Hope amid Northern Triangle violence
An entertaining read from Richard Lapper on visiting the Northern Triangle thirty years after covering the wars there in 1981-1982 and beyond for Americas Quarterly.
Okay, I have some problems criticizing international middle class perspectives on Central America but then reporting from Suchitoto and the area surrounding Camino Real in El Salvador; relying upon the insights of Joaquin Villalobos to provide an understanding of contemporary El Salvador; referring to the Northern Triangle countries as "not perfect" democracies; and being excited about palm oil opportunities.
Suchitoto is disappointing. It's a great little tourist town outside of San Salvador. However, internal FMLN fighting over control of the mayor's office seems to have been detrimental to the town's development. From what I heard as well, some of the small shops that produce uniforms for school children do not reap all the benefits one would expect. It's great that school children have free uniforms and that the uniforms are not being mass produced by one or two clothing companies. However, these small shops need to pay bribes to remain in the network of shops allowed to produced such uniforms to governmental officials, in addition to the extortion that they have to pay local gangs. I don't know if this is every shop in the country but at least a few in Suchitoto.
I appreciate his call to pay more attention to the agricultural sectors, especially given the environmental challenges of the last few years. The economic opportunity for nontraditional agricultural exports is probably greatest for Guatemala and Honduras; I'm not so sure about El Salvador. The shift to nontraditional agricultural exports has been recommended for what, about thirty years? I guess there's been some progress but something must be up if what we have now is the result of thirty years of policies that have encouraged such change. Perhaps CAFTA-DR will help once all of its conditions are implemented.
I'm happy that Lapper is somewhat optimistic about Guatemala and Honduras' ability to turn things around, to actually continue building on the momentum of the last few years. He doesn't really say much about El Salvador's ability to do so.
Okay, I have some problems criticizing international middle class perspectives on Central America but then reporting from Suchitoto and the area surrounding Camino Real in El Salvador; relying upon the insights of Joaquin Villalobos to provide an understanding of contemporary El Salvador; referring to the Northern Triangle countries as "not perfect" democracies; and being excited about palm oil opportunities.
Suchitoto is disappointing. It's a great little tourist town outside of San Salvador. However, internal FMLN fighting over control of the mayor's office seems to have been detrimental to the town's development. From what I heard as well, some of the small shops that produce uniforms for school children do not reap all the benefits one would expect. It's great that school children have free uniforms and that the uniforms are not being mass produced by one or two clothing companies. However, these small shops need to pay bribes to remain in the network of shops allowed to produced such uniforms to governmental officials, in addition to the extortion that they have to pay local gangs. I don't know if this is every shop in the country but at least a few in Suchitoto.
I appreciate his call to pay more attention to the agricultural sectors, especially given the environmental challenges of the last few years. The economic opportunity for nontraditional agricultural exports is probably greatest for Guatemala and Honduras; I'm not so sure about El Salvador. The shift to nontraditional agricultural exports has been recommended for what, about thirty years? I guess there's been some progress but something must be up if what we have now is the result of thirty years of policies that have encouraged such change. Perhaps CAFTA-DR will help once all of its conditions are implemented.
I'm happy that Lapper is somewhat optimistic about Guatemala and Honduras' ability to turn things around, to actually continue building on the momentum of the last few years. He doesn't really say much about El Salvador's ability to do so.
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