A Comparative Case Study: Memory, Law and Morality

Abstract

Comparative analysis of two Salvadoran towns with similar patterns of international migration but different historical land-tenure patterns reveals the emergence of radically different development strategies. Whereas in one case, mostly landed households with a history of farming commercially have been selling land and abandoning agriculture, in the other case, previously landless households whose members worked as sharecroppers before the onset of migration have been acquiring land and farming as much as possible. The opposite processes at work in these two cases raise important theoretical questions for both migration and development studies. Using ethnographic, census, and historical data, I examine how and why land ownership, under particular historical circumstances, conditions the impact of migration on development. Extensive poverty in Central America is linked historically to landlessness among the majority of the region’s population (Ripton 2006; Dunkerley 1988; BulmerThomas 1987; World Bank 2007). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, oligarchs institutionalized inequality in ownership of productive farmland, access to which would have enabled many Central Americans to incorporate themselves into their national economies. Instead, states constructed agro-export economies and supported the expansion of large estates through the 1970s (Ripton 2006; Dunkerley 1988; Paige 1997). This entailed expelling more and more peasants from the arable land to develop large coffee, cotton, banana, and sugar farms on which landowners managed production for export (Dunkerley 1988). Even today, as Central American leaders deemphasize the agro-export sector to instead experiment with maquiladora-based economies, fi nanced in part by growing migrant remittances (Hausman and Rodrik 2005; Gammage 2006), scholars identify access to arable land as a signifi cant means of buffering families against the effects of all-too-frequent labor market crises (Conning, Olinto, and Trigueros 2001). Central Americans who have at least some access to arable land have been better able to diversify their economic activities to ensure a nominal income or subsistence, whereas those who have remained landless suffer the greatest indices of poverty (World Bank 2007). In contrast to Mexico, where early twentieth-century revolution stimulated The author would like to thank L. Frank Weyher, Adrian Favell, César Ayala, Edward Telles, Rubén Hernández León, Dana Britton, László Kulscár, Erynn Casanova, participants in the UCLA International Migration Workshop, and the three anonymous LARR reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. The Latin American Studies Program at UCLA and the Mellon Foundation provided fi nancial support for the research. P6079.indb 133 3/6/13 11:33:06 AM 134 Latin American Research Review land reforms resulting in the redistribution of more than 50 percent of the country’s arable land (Kay 1995), land reform in Central America has been modest and late. Several scholars hold delayed and incomplete land reforms responsible for thwarting development in Central America (Kay 2002; Dunkerley 1988; Ripton 2006; Paige 1997). By contrast, state-led land reform and industrialization in Taiwan and South Korea stimulated greater production of agricultural surplus that was used to feed the urban proletariat inexpensively, thus enabling domestic industrial bourgeoisies to launch new industry locally (Kay 2002; Amsden 1979, 1994). Greater productivity in agriculture also created an internal market for urban industrial goods, as well as a platform for innovation under appropriate macro economic management (Wade 1993; Kay 2002, 2006; Amsden 1979, 1990, 2001). Wages in both sectors rose. Central American countries have largely failed to follow this trajectory. Instead, failed development in Central America has played an important role in stimulating mass migration. Vast inequities in land distribution unleashed peasant uprisings that resulted in civil and revolutionary war across the isthmus from the late 1960s to the 1990s. Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans fl ed poverty and sociopolitical violence, with more than 80 percent destined for the United States. However, rather than subsiding with the conclusion of these wars, Central American migration persists. El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras are today among the largest and fastest-growing source countries for migration to the United States (US Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] 2009). El Salvador’s signifi cant migratory history and internal variation make it an ideal candidate for studying how the explosion in migration during recent decades bears on actors’ efforts to generate development across different local contexts.1 During the past twelve years, El Salvador has ranked among the top ten global source countries for unauthorized migrants to the United States: from the year 2000 through 2006, it ranked second, behind Mexico (USCIS 2009). This is particularly remarkable given that Mexico’s population of 104 million is nearly fi fteen times the size of El Salvador’s population of 7 million. From 2004 through 2006, moreover, Salvadorans ranked eighth on the list of source countries for US legal permanent resident fl ows—fi ve ranks below China and three below India— and twelfth for naturalizations during the same time period (USCIS 2009). Nineteen percent of El Salvador’s population currently lives abroad, and 22 percent of households in El Salvador receive remittances.2 Annual national remittance receipts amount to approximately $2 billion, or the equivalent of more than 16 percent of El Salvador’s gross domestic product. From 1978 to 2004, the main source of El Salvador’s foreign exchange shifted from agro-exports to migrant remittances (Hecht et al. 2006; UN Development Program [UNDP] 2005). At national and household levels, migration affects how Salvadorans use land, manage their assets, and plan futures in El Salvador. 1. Development here refers to the ability of a society to organize its production and distribution of goods and services to maximize the welfare of as many people as possible (Block 1990). 2. However, whereas in some municipalities nearly 75 percent of households engage in migration, in others fewer than 10 percent do (Andrade-Eekhoff 2003; UNDP 2005). P6079.indb 134 3/6/13 11:33:06 AM LAND TENURE, MIGRATION, AND DEVELOPMENT 135 At the same time, migration occurs across communities with highly variable land-tenure patterns. In some municipalities, few households historically owned their own land, whereas in others, the majority did (Lardé y Larín 2000; Ripton 2006). How do preexisting land-tenure patterns affect the development strategies that local households in high-migration communities pursue? LAND TENURE, MIGRATION, AND DEVELOPMENT: MAKING CONNECTIONS The nature of the relationship between migration and development has long divided scholars. Some scholars draw on modernization theory and argue that development stimulates migration by disrupting peasants’ farming communities (Massey 1988; Durand and Massey 1992; Taylor et al. 1996). This migration, in turn, enables money and ideas to fl ow from more advanced developing countries to less developed ones, and itself becomes a force for development (Massey 1988, 282, 398; Sana and Massey 2005; Levitt and Nyberg-Sørensen 2004). However, once enough jobs are created through urbanization and industrialization, synonymous with development in this view, pressures to migrate will weaken (Massey 1988). In sharp contrast to this view, another set of scholars draws on dependency theories of development to argue that the reverse is true (e.g., Binford 2003; Weist 1984; Reichert 1981). Lack of employment, poor infrastructure, and poor-quality public services stimulate migration, which depletes sending communities of young and able workers, which in turn dampens development prospects. In this view, underdevelopment begets migration and further underdevelopment. Because several scholars have already documented the debate between so-called optimists and pessimists on the question of migration’s developmental impact per se (most recently, see Haas 2010), I focus on the extent to which those engaging in this debate address the issue of land tenure more specifi cally. I then turn briefl y to scholarship that suggests how state policy may affect the relationship between land tenure, migration, and development in El Salvador. From a modernization perspective, Massey (1988, 391–393) argues that capital investment and land consolidation are necessary to modernize agriculture and promote development. By the same token, these processes are labor saving rather than labor generating. Modernization of agriculture thus stimulates international migration among displaced peasant farmers, at least until cheap foodstuffs produced through modern agriculture create enough domestic industry to absorb displaced rural workers (Massey 1988; Durand and Massey 1992). Further, rural households receiving remittances are likely to expand the modernization of agriculture by acquiring larger landholdings and investing in new labor-saving technologies, thus perpetuating migration (Durand and Massey 1992, 18–19, 26; see also Massey et al. 1987; Massey 1988, 282, 398; Sana and Massey 2005). Although her work addresses the effects of land tenure on migration and not the effects of land tenure on development, Van Wey (2005) similarly found that members of households with large amounts of land (far above average) are likely to migrate in order to secure capital for investment in acquiring more land and improving production (see also Findley 1987). Although members of landless households also migrate to purchase land, they are less likely to continue to migrate to purP6079.indb 135 3/6/13 11:33:06 AM 136 Latin American Research Review chase more land once their household has acquired some, even small amounts (in