Coffee and power : revolution and the rise of democracy in Central America

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.