Coffee and Power

In the revolutionary decade between 1979 and 1992, it would have been difficult to find three political systems as different as death-dominated El Salvador, peaceful social-democratic Costa-Rica, and revolutionary Sandinista Nicaragua. Yet when the fighting ended, all three had found a common destin [...]
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In the revolutionary decade between 1979 and 1992, it would have been difficult to find three political systems as different as death-dominated El Salvador, peaceful social-democratic Costa-Rica, and revolutionary Sandinista Nicaragua. Yet when the fighting ended, all three had found a common destination in democracy and free markets. This text fuses political economy and cultural analysis to show that both the divergent political histories and their convergent outcome were shaped by a single commodity: coffee. Jeffrey Paige's analysis challenges current theories of dictatorship and democracy, and shows that revolution in Central America is deeply rooted in the histories of the coffee elites.