Lesson 22

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Question SA-11. Here is the text reference (p. 222/2 and 3):

The United Nations peacekeeping mission, ONUCA (for the Spanish letters for UN Observers in Central America) moved into the five Central American nations and, with OAS support, began supervising the fulfillment of the Esquipulas peace plan. For a few short months things were tense as some of the Contras resisted being demobilized, as they were required to do under the peace plan. The UN responded by bringing in a battalion of 800 Venezuelan paratroopers to supervise the demobilization and to persuade the Contras that they should cooperate. With the Contras demobilized, the size of the Nicaraguan armed forces shrank dramatically as the Sandinista government peacefully turned power over to Violeta Chamorro after the February 1990 elections.

With the Contra war over, the peace process shifted its attention to El Salvador. ONUCA became ONUSAL (UN Observers in El Salvador), and in a similar process supervised the demobilization of the FMLN at the same time as it verified that the Salvadoran Armed Forces were being cut back. An important difference with Nicaragua was that in El Salvador the old police organizations, which had been under military control and had a reputation for brutality and human rights violations, were disbanded, and the new police forces created in their place were structured so as to include personnel from both the FMLN and the previous military and police groups.