Varieties of Spanish in the United States:

9. Salvadoran Spanish in the United States

9 Salvadoran Spanish in the United States The Diaspora of Salvadoran Spanish Salvadorans make up 2% of the U.S. Latino population, the same order of magnitude as the Dominican population reported in 2000 (although the rapid growth of the latter group will probably eclipse Salvadoran immigration in the future). Even before the civil turmoil in El Salvador that began in the late 1970s, Salvadorans immigrated in large numbers to neighboring Central American nations, as well as to the United States. El Salvador is the most densely populated nation in Central America, and its population density contrasts markedly with neighboring Honduras, as well as with Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and southeastern Mexico. A peasant revolt in 1932, spearheaded by Communist Party leader Farabundo Martí, was brutally suppressed by the Salvadoran government in a harbinger of the violence of the 1980s (Anderson 1971). By the 1960s, the population density of El Salvador, combined with landholding practices in which most of the available land was held by a few large landowners who devoted production to cash-crop agriculture , forced thousands of Salvadoran peasants to seek opportunities elsewhere. Neighboring Honduras, whose population density was a fraction of that of El Salvador, was a natural destination , and by the late 1960s some 300,000 Salvadorans were squatting across the border in Honduras (Peterson 1986, 6). Thousands of other Salvadorans worked in the banana plantations of northern Honduras. In 1969 smoldering resentment of Salvadorans within Honduras came to a 150 head after a bitterly disputed soccer match, and for a brief but bloody period the two nations went to war (Anderson 1981). The outside world ridiculed the “soccer war” between two “banana republics,” but the real cause had more to do with displaced workers and an increasingly difficult labor situation within Honduras. As a result of this conflict, thousands of Salvadorans were forcibly repatriated or coerced into leaving Honduras. Guatemala—El Salvador’s other neighbor— became the next major destination, as Salvadoran agricultural workers flooded into southwestern Guatemala to work on coffee, sugar, and cotton plantations. These jobs had traditionally been held by laborers from northern Guatemala, but the Salvadorans were willing to work for less money. It is estimated that as many as 300,000 Salvadorans migrated to Guatemala in the 1970s, nearly all illegally because Guatemala did not grant work permits to foreign workers. Mexico was also a favorite destination of Salvadorans, particularly after the Salvadoran civil war broke out, but Salvadorans in Mexico were never regarded as anything more than transitory visitors on route to the United States. Despite the unfriendly, often brutal treatment afforded them by Mexican authorities, thousands of Salvadorans settled in Mexico; in 1985 it was estimated that about 116,000 undocumented Salvadorans lived in that country (Peterson 1986, 9). An estimate made the preceding year placed the number closer to 120,000 (Montes 1986, 56), whereas as early as 1982, as many as 140,000 Salvadorans had been estimated to be living in Mexico (Torres Rivas 1986, 10). Of these, approximately 40,000 lived in the greater Mexico City area, with others found in Guadalajara, Monterrey, and towns along Mexico’s northern and southern borders. By the end of the 1970s, social conditions for El Salvador’s largely rural, poverty-stricken population had become intolerable, and various armed movements had arisen in opposition to the increasingly brutal attacks by the Salvadoran armed forces. A military coup in 1972 annulled the national elections, and another— supposedly reformist—coup in 1979 further undermined confidence in the democratic process. In 1980 five of the leading insurgent groups banded together to form the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), which was to become the strongest guerrilla army in the history of Latin America. A number of right-wing paramilitary groups arose as a result, complete with death squads and close links to the Salvadoran military apparatus and landed oligarchy. Following the 1979 Sandinista victory in Nicaragua the United States became actively involved in El Salvador, in an attempt to prevent a leftist takeover of this nation all the while holding off right-wing takeover threats (Byrne 1996; Gettleman et al. 1987; Lungo Uclés 1990). In the rapidly deteriorating situation the FMLN launched its first major offensive in 1981, and the civil war continued unabated for nearly a decade thereafter. In 1984 president José Napoleón Duarte SALVADORAN SPANISH IN THE UNITED STATES 151 was...