THE WESTERN media are focusing international attention and scrutiny on the implementation of the Esquipulas accords vis-à-vis Nicaragua. While in El Salvador, for example,
President José Napoleon Duarte's idea of complying with the accords' proposal for an amnesty for political prisoners has extended to releasing two former national guards serving
30-year terms for their activities in the notorious death squads.
One of the major reasons for the war that has continued to tear El Salvador apart for almost eight years has been the oligarchy's resistance to any agrarian reform — a central demand of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front
(FMLN). At a time when the Esquipulas Il accord calls for
"peace and social justice", there can be no lasting peace without a genuine agrarian reform.
MICHELE RIVIERE
N THIS TINY and densely populated country', where industry represents only a fifth of the national product and still less in terms of employment?, the distribution of the land and excess population in the countryside are obviously crucial problems. Today, also, 300,000
Salvadorans are working in the United
States to maintain their families at home.
In 1971, 34% of the land was concentrated in the 0.29% of landholdings over 200 hectares. These are owned by the big oligarchical families that export coffee, cotton and some sugar cane.* These three products account for two-thirds of El Salvador's exports (coffee alone represented 56.7% in
1981 and 60.1% in 1985), and are thus one of the state's main fiscal resources. As against this, nearly 600,000 peasant families are either share-croppers (47.7%), or permanent or seasonal agricultural laborers
52.3%), only some of whom also have
The problem of the landless peasants worsened abruptly in the 1960s. The onset of industrialization and a slight improvement in the standard of living were quickly outweighed by population growth. The
"football war" with Honduras (in fact, the expulsion of more than 50,000 Salvadoran peasants who had gone to Honduras in an attempt to better their lot) only aggravated the situation. From 1961 to 1971, the number of landless seasonal agricultural laborers grew from 23,800 to 102, 900.
During the 1970s, however, while no
220 agrarian reform was carried out, the gov-
International Viewpoint • February 8, 1988 ernment of the Salvadoran oligarchy, with the help of the Agency for International Development (AID) stimulated projects for inproving food crops (maize, beans, chemical fertilizers). It was of course necessary to feed the cities, and the program did not fail to make an impact. But this "development aid" did not solve the basic problem - the distribution of the land
The combination of the large-scale export agriculture of the big haciendas and a mass of dispersed and inadequate smallholdings (individual plots or rented land) has in fact suited the oligarchy. It assures abundant and cheap labor during the harvests of coffee, sugar cane and cotton, while at other times leaving a minimum for 1. With about half the land area of Switzerland (24,000 square kilometers), El Salvador has almost the same number of people — 5.5 million. The agricultural area 2. In 1975, agriculture represented 25% of GNP; industry and construction, 25%; commerce, 23%; and the state sector, 8%. Ten years later, agriculture still represented 25%, while industry and construction represented 20%; commerce, 17% and the public sector, 13%. (This is an estimated comparison. Source: Dunkerley, Der lange Krieg, ISP-Verlag, 1986, p.61. [The English version is also called The Long War, and was published in Britain by Verso, 1982]; and in the Bulletin of the Institute for Economic Research of San Salvador University, Coyuntura Economica 4/5, FebruaryMarch 1986, p.27) The trend is clear. Eight years of crisis and war have set back the precarious industrialization El Salvador experienced in the 1960s. 3. This summer, Reagan wanted to drive them out, which aroused a panic among the Salvadoran authorities. The measure has currently been postponed. 4. The first study dated from 1971. Sources: Dunkerley, op. cit., which is based on the work of T Downing, Agricultural Modernization in El Salvador, the cycles of cane cultivation or before replanting coffee trees, which forces them to move on every two or three years) have no interest in improving the fertility of lands that they will soon have to vacate and leave to the landlords. This system of exploiting the peasants, moreover, blocks any takeoff of industrialization. In what is already a geographically very limited territory, hundreds of thousands of poor peasants provide no domestic market for the textile or food processing industries that developed in the 1960s.
Backdrop to the 1979 crisis
This is the backdrop to the crisis that broke out in October 1979, which was opened by the young officers' coup d'état against the oligarchical regime. In 1976, the regime had opposed a timid agrarian reform. It called for distributing 48,000 hectares (which only 14,000 were finally distributed), forming what is today called the traditional cooperative sector.
The revolutionary junta that took power in 1979 and which quickly found itself bypassed by working-class and peasant mobilizations, promised an agrarian reform.? This project was given concrete form in March 1980 in a series of decrees — which looked impressive on paper. But we will see what their actual results were.
It is important to point out here that the US intervention in El Salvador® was stepped up at the end of 1979, a few months after the victory of the Sandinistas in neighbouring Nicaragua — accorded a strategic function to this agrarian reform, as important in the beginning as military aid. Cambridge 1978; a recent study by Documentation française, M. Dufumier: La question agraire au Salvador. Problemes d' Amérique latine, No. 83, first quarter of 1987, indicates similar proportions. 5. Source: Dunkerley and Downing, op. cit.,1971 figures. With the war and population displacements, the proportion of landless peasants must have increased further. The agricultural population is estimated at a total of 2.5 million, about half the population of the 6. Dufumier, op. cit. The yield of maize per hectare increased by 50%, and El Salvador was self-sufficient in 7. A heterogeneous group of reformist officers, pro-American officers (who were quickly to gain control), Christian Democrats (who were to divide in March 1980 over whether or not to stay in the government) and social democrats (who were to leave the government and join the FDR, along with the Christian Dem8. Today, this is the fifth largest US intervention in the world, costing $2 million a day! That indicates the priority that US imperialism accords to this small
US imperialism understood that it cou d not "stabilize" its domination in Central America, any more than elsewhere, without carrying out some sort of agrarian reform on a national scale that would win the support of at least a part of the peasantry for the US presence, and thereby limit the influence of the left opposition and the guerrillas. AID devoted "more than $200 million to this
In 1985, more than a quarter of American aid was destined for reforms and developmental or food aid.° For its part, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) financially supported the Union Popular Democratica (UPD), the main peasant union. The latter organization, founded in September 1980 and controlled by the Christian Democrats (PDC), was intended to oversee the agrarian reform and, of course, the
The recall from exile of José Napoleon Duarte, the leading figure of the PDC, and his inclusion in the revolutionary junta in March 1980, was also designed to promote reforms, notably the agrarian reform that was adopted in the same month. These reforms were to constitute the second aspect of US intervention - along with counterinsurgency warfare. Repression coupled with reforms was the cornerstone of imperialist policy in El Salvador.
This is to say that if, today, the reforms have not been carried through, it is not for any lack of will on the part of the United States and a part of the Salvadoran bourgeoisie. It is rather because they did not succeed in solving the problem of the structural obstacles in Salvadoran society, above all the resistance of the oligarchy to any reform project, even though the whole reform scheme sought to placate it. From this standpoint, the failure of the agrarian reform is a crucial setback for US intervention in general, threatening to leave only the military aspect!
The general principle of the 1980 agrarian reform was to distribute all landholdings over 100-150 hectares to cooperatives or individuals for repayment over 20 years. Overall, it promised to redistribute 47% of the country's agricultural land — no small operation! Buoyed up, no doubt, by this grandiose project (on paper), former US ambassador to El Salvador, RE White, hailed it as "the most revolutionary agrarian reform in the history of Latin
Peasant organizations violently repressed
As a "revolution," it was immediately put under tight control. A state of siege was decreed at the same time as the reform, less against the big landowners (who were to back paramilitary organizations and death squads that acted with impunity) than against the peasants, and especially the landless seasonal workers, to keep them from taking the land. The left peasant organizations were from the outset excluded from participating in the division of the land and violently repressed. 12 The Salvadoran Community Union, close to the Christian Democratic Party, and then the UPD, also under the thumb of the Christian Democrats, were assigned to overseeing the process. In return, they got the key posts in the agrarian reform institutions, in particular in the Salvadoran Institute for Agrarian Transformation (ISTA).13
These political choices were in keeping with the social objectives of this reform, Which were far from being "revolutionary." The lands were not intended for all the peasants but for permanent agricultural workers and share croppers. The seasonal agricultural laborers were excluded. Brutal repression, both governmental and paramilitary, came down on the independent peasant movement and the unions. (This was the period of massive "disappearances" and murders.) So, the objective was not to distribute the land — as in Nicaragua — but to help the small peasants gain ownership in return for long-term quit rents to the oligarchy.
Despite this safeguard, however, the oligarchy reacted violently. Excluded from the government that it had controlled for a half century, it created, for the first time, its own party — ARENA, the Alliance for National Renewal — led by the sinister Major d'Aubuisson. It resorted first to terror, and then to using the parliamentary majority that it held from 1982 to 1984 to block the agrarian reform. 14
Without entering here too much into detail's, it should be said that of the 700,000 hectares that were supposed to be parcelled out, less than half (311,300 at the end of 1985) were actually distributed. And for these lands only a fourth of the peasants had gotten definitive titles by the end of 1985.16 Over five years, therefore, less than a tenth of the country's agricultural land was actually distributed, although the reform had promised that nearly half of it 9. International Herald Tribune, September 29, 1987. 10. According to Coyuntura Economica, op . cit., US aid for 1985 was divided as follows: 43% indirect aid for the war; 28.3% direct aid for the war, 19% for reform and development; 9.7% food aid (covering the biggest shortages created by the agricultural crisis). 11. International Herald Tribune, September 29, 1987. 12. Federación Cristiana de Campesinos Salvadoreños (FECCAS), linked to the Bloque Popular Revolucionario; and the Union de los Trabajadores del Campo (UTC). Both entered the FDR in 1980. 13. ISTA was founded back in 1976 at the time of the first reform project. Led at first by the far right, it was presided over after 1984 by a member of the UCS, UPD. as a result of the latter's "social pact" with Du arte for his election to the presidency in 1984. 14. Not only against the left but also against goverment functionaries and members of the Christian Democratic Party. For example, on January 2, 1981, the chair of ISTA and two US experts were assassinated. 15. Marc Dufumier's article, op. cit., offers an exhaustive balance sheet of the 1980 reform. Here, I have summed up the essential data. 16. Exactly 85 of the 314 cooperatives of Phase I of the agrarian reform (or 26% of the 214 hectares distributed) and 13,774 of Phase III peasants (or 22% of the 21 63,668 beneficiaries). February 8, 1988 • International Viewpoint
EL SALVADOR would be. And about 20,000 peasants had titles, out of the 600,000 who needed land!
The oligarchy's obstructiveness was such that out of the three "phases" provided for by the March 1980 agrarian reform, only the first has been started. The second never saw the light of day, and the third was emptied of its substance. Phase I called for dividing up holdings of more than 500 hectares (469 estates) into 314 cooperatives. Out of 31,359 beneficiaries of this division, at the end of 1985 (for reasons that will be explained later on), only 26,163 remained at the end of 1985. Duarte suspends agrarian reform plans
ISTA took charge of this division and advanced compensation to the landowners (who got 15% of the value of their lands outright and the rest in the form of "bonds" paying a maximum of 7%). Phase II was to divide up estates between 100-150 and 500 hectares, which includes the big coffee plantations. In all, 1,739 holdings totalling 340,000 hectares (23% of agricultural land)
However, barely a month after the March 1980 decree, in view of the reaction of the oligarchy, Duarte suspended the project. And when ARENA got the majority in parliament, it passed a law that fixed the maximum for landholdings at 245 hectares (instead of 100-150 hectares). Moreover, this made it possible to keep several estates within families, thus enabling them to hold onto their lands. With the "reserves rights" that, in any case, were granted to to landowners, the lands left to be distributed amount today to 35,000 hectares, or a tenth of what was intended.
Phase III, conceived by the American expert Roy Prosterman, who did the same in Vietnam, encouraged the share-croppers to become owners. Some 150,000 hectares were to be allotted to 117,000 peasants. But, in 1982, ARENA got Phase II suspended for cotton and sugar cane plantations, as well as grain and livestock ranches. Thus, at the end of 1985, only 97,300 hectares had been granted to 63,668 families. In total, 311,300 hectares (19.7% of agricultural land) have been distributed to 89,831 peasant families, of whom, as we saw before, only a quarter have received definitive titles.
However, the oligarchy's resistance does not explain everything. After all Duarte did not fail to get the upper hand. Even if the land titles are not definitive, a fifth of the land has been distributed, and tens of thousands of peasants have benefitted.
"Benefitted," however, and rightly so, is far from the term used today by the majority of the peasants in the reformed sector! One should rather say that they are heavily in debt. Because a quit-rent has its logic. The payment advanced by ISTA for Phase land by a special AlD-assisted institute , (FINATA) for Phase III has put a burden of International Viewpoint • February 8, 1988 debt on every hectare of land distributed. It amounted to an average of 3,000 colons a hectare in the first case, and 1,644 in the second (which indicates poorer land). The peasants or the cooperatives, who were exempted from payment for the first four years, have to pay 9.5% interest on the advances given by ISTA and FINATA, which is more than the interest on the agrarian reform "bonds". These conditions explain why part of the beneficiaries of Phase I have abandoned their cooperatives. Many others would prefer individual plots outside the bureaucratic control of ISTA.
Summing up the state of agrarian debt, the Economic Research Institute of San Salvador University noted at the end of 1985 that for Phase I cooperatives, "debt has nearly doubled as a result of the interest, amounting to a debt of 49,493 colons. The debt by land area is 2,904.3 colons per manzana and 4.3 million on the average per cooperative... According to a study carried out by Robert R Nathan Associates Inc. (1985), 'most cooperatives show serious financial problems. Out of 14 case studies, only 5 have a liquidity rate (current assets and debts) of more than 1.0 and none is as high as 2.0. In six out of 14 cases, debts exceed total assets, which in normal commercial terms would indicate bankruptcy. "1
The situation revealed by this study in 1985 has only got worse since. Even AID recognizes today, in accordance with San Salvador University, that *75% of cooperatives are unable to pay the interest on their debt, which is estimated at $800 mil-
According to the same source, minister of agriculture Carlos Aquilino Duarte is unwilling to recognize that more than 40% of the cooperatives are in that
Agricultural debt reached staggering proportions
This figure of $800 million (4,000 million colons) is a staggering one for El Salvador. It includes the whole agricultural debt, both that of phases I and II and of the 1976 "traditional sector." The cooperative organizations belonging to COACES, which demonstrated on July 4, 1987, in San Salvador, have arrived at similar figures19: "The debt has reached 3,500 million colons. The value of this debt equals the national budget for 1987. In other terms, the agricultural debt amounts to a sum almost identical to that of US aid for a year." 20 Nonetheless, since the dramatic reckoning that was made at the end of 1985, the Duarte government has tried to alleviate this debt by devaluing the colon by half. The landowners groaned, since the value of indemnities not paid in cash shrank.
The major result of this debt for the peasants in the cooperatives has been that they have exchanged the old domination of the landowners for that of the banks and ISTA. Since they do not have sufficient liquidity, the cooperatives (in this case those of
Phase 1), are going into debt to the banks to meet expenses necessary for the proper running of the farms....The bulk of these loans serve to cover ordinary expenses of the farming cycle - purchases of seed and fertilizer, repairs of equipment, maintenance of buildings, animal care, wages, etc. The cooperative members themselves get "advances on income' on the basis of the work done by each of them. These advances are supposed to be paid back at the end of the cycle from the sale of harvests....But deficits are much more frequent [than profits], and any profits go essentially to paying the 'agricultural' debt. Cooperative members thus consider themselves rather to be agricultural workers. They stop working whenever the bank is unable to pay them their 'advances on incomes,' them take the place of wages. "21 Peasants under thumb of agrarian bureaucracy
This is the measure of the failure of a reform that sought to placate the oligarchy by paying it compensation. The peasants have not become the independent producers promised and so highly touted by the whole free-enterprise ideology. Those who advocated "less state" have in fact in El Salvador, through the agrarian reform, transferred the peasants from subordination to the big landowners to that of the — often corrupt - agrarian reform bureaucrats
The banks and ISTA in fact exercise direct control over production decisions. For example, they refuse credits to projects such as growing vegetables for the domestic market or melons for export, which are not considered to offer a high enough return. Thus, ISTA exerts direct tutelage over the management of cooperatives. This is a source of constant conflicts with the peasants, who demand their autonomy.
Miguel Aleman, president of the federation of cooperatives FECORAO said, for example, on the day when his association joined UNTS last April: "Life has not changed for cooperative members, despite all the propaganda poured out by the government telling the Salvadoran people that the agrarian reform sector offers advantages to cooperative members. The only thing that has changed is the form of exploitation."22 17. Coyuntura economica 2, November 1985, p.6. 18. International Herald Tribune, September 29, 1987. 19. Confederación de Asociaciones Cooperativas del Salvador, which embraces four federations of cooperatives - FECORAO in the eastern zone: FECORAPCEN in the central zone; FEDECOOPADES and FENACOA - as well as a federation of savings and credit cooperatives (FEDECACES) and a transportation cooperative (FENACITES, city buses for example). In all it includes 236 cooperatives and 16,000 members. (from Pueblo Unido, a workers' and people's news bulletin backed by the UNTS, No. 6, July, 1987.) 20. Idem. El Salvador's gross national product in 1986 has been estimated at 3,036.7 million colons by Coyuntura economica, No. 11, February 1987. 22. UNTS joumal, April 1987, p.2
In the spring of 1984, when the UPD signed a "social pact" with Duarte in order to get him elected (and thereby end ARENA's blocking of the agrarian reform), all these problems were already present, but they had not assumed the same sharpness as today. A large part of the payments on the debt only started in 1985, after four years of grace. But the crisis accelerated with the
BELIZE
MEXICO
GUATEMALA
HONDURAS
EL SALVADOR
Caribbean Sea
NICARAGUA 1986 "'economic package".
Partial victory for cooperatives
Two problems cropped up to aggravate the conflict, and in less than two years led to the breaking of the 1984 "social pact." First of all there was the status of the cooperatives. In February 1985, a majority in the National Assembly (including 33 PDC Assembly members) voted through a new law on the cooperatives, granting them considerable autonomy of management.
Duarte vetoed the bill. The governmentlinked UPD left the ground to the opposition cooperative federations, which grouped themselves in COACES. Besides autonomy in management, they called for recognition of cooperatives with 18 members rather than the present 30 and a lowering of the age of responsibility from 21 to 16. They demanded credits from the banks without strings attached (in particular abolition of "political" credit, given only to cooperatives that accept the social pact" and link themselves to the Christian Democrats), as well as better prices for their
On the initiative of COACES, a big demonstration was held in San Salvador on July 6, 1985, to support these demands. The peasants won a partial victory. The essentials of the cooperatives' law were finally adopted in May 1986, after a year of struggles and pressures. The price for beans was raised from 70 to 100 colons a quintal. However, the accord was only signed in March 1986, that is, after the harvest. That left the benefits "to the coyotes," as the peasants say, that is to the middlemen. 23
These results, for which the COACES federations got the political credit, sharpened the crisis in the government's relations with its own "transmission belts" the UPD and the Christian Democratlinked associations that emerged in the framework of the agrarian reform. A part of the UPD even participated in the founding of the UNTS in February 1986.
A second element, however, was to precipitate this conflict — the accelerated economic crisis that El Salvador has been experiencing since the devaluation and the early 1986 "economic package." These measures were supposed to stimulate exports, improve agriculture prices and stabilize the economy. On the contrary they raised the prices of imports, aggravated inflation and unemployment and swelled the government deficit, which they were supposed to relieve.
EL SALVADOR Pacific Ocean
Even the business circles of FUSADES throw cold water on the optimism that the government is still displaying about economic perspectives. "Since 1977, in many aspects, we have been seeing an aggravation of the general situation, because the process of recession has been coupled with financial disequilibrium," explained Rafael Rodriquez Loucel, FUSADES' economist.25 One index more than any other points up the extent of this crisis: Between 1981 and 1986, per capital gross national product fell by 16.7%, and after a brief period of stability in 1984-85, the fall resumed over the last year. 26 Agricultural workers losing
The new boost to exports was supposed especially to favor those of coffee. The "economic package" hoped to collect a special surtax of 15% from them to relieve the deficit caused by the war." But the results were the opposite. To be sure, in value, coffee exports increased in 1985 and 1986, benefitting from the higher prices (+48% in 1986) caused by the bad harvest in Brazil.28 But this market windfall did not last, and already doubts are being expressed about the fiscal receipts forecast
"Out of the total fiscal receipts planned for, it is expected that the tax on coffee exports will bring in 900 million colons (32.1% of taxes). This is an optimistic calculation based on a price of 190 dollars a quintal. Since the basis of calculation has changed for current prices and the price will be under $135 (FOB), the surtax will not be collected, and the ordinary tax will fall." 29 Above all, the temporary increase in the value of exports has not braked the fall in coffee production that has been going on for several years. "Coffee production dropped from 4.5 million quintals in 1979 to 2.7 million in 1984. "30 Ei Salvador's Associación Cafetelera estimates it today at 2.2 million quintals. This represents a decline of one half of total production in seven years. Between 1985 and 1986, the coffee yield also dropped from 13.6 to 12.5 quintals a manzana. 31
COSTA
In terms of jobs (seasonal ones at harvest), as well as for the agrarian revolution, this evolution has been catastrophic. In a small overpopulated country where the oligarchy has rejected agrarian reform in order to hold onto their estates, the land under coffee cultivation is declining, but it is not been redistributed and the agricultural workers are losing their jobs.
The cotton crisis is no less grave. The area under cultivation in 1980-81 58,100 hectares. In 1983-84, it fell to 36,700 hectares, and no figures have been available on this since then. In 1980-81, the harvest reached 129,000 metric tons, and in 1983-84, it fell to 88,500 metric tons. The value of cotton exports, however, indicates the decline: in 1980-81, the value of cotton exports was $53 million; in 1984-85, it was $10 million; in 1985-86 it was $38 million; and in 1986-87 it is expected to be $16
Hoping for a slight upturn in international prices, the government decided last summer to increase the area under cultivation. The target is to regain the 1983 level, or 42,000 hectares, in particular with technical aid from Israel and with AID financing in the eastern zone. But the results are very uncertain. This is for two reasons. In the first place, it was the cotton producers who in 1982 applied pressure to get their lands excluded from Phase II of the agrarian reform and also got guarantees for their prices and for the purchase of their entire crop. Then, using the pretext of FMLN sabotage, the big producers demanded government aid, with the result that the central bank "fi23. Interview with FENACOA, summer 1987. 24. There are many of them - ACOPAI, FESACORA (first agrarian reform), UCS, ANIS (Indians), ASTA, UPD. ANIS is divided into a governmental organization and another non-governmental one (which is working today with the UNTS). 25. Inforpress centroamerica 751, August 13, 1987, 26. Coyuntura economica 14/15, June 1987, p. 15. CE30. La deuda externa salvadoreña, pamphlet published by San Salvador University, January 1987, article by 31. Official figures, in Coyuntura economica 11, February 1987, p.8. One manzana equals 1.4 hectares. 32. Inforpress centroamerica 744, June 25, 1987, p.8. For all the data on the cotton crisis, see issues 734 and February 8, 1988 • International Viewpoint
EL SALVADOR nanced the deliberate failure to repay debts and capital flight."32
Secondly, by giving priority to exports, the producers are going to aggravate the crisis of the domestic market. In 1984, textile producers were already complaining about the adequacy of the harvest (they needed 300,000 quintals more). Moreover, cotton seed is a major source of edible oils. The impact of the cotton crisis is therefore predictable. It is going to aggravate the crisis of the textile industry and price rises, especially of oils.
Food production, which the agrarian reform was supposed precisely to bolster, was hit by a growing crisis as a result of the "economic package. " Already, as we have seen, the burden of the agricultural debt falls on the small producers. But the rise in the prices of imports has given them the coup de grace, making fertilizer unaffordable. A peasant questioned recently summed up the whole failure of the agrarian reform in these words: "The land is bad. Every year it produces less. I don't have enough money to buy fertilizer or enough to pay the mortgages. "35
Wages fall as inflation
In other words, despite a slight increase in the area under cultivation (even for rice between 1984 and 1985), or despite the timid agrarian reform, production of the main staples (in which El Salvador was self-sufficient at the end of the 1970s) is stagnating or falling. Maize fell from 11,000 to 9,000 quintals; beans went up only slightly from 1,060 to 1,079; and rice fell from 1,376 to 1,150. "The production of staple cereals shows a deficit of about 3 million quintals owing to drought and especially to the higher fertilizer prices brought on by devaluation," the same source notes. US food aid is Duarte's only
The consequences of this for the Salvadoran people were not long in coming. The prices that the so-called Institute for Regulating Supply (IRA) was supposed to stabilize are soaring. In April 1986 already, the gap between official and real prices was 34% for maize, 67% for rice, 98% for red beans, 70% for black beans, 18% for sugar and 8% for oils 34 A year later, the increase in prices is officially estimated at 35% to 40%. The prices offered by the IRA are notoriously inadequate for meeting the needs of the producers, and the IRA is taking only 6.6% of the production of the Phase II agrarian reform farms.35
A large part of production, moreover, is not destined for the market but for the consumption of the farmers themselves. American aid, which is supposed to make up for the food deficit, does not help matters any. AID's supplies of powdered milk have, for example, provoked a reaction from milk
24 of povers ed he note than thy al end nas
International Viewpoint • February 8, 1988 tional demand, and have completely altered the market (the IRA alone and the AID program in 1983 imported the equivalent of 46% of national consumption) 36
Pastry makers, bakers and ice-cream manufacturers cover 60% to 90% of their needs with powdered milk, ment inspections to limit this practice remain ineffectual. There is a good reason for this. In the IRA, corruption is rampant. Last summer, the unions denounced highly-placed Christian Democratic functionaries in the institute who held back the milk in order to sell it at higher prices in the
Alongside this surge of inflation, agricultural incomes remain mired in poverty. Between 1978 and 1985, real wages for agricultural laborers cultivating the coffee trees fell from 7 colons to 5.57; for those cultivating cotton from 6.25 to 3.18; for cane cutters from 5.50 to 4.48; and for coffee harvesters from 9.75 to 5.67. The situation of agricultural laborers worsened further in 1986, since the index of real agricultural wages dropped from 2.65 in February to 2.14 in December. 37
In March last year, the Ministry of Economic Planning (MIPLAN) estimated that the income necessary to feed a family was 2,607 colons a month and that agricultural laborers were getting 500 colons! As for the incomes of peasants in the agrarian reform sector, they are hardly better. We have seen that in the Phase I cooperatives, the producers regard themselves as agricultural wage workers, living on bank advances. For Phase II producers, according to Dufumier's study at the end of 1985, net incomes did not exceed 1,250 colons per family, with 535 colons representing consumption of their own products and 715 colons representing money income. does not cover all expenses for necessities (clothing, soap and food not produced on the holding), and the peasants continue to sell their labor power on the big plantations during the harvest. Agricultural wages make up on average 66% of the total income of families that have benefitted from the third phase."38
All along the line, the balance sheet is clear: The 1980 agrarian reform has run aground, and the American scheme for favoring small owners in order to "prevent a new Nicaragua" has thrown the peasants, even in the agrarian reform sector, definitively into the opposition. We should not forget here that alongside the tens of thousands of peasants who have "benefitted" from the reform, there are still hundreds of thousands without land. The massive population displacements brought on by the war (1.2 million exiled or forced to move to other parts of the country have only served to magnify the disaster. And Reagan and Duarte are still talking about a war "imported" from Cuba or from the USSR!
The failure of the agrarian reform has deeply divided the peasants. The already evident tensions between agricultural wage workers (a part of whom work for the cooperatives) and producers in the agrarian reform sector has not been overcome. They have been compounded, since 1986, by a new division within the cooperative sector. The Christian Democrat-dominated organizations strongly linked to the agrarian reform institutions have all experienced either splits (between governmental and non-governmental organizations) or outflows to other organizations. The newest of such processes, one that has been going on for two years, is a part of the cooperative sector moving toward the UNTS.39
Murders and "disappearances" resuming
The mobilizations conducted by COACES in recent years, especially its success in 1985, have contributed considerably to this evolution, and, by the same token, to the loss of credibility of the UPD and its affiliated organizations. But this reorganization of the cooperative sector is only in its beginnings, and the government is subjecting the organizations it does not control - like all independent organizations (trade unions, cooperatives or humanitarian groups) — to systematic repression. The murders and disappearances are starting again. Between September 1986 and June 1987, 130 such cases involving trade-unionists and cooperative members were registered While Duarte is negotiating with the FMLN/FDR, he rejects any negotiations with the independent people's organizations.4° And he has recently been responsi ble for the death of the chair of the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission (CDHES), Herbert Anaya Sanabria, who was gunned down on the streets of the capital on October 26.
The agrarian reform has failed; the "democratic opening" announced with great fanfare at the time of Duarte's election in 1984 has also failed. In two to three years, the scheme of repression coupled with reforms has failed. All that remains is the war and the terrorist practice of murders and "disappearances." But, regardless, from one end of the planet to the other, all "independent" observers are focusing their binoculars on the application of the Esquipulas II accord in Nicaragua. * 33. International Herald Tribune, September 29, 1987 34. Study by San Salvador University, Coyuntura economica 6П, April 1986, p.5. 35. Dufumier, cop. cit., p.81. 36. Inforpress centroamerica 757, September 24, 1987, 37. Coyuntura economica 4/5, March 1986 and 11, 38. Dufumier, op. cit., p.82. 39. UNTS includes the unions (private and public sector) cooperative, student and humanitarian associations (such as CRIBDES, Comite Cristiano para las "repoblaciones," which is for the retur of the persons dis40. Duarte's objective is not peace but to defuse the national situation on the eve of the March elections and later scuttle the negotiations (while putting the blame on the FMLN) At the same time he wants to put pressure on the Sandinistas to negotiate directly with the