DISTILLED CONCLUSIONS: The Disappearance of the Agrarian Question in El Salvador

Abstract

A recurring theme in the study of social stability is the relation of rural conditions to political violence and revolution as well as to subtler and less violent forms of opposition and resistance. El Salvador has served as an example for study because of its recent twelve-year civil war and the participation of its rural population. Given the depth and richness of data concerning rural conditions leading up to the civil war, it is somewhat baffling to find that rural social tensions are explained away in the terms used by Mitchell Seligson in "Thirty Years of Agrarian Transformation in El Salvador".