Indians, the Military and the Rebellion of 1932 in El Salvador

Abstract

This study challenges the widely held belief that the peasant rebellion of 1932, and the massive military response to it, marked the demise of Indian ethnic identity. Working from documents that have become available only recently, we demonstrate that the Indian population was not decimated by the military repression. The percentage of Indians in the population remained steady and in some regions even increased. We show that the bedrock of Indian identity, the cofradías and the communities, survived the repression as well. We propose that these survivals are due, ironically, in part to the military. Despite their willingness to employ violence on a colossal level, military leaders believed that order in the countryside was to be achieved through reform as well as repression. The military's reformist ideology and reform programme worked to defend individual Indians and Indian communities from ladinos anxious to avenge their losses in the uprising.