Miguel Mármol: 1905-1993: Union Activist

As the worldwide economic depression hit poverty-stricken El Salvador, coffee and sugar prices plummeted and peasants were thrown out of work. Popular unrest reached new heights, with mass demonstrations and strikes. The government retaliated, the jails filled with political prisoners, and a military coup placed General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in power. In January of 1932 the CP decided to organize an armed insurrection, but before they could act, the communist leaders and their military supporters were arrested and executed. Over the next few weeks, some 30,000 men, women, and children—2.5% of the population—were massacred by government forces.

Mármol was arrested and faced a firing squad along with 17 comrades and innocent bystanders. It took many bullets for the nervous soldiers to complete the executions. Mármol was felled with four bullets and a Russian salesman died on top of him, making it appear that Mármol had been shot in the head. After the soldiers left, he managed to crawl to safety, eventually making his way to San Salvador.

With his comrades dead, in prison, or disappeared, Mármol moved to the eastern part of El Salvador where he eventually found work in shoe factories and formed a new communist cell. After more than a year, he returned to San Salvador, living underground and moving every few days. He helped reorganize the CP and the underground worker's movement, laboring in a shoe factory to feed his family, and staying one step ahead of the police. Once he was saved by a former lover, Adelita Anzora, with whom he had a daughter named Hildita. Later Mármol was arrested as he prepared to flee to Honduras. Shackled and held incommunicado, he was finally released in 1936 after staging a hunger strike.