El Salvador 14 Families ^hot^ Now

Between 1881 and 1882, President Rafael Zaldívar—himself a creature of the oligarchy—simply abolished ejidal lands (communally held indigenous property). Overnight, entire villages became landless laborers. The laws were written in Spanish, not Nahuat; the deeds were registered in San Salvador, not in the rural hamlets of Izalco. Within a decade, 2% of the population owned 70% of the farmland. The Fourteen owned most of that 2%.

The rest of El Salvador—the descendants of those 1932 peasants, the gang members in Bukele’s jails, the migrants crossing the Rio Grande—lives in the world the Fourteen made. It is a world of extreme inequality, of deep historical trauma, of a land that was taken and never returned. el salvador 14 families

They choose burn.

The response was not small.

Take the Kriete family (descendants of the old Fourteen through marriage). They own Grupo Agrisal, which controls hotels, shopping malls, and the largest private bank. They endorsed Bukele. The Salaverría family (another oligarchic line) owns La Prensa Gráfica, the country’s largest newspaper. Bukele has attacked them as “the old regime”—but he has not broken their monopolies. Within a decade, 2% of the population owned