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