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• 1 2016-06-02T18:07:23-07:00 New Era of Terror 6 About Felix plain 2016-08-21T15:01:24-07:00 Leading up to the 1932 massacre in El Salvador, governments throughout the Northern Triangle were arresting and killing Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders and agitators of the Communist Party. The revolts were not as localized as they once were. The struggle had now crossed borders, classes, and ideologies. The labor struggles of the countryside had spilled into the cities where the worker continued to take a backseat in politics and experience the hardships of a broken economy. These artisans, Indigenous, peasants and campesinos made up the masses. Many, if not most, found an ally in the Communist Party, an ideology that had spread throughout the Americas bringing hope to the exploited worker. This chapter focuses on the aftermath of the thwarted Central America worker and communist movements, including the groups that continued the resistance after La Matanza despite the terror unleashed by General Martínez before his regime ended in 1944. In this chapter, the memories of Felix Panameño are set against the backdrop of the anticommunist campaign from 1934 to 1945. With the testimonials of Abuelita Letty and Tío Chus, the new era of terror is seen through a different lens, shinning a light on the families that lived through this period of great repression as well as resistance. The last section, titled The Market Space, builds on the social and political significance of the Central Market, as it pertains to Eve and her family; and how the market space represents the interplay between class and gender, and is important in expanding understanding of the Salvadoran struggle, la lucha, beyond the dominant male view.
   
  The Peoples’ Movement
  In Tilley’s Seeing Indians, it is clear that Indigenous revolts were constant before 1932. Her partial list includes 43 revolts throughout El Salvador start from 1771-1918;[1] countless more revolts occurred before and after these dates, and whether these revolts were strictly Indigenous or included “mestizos,” the peoples’ struggle and resistance is centuries old. But is the massacre of 1932 linked to these past revolts? According to Manlio Argueta’s prologue for Miguel Mármol by Roque Dalton, history shows that the dominant class was “always ready to unleash its fury and rage against those who rebelled.” [2] He points out the link between the 1932 insurrection and killing of Indigenous leader José Feliciano Ama to Anastasio Aquino’s assassination in 1833. Aquino’s rebellion was put down when he was killed and had his head nailed to a stake “as a lesson and an example for whomever might dare to question the authority of the newborn oligarchy;” similarly, “one hundred years later, in 1932, the body of José Feliciano Ama, another indigenous leader, hung from a tree…the massacre is repeated, and silence and terror imposed.” [3] As discussed in Chapter 1, violent public punishments against non-European leaders was necessary for Europeans to portray dominance and control over their subjects. Feliciano Ama, a cacique, and FRTS labor leader Francisco Sánchez, were just some of the leaders killed during the violent acts against social movements throughout Central America in the 1930s.
  
  January 22, 1932 marked the beginning of the massacre mainly in the western coffee region of El Salvador, where over 30,000 men, women, and children were killed; then, imprisoned Farabundo Martí along with comrades Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata were lined up, shot and executed on February 1, 1932. A few days later in Guatemala, Juan Pablo Wainwright was “officially” executed on February 18, 1932. Carlos Castillo, secretary general of the FRTS sent a letter reporting on the massacre to the Caribbean Bureau in New York on May 1932:

  As you know, El Salvador has seen a most horrendous massacre, some 10,000 campesinos and workers killed in one week. Between the dates January 21 and February 21, some 15,800 have been killed; all family members of those people killed. They have been burning piles of 200 to 400 killed and wounded.[4]

  
  Members of the FRTS, SRI and Communist Party had been killed or went into hiding, which is what Carlos Castillo did by going to Honduras when reporting to the Caribbean Bureau. In Guatemala, on February 15, 1932, Villars describes a frightful account of 1932 when seven communists in total, including Juan Pablo Wainwright and Salvadoran lawyer Miguel Ángel Vásquez were condemned for treason and sentenced to death. Families were invited to say goodbye to their loved ones the day of the execution. After their goodbyes, they awaited the sounds of the firing squad outside the penitentiary. Much to their surprise, and to the platoon ready to fulfill orders, President Ubico called-in the suspension of the execution. Upon hearing the news, the families of the communists began to yell, Viva el General Ubico![5]
  
  However, Wainwright did not meet the same fate. Tía Fema’s worst fears had materialized when she received the news her Juan was “officially” killed on February 18, 1932. Villars suggests Wainwright was killed before the pardons were given. Tía Fema was left a widow in El Salvador (her country of origin) with two children. Even with the support of the women in her family, which included her mother Arcadia, her aunt Mercedes, and her sister Rosita, Tía Fema did not have a chance to mourn. She had to be as her Juan asked, alma de acero (strong as steel) to get the family through these hard times.[6] Indeed she faced many difficulties in the subsequent years, such as living in greater poverty, and having to deal with the lawyer who swindled her out of Juan’s life insurance. Villars remarks about the fraud in her book:

  With this move he dispossessed a widow and unprotected mother of twenty-two years of age and her two small daughters of their only material inheritance that her husband-father left them.[7]

  But this was the reality of so many families supporting the struggle. The mental and physical trauma was not only experienced by the political activists in the front lines, but also the families at their side.
  
  For the Indigenous communities of El Salvador, 1932 proved to be another horrific act of ethnic violence against them. The western coffee region of El Salvador was once again defending its territories against Ladino predators, who were looking to expand their plantations at any cost. But long gone were the famed Indian Militias that helped Indigenous communities to negotiate their autonomy during the late nineteenth century. In 1932, with their leaders mostly in jail and weapons confiscated, poorly armed Indigenous rebels improvised as an army. The insurrection began but the rebels were no match against General Martinez’s troops. Those that survived faced the unimaginable task of staying out of sight. Some “people hid out for weeks in holes in the ground, breathing through reeds. Others hid for weeks in the rocky, cave-like region of Los Teshcales near San Isidro. Many hid in trees.”[8]
  
  Picking up the pieces after La Matanza was not easy for anyone living under state-sponsored repression. Mármol explains the death of their comrades, state of siege, and martial law weighed heavy on the revolutionary organizations. Many members of the Communist Party, the FRTS, and SRI had also gone into hiding or left the organization altogether, understandably so, considering General Martínez was busy building up his military. In the fall of 1934, the military put on an exhibition where “2,000 men participated, including cavalry, artillery, and air force. Demonstrations in aerial bombardment, artillery and machine-gun fire, and mass troop movements were conducted. Hernández Martínez proudly unveiled the first domestic-made tank, equipped with six heavy machine guns.”[9] Moreover, General Martínez developed an intelligence apparatus, where he converted members of the police into spies. “Some orejas (ears) were employed formally, such as the schoolteacher in Sonsonate Department who doubled as a spy and submitted reports to the military.”[10] This mechanism of control worked well, causing new fears and widespread mistrust. Mármol describes an incident at his job in Usulután where “Humberto Flores’ brother, pale as a ghost, came in and told us that the boss, despite the fact that they were brothers, had denounced him as a communist because of a family argument, and that the police were looking for him.”[11] For men, women and children, rich or poor, this was the reality of all Salvadorans involved in the social movement and opposed to the administration of General Martínez. And yet, small communist cells around the country continued their political work despite having to face these new threats.
  
  There was also the role of the media portraying the massacre as a “communist plot”. One of strongest and most enduring mechanisms of oppression utilized by General Martínez was the criminalization of communists through the media. Examples of this abound during his era of terror, including his own accounts published in el Diario Oficial a day after the initial launch of La Matanza: La Prensa used phrases like “the communist movement,” “red groups”, the “red danger,” and “the one hundred-headed hydra of communism.” El Dia published a story entitled, ‘In Tacuba the Victims’ Heads Were Thrown to the Hogs.”[12] Diario de Oriente published a report on March 7, 1932 about the “soul of the propaganda scheme” that was suppressed by the military and, moreover, that some of it was coming from Guatemala.

  The rebellion was incited. It was not known where they came from, but its solvent character implied its origins. Some of them seemed backed by the signature of the Communist Party of Guatemala. The government of General Ubico realized the danger. That mysterious propaganda could eventually alter the order, and so he dictated the crackdown to discover those who were the soul of such machinations.[13]

  These were the messages being transmitted to the masses throughout Latin America, and so began the criminalization of the Communist Party after 1932. And with the proven technique of divide and conquer, further emphasis was put on race and religion, where terms like “drunken Indians” were used against the backdrop of horrific images of the event, as well as characterizing communists as failing to have a Christian religion. There was also the “official” study on the event by Joaquin Méndez, whose biased interviews excluded the voices of the marginalized groups, and then later inspired the work of staunch anticommunist Jorge Schlesinger. In 1946, Schlesinger published in Guatemala his study on the accounts of 1932 with the objective to “leave his readers afraid about what happens when communists and Indians are not curtailed.[14]    
  
  Panameño’s Persecution
  Mármol had been in hiding since the events of 1932, and had finally made his way to San Salvador in 1934 where he knew a few surviving comrades were still active. He was eager to meet the new leadership group that for him marked the beginning of a new era. He recalls the names of his first contacts from the Party in San Salvador:

  …a comrade named Antonio, nicknamed “The Devil,” who I think I spoke of before, and who would die in 1934 from the brutal beatings the National Police…the man who’d been renamed Secretary General, comrade Narciso Ruiz…the comrade we called ‘Hoarse Felix’ [Felix Panameño] …” and others who would meet clandestinely in Paleca. Later, Toño Palacios would join them. The Party was alive and developing.[15]  

  On August 20^th, 1934 the government claimed that communist propaganda was distributed during las Fiestas Agostinas, the national celebrations of the country’s patron saint. According to the article by Carlos Henriquez Consalvi of the Museo de la Palabra, the propaganda prompted General Martínez to launch a man hunt for those responsible. In a phone call between Coronel Francisco Linares and General Martínez, Martínez made it clear he did not want Mármol to escape. “¡Métame en la cárcel a esos bochincheros! “¡No quiero un nuevo treinta y dos!” (Put them in jail those rebel rousers! I don’t want a new 32!) While Miguel Mármol remembers the initial pursuit in which he and Porfirio Huiza narrowly escaped from el Parque Centenario, he would only escape for a few more months until his capture on November 25, 1934. This article helps explain what happened to his other comrades while he was on the run; several of them had been captured, brutally beaten, and then interrogated including Felix Panameño.
  
  The following day on August 21, 1934, the first interrogation was of bricklayer and Secretary of Consejo Ejecutivo Sindical Julio Sánchez. His interrogation reveals that when he was captured, incriminating documents exposed other members of the Communist Party as well as their pseudonyms. He also mentions that the pamphlets found at las Fiestas Agostinas in San Salvador came from Felix Panameño’s typewriter:

  Julio Sánchez: We rented the machine from Felix Panameño, the one they call the Hoarse Felix.
  Interrogator: “Did Panameño know what the fuck the typewriter was being used for, how much did he charge?
  Julio Sánchez: Yes, he knew…and he charged seventy-five cents a month.
  Interrogator: Who ordered the flyers and the correspondence sent throughout the country?
  Julio Sánchez: The Devil...
  Interrogator: Antonio Quinteros, the Secretary of Finance, correct?
  Julio Sánchez: Yes…it was him.
  Interrogator: And what about that Felix Panameño… Is it true he was a  Claramounista?
  Julio Sánchez: Yes, but he is now a sympathizer of the cause.[16]

  With this information the interrogator was able to direct for three agents to look for the typewriter at Panameño’s house, where he lived with Eve and their four children at “12 Calle Poniente, Barrio El Calvario.” Three hours later, after ransacking the house, Jose N. Monterrosa, Agent No.111 of the Special Investigations’ Unit reported he was not able to find the typewriter. They were only able to find a magazine, El Mundo Obrero, which was described to contain communist language, a book entitled Political Economics: What is Socialism?, and a copy of El Salvador’s constitution as well as a photograph with a caption on back that said Augusto César Sandino and Agustín Farabundo Martí. The next day, the interrogation of Felix Panameño was as follows:

  Interrogator: Age, occupation and civil status…
  Felix Panameño: I am forty years of age, shoemaker, single.
  Interrogator: How did you acquire the typewriter Oliver that was found at your house…
  Felix Panameño: I have had the typewriter for two years now, I bought it in 32, at the department store H. de Sola. I paid 25 colones for it.
  Interrogator: Tell me…who did you rent it out to?
  Felix Panameño: Someone called Toño Palacios
  Interrogator: Describe him.
  Felix Panameño: Tall, thin, flat, black, with marks on his face, straight black hair, black eyes, I believe he is a carpenter.
  Interrogator: What does he dress like, how old is he?
  Felix Panameño: He wears brown colored khakis, a black hat, with shoes, he is twenty-five years old.
  Interrogator: When did you rent him the typewriter?
  Felix Panameño: In the month of June, he told me it was to write a novel, he reimbursed me a colon and fifty cents for the rental.
  Interrogator: Who can give references for you…
  Felix Panameño: Don Cipriano Castro, Director General de Contribuciones Directas, I know him from the Araujo administration, the time when Castro was deputy for Santa Ana, I sympathized with him because he opposed the loan of three million.
  Interrogator: Tell me Felix Panameño, are you a communist exploiter of the masses?
  Felix Panameño:  I promise you I am not Inspector, look, I am dedicated to my business at the Portal Papelito.
  Interrogator: In the electoral campaign, who did you promote?
  Felix Panameño: For Claramount.
  Interrogator: Do you know any communists?
  Felix Panameño: No, I don’t know any.
  Interrogator: Take this fucker…! Tell me! Who do you know?
  Felix Panameño: The shoemakers David Ruiz, Gumercindo Ramirez, the painter Abel Torres and Hernán Cortes, they were comrades, but they are no longer.[17]

  At this time the interrogation is interrupted to update the officer with the latest developments. Apparently, the agents had returned to Panameño’s neighborhood and seized the green typewriter in question—Oliver—in question from a Margot Bonilla. According to Ms. Bonilla, Rosalina N. had dropped it off explaining it was the typewriter in question. The agent then explains that the owner of the typewriter was Panameño:

  recognized as one of the communist leaders in the capital, Panameño therefore was asked if it was the same typewriter from his property and he said yes, it was the same one that was borrowed. Rosalina N. is his partners’ niece.^[18]

  During a formal session with Abuelita Letty, we read and discussed the article by Consalvi which I read out loud for her to expand on the topic. She explained Rosalina was the name of her uncle’s daughter and she remembers the typewriter well:

  …Arriba habían hecho un techo. Como de…yo no sé como… pero ahí es donde escondieron la maquina…Le habían puesto algo de, come te dijera…que tapara…no era trapo ni nada…era como hoja…
   
  …mi papa era de los que salía a repartir…allí los hacían…escondía [la propaganda ] mi abuelo [Felix Panameño] y mi mama…eso lo sabía. [19]
   
  (…On top they had built a roof. Similar to…I’m not sure how…but that is where they hid the typewriter…They had put over it something like, how can I describe it…like a cover…it was not a rag or anything of that sort…it was more like leaves…
   
  …my father used to be the ones handing out the flyers…that’s where my father and mother used to make and hide [the propaganda] …that I knew.)

   
  Rosalina appeared to have done the best she could to get the typewriter out of the house, unfortunately under Martínez the National Police was on a mission. When Mármol was caught the same year, he recalls “34 communists being held incommunicado in the police cells.”[20] They were being tortured and placing their families in horrible distress. When his family inquired about him, the police would say he was not there. It would appear that General Martínez was simply making them disappear. After several months in jail, Mármol noticed a new wave of prisoners which he described as “big-shot smugglers, embezzlers…a group of cavalry officers who were charged with plotting against Martinez.” And other groups of officers and university students, who then would be exiled to Honduras and Guatemala. Mármol remembers saying to himself, “What they wanted was to wear me down as much as possible in jail, leave me there for who knew how long until I rotted, make sure I did not return to political work.”[21] He was released in January 1936 under conditions that were imposed on his other comrades. He was not to leave the city limits, and he had to report to the Directorate General once a week.
  
  The article was very useful in stirring up Abuelita Letty’s memory. She talked more in depth about the painful relationship between her father and mother.  Eve once described to Abuelita Letty what it was like when she would visit Felix in jail:

  Bien flaquito…parecía un Cristo, decía mi mama. Pálido y le daba la ropa que se la lavara, toda manchada de sangre. Los acostaban en un catre…con esos cinchos, de duros, de cuero con eso les pegaban. Les dejaban la espalda desecha… Mi mama dice, ‘yo le lloraba’. Le decía, ‘¡Felix ya no sigas en eso, Felix!’[22]
  
  (Very skinny…he looked like Christ, my mother would say. Pale and he would give her his clothes to wash all full of blood. They would lay them on cots…on those hard leather belts, and with those, they would beat them. They would destroy their backs… My mother said, ‘I would beg him’, I would tell him, ‘Felix don’t continue in that, Felix!’)     

  She also shared with Abuelita Letty an extraordinarily dangerous experience that you can tell impacted Abuelita Letty to the core. At some point before the 1940s, Eve told Abuelita Letty that Papa Felix and others were sent to the “paredón” (wall) in the cemetery before a firing squad. Eve met with a lawyer hoping to save Panameño:

  Por ella [Eve] no lo fusilaron [y] por ese abogado…ella con lágrimas, derramando sus lágrimas, suplicándole al abogado…y el hizo algo que si era injusticia…fue el único que se salvó. El único que se salvó de los que mataron ese día, pero porque ella fue al abogado a llorarle y pagarle lo que no tenía, la pobrecita. El señor [abogado] se lo hizo, porque quizás simpatizaba verdad…y fue por eso que no lo mataron.[23]
   
  (Because of her [Eve] they did not shoot him dead and because of that lawyer…she with tears, streaming down begged the lawyer…and he did something that was indeed unjust…he was the only one that was saved. The only one that was saved out of the ones that were killed that day, but because she went to the lawyer, crying and to pay him what she did not have, poor woman.  The man [lawyer] did it, because he was probably a sympathizer, right…and that is why they did not kill him that day.)

  Abuelita Letty also remembers that her mother told her that Papa Felix became jealous of the favor and struck Eve after he was released from jail. For Abuelita Letty, it was Papa Felix that had committed the ultimate injustice against her mother. My grandmother explained she never witnessed her father abusing her mother physically, but had strong feeling against her father for putting the family in danger. She adds, “on the one hand he fought for our rights, and on the other he did not practice it at home, not even with his wife…his woman.”[24] Revolutions tend to include women’s rights in their decrees, but time has shown that women’s rights is harder to achieve than to fight for. These complexities were contended with on a daily basis by women who confronted huge losses—disconnected, state violence, and vulnerability.
  
  Another challenge that families faced during this time was having to balance family members on opposite sides of the struggle, or political camps. Eve had a brother named Luciano, who was a Guardia Nacional (National Guard) and was the father of Rosalina. Abuelita Letty remembers her uncle fondly providing details of her memories of him and on how he died in 1945, which would make her fourteen years old, not twelve as she stated here when remembering her uncle:

  Yo quería tanto a mi tío [Luciano]…cuando el murió venían de una comisión, porque los mandaban a los pueblos, venían en un Jeep, ya para la casa…era Cabo, no era un soldadito…ya vivía yo…cerca del cementerio, yo tenía apenas como 12 años, ahí es cuando el murió…iban varios soldados contentos…y mi tío también…pero en eso no sé qué le paso al Jeep y volcaron. Y unos salieron por allá y otros por allá. A mi tío fue el único que murió, porque el Jeep ese les cayó encima…[se le] reventó la cabeza.
   
  …Mira, me quería tanto. Como dice mi mamá, él era tu chino. El té cuidaba de baby…yo lo oía que me decía Techita, aquí te traje. Me llevaba unos dulcitos de morro, [bien] cariñoso…[25]
   
  (I cared so much for my uncle [Luciano]…when he died, they were coming from an assignment, because they would send them to the small towns, in a Jeep headed home…he was not just a soldier, he was above a soldier…at that time I already lived close to the cemetery, I was only about twelve years old when he died. There were many happy soldiers and my uncle was happy too but at some point something happened to the Jeep and they flipped. And some went flying over there and others over there. My uncle was the only one that died because the Jeep fell on top of him and crushed his head.
   
  …Look, he cared for me so much. Like my mother would say, he was your caretaker. He would take care of you since you were a baby…I would hear him call me Techita, I’ve brought you something. He would bring me morro sweets or candy, he was so caring…)

  “Porque los mandaban a los pueblos,” she says, not in the slightest reflecting on what he may have been doing there. The National Guard, founded and trained by Spanish officers in 1912, was responsible for maintaining order in mainly rural areas, where the elite landowners felt the most threatened. The oligarchy often hired the guards on a private basis during the regime of General Martínez.[26] On the other hand, when I asked about Luciano in my session with Tío Chus, his memory of Luciano took on a less heroic tone. “Ese nació y vivió en La Guardia. Salía unos meses, si no hallaba trabajo [hace sonido de carro], otra vez a La Guardia. [interrupciones] …Tío Luciano que era soldado raso, que lo mataron en la revolución, esa…que hubo.”[27] (That guy was born and died in the Guard. He would come out for a few months, and if he did not find work [makes a car noise], he would return to the Guard. [interview is interrupted] …my uncle Luciano was a soldier that was killed in the revolution that one they had.) Tío Chus could not remember the year his uncle was killed but claimed there was a “revolution” around the time he died. Perhaps he was remembering the military transition taking place in 1945 as General Martinez stepped down and Salvador Castaneda Castro was declared president.
  
  Upon reflecting on the two memories shared with me about Luciano, I realized there were two significant discrepancies between Abuelita Letty and Tío Chus’ memories of him. First, Tío Chus could not remember Luciano having children, compared to Abuelita Letty who said Luciano’s daughter was Rosalina. Secondly, according to Tío Chus, Luciano was a soldado raso (lowest in rank) compared to Abuelita Letty’s description of Luciano being a Cabo (above a soldier). With a little research, I was able to resolve one of the discrepancies. Figure 4 is a public announcement in the Diario Oficial dated May 2, 1945 pertaining to Luciano’s death on February 7, 1945, showing that his sister Eve had presented herself as a temporary beneficiary of his due salary as “Cabo numero 815 del Cuerpo de la Guardia Nacional en esta capital…” The public announcement was meant to allow other potential beneficiaries to come forward and claim his salary. In this case, the document helped solve the differences in how he was remembered by his niece and nephew. Luciano was indeed a Cabo when he died, not a soldado raso.
  
  But more importantly, while Abuelita Letty and Tío Chus provided details about a soldier’s life in their family; they never once made any comments about the connection between her uncle’s occupation and assignments with her father’s political work. These two men obviously followed different political paths. Clearly, a division Abuelita Letty at the age of 14 and Tío Chus at 16 had to be mindful of, as it was the difference between life and death at the time, a type of stress that Salvadoran families would again need to balance decades later during the civil war.
  
  Conclusion
  When General Martínez first took office the elites were relieved; they felt he would protect them from the angry mobs. Over time and several constitutional changes, elite civilians and military began to feel his wrath. He amended the constitution in 1939 and 1944 in order to remain in office. General Martínez finally resigned when “economic elites, newspaper publishers, young military officers, urban labor, public sector workers, schoolteachers, and the university community”[45] mobilized a strike known as the “Huelga de Brazos Caidos”, in which the cities were virtually shut down. However, this ad hoc group of oppositional forces mobilized for one reason only and that was to deny General Martínez another term. They were not a social movement in Freire’s terms, in motion, and therefore immobile in facing the subsequent repressive military dictators that came after General Martínez.
  
  As mentioned before, the Indigenous populations had a long-standing history of revolts, protecting their lands and right to remain autonomous. Their ability to lead a revolt, especially in 1932 is no longer contested. By this time, the Indigenous communities had survived the miscegenation campaigns of colonialism, the nation-building myth of mestizaje, and the assimilation that came with education. The widely accepted belief that the Indians completely vanished after La Matanza is not only incorrect, but misleading. This is not to say they did not suffer tremendous setbacks or that many, if not most, did gave up their dress and language to survive. But like Abuelita Letty remembered about Mama Goya, she wore her Nahua clothing well into the 1940s. However, the myth of their demise persisted well into the twenty-first century. Even with the large number of deaths from the massacre, the most destructive annihilation vehicle for the Indigenous has been official records.
  
  Tilley’s research of the Indigenous population of El Salvador led her to review existing birth records. Her findings show that Indians “vanishing” from El Salvador are not true, in fact she finds that there was no overall drop in indigenous population after the massacre. “On the contrary, in the two largest indigenous municipalities of Sonsonate—Nahuizalco and Izalco—indigenous birth proportions either held rock-steady or actually rose until racial notations were abruptly eliminated from the registry, in 1945 and 1950, respectively.”[46] It was during this time that the term “mestizo” fell back into fashion. Tilley points out that the government began to use the term as a way to erase race from the national census. By the 1950s, the terms “indian and ladino alike were now, officially, mestizo.”[47] El Salvador was not the only country in Central America to exercise the erasure of its indigenous peoples across official records, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras were doing the same. They were all part of a larger movement towards nationalism, a tactic used by governments to undermine the needs of their original peoples.
  
  The insurrection of 1932 may have been defeated, but the idea of change was not. By this time, a strong leftist movement had penetrated the social consciousness of the country. Communism appealed to the middle and upper class just as it did to the poor. While not all leftists were Marxist, many in the middle and upper classes were “driven to the left not by hunger but rather by a belief that Marxism in its various iterations provided a road map to create a more just society.”[48] The peoples’ movement grew and evolved into a real political alternative to the country’s long history of repressive governments. This is evident through the endless persecutions that Felix Panameño endured between the years of 1934 to 1952, and which concur with Mármol’s narrative and other party members who were tortured and jailed alongside him.
  
  These men and women certainly left a legacy for struggling through multiple ideologies, multiple oppressions, and multiple forms of violence against their bodies and identities, including the metanarrative that heralded their criminalization for 1932 through public newspapers. As a result, it further silenced voices, especially from those closest to them–their families. These mothers already having to balance work, domestic life, and community were expected to render these services unconditionally, and some may argue without fear. But there was fear; there was a lot of fear, and some women made choices to follow a different path. However, under military dictatorships, all paths were repressive.
  
  For this reason, I reflect on Eve’s path after her and Papa Felix separate, as well as the space that history and Abuelita Letty’s memories have erased or overlooked in regards to market vendors. I argue that the Central Market in San Salvador was not less political than the Communist Party, it was not less dangerous than the Communist Party, and certainly not less complex than the Communist Party of El Salvador. Elitist history has dismissed the marketplace as a significant social, political and gendered space based on elite domination of subaltern public spaces. In Chapter 3, when covering the 1920s, I mention that market vendors have historically been women; they were excluded in the initial launch of trade unions affiliated with San Salvador, and these women carry the stigma of not being as “feminine” or “proper” compared to domestic workers. And despite the alienation from society, the Central Market and its vendors in San Salvador were critical not only for commerce, but for the social movements that depended on them for support. 
   
  The earliest recordings of political activism by women vendors was in their attempt to reinstall President Carlos Ezeta in the late nineteenth century. Their involvement got them exiled to Panamá for “revolucionarias” (female revolutionaries).[49] In Chapter 3, in the early 1920s, I also explained how the market women rallied to protest against the banks for imposing currency policies, and then organized a march to show their political support for an oppositional party. Marches and rallies were their only form of political participation at the time. From a class perspective, how the event was reported exposes the various layers of discrimination these women had to experience. As one “middle-class critic” pointed out, “…A group of girls led the march, followed by señoras and señoritas of the highest society, followed by the rest of the classes, until the market women and servants.”[50] His observation clearly shows how even the marches followed class hierarchy. Market vendors also had to be reminded of their subaltern identities in their workplace, every time the domestic servant entered the market with their bosses. Weismantel, who studied race and sex in the Andes, where race plays a predominant role, describes these types of encounters as “performances”, where the crude market vendor acts completely opposite than the bosses’ silent domestic servant. She explains, these performances “play to bourgeois fantasies about race—yet at the same time, the obvious artifice of their performances undermines bourgeois belief in their own “natural” superiority.”[51]
  
  We also see that in Eve’s particular narrative, her stall at the Central Market sustained her family economically, especially when Papa Felix could not. His livelihood was often interrupted for long periods of time, based on being detained, jailed, recovering from torture, in exile, or working on political campaigns. And this is not to say that Eve’s livelihood was not interrupted, it was just interrupted in different ways. From jail visits to lawyer visits, women like Eve constantly had to depend on other family or community members to take care of their stalls and children. Throughout Mármol’s testimony, his family’s support, which included his mother, sister, and wife, all played a critical role in making sure Mármol stayed safe and that the police did not make him disappear. Therefore, the efforts of these women enabled the struggle to continue.
  
  Further, we see persecutions enacted against defenseless, hardworking women, as it was also imposed on communists. In either case, the punishments were altered to fit the sexes. And while El Salvador was not at war, during the various military dictatorships, governments would impose a State of Siege as if they were under attack or at war. Maldonado-Torres explains that war is not only about killing and enslaving: “While in war there is murder and rape, in the hell of the colonial world murder and rape become day to day occurrences and menaces. ‘Killability’ and ‘rapeability’ are inscribed into the images of the colonial bodies.”[52] These women vendors had to build community ties to survive and their working relations, such as a market vendor holding a street vendor’s basket while she is harassed by authorities, shows how these survival tactics are a form of women’s resistance in public spaces. However, many times resistance to authority in any form resulted in death or rapes.
  
  The complexity of the market comes from the daily task of having to negotiate the dominant concepts of race and caste, through imposed identities. For market vendors, daily discrimination meant further alienation, compromising their ability to yield power much less a voice; however, the criminalization of their livelihood meant the possibility of death. And yet, in a 1970s report on the market sprawl, a comment was made about the Central Market that despite other markets having opened in surrounding barrios, “fortunately in the 440 years after the foundation of San Salvador, we find the majority of commercial activity in San Salvador and perhaps in all the country continues to thrive in the same location.”[53] Marketplaces and market vendors still exist and thrive today. The marketplace remains occupied by mostly women with little alternatives for improving their educational and formal employment options. Women continue to have to depend on the informal economy for survival with very little time to for anything else. This is an important area of study that deserves further research.
   

  ---

  [1] Tilley, Seeing Indians, pp. 123-127.

  [2] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. xiii.

  [3] Ibid., p. xiii.

  [4] Lindo-Fuentes, Ching, and Lara-Martínez, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, pp. 194-195.

  [5] Villars, Lealtad y rebeldía, pp. 356-357.

  [6] Villars, Lealtad y rebeldía, p. 322.

  [7] Ibid., p. 347.

  [8] Gould and Lauria-Santiago, To rise in darkness, Kindle 3395.

  [9] Elam, “Appeal to Arms,” p. 48.

  [10] Ching, Authoritarian El Salvador, p. 259.

  [11] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 331.

  [12] Lindo-Fuentes, Ching, and Lara-Martínez, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, p. 220.

  [13] Villars, Lealtad y rebeldía, p. 308.

  [14] Lindo-Fuentes, Ching, and Lara-Martínez, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, pp. 222-231.

  [15] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, pp. 340-342.

  [16] Carlos Henriquez Consalvi, “¡Primero Dios!,” Trasmallo: Romero, Imágenes Inéditas, no. 6 (2010): pp. 4-6.

  [17] Consalvi, “¡Primero Dios!,” p. 6.

  [18] Consalvi, “¡Primero Dios!,” p. 7.

  [19] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [20] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 361.

  [21] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 375

  [22] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [23] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [24] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [25] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [26] Knut Walter and Philip J. Williams, “The military and democratization in El Salvador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs no. 1, 35 (1993), p. 44.

  [27] Tío Chus, interview by author, November 28, 2015.

  [28] Tío Chus, interview by author, November 28, 2015.

  [29] Tío Chus, interview by author, November 28, 2015.

  [30] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 391.

  [31] Elam, “Appeal to Arms,” p. 49.

  [32] Lindo-Fuentes, Ching, and Lara-Martínez, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, p. 83.

  [33] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, pp. 384-386.

  [34] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [35] Elam, “Appeal to Arms,” p. 50.

  [36] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 403.

  [37] Ibid., p. 403.

  [38] Dalton, Miguel Mármol, p. 405.

  [39] Tío Chus, interview by author, November 28, 2015.

  [40] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [41] Carlos Enrique Melgar Morán, “Mecanismos de poder político y resistencia sobre el espacio: Centro Histórico de San Salvador de las asociaciones de vendedores informales, (1992-2007)” (PhD diss., Universidad de El Salvador, 2007), p. 22.

  [42] Ibid., p. 30.

  [43] Melgar Morán, “Mecanismos de poder político y resistencia sobre el espacio,” p. 34.

  [44] Abuelita Letty, interview by author, December 5, 2015.

  [45] Paul D Almeida, Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, 1925-2005 (Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), p. 55.

  [46] Tilley, Seeing Indians, p. 181.

  [47] Ibid., p. 190.

  [48] Lindo-Fuentes, Ching, and Lara-Martínez, Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador, p. 215.

  [49] Melgar Morán, “Mecanismos De Poder Político y Resistencia Sobre El Espacio,” p. 25.

  [50] Gould and Lauria-Santiago, To rise in darkness, Kindle 710.

  [51] Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos, pp. 118-122.

  [52] Maldonado-Torres, “On the coloniality of being,” p. 255.

  [53] Melgar Morán, “Mecanismos De Poder Político y Resistencia Sobre El Espacio,” p. 29.