By Sonja Wolf

The countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America –El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras– have long struggled with social exclusion and authoritarian governments. Periodic protests were violently crushed, and the inability to achieve change by peaceful means resulted in political violence and civil wars. The Peace Accords signed in the early and mid-1990s and the transitions to electoral democracy allowed for some limited reforms, but the structural transformations that Central American societies needed remained elusive. The three countries have acquired a more urban and modern face. Citizens enjoy greater protection of human rights than in the past and can freely choose their rulers in ordinary elections, except for Honduras, which saw a democratic collapse with the 2009 coup d'état and fraudulent presidential elections in 2017. There, post-electoral violence, together with the increasing concentration of the executive power over legislative and judicial institutions, has eroded citizen confidence in public and political institutions. The progress that has occurred should not detract from the deep flaws that continue to characterize the nations of the Northern Triangle. State structures are weak and underfunded due to limited tax collection and widespread corruption. With an underdeveloped civil service, appointments and hiring decisions often based on personal and partisan connections regardless of merit, leave public institutions with little ability to build public policy. Corruption damages democratic institutions and prevents governments from allocating the maximum of available resources for the enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic and social rights. Economic power continues to be concentrated in a few hands. Deep-seated poverty, exclusion, and racism also persist and affect especially indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples as well as rural populations. Rural poverty reaches 49 percent in El Salvador, 77 percent in Guatemala, and 82 percent in Honduras. Overall poverty rates have decreased somewhat over the years, but more as a result of remittances than consistent social and economic policies. These transfers are an important contribution both to family economies and to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and in 2016 they constituted 10.4 percent of GDP in Guatemala, 17.1 percent in El Salvador, and 20.2 percent in Honduras.

Mexico City, Mexico: Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), 2020. 101p,