A cease-fire was declared in September 1991, and a comprehensive settlement, the Chapultepec peace accords, was signed on January 16, 1992. A USIA survey in June-July 1984, for example, asked the citizens of four countries whether they approved or disapproved of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. The 1980s were a time of very active American military intervention around the world. The original series appeared with the San José Mercury News in 1996. In 1981, the government instituted a new Agrarian Reform law, designed to redistribute land to over 100,000. They sought to foreclose the possibility of a viable socialist-oriented economy in Latin America by beating Nicaragua into submission through terror and sabotage. Upon learning of the manual, Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented, “The administration has launched an aggressive anti-terrorism campaign, and yet we seem to be engaged in the very same terrorist activities which we deplore elsewhere.”, In early March 1985, Reed Brody, former Assistant Attorney General of the State of New York, released a report documenting twenty-eight cases of Contra attacks on Nicaraguan civilians between September 1984 and January 1985, based on the sworn affidavits of 145 witnesses. [51] William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard:  The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (Chapel Hill: Univ. Efforts by U.S. human rights advocates to restrict U.S. military aid to abusive governments were necessary and important, but they did not address the underlying economic injustices that gave rise to rightist repression. [148] Gill, The School of the Americas, 83. The number maimed by Contra-laid mines was most likely larger; see Don Mosley, with Joyce Hollyday, With Our Own Eyes: The Dramatic Story of a Christian Response to the Wounds of War, Racism, and Oppression (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1996). In May 1980, Congress approved a $75 million aid package that included $70 million in loans, of which 60% was reserved for the private sector. In April 1985, former CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner testified before a Congressional committee that the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan guerrillas, known as Contras, had engaged in numerous acts of “terrorism.”. In fact, seven parties participated in the elections. In reality, the offensive convinced U.S. officials that military victory could not be attained. Pastora abandoned the fight in 1986 and returned to Nicaragua in 1989. In August 1953, he approved a covert plan to overthrow the constitutional government. Under the leadership of José Napoleón Duarte, the PDC made political gains in the Legislative Assembly and Duarte himself was twice elected mayor of San Salvador. One of the odd legacies of the counterinsurgency war in El Salvador is that some military strategists have adopted it as a model for U.S. counterinsurgency operations elsewhere, including Iraq. By Heather Murdock. Although Congress had banned U.S. aid to the Guatemalan government based on human rights abuses, the Reagan administration aided this government’s counterinsurgency war as well. S/LPD furthermore compiled a list of negative words and phrases for administration officials to use whenever referring to Nicaragua. Labor unionists, indigenous groups, Christian Base Communities, and the Christian Democratic Party led efforts to effect political change, but without success. 1985, A1; President Reagan, Radio Address to the Nation on “Central America,” Feb. 16, 1985, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38231; and Col. Daniel Jacobowitz, “Public Diplomacy Action Plan: Support for the White House Educational Campaign,” March 12, 1985, National Security Archive, Iran-Contra collection, IC00934, 2-3. Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo won the presidency and his Christian Democratic Party won the majority of congressional seats. Fourteen people were charged with criminal offenses and eleven convicted including North, Poindexter, Secord, Clines as well as NSC staffer Robert “Bud McFarlane,” and CIA agent “Dewey” Clarridge. This research paper, declassified in 2011, notes, “While liberation theology has served to promote US interests by assisting popular efforts to bring democratic reform to authoritarian states, it has also posed a major threat to US interests by providing a fertile ground for Communist exploitation” (p. vi). The Reagan administration’s push for new military aid to the Guatemalan government began with a proposal to sell $2 to $6 million in helicopter spare parts and other quasi-military items. Upon entering the White House in January 1989, President George H. W. Bush continued to support the Contras but shifted emphasis to organizing political opposition within Nicaragua. Sandinista military hero Edén Pastora Gómez, known as Comandante Cero, defected in July 1981 and was recruited by the CIA. The net effect was to bolster repression in Honduras. The House of Representatives was about evenly divided on the issue, thus enabling a small group of “undecideds” to determine the outcome of periodic votes. Illegal drug sales and other criminal activity provided another source of Contra financing. President Ronald Reagan, upon entering the White House in January 1981, was intent on ousting the Sandinista government and undermining its socialist-oriented economic experiment. To the degree that the FSLN leadership was seen as illegitimate and oppressive, the administration could claim to be freeing the Nicaraguan people from “totalitarian” rule. Through its Cold War words and actions, the United States sent clear signals to Latin American authorities what they had to do to defeat communism and protect the United States. [215] D’Haeseleer, The Salvadoran Crucible, 6, 10. In September 1982, leaders of the PDC, including Duarte, charged that hundreds of PDC activists and nine PDC mayors had been murdered that year (a total of 35 had been killed over the years). [64] “The massacre of children and others at El Mozote,” El Salvador Perspectives, December 10, 2017, 1, http://www.elsalvadorperspectives.com/2017/12/the-massacre-of-children-and-others-at.html; and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Case of the Massacres of El Mozote and Nearby Places Versus El Salvador, Judgment of October 25, 2012, pp. A conservative wing of the human rights movement also arose. The U.S. also provided the Salvadoran government with $22.5 million in military aid between 1946 and 1980. Two days later, Sandinista guerrillas marched into Managua amidst cheers and celebration. Based on thousands of witness testimonies and statements, the commissions concluded that government security forces and allied rightist death squads were responsible for the vast majority of murders, disappearances, and massacres:  85% in El Salvador and 93% in Guatemala. Many U.S. citizens were outraged that their tax dollars were being used to support murder and mayhem in Central America. In response to poor working conditions and to the establishment of a reactionary dictatorship in 1931, many peasants revolted in 1932. [188] Sharon Erickson Nepstad, Convictions of the Soul:  Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central American Solidarity Movement (New York: Oxford Univ. Witness for Peace (WFP), created by religious activists in 1983 with the help of Sixto Ulloa of CEPAD, brought more than 4,000 U.S. citizens to Nicaragua to witness first-hand the destruction wrought by the Contras. Historical Map of South American nations (19 July 1918 - South America in the Great War: When World War I broke out in Europe, the German East Asia Squadron attempted to reach the Atlantic via the Pacific and Cape Horn, raiding merchant ships along the route. The Central America movement was energetic, creative, and largely decentralized. The first such war, sometimes called Metacom’s Rebellion or King Philip's War, lasted 14 months and destroyed 14 towns. In particular, the United States feared that victories by communist forces would cause South America to become isolated from the United States if the governments of the Central American countries were overthrown and pro-Sovietcommunist governments were installed in their pla… Going into the Central American Crisis, Honduras's economy was framed by stagnating agricultural production, de-industrialization, deteriorating terms of trade, the continuing problems of the Central American common market, the decline of international financial reserves, salary decline, and increasing unemployment and underemployment. November 24, 2020 03:26 PM Share on Facebook. [119] Bernard Weinraub, “Congress Renews Curbs on Actions Against Nicaragua:  Measure Forbids U.S. Support for Military Moves Aimed at Toppling Sandinists,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 1982, A1. Unitarian Universalist Church members protest in front of the federal building in Los Angeles, 1986 (photo by Bill Becker). Nicaraguan observer María López Vigil believed that the vote was largely a response to U.S. intimidation. On the Atlantic Coast, a separate wing of the Contra movement formed among Miskito, Sumu, and Rama ethnic communities. For the most part, rebel forces held their own against the U.S. backed, trained, and financed government forces, even as the latter grew in strength and number over the course of the decade. Reports of such activities revive memories of the brutality of Somoza’s National Guard.”. [173] Joel Brinkley, “Four Veterans Ending Fast on Policy in Nicaragua,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1986, A16; “War Medals Returned To Protest U.S. Policy,” New York Times, Oct. 10, 1986, A22; and Penny Pagano, “Four Veterans Say Other Efforts Will Go On, Fast Over Central America Policy to End,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 17, 1986, 14. Renewed negotiations began in July 1985, when Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Peru formed the Contadora Support Group. Rep. Bonior was often chosen to present the Democratic Party’s response to Reagan’s addresses on Central America. The Iran-Contra affair united many veterans of past CIA shadow wars who were expert in circumventing legal and congressional oversight and setting up front companies to launder money and arms and in recruiting criminal assets. A constituent assembly was elected in 1984, which in turn produced a new constitution in 1985. The mines damaged seven vessels owned by six different nations. 4 (Winter 1987-1988), 564. [203] Alfred W. McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. As in the Vietnam War, military objectives undermined reform efforts, especially in the countryside. In 2006, sixteen years after the FSLN was voted out of power, Daniel Ortega and the FSLN were voted back in. FSLN leaders were intent on creating a socialist-oriented economic system that would meet the basic needs of the majority, but they did not regard the Soviet Union, Eastern bloc countries, or Cuba as appropriate economic models. 26, No. Eugene Hasenfus, an air cargo handler, survived the downing of his plane on Oct. 5, 1986. [105] Mary B. Vanderlaan, Revolution and Foreign Policy in Nicaragua (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), 65. Alejandro Bandaña, an official in the Nicaraguan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, put the matter succinctly:  “The U.S. would support the results of a ‘free’ election only if its own side won.”[141]  The U.S.-backed counterrevolution, moreover, was designed to produce repression rather than openness, forcing the Sandinista government into a position of restricting freedoms and censoring the press in order to maintain security (the U.S. acted similarly in World War I, enacting the Espionage and Sedition acts, and in World War II, incarcerating Japanese-American citizens). The dual orientation led the U.S. to constantly preach human rights principles to the Salvadoran military while doing little to actually stop extrajudicial executions and death squad disappearances, lest the counterinsurgency effort be undercut. According to the United Nations Truth Commission report of 1993, Col. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, director of the National Guard, and Jose Guillermo García, Minister of Defense, organized an official cover-up of the murders. Nicaraguans generally distinguished between the imperialist actions of the U.S. government and U.S. citizens. virtually all of the major Protestant denominations had Washington offices responsible for linking their congregants to the national political process.”[166]  The influence of the religious lobby was acknowledged with frustration by Robert Kagan, head of the Reagan administration’s Office of Public Diplomacy, as his job was to discredit and nullify it. Duarte was arrested, tortured, and exiled. Center for International Studies, 1998). FSLN leaders were well aware of this demand but reluctant to subject themselves to a popular vote before their reform programs could prove their value. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the United States often pursued its interests through puppet governments and the elite classes, whose members tended to ignore the demands of the peasant and working class. The training was accompanied by an ideological indoctrination that “emphasized the threat posed by internal enemies, not only communists but also those critical of the regime,” according to the historian Brian D’Haeseleer: Anticommunist rhetoric disseminated in US service academies established a negative image of actors critical of US-supported regimes and those who demanded reforms as synonymous with enemies of the state. The Central America movement of the 1980s has been described as a human rights movement, peace movement, and solidarity movement. ... the feared race war did not materialize. For a more detailed review of the 1954 CIA operation, see Section VI of this website’s essay on Cold War interventionism, 1945-1990. Fear of “communism” receded in the wake of détente; the lesson of the Vietnam War cautioned against U.S. interventionism; a throng of reform-minded Democrats was elected to Congress in the wake of the 1974 Watergate scandal; and human rights reformers in the U.S. and Latin America were growing in number and influence, demanding an end to U.S. support for despotic regimes. Reagan and Bush remained unscathed despite their heavy involvement and Oliver North became a right-wing folk hero after giving televised testimony before Congress in which he played up his patriotic motives. In his State of the Union Address in January 1984, Reagan cast his policies as part of a “crusade for renewal” in which the U.S. has “the will to defend peace and freedom.”[40], U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, right, walks with Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova in San Juan Opica, El Salvador, Sept. 7, 1983 (AP). As in El Salvador, the government allowed the landed elite to take indigenous communal lands and establish forced labor systems. Denying that a war crime had taken place, the Reagan administration certified to Congress that same month that the Salvadoran government was making progress in human rights and requested more U.S. aid for the government. In May 1950, President Harry Truman signed National Security Council (NSC) 56/2, authorizing military aid to Latin American governments for the ostensible purpose of combating “communism.”  In 1951, Congress authorized $38 million in direct military assistance; and in 1952, $90 million. The Reagan administration’s public pronouncements that Sandinista Nicaragua must embrace democracy were all for show. The entourage met with activists, opinion makers, politicians, and Hollywood celebrities. Once again, the Reagan administration tried to sabotage the treaty. “If possible, professional criminals should be hired to carry out specific selective ‘jobs,’” the manual stated. Many noted the discrepancy between administration rhetoric and reality, especially in Sandinista Nicaragua, which welcomed international visitors. By the late 1980s, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras all implemented reforms such as privatizing state companies, liberalizing trade, weakening labor laws, and increasing consumption taxes in attempts to stabilize their economies. [187] Norma Stoltz Chinchilla, Nora Hamilton, and James Loucky, “The Sanctuary Movement and Central American Activism in Los Angeles,” Latin American Perspectives, Vol. [138], Daniel Ortega campaigns for president in downtown Managua, Nov. 1, 1984 (Pat Hamilton, AP). Between 1950 and 1972, more than 1,000 Salvadoran soldiers and officers received training at the School of the Americas in Panama. “communist subversion,” and second, as a benevolent mission to bring freedom and democracy to oppressed peoples. Samuel K. Doe: Liberia: 1980–1990 : Chairman of the People's Redemption Council 1980-1984; President of Liberia 1984-1990. In April 1982, he announced via radio that he was at war with the Sandinistas. At least eleven mayors were summarily executed. Wade, and Thomas W. Walker, Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion, and Change (Berkeley: Westview Press, 2014), 139. They were the main “war” strategy. Rigoberta Menchú, born in Quiché, Guatemala, to indigenous Mayan parents, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work in human rights. The Iran-Contra affair united many veterans of past CIA shadow wars who were expert in circumventing legal and congressional oversight and setting up front companies to launder money and arms and in recruiting criminal assets. “By the mid-1960s,” writes Stephen Rabe, “Guatemala had descended into a hell of violence, torture, and death that lasted three decades.”, During the 1960s, rebel groups formed to overthrow Guatemala’s military government. Led by Marxist intellectual and Communist Party leader Augustín Farabundo Martí, the revolt was quickly crushed, ending in a massacre of over 30,000 people, known as known as. [214], One of the odd legacies of the counterinsurgency war in El Salvador is that some military strategists have adopted it as a model for U.S. counterinsurgency operations elsewhere, including Iraq. Cold War policy." Rep. Edward Boland, Democrat of Massachusetts and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, subsequently offered an amendment barring U.S. covert actions “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.”  The amendment was approved and signed into law by President Reagan. They modernized Guatemala with infrastructure and established coffee as the major export crop. 36, Issue 6, December 18, 2009, 106-107. In 1975, Congress began banning U.S. military aid to specific countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Guatemala, citing reports of gross violations of human rights. The murder of a popular newspaper publisher, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, on January 10, 1978, presumably by Somoza’s thugs, marked the beginning of an eighteen-month insurrectionary period. It was during the Salvadoran government’s counteroffensive that members of the Atlacatl Battalion murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter at the Universidad Centroamericana. When pressed to explain the bad behavior of U.S. allies, occasionally noted in the media, U.S. leaders typically responded that U.S. support for unsavory regimes was the lesser of two evils, the other being “communist” takeovers. His burial took place in Matagalpa on April 30, 1987. To not repeat the same mistakes is, of course, the point of studying history. Yet, as many members of Congress did not view the Sandinista government as a national security threat, Reagan used the issue of arms transfers as a wedge to build a counter-revolutionary army in Nicaragua – the Contras. The Reagan administration’s efforts to maintain pro-U.S., rightist governments in the region extended to Guatemala, where revolutionary groups had been operating since the early 1960s. The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. [43] Lt. Col. Oliver North, “U.S. World War III in Asia: What a Russia vs. America War in the 1980s Would Have Looked Like by Robert Farley Follow drfarls on Twitter L Key point: … “There seems to be no crime to which the Sandinistas will not stoop – this is an outlaw regime,” declared Reagan in a televised address to the nation on March 16, 1986. The Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington worked with activist groups to set up speaking engagements in different cities. [133] President Ronald Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a White House Luncheon for Regional Editors and Broadcasters,” June 13, 1986, Reagan Public Papers. The U.S. military appropriated large areas of the country for the construction of bases, military exercises, and the operations of the Contras. Private U.S. investments in Nicaragua were not large, but Cold War political ties were strong. 1901-Cuba Becomes United States Protectorate: 1902-Britain and Germany Threaten Venezuela [52] D’Haeseleer, The Salvadoran Crucible, 48. Kennedy is remembered for his uplifting rhetoric in support of freedom and democracy, but his lack of commitment to democratic governance was demonstrated in March 1963, when he encouraged the military in Guatemala to seize power rather than allow the election of former President Juan José Arévelo. Nor did the administration recognize its actions against Nicaragua as. According to Stephen Rabe: The United States undermined constitutional systems, overthrew popularly elected governments, rigged elections, and supplied, trained, coddled, and excused barbarians who tortured, kidnapped, murdered, and “disappeared” Latin Americans…. In early 1984, however, revelations in the press that CIA agents had mined Nicaraguan harbors – an act of war – without Congressional knowledge or approval sparked outrage, even among some Republicans. Clines had put together a private network of CIA agents functioning as a kind of shadow CIA after Jimmy Carter had cut the CIA’s budget and fired many of its staff. [141] Alejandro Bandaña, “Nicaragua’s and Latin America’s ‘Lessons” for Iraq,” March 1, 2004, http://aworldtowin.net/documents/Iraq_Dossier.pdf. Funds were raised for prosthesis centers at the Aldo Chavaria Rehabilitation Hospital and the Velez Pais Children’s Hospital, both located in Managua. [58] Michael Getler, “New Diplomacy Tested by U.S. Reports of such activities revive memories of the brutality of Somoza’s National Guard.”[126]. Arévelo encouraged democratic elections and workers unions and rights, but he held back on land reform. In April 1964, Brazilian military officers overthrew the constitutional government, instituting a military dictatorship. Rep. Bonior was often chosen to present the Democratic Party’s response to Reagan’s addresses on Central America. Following the overthrow, Johnson sent a congratulatory telegram to the new military leaders expressing his “warmest good wishes.”  This was followed by generous U.S. aid amounting to $1.5 billion between 1964 and 1968, even as the Brazilian dictatorship arrested and tortured thousands of its citizens.[28]. ‘The Administration never contemplated letting Cruz stay in the race,’ one official said, ‘because then the Sandinistas could justifiably claim that the elections were legitimate, making it much harder for the United States to oppose the Nicaraguan government.’”  See also, Taubman, “U.S. “The fact that we were arming and financing the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua was very, very disturbing to me,” said Bonior in an interview. As U.S. reporters were largely absent in the hinterlands, WFP played a vital role in documenting Contra terrorism, prompting Congressional hearings in the spring of 1985. Over the course of the decade, Congress vacillated between restricting the purpose of Contra aid, blocking it, approving it, and limiting it to “non-lethal” aid. Although Congress had banned military aid to the Guatemalan government in the late 1970s due to its systematic human rights abuses, President Reagan found ways around the ban, offering moral and material support for the government’s counterinsurgency war. The proximity of Central America to the U.S. allowed for extensive transnational connections in the form of study tours, sister city partnerships, humanitarian aid, peace witnesses, and various solidarity activities. Sister city projects had a number of desirable attributes for activists:  they were locally organized, facilitated travel and interpersonal relationships, provided tangible benefits to the Nicaraguan people, and served to educate U.S. citizens. It coalesced in 1980, mainly around the issue of halting U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government based on human rights concerns. Following the U.S. invasion of Grenada in October 1983, religious activists initiated a Pledge of Resistance campaign to deter an expected invasion of Nicaragua. UNO won 54.7% of the national vote and gained 51 seats in the National Assembly, as compared to the FSLN with 40.8% of the vote and 38 seats. On February 14, Ambassador Pezzullo met with Junta leaders Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramírez to discuss the issue. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the 46-year-long Somoza dictatorship in 1979. In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company (UFCO) became the dominant player in the economy, with the Guatemalan government granting the U.S.-based company large tracts of land. From 1954 to 1972, some 2,000 Guatemalan army officers were trained in U.S. military schools. At best, this meant influencing and manipulating elections through the CIA to turn results in favor of U.S.-supported candidates. The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Deane Hinton, denied that a massacre had taken place, blamed the guerrillas for putting civilians in harm’s way, and was photographed giving a big hug to Lt. Col. Domingo Monterrosa of the Atlacatl Battalion. U.S. actions in Guatemala signaled to reactionary forces across Latin America that they could count on the U.S. to support them in suppressing leftist reform without regard to constitutional law, democratic procedures, political freedoms, and human rights. Why were many of these refugees – despite personal experiences of violence and persecution – refused asylum in the United States? Inscribed in the Monument to the Memory and the Truth are the names of 30,000 known victims of the Salvadoran civil war, out of a total of 75,000 killed. They also forcibly detained, tortured, and disappeared supporters of, or those believe to support, the Sandinista government or the Salvadoran guerrillas.[148]. A funeral procession of 10,000 people proceeded through the streets of the city to a hillside cemetery. [10] According to Lynn Horton, in Peasants in Arms: War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979-1994 (Athens: Ohio Univ. UNO won 54.7% of the national vote and gained 51 seats in the National Assembly, as compared to the FSLN with 40.8% of the vote and 38 seats. Their presence also may have deterred Contra attacks. Anticommunist rhetoric disseminated in US service academies established a negative image of actors critical of US-supported regimes and those who demanded reforms as synonymous with enemies of the state. As in the early Cold War era, human rights progress was conflated with U.S. foreign policy goals. “The fact that we were arming and financing the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua was very, very disturbing to me,” said Bonior in an interview. The presidency of Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983), during which he implemented a strategy he called "beans and bullets", is widely considered[by whom?] [192]  The Laotian secret war set an important precedent in being partially financed through opium smuggling on Air America flights and by CIA proxies like General Ouane Rattikone and General Vang Pao. Among the worst incidents was the massacre of an estimated 100 demonstrators who had gathered at the Plaza Libertad in San Salvador on February 28, 1977, to protest the fraudulent presidential election of General Carlos Humberto Romero. The Central America movement co-existed with other progressive peace movements in the 1980s, notably, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, the South Africa anti-apartheid movement, and federal budget priorities campaigns (redirecting federal spending from military to human needs programs). intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent,” www.foxnews.com, October 10, 2013; Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia E. Bartley, Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía. [40] Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 3, 1980, 1, cited in Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2000 (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 316; and President Reagan, “Address before a Joint Session of the Congress Reporting on the State of the Union, January 25, 1984,” The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu (hereafter referred to as the Reagan Public Papers). Opponents of Contra aid challenged the Reagan administration on a number of counts. Three Nicaraguan priests associated with liberation theology, Miguel d’Escoto and Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal, served in the FSLN government. Congress shut down the U.S. Public Safety Program in 1974, as the program had become identified with brutal interrogation techniques rather than the professionalization of security forces. Similarly, in El Salvador, after two decades of rightist ARENA party rule, voters elected FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes to the presidency in 2009. Tom Ashwell (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2016). However, the manipulation was not the work of the Sandinistas – who had every interest in making these elections as demonstrably fair, pluralistic, and competitive as possible – but of the Reagan Administration, whose interest apparently was in making the elections seem as unfair, ideologically one-sided, and uncompetitive as possible. On February 17, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador wrote a letter to Carter imploring him not to send military aid, equipment, or advisers to the government of El Salvador: The present government junta and, especially, the armed forces and security forces have unfortunately not demonstrated their capacity to resolve in practice the nation’s serious political and structural problems. Lt. Col. Oliver North pointed to his superiors as the source of the Iran-Contra arms exchanges, but Congress let President Reagan and Vice-President Bush off the hook. In deference to public and Congressional fears of “another Vietnam,” President Reagan agreed in March 1981 to limit the number of U.S. military advisers in El Salvador to fifty-five (actual numbers reached 130). When, at times, negotiations progressed despite administration intransigence, U.S. officials fell back on the fail-safe argument that the Sandinistas could not be trusted to carry out any agreement. In October 1984, Ortega, his poet wife, Rosario Murillo, and Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto along with about 20 security and staff people conducted a nine-day speaking tour through New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta. According to a Defense Intelligence Report, “In the 100 day period from 14 March to 21 June, at least 106 insurgent incidents occurred within Nicaragua.”. Taubman writes:  “Since May [1984], when American policy toward the elections was formed, the Administration has wanted the opposition candidate, Arturo José Cruz, either to not enter the race or, if he did, to withdraw before the election, claiming conditions were unfair. Coffee growers reacted to the Depression by cutting the wages of their already impoverished workers. As in El Salvador and Guatemala, the combination of deepening poverty, economic inequality, government authoritarianism, and repression of reform provided fertile soil for revolution. “The massacre at Las Hojas grew out of a dispute over land and water rights between the members of the Indian farming cooperative and landowners in the region,” according to human rights analyst Cynthia Brown. In May 1980, Congress approved a $75 million aid package that included $70 million in loans, of which 60% was reserved for the private sector. When, at times, negotiations progressed despite administration intransigence, U.S. officials fell back on the fail-safe argument that the Sandinistas could not be trusted to carry out. In Los Angeles, the office of Mayor Tom Bradley officially welcomed Ortega with a symbolic key to the city. South America 1900-2010 a timeline of major events. [38] United Nations, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml. Faith networks also had clout in Washington. 10, 1999 (AP), President Bill Clinton at least apologized for U.S. actions in Guatemala during his visit in 1999. Between 1950 and 1972, more than 1,000 Salvadoran soldiers and officers received training at the School of the Americas in Panama. [82] Paul Dosal, Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899-1944 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1993), 17. The Iran-Contra deals were secretly brokered through Israeli and CIA middlemen like Richard Secord, former director of the Air Wing of the Pentagon-CIA Special Operations Group at Udorn Air Force base in Thailand which helped command the secret war in Laos, General John Singlaub, the head of the World Anticommunist League, and Richard Gadd, who had set up a private air transport service for clandestine government operations. [125] Jonathan Lemco, Canada and the Crisis in Central America (New York: Praeger, 1991), 17. On March 2, 1981, the Reagan administration announced that it was sending $25 million in additional military assistance to the Salvadoran government along with four more training teams. Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison. We were running drugs. Thomas Quigley, head of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Office of International Justice and Peace noted that “people who disapprove strongly of U.S. efforts to overthrow the [Nicaraguan] government and fund the Contras can still be quite critical of the Sandinistas.”. Contras roamed the rural areas, attacking towns and farming villages, and murdering anyone suspected of being a government worker or Sandinista supporter. [7] The conflict ended in the early 1990s. Economic adversity, in turn, fueled new opposition groups and political parties. The FSLN directorate, being of mixed class origin itself, was decidedly pragmatic in its approach to reform. And specifically, I believe it is irrefutable that a number of the Contras’ actions have to be characterized as terrorism, as State-supported terrorism. With the treasury left bankrupt by the Somoza government, the FSLN appealed for international assistance and encouraged Sandinismo at home, a spirit of cooperation and volunteerism in rebuilding the country. Religious organizations and institutions were instrumental in the Central America movement, providing leadership, volunteers, a respectable public image, an organizational base, institutional support, and transnational connections. [191] For details on Seal’s escapades and government connections, see Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (London: Verso, 1998); Michael Hopsicker, Barry and the Boyz: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History (Mad Cow Press, 2001); Roger Morris, Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1996), 389-427; and for a skeptical view see Del Hahn, Smuggler’s End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, ed. Although highly imperfect, El Salvador’s Truth Commission was lauded as a model for the world to begin healing from genocides, civil wars, and grave human rights abuses. On November 11, the FMLN launched a major offensive in San Salvador, bringing the war to wealthy parts of the city and utterly surprising U.S. officials. Duarte’s popularity alarmed the conservative oligarchy and its military allies. [26] Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 72, 74; and Brian D’Haeseleer, The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979–1992 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), 47-48. Ambassador Pezzullo’s last attempt at diplomacy before leaving his post in August 1981 involved setting up talks between Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders and Sandinista officials in Managua on August 12-13. The Archdioceses legal office attributed 5,399 civilian deaths to the army and related paramilitary forces, and yet this was an “improvement” over the previous year’s total of about twice the number. For Guatemalans, it was an opportunity to address their nation’s violent past and move toward a more peaceful, politically inclusive, and democratic future. Center for International Studies, 1997). Their purpose, said Ortega in an interview, was to counter “the campaign of disinformation about Nicaragua” by the Reagan administration. Only a few days after the massacre, President Reagan certified to Congress that the Salvadoran government was making progress in “internationally recognized human rights.”  Congress as a whole went along with the charade. See also, Edgar Chamorro, Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation (New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1987). Over the course of the 1970s, significant tensions and violence had already existed, before the civil war's full outbreak. Israeli advisers actively assisted the Lucas and Ríos Montt counterinsurgency campaigns. On the issue of human rights, Pezzullo wrote, “We are not aware of any press reports of systematic violations of human rights of the new government. Regarding the four guardsmen convicted of murdering the American churchwomen, in 1998, while serving 30-year sentences, they divulged that they acted only after receiving “orders from above.”  See Larry Rohter, “4 Salvadorans Say They Killed U.S. Nuns on Orders of Military,” New York Times, April 3, 1998. President John F. Kennedy considered the dilemma of Cuba and decided to add economic incentives for moderate reform through the Alliance for Progress program, established in March 1961. of State, Aug. 13, 1983, 1-2, National Security Archive, Nicaragua collection, NI01791. Beyond this, the administration offered no explanation as to why the U.S. supported the dictatorial Somoza dynasty for more than forty years, but was now presumably intent on establishing democracy in Nicaragua. Following a tour of Latin America, he wrote that “harsh government measures of repression may be the only answer; that these measures may have to proceed from regimes whose origins and methods would not stand the test of American concepts of democratic procedure; and that such regimes and such methods may be preferable … to further communist successes.”[20]  Kennan’s recommendations were in accord with the Cold War views of President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who also committed the U.S. to supporting the French reconquest of Vietnam as an antidote to Asian communism. This proved to be an error, as the Carter administration cut off new aid to Nicaragua in the 1979 budget and blocked pending arms deliveries. They received 30-year prison sentences, but their superiors remained free. In addition, the U.S. arranged for international loans to the Salvadoran government amounting to $280 million between July 1981 and September 1984. The exclusion of economic rights from the conceptual framework of “human rights” discussed by U.S. policymakers hindered their understanding of the struggles for reform in Latin America. If they weren’t engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn’t be any hotspots in the World.”  As president, Reagan embarked on an aggressive rollback strategy that involved covert support for guerrillas in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, and Cambodia, countries either led by Marxist governments or embroiled in civil wars. President Jimmy Carter embraced the rhetoric of human rights but was hesitant to cut off aid to important allies. The public face of the administration policy necessarily emphasized the reformist orientation, given the tarnished reputation of the Salvadoran military. The revolution ousted the U.S.-backed dictatorial government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in July 1979, ending more than four decades of dynastic rule. Economic damage costs of $9 billion are cited in both of the above studies. The survey also found that that those who were better educated and more informed about Central America issues were more likely to oppose U.S. policies. The elections were observed by some 1,000 foreign journalists and 450 official observers from thirty-five countries. The receipts to the Pentagon were doctored to cover up the arms sales, and profits funneled to the Contras through Swiss bank accounts and other front companies used to purchase arms. Between February and July 1979, FSLN fighters increased in number from about 2,500 to 5,000, and proceeded to ‘liberate” towns and regions. From there, the U.Sbacked irregulars launched raids into Nicaragua. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts declared that “not a dime of military aid should go to El Salvador” until the armed forces were purged of human rights abusers. In an effort to win hearts and minds, the U.S. also pushed a land redistribution program that was hated by the economic elite. Bonner arrived at the site with photojournalist Susan Meiselas to record the results a few days after the massacre. And why was the U.S. government supporting Central American governments and military forces that were perpetuating these conditions?”. Wealth concentrated into fewer hands while the majority of the population became increasingly poorer. The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative in America that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by increasing and enforcing penalties for offenders. FSLN leaders were intent on creating a socialist-oriented economic system that would meet the basic needs of the majority, but they did not regard the Soviet Union, Eastern bloc countries, or Cuba as appropriate economic models. Sandinista Nicaragua was to be a new socialist experiment, allowing for individual ownership and private enterprise. We didn’t denounce it because we didn’t want to foul up the good results and the good image of the election,” said Hugo Barrera, a leader of ARENA; cited in Brown, With Friends Like These, 121. [192] See Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter, The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1987). [121] Philip Taubman, “In From the Cold and Hot for Truth,” New York Times, July 11, 1984, B6. [197] National Security Planning Group (NSPG) Meeting, “Subject: Review of US Policy in Central America, January 10, 1986, Secret,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB483; Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988), 326. In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights reported that “Salvadoran authorities systematically denied and concealed the facts,” and “that for nine years the State failed to open an investigation.”  The court furthermore chastised the Salvadoran government for passing an amnesty law in 2012 that exonerated the perpetrators without identifying them and called on the government to make reparation payments to victims’ families.