>>450617
Can we extend this thread's scope to the rest of Central America?

They seem to have the same problems, and frankly most people wouldn't know the different between El Salvador and Guatemala

Idk but I'm dating a 10/10 Salvadorian Christian virgin qt :3 I want to marry her

>>450657
funny you say that since I am banging a 10/10 salvadorian christian qt who has never banged her bf claiming she is a "virgin". She also mentioned how her boyfriend wants to marry her, and how she'll go on with it for the money but will continue on banging me every day of the week.

>>450691
>how she'll go on with it for the money
>for the money
Well I guess it isn't me because I'm piss poor

Well they were under an oligarchy modeled on the hacienda system all the way until the late 1900s. These systems generally isolated wealth extremely. The subsequent overthrows of these governments were viewed as communist and based on the Cuban model. So with US aid and training many of these countries ended up with military governments in power which preserve previous, conservative modes of governing. In El Salvador's case however they failed to fully snuff out "communist" resistance, though really these are mostly advocates for the poor with a lot of liberation theology mixed in, especially in El Salvador's case. The terrain lacks the ability to industrialize in enough of a capacity to fulfill their own needs. Much of central America is also very difficult and uneven terrain making farming difficult although possible.

>>450622
Plantation economy supported partially on a racial basis
Huge economic disparity between upper and lower classes
Social class tensions
Plantation workers begin to become outdated due to new technologies and are not hired any more
Communism gains popularity
USA squashes communism through proxies
Agricultural reforms attempting to appease social differences improve worker rights
The most obsolete and mismanaged of plantations collapse due to careless owners not being able to modernize
Former plantation workers mobilize en masse to city outskirts
Shantytowns grow much faster than municipalities are able to build infrastructure
Children of former plantation workers form gangs
Gangs effectively become the "law" in shantytowns
The farms that collapsed in the 80s begin to grow cocaine and marijuana because they are more profitable than normal crops
Gangs gain control of drug traffic

>>450617
Salvadoran here, it's rare to see people caring about us.

El Salvador, like many Latin American new nations, got indebted to industrialized countries (mostly the UK) very quickly after its inception. It led it to form a liberal economy completely reliant on agriculture so that we could trade for industrial goods from richer countries (and for paying denbts). This meant that our economy was very weak and completely reliant on the price of our products, and that most of the wealth stayed in the hands of the already wealthy land-owners. This went on from the mid 19th century up to the mid 20th century.

For a time, there was a large popular support for the liberal system, believed to make you as rich as you were able to get, but social unrest began manifesting by the turn of the century when people started realizing the wealth wasn't moving downwards, leading to syndicalist and socialist movements.

Weary that the social and economical disparity would lead to communist revolutions, the US took down popular and social-centric governments (some more gommie than others), which helped oligarch friendly military dictatorships to take power. On the other hand, the US also helped modernize and industrialize the country, making El Salvador grow very fast in the 50s and 60s (at the expense of other Central American economies that would buy our industrial goods. This led to war with Honduras in 1969).

However, the oligarchs were the ones to benefit the most from the industrialization as well, and while the American plan called for an agrarian reform so that the agrarian workers were able to obtain their own lands, the oligarchs decided they would keep everything and abandoned the original plan. In the meantime, the military government had been weakening, leading to the formation of secret police squads completely run by the oligarchs, and in turn leading to the formation of several para-military groups that were intended to defend the people. (cont)

>>450617
Not that I know anything but the difference between all Spanish colonies and English ones is that the British gave there colonist the ability to govern themselves while Spanish didn't.

>>452037
Social unrest kept growing until it sparked a civil war in the 80s.

By the time, the growth had already stalled, but the war set back the economy quite a bit. Both main belligerents in the war (the fusion of the paramilitary groups into a guerilla backed by the USSR and the old military dictatorship and secret police backed by the US) became the two dominant political parties when the peace treaties were signed, and while the government repression came to an end, the persistent economic disparities started a raise in crime rate by the late 90s.

Meanwhile, both dominant political parties kept (and keep) being at such odds with each other, as to actively undermine all sorts of projects from the opposing party. This leads to an ineffective government that also tends to be quite corrupt, regardless of the political party in power.

Our middle class grew in the 50s and 60s, and again in the 90s, but we've been having a raise in unemployment and foreign investment lately, probably due to the political party in power right now happens to be the ex-gommies.

By the way, there were several tries for civilian governments up to, during and even after the civil war, that weren't connected either side and would have probably led the country better, but they weren't at all effective with both sides undermining them, and first past the post voting obviously favors the extremists anyway.

>>452064
Spanish colonies used a caste system based on race. British colonies simply shunned halfbreeds culturally.
Spanish colonies replaced local religions with Catholicism. British colonies only outlawed customs they deemed extremely barbaric.
Local authorities in Spanish colonies were toppled and replaced with Spanish and Italians (in the case of clerics). Whatever government was in place before was replaced with Iberian-style feudalism. British used the established systems in order to extract resources whenever possible.
Spanish structured the colonies grouping historical allies under Spanish rule (when possible). British created states where allies and enemies lived together, with Britain ad the balancing force.