20 - El Salvador

Summary

Despite a significant increase in the number of studies – largely of a secondary character – since 1980, the scholarly literature on El Salvador in the twentieth century remains thin. Although they were written before the political developments that prompted the ‘new wave’ of books, two English-language texts remain indispensable as general surveys: David Browning, El Salvador: Landscape and Society (Oxford, 1971), which adopts a predominantly geographical approach to socio-economic development, and Alastair White, El Salvador (London, 1973), which devotes more space to history and politics. Mario Flores Macal, Origen, desarrollo y crisis de las formas de dominatión en El Salvador (San José, C.R., 1983), and Rafael Guidos Vejar, Ascenso del militarismo en El Salvador (San José, C.R., 1982) provide general overviews of political history, while the work of Rafael Menjívar links politics more closely to developments in political economy: see Crisis del desarrollismo: Caso El Salvador (San José, C.R., 1977); El Salvador: El eslabón más pequeno (San José, C.R., 1981); and Formation y lucha del proletariado (San José, C.R., 1982). Menjívar also contributes a chapter to Centroamérica hoy (Mexico, D.F., 1976), an important collection of comparative essays that situates the country within a regional framework. W. H. Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer Wars (Stanford, Calif, 1979) also takes a comparative approach, contrasting the rural subsistence economy of the country with that in Honduras, a counterpoint being given by Eduardo Colindres, Fundamentos económicos de la burguesía salvadorena (San José, C.R., 1977), which was the basis for the author’s many articles on the landlord class and direction of the modern coffee and cotton sectors.