Communist Party of El Salvador
살바도르 공산당
A communist party of El Salvador founded in March 1930 by Abel Cuenca, Miguel Mármol and others, with Farabundo Martí among its leaders. Banned after the 1932 peasant uprising and massacre, it worked underground for decades and in 1980 joined other left-wing organisations in forming the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). After the civil war it dissolved into the FMLN in 1995, and it was re-established in 2005.
In depth
According to the Spanish source, the Communist Party of El Salvador was founded on 30 March 1930 by Abel Cuenca, Miguel Mármol, Modesto Ramírez and others, with Farabundo Martí as its best-known member. From the start it adhered to International Red Aid and the Comintern. In 1931 the government of Arturo Araujo granted it legal status, allowing it to take part in the municipal and legislative elections of January 1932, while it also organised peasants and indigenous people in the western coffee-growing region. A coup on 2 December 1931 brought General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez to power.
In January 1932, when the government annulled the results where the party had stood, its Central Committee decided to prepare an uprising, and the police arrested party leader Martí along with student leaders Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata. The Spanish source states that the party supported but lacked the capacity to lead the indigenous peasant movement in the west. After the uprising was crushed, Martí and other party leaders were executed along with the indigenous leader Feliciano Ama. After the 1932 massacre the party was banned and persecuted by the military governments that ruled until 1979, but it continued through unions and student organisations and, in 1970–1977, through its “open front”, the Nationalist Democratic Union (UDN).
In 1969 the party divided between advocates of armed struggle and of political and electoral struggle; when the latter prevailed, Salvador Cayetano Carpio, secretary general since 1964, left to form the Farabundo Martí Popular Liberation Forces (FPL). Schafik Handal became secretary general and held the post until the party’s dissolution in 1995. The party’s 1977 congress accepted armed struggle as a valid means, and in 1980 it joined four other organisations to form the FMLN, fighting in the civil war through its Armed Forces of Liberation (FAL).
After the civil war ended in 1992 and the FMLN became a legal party, the Communist Party dissolved its structures in 1995 and merged fully into the new party. The English source notes that the US State Department estimated its membership at about 200 in the mid-1960s and that Handal was the FMLN’s presidential candidate in 2004. In 2005 old and new communists began a refoundation, which culminated in a refounding congress on 17 December 2006.