Farabundo Martí

Agustín Farabundo Martí Rodríguez (5 May 1893 – 1 February 1932) was a Marxist-Leninist activist and a revolutionary leader in El Salvador during La Matanza.

Early life
Martí was born in Teotepeque, a farming community located in Departamento de La Libertad, El Salvador to parents Pedro Martí and Socorro Rodríguez. Farabundo's original surname was originally Mártir meaning "martyr" in English. However, his father changed it to "Martí" out of admiration for the famous Cuban patriot, José Martí. From a very young age, Martí struggled to make sense of the glaring inequalities he witnessed around him. It did not make sense to him why there was such a stark difference between his own shoes and the bare feet of the children from worker families he played with, as well as the contrast between the clean, decent clothes worn by his parents and the tattered, dirty rags on peasant workers. According to Jorge Arias Gómez's biography of Martí, when Martí became a teenager, he frequently pointed out to his parents the clear difference between the plentiful food that his family had compared to the very little food available to workers. Martí would repeatedly make his parents aware of the unfair situation, not understanding why there was such a large gap in the amount and quality of food between his relatively wealthy family and the peasant workers around him.

After graduating from Saint Cecilia Salesian School in Santa Tecla, he enrolled at the University of El Salvador, in San Salvador. From early on, he condemned the exploitation of the country's poor for the profit of the rich. He became known as a Salvadoran revolutionary and for many, a martyr.

Revolutionary activity
Farabundo Martí was categorized by Miguel Mármol as an intellectual but a proletarian-like young man in his testimonio. Martí decided to drop out of his Political Science and Jurisprudence program at the University of El Salvador in order to fight for his community and nation. In 1920, Martí, along with numerous students, were arrested for taking part in a protest against the then-ruling Meléndez-Quiñónez dynasty. Martí's arrest subsequently led to his exile from the country, taking up residence in Guatemala and later Mexico until his return to El Salvador in 1925.



Upon his return from exile, Martí was appointed as a representative and invited to the conference of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas in New York City. Upon arriving in New York, he was once again arrested and later released. In the meantime, he worked with the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader Augusto César Sandino.

Martí became involved in the founding of the Communist Party of Central America, where he led a communist alternative to the Red Cross, the International Red Aid, serving as one of its representatives. Its goal was to help poor and underprivileged Salvadorans by the use of the Marxist-Leninist ideology. In December of 1930, at the height of the country's economic and social depression, Martí was once again exiled due to his rising popularity among the nation's peasants and working-class. In addition, there were also rumors of his upcoming nomination for President the following year.

Uprising and death
Once the new president Arturo Araujo was elected in March of 1931, Martí returned to El Salvador and, along with Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata, began the movement that was later truncated by the military. They helped start a guerrilla revolt of indigenous farmers. During that time, he was acting as the Interim General Secretary of the Party.

The communist-led peasant uprising against the dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez was fomented by collapsing coffee prices, relishing in the initial success but was soon drowned in a bloodbath, being crushed by the Salvadoran military ten days after the uprising had commenced. An estimated 30,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed as a result of the uprising by order of General Martínez which called for the killing of not only suspected participants of the uprising, but of those who were thought to have "not protested" against it. This event became known to as"La Matanza" ("The Slaughter").

President Hernández Martínez, who had himself toppled an elected government only weeks earlier, ordered Martí shot after a court-martial.