[Mb-civic] In El Salvador, an invasion of American agriculture - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

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In El Salvador, an invasion of American agriculture

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  April 29, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

Second of two parts

WHEN THE US-backed government and military of El Salvador brutally
repressed their people in the 1980-92 civil war that took 75,000 lives,
Gregorio Rosa Chavez was one of those who pleaded to the outside world,
''We don't need bullets; we need beans."

Today, he still pleads for the beans.

To understand why, one can start with a 2003 article by the US Department
of Agriculture, titled ''El Salvador Offers a Balmy Climate for US
Agricultural Exports." Written as the United States pushed for the Central
American Free Trade Agreement, it said, ''Some 20 percent of El Salvador's
population regularly purchases US food items. . . . With more women joining
the labor force and fewer domestic employees to assist in food preparation,
the demand for convenience and fast foods is increasing. . . .

''Generally, people living in urban areas consume more bread and meats than
tortillas and beans. Urban Salvadorans are very familiar with US-style
food, and most US fast-food franchises have outlets in El Salvador. Food
courts in shopping malls are popular and viewed as a perfect place to
socialize. . . . US foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers are preferred by
the younger generation."

Rosa Chavez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, said this is not his
idea of globalization.

''It is taking away our identity," he said last week in Cambridge, where he
received an award from the Latino immigration advocacy group Centro
Presente. He spoke through an interpreter. ''I talked to a girl recently
who was born in the US but whose parents are from El Salvador. She told me
that she felt at home on her first visit to El Salvador because she saw
McDonald's. I see it as a symbol of how globalization promises so much
economically, but impoverishes us by stealing our soul. Right now, the
culture of globalization is more about having stuff just for pleasure,
hedonism, and power."

El Salvador was the first nation to implement CAFTA, which was not
surprising because of our continued long reach into its affairs. It has
adopted the dollar as its national currency. President Tony Saca won office
in 2004 with haunting support from the United States. US envoy Otto Reich
-- notorious for his covert propaganda in Iran-Contra -- warned Salvadoran
journalists that he was ''concerned" what a leftist presidency would do to
the ''economic, commercial, and migratory relations with the United States."

El Salvador is the last Latin American nation to still have troops in Iraq,
380 of them. Its reward is an invasion of American agriculture. Under
CAFTA, tariffs are eliminated on one of the staples of fast food, frozen
fries. Tariffs on red beans, black beans, and peas will be phased out over
15 years. ''We are going to have many peasants who do traditional
Salvadoran farming who will be driven off their farms and forced into
factories because of American goods," Rosa Chavez said.

In return, President Bush says Salvadorans will benefit with cheaper and
better US goods and industrial investments. But 48 percent of the people
remain in poverty, the cost of living has gone up, and the gap between rich
and poor is widening, according to data from the Congressional Research
Service and even the US Agency for International Development. That poverty
would be worse if Salvadorans were not receiving nearly $3 billion a year
in remittances from relatives in the United States. That cash accounts for
17 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, according to the State
Department.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 28 percent of adults in El Salvador
receive remittances from the United States. During the civil war, the
United States spent an average of about $500 million a year to prop up a
regime that a United Nations-sponsored truth commission judged responsible
for 85 percent of the deaths. Today, we give a mere $40 million a year to
help that country come to life.

Rosa Chavez called this a ''diabolical cycle." Many Salvadorans fled the
instability at our hands to work in the United States at high legal risk,
often on dangerous jobs and at poverty wages to provide the high life for
Americans and a higher life for Salvadorans at home.

''Globalization might help some people," Rosa Chavez said, ''but we also
have Salvadorans in the US who never buy new clothes, go to the worst
schools, and who send money home to people who purchase the most expensive
shoes, and shop for the biggest televisions in the malls in El Salvador. It
ends up being poor dollars sent by poor people, and for what?"

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