EL SALVADOR: Increase in Poverty Driven by Soaring Food Prices

[Judi Lynn]

EL SALVADOR: Increase in Poverty Driven by Soaring Food Prices
By Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN SALVADOR, Oct 6 (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.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44148

On edit:

Here's the money quote which will, without a doubt, excite some forms of mock-DU'ers beyond their ability to control themselves, those who feel the world should be completely at the service of unrestricted capitalists:

~snip~
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.

I can imagine their eyes rolling back in their heads in a fit of dollar-driven religious ecstasy.

I knew this would make their day.

[EFerrari]

1. This is what happens when your leader is a commie dictator

socializing everything, right? :sarcasm:

We're looking forward to the election. Unless it's stolen, the country will elect the lefty.