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Figure 3.9 Cooperativa Joya del
Pilar, 1990. Courtesy of the authors.
Between the coastal plain and the coffee highlands of Usulután runs a belt
of smallholdings. Before the civil war, the peasant families who owned these properties
mostly cultivated basic grains, vegetables, eggs and chickens for their own subsistence.
Many landless families also lived in cantones in the area. While most residents
fled the area during the early 1980s, many returned beginning in about 1983 as
conflict lessened. At the end of the 1980s, some of these smallholdings were occupied
by insurgent cooperatives. The Cooperativa La Joya del Pilar ("Jewel of
Pilar") was a cooperative of mostly landless residents that occupied several
smallholdings in the hamlet of La Joya (Figure 3.8). Along the northern and eastern
edge of the map the occupied properties are indicated by the crosshatching around
their borders, shown in red. Most of the smallholdings are planted in corn, but
the three in the upper right-hand corner are used for cattle. When I asked why
some smallholdings but not others had been occupied, local leaders responded that
those properties occupied had been abandoned or were owned by people who had not
"cooperated" during the civil war.
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