Sewing success in El Salvador.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Garments export industry

Out on the horizon of a shallow pond less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean, dozens of women and girls - their arms and legs covered in black mud - slosh around, filling crates with huge, succulent shrimp. When the yellow crates come back full, young men hoist the valuable catch onto an embankment for a thorough washing. From there, the shrimp will be trucked in ice-filled barrels to a processing plant, where the day's harvest will be cleaned once again, weighed, packaged and shipped to Miami, and ultimately, the best seafood restaurants in the southeastern United States. "We have the right species of shrimp, the right climate and the right water quality," said Jorge Ramos, chief of aquaculture projects at Fusades, a major export promotion agency in El Salvador. The $500,000 project near Acajutla, located 99 kilometers west of San Salvador, is one of four large-scale shrimping enterprises in the country, which last year exported 1,972 metric tons of frozen shrimp to the United States.

In fact, aquaculture - along with a mushrooming garment industry, nontraditional fruit and vegetable exports, and tourism - is viewed by the government of President Alfredo Cristiani as crucial in the country's efforts to diversify its fragile economy away from traditional products such as coffee and sugar. With El Salvador finally at peace after a 12 year civil war that claimed 75,000 lives and wrecked the nation's infrastructure, those efforts seem to be paying off.

Since the signing of the Chapultepec peace accords earlier this year between Cristiani's administration and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), overseas interest in El Salvador's garment industry has skyrocketed, Even during the war-torn times between 1986 and 1991, El Salvador's clothing exports increased 54 percent per year. Francisco Escobar, president of the Salvadoran Apparel Manufacturers Association, says that in the last year alone garment exports from his country to the United States have shot up from $70 million in 1990 to $106.8 million in 1991 and could reach $500 million by 1996. "With the end of the war, we've seen an increase in companies coming in," said the businessman, whose organization represents 90 apparel makers. "Most of the plants that are installed are full and are now buying equipment and increasing capacity. All of a sudden, we're very palatable to large companies. People realize that El Salvador has one of the best work forces in Central America."

William Sandoval, general manager of Primo S.A., a subsidiary of the North Carolina-based Perry Manufacturing Incorporated, points out that before the war El Salvador was considered the Taiwan of Central America for its proliferation of electronic and apparel assembly industries. Many large manufacturers, including Texas Instruments, had plants here. "Not many...