Feature

Still hungry for change

Twelve years of war seems to have changed little for poor people in El Salvador. Jacqui Webster reports on food and health projects being developed in response to chronic unemployment and food shortages

Once, like Kosova today, El Salvador was the focus of international attention. Now it is largely forgotten. During 12 years of civil war, the US government poured millions of dollars into supporting the government’s suppression of uprising. At the same time, international development and relief agencies poured in aid and support.

Once the war ended, in January 1991, aid continued, predominantly in the form of reconstruction programmes and ‘food for work’ projects. Now most of that has ended. Progress with land reform has been slow. Many people still have no access to land or credit. Despite the gradual recovery of the economy, there is massive and rising unemployment and many people are struggling to feed themselves. It is estimated that up to 70 per cent of children are malnourished in El Salvador. Exacerbated by poor diet, diseases such as malaria, dengue and typhoid are rampant.

In the face of this adversity, many organisations are struggling to establish community health projects and food projects which help people to help themselves. These include women’s soya projects, natural medicine projects, co-operative food growing and projects to stimulate and support the commercial production of organic coffee. In addition to improving people’s diets and health, some of these projects have the potential to generate employment and small amounts of revenue which, in turn, may help to combat the growth of unemployment and poverty. But such projects need external support or are unlikely to survive.

In Celina Ramos, a small village at the foot of the Guazapa mountain range, north of the capital San Salvador, I talked to Joel Sanchez Bonillo, a former commandant in the left-wing FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Party).

He explained how co-operative sugar cane production functioned. The workers plant, weed and harvest the cane together and then sell it to a refinery. At the end of the year, the profits are divided evenly among the workers according to the total number of days worked.

But in addition to this work, each person needs to grow their own basic foods (cereals and beans) for subsistence. The profits from the co-operative are not sufficient to pay off the loans that were needed to buy fertilisers and to start to work the land. Gradually, the farmers have fallen into more and more debt and are unable to pay off the loans, threatening the sugar cane production. Banks and credit institutions are refusing to give them more loans. Some non-governmental agencies (NGOs) have even stopped giving agricultural loans as many communities cannot pay them back.

The result is increasing poverty and dependency. The banks are recouping their losses by claiming the farmers’ land to pay off the debts. In such cases the land reforms have been pointless: the farmers are again left with nothing.

Joel Sanchez Bonillo explained how, after the 1991 peace agreements, many institutions implemented food for work programmes. The people did community work, such as soil conservation, planting trees or building, in return for food. In view of El Salvador’s unemployment rate and the lack of food, he felt that such programmes had been very effective. Now there is peace, people are presumed to be able to work, so food for work programmes have ended.

In Celina Ramos, many communities survive on tortillas (bread made of ground maize) and salt. Most development projects focus on education and training because the agencies behind them feel that people will just get accustomed to receiving food which will impede development.

But it is impossible to have a solvent economic situation when taxes are high, products expensive and profits small. As a result, people are being forced to hand over their land deeds to receive credit and if they re unable to pay off the debt then they lose their land.

In Usulutan, the situation is a little different. It was one of the areas with most conflict during the war. The pre-war thriving coffee plantations were abandoned as it became impossible to work. Most of the workers joined the guerrilla army when their traditional form of employment disappeared. The people were forced to grow beans and maize to feed themselves.

COMUS was set up as a clandestine organisation in the late 1980s when civilians in the area began to organise themselves to improve their situation. It is now dedicated to supporting land reform and promoting co-operative farming. Credit programmes are implemented and backed by technical advice from agronomists, as many of the farmers have only ever worked as labourers and lack technical expertise.

COMUS also supports a primary health care programme. Health promoters are trained in each village and then go on to train other members of the village running communal workshops and activity days. The women explained their situation to me. They had up to seven years’ experience, having started first aid classes with Medicin Sans Frontières during the war. As it was not possible to study during the war they relied on practical experience, learning which medicines to administer for common illnesses, carrying out vaccination programmes and working as midwives.

Now the women are most commonly called upon to deal with respiratory illnesses, dengue, conjunctivitis and amoebic stomach problems. The health unit is open from Monday to Friday but its catchment area is too large and the women do not have enough resources to meet the level of health need. The women explained how they urgently needed more money and support in order to be able to help everyone who needed it.

As many of the prevalent illnesses could be avoided by an improved diet, COMUS decided to develop the woman’s soya project. Soya is very high in nutritional content and is also straightforward for small farmers to grow as it is similar to cultivating frijoles (beans), one of the staple foods.

Building on skills and knowledge that the women had obtained in Nicaraguan refugee camps during the war, COMUS supported them to grow soya organically on communal land. The women went on a training course to learn how to cultivate soya and prepare a variety of different healthy foods. COMUS provided them with a mill for grinding and other basic cooking equipment which enabled them to prepare the products and share them with other members of the community.

Soya beans are onerous to prepare. After soaking for at least 10 hours in water, the husks need to be removed and the beans rinsed thoroughly in cold water. They are then ground and can be used as a substitute for flour in making a variety of things, including tortillas and doughnuts. The soya can also be boiled in water to make soya milk which can be used as a substitute for cows’ or goats’ milk or made into cheese.

With the help of COMUS, the women have developed a range of recipes and visit women in other communities on a regular basis. They explain how to produce organic soya and its health and environmental benefits. They demonstrate the soya beans’ versatility by cooking a variety of foods and sharing them with the other women.

Several groups have expressed an interest in developing their own soya projects and COMUS is examining ways of expanding the project into a commercial venture for the women.

COMUS is also promoting production of organic coffee, using specialised techniques to renovate the land in six productive areas.

But while such projects clearly have a positive impact on the lives of the people involved, they can do little to address the dire economic situation. The communities barely manage to grow enough food to sustain themselves and there are no permanent projects to improve their incomes. Without the support of COMUS, the people in the Usulatan community felt it would be difficult to survive.

It is depressingly clear that, for many people, there have been few improvements since the peace agreements. Many of the projects implemented since have failed due to lack of external support.

Joel Sanchez in Celina Ramos explained how the women’s horticultural project which was being developed when I was there six years ago had been unsuccessful. The husbands did not want their wives working, the women did not enjoy going to the market and the lack of support from development organisations meant that the project had become unviable.

‘We continue to struggle,’ said Eulalio Flores, the father of the family I stayed with, ‘but we are too poor now.’

Despite housing and water projects, people’s are hungry. Many people still have no land and those who do lack either the skills or the credit, or both, to harvest it successfully.

It is a depressing picture. El Salvador has the fastest growing economy in Central America and its financial and service industries are booming. But these do little to support the majority of the population.

Walking down Boulevard de los Heroes in San Salvador you could be forgiven for imagining that you were in any developed country. But wander back towards the old city, to where the cathedral still stands, half demolished from the war, and you cannot avoid startling poverty.

It was the unequal distribution of land and wealth which led to the brutal 12-year civil war, in which as many as 75,000 people were killed and millions more displaced. It seems little has changed. The war opened up a political space in which people can now express their discontent but economically and socially things are much the same.

Community food and health projects that bring some, albeit small, economic benefits to poor communities and help reduce the amount of illness go some way towards addressing the situation. But unless something is done to address the chronic shortage of jobs and the widening gap between El Salvador’s rich minority and poor majority, then such projects will struggle and the people involved, as in Celina Ramos, will become disillusioned. People are fighting to feed themselves and their families. For a country that has fought so long to achieve some form of justice, this is surely no reward.