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Figure 3.2 Finca Las Conchas, 1992. Courtesy
of the authors.
The Finca Las Conchas was typical of the larger coffee estates of the highlands
of Usulután. The finca’s 280 hectares (400 manzanas) were planted
almost entirely in coffee except for the area of highly developed infrastructure,
including warehouses, water tanks, shacks for short-term storage of green coffee
beans, two playing fields, tree hedges planted as windbreaks, and an office for
armed private guards (the remnants of the infrastructure can be seen in Figure
3.2, a map representing the finca at the end of the war). A few houses of colonos
(permanent farm employees who lived in small houses and were usually allowed to
plant a small cornfield in exchange for labor) were scattered at the periphery
of the property. The majority of the labor force was drawn from nearby cantón
San Lorenzo, shown on the upper left hand corner of the map. (Distances at the
edge of this map are severely distorted). During the war, the finca was abandoned,
and campesinos planted some corn within its boundaries, as indicated by the scattered
corn stalks. The mapmakers estimated that the coffee trees were about 50 percent
"ruined" (see the notation to the left of the map’s center);
presumably they expected yields to be half of pre-war yields.
click image for an enlargement
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