| 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Map of the Salvadoran districts affected by the uprising. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Salvadoran rebels | Government of El Salvador (Armed Forces of El Salvador) | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Feliciano Ama Francisco Sánchez |
Maximiliano Hernández Martínez José Tomás Calderón Osmín Aguirre y Salinas Salvador Ochoa Saturnino Cortez |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 10,000–40,000 dead | |||||||
The peasant uprising of 1932, also known as La matanza ("The Massacre"),[1] was a brief, peasant-led rebellion that occurred on January 22 of that year in the western departments of El Salvador. The uprising was quickly suppressed by the government, then led by Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, whose army was vastly superior in terms of weapons and soldiers and proceeded to execute anyone who stood against it. The rebellion was a mixture of protest and insurrection and ended in ethnocide,[2] claiming the lives of anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000[3] peasants and other civilians, many of them indigenous people.[4]
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Social unrest in El Salvador had begun to grow in the 1920s, primarily because of the abuses of the political class and the broad social inequality between the landowners and the peasants,[5][6] product of the policies of the latifundia. This unrest was only strengthened by the tremendous drop in the price of the coffee bean and the growing unemployment rates. During the final decades of the 19th century and through the beginning of the 20th century, the Salvadoran economy relied greatly upon the cultivation of coffee, leading to the country's being called a "coffee republic." The drop in the price of coffee thus meant mass firing of peasants and the closing of several haciendas, which led to deep economic crisis.[7]
The national coffee-growing industry arose from the accumulation of riches of a small group of landowners and merchants[6][8] who had purchased large portions of land and employing a great number of peasants, many of them indigenous.[9]
Politically, El Salvador had been ruled since 1871 by Liberal elites who had established what became known as the "Coffee Republic", which had given the country a long period of comparative stability and a liberal constitution in 1886. By World War I, the presidency rotated effectively between the Meléndez and Quiñónez families in quasi-dynastic succession. In 1927, Pío Romero Bosque was elected President and embarked on political liberalisation that led to what was arguably the first free election in Salvadoran history in 1931, won by the reformist Arturo Araujo. However, this period of pluralist democracy was not to last.
Unrest spread among military officers. In December 1931, with the collapse of coffee prices, the military's dissatisfaction peaked. A group of young officers, led by vice president Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, staged a coup and ousted Araujo. Araujo fled the country and Martínez assumed power.
Though Martínez's rule may have satisfied the military, popular discontent continued to build and the government's opponents continued to agitate. Within weeks, communists, believing the country was ready for a peasant rebellion, were plotting an insurrection against Martínez. However, the government learned of the plot and arrested most of the ringleaders.
Nonetheless, actual fighting broke out on January 22, 1932. Rebels led by the communist party and Agustín Farabundo Martí, Mario Zapata and Alfonso Luna, attacked government forces with support that was largely from Pipil Indians in the western part of El Salvador. Within three days, they had succeeded in taking control of several towns, disrupting supply lines to many of the country’s towns and villages, and attacking a military garrison. With their superior training and technology, the government troops needed only a few days to defeat the rebels. While the rebels killed fewer than 100 people, the military retaliated with great force. Promising an open discussion and pardons for those involved in the uprising, the government invited them into a large public square where the army killed between 10,000 and 40,000 peasants, including Martí.
In western El Salvador hundreds of peasants rose against the new, corrupt government of Martinez, but this was crushed by the Army. Martinez started a genocide against his own population. Since most of the people that participated in the uprising were of indigenous origin, anyone that looked or dressed like a native or spoke Nahuatl was killed by the army. The number massacred is estimated at 30,000. A saying that circulated around the time of the Matanza: "President Martinez was such a good president that he was able to give every Salvadoran a house." (La Matanza by Thomas Anderson). The proportion of the 30,000 Salvadorans killed compared to the population of the actual U.S. population would be 60 million Americans. However, the political ideology of the Martinez administration was fascism. He admired Hitler and did not allow any Jews, Palestinians or black people to enter the country.
The towns of Nahuizalco, Juayua, Apaneca and Izalco were assaulted by the army. Feliciano Ama, an Indian leader, was hanged and this event was shown on postage stamps of the time. Following the Matanza from 1932-1979, military officers held the presidency, with some presidents using more repression than others. El Salvador's problems included unfair minimum wages, repression against student and general demonstrations, and election fraud.
In the aftermath, accounts of the uprising and massacre were purged from libraries and replaced by the myth of Martínez as the savior of Salvadorans from vicious communists and barbaric Indians. To avoid further violence, members of the Pipil indigenous group generally severed their ties to their culture and Pipil language, adopting Western dress and the Spanish language as well as intermarrying with members of non-indigenous groups. In modern-day El Salvador, it is estimated that 1% or less of the population is of exclusively indigenous descent.