6/10/05

 Impacts of CAFTA On Salvadoran Culture

Anthropological Reflections

By

 Noel Andersen 

The Central American Free Trade Agreement has been in effect for over two months now, since April 1^st, 2006, and many are beginning to analyze its impact on El Salvador. The Salvadoran mediums of communication tend to support the government's praising of a strong economic future for El Salvador because of CAFTA, although economic growth has held fairly steady at 3%, equal to the rate of inflation, and there remains a very high level of unemployment. It is doubtful that CAFTA will save the Salvadoran economy; however, the influence of neo-liberal economic imposition does impact Salvadoran culture and way of living in a form that strips people of years of tradition, traded in for a globalized version of westernization, urbanization and emigration to the US. The following is an anthropological reflection of CAFTA's impact on Salvadoran culture. 

Economy and culture are closely linked. The indigenous cultures here in Central America have always been tied to the land with a highly developed system of agriculture that included irrigation and natural growing techniques.  Central Americans who continue to live in rural areas have maintained a style of life similar to that of indigenous culture's agricultural past. For example, the word "milpa" is still utilized, meaning corn, daily bread, or daily work. "Campesinos" or farmers, still wake up everyday and go to work in the fields at the break of dawn; even if they work for a coffee or sugar plantation, they almost always have their own share of land for corn and beans. The tortilla, served with every meal, is made from pure ground corn. In the Mayan book of legends, "Popul Vuh," recorded by a Catholic priest in sixteenth century, the Mayan creation story tells of how man and woman are created by corn, the "masa" made for the tortilla.

Much of this agriculture based economy tends to be kinship-based where each family is responsible for their own shelter, plot of land, and daily subsistence, where everything is shared within the larger extended families. "Campesino" life still represents much of this kinship-based economy where families and communities work together in the process of survival. (Photo: A procession in Las Anonas community to celebrate an anniversary as a community.)

As in all Central American countries, imposing Spanish and US colonial forces have attempted to kill off indigenous people's culture and identity.  From the Spanish Conquest onward the indigenous have been massacred and enslaved for colonial economic gains. The pattern has continued in El Salvador where ten to fifteen thousand indigenous campesinos were massacred in 1932 as a reaction to a growing leftist rebellion. Likewise, the US-backed Salvadoran Civil War from 1980-92 brought similar destruction and massacres of innocent rural people in the name of killing communism.

The colonial influence has been strong in grounding out indigenous identity within El Salvador, leaving 1-2% who actually recognizes themselves as indigenous and maintain their language. One must ask the question what is indigenous culture? The concept of culture itself is fluid and ever-changing as it adapts and shifts with internal and external influences. Within Salvadoran rural life there remains a base of indigenous tradition that has been overlapped by Western influences such as language and dress. Yet indigenous presence is strong, especially in the agriculturally-based life. Although the indigenous language, history and identity has been lost, those who identify as "campesino" carry certain traditions and ways that have been passed down for centuries.

CAFTA is the modern-day economic version of the same colonial model that is methodically wiping away indigenous ways of life. Over the last fifteen years, El Salvador has seen a massive migration to urban spaces, in which those working in agriculture have been unable to compete with global markets, especially first world farmers who receive farm subsidies, like those from the US. Rural people are therefore forced to find jobs in the city.  In 1990, 70% of Salvadoran exports were agriculturally-based; in 2004 only 5% of exports came from agriculture. The exodus from the small farm subsistence to city jobs has also brought a dramatic increase in emigration to the US, where immigrants can work in similarly despondent jobs for five times the price and send home the profits to support their families. This process of urbanization and emigration also works to further westernize and modernize those from traditional backgrounds whose people have worked the land of Central America for thousands of years.                        (Photo: A workshop put on by CRIPDES on the affects of CAFTA)

 Some feel the government is nurturing this process of emigration to relieve itself of the economically poor and to re-acquire the land given to many of the displaced during the land reforms of the Civil War, so that they can now sell it to foreign investors interested in the tax relief CAFTA offers. Many Salvadorans are entering a dispute with the government over land titles, in which they have paid their loans off, but are refused the official land title that legally allows them to initiate further development projects. Because of CAFTA, the government does not want to give the land to its proper owners.

The history of Central America's indigenous culture continues today in El Salvador through its connection to the land and agriculture. However, after years of colonialism, massacres and wars, the indigenous traditions has been left to the syncretistic identity found in ¨campesino¨ life.

(Photo: CRIPDES holds a press conference and protest outside the government branch ISTA that is not giving the land titles owed to campesinos in San Vicente)

The work that the SHARE Foundation and Sister Cities supports through the Association of Rural Communities for Development in El Salvador (CRIPDES) honors the traditions of "campesino" life, as it works to support rural, marginalized communities who are still living and working the "milpa" as their ancestors had before them.  After surviving the terrors of war and repopulation, CRIPDES and its communities are working for the basic needs of land rights, water, health, women' rights and emergency relief.  As US citizens, we must become educated about the history and current social reality of globalization and its new forms of imperialism, so that we can stand up for the rights of Salvadoran people and walk with them in solidarity.