1932 El Salvador Forbidden History

About

Screening of Ama: Memory of Time followed by a conversation with Salvadoran poet and filmmaker Daniel Flores y Ascencio

AMA - THE MEMORY OF TIME - A documentary film based in the life and death of Jose Feliciano Ama, a spiritual grandmaster, leader and chief of the Izalcos, a Nahuat-Pipil Nation in western El Salvador. This is the story of his family and survivors of the 1932 genocide. Don Juan Ama, nephew of Jose Feliciano, tells the story in an attempt to clear his uncle's name from historical inaccuracies and restore the family and tribe's dignity.

For decades Salvadorans have engaged in an intense debate over "La Matanza", a series of massacres that killed an estimated 30.000 of Indigenous people in January 1932. Conducted under the leadership of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, the event marked the beginning of a 13 years brutal regime and a paved the way for military dominance for the next several decades. The event also marked a dramatic shift for El Salvador in an era when the Central American nations had conducted the first democratic elections. For Indigenous people, "La Matanza", was the last chapter in a series of polices and reforms beginning in the 1920's that sought to privatize ancestral/communal lands as El Salvador transitioned from an indigo to a coffee producing economy.

Daniel Flores y Ascencio is a Salvadoran poet, filmmaker, visual artist, and human rights activist affiltiated by direct descent to the Maya Aguachapaneco/Nonualka . He is known for his central role in organizing transnational artistic solidarity movements during the Salvadoran Civil War and for creating evocative films that document Salvadoran history, indigenous trauma, and the postwar diaspora.