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El Salvador Economic Crisis and Repression
The presidency of Pio Romero Bosque (1927-31) was a
transitional period in Salvadoran history that ended the
relatively stable functioning of the coffee republic and the
liberal economic system that sustained it. The world depression
of the 1930s, which precipitated a sharp fall in world coffee
prices, hit hard in El Salvador. The loss of income reverberated
throughout the society; as always, those on the lower end of the
economic scale felt the deprivation most keenly, as wages were
reduced and employment levels cut back. The government first
responded with limited reform to ease this situation and the
popular unrest it produced. The subsequent response was brutal
repression.
President Romero was the designated successor of President
Quinonez, who apparently expected Don Pio, as he came to be
known, to carry on the noninterventionist political tradition of
his predecessors. Romero, however, for reasons of his own,
decided to open up the Salvadoran system to a limited but still
significant degree. He turned on Quinonez, exiling him from the
country, and sought to exclude other members of the elite from
the government. He is best remembered for allowing the
presidential and municipal elections of 1931, the freest held in
El Salvador up to that time. These elections still excluded any
radical party that might have sought to overturn the existing
governmental system; nevertheless, they resulted in the election
of Arturo Araujo, who enjoyed a mildly reformist reputation
despite his oligarchic family background.
Araujo assumed the presidency at a time of severe economic
crisis. Between 1928 and 1931, the coffee export price had
dropped by 54 percent. The wages paid agricultural workers were
cut by an equal or greater extent. Food supplies, dependent on
imports because of the crowding out of subsistence cultivation by
coffee production, likewise fell sharply. Privation among the
rural labor force, long a tolerated fact of life, sank to
previously unknown depths. Desperate campesinos began to listen
more attentively to the exhortations of radicals such as Agustin
Farabundo Marti.
Marti came from a relatively well-to-do landowning family. He
was educated at the University of El Salvador (commonly referred
to as the National University), where his political attitudes
were influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and other communist
theorists. He was an original member of the Central American
Socialist Party (founded in Guatemala in 1925) and a propagandist
for the Regional Federation of Salvadoran Workers. He also spent
a few months in Nicaragua with that country's noted guerrilla
leader, Augusto Cesar Sandino. Marti and Sandino parted ways over
the Nicaraguan's refusal to add Marxist flourishes to his
nationalistic battle against a United States occupation force.
Jailed or expelled several times by Salvadoran authorities, Marti
kept up his efforts to organize popular rebellion against the
government with the goal of establishing a communist system in
its place. The widespread discontent provoked by the coffee
crisis brought ever-increasing numbers of Salvadorans under the
banner of such Marxist organizations as the Communist Party of El
Salvador (Partido Comunista de El Salvador--PCES), the AntiImperialist League, and the Red Aid International (Socorro Rojo
Internacional--SRI). Marti was the Salvadoran representative of
the SRI, which was closely associated with the other two groups.
Most dissatisfied Salvadorans were driven more by hunger and
frustration than by ideology. Araujo, a product of the economic
elite, was burdened by loyalty to his class, by the unyielding
opposition of that class to political reform, by the increasing
polarization between the elite and the masses, and by the
suspicions of the military. Araujo's initial response to popular
unrest, perhaps a conditioned one, was to quell disturbances by
force. When demonstrations persisted, the president decided to
offer a concession instead of a club. He scheduled municipal
elections for December 1931; furthermore, he offered the
unprecedented gesture of allowing the PCES to participate in
those elections.
In the tense political atmosphere of the time, this last
concession aroused both the landholding elite and, more
important, the military. A December coup staged against Araujo
drew support from a large number of military officers, who cited
Araujo's ineptitude to justify their action. This rationalization
did not match the portentous significance of the event, however.
The 1931 coup represented the first instance when the Salvadoran
military took direct action as an institution to curtail a
potential political drift to the left. This watershed event
ushered in a period of direct and indirect military rule that
would last for fifty years.
The rebellious officers shortly installed as the country's
leader General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (known in El
Salvador by his matronymic, Martinez), who had been Araujo's vice
president and minister of war. Surprisingly, Martinez allowed the
promised elections to take place only a month later than
originally scheduled, and with the participation of the PCES. The
general's motivations in this regard, however, seem to have run
more toward drawing his enemy into the open than toward the
furthering of democratic government, for the communist candidates
who won municipal offices in the western part of the country
subsequently were barred from assuming those offices.
The denial of the municipal posts has been cited as the
catalyst for the launching of a rural insurrection that had been
in the planning stages for some time. Unfortunately for the
rebels, the military obtained advance warning of their
intentions. Marti and other rebel leaders were arrested on
January 18, 1932. Confusion and poor communications led the
insurgents to go ahead with their action as planned four days
later. The rebels succeeded in capturing government buildings in
the towns of Izalco, Sonzacate, Nahuizalco, Juayúa, and Tacuba.
They were repulsed by the local garrisons in Sonsonate, Santa
Tecla, and Ahuachapan. Even the small successes of the insurgents
were short lived, however, as GN and army units were dispatched
to relieve local forces or to retake areas held by the rebels.
Less than seventy-two hours after the initial uprising, the
government was again firmly in control. It was then that
reprisals began.
The military's action would come to be known as la
matanza. Some estimates of the total number of campesinos
killed run as high as 30,000. Although the true number never will
be known, historian Alastair White has cited 15,000 to 20,000 as
the best approximation. No matter what figure one accepts, the
reprisals were highly disproportionate to the effects of the
communist-inspired insurgency, which produced no more than thirty
civilian fatalities. The widespread executions of campesinos,
mainly Indians, apparently were intended to demonstrate to the
rural population that the military was now in control in El
Salvador and that it would brook no challenges to its rule or to
the prevailing system. That blunt message was received, much as
it had been after the failure of Aquino's rebellion a century
earlier. The memory of la matanza would linger over
Salvadoran political life for decades, deterring dissent and
maintaining a sort of coerced conformity.
Data as of November 1988
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