Walmart in El Salvador

I don’t like Walmart.  In fact I very strongly dislike Walmart.  For a lot of reasons.  Walmart puts small local businesses out of business.  They underpay and mistreat their employees, some of this mistreatment could even be considered abuse.  The vast majority of Walmart’s products are made in factories with very questionable labor practices.  Walmart promotes the idea that you will live better if you shop at Walmart simply because you’ll be able to buy more “stuff” for a low price.  You won’t live better if you have more “stuff”, and the people who made that stuff you buy won’t live better because they have to pay the true cost of producing that “cheap” stuff.  These problems certainly aren’t limited to Walmart- there are plenty other companies out there with similar problems.  Walmart just takes things to the extreme.  If you want to earn more about why you too should dislike Walmart, there is a pretty good documentary out there called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

So when I saw that Walmart had finally made it’s way to El Salvador it made me sad.  (Technically Walmart has been in El Salvador for about 5 years- it was just operating stores under different names.  Now Walmart has opened an actual Walmart store like ones in the States).  There were signs and advertising for Walmart all over the place in San Salvador.  

"Walmart has arrived.  Low prices, everyday."  There were billboards like this one all over the place.

There it is.  We drove past it a few times.

El Salvador already had enough problems without Walmart, that’s just one more thing that will make life more difficult in El Salvador.  Walmart will provide some jobs to Salvadorans, but the poorest of the poor- those who really need the jobs- won’t get the jobs.  I can’t say this as a fact, but my best educated guess is that most Salvadorans will not be able to afford to shop at Walmart- even with the “low prices”.  Walmart will put the little local stores out of business.  This just isn’t at all what El Salvador needs.

Here’s a blog post about Walmart in El Salvador (and this blog, What’s Up El Salvador, has quite a few interesting posts).