"They call us thieves and steal our wage": Toward a reinterpretation of the Salvadoran rural mobilization, 1929-1931

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 84, Issue 2, 2004, Pages

  Gould, Jeffrey L ^a   Lauria Santiago, Aldo ^b  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of Biology

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 56849109732     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-84-2-191     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. The most important contributions to the analysis of the revolt and its origins are Mario Salazar Valiente, David Alejandro Luna, and Jorge Arias Gómez, El proceso político centroamericano: Ponencias de Mario Salazar Valiente, David Alejandro Luna y Jorge Arias Gómez (San Salvador: Ed. Universitaria, 1964)
2. Alejandro Marroquín, "Estudio sobre la crisis de los años treinta en El Salvador," in America Latina en los años treinta, ed. Pablo González Casanova (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1970)
3. Michael McClintock, The American Connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador (London: Verso, 1985)
4. Thomas Anderson, Matanza: The Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1971)
5. Jorge Arias Gómez, Farabundo Martí (San José, 1972)
6. Rafael Menjivar, Formación y lucha del proletariado industrial salvadoreño (San José: Ed. Universitaria Centroamericana, 1982)
7. Rodolfo Cerdas Cruz, La hoz y el machete: La International Comunista: America Latina y la revolución en Centroamérica (San José: EUNED, 1986)
8. Rafael Guidos Vejar, El ascenso del militarismo en El Salvador (San Salvador: UCA, 1980)
9. Leon Zamosc, "The Definition of a Socio-Economic Formation: El Salvador on the Eve of the Great World Economic Depression" (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Manchester, 1977)
10. Alan Everett Wilson, "The Crisis of National Integration in El Salvador, 1919-1935" (Ph.D. diss, Stanford Univ., 1969)
11. Héctor Pérez Brignoli, "Indians, Communists, and Peasants: The 1932 Rebellion in El Salvador," in Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America, ed. William Roseberry, Lowell Gudmundson, and Mario Samper Kutschbach (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995)
12. Leon Zamosc, "Class Conflict in an Export Economy: The Social Roots of the Salvadoran Insurrection of 1932," in Sociology of "Developing Societies": Central America, ed. Edelberto Torres Rivas (New York: Monthly Review, 1988)
13. James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America (London: Verso, 1988)
14. and Andrew Jones Ogilvie, "The Communist Revolt of El Salvador, 1932" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard College, 1970)
15. David Luna, Manual de historia económica de El Salvador (San Salvador, 1971)
16. Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The Political Economy of Central America Since 1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987)
17. Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus
18. Edelberto Torres Rivas, Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano: Procesos y estructuras de una sociedad dependiente (San José: Ed. Universitaria Centroamericana, 1981)
19. Gerardo Iraheta Rosales, Vilma Dolores López Alas, and María del Carmen Escobar Cornejo, "La crisis de 1929 y sus consecuencias en los años posteriores," La Universidad 6 (1971): 22-74
20. Zamosc, "Class Conflict"
21. and Zamosc, "The Definition"
22. Bradford Burns, "The Modernization of Underdevelopment: El Salvador, 1858-1931," Journal of Developing Areas 18, no. 3 (Apr. 1984): 293-316
23. For an in-depth discussion of the Araujo regime and its failures, see Guidos Vejar, El ascenso del militarismo
24. For discussions of the revolt that emphasize peasant participation, see Italo López Vallecillos, "La insurección popular campesina de 1932," ABRA 2, no. 13 (June 1976)
25. Segundo Montes, "El campesinado salvadoreño," Revista Española de Antropología Americana 11 (1981): 273-84
26. Mario Lungo, La lucha de las masas en El Salvador (San Salvador: UCA, 1987)
27. Mario Flores Macal, Origen, desarrollo y crisis de las formas de dominación en El Salvador (San José: SECASA, 1983)
28. Douglas A. Kincaid, "Peasants into Rebels: Community and Class in Rural El Salvador," Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 3 (July 1987): 466-94
29. See Cerdas Cruz, La hoz y el machete
30. Rodolfo Cerdas Cruz, Farabundo Martí, la internacional comunista y la insurrección salvadoreña de 1932 (San José: Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Político Administrativo, 1982)
31. Benedicto Juárez, "Debilidades del movimiento revolucionario de 1932 en El Salvador," ABRA 2, no. 13 (1976)
32. Aldo Lauria-Santiago, "Una contribución biográfica a la historia del Partido Comunista Salvadoreño," Revista de Historia 33 (Jan.-June 1996): 157-83
33. Erik Ching, "In Search of the Party: The Communist Party, the Comintern, and the Peasant Rebellion of 1932 in El Salvador," The Americas 55, no. 2 (Oct. 1998): 204-39
34. Erik Ching, "From Clientelism to Militarism: The State, Politics, and Authoritarianism in El Salvador, 1840-1940" (Ph.D. diss, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, 1997)
35. Patricia Alvarenga, Cultura y ética de la violencia: El Salvador 1880-1932 (San José: EDUCA, 1996)
36. Pérez Brignoli, in "Indians, Communists, and Peasants," characterizes the rebellion as a "traditional" colonial Indian jacquerie. Older accounts that stress the indigenous role include Anderson, Matanza; and McClintock, The American Connection
37. and McClintock, The American Connection
38. William Roseberry, "Hegemony and the Language of Contention," in Everyday Forms of State Fomation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 361
39. William Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1989). Unlike many cases of new groups that emerge with the development of agrarian capitalism, these combined a new class position with geographical rootedness
40. This notion is echoed by Mintz's observation about "evil times." Jeffery M. Paige, "Coffee and Politics in Central America," in Crisis in the Caribbean Basin, ed. Richard Tardanico (Newburry Park, Calif.: Sage, 1987), 141-90
41. Jeffrey M. Paige, "Social Theory and Peasant Revolution in Vietnam and Guatemala," Theory and Society 12, no. 6 (1983): 699-737
42. Wallace Thompson, Rainbow Countries of Central America (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1924), 96
43. Thompson, Rainbow Countries, 98-99
44. Thompson, Rainbow Countries, 94, 96, 99
45. Frederick Palmer, Central America and Its Problems; an Account of a Journey from, the Rio Grande to Panama (New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1910), 110
46. Frank G. Carpenter, Lands of the Caribbean (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925), 114
47. Alfonso Rochac, "Conferencia de Alfonso Rochac en San Pedro Sula," Patria, 9 Oct. 1929, 3
48. Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic
49. Lopez Harrison, Patria, 10 Aug. 1931
50. Revista de Agricultura Tropical, 1930, cited in Wilson, "The Crisis," 40
51. For the northern and eastern regions of El Salvador, Honduras served as a sort of release valve for agrarian pressures. By the mid-1920s there were thousands of Salvadorans working in Honduras, although western El Salvador continued to receive significant seasonal migrant workers from eastern Guatemala to pick coffee (Thompson, Rainbow Countries, 183). Wilson claims that there were 12-60,000 Salvadorans in Honduras, with some Honduran towns composed of 50-100% Salvadoran immigrants
52. Wilson, "The Crisis," 118
53. cited in Carlos Gregorio López, "Tradiciones inventadas y discursos nacionalistas: El imaginario nacional de la época liberal en El Salvador, 1876-1932" (ms., San Salvador, 2002), chap. 4
54. As reported by Rodrigo Buezo, Sangre de hermanos (Havana: Ed. Universal, 1936), 29-33
55. See also Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate: Crónica del 32 (San Salvador, 2001), 274, 280
56. Benjamin Muse, Narrative Reports. El Salvador, 19 Sept. 1924, USFAS, USNA
57. Ogilvie, "The Communist Revolt."
58. A. E. Carleton, Commerce and Industries Quarterly Report, 1931, 15 Aug. 1931, USFAS, USNA. Even lower wages reported in more Indian localities. Hector B. Llanes, "A History of Protestantism in El Salvador, 1896-1992" (Ph.D. diss, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1995), 127
59. Guidos Vejar, El Ascenso
60. Marroquín, "Estudio sobre la crisis"
61. Wilson, "The Crisis"
62. Burns, "The Modernization," 293-316
63. and Alvarenga, Cultura y ética, chap. 7
64. For a substantial discussion of obrerismo, see López, "Tradiciones inventadas."
65. On obrerismo in Nicaragua, see Jeffrey L. Gould, To Lead As Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990), chaps. 1-3
66. Galindo Pohl, Recuerdos de Sonsonate, 329
67. Diario de Ahuachapan, 10 July 1928
68. Arias Gómez, Farabundo Martí
69. El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 9 Jan. 1931, signed Sandokao
70. La Epoca, 17 June 1931
71. See Karen Racine, "Alberto Masferrer and the Vital Minimum: The Life and Thought of a Salvadoran Journalist, 1868-1932," The Americas 54, no. 2 (1997): 225. Vitalismo "captured the imagination of reform-minded humanitarians across the isthmus" (225). Masferer also linked the social reformism of these years with its anti-imperialism. In one text he wrote, "If you were to look for two words, precise but harsh, to characterize the mental and material attitude of the Central American peoples in contrast with the United States, you would have to choose these two: imbecility and servility. . . . In these times, so deep and wide is the breech of our understanding, that the vast majority of Central Americans do not notice, nor even suspect, that their region is threatened with definitive and total absorption"
72. Alberto Masferrer, "En la hora de crujir de dientes," La Prensa, 3 Feb. 1927, p. 1
73. cited in Jaime Barba, "Masferrer, vitalismo y luchas sociales en los años veinte," Región: Centro de Investigaciones (1997)
74. For discussions of Masferrer and Patria and their relationship to broader reformist movements, see Barba, "Masferrer"
75. García Giráldez, "El unionismo"
76. Casáus, "Las influencias de las redes intelectuales teosóficas en la opinión pública centroamericana (1870-1930)" (paper presented at the 6th Congreso Centroamericano de Historia, Panama, 2002)
77. See Ricardo Antonio Argueta Hernández, "Los estudiantes universitarios y las luchas sociales en El Salvador (1920-1931)" (paper presented at the 6th Congreso Centroamericano de Historia, Panama, 2002)
78. Casáus, "Las influencias"
79. Gobernador de Sonsonate, Carta al Présidente de la Republica, 30 May 1931, AGN-FG-SO
80. See, for example, Román Mayorga Rivas, "Los indios de Izalco, terruño salvadoreño," Revista del Ateneo del Salvador 11 (1913): 372-74
81. Rochac, "Conferencia de Alfonso Rochac. "
82. See Jeffrey L. Gould, To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1998)
83. Miguel Angel Espino, Prosas Escogidas, 6th ed. (San Salvador: UCA Ed., 1995), 20
84. Lillian Elwyn Elliott, Central America: New Paths in Ancient Lands (London: Metheun and Co., 1924), 118
85. Mario Appelius, Le terre che tremano, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama (Verona: A. Mondadori, 1933), 113-14. During the insurrection, Nahuizalco residents reported that the rebels shouted "Viva los indios de Nahuizalco!"
86. El Heraldo de Sonsonate, 22 Apr. 1931
87. Patricia Alvarenga, "Los indígenas y el estado: Alianzas y estrategias políticas en la construcción del poder local (1920-1944)," in Memorias del mestizaje, ed. Darío Euraque, Jeffrey L. Gould, and Charles R. Hale (Guatemala City: CIRMA, 2004)
88. Gould, To Die in This Way, 182-83
89. Alvarenga, "Los indígenas"
90. Ching, "From Clientelism to Militarism," chap. 5
91. Jeffrey L. Gould, "Revolutionary Nationalism and Local Memories in El Salvador," in Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: The View from the North, ed. Gilbert Joseph (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2001)
92. Apellius, Le terre che tremano, 109-10
93. Sarah Ziegler, "Wifely Duties: Marriage, Labor, and the Common Law in Nineteenth-Century America," Social Science History 20, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 79-83
94. Alejandro Dagoberto Marroquín, Panchimalco (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1959), 194-95
95. Smith, "Race-Class-Gender Ideologies."
96. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Central America (San Francisco: The History Company, 1887) 3:604
97. Ruhl, The Central Americans, 203
98. Patricia Alvarenga, in Cultura y ética and "Auxiliary Forces," examines the multiple levels of state coercion in peasant society
99. La Prensa, 29 Jan. 1932
100. Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, "El 'Bolchevique Mexicano' de la Centroamérica de los veinte" (an interview with Fernández Anaya), Memoria 4, no. 31 (Sept.-Oct. 1990): 218
101. 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
102. "Actividad Comunista desarróllase ahora en San Isidro, Izalco," Diario Latino, 23 Jan. 1931
103. Informe Sobre el Salvador, Jorge Fernández Anaya to Alberto Moreau, Secretary General, of CPUSA, Colonial Department, 8 Sept. 1930, Comintern 495/119/4, p. 10
104. See Juan Ramón Uriarte, La esfinge de Cuscatlan, El Presidente Quiñonez (Mexico: Impr. Manuel Sanchez León, 1929)
105. José Antonio Chachagua, Achupaco, Ahuachapán, 2001
106. La Situación Política, PCS document, 8 Oct. 1931, Comintern 495/119/7, p. 11
107. Roque Dalton, Miguel Marmol y los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador (San Jose: Ed. Universitaria Centroamericana, 1982), 229
108. Report by Comrade "Hernández" (most probably PCS leader Max Cuenca), Comintern 495/119/4, p. 36
109. Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic, chap. 5
110. and Patricia Alvarenga, "Valiosos aliados, peligrosos enemigos: Las comunidades indígenas en la formación del estado, El Salvador, 1870-1932," ms
111. Manifiesto del Comité Central del Partido Comunista a Las Clases Trabajadoras de la República, 20 Jan. 1932, app., in Mayor Otto Romero Orellano, "Génesis de la amenaza comunista en El Salvador," Centro de Estudios Estratégicos de las Fuerzas Armadas (San Salvador, 1994), 97