The source offered for analysis speaks of two terrible events, the El Salvador Uprising of 1932 and the Haitian Genocide of 1937. The first event, the El Salvador Uprising, is the first peasant uprising in Latin America. In the early 1930s, the world economic crisis affected El Salvador’s economy as well. Discontent was brewing in the country. In January 1932, the leader of the Communist Party, Farabundo Marti, returned to the country after being expelled and began preparations for an uprising. Rebellious peasants and laborers seized several villages and towns. Red flags flew for three days and approached the capital. Dictator Martinez urgently procured arms from the United States, and within three days, the uprising was crushed. Four thousand people died, and Farabundo Martí was sentenced to death. More than 30,000 people were exterminated after this rebellion. The Haitian genocide was a massacre of persons of Haitian origin carried out in the Dominican Republic in October 1937 on the orders of dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Both of these events have in common a particular cruelty toward the innocent and ideological motivation. From an eyewitness account of the El Salvador Uprising, it can be noted that the mass atrocities took place under the umbrella of communism. He says: “There is not a single Indian who is not an affiliate of devastating communism” (Foote, 177). An ideological agenda was also present during the Haitian genocide when the killing of ethnic inhabitants took place under the umbrella of nationalism. What both cases have in common is the inhuman brutality with which people acted. In El Salvador, homes and rural estates were looted, people were killed, and ordinary field workers suffered for nothing. In Haiti, people were killed simply because of their rapeseed and ethnicity. The eyewitness accounts of these terrible events are intended to remind contemporary humanity of how ordinary people suffer in warfare. They are meant to open our eyes to the fact that in order to achieve political or ideological goals, sometimes state leaders may use inhumane methods.
Work Cited
Foote, Nicola. Sources for Latin America in the modern world. Oxford University Press, 2018.