ABSTRACT
The role of Central American economic elites has historically been of key importance to the explanations for the economic and political development of the region. Emerging mainly as landowners and agricultural exporters and evolving into multi-sector diversified business groups (DBGs), their control over productive and political apparatuses has been a main explanatory variable for understanding the consolidation of democracies, distribution of economic resources, as well as the persistent social conflicts in the region (Bulmer-Thomas 1987; Williams 1994; Paige 1997). During the past 20 years, the productive structures of Central American countries have changed considerably, partly owing to the liberalization of previously state-controlled sectors (Mortimore 2000; Bull 2005) and participation in different free trade accords, most importantly the DR-CAFTA signed between Central America, the USA and the Dominican Republic in 2004 (Sánchez-Ancochea 2008). Among the most visible changes is the move away from export-agriculture towards the services sector, and the increased presence of DBGs as providers of domestic services and goods. For the main Central American economic groups that depended heavily on control over export-agriculture, as well as contracts with and protection from the state, the open economy has signified major challenges. The popular account of how they have managed to survive in the face of less protection and increased competition is that they have become subsumed under the circuits of accumulation of transnational capital and increasingly act as the representatives and junior partners of the multinational companies (MNCs) locally. Their role is essentially to be agents of global capitalism in the increasingly integrated and similar national contexts (Robinson 2003). From a rather different point of view, the management experts predict that the process of global integration will force business groups to specialize and their characteristics as DBGs to disappear.
