Today in Labor History June 19, 1985: Gunmen opened fire on an outdoor restaurant in San Salvador’s upscale Zona Rosa, killing 13, including four U.S. Marines and two U.S. businessmen. A broadcast by Radio Venceremos, the FMLN’s pirate radio station, said: "If U.S. Army members and CIA agents died in San Salvador, it was because they came to attack our people. No one had summoned them; they died as a result of the interventionist policy carried out by President Reagan, whose intervention grows day by day. Reagan will have to assume full responsibility for his deeds."

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Today in Labor History January 22, 1932: Salvadoran communists, peasants and indigenous people rose up in rebellion against the military dictatorship, creating the first soviets in the Western hemisphere. In response, the military went on a rampage, killing 30,000 people in the "La Matanza." The violence decimated what was left of the country’s indigenous population, as well as most of its socialists, communists, anarchists and labor organizers. One of the first to go before General Martinez’ firing squads was guerilla leader Farabundo Marti (for whom the FMLN guerrillas took their name). Martinez once said that America was great because it wiped out its Indians and so, too, must El Salvador. Eduardo Galeano talks about La Matanza in his “Memory of Fire” trilogy.

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Today in Labor History January 16, 1992: The government of El Salvador and the FMLN rebels signed a peace accord, formally ending their 12-year-old civil war. 75,000 people died in that war, mostly civilians, and mostly at the hands of the military and government-supported death squads. 25% of the population became refugees. The U.S. taxpayers heavily subsided the Salvadoran government and its death squads and also trained many of them at the School of the Americas (AKA School of the Assassins), in Fort Benning, Georgia. The FMLN was named after Farabundo Marti, a Salvadoran revolutionary from the 1930s, who led a communist uprising that created the short-lived Salvadoran soviet, the first soviet in the western hemisphere. The Martinez dictatorship then slaughtered over 40,000, mostly indigenous people, in a genocide known as La Matanza. Martinez was one of the first world leaders to recognize Hitler.

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Today in Labor History January 10, 1981: The FMLN launched its first major offensive against the Salvadoran military. As a result, they gained control of the departments of Morazan and Chalatenango. They held onto these regions of El Salvador for most of the civil war. In 1989, it became clear after their “final” offensive, that the government could not defeat them. At this point, the U.S., which had previously supported the government’s genocidal war against the Salvadoran people, began to support negotiations. The United Nations estimated that 85% of all civilian killings during the civil war were committed by government forces and government-supported death squads. Despite the peace process, death squad killings continued. There were several during the two months I was there in 1993, in spite of the presence of UN observers.

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