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El Salvador RURAL LIFE
As indicated, El Salvador remained a largely rural country
despite the growth of San Salvador and its environs. For the vast
majority of rural residents, however, land shortages,
unemployment and underemployment, and extremely low wages
combined to keep the standard of living low and the quality of
life barely tolerable.
Standard of Living
In this largely agrarian society, land distribution continued
to lie at the heart of the many problems afflicting the poor. In
1971, which as of 1988 was the date of the latest census, 92
percent of farms, some 250,500 in number, covered less than ten
hectares each and together constituted only 27 percent of total
farm area. These farms were the holdings of peasant laborers who
planted basic foodstuffs such as corn, beans, rice, and sorghum
on 95 percent of their holdings. They used rotational methods of
agriculture in which individual plots were cultivated for about
two years, then left fallow while another plot was tilled.
The 8 percent of the farms with an area greater than ten
hectares occupied the remaining 73 percent of farm area. Within
this category, 1,941 farms between 100 and 500 hectares in size,
representing 0.8 percent of the total number of farms, accounted
for 38.7 percent of all land under cultivation. Less than 20
percent of this land produced basic grains. Farms of more than
500 hectares accounted for more than 15 percent of the cultivated
land. These farms included the agricultural estates of the elite.
The data actually understated the extent of land concentration
within the upper sector, however, since some elite individuals
owned more than one farm and some large farms were registered in
the names of various family members in an effort to conceal
family holdings.
At the other end of the scale, there was a considerable
increase during the 1970s in the number of farms composed of less
than one hectare of land. These farms were on very poor soil,
often on steep hillsides prone to erosion, and frequently were
rented rather than owned. Such small rental farms were
particularly common in the hilly northern departments of
Chalatenango, Cuscatlan, Morazan, and Cabanas. In 1950 there were
70,400 such farms; in 1961 there were 107,000; in 1971 there were
132,000; and in 1975 there were 138,800. Stated somewhat
differently, in 1975 an estimated 96.3 percent of the rural
population had access to five hectares or less of generally
marginal quality land per family; approximately seven hectares
were judged necessary for a "typical" family of six people to
produce enough food and income for its needs.
Wage labor was the alternative to agricultural selfsufficiency for the majority of rural Salvadorans. In fact, by
1980 approximately 65 percent of the rural work force was
landless and dependent on temporary or full-time wage labor; more
than half the rural families depended on wage work for over half
their income. Given the lack of permanent jobs in the
agricultural sector, the low wage scale, and the number of
laborers seeking work, however, cash income was insufficient for
many peasant laborers in the countryside. In 1975, for example, a
typical family of six was estimated to need US$533 in annual
income to buy the basic food needed to survive, yet 60 percent
earned US$120 or less.
The effect of a declining national economy in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, as evidenced by a decline in agricultural
production of 7.4 percent in 1982 and 8.7 percent in 1983,
restricted the number of available jobs
(see The Labor Force
, ch.
3). Unemployment and underemployment increased markedly during
the late 1970s and early 1980s and reached such serious
proportions that by 1986, according to Salvadoran government
statistics, 30 percent of the work force was unemployed and
another 20 percent was underemployed (unofficial sources claimed
even higher figures). Of those working, a reported 80 percent
worked only part time, often at jobs lasting only a few days, or
received less than the minimum wage. Regular day labor on a
cotton or sugar estate sometimes provided the equivalent of
US$1.75 per day or less; seasonal jobs at harvest sometimes paid
as little as US$0.60 a day.
In addition, even as the number of workers receiving less
than the minimum wage increased, the buying power of that wage
declined by 65 percent from 1979 to 1983, further aggravating the
already serious economic problems of the poor. The minimum diet
was very sparse, consisting of maize, beans, rice, sorghum, and,
for a family of six, less than one kilogram of meat per month and
a per capita caloric intake that was the lowest in the Western
Hemisphere. Consumption levels in general fell by 27 percent
between 1979 and 1981 and by a further 20 percent by 1984; the
overall cost of living rose 98 percent during the 1979-84 period.
Clothing and foodstuffs--items on which some 63 percent of all
Salvadoran families spent 62 to 65 percent of their income--rose
by 153 and 122 percent, respectively.
Poverty encouraged the additional hardship of broken
families, a particularly acute problem among landless laborers
who often had to move to find work. By 1980 about 25 percent of
households were headed by women, partially as a result of men
leaving the family unit in search of work. That over 60 percent
of children were born out of wedlock was another indication of
familial instability.
Data as of November 1988
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