E/CN.4/1503
Annex I page 36
1980 - EL SALVADOR (THE REPUBLIC OF)
111.
In the last two years, a range of factors having their origins in the socio-economic and socio-political history of El Salvador have combined with severe population pressures to bring about a national crisis of which one of the most dis- turbing manifestations has been the large-scale uprooting of people. The Government reports more than a quarter of a million as being internally displaced, while at least an equivalent number has reportedly left the country.
112. Armed confrontation between opposing interests has been a feature of the country's political life over a long period of time. Civilian and military régimes have been rapidly succeeding one another (not without frequent resort to politi cal assassination). The economic and political evolution has benefited essentially the landowning and entrepreneurial class. Peasant uprisings at the end of the last century were harshly repressed and
repressed and legislation enacted to control the increasing numbers dispossessed by
by the wholesale conversion of large sectors of the rural economy to coffee production. (Two per thousand of the population came to be in possession of 40 per cent of the land, while over 90 per cent had only 22 per cent of the land.)
power.
113. In the twentieth century, few reforms have been introduced while popular movements have found no favour with those holding A major insurrection in 1932 led to the masacre of over thirty thousand people. Meanwhile, the population has
a million to leapt spectacularly from three-quarters of
4.4 million since 1900, doubling in the last twenty years. With 200 inhabitants per square kilometre, El Salvador has the highest population density of the hemisphere - and, with a capital-intensive rather than a labour-intensive approach to industrialization, it has no real outlets for its large labour pool, especially since the Government of Honduras in 1969 told 300 000 Salvadorians
Salvadorians living and working on
on its territory to go home. It has remained one of the poorest countries in the Americas.
114. The Government has So far had difficulty to attain the basic objectives it had announced on taking power after a coup in October 1979. Among these were the disbanding of para- military right-wing groups like ORDEN, an amnesty for political prisoners and exiles, the renewal of activity by political and trade union organizations, a radical agrarian reform (of which a first phase has been initiated), nationalization of the banks and of foreign trade, the operation of private enterprise in the national interest, a pluralist government and the establish- ment of a dialogue with the revolutionary armed organizations.
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