El Salvador Travel Guide

Commercial production of coffee became widespread from 1860 onwards, fuelled by the collapse in demand for indigo following the development of synthetic dyes - and the growing popularity of coffee in Europe and North America. Other exports - sugar cane, beef - also expanded, but it was coffee which came to dominate and be seen as the best hope for the Salvadorean economy. Unusually, compared to El Salvador's neighbours, finance for the boom was provided and controlled domestically. Government encouragement for and promotion of coffee created a " coffee elite ". The most significant piece of government policy was the privatization, in 1882, of lands worked under the ejido system, that is communally. Growing numbers of small-scale farmers and families dependent upon subsistence agriculture were displaced, with no access to land. Over time, as small-scale producers found themselves unable to compete profitably in the world market, land became concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, creating a tiny but powerful oligarchy . This trend became particularly apparent from the early twentieth century onwards, with three-quarters of all land eventually held by less than two percent of the population.

Descended mainly from the original colonial European elite, the oligarchy monopolized coffee production and trade, extending its interests into other agricultural sectors, industry and finance. As the interests became more firmly entrenched, so did the oligarchy's willingness to take action to defend them. The first example of this came in 1885, when President Zaldívar was forced from office. Over the next decades, until a military coup in 1898, private interests were the motivating force behind all changes in government