El Salvador The Society and Its Environment
Girl selling fruit
IN THE LATE 1980s, El Salvador was a country with major
social, economic, and political problems that had reached crisis
proportions on a national level. These problems reflected a basic
pattern of social, economic, and political inequality that has
persisted since the colonial era and grown in intensity during
the twentieth century.
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America in
land area; it is also the most densely populated. These
conditions have combined with marked imbalances in income
distribution to create sharp contrasts in standards of living and
general quality of life between the powerful and wealthy elite
and the poverty-stricken masses. Limited productive territory,
continuing high rates of population growth, and restricted
ownership of land have led to a high level of unemployment and
underemployment among the still largely rural and agrarian
population. This population has lost much of its subsistence land
base and therefore has had to rely for survival on participation
in the cash economy, to which, however, most of its members were
distinctly marginal.
The socioeconomic plight of the rural population, largely
ignored by military-dominated governments, contributed to the
development of an armed insurgent movement by the early 1980s.
Pressure for economic reforms also played a part in the dialogue
over political change as El Salvador's rigidly controlled
oligarchic system enforced by the military confronted pressures
for a more open form of participatory democracy. Meanwhile, the
turmoil and destruction caused by civil conflict exacerbated the
problems of an already seriously stressed population.
Data as of November 1988
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