Complete Thesis_double spaced abstract.pdf

coffee plantations was affected more by the price of coffee in the international market than by
mechanization. Lastly, increasing unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s was related to the
declining industrial sector. While employment in the industrial sector had never matched the
initial expectations, the situation in the 1980s was even worse.
Unemployment was driven higher in rural and urban centers by the 1976 earthquake.
Approximately 25,000 people perished as a result of the earthquake, 70,000 were injured and 1.25
million were left without homes or shelter when their homes were destroyed in the earthquake
(Jonas, 1991, 95). In many of the smaller cities and towns every single building was destroyed;
the highest number of homeless unemployed earthquake survivors migrated to Guatemala City.
The population of the capital city nearly doubled from the 1960s to the 1980s. The city did not
have the necessary infrastructure to deal with the massive influx; peasants living in shanty towns
on the edge of the city did not have access to sanitation, potable water, healthcare, or educations.
Individuals who were able to maintain employment through the period saw their wages
decline throughout the decade. Laborers in 1979 earned just “74% of the real wage they had
earned in 1970…rural workers earned 54% compared with 1970” (Jonas, 1991, 95).
Furthermore, wages between all agricultural laborers were not equal, permanent laborers made
double the wages of seasonal laborers. There were serious wage inequities between subsistence
farmers and migrant laborers, the subsistence farmers earned US$43.34 per year while the
migrant laborers earned US$28.64 per year (Dunkerly, 1988, 182). Decades of economic
dependency on a few agricultural commodities resulted in corresponding decades of
underemployment in Guatemala. Between 1972 and 1985 only “35% of the economically active
population is fully employed year-round” (Jonas, 1991, 96). The percentage of underemployed
was higher in rural areas; in 1979 81% of coffee workers are employed only during the coffee
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