Today in Labor History October 10, 1980: The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front was founded in El Salvador. The FMLN, which fought a long civil war to overthrow the rightwing dictatorship, was named after Salvadoran revolutionary Farabundo Marti (1893-1932). Marti, a comrade of Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader, helped found the Central American Communist Party. In 1932, he helped lead an uprising that, for ten days, was the first Soviet in the western hemisphere. The rebellion was crushed by the dictator Maximiliano Martinez, who slaughtered over 30,000 peasants, indigenous people and communists in the Matanza. Martinez had once proclaimed, “America is great because it eradicated its Indians. For El Salvador to become great, so must we.” Martinez was also one of the first world leaders to recognize Adolf Hitler. He also believed in the “court of invisible doctors.”
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