Las Catorce

The decades leading up to the civil war were a tumultuous time that up-ended El Salvador's relatively predictable and stable political climate. To give a full sense of this harrowing story, this chapter addresses several key actors and movements that emerged on the left, right, and center of Salvadoran politics and society in the 1960s and ’70s. It seems appropriate to begin with the power that stood the test of time in this tiny Central American country – the oligarchy.

When foreign journalists during the war years wrote about the Salvadoran oligarchy, they almost invariably used the term “las catorce” for the fourteen families that were said to rule the country. The revolutionary left also described the oligarchs in such terms. According to one guerrilla leader interviewed in Havana in 1980, “Some 14 families own most of the land in El Salvador. These families are also linked to North American capital through the interests they have in the American-controlled industries.”

While the term las catorce was widely used, there were in fact around 100 clans that were the effective owners of Salvadoran industries and land. But even that number was suspect as some contended that it was in fact much larger, even if a tiny fraction compared to the country's total population. According to Jorge Sol Castellanos, a 66-year-old businessman and minister of the economy, “It's different from an aristocracy, which we also have. It's an oligarchy because these families own and run almost everything that makes money in El Salvador.