Blackwell Reference Online

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Miguel Mármol co-founded the Communist Party of El Salvador in 1930. As a member of the party's Central Committee, he experienced the 1932 uprising of El Salvador's masses against the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez and later analyzed the critical role of the Communist Party during the insurrection process. Like thousands of other insurgents and communists, he was arrested and brought before a firing squad. He survived the execution and escaped with serious injuries. This incident and his untiring revolutionary work earned Mármol an almost legendary reputation within the Latin American left. This position was consolidated by Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton's book about Mármol and by Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano, who raised him to the status of metaphoric symbol for Latin America's fate. Mármol and his two sisters were brought up by their mother, Santos Mármol, in Ilopango, near the capital of El Salvador. Because of the family's precarious situation, he worked as an assistant at the local National Guard office. The National Guard was El Salvador's military police, and it became increasingly involved in human rights violations in the name of oligarchic regimes. Mármol's work acquainted him with the torture chambers in his country, and he was shocked by the cruelty he witnessed there. Mármol left his work with the police and became apprenticed as a shoemaker in ... log in or subscribe to read full text