El Salvador MIGRATION
Moncagua displaced persons settlement, San Miguel Department
Courtesy United States Agency for International Development
Displaced family, Moncagua
Courtesy United States Agency for International Development
Salvadoran migratory patterns have been shaped by
socioeconomic problems such as insufficient land, limited job
opportunities, low wages, and persistent poverty. Some
Salvadorans emigrated permanently from the country, some moved
within the rural area itself, and some moved to urban areas in
search of a better life. Internal and external migration levels
were augmented by the civil conflict of the 1980s, although
family and community fragmentation and dislocation were longstanding characteristics of life for the lower class. These
patterns can be traced to the latter half of the nineteenth
century, when communal landholdings were dissolved to facilitate
the expansion of private holdings. This action created a
dispossessed labor force whose movements came to be dictated by
the cycles of coffee production.
Seasonal migrations from home communities to cash crop
estates at times of harvest have been a way of life for many
rural dwellers ever since coffee production came to dominate the
Salvadoran economy
(see The Oligarchy and the Liberal State
, ch.
1). This type of migration was particularly important for landpoor peasants from the relatively infertile northern departments,
hundreds of thousands of whom sought seasonal work in the central
coffee regions. Similarly, as cotton farming developed in the
coastal zone, both permanent laborers and thousands of seasonal
harvest workers followed, particularly to land east of the Rio
Lempa and within the Sonsonate coastal plain in the southwest.
Between 1945 and 1969, population increase and land loss,
particularly to cotton estates, led as many as 300,000 workers
and dispossessed peasants--about 7 percent of the Salvadoran
population--to migrate to neighboring Honduras. There, as farm
laborers, squatters, tenants, or small farmers, they joined the
land-poor rural population or moved to provincial towns where
they were subsumed into the Honduran labor force. By the late
1960s, these Salvadorans constituted 12 percent or more of the
Honduran population, and they had established contacts among that
population, which was involved in its own agrarian reform
efforts. The Honduran government targeted Salvadoran immigrants
as the principal impediment to land redistribution efforts,
encouraging anti-Salvadoran sentiments in an attempt to diffuse
tensions among Honduran peasants and agricultural workers. In the
wake of the ensuing Honduran agrarian reform, in which only
native Hondurans were allowed to own land, as many as 130,000
Salvadorans were forced, or chose, to give up whatever jobs or
land they had acquired and return to El Salvador. The exodus of
Salvadorans from Honduras contributed to the so-called "Football
War" of 1969 between the two countries, and the large number of
returning Salvadorans worsened social and economic tensions
within El Salvador itself.
In spite of ongoing tension with Honduras, Salvadorans
continued to emigrate to that country, not only as landless
laborers seeking work but, in the early 1980s, as refugees
fleeing the civil conflict in El Salvador. Honduras seemed a
logical refuge for many, given its proximity to the bordering
Salvadoran departments of Morazan, Cabanas, and Chalatenango, all
areas suffering under the civil conflict during the early 1980s.
In 1981 some 60,000 refugees were in Honduras, many, particularly
women and children, in refugee camps near the border, camps
administered under the auspices of the office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Life was somewhat uncertain in the camps because of the
unsettled circumstances stemming from the Salvadoran conflict.
These pressures, as well as the monotony of life in the camps,
induced thousands of Salvadorans to return home in spite of the
dangers posed by ongoing warfare. In 1987 a reported 19,000 to
20,000 refugees still resided in camps in Honduras, the majority
of whom were children and the rest mainly women and the elderly.
Some 20,000 Salvadoran refugees also sought sanctuary in
Nicaragua, and an estimated 80,000 to 110,000 more relocated to
Guatemala and thence to Mexico, many ultimately hoping to reach
the United States. Indeed, between 1979 and 1988 as many as
500,000 Salvadorans were estimated to have reached the United
States, the majority via Mexico. In overall terms, the extent of
Salvadoran emigration to foreign countries was such that the
United Nations (UN) in 1982 estimated that one-third of the work
force had left the country. The number of refugees and displaced
persons in general was estimated at 1 million, or 20 percent of
the population, roughly half of whom had left the country.
Displaced persons remaining in El Salvador, internal refugees
uprooted by the civil conflict, followed several migratory
patterns. Some moved from one rural area to another; for example,
some migrants from the war zones of the east moved to the far
western provinces, where guerrilla groups were less active. Some
fled from smaller cities and towns to the countryside, where the
number of internally displaced persons was estimated at close to
250,000 in the early 1980s. The highest concentration of
refugees, however, was found in the war-torn departments of
Chalatenango, Morazan, and Cabanas.
In the early 1980s, many dislocated rural persons traveled to
San Salvador seeking help largely through the auspices of the
Roman Catholic Church. Conditions for these refugees were less
than ideal, as many faced severe overcrowding, continued
malnutrition and illness, and harassment from security forces in
the camps where they sought shelter. Others faced extreme poverty
in makeshift slum settlements, trying to earn a living as street
vendors.
Data as of November 1988
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