American Indian Culture and Research Journal

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.