Tuesday 07 October 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
EL
SALVADOR
Increase in Poverty
Driven by Soaring Food
Prices
By Raúl Gutiérrez
SAN SALVADOR (IPS) - In
the village of Talchiga
in northeastern El
Salvador, 20 families
live in wooden shacks
with earth floors, have
no piped water,
electricity or sewer
services, and suffer
from high levels of
malnutrition.
The village is in the
remote mountainous
department (province) of
Morazán, on the border
with Honduras and 200 km
from San Salvador, one
of the areas that was
most affected by the
1980-1992 civil war.
But while the armed
conflict is long over,
conditions have not
improved in this village
located 900 metres above
sea level, where the
dire poverty contrasts
with the fresh mountain
air and the natural
beauty of the small
rivers and streams that
run over the rough
terrain around the
community.
The villagers also
complain that large
landowners are trying to
seize control over the
land where their
grandparents "were born
and died."
Nearly all of the
village’s 100 people, 60
of whom are women and
children, complain that
they do not have enough
land to farm, and that
the land they do have is
poor. And since they
cannot afford
fertilisers, their
harvests of corn are
scanty.
In El Salvador, where
around 42 percent of the
population lives in
poverty, the people of
Talchiga are among those
hardest hit by the rise
in food prices over the
last year and a half.
Lucila López, a
27-year-old mother whose
five children are
between the ages of
seven months and 12
years, said the soaring
prices mean that she is
frequently unable to
offer her family
anything other than
"tortillas with salt,"
and complained that
beans have become a
luxury item, at a cost
of a dollar per pound
(just under half a
kilo).
Sometimes "we only eat
twice a day," said López,
whose gap-toothed smile
clearly reflects a lack
of calcium after nursing
each one of her children
up to the age of two.
Corn tortillas and beans
form the basis of the
Salvadoran rural diet.
According to the
Ministry of Agriculture
and Livestock, the corn
harvest totalled 17
million hundredweights
(100 pounds/46 kilos) in
2007, while nearly four
million hundredweights
were imported. In the
case of beans, output
stood at just over two
million hundredweights,
and imports at 300,000.
During the 1980-1992
civil war, villagers in
this area were victims
of bombings and
massacres by the army,
which accused them of
being sympathisers of
the Farabundo Martí
National Liberation
Front (FMLN) insurgency.
The FMLN is now the
country’s second-largest
political party, after
the rightwing ARENA,
which has governed since
1989.
According to a World
Food Programme (WFP)
study, "Alza de precios,
mercados e inseguridad
alimentaria y
nutricional en
Centroamérica" (Price
Rises, Markets and Food
and Nutritional Security
in Central America),
more than 100,000 people
in this country of 6.5
million slipped below
the poverty line between
September 2007 and June
2008.
The study, carried out
among 850 people in 25
rural communities in 10
of the country’s 14
departments, reports
that more than one
million people in El
Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras and Nicaragua
fell into poverty in
that period.
The Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB)
warned in August that
more than 26 million
people in Latin America
and the Caribbean could
fall into extreme
poverty if food prices
remain high.
The IDB report also
projects that persistent
high prices would drive
up poverty rates, from
51.4 percent before the
increase in food prices
to 59.4 percent after
the price increase, in
Guatemala, for example.
It also predicts a rise
in the poverty rate from
35.1 to 41.7 percent in
El Salvador; 69.5 to
73.4 percent in
Honduras; and 41.5 to
46.8 percent in
Nicaragua.
Central America has been
identified as "a
particularly vulnerable
region," because of its
dependence on "food and
fuel imports" -- two
variables that produce
inflation, WFP country
director for El
Salvador, Carlo
Scaramella, told IPS.
According to Scaramella,
the cost of the basic
needs basket has risen
33 percent in El
Salvador in the last two
years, but wages have
not kept up with the
increase, which means a
large part of the
population has gotten
poorer, a phenomenon
that has been aggravated
by practices like
hoarding and
speculation.
This in turn has led to
"an increase in
malnutrition among women
and children," he said.
"People are eating less
and buying cheaper and
less nutritional foods,"
said the WFP
representative, who also
pointed out that the
agency’s funding is
"proportionately much
lower than before," at a
time when needs have
increased.
Since 2004, the WFP has
spent 16 million dollars
in El Salvador, at least
70 percent of which has
gone into food aid and
the rest to technical
training programmes
directed by the
Education Ministry and
the Ministry of
Agriculture and
Livestock, with a focus
on assistance to poor
families.
"It is a worrisome
phenomenon. Government
efforts to combat
poverty are sliding
backwards," said
Scaramella.
In October 2005, the
government of Antonio
Saca launched the Family
Solidarity Network
programme, which
provides a monthly
payment of between 15
and 20 dollars --
depending on the number
and ages of the family’s
children -- per child to
each family living in
extreme poverty, while
extending basic services
to impoverished areas.
In exchange for the
conditional cash
transfers, parents must
ensure that their
children attend primary
school, and the mother
and children must make
regular visits to the
doctor.
From October 2005 to
February 2008, the
government spent 49
million dollars on cash
transfers and the
provision of basic
infrastructure,
benefiting 50,000
families, according to
official figures.
The families of Talchiga,
however, say that since
late 2007, the
assistance they receive
from the programme is no
longer enough to buy
food for their children.
"With today’s high
prices, the money just
doesn't stretch far
enough. We can’t feed
our children," said
village head Antonio
Hernández, whose quarter
hectare of corn lasts
his family just two
months.
Things are especially
tough for 33-year-old
María Catalina Hernández,
who lives in a one-room
20 square metre shack
with her four children.
When she doesn't have
enough to feed her
children, "I borrow food
from my neighbours," she
said, as her
five-year-old daughter
Elia stands nearby
munching a tortilla for
lunch. Like the rest of
the children in the
village, the little girl
shows clear signs of
malnutrition.
The night before, a
coyote ate the last nine
chickens that Hernández
was raising in a little
pen out back.
"It sounds great on TV"
when the government says
they are bringing the
poverty rate down, said
Antonio Hernández. "But
if they would come here
and see what we eat,
they would see that our
conditions have gotten
worse." |
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