El Salvador: Background to the Struggle

In: Race & class: a journal on racism, empire and globalisation, Band 22, Heft 1, S. 63-75

Abstract

Reviewed are economic & political developments in El Salvador since the late nineteenth century, in an attempt to clarify issues germane to the coup of 1979. The government decision of 1880 that all common land should be privately owned made way for the domination of the coffee economy by fourteen families, who employed the bulk of the Salvadorean peasantry. The drastic drop in coffee prices in the early 1930s & subsequent devastation of the economy caused a popular revolt, soon broken by the military, which has since been in control of the country. Reflecting popular optimism over events in Nicaragua, the 1979 coup was a seizure of power by progressive military officers who promised political, agrarian, & social reforms. But the historical pattern of insurrection & repression threatens to be repeated once more in the confrontation between popular organizations & right-wing military forces trying to regain control of the army & the country. D. Dunseath.