Miguel Mármol

Miguel Mármol (4 July 1905 – 23 June 1993)[1] was a Salvadoran communist activist and the founder of the Communist Party of El Salvador.[2]

Miguel Mármol
Born(1905-07-04)4 July 1905
Ilopango, El Salvador
Died23 June 1993(1993-06-23) (aged 87)
San Salvador, El Salvador
Citizenship El Salvador
OccupationShoemaker
Known forFounding the Communist Party of El Salvador
Political partyCommunist Party of El Salvador

Biography

Miguel Mármol was born on 4 July 1905 in Ilopango, El Salvador.[1] Mármol became a shoemaker, but when the October Revolution occurred in Russia, he began to have an interest in left-wing politics.[1] In Ilopango, he met Augustín Farabundo Martí, a prominent left-wing Salvadoran activist, and together they founded the Society of Workers, Peasants and Fishermen of Ilopango (SCOPI), and they used the ideologies of Augusto César Sandino as a guide.[1] On 30 March 1930, he founded the Communist Party of El Salvador.[1]

On 22 January 1932, indigenous and communist peasants staged a revolution in El Salvador against the regime of President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.[3] The rebels took over large portions of western El Salvador and killed an estimated 100 people during the first day.[4] In response, President Hernández Martínez ordered the Army to put down the uprising by force. The ensuing killings became known as La Matanza where anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 people were killed.[5] Augustín Farabundo Martí was execution following the uprising and Miguel Mármol was arrested.[1][2] He was released and later rearrested and rereleased in 1934 while attempting to flee to Honduras.[1][2] While he was incarcerated, the chief of police told him that was going to surely die.[2] He remained in El Salvador and later became the president of the National Alliance of Shoemakers.[1]

In 1947, Mármol left El Salvador for Guatemala.[1] He was forced to flee back to El Salvador in 1954, however, due to the United States-backed coup which brought Carlos Castillo Armas to power.[2] In 1988, Mármol recounted his escape from Guatemala in an interview with William Bollinger and Georg M Gugelberger:

I was number five on the execution list. But his [Carlos Castillo Armas] police could not capture me. I hid for two months in Guatemalan territory on my way to [El] Salvador. And I made it through without being assassinated. People say I must be protected by some witchcraft which allows me to go like a blind man through life. The police, of course, call me a red phantom because they could never catch or kill me.

— Miguel Mármol, 1988[2]

Mármol participated in a steel workers' strike against the government of Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo.[2]

He fled El Salvador again on 13 July 1980 after receiving death threats from several Salvadoran death squads.[2]

Mármol returned to El Salvador and died in San Salvador on 23 June 1993.[1]

See also

References
  1. "Miguel Mármol". EcuRed. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
  2. Mármol, Miguel; Bollinger, William; Gugelberger, Georg M. (1991) [1988]. "Interview with Miguel Marmol, Los Angeles, May 23, 1988". Latin American Perspectives. Sage Publications, Inc. 18 (4): 79–88. doi:10.1177/0094582X9101800405. JSTOR 2633960. S2CID 144704292.
  3. Ching, Erik (September 1995). "Los archivos de Moscú: una nueva apreciación de la insurrección del 32". Tendencias (in Spanish). San Salvador. 3 (44).
  4. Anderson, Thomas P. (1971). Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. pp. 135–6. ISBN 9780803207943.
  5. Beverley, John (1982). "El Salvador". Social Text. Duke University Press (5): 55–72. doi:10.2307/466334. JSTOR 466334.
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