Lesson 22

English text: Chapter 22: Lesson 22: Central America - Conflict and the Search for Peace

The decade of the 1980's saw unusual amounts of attention being paid to events in Central America, normally an area of secondary concern in the Hemisphere. The events involved another potentially major revolutionary process, covert and overt U.S. efforts to counter it, a civil war in a second country, and a sense that the region as a whole was drifting toward a war that might involve not only all of the Central American regions, but also the U.S. and possibly surrogates of the Soviet Union. In response to this range of serious threats to stability, a group of Latin American nations launched a painfully slow peace process which eventually appeared to have resolved two of the most serious conflict situations in the region.

I. Nicaragua: Revolution and Counter-revolution

The story of the Nicaraguan Revolution bears more than passing similarity to the Cuban, although the outcome has been quite different. Like Cuba, Nicaragua had been under heavy U.S. influence for much of its history, at first because of its favorable geographic location for a possible Isthmian canal. When in 1903 the chosen route turned out to be Panama, Nicaragua's importance to U.S. policy-makers diminished considerably, although the proximity to the Panama Canal and U.S. business investments in Nicaragua continued to give it a certain priority in U.S. Central American concerns.

Political instability in Nicaragua led to a long series of U.S. military interventions in the period from 1907 to 1933. The U.S. presence was welcomed by some Nicaraguan politicians and strongly resisted by others. One of those who resisted was General Agusto C. Sandino, who in the late 1920's led an effective guerrilla campaign against the U.S. Marines and their Nicaraguan allies. Toward the end of the Hoover administration, with the U.S. in the depths of the Depression, the U.S. government decided that a protracted campaign against Sandino and his insurgents was politically damaging and militarily unwinnable without a major commitment of U.S. forces.

To extricate U.S. troops from Nicaragua, a professional military force trained by the U.S. was established. The plan was that this force would stay out of politics and act as a stabilizer between the two main political camps, the liberals and the conservatives. The first commander of this Nicaraguan National Guard (Guardia Nacional) was General Anastasio Somoza Sr., who rather quickly converted the Guard into his personal force and became deeply involved in the politics the Guard was supposed to abstain from. Somoza had been educated in the United States and knew how to manipulate U.S. emissaries and policy-makers in Washington by assuring them of Nicaraguan support and guaranteeing U.S. businesses that they would find Nicaragua to be a stable country for their investments. Internally, Somoza was ruthless in his political activities and his use of the Guard to defend his family interests. In 1934 he had Sandino assassinated, thus eliminating a potential rival for power (and in the process making him a national martyr). In 1937 Somoza assumed the presidency and began the forty-year period that could fairly be called the Somoza family's dynastic rule of Nicaragua.

Somoza senior died by an assassin's bullet in 1956, and over the next two decades was succeeded in the presidency by two sons and a close family friend. Anastasio Somoza junior, who had been trained at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, had been National Guard Commander for much of this time and became President in 1967, governing directly or indirectly until overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979.

The Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN for Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) was begun as a Cuban-style revolutionary "foco" in 1960, and was almost wiped out several times by Somoza's forces. Although there was no direct connection to the Sandino of the 1920's, the group took his name as a symbol of the continuing struggle against U.S. intervention and against the kleptocracy of the Somoza family. By the mid-1970's the Sandinistas were in something of a stalemate, strong enough to survive, but unable to win a decisive victory against Somoza. They were handicapped by their division into three main factions, which made coordinated action difficult. Acting on the persuasive advice of Fidel Castro, the three factions united and stepped up both their campaign for international support (from Cuba as well as other nations in Latin America and Europe) and their internal effort to broaden their appeal to wide sectors of the lower and middle classes.

Like Batista in Cuba before him, Somoza helped the insurgents through his ruthless pursuit of anyone believed to be a guerrilla sympathizer. A turning point in the struggle for the hearts and minds of average Nicaraguans was a devastating earthquake in Managua in 1972. Somoza and the National Guard, in charge of the relief effort, stole many of the international relief supplies and sold them to their countrymen for personal profit. Wholesale violations of the human rights of ordinary Nicaraguans alienated large sectors of the public, and caused Somoza increasing problems with the Carter administration. By 1978 wide-spread fighting had damaged or destroyed important parts of many of Nicaragua's cities, since Somoza did not hesitate to use his combat aircraft to bomb neighborhoods in which the FSLN were present. Toward the end of the fighting period in mid 1979, Somoza and the Guardia Nacional were almost totally isolated, and the FSLN was supported by large sectors of the Nicaraguan people, including the Church, most labor and student organizations, and large numbers of lower and middle-class citizens.

The end came in July 1979. Despite a last-minute U.S. effort to send an OAS peacekeeping presence to save what was left of the Somoza regime, the insurgents pushed into Managua and all the other principal cities. Somoza escaped into exile in Miami, and the Guard disintegrated, with many of the officers and senior noncommissioned officers making it across the border into Honduras with their weapons.

The triumphant FSLN, at the head of the broad coalition of anti-Somoza forces, found an economy in shambles, a severely damaged infrastructure, and an international community that was waiting to see if the Nicaraguan Revolution would turn out to be like the Cuban one twenty years before. There was an attempt to create a coalition government with representatives of the many groups which had supported the FSLN at the end of the struggle, but it soon became clear that real power lay in the hands of those with the weapons, namely the fighters of the FSLN. Within the FSLN the leadership was in the hands of the nine-man "Directorate", made up of three members from each of the three main factions; the Ortega brothers (Humberto and Daniel) were the more significant members of this Directorate. Ministerial posts were more widely distributed, to include several Catholic priests as cabinet members. There was also a commitment to a mixed economy which would allow significant private holdings of lands and businesses, thus departing from the Cuban model.

In one respect the FSLN was fortunate to have had the Somoza dynasty as their enemy: the Somozas owned many business enterprises and about 20% of the country's agricultural land. This was immediately confiscated and distributed to both cooperatives and individuals in a rapidly implemented land reform program.

Like the Cuban Revolution, and with the help of several thousand advisors and technicians from Cuba, the Soviet Block, and other countries, the Nicaraguan Revolution set out on a sweeping reform program. One of their first priorities was a crash literacy drive, and in a few months they were able to teach basic writing and reading skills to most Nicaraguans (critics noted that the literacy training also included a heavy dose of FSLN propaganda). The Revolutionary government made free health care and social services available to all Nicaraguans, and cooperatives were set up under FSLN supervision to make these services available. There was also a cultural renaissance, with an emphasis on popular involvement in the arts, music, and literature (especially poetry). Although many of these features were based on the Cuban model, the Nicaraguan Revolution always had a distinctive touch, especially the way it blended socialism, nationalism and Christianity.

The initial U.S. reaction under the Carter administration was cautious but helpful. Despite hostility by some members of the FSLN, who could never forget the long years of U.S. support to the Somozas, there seemed to be a willingness on both sides to work out differences. The initial aid package from Washington, although not all the FSLN had asked for, was generous and helped a great deal in the early days of the new revolutionary government. There was concern in Washington over the large numbers of Cuban (and other Soviet-bloc) advisers, especially in the areas of intelligence and security, but this was explained as logical since the Cuban model was the most relevant.

The U.S.-Nicaraguan relationship changed abruptly when the Reagan administration took office in January 1981. Hard-line anti-communist ideologues in Washington could not accept the links between the FSLN and Cuba, to say nothing of the Soviet Union. The U.S. aid programs to Nicaragua were cut off or severely curtailed. More ominously, the Reagan administration chose as one of its principal vehicles to influence Nicaragua the same device that had been used against leftist regimes in Guatemala (1954) and Cuba (1959- ): anti-Communist exiles. There were a significant number of ex-members of the Guardia Nacional in makeshift camps in Honduras, and by working with a compliant Honduran military, it was possible for the CIA to organize and support these former members of the Guardia into what became known as the "Contras" (Spanish for counter-revolutionaries). There were other covert and overt actions: sabotage, mining of Nicaraguan harbors, diplomatic pressures, and an economic embargo.

Although the Contras never had a realistic chance of bringing down the Sandinista government, they were able to wreak considerable damage in northern Nicaragua, and forced the FSLN regime to divert a large percentage of its national budget to defense. In a short period of time the Nicaraguan military, with support from Cuba, the Soviet Union and its allies, became the strongest military force in Central America, and there were fears that an FSLN-Contra confrontation could spill over into a wider regional war involving all the Central American nations. Inevitably, this would also have involved the United States and the allies of Nicaragua.

By the late 1980's there was a war-weariness in Nicaragua (as well as much of the rest of Central America). Economic conditions in Nicaragua, aggravated by the Contra war and the economic embargo, were bad and getting worse. Sandinista promises for reform could only be partially fulfilled, and the revolutionary fervor of the first few years was wearing thin. Further, there was no single charismatic leader (such as Fidel Castro) who could rouse the passions of Nicaraguans. Although Daniel Ortega was president, he was still beholden to the nine-man FSLN Directorate and the FSLN party bureaucracy. Externally, the crisis in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European allies meant that the large amounts of military and economic aid to Nicaragua were about to end. Furthermore, the Central American peace process (described below) was well under way and seemed to suggest that the Contra war was about to have a peaceful resolution.

In these circumstances Nicaraguans went to the polls in February 1990 in a remarkable election that was undoubtedly the most carefully watched ever in Latin America (there were several thousand outside observers, including Jimmy Carter and large numbers of UN and OAS poll-watchers). The results were a surprise to just about everyone: the FSLN and Daniel Ortega could get only 41% of the vote and lost to a coalition of center and right parties (55%) led by Violeta Chamorro, the widow of an assassinated staunchly anti-Somoza journalist. Perhaps even more amazing than the elections was the peaceful way in which power was transferred from the FSLN regime to the Chamorro administration. A second election in 1996 saw another peaceful transfer of power and a second electoral defeat for the FSLN.

But governing was not easy for Violeta Chamorro. Her coalition had quarreling factions, and the Sandinistas controlled the labor unions, much of the economic life of the country through their cooperatives, and the security forces under Humberto Ortega. Nevertheless, the remarkable outcome in Nicaragua was that a revolution that came to power with a socialist program and a Marxist orientation was given the opportunity to implement its programs, and then peacefully gave up power through a democratic process, perhaps to return to power again via the same route in the future.

II. El Salvador: Civil War

The other source of grave concern in the 1980's was the civil war in El Salvador. Here a government with strong links to the U.S., supported by a military which had historically been associated with land-owning elites, was fighting a popular insurgency with some parallels to the FSLN in Nicaragua. The Salvadoran insurgency had a similar name: FMLN - Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation. Farabundo Martí was a Marxist who had been a close associate of Sandino, and had led a popular uprising against a conservative government in 1932, demanding land reform and social justice. The army brutally put down the revolt in an event known as "La Matanza" ('The Massacre"), in which perhaps 20,000 Salvadorans died, including Farabundo Martí.

Like the FSLN, the FMLN received outside support from various nations sympathetic to their cause, including Cuba. When the FSLN came to power in Nicaragua in 1979 they were able to provide moral and material support to their Salvadoran counterparts, although the degree and significance of this support remains arguable. There seems no doubt that the aid was significant, but it is also true that the FMLN had broad support within El Salvador, and would have been capable of continuing their guerrilla struggle indefinitely by means of peasant support and weapons and supplies captured from the Salvadoran Army.

The year 1979 was a key one in El Salvador: a coalition of reformist middle-rank officers, centrist politicians, and businessmen staged a bloodless coup which removed a general-president and ended a long history of rule by retired military officers beholden to the conservative elites (mainly landowners). There was hope that the 1979 reformist Junta could make peaceful changes which might avoid the bloodshed that Nicaragua had experienced. Mild land reforms and other changes were indeed launched by the 1979 Junta, but opposition by the landowners and conservative senior military officers was too great, and the Junta was pushed aside. Also significant were the actions of covert "death squads", linked to the conservative forces in the military and the landowners, who did not hesitate to intimidate and kill peasants or politicians who proposed reforms they considered too radical.

When the government shifted to the right after the reformists were removed from the Junta, full-scale civil war broke out between the military and a revitalized FMLN, which had won over important sectors of the political left. Thousands of ordinary Salvadorans died in this period, and the death squads also assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero and American missionary nuns.

With the Reagan administration, the U.S. role greatly increased in El Salvador, especially in terms of military assistance. Although efforts were made to include respect for human rights in the training of the Salvadoran military, the activities of the death squads did not fundamentally change. El Salvador's economy increasingly became a war economy, heavily dependent on U.S. aid for survival, and as the military became stronger their role in running the nation increased accordingly.

As the struggle intensified, the fight in El Salvador was seen as closely linked to the situation in Nicaragua, especially if either conflict (the Contra War in Nicaragua or the civil war in El Salvador) should cross borders and lead to regional conflict. For the Reagan administration the Nicaraguan-Cuban role in supporting the FMLN was ominous, and suggested a Central American version of the "domino theory": "yesterday Nicaragua, today El Salvador, tomorrow the rest of Central America". There were echoes of the Vietnam experience as well. Liberals in the U.S. framed the argument in terms of "never again": never again should the U.S. get itself involved, as it did in Vietnam, defending a conservative and corrupt old order in fighting against a revolutionary guerrilla movement. (A sample bumper sticker from the period read: "El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam"). Conservatives in the U.S. agreed that there was an analogy with Vietnam, but that the appropriate lesson should be to "do it right this time" (i.e., to go in with superior U.S. force to decisively crush the guerrillas).

By the end of the 1980's, the war-weariness that led to elections in Nicaragua was having its effect in El Salvador as well. Both sides seemed to realize that they were strong enough to continue the fighting indefinitely, but were not strong enough to win a clear-cut victory. The Bush administration in Washington, less ideological than Reagan's, was anxious to disengage from a situation that it saw as costly and with little prospects of victory. Aided by outsiders, including the United Nations, the FMLN and the Salvadoran government in late 1991 signed a peace agreement that finally brought an end to the long and painful civil war.

III. The Central American Peace Process

The slow and difficult path to peace in Central America was an historical turning point, and a remarkable achievement. For one, it was organized by a group of Latin American nations themselves, often in the face of opposition from a U.S. government that believed a military solution was not only preferable, but also possible. Secondly, it for the first time brought the United Nations into a serious conflict situation in the Hemisphere (in the past conflict resolution had either been handled by the U.S., or the Organization of American States under strong U.S. influence). Ultimately the peace process accomplished its goals in terms of ending the Contra War in Nicaragua and the civil war in El Salvador, and eventually winding down the 30-year insurgency in Guatemala. This is not to say that the Central American peace process has solved all of the region's problems. Economies are still weak, recovery from many years of conflict is slow, ecological and infrastructure damage is severe, democracy is fragile, and new conflicts may break out in the future. But the importance of the process merits a look at how it operated and achieved its objectives.

The process began in early 1983, when a group of four concerned Latin American nations met on the Panamanian island of Contadora to discuss ways in which they might launch a new peace initiative. It is noteworthy that the four countries were the four immediate geographic neighbors of Central America: Mexico to the north, and Panama, Colombia and Venezuela to the south. Over the next few years they met numerous times and drafted several proposed peace treaties for consideration by the various parties involved. (See the Contadora September 1983 "21 Objectives" document, which follows, for a summary of the main ideas proposed by the Contadora group). The Reagan administration's position was clear: although never directly attacking the so-called Contadora process, the U.S. made it known that it regarded such efforts as well-meaning meddling at best, and as helping the FSLN and FMLN at worst. The hard-liners in the Reagan administration argued that the Contras could defeat the FSLN regime, and that U.S. support for the Salvadoran military would defeat the FMLN insurgency.

The peace process seemed to be stalled in early 1987, mainly over U.S. opposition and the fact that the five Central American nations were reacting somewhat negatively to peace proposals written up by outside (albeit neighboring) nations. In mid 1987 the process was revitalized when Costa Rican president Oscar Arias proposed a new (although similar) peace plan which enlisted the help of the United Nations to verify and support the peace agreements. This proposal, which won the Nobel peace prize for Arias, became the definitive Esquipulas agreement under which the Central American peace process achieved significant results in Nicaragua, El Salvador and eventually Guatemala. Under United Nations sponsorship, four countries committed themselves to a major effort in the peacekeeping and verification aspects of the agreement: Canada, Germany, Venezuela, and Spain. Although Canada had long experience with United Nations peacekeeping, the other three did not, and their involvement in the Central American peace process was an important development.

In early 1989 the new Bush administration took over from Reagan's, and this permitted an agreement between the White House and the democratically-controlled Congress to support the peace process, end U.S. support for the Contras, and lower the U.S. profile in Central America. Coupled with the crisis in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, this meant that the Central American crisis no longer was likely to lead to a superpower confrontation and thus could be resolved on the basis of local interests.

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.

In theory the Esquipulas Central American peace process was supposed to apply to all five Central American nations, and by 1993 it was reasonably successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador, as described above. Costa Rica was not directly involved in the conflict, and Honduras' role was mainly to provide the bases from which the Contras could move into Nicaragua; with the Contras demobilized Honduras too was at peace. This left only Guatemala with a continuing conflict between the Marxist guerrillas in the hills and the Guatemalan military. Talks to resolve this conflict on a basis similar to the others had yielded few results until a final agreement between the parties was reached in 1996 with considerable United Nations involvement.

The "Contadora Objectives Document", 9 September 1983.

Considering:

The situation prevailing in Central America, which is characterized by an atmosphere of tension that threatens security and peaceful coexistence in the region, and which requires, for its solution, observance of the principles of international law governing the actions of States, especially:

The self-determination of peoples;

Non-intervention;

The sovereign equality of States;

The peaceful settlement of disputes;

Refraining from the threat or use of force;

Respect of the territorial integrity of States;

Pluralism in its various manifestations;

Full support for democratic institutions;

The promotion of social justice;

International cooperation for development;

Respect for and promotion of human rights;

The prohibition of terrorism and subversion;

The desire to reconstruct the Central American homeland through progressive integration of its economic, legal and social institutions;

The need for economic cooperation among the States of Central America so as to make a fundamental contribution to the development of their peoples and the strengthening of their independence;

The undertaking to establish, promote or revitalize representative, democratic systems in all the countries of the region;

The unjust economic, social, and political structures, which exacerbate the conflicts in Central America;

The urgent need to put an end to the tensions and lay the foundations for understanding and solidarity among the countries of the area;

The arms race and the growing arms traffic in Central America, which aggravate political relations in the region and divert economic resources that could be used for development;

The presence of foreign advisers and other forms of foreign military interference in the zone;

The risks that the territory of Central American States may be used for the purpose of conducting military operations and pursuing policies of destabilization against others;

The need for concerted political efforts in order to encourage dialogue and understanding in Central America, avert the danger of a general spreading of the conflicts, and set in motion the machinery needed to ensure the peaceful coexistence and security of their peoples.

Declare Their Intention of Achieving the Following Objectives

To promote detente and put an end to situations of conflict in the area, restraining from taking any action that might jeopardize political confidence or obstruct the achievement of peace, security and stability in the region;

To ensure strict compliance with the aforementioned principles of international law, whose violators will be held accountable;

To respect and ensure the exercise of human, political, civil, economic, social, religious and cultural rights;

To adopt measures conducive to the establishment and, where appropriate, improvement of democratic, representative, and pluralistic systems that will guarantee effective popular participation in the decision-making process and ensure that the various currents of opinion have free access to fair and regular elections based on the full observance of citizens' rights;

To promote national reconciliation efforts wherever deep divisions have taken place within society, with a view to fostering participation in democratic political processes in accordance with the law;

To create political conditions intended to ensure the international security, integrity and sovereignty of the States of the region;

To stop the arms race in all its forms and begin negotiations for the control and reduction of current stocks of weapons and on the number of armed troops;

To prevent the installation on their territory of foreign military bases or any other type of foreign military interference;

To conclude agreements to reduce the presence of foreign military advisers and other foreign elements involved in military and security activities, with a view to their elimination;

To establish internal control machinery to prevent the traffic in arms from the territory of any country in the region to the territory of another;

To eliminate the traffic in arms, whether within the region or from outside it, intended for persons, organizations or groups seeking to destabilize the Governments of Central American countries;

To prevent the use on their own territory by persons, organizations or groups seeking to destabilize the Governments of Central American countries and to refuse to provide them with or permit them to receive military or logistical support;

To refrain from inciting or supporting acts of terrorism, subversion or sabotage in the countries in the area;

To establish and coordinate direct communication systems with a view to preventing or, where appropriate, settling incidents between States of the region;

To continue humanitarian aid aimed at helping Central American refugees who have been displaced from their countries of origin and to create suitable conditions for the voluntary repatriation of such refugees, in consultation with or with the cooperation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other international agencies deemed appropriate;

To undertake economic and social development programs with the aim of promoting well being and an equitable distribution of wealth;

To revitalize and restore economic integration machinery in order to attain sustained development on the basis of solidarity and mutual advance;

To negotiate the provision of external monetary resources, which will provide additional means of financing the resumption of intra-regional trade, meet the serious balance-of-payments problems, attract funds for working capital, support programs to extend and restructure production and promote medium- and long-term investment projects;

To negotiate better and broader access to international markets in order to increase the volume of trade between the countries of Central America and the rest of the world, particularly the industrialized countries; by means of a revision of trade practices, the elimination of tariff and other barriers, and the achievement of the price stability at a profitable and fair level for the products exported by the countries of the region;

To establish technical cooperation machinery for the planning, programming, and implementation of investment and trade promotion projects.

The Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Central American countries, with the participation of the countries in the Contadora Group, have begun negotiations with the aim of preparing for the conclusion of the agreements and the establishment of machinery necessary to formalize and develop the objectives contained in this document, and to bring about the establishment of appropriate verification or monitoring systems. To that end, account will be taken of the initiatives put forward at the meetings convened by the Contadora Group.

[Adopted on September 9, 1983, by the Contadora countries of Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela and the Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica].