Page 18 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread
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richness’ was well on its way based economy of El Salvador and in 1932 peasants and workers,
to becoming one of America’s who were being forced to work at starvation wages, armed
worst civic and environmental themselves with machetes and sticks and rose up in rebellion
catastrophes. Privatization of against the plantation owners. The fledgling Communist party,
land was proclaimed by law which was not originally involved in planning the revolt, tried to
and the oligarchy, the “fourteen help by channeling the mass uprising towards the formation of
families”, came to own all the a more progressive state. At this point, the oligarchy, led by the
best land which they turned Melendez-Quinones families, had the option of implementing
into plantations to grow coffee economic and democratic reforms. Instead they chose genocide.
as a cash crop for export to The peasant uprising lasted for only a few days. Defeat came
foreign markets. Communal even without intervention of U.S marines who waited on ships
property was outlawed, and just outside the port of Acajutla in case the government troops
landlords were authorized required support in their slaughter. In less than a month more
to expropriate the peasant’s than 30,000 Salvadoran peasants, including women and children,
lands, condemning them to a were assassinated in cold blood by the army and by paramilitary
life of servitude. The society groups that had been organized and paid for by the coffee
became one of ‘haves’ and barons. Farabundo Martí, Secretary General of the Salvadoran
‘have-nots’. This situation Communist Party, was captured and executed. El Salvador
was exacerbated by the U.S. became a military dictatorship. Militarism was institutionalized
adoption of an aggressive by the armed forces while the business stratum, the oligarchy,
counterrevolutionary expanded and diversified the plantation system and export
foreign policy aimed economics, adding sugar and cotton to the cash-crop enterprizes.
towards turning the Central More and more peasants were driven off their land as foreign
American region into the trade and banking became privatized. U.S. investors moved in and
United States’ “backyard”, a the gape between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ widened.
zone they aspired to control
economically, politically, and Wage earners were paid less than a dollar a day and vast
militarily. As stated in the numbers of Salvadorans were living at or below subsistence level.
Monroe Doctrine, U.S. policy The estates of the very rich, less than 2% of the population, were
was to be, “Central America encircled by high walls and well separated from the barrancas,
for the North Americans.” All the gullies or ravines, where the poor were crowded together
the root causes for the future by the thousands in shacks of cardboard and surrounded by
conflicts in twentieth century garbage. There was no healthcare available for the poor and very
El Salvador were in place. little food. More and more people descended into a situation of
unemployment and impoverishment and became vulnerable to
The worldwide depression extreme exploitation. By the late 1970s somewhere around 60%
in 1929 shattered the coffee of rural families were either landless or were living on inadequate
14 MARLIE BURTON-ROCHE LANDSCAPE & BREAD