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The three-phase land reform was originally proposed within months of the October 1979 coup that installed a reformist civilian-military junta. Phase 1 of the reform, implemented at the time Duarte joined the junta in March 1980, expropriated 426 private Salvadoran estates that exceeded 1,235 acres. Phase 2, calling for the takeover of farms ranging in size from 247 to 1,235 acres, encountered strong opposition from the right, including the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) led by Roberto d'Aubuisson. Under a compromise adopted last December, Phase 2 now applies only to farms larger than 605 acres, but so far, none of the land in question has been redistributed. Phase 3, known as the land-to-the-tiller program, also went ahead in 1980. It allowed an estimated 117,000 landless farmers and their families to purchase the small (up to 17 acres) plots that they had previously worked as tenants or sharecroppers. In all, some 228,230 acres of land, or 6% of El Salvador's cultivated area, was subject to change of ownership under Phase 3.
Initially, the land-reform program was viewed with distaste by the Reagan Administration: the White House did not approve of government expropriation of private property. Gradually, however, the Administration has embraced agrarian reform as the kind of worthy effort in El Salvador that justifies large accompanying doses of U.S. military aid. Duarte left no doubt in Washington last week that, although he would water down some of his more liberal economic views, he would not sacrifice land reform to please El Salvador's conservative business community. On the contrary, Duarte's election could accelerate the process.
Since 1980, the program has won $113.3 million in financial support from Congress. In January, however, the inspector-general's office of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) issued a controversial 40-page report that took a searching look at the reform and concluded politely that it had had "mixed results." Among other things, the audit claimed that many of the 317 major farm cooperatives created under Phase 1 are "not financially viable." The future of those plantations, which produce mainly coffee, cotton and sugar, seems "bleak," said the report, without additional government assistance. As of September 1983, the cooperatives owed a total of $400 million. "If this process continues," the report added, "the debt could total about $2 billion by the year 2000."
The report also took issue with the land-to-the-tiller program. After four years, said the audit, less than half of the eligible applicants (some 50,000 out of an estimated 117,000) have petitioned for purchase. Roughly one-third of those who did apply for their land failed to work it, "because they had been threatened, evicted or had disappeared."