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El Salvador The Lower Sector
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Village women in Santa Inés, San Miguel Department
Courtesy Inter-American Development Bank
The vast majority of Salvadorans were members of the lower
sector of the population, which was composed of full- or parttime laborers, peasant smallholders, and the unemployed. Although
there was considerable diversity within this large social sector,
most of its members shared the common denominators of dependence
on the cash economy and insufficient earning power for even a
minimally adequate standard of living. The variation within this
population reflected degrees of landlessness, types of
employment, residence locations, and relationship with economic
and military power holders.
In 1981 approximately 58 percent of Salvadorans lived in
rural areas, some as full-time estate workers (colonos),
others owning or more likely renting (arrendatarios) small
plots of marginal land, and many, both those with small plots of
land and the vast number who were landless, as seasonal wage
laborers or unemployed. During the 1980s, the number of workers
depending on agriculture for jobs increased, as a result of both
population growth in the rural areas and the civil conflict,
which eliminated more nonagricultural than agricultural jobs.
The extent of access to marginal subsistence plots varied
according to the degree of plantation development in the various
regions of El Salvador. The hilly northern departments of
Chalatenango, Cabanas, and Morazan, adjacent to the Honduran
border, contained relatively few large estates. Consequently,
subsistence farms continued to exist there. But such farms, being
small and with marginal soil quality, generally did not provide
full self-sufficiency or year-round employment. Nor was much cash
available from the sale of produce, for the government, concerned
with providing affordable food for city dwellers, kept food
prices low. Consequently, members of these peasant families
migrated seasonally to cash crop (coffee) estates at harvest
time, when they obtained temporary jobs at very low wages, or
moved to San Salvador.
Peasants living in areas where coffee, cotton, and sugarcane
were grown extensively were less likely to have access to
subsistence plots, although valiant attempts were made to
cultivate the rocky, marginal land on the steep hillsides of the
volcanic ranges of central El Salvador, where coffee estates
absorbed all good land in the central valleys and on the
cultivable slopes. The development of cotton estates on the lowlying coastal plain and of sugarcane, grown between the coastal
cotton and hilly coffee regions, also dislocated many peasants.
In addition, large-scale mechanization in the 1970s eliminated
the need for sizable labor forces on these estates. For example,
one 6,000-hectare cotton estate employed a total regular work
force of only thirty-five people. The development of grazing
lands for export cattle on the coastal plain and in some interior
valleys again reduced available subsistence land while requiring
very few laborers. In the 1970s, more of El Salvador's land
resources were used for cattle grazing than for production of
food crops.
In addition, as social unrest grew among rural laborers,
large estate owners preferred wherever possible to increase the
use of seasonal rather than permanent workers. In the cottongrowing areas, for example, the number of colonos
decreased by 60 to 95 percent during the 1960s. Overall, the
number of landholdings with colono arrangements dropped
from a high of 55,000 in 1961 to 17,000 in 1971. Permanent
agricultural workers were thought to be more susceptible than
temporary workers to political organization and therefore were
believed to constitute more of a potential threat to elite land
rights. This attitude further increased the number of
underemployed and unemployed landless laborers in the
countryside. A few statistics illustrate the situation in
general. In 1961, about 12 percent of the rural population was
landless; by 1971 the figure had reached 29 percent; in 1975 the
number of landless was estimated at 41 percent. Similarly, from
1950 to 1970 rural unemployment stood at 45 to 50 percent. By
1975 only 37 percent of rural workers worked full time, 14
percent worked an average of nine months, 19 percent worked an
average of six months, and a full 30 percent worked for only two
to three months annually. By 1980 an estimated 65 percent of the
rural population was landless and dependent on wage employment.
The small percentage of the labor force employed in industry
was somewhat better off than agricultural workers, but only about
12.8 percent of the labor force was employed in industry in 1961,
and by 1971 that number had dropped to 9.8 percent
(see Industry
, ch. 3). Their low numbers in part reflected the use of capitalintensive technology, which made it unnecessary to hire a large
work force. Jobs also were few because industry in general, and
manufacturing in particular, remained limited as a result of
capital flight caused by political instability, the unsettled
economy, and damaging guerrilla attacks.
Enlisted military personnel, another component of the lower
sector, were young peasant conscripts or volunteers who had
joined the armed forces to enjoy three meals a day and a warm
place to sleep; some of the conscripts had been impressed into
service in response to manpower shortages. After discharge from
active duty, some ex-servicemen signed on for further service and
benefits as military reservists in the GN or in civil defense
groups.
Data as of November 1988
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