Miguel Mármol

Miguel Mármol
Born	(1905-07-04)4 July 1905 Ilopango, El Salvador
Died	23 June 1993(1993-06-23) (aged 87) San Salvador, El Salvador
Occupation	Shoemaker
Known for	Founding the Communist Party of El Salvador
Political party	Communist Party of El Salvador

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

Biography

Miguel Mármol was born on 4 July 1905 in Ilopango, El Salvador. Mármol became a shoemaker, but when the October Revolution occurred in Russia, he began to have an interest in left-wing politics. In Ilopango, he met Agustín 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. On 30 March 1930, he founded the Communist Party of El Salvador.^{[citation needed]}

On 22 January 1932, indigenous and communist peasants staged a revolution in El Salvador against the regime of President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.^[2] The rebels took over large portions of western El Salvador and killed an estimated 100 people during the first day.^[3] 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.^[4] Agustín Farabundo Martí was executed following the uprising and Miguel Mármol was arrested. He was released and later rearrested and rereleased in 1934 while attempting to flee to Honduras.^[1] While he was incarcerated, the chief of police told him that was going to surely die.^[1] He remained in El Salvador and later became the president of the National Alliance of Shoemakers.^{[citation needed]}

In 1947, Mármol left El Salvador for Guatemala.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[1] 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^[1]

Mármol participated in a steel workers' strike against the government of Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo.^[1]

He fled El Salvador again on 13 July 1980 after receiving death threats from several Salvadoran death squads.^[1]

Mármol returned to El Salvador and died in San Salvador on 23 June 1993.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Communist Party of El Salvador

References

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