Finca Los Naranjos

Coffee arrived in El Salvador in the 1880s and soon became a major wealth generator for the country’s elite rulers. Indigo, the plant that was used to dye cloth that iconic blue, had long been the main export crop for both El Salvador and Guatemala. However, in the 1880s, as new, cheaper, man-made dyes became available, the country’s indigo export business gradually disappeared.

As coffee supplanted indigo as the country’s biggest export crop, the small, landholding elite who possessed large swathes of land benefited. These elites were almost all deeply connected to politics, including the president of El Salvador himself, General Tomás Regalado, who at one point owned more than 6,000 hectares. Politicians had a habit of using their office (and the military) to force peasants to cede their land to cronies and even to work as poorly- or unpaid forced labor on large estates.  

The landed elite invested heavily in infrastructure - roads and mills - that enabled El Salvador’s coffee industry to flourish. However, it was not until many years later, when land was redistributed to landless farmers, that the majority of the population was able to benefit from those investments.

By the 1920s, 90% of El Salvador’s exports were coffee, and by the 1970s, El Salvador was the world’s 4th largest coffee producer. This accolade is made even more impressive when considering El Salvador’s diminutive size. Unfortunately, El Salvador’s standing as an agricultural powerhouse was decimated by the full-fledged civil war that lasted from 1979 to 1992.

One outcome of the country’s civil war was significant land reform that disaggregated many of the large estates and redistributed land to landless workers. Today, 95% of El Salvador’s coffee growers cultivate coffee on fewer than 20 hectares. Estate sizes for single owners are capped at 245 hectares.