>La Matanza (Spanish for 'The Massacre') refers to a communist-Indigenous rebellion that took place in El Salvador between 22 and 25 January 1932. After the revolt was suppressed, it was followed by large-scale government killings in western El Salvador, which resulted in the deaths of 10,000 to 40,000 people. Another 100 soldiers were killed during the suppression of the revolt.
>On 22 January 1932, members of the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCES) and Pipil peasants launched a rebellion against the Salvadoran military government due to widespread social unrest and the suppression of democratic political freedoms, especially after the cancellation of the results of the 1932 legislative election.
>During the rebellion, the communist and Indigenous rebels, led by Farabundo Martí and Feliciano Ama, respectively, captured several towns and cities across western El Salvador, killing an estimated 2,000 people and causing over US$100,000 in property damage. The Salvadoran government, led by General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who had assumed power following the 1931 Salvadoran coup d'état, declared martial law, and ordered the suppression of the revolt.
>Most of the people who were killed during La Matanza, which has been described as an ethnocide, were Pipil peasants and non-combatants, causing the extermination of the majority of the Pipil-speaking population, which led to a near total loss of the spoken language in El Salvador. Many of the rebellion's leaders, including Martí and Ama, were executed by the military. The government's repression also forced several communist leaders to flee the country and go into exile.
<Translated from the Spanish statement of the PCS.
>It was Sunday, March 30, 1930, on the shore of Lake Ilopango, 15 km from the city of San Salvador that a group of 25 to 30 workers, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters with two teachers among them (according to Miguel Mármol, who was one of the founders), made the historic decision to found the Communist Party of El Salvador, inspired by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the aspirations of the working class for a better world.
>That young party began a revolutionary struggle under the administration of the President Pío Romero Bosque, who had a liberal but also repressive vision. This was in the midst of the great world economic recession at that time, which had started in 1929 and hit the working class and the peasantry hard. This situation caused a serious famine among the impoverished people and especially the peasant masses. In addition to all of this there was the coup d'état of December 2, 1931 by General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, overthrowing President Arturo Araujo.
>In this economic and political context, the PCS worked intensively to organize the working class of the city and the countryside. In 1931 it organized for rebellion and participated in the mayoral elections in December of that year and January 1932. Those elections were a grotesque mockery of the working people and the mayors of the parties supporting the dictatorship were appointed.
>The PCS was involved in preparing the rebellion that began on January 22, 1932. 30,000 workers, peasants and indigenous people were killed in this rebellion that also saw the shootings of Farabundo Martí and the students Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata on February 1, 1932.
>The Communist Party was decimated and forced to work underground. It resurfaced in 1944 with the fall of General Hernández Martínez and continued its heroic struggle until 1995, when it was dissolved by the Ninth Party congress. In view of changing circumstances and the historical necessity of its existence, the PCS was re-founded on March 27, 2005.