This article explores the long arc of colonial terror in 1930s El Salvador through the establishing of Race Laws that both expelled and prohibited the migration of visibly African-descended peoples into the country whilst the state embarked on the systematic murdering of indigenous peoples as part of an anti-communist crusade. This essay investigates the effect of the Race Laws and 1932s La Matanza massacre of indigenous bodies through a settler colonial optic focused on the biopolitics of colonial terror as a mode of social control. The piece concludes with a reflection on the efficacy of settler colonialism as an analytic for reevaluating Central American history.