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Birth
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez was born October 21,1882.In,San Matias,La Libertad,El Salvador. At the age of 83. -
Exporting Goods
At the beginning of the twentieth century the major export of El Salvador was coffee and most of the plantations were controlled by a small oligarchic clique of families, a legacy of Spanish colonialism. The local indigenous Pipil people had long been decimated by abuse and disease, and their diverse self-sustaining farming economy had long been overrun by the same militarized system of export agriculture that was pervasive throughout the Spanish Empire from the fifteenth century onward. -
Early Age
He served at president of El Salvador from 1931 to 1944.He entered the El Salvador’s army at an early age. -
President
General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez became president of El Salvador after a military coup overthrew the freely elected government of Arturo Araujo in 1931. The Salvadoran legislature confirmed Martinez as president the following year, and he was elected to a four-year term in 1935 and a six-year term in 1939. -
Killing Of Thousands
The authoritarian and eccentric General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez became president of El Salvador after a military coup overthrew the freely elected government of Arturo Araujo in 1931. After ordering the killing of thousands of peasants and political dissidents during his first two terms, Martinez suspended the constitution in early 1944 and declared he would serve a third without an election. An armed revolt by dissident military and other elite elements that April was quickly crushed, -
General Maintained Personal Control
The general maintained tight personal control of the nation through an extensive system of repression and spies. His regime became more oppressive in its later years, especially after 1938. Police methods were harsh. Among his "reforms" were laws reinstituting the death penalty for such crimes as rebellion. A revolt on May 8, 1944, led to his resignation. After that he lived in obscurity in exile in Honduras for many years and died there in 1966. -
President
In,1938, El Salvadoran president General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez proposed changing the country’s constitution so that he could continue holding his position beyond the end of his second term. When Martínez came to power in the early 1930s as a result of a coup, he extended his authority over the state by centralizing decision-making, and organizing the only legally operating political party, the Partido Nacional Pro-Patria. -
Armed Uprising
In April of 1944, after an armed uprising failed to remove Martínez from power, university students began organizing against the regime. In response to the government’s bloody crackdown that followed the attempted coup, medical students wore black ties in April as a show of mourning for those who had been killed. -
Armed Uprising
The victory was not retained beyond five months, however. The El Salvadoran democratic leadership that saw how to oust the dictator Martinez did not have a strategy for defending their achievement nonviolently. A successful coup in October 1944 usurped power from Menéndez and set El Salvador on another long path of political strife and instability. -
Death
He died May 15,1966 by being stabbed to death by his driver Cipriano Morales whose father had been one of the many murdered by Hernández's dictatorship. -
Begininng Of 20th Century
At the beginning of the twentieth century the major export of El Salvador was coffee and most of the plantations were controlled by a small oligarchic clique of families, a legacy of Spanish colonialism. The local indigenous Pipil people had long been decimated by abuse and disease, and their diverse self-sustaining farming economy had long been overrun by the same militarized system of export agriculture that was pervasive throughout the Spanish Empire from the fifteenth century onward. -
Difficulties Encountered
Col. Fidel Sánchez Hernández (1967–72) encountered difficulties as a result of the decline in world prices for coffee and cotton, but in 1969 the country’s attention was diverted from economic problems by the outbreak of what came to be known as the “Soccer War” with Honduras. This conflict broke out shortly after the two countries had played three bitterly contested matches in the World Cup competition, but the real causes for the war lay elsewhere. -
Spurred By Reports
Spurred by reports of the mistreatment of these refugees, the Salvadoran government opened hostilities on July 14, 1969. A cease-fire took effect on July 18, but El Salvador continued to force the action until the Organization of American States (OAS) threatened economic sanctions against the country on July 29. The brief war had cost several thousand lives, and a peace treaty between the two countries was not concluded until 1980. -
Non-Violent Resistance
The 1970s saw growth in both non-violent resistance—led by progressive Catholic clergy, trade unionists, students, and peasant organizations—against the military government as well as an armed resistance by a coalition of Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups which became known as the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN). Killings of oppositionists by government forces and allied right-wing death squads grew dramatically. -
Suffering Peasants
Peasants surely suffered the brunt of efforts to stifle dissent, but the most egregious example of government violence came in 1975 when at least a dozen university students were shot to death while protesting the use of public funds to hold the Miss Universe contest in El Salvador. The political situation steadily worsened until Romero was removed from office by a military coup in October 1979. -
A Coup Against Military Dictator
A coup against military dictator Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero in 1979 in response to growing unrest brought to power a military-civilian junta nominally dedicated to reforms, but the repression only increased. The nonviolent resistance movement, despite a series of large-scale general strikes and other actions, was largely destroyed by the U.S-backed regime by 1981. -
Country Collapsing
Country collapsed into full-scale civil war. Later in the decade, after nearly 80,000 deaths—primarily civilians at the hands of the U.S.-backed regime and its allies—there was a rebirth of nonviolent civil society activism in the late 1980s. Combined with protests in the United States against U.S. support for the repression and a stalemate in the armed struggle, a peace agreement was signed between the government and the FMLN which ended the fighting.
