El Salvador Quality of Life
Campus of the Jesuit-run Central American José Simeón
Cañas, San Salvador
Courtesy Inter-American Development Bank
Given the nature of available work, urban centers offered
relatively little improvement in job opportunities for rural
migrants. Although a small percentage of the work force was
organized into labor unions, wages generally were kept low in the
urban as well as in the rural sector. During the 1970s, an
estimated 90 percent of urban workers received less than the
legal minimum wage. In 1977 the average daily wage in urban
manufacturing and service sectors was the equivalent of US$2.80.
In 1983 observers estimated that a family needed 3.7 wage earners
to buy a basic basket of goods. According to government figures,
only 53,467 workers earned enough to buy the basic basket, while
1,283,058 did not. Of those who did not, approximately 800,000
could buy no more than 25 percent of the basic basket. In terms
of purchasing power, poor urban workers earned about the same
income as landless rural workers, so there was not a strong
economic incentive for urban migration. In fact, like landless
rural laborers, underemployed or unemployed city dwellers
sometimes sought seasonal work as harvesters on agricultural
estates.
The urban job market reflected the state of industrialization
and manufacturing in El Salvador. During the decade of the 1960s,
manufacturing growth was strong as the Central American Common
Market enhanced export opportunities
(see Manufacturing
, ch. 3).
During this period, the total number of persons employed in
industry, including coffee, sugar, and cotton processing,
increased markedly, mainly in San Salvador. The increase in
manufacturing jobs, however, was not as great; this was
attributable in part to the generally capital-intensive nature of
manufacturing in El Salvador.
Although the total number of industrial jobs grew, these jobs
actually declined as a proportion of the total labor market
during the 1960s, dropping from about 13 percent in 1961 to about
10 percent in 1971. Consequently, many urban workers displaced by
manufacturing technology and newcomers from rural areas were
forced into the informal job sector or into petty thievery and
similar activities.
Because the cities, and especially San Salvador, were also
the home, indeed the stronghold, of the elite, by the early
twentieth century San Salvador displayed a sharp dichotomy
between great wealth and extreme poverty, between those who owned
expensive automobiles and those who walked barefoot beside ox
carts. These differences became more pronounced during the course
of the twentieth century. The families of the oligarchy and the
high ranks of the military lived in material comfort and in a
rather insulated fashion, avoiding contact with the poor, who
were ridiculed, deprecated, and despised but also feared by the
urban wealthy. The elite emulated West European and North
American values and life-styles, emphasizing material goods,
conspicuous consumption, and the "good life."
The city gave clear evidence of the social tensions and
crises existing between the rich and the poor. Nowhere was this
better illustrated than in the area of housing, which evidenced a
severe shortage for the majority of poor and a kind of fortress
mentality among the elite. Housing problems were dramatically
increased in October 1986 by an earthquake centered on San
Salvador, which left more than 200,000 homeless.
Of the 858,000 persons living in San Salvador in 1980, an
estimated 643,000 lived in slum settlements either in the center
of the city or on the periphery. Squatter communities included
those newly arrived from the countryside as well as the long-term
urban poor who, given the extensive unemployment and lack of
opportunity in general, had not managed to improve their standard
of living. In the approximately 100 tugurios
(shantytowns), single-room dwellings were constructed of tin,
cardboard, and cloth, sometimes with bahareque walls and
tiled roofs. The majority had dirt floors, no electricity, and no
access to any kind of water and sewage services. These hovels
typically were crowded onto nationally or municipally owned land,
such as riverbeds or rights-of-way.
Dozens of similar settlements also appeared on privately
owned land held for speculation and rented at exorbitant rates.
Often shanties were erected on such land before the owner was
aware of the fact, and rent was a matter subsequently worked out
between the squatters and the landowner. Just as municipal or
national authorities did not guarantee permanent settlement on
tugurio sites, so private landowners were not reconciled
to permanent settlement by the tenants on their land and
attempted to evict them if a more lucrative use for the land
emerged.
Slums of a different sort, called mesones, were
located in the central city. They were privately owned single-
story compounds composed of a connected series of five, ten, or
twenty or more rooms, each roughly four meters square,
surrounding a common courtyard. Mesones typically lacked
washing or cooking facilities; some included access to a common
latrine. Each room was rented to a separate tenant, either an
individual or a small family. Residents of mesones
contrasted with those of tugurios in household size, as
the latter tended to live in larger and more heterogeneous
households, partly because of the general lack of landlord or
government control over their living conditions.
Legally constructed private housing equipped with modern
facilities and appliances was available only for middle- and
upper-class Salvadorans. The homes of the elite, many of them
located on the clean streets of San Benito, the wealthiest
neighborhood in San Salvador, typically were surrounded by walls
two to three meters high or more, topped with barbed wire and
sometimes electrified. Watchtowers, gun ports, and closed-circuit
television systems to monitor the grounds were not uncommon.
In urban slums, as in rural areas, poor housing, inadequate
and unsafe water, poor sanitation, and overcrowding created
medical problems, particularly infectious diseases, that
compounded the ill effects of such poor living conditions. The
urban infant mortality rate was, however, lower than the rural
infant mortality rate (85 and 120 per 1,000 live births,
respectively, in the mid-1970s).
Well-to-do Salvadorans had far better access than lower-class
Salvadorans to medical facilities and social security benefits,
especially in urban areas. Health service delivery, though
planned on a nationwide scale, clearly favored urban dwellers
(see Health and Welfare
, this ch.).
Better education also was available in the city, and more
people were able to take advantage of it. In 1976 about 61.7
percent of urban students reached the ninth grade, as compared
with 5.7 percent of rural students. Some 90 percent of urban
children attended primary school, and over 90 percent of all
national enrollment in grades seven through twelve was urban.
Nonetheless, the urban poor had the least likelihood of pursuing
education beyond one or two years of primary classes, since
school attendance required cash outlays for materials, special
activities, or uniforms. Primary-school-age children, especially
boys, also were able to earn a few centavos (100 centavos equals
1 Salvadoran colon; for value of the
colon--see Glossary) on the
streets with odd jobs, such as selling newspapers, shining shoes,
running errands, or watching cars, to supplement the family
income.
University training was an important part of the urban
education program in San Salvador, where university enrollment
reached 35,000 in the 1970s. The main campus of the National
University, or University of El Salvador, was located in the
capital, but branch campuses were also found in the secondary
cities, such as Santa Ana.
Traditionally, the National University enjoyed a high degree
of institutional autonomy in its activities in spite of a long
tradition of politically active students. As the political and
economic problems of the nation deepened during the 1970s,
however, the university came to function not only as a lively and
protected forum for political dialogue but also as a haven for
political activists, a center for communication and coordination
of activities among politically active opposition groups, and a
recruiting source for radical leftist guerrilla groups. All the
mass organizations associated with the Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional--
FMLN) and the Revolutionary Democratic Front (Frente Democratico
Revolucionario--FDR) came to have offices there, and the
university was used as a press and a public forum by their
representatives
(see Political Parties
, ch. 4;
Left-Wing Extremism
, ch. 5).
This situation changed abruptly in 1980 when the army closed
the San Salvador campus based on evidence that it was being used
as an armory and refuge by members of guerrilla groups. The
university staff continued to operate on a greatly reduced,
makeshift basis from rented space scattered throughout the city,
enabling some 10,000 university students to continue their
studies. In the violent atmosphere that prevailed at that time,
some staff members were targeted for attack by right-wing groups,
some were arrested, and the university rector was assassinated.
With the closing of the university campus, some twenty-five
private universities, with a combined enrollment of 25,000
persons, sprang up. These schools were both far more expensive to
attend than the National University, which had charged only the
equivalent of US$36 for annual tuition, and more conservative in
attitude.
The Jesuit-operated Central American University Jose Simeon
Canas (Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas--UCA),
originally established in 1966 by the elite to provide a
conservative Catholic education for their children, continued to
operate. The staff developed more liberal leanings than its
oligarchical supporters originally intended, however. Members of
the faculty and administration strongly supported political and
economic reforms and published political, social, and economic
studies on national and regional affairs. Although the university
remained open during the 1980s, it was not immune from rightist
attacks on its faculty and facilities.
Data as of November 1988
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