Popular protest in San Miguel: reconsidering the 1927- 1932 social mobilization wave from the salvadoran east

Abstract

This article delves into the popular protests in San Miguel within the widest mobilization wave that went all over El Salvador between 1927 and 1932. Different from the common places in the Salvadoran historiography, the eastern region was not unconnected to the organization, conflict, ideological radicalism and protest features of the west-central region. In any case, they found different ways and means for expression, rooted in the particular regional and local conditions. The types of redeeming movements and the big riot of October 1930, in the most important city in the Salvadoran east, San Miguel, allow a deep understanding of a culture of popular protest within a mobilization scenario simultaneously marked by different spatial scales. Thus, firstly, the conditions that made these mobilization forms in San Miguel are addressed; secondly, the features of the main expressions of that popular protest, focusing on the subjects, the forms of action, the adversaries, the speeches and the displayed objectives and, thirdly, an overall analysis of this mobilizations is performed. As we will see, within the framework of the specific conjunction of structural and situational conditions, the popular protest of San Miguel stood out because of the emergence of the leading role of craftsmen- workers and female traders of the markets, who deployed a hybridization of traditional and modern forms as their action repertoires and, by following their own way, a growing radicalism process.