“were socioeconomic tensions responsible for the witchcraft hysteria in salem? ”

Many theories have tried to explain why the Salem community exploded in that delirium of witches and demonic disturbances. The most widespread insists on asserting that the Puritans, who ruled the Massachusetts Bay Colony with virtually no real control from 1630 until the enactment of the Royal Charter of Massachusetts in 1692, were going through a period of mass hallucinations and hysteria caused by religious fanaticism.

Most modern historians find this explanation, at least, simplistic. Other theories are based on analyzing the facts of child abuse, guessing by invoking the malignant, and ergotism (full intoxication with fermented rye bread containing mycotoxins from the fungus Claviceps purpurea or ergot that can have effects similar to the hallucinogen LSD), struggle for property, the plot of the Putnam family to destroy rival family Porter, and some others allude to the issue of the "social strangulation" of women, being that the sum of these factors caused the outbreak of religious fanaticism.

Within the small community of Salem there was a strict religious behavior, in which each person watched their neighbors and in turn was watched by them in their words and actions, generating doubts and suspicions in case their behavior did not conform to the Puritan religious parameters. Women were considered as individuals destined to serve their husbands and to lack greater rights, while children were destined to be severely educated from an early age in the work of adults instead of simply playing. Another fundamental concern of this community was to avoid the "wrath of God" and, therefore, to strictly adhere to the religious dictates of Puritanism in order to avoid the divine punishment that resulted in loss of crops, bad weather and livestock deaths.

b. they tried to evict the squatters from the area.

so sorry if wrong