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El Salvador The Middle Sector
The small proportion of society constituting a middle class--
about 8 percent in the early 1980s--included skilled workers,
government employees, professionals, school teachers,
smallholders, small businessmen, and commercial employees. These
people were caught between the polar extremes of wealth and
poverty. Not being members of the traditional oligarchy--although
the great success of nineteenth- century coffee production had
stimulated the development of the middle sector as well as of the
elite--the middle sector traditionally had little direct
influence in government affairs. Similarly, although profoundly
influenced by the United States, members of this population
sector did not have sufficient wealth to enjoy ready access to
schooling or travel in that country. Instead, having only a
tenuous toehold on property and limited power within the existing
Salvadoran system, the middle sector found its position
precarious and felt seriously threatened by El Salvador's
political and economic crises.
After the depression of the 1930s, the middle sector hoped to
improve the standard of living for all Salvadorans through
agrarian reform and through legalized peasant organizing. In the
1960s and early 1970s, various professionals and other members of
the middle class tried to promote meaningful elections and called
for a transition to more open and participatory democratic
procedures. As economic and political crises deepened in the
1970s and 1980s, however, many members of the middle class became
alienated by the rising tide of political violence. Many of these
Salvadorans wished that the problem of "subversives" would simply
go away so that order, stability, and economic growth could be
restored. Others, however, chose to become increasingly active in
political parties or popular organizations.
Data as of November 1988
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