Book Reveals Identities of El Salvador’s Richest Families

Common wisdom has it that El Salvador is run by 14 families. But no one ever says which 14 families.

That’s why the recent publication of a slim book called “The Richest of the Rich in El Salvador” has generated a furor here.

Maria Dolores Albiac, a Spanish journalist and longtime resident of El Salvador, has named names, telling of more than 100 families with large fortunes--and political clout to match. And she actually tells how they made their money.

“In any other country in the world, this is public information,” Albiac said at the book’s launch this month. Yet, in El Salvador, the identity of the oligarchy has been treated like a state secret.

El Salvador is marked by extreme differences in income, she found. While 700,000 families--3.5 million of the country’s 5 million people--live on $1 a day or less, 518 families earn $10,000 a month or more.

“The issue of concentration of wealth should be discussed,” Albiac said. “How is it that, in a country with so much poverty, no one is willing to talk about the other extreme?”

Economist Carlos Glower acknowledged, “We should think about the excessive concentration of wealth and the effect that has on the poorest people.” But he said the book talks about wealth as if it were a sin. “I wish our country had more wealthy people,” he said, “not fewer.”

The list has some names that everyone here knows. The old coffee families are there: Regalado, Duenas, Sol--the family of President Armando Calderon Sol’s mother.

And there are the politically prominent immigrant families, such as that of former President Alfredo Cristiani and Roberto Murray, who was an unsuccessful candidate for the nomination of the extreme right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as Arena, in next year’s presidential election.

In her book, Albiac explains how those two groups of families joined forces, strengthening old fortunes. Many of the immigrants arrived mid-century as administrators of the plantations, fleeing the war in Europe. Bored with the boys they grew up with, the daughters of the aristocracy married the ambitious--and often well-educated--hired hands.

These couples and their children brought the country into the age of industry and commerce. Some have fared better than others.

The Mezas and Ayaus--co-owners of La Constancia brewery--are increasing their wealth, while the fortunes of the Guirola coffee family are sinking, Albiac found.

Further, Albiac charges that the determination of a few families to retain their hold on power and a disproportionate share of the wealth mired the nation in a 12-year civil war that lasted until 1992, killing 75,000.

Talking about the extremely wealthy clearly makes Salvadorans uncomfortable. Albiac noted that she was accused of trying to influence the presidential nomination process--even though the book first appeared weeks after Arena had chosen its candidate.

Albiac’s book does review some of the less savory aspects of Salvadoran personal wealth, including a multimillion-dollar scandal last year at a bank run by a scion of two prominent families, Roberto Mathies Hill, who is awaiting trial in the case.

In addition, she pointed out that the fortunes of many Salvadoran families are based on monopolies.

Further, the book notes how little the wealthiest Salvadorans pay in taxes, an issue that Albiac said is becoming a sore point among European aid agencies. “Governments are beginning to feel that their less prosperous citizens are paying taxes that become international aid, making up for the taxes that the rich in El Salvador do not pay,” she said.

She is bemused by the tempest her book has caused and insists that controversy was not her intention. In fact, she said, she wrote the 59-page work for publication in Europe--translated into German--as part of an economic series.

Only at the last minute, she said, did her publisher decide to make the book available here, in Spanish.