, Percy Falke, 5
McCreery, David, 4 -5
Martinez, José Agustín, 43
Meardi, Mauricio, 6 1-6 2
Martínez, Maximiliano Hernández, 60,
Meardi family, 24
13 9 ,14 0 -4 4 , 218, 219, 253; electoral
Meléndez, Carlos, 34
fraud and, 149; insurrection and, 162;
Meléndez, Jorge, 12, 34, 35, 39, 41
massacre and, 237; overthrow of,
Meléndez-Quiñónez regime, 5, 26-27,
242; p c s and, 160; post-massacre
31, 3 4 -3 5 , 39, 6 0-6 1; Araujo and,
policies of, 2 4 1-4 2 ; repression
58; democratic opposition to, 4 0 -4 1;
under, 210; United States and,
élite support for, 3 6 -3 7 ; labor move­
322044
ment and, 55; Romero Bosque and,
Martinez, Miguel, 71
32
Martinez, Rafael Lara, xix
Mella, Julio Antonio, 8o, 310040 Moran, Esteban, 142
memory, 15 3 ,19 1,19 8 , 287; collective, Morán, Rafael Herrera, 152
7 3 ,114 ,14 9 , 255; o f insurgency o f Morroquin, Alejandro, 128
19 3 2 ,16 5 ,19 2 ; ofland loss, 26, 29 - mourning, 244-46
3 0 ,12 5 ; o f massacre o f 19 32,14 9 , Movimento Renovación, 52
206, 227, 238-39 , 248, 262, 283; municipal elections, xxi, 43, 4 5-46 ,
“ prosthetic,” 288-89, 34in8; sup­ 1 19 ,1 4 4 - 5 1 ,1 7 2 , 335n5; p c s p la t­
pression of, xii-xiii; transmission of, fo r m fo r, 147
245; traumatized, 243-46 Muñoz, Alfonso, 242, 243, 253
Mendez, Joaquin, xix, 234 Munro, Dana, 25
Méndez, Maria, 2 14 -15 Murillo Manuel, 7 5 -7 6 , 250
Merridale, Catherine, 245 Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, 281-8 2
mestizaje, xv-xvi, 45, 4 8 -4 9 ,10 1-2 ,
Nahuatl-Pipil language, xvi, 10 4 -5 ,10 8 ,
122, 3150 13 ; capitalism and, 10 6 -7 ;
115, 2 52-58 , 315018, 337n 5i; decline
indigenous response to, xvii, 108-9,
of, xv, xxv, 286; suppression of, 1 1 3 -
X 13,11 8 ,1 2 1 ,1 3 0 ; in Nicaragua, xxvi,
14, 241, 286, 337n54; teaching of,
4; in 1980s, 2 6 1-6 2; post-massacre,
272, 276
253, 258; religion and, 10 2 -3
Nahuizalco, 8 4 ,12 0 ,18 7 , 262, 263-64,
Mexican Revolution, 48, 50, 51
272; economy of, 107; elections in,
Mexico, xvii, 5 ,14 9 ,15 7 ,19 7 , 334078;
4 7 - 4 8 ,1 19 ,14 8 ,15 0 , 335n5; F M L N
labor movement in, 56; land reform
in, 275, 278; indigenous language in,
in, 52
1 0 5 ,1 1 3 - 1 4 , 254, 2 56 -57; indige­
Miguel Mármol: Los sucesos de 1932 en El
nous population of, 10 3 ,10 8 ,115 ,
Saltador (Roque DaltonJ, xix-xx
118 ,11 9 ,1 3 0 ; insurrection in, 171,
military-Indian alliance, 242-4 3, 265,
1 8 1 - 8 2 ,18 5 ,18 9 ,19 1,19 6 , 220,
335 n7 326m ; labor movement in, 87; loot­
military rule, 19 2,19 8 , 215, 238-39,
ing in, 199, 246; massacre o f 1932 in,
271. 273 ix, 2 1 1 - 1 3 , 221, 2 23-26 , 231, 2 3 3 -
millenarianism, 194-96, 329n72
34, 248, 333n59; massacre o f 1980
milpa, 29 -30 , n i , 254
in, 266; religion in, 1 1 1 - 1 2
Minimum Vital ideology, 52
National Assembly, 60
Mirón, Juan Antonio, 178
National Association o f Students
modernity, 9 ,1 4 ,13 6 - 3 7 ,1 9 5 , 273
(a g e u s ), 52
Mojica, Fabian, 12 3 ,14 2 , 2 13 -14 , 288
National Guard, 5, 7 0 ,15 2 ,16 8 ; Araujo
Mojica, Julia “ La Roja,” 176, 214, 33in8
and, 58; insurrection and, 16 7 ,17 3 ,
Mojica, Manuel, 96, 9 8 ,15 7 ,17 6 , 214
17 6 ,18 4 ,18 6 ,19 0 , 33in8; leftist sym­
Mojica, Tomás, 157
pathizers in, 166; Nahuatl-Pipil lan­
Molina, Alfonso Quiñónez, 3 4 -3 5 , 61
guage and, 253, 256; p c s and, 149,
Molina, Narciso, 178 -79
166, 227; repression o f labor move­
Molina, Tomás, 3 7 -39
ment by, 62, 87, 90, 9 2 ,12 1 ,1 3 3 ,
Montes, Segundo, xx, 134 ,19 8
32on2; role in massacre o f 1932 of,
moral economy, 190
ix-x, 2 11, 222, 224; strikes and, 143,
Morales, Carlos Alfonso Figueroa, 272
154
 nationalism, 2 5,4 9 , 51, 219 r e p r e s s io n o f, 13 7 - 3 8 ,14 5 ; sri an d ,

Nazareth, 87 67, 90, 282; s t r ik e s a n d , 15 5 ,15 6 . See

Nicaragua, 4 -5 , 40, 5 4 ,1 0 7 ,1 1 3 - 1 4 , also c o m m u n is ts
364
277; anti-imperialism and, 49-50, Partido de Conciliación Nacional, 263
51; elections in, 47; indigenous lan­ Partido de los Trabajadores, 144
guage in, 113 ; indigenous population Partido del Proletariado Salvadoreño,
Index of, 127, 2 57-5 8 , 261; labor move- 307n n m - i 2
mentin, 65, 7 0 ,12 5 ; mestizaje in, xv, Partido Laborista, 32, 9 3 ,13 3 ,15 4
xxvi, 10 1,10 6 ,10 8 , 262; peasant Partido Nacional Democrático ( p n d ),
movements in, 197 35»36- 37»46, 47»61, 93'»Romero
Nuevo Cuscatlán, 87 Bosque and, 42, 43
Pashaca, José, 175
obrerismo, 4, 26, 47, 54
Pastoral Indigenista, xi, 276
occidentales, xxiv, 16 2-6 3
Patria, La (newspaper), 5 1- 5 2
oligarchy, Salvadorian. See agro-
patriarchy, 14, 2 0 ,12 6 -3 1, 259, 261
financial élite
Patricio, Lázaro, 249-50
Olivares, Angel, 243
Patriz, Reynaldo, ix-xiv, xxvi, 281-8 3
Organización Democrática Nacional
patronage-based networks, 16, 58-59,
( o r d e n ), 266, 269
60,188
Orozco, Francisco, 46
Pavletich, Esteban, 51
Ortiz, Alejandro Pérez, 240
p c s . See Partido Communista Sal­
Ortiz, Juan, 98, 2 2 2 -2 3 , 227
vadoreño (PCS)
Ortíz, Julián, 124, 214
peonage, 2
Paige, Jeffrey, xvii, xxi Pérez, Andrés, 11 3 - 15 ,11 8 ,19 8 - 9 9 , 251
Palomo, Tomás, 35 Pérez, Higinio, 161
Panama, 17, 51 Perez, Manuel Ascencio, 269-70
Panchimalco, 12 8 ,17 1, 2 3 1-3 2 Pérez, María Antonia, 240, 255, 260, 267
paramilitary forces, 264 Pérez, María Eduwiges, 267-68, 288,
Partido Acción Revolucionario, 339091 290
Partido Civilista, 4 2 ,4 3, 46 Pérez, Saturnino, 161, 284
Partido Communista Salvadoreño Pérez-Brignoli, Hector, xxi-xxii
( p c s ), xix, xxiii, 57, 64, 82, 293024; Peru, xvii, 258
Araujo and, 15 7 ,15 8 ; Comintern and, Pessar, Patricia, 195-96
14 1,16 4 , 237; criticism of, xxi; elec­ Peterson, Brandt, 247-48
tions and, 14 4 ,14 6 - 4 8 ,14 9 - 5 1,15 3 , Phillipines, 51
15 6 ,15 9 , 17 2 ,17 9 ; formation of, 88; Piedras Pachas, 93-94, 95
insurrection o f 1932 and, xxiv, 16 0 - Pipil. See Nahuatl-Pipil language
6 3 ,16 5 ,16 6 -6 7 , 2io; Hernández p n d (Partido Nacional Democrático),

Martínez regime and, 13 9 -4 0 ,16 0 ; 35»36- 37»46, 47»61, 93; Romero

Marxism-Leninism and, 167; mas­ Bosque and, 42, 43
sacre and, 227, 230; military and, Pohl, Reynaldo Galindo, 19, 29 -30 , 50,
166; populism of, 168; propaganda 10 1,15 0 ,19 0 5 ; demonstration o f May
and, 323058; radicalization of, 134; 1 7 and, 96-97
political prisoners, 85, 89, 9 5 ,13 4 ,13 8 , Radio Venceremos, 281, 34103
140, 268 Rafael Campo Park, 95, 98
populism, xxiv, 25, 42, 6 2,14 8 -4 9 , Rafael Campo School, 253
365
276 -77 ; Araujo and, 58, 97; o f labor Ramírez, Indalecio, 152
movement, 37, 47, 73, 8 2-8 3; Mar- Ramírez, Modesto, 2 7-28 , 74, 84
tinez and, 140 ,144 ; Meléndez- rape, 5 5 ,13 1,19 0 - 9 2 , 260, 270. See also
Quiñónez regime and, 37, 39, 40; o f sexual abuse Index
p c s , 168; right-wing, 81, 235, Rappaport, Joanne, 258
3° 3n 3i, 340m rationalization, 247-48
Potosi hacienda, 2 2 -2 3 Ravelo, Padre, 230
Presa hacienda, 7 0 -7 1, 75, 85, 89 Reagan, Ronald, 268-69
primitive accumulation, 3 0 ,12 5 Recinos, Felipe, 58
privatization, 2 ,16 ,3 0 ,10 3 , i n , 119 ,24 5 Redaelli, Emilio, 17, 4 4 -4 5 ,17 7 - 7 8 ,
productivism, 14 18 0 ,18 8 ,18 9 -9 0 ,19 7
Pro-Indian policies, 242 Red Army, 15 9 ,17 6 . See also Ejercito
proletarianization, xvii, 18, 54, 8 6 ,10 6 - Rojo
7, 264-65 refajo, 2 57-59 , 261, 286, 338070
propaganda, 65-68, 71, 87, 97,158 , refeudalization, xxi
201, 247 reformism, xxiv, 32, 44, 4 8 -5 1, 63, 263,
“ prosthetic” memory, 288-89, 34in8 264; Araujo and, xix, 31, 59, 61, 90,
prostitution, 259-60 92; communism and, xviii, 164; in
Protestants, 11 2 - 1 3 , 214, 226, 231 Costa Rica, 5; labor movement and,
protests, 37, 39, 83, 9 8,124, 242, 262; 57; obrerismo and, 47; Romero
labor movement and, 56, 8 7 ,14 1; Bosque and, 4 1-4 3 ; students and,
ladinos and, 116; against massacre o f 50, 52, 242
1932, 237; p c s and, 14 5 ,15 7 ; pro- Refugio, El, 14 4,149
Sandinista, 50; s r i and, 89; strikes Regalado family, 144
and, 14 6 ,16 5 ,19 7 ; students and, 52, religion, 1 3 ,1 0 9 - 1 3 ,1 1 5 ,1 2 6 , 248-50,
133; violent response to, 35, 6 1-6 2, 2 5 1-5 2 . See also Catholic Church
9 6 ,13 2 ,16 0 , 264. See also Renderos, Emilio, 232
demonstrations Renderos, Rafael, 48
reparations, 217
Quijano, Manuel Hernandez, 3 7 -3 9 , 40
repression, violent, xx, 16 1,16 3 , 244,
Quifiónez, Alfonso, 37, 41, 302n25
262-6 5; against anti-imperialism,
racism, 1 2 - 1 3 , 20, 47> 1 0 0 - 10 1,116 - 18 , 51; Araujo regime and, 9 2 ,13 2 - 3 4 ;
333n54: anti-Indian, 4 9 ,19 1, 209, genocide and, 219; in indigenous vil­
227, 257, 283; genocide and, 217, lages, 198; justification for, 16 8 ,19 2;
219, 221, 236; ladino, 1 1 2 ,1 3 1 , 2 26 - o f labor movement, 86-90; Martinez
27>258 regime and, 14 4 -4 5; Meléndez-
radicalization, 12 5 ,13 8 , 2 6 1-6 2, 263, Quiñónez regime and, 3 5 -3 6 , 37; o f
264-65; o f labor movement, xxiv, P C S, 13 7 -3 8 ; o f post-election strikes,
5 2 - 5 7 ,13 4 ; repression and, 86-88, 15 2 ,15 4 - 5 5 ; radicalizing effect of,
9 1,13 2 134; resistance to, 13 0 ,14 6 ,15 9 ,16 4 -
 repression (continued) Santa Catarina Masahuat, 4 3 ,117 , 2 3 2 -
6 5,16 7 ; o f S R I, 94-98. See also in­ 33
surrection o f 1932; massacre o f 1932; Santa Rita, 15 1,15 3
366
massacre o f 1980 Santa Tecla, 51, 56, 8 9 -9 0 ,14 2 ,16 7 ,
residual cultural forms, 136 230; insurrection in, 17 0 - 7 1 ,1 7 3 ,
ressentiment, 147, 323056 200, 220; massacre in, 212
Index reuniones de barranca, 76 Santo Domingo de Guzmán, 10 7,10 8 ,
Reuolucídn Comunista (book), 66-67 232, 2 56 -57, 2 6 2 -6 3, 2 7 2 : f m l n in,
revolution, 326m . See also insurrection 275, 278; massacre o f 1932 in, 249;
o f 1932 massacre o f 1980 in, 265-66, 269
revolutionary violence, 14 7 ,16 7 ,18 7 , San Vicente, 42, 60
204, 206, 323056 Sarmiento, Augusto, 215
Rivas, Geoffroy, 17 0 ,17 9 Scars o/Memory (film), 282-86, 289-90
Rivas, Rafael, 18 3 ,18 8 ,19 0 Schlesinger, Jorge, xix, 65, 66-67
Rogers, D., 15 4 - 5 5 ,18 7 , 233, 237 Scott, James, 30
Roldan, Mateo, 180 Segovia, Alexander, 278
Romero, Arturo, 242-4 3 segregation, 116 - 17
Romero, Heriberto, 62 semi-proletarians, xvii, xxiv, 3 ,1 7 - 1 8 ,
Romero Bosque, Pío, 32, 33, 4 1-4 3 , 60, 27, 30; jornaleros as, 324080; s r i
139, 302026; labor movement and, and, 92; strikes and, 15 3 ,15 8 ; wage
55- 56- 57, 63,71 cuts and, 2 0 -2 1
Roseberry, William, 3 - 4 sexual abuse, 128 -29 , I 3i, 192, 260. See
Rossi, Arrieta, 5 2 -5 3 also rape
Rothery, Agnes, 1 - 2 Shaltipe, 86
Ruhl, Arthur, 1 , 1 2 , 1 9 , 1 2 8 sharecropping, 19
Russian Revolution, 16 4 ,18 4 ,19 7 , 231, Shul, Alberto, 2 8 ,18 1
310040 Sicilia, Tomas, 45-46 , 46
Sigüenza, Raúl, 18 0 ,19 3
Sacacoyo, 103
Sindicato de Oficios Varios, 75
Salarrué, 259
Sindicato Unión de Trabajadores de
Salaverria, Maximo Rauda, 45
Nahuizalco, 84
Salinas, Francisco, 185
slavery, 2 8 ,13 7 , 217, 259
Sánchez, Francisco (Chico), xxi, 124,
smallholders, 1 - 2 ,1 9 , 7 5 ,10 7 -8 ,14 4 ,
16 1,17 8 -8 0 ,18 9 -9 0 ,19 4 , 214
188, 262; coffee industry and, 7 , 1 6 -
Sandinistas, 50
17; labor movement and, xx, 28, 79,
Sandino, Augusto César, 4 9-50
80; ladino, 1 2 2 ,1 3 1 ,1 6 5
San Isidro hacienda, 26, 72 -7 4 , 93,
socialism, 8 2 -8 3 ,16 4 ,19 7 , 276, 284
165
Socorro Rojo Internacional ( s r i ), 51,
San Julián, 10 3 ,1 2 3 ,1 7 3 , 3o8n3
79, 85-86, 88-98, 9 9 -10 1,118 ; Com­
San Miguel, 6 1-6 2
intern and, 164; communists and,
San Salvador, 33, 6 0,150, 227, 309017;
xxiii; expansion of, 12 1; ideology of,
insurrection in, 16 2 ,16 6 ,16 9
82; indigenous-ladino relations and,
Santa Ana, xv, 18, 24, 262, 263, 275;
124; insurrection and, 161, 282; mas-
repression in, 137; strikes in, 14 1,14 2
 sacre an d , 2 11, 214; m e m b e r s h ip in , sugar production, 8, 27, 296025
153; pcs and, 6 7 ,14 5 ,14 8 , 282; p o p ­ Sunza hacienda, 57, 93, 306M02
u lis m o f, 276; r a d ic a liz a t io n o f, 134; symbolic violence, xi, 19 3 ,19 6 -9 7 ,
r e lig io n a n d , 126; s trik e s a n d , 141, 255-56
156; s u p p o r t fo r, 17 4 ,17 7 - 7 8 ,17 9 , Syndicalism, 57, 64-65, 6 7 ,15 7
205
Tabora, Rocío, 115
solidarity, 204, 208
Tacuba, 33, 89, n o , 187, 226, 275; elec­
Somocismo, 4
tions in, 14 9 ,15 6 ; indigenous popu­
Somoza regime, 4 0 -4 1
lation of, 124; insurrection in, 162,
Sonsonate, 18, 9 5 ,15 3 ,16 5 , 262, 265;
18 3 -8 4 ,18 6 ,18 9 , 220, 326m ; labor
anti-imperialism in, 50; Araujismo
movement in, 123; massacre in, 2 1 1 -
in, 60; elections in, 14 5 ,15 0 ,15 7 ;
12, 215, 231, 233
f m l n in, 275; insurrection in, 17 0 -
Tajcuilulah, 213
7 1.17 3 .17 5 - 7 6 .18 5 ,18 9 , 220,
Tamanique, 103
326m , 332027; labor movement in,
Tejutepeque, 103
76; looting in, 194, 329n74; mas­
Tenancingo, 103
sacre in, 213, 228 -30 ; repression in,
Teotepeque, 109
13 7 ,16 1,16 7 ; s r i in, 89; strikes in,
Tepecoyo, 10 3 ,10 5 ,10 6
14 2 ,15 4
Third International, 134
Sonzacate, 17 6 ,17 8 ,19 2 , 213, 33in8,
Thompson, E. P., 54
332n27
Thompson, Wallace, 1 ,1 1 6
South Africa, 166
To Die in This Way (Gould), xxvi, 10 6 -7 ,
Soviets, 17 8 -7 9 ,18 4
Soviet Union, 79, 237, 245
127
Torres, Emeterio, 58
Soyapango, 186
Torres, Salomé, 130, 200-202, 230,
Spanish language, 64, 7 3,10 6 , 206,
333n51
2 56 -57; indigenous languages and,
torture, 267-270
10 8 ,113 - 15 , 252. See also Nahuatl-
traditionalists, xv, 1 1 8 , 1 1 9 ,1 2 1 , 1 3 0 - 3 1
Pipil language
Tránsito, El, 15 1- 5 2
Spanish revolution, 197
Traverso, Enzo, 2 3 6 -3 7
s r i . See Socorro Rojo Internacional
Treaty o f Peace and Amity (1923), 41
state repression, xviii, 32, 37, 8 8 ,134 .
Trouillot, Michel-Rolf, xiv
See also repression
Trujillo, Rafael, xviii
strikes, 56 -57 , 72, 8 5 ,13 2 - 3 3 ,1 4 1- 4 4 ,
Turcios, Margarita, 7 3 - 7 4 ,17 4
16 1-6 3 , 3 °9 n l7; coercion and, 197;
Turin, 14 9 ,15 6
o f 1970s, 262, 266; p c s and, 159 -60;
Turner, Victor, 77
post-election, 14 6 ,1 5 1 - 5 3 ,1 5 5 - 5 7 ,
181, 210, 239; repression and, 36, unemployment, 55, 9 2 ,13 3 ,14 7 ,15 8 ,
154, 293n24 299n65
student movements, 37, 5 0 - 5 2 ,13 3 , Unión Comunal Salvadoreño, 262-263
17 9 ,18 3 , 242 -4 3, 2 6 1-6 2 union movement, 24, 5 5 -5 7 , 64-65,
Subcomité Central de Obreros, 42 65, 70, 7 3 -7 4 ; communists and,
Suchitoto, 103 xxiii; Cuban, xviii; growth of, 76 -79,
 union movement (continued) Valiente, Antonio, 15 1, 240
83-8 4; indigenous participation in, Vásquez, Margarito, 263
92,10 6 ; internal conflicts of, 79 -8 3; Velásquez, Jesús, 122, 223
368
in Jayaque, 7 5 -7 6 ; Meléndez- Velasquez, Miguel, 74
Quifiónez regime and, 37; member­ Venezuela, xvi
ship in, 153; o f 1970s, 262; organiza­ Vilanova, Machón, 114
Index tion of, 7 1- 7 2 ; p c s and, 145; per­ Virgin o f El Adelanto, 126,19 6,
secution of, 8 8 ,13 3 ; propaganda of, 32gn72
68; Salome Torres and, 200; s r i and,
wages, 5, 7 , 1 2 - 1 3 , 1 6 , 1 8 - 2 1 , 53,
89; strikes and, 14 2 -4 3 ; techniques
298054; cuts in, 56, 299065;
of, 68-69. See also Federacción
increases in, 116 ,12 8 , 264, 298;
Regional de Trabajadores de El Sal­
insufficient, 24, 2 7-2 8 , 76 ,16 7 ,
vador; labor movement
277; struggle for higher, 7 0 -7 1, 79,
Unión Sindical de Trabajadores de
8 5 ,1 4 1 ,1 4 3 ,14 7 ,15 8 , 325096
Juayúa, 84
White, Alistair, 29
Unión Vitalista, 52
Wickham-Crowley, Timothy, xvii, 264
United Nations Convention on the Pre­
Williams, Raymond, 13 5 - 3 6 ,19 0
vention and Punishment o f the
Wilson, Everett, xx, 14 - 1 5 ,19
Crime o f Genocide, 217
Wood, Elizabeth, 165
United States, 41, 5 1- 5 3 , 6 5 ,14 3 -4 4 ,
working conditions, 19 -2 1, 30, 5 1- 5 3 ,
217, 237; Araujo government and,
133; intervention by, 4 9-50, 54; Mar­
55. 7i. 137.167
tinez regime and, 14 0 ,14 9 , 242, Young Communists, 80
322n44; massacre o f 1980 and, 268- Yuculeños, 106 -8
69; racism in, 100
Zamosc, Leon, xxi
Universidad Popular, 51
Zapata, Mario, 15 7 ,16 1,16 6
Urbina, Miguel, 250
Zaragoza, 13 3 - 3 4 , 167
U S S R , 79, 237, 245
Zarate, Alberto Gómez, 6 0-6 1, 93,
utopianism, 195
Í35, 3i3n85
Valdes, Rafael C., 46 Zelaya, Miguel Angel, 152
Valdéz, Joaquín, 16 0 ,16 1
J E F F R E Y G O U L D is a professor o f history and director o f the
Center for Latin American Studies at Indiana University.

A L D O L A U R I A - S A N T I A G O is an associate professor in the

department o f history and chair o f Latin and Hispanic Caribbean
studies at Rutgers University.

Library of Congress Cataloyiny-in-Publtcation Data

Gould, Jeffrey L.
To rise in darkness : revolution, repression, and memory in El Salvador,
19 2 0 -19 3 2 / Jeffrey L. Gould and Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8223-4207-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — is b n 978-0-8223-4228-1
(pbk.: alk. paper)
1. El Salvador—History—Revolution, 1932.
2. Massacres—El Salvador—History—20th century.
3. Collective memory—El Salvador—History—20th century.
I. Lauria-Santiago, Aldo. II. Title.
F1487.5.G68 2007
972.8405'2—dc22
2007042437