Film, Politics & Gramsci Book

Just started this. only about 70 pages in but it is already fascinating, fast-moving. these are incredible events that miguel marmol describes as a young man growing out of poverty and moving toward leftist principles and into revolutionary action.


miguel marmol was one of the few survivors of the 1932 matanza, or massacre, of over 30,000 people after a failed uprising in the western highlands of el salvador.

this book is often called the first of its kind -- a testimonial, where the subject is given license to act as historian. this is done in an effort to give voice to and comprehend a sort of cultural and political inheritance and to acknowledge personal experience and the retelling of events as being just as critical to our understanding as the "objective facts".

this book might be best read in succession with "remembering the 1932 massacre of el salvador" -- a dry title for an amazingly researched and kind of startling book that refutes the claim that the 1932 uprising in el salvador was communist-inspired and gives abundant space and evidence to counter-claims that it that was an indigenous-led revolt. the implications for this revelation are enormous, especially as the right AND the left have propped up the political theory that the ongoing battle in el salvador is a war between communist and capitalist forces more than a struggle between indigenous people and colonialist thugs.

the book has a whole section about roque dalton and another section that describes his meetings with miguel marmol in preparation for this testimonial.