In 1932 my mother Amanda survived the “Great Massacre,” in which the president of El Salvador, General Martinez, had 20,000 poor people killed in one month, calling them all communists.
There was a logical reason for this: The New York Stock Market plummeted three years previous. When the U.S. gets poor, the rest of the world gets poorer. And in countries like El Salvador, the poor get desperate. So they organize.
That pissed off and frightened the Salvadoran Oligarchy: 14 families who owned the nation. So they sent in that guard dog Martinez. And he shut down the organized masses by killing them.
The 14 families weren’t alone: the whole country wanted to be saved. And they too believed that Martinez would save them. You could have called them the “Tamale Party:” growing admirers of a demagogue who would become their savior.
Martinez, like Hitler, also did what everyone else before had failed to do: he fixed the Salvadoran economy. He created jobs, got people back to work, started little wars with other Central American countries. He pulled the country up by its bootstraps and got it running again. My mother remembers that people admired him for that.
Martinez was a great leader. Psychotic, but great. The 14 families had done something brilliant: put somebody in power who was clear in his politics, with no allowance of questioning.
Tamale Party. Tea Party. I watched the recent Republican debates, and was relieved to see what idiots they are. But I also got worried, because we’re desperate these days, and will turn to anyone to will promise they’ll pull us out of this economic quagmire.
But the Tea Party has yet to find a good Martinez. Or Hitler. Someone with a huge, larger-than-life personality. A really, really professional demagogue. Someone who will rise like a spark that hits the gas tank.
It doesn’t help that Barack Obama is the new Jimmy Carter. I liked Jimmy, but he too depressing for our American Dream beliefs (that we can all become Donald Trump). So we elected a guy who promised happy, happy days ahead.
But Barack (and I voted for him) is worse than Carter. He yawps platitudes. He’s lost his cojones.
The timing is perfect: the Tea Party grows like burning daisies. They’re looking for someone who will fix this mess up quick. They’re keeping a watch out for their own General Martinez. Or that other guy.
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