Salvador Cayetano Carpio (6 August 1918 – 12 April 1983), also known as Commander Marcial, was the leader of the

Communist Party of El Salvador The Communist Party of El Salvador ( es, Partido Comunista de El Salvador) is a communist party in El Salvador. The Communist Party was founded by Miguel Mármol on 10 March 1930. History In the mid-1960s the U.S. State Department estimate ...

in the 1960s, until he quit the party to found the Salvadoran revolutionary political-military organization, the

Fuerzas Populares de Liberación Farabundo Martí The Fuerzas Populares de Liberación "Farabundo Martí" (FPL) (English: Farabundo Martí Popular Liberation Forces) was a left wing guerrilla military and political organization in El Salvador. It was the oldest of the five groups that merged in ...

(FPL) in 1970. Carpio did this because he felt the time was right for armed revolution to end the military dictatorship in El Salvador, but the Salvadoran Communist Party was against armed struggle, instead engaging mainly in legal electoral and trade union organizing. During the 1970s, Carpio's new organization, the FPL, became the largest group on the Salvadoran left, and therefore became the predominant force among the five organizations that joined together in 1980 under the umbrella of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Carpio played a leading role in both the FPL and the FMLN. He was sometimes referred to as the "

Ho Chi Minh (: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as (' Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as P ...

of Latin America". The official story of his death was that he committed suicide after being blamed by other leaders in the FPL for the murder of FPL second-in-command

Ana María Ana María (17 May 1929 – 6 April 1983) was the nom-de-guerre of Dr. Mélida Anaya Montes, the second in command of the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación Farabundo Martí (FPL), the oldest of the five guerilla organizations making up the FMLN, ...

on 6 April 1983 in

Managua, Nicaragua ) , settlement_type = Capital city , motto = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Nicara ...

Early life

Salvador Cayetano Carpio was born in 1919 as a son of a cobbler. Throughout his life he worked as a laborer in various jobs, but he was most recognized as a baker. He became a trade union activist as a young man. Later he joined the

, he was later assigned its secretary general in the 1960s. As a result of various acts of political repression against the left, much of his adult life was spent in prison, in exile or underground.

Forming of the FPL

At the age of 50, Carpio headed for the hills with a small group of women and men. Under his leadership, the FPL combined armed struggle with different forms of mass organization. It was instrumental in the formation of the Popular Revolutionary Block (BPR or Bloque Popular Revolucionario), the largest of the cross-sector mass organizations that mobilized hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans in the economic and political struggles of the latter part of the 1970s. As the senior leader of the revolutionary movement and commander-in-chief of its largest organization, Carpio was a central figure in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

External links

Biografía de Salvador Cayetano Carpio, Comandante Marcial
(Biography of Salvador Cayetano Carpio, in Spanish)
Communiques from the FPL

Letter from Ceyetano Carpio (in Spanish) {{DEFAULTSORT:Carpio, Cayetano 1918 births 1983 deaths People from La Libertad Department (El Salvador) Salvadoran communists Salvadoran revolutionaries People of the Salvadoran Civil War Salvadoran prisoners and detainees Suicides in El Salvador

Early life

Forming of the FPL

See also

External links