war and peace - UT LANIClanic.utexas.edu/project/hemisphereinitiatives/warpeace.pdfthe Chamorro government that defeated the Sandinistas in the election, and the various forces that

Jack Spence

Comparing Transitions TowardDemocracy and Social Equity In

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua

War and Peace inCentral America

November 2004

Hemisphere Initiatives

Brookline, Massachusetts

Copyright 2004 Hemisphere Initiatives

Jack Spence is President of Hemisphere Initiatives.He is Associate Professor of Political Science andAssociate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at theUniversity of Massachusetts Boston. He has con-ducted research on the wars and peace processes inCentral America since 1981.

Translator: Claudia Ferreira Talero, Managua([email protected] )

Graphic Artist: Nick Thorkelson, Somerville,Massachusetts (www.nickthorkelson.com)

Graphic Artist for Spanish edition, Kathy Sevilla,Managua ([email protected])

We are extremely grateful to PRODECA (Programade Dinamarca Pro Derechos Humanos ParaCentroamérica) in Guatemala for funding this reportand in particular to its Director Klaus Wulff for hisenthusiasm and patience, and to the highly profession-al and ever gracious members of the PRODECA staff:Beatriz Bravo, Rosario de Monzón, MinervaSamayoa, Finn Rasmussen and Carolina Pazos.Joy Olson, Executive Director of the WashingtonOffice on Latin America (WOLA) offered WOLA’shelp on distribution at a moment when WOLA wasextremely pressed for time, and Geoff Thale,WOLA’s Senior Associate for El Salvador, Cuba andNicaragua provided guidance on the distribution strat-egy. In Managua the Danish Embassy helped with dis-tribution as did the every resourceful MinervaSamayoa for PRODECA in Guatemala. In ElSalvador the decade-old collaboration betweenHemisphere Initiatives and Loly de Zúniga contin-ued with her very professional help with distribution,and we thank David Holiday for permission to useLoly’s services. Silvia Vasquez provided helpfulresearch in El Salvador and Guatemala on policereform before taking a position with the governmentin Guatemala. Judy Butler in Managua providedessential help on financial logistics.

It has been my pleasure to work with real profession-als over many Hemisphere Initiatives publications:Nick Thorkelson, Claudia Ferreira and Kathy Sevilla.

Copies of this report in PDF format as well as otherreports, can be found atwww.hemisphereinitiatives.org

For hard copies write Hemisphere Initiativesc/o Jack Spence37 Gorham AvenueBrookline, MA 02445 [email protected] or [email protected]

Or contact the Washington Office on Latin America1630 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 200Washington, DC [email protected]

CONTENTSSummary...................................................1Current Political Moment.......................14Guatemala ...........................................14El Salavador ..........................................18Nicaragua ............................................19

Varied Impacts of the Wars 22Origins..................................................22The Wars Begin....................................24Carter and Reagan: The Cold War and Human Rights .......................26The Wars’ Sequences and Impacts ........27

The Peace Agreements............................37Ending the War in Nicaragua...............38The Salvadoran Peace Accords ..............41The Guatemalan Peace Accords ............43

Military Reform......................................45Demilitarization in El Salvador.............46The Military in Guatemala ...................50Nicaraguan Military Reform.................52

Reforming Justice Systems .....................54Window on the Issues: Violence at Nueva Linda .......................54El Salvador Reforms..............................58Guatemala Reforms ..............................62Nicaragua Reforms ...............................65

Post War Elections, Participation, and Parties........................67Elections and Parties in El Salvador ......71Elections and Parties in Guatemala.......75Elections and Parties in Nicaragua........76Electoral Systems and Participation ......77

Land and Equity .....................................82Land......................................................82 Social Spending.....................................88

International Factors ...............................91Conclusion ..............................................96Bibliography...........................................97

This study compares the peace processes inCentral America and focuses on four areasof reform: military institutions, police and

judicial, elections and political participation, andland and social equity. Problems in each of theseareas gave cause to the wars, and each was negoti-ated and contested during the peace processes;each is a part of attempted democratic transi-tions. The conditions faced by national and inter-national actors were constrained by the variedimpacts and sequences of the wars, which in turnaffected the shaping of peace agreements and theopportunities for democratic transition.

The report is organized as follows: ThisSummary provides a compressed background ofthe wars and peace processes and itemizes andcompares the changes brought by peace imple-mentation. The following section provides ananalysis of the current political moment in eachcountry—the conflicts and agendas each face.The following two sections contain a moredetailed analysis of the wars and peace processes.Readers familiar with these events may wish toskip those sections. Then there are sections on theaforementioned four areas of reform. The sectionon politics, parties and electoral authorities alsogives details about electoral and party eventsleading up to the present. Although all of thesesections make abundant references to the rolesplayed by various international actors, an addi-

tional section focuses on the international com-munity.

General Background. Between 1978 and 1980three civil wars erupted in Central America. Leftistguerrillas threatened to overthrow the traditionalconservative, dictatorial order made up of analliance between rich landowners, exporters of cof-fee, sugar, cotton and beef, and the military insti-tutions. In Nicaragua, this order took the form ofthe Somoza family dynasty variously supported oracquiesced to by other rich exporting groups. Therapidly deepening crises surprised the traditionalpowers, as well as the U.S. government, and, veryprobably, the insurgents themselves. The rebelsfought to destroy long-standing dictatorships andto redress the highly unequal distribution ofwealth and extensive and growing poverty.

The first war ended after 18 months in July 1979with the defeat of the Somoza dictatorship and thevictory of the rebels of the leftist SandinistaNational Liberation Front (FSLN) and other op-position groups. This victory spurred the enthusi-asm of rebel groups in El Salvador and Guatemalaand, in even greater measure, alarmed thelandowners and militaries, to say nothing of theU.S. By 1980 war had roiled those two countries,and the U.S. began to heavily back theSalvadoran government. In Nicaragua a conserva-tive, armed opposition to the Sandinistas beganand, with the full support of the Reagan adminis-

War and Peace in Central AmericaComparing Transitions Toward

Democracy and Social Equity in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua

SUMMARY

tration, the conflict was soon to escalate into a full-scale war. Each of the three wars was highlydestructive — in terms of lives lost, many times asdestructive as the Vietnam War was to the U.S.

All wars eventually end. Whether they end in tri-umph and defeat or, in the words of the rebelspokesperson at the signing of the Peace Accords forEl Salvador, with “neither victor nor vanquished”establishes the fundamental condition of the peace.In the four wars suffered in Central America oneended in the defeat of Somoza. The other threeended in compromises: Nicaragua in 1990, after anelectoral defeat of the Sandinista government; ElSalvador in 1992 with a treaty between the U.S.-supported government and the Farabundo MartíNational Liberation Front (FMLN) coalition ofguerrilla groups; and Guatemala in 1996 with atreaty between the government and the GuatemalanNational Revolutionary Unity (URNG) coalition ofguerrilla groups.

The peace compromises accomplished a durablepeace (although scattered, destructive fighting by“demobilized” contras went on for another six yearsin Nicaragua). As renewed war has been commonelsewhere in the last 25 years, that accomplishmentshould not be taken for granted. These peace agree-ments had other lofty goals: to establish fully par-ticipatory democracy with a main focus on free andfair, inclusive elections; to reform the national mili-tary institutions; to establish effective, apolitical,non-repressive police forces; to establish the rule oflaw through reform of corrupt or ineffective, politi-cized judicial institutions; to address questions ofsocial justice, poverty, and the highly unequal dis-tribution of resources—in particular land; and toaddress many issues of indigenous peoples, mainlyMayan groups in Guatemala. In Guatemala and ElSalvador comprehensive treaties spelled out thesegoals; in Nicaragua a series of ad hoc negotiationsaddressed some of them.

The wars profoundly affected everything.Practically everyone knew someone who had beenkilled. The wars impoverished many and wereruinous to the economies. The wars and the peaceprocesses altered traditional political and economicpower arrangements. War-time elections with civil-ian candidates were a marked departure from long-standing military regimes prior to 1979, yet didnot end the wars. The wars brought massive humanrights abuses, particularly by traditional militaries,and showed judicial institutions, governments, and

foreigners to be incapable of dealing with them.Impunity reigned. The wars and agrarian reformsdeeply affected distribution of property inNicaragua and El Salvador, and this issue pervadedthe peace processes.

Despite the striking similarity of the three coun-tries, one can see significant differences in each ofthe three countries for every statement made in theabove paragraph. Eight to fourteen years removedfrom the ends of their wars, the ongoing issues ofthe peace accords, the effects of the wars, and theconfiguration of political forces varies considerablyfrom country to country. One cause of the variance,among others, is the relative military and economicimpacts of the wars. Another is the nature of thegroups contesting the wars: the national militaries,the traditional wealthy classes, the guerrillas, andthe U.S. government—opposing the government inNicaragua, supporting that of El Salvador, and heldback from supporting the Guatemalan government.

In El Salvador, the two groups that negotiatedthe treaty—the FMLN rebels and a governmentheaded by a President from the rightist ARENAparty—currently are the two dominant politicalprotagonists, but the political force of the treaty’sspecified goals is spent, after significant achieve-ments. However the heritage of the war, and theU.S. role in it, had a strikingly high profile in thepresidential election last March, in which the U.S.supported ARENA.

In Guatemala, by contrast, the treaty still hassome force in terms of setting agendas, focusingforeign aid, and shaping debates. President OscarBerger, elected late last year, initially pledged toimplement it. Berger, however, is not the firstpresident to make this pledge, and subsequentdevelopments have left doubts. In contrast to ElSalvador, the main negotiators of key aspects of theaccords—the URNG rebels and a governmentfrom the PAN political party—have faded toextremely weak positions in the Guatemalan polit-ical scene. The war played little role in the elec-tion, save for attention paid to the bloody recordduring the war of one of the presidential candi-dates—(ret.) General Efraín Ríos Montt.

In Nicaragua, of the principal parties that nego-tiated war-ending compromises—the Sandinistas,the Chamorro government that defeated theSandinistas in the election, and the various forcesthat made up the anti Sandinista rebels—only theSandinistas remain as a major political organiza-

2 War and Peace in Central America

tion. But that organization has been transformed instructure (from collective leadership to one-manrule), in composition (the majority of historic lead-ers have left the party), and in philosophy. HoweverSandinismo and anti- Sandinismo still dominateelectoral politics, though it is not clear what thoseterms mean beyond hold-over symbols of the war.While elections prevail and governments turn over,larger peace process goals of rule of law, democracy,and social justice have been replaced with deal-making, ironically enough, between two maincaudillo (or political boss) party leaders—DanielOrtega of the Sandinistas and Arnoldo Alemán ofthe anti- Sandinistas in his Liberal ConstitutionalParty (PLC). They battle, then divide up quotas ofpower and governmental offices to protect eachgroup from maximum damage by the other group,then battle again, with the U.S. openly opposed toboth and trying to find a third force in the personof President Enrique Bolaños, elected in 2001.Substantive politics about issues of democracy andsocial justice have been replaced by a long-runningpolitical poker game.

Achievements and Gaps

• Peace did take hold. Post-war political violence,including assassination, marred each country. Itwas the most extreme and long-lasting inNicaragua. In Guatemala, with a peace treatysigned in 1996, there have been 12 murders ofhuman rights activists in the past four years. Butin each country the post-war years saw a dramaticdrop in human rights abuses. In many other civilwars of the last thirty years, peace has not lasted.

• Social peace, however, did not arrive. A dramaticincrease in violent crime broke out and, thoughrecently at lower levels, save in Guatemala, haspersisted. The crime, at least in initial years, wasrelated to the wars: to unemployed demobilizedsoldiers, to many assault rifles, to post traumaticstress disorder, to the lack of effective police, tothe “normality” of violence spawned in the wars.At its peak in El Salvador, the level of post-warhomicide met the annual levels of war- timedeaths in the late 1980s. Unexpectedly, giventhe post-war political violence, the least moun-tainous crime wave was in Nicaragua.

• The military no longer controls, wins, or partic-ipates in elections. This trend began before theends of the wars.

• The military’s institutional political power hassignificantly declined in each country, even inGuatemala where it remains the strongest politi-cal institution. (In Guatemala the military hashad significant political control or influence overcivilian governments, much more so than in theother two countries.) Military budgets havedeclined as a proportion of GNP, but again, lessso and unevenly in Guatemala. The militariesmaintain significant autonomy from civilianoversight, and have independent means ofincome (less so in El Salvador, more so inGuatemala). In Guatemala the military mostlyretains impunity from prosecution or account-ability, but it is on the defensive.

• The police forces are now independent of themilitary, though this independence is formal andfar from complete in Guatemala. In El Salvadorand Guatemala the police are new institutionscreated in the peace accords and replace institu-tions that were controlled by the military dicta-torships and renowned for corruption and humanrights abuses. Problems in ineffectiveness andcorruption and lack of geographic coverage wereand are more extreme in Guatemala than ElSalvador, though El Salvador’s force is four yearsolder. In Guatemala there is competition amonginstitutional actors with powers to investigatethat see crime as a resource to be used. There isevidence that the police force in Nicaragua,though strapped for resources, is more effectiveand less corrupt than in the other two; however,there is evidence of corruption in the Atlanticcoast drug transshipment area.

• Reform of the judicial system and establishmentof the rule of law has been most difficult. Giventhe historic control the militaries had over thepopulations, it is striking that military reformhas progressed much more rapidly than judicialreform. The central progress made in reformingjudicial systems has been in the Supreme Courtin El Salvador, a direct result of the peace nego-tiations. At lower levels judges, particularly inGuatemala, are more prone to corruption and/orintimidation. In Nicaragua the courts have ahigh degree of politicization with judgeshipshanded out as a result of recent pacts betweenthe two leaders of the two major political par-ties. In the face of threats and bribes, somejudges and prosecutors, particularly inGuatemala, have demonstrated great profession-

Summary 3

alism and even greater courage. And there aremany, though modest, reform projects inGuatemala.

• Electoral democracy has taken hold with generalprocedural fairness. Votes, for the most part,have been counted correctly and competition hasbeen open. Serious flaws and biases against thepoor persist, despite some improvements in voterregistration (with Nicaragua doing better sincethe 1980s on this front), with large inequities inresources competitors bring to campaigns, andwith either a lack of professionalism or over-politicization of electoral authorities. On thisfront, Nicaragua has declined sharply from ahighly professional operation to one controlledby the two political parties, and the other twocountries have shown gradual improvement onthe registration and other procedural fronts.

• There are large inequities in the resources par-ties bring to the fray, with the advantage goingto those who are supported by the rich. There islittle or no regulation of finance or limits oncampaign viciousness. Assessed in relative inter-national terms: there has been turnover in thelegislatures and so meaningful electoral compe-tition with few “safe seats;” presidents are elect-ed by a direct vote with runoff provisions; thereare uniform national electoral procedures; andnone of the recent elections has been plagued bythe host of procedural and discriminatory prob-lems manifested in Florida in 2000.

• However the governments that have come topower after elections have not, in the main,directed much attention or resources to the sub-stantive issues raised in the peace processes suchas social equity, property distribution, policeand judicial reform, unless forced to do so bysocial upheavals or foreign pressures. Money isshort; there is resistance to raising taxes; theeconomies are weak; the rich can protect them-selves from crime; institutional reform is a long-term proposition that is hard for a politician toturn into an electoral resource; there is resis-tance to change; quotas of impunity are jealous-ly guarded; and reformers from the “internation-al community”, despite considerable monetaryresources, are divided, have short horizons dueto their own politics, and have taken on tasksfor which they have little experience.

• Among the rebel groups of the 1970s two of thethree—the Sandinistas and the FMLN in El

Salvador — remain major players in elections,have had large benches in the national legisla-tures, and have won many local municipal coun-cil elections, particularly in larger urban areas.The third, the URNG in Guatemala, is hangingon for survival. The conservative Nicaraguanrebels of the 1980s have little organized pres-ence, but some have had positions in the lasttwo governments and legislative benches. Boththe Sandinistas and the FMLN have undergonesubstantial structural and personnel changes,with various groups leaving (or being asked toleave). Each has a key figure that has been onthe winning side of all internal battles: DanielOrtega of the Sandinistas and Shafik Handal ofthe FMLN, though Ortega has lost three presi-dential elections and Handal lost last March bysubstantial margins.

• Two other parties have been dominated by oneman—Arnoldo Alemán of the PLC inNicaragua and Efraín Ríos Montt of the FRG inGuatemala. Alemán dominates despite havingbeen in jail, under house arrest, or under arrestin the hospital on charges of massive corruptionfor most of the last two years.

• Conservative forces have won every Presidentialelection. They have won more seats than the leftin legislative elections. (The FMLN won moreseats than ARENA in the last three legislativeelections, but ARENA has been able to counton votes of other conservative parties.)

• Nicaragua is dominated by the two parties dueto post-1996 restrictive election laws passed bythe two parties. In El Salvador three smaller par-ties have had a significant role — the PCN onthe right, the Christian Democrats on theCenter Right, and the Democratic Convergenceon the left — though the two larger parties aredominant. No parties have dominated (for long)in Guatemala.

• The dominance of the two large parties in ElSalvador and Nicaragua, and their own central-ized structures, has tended to minimize the poli-cy impact of organized groups in civil society,with the occasional exception of some unions,peasant protests, and coalitions of women’sgroups. There are no broad-based, non-businesslobby groups. In Guatemala the weak and tem-porary nature of the political parties has beenaccompanied by a fairly high level of politicalparticipation by groups in civil society, organized


mainly around the implementation of the peaceaccords. These groups have suffered crises infunding and a lack of organized political bases.

• The elected governments have all been neoliber-al. They have pursued privatization and reduc-tions in government and have not increasedsocial spending much, if one discounts interna-tional donations. Despite having very low taxrates compared to other countries in LatinAmerica, El Salvador and Guatemala have donelittle to increase them, and in Guatemala’s casethis was a specific requirement in the peaceaccords. Nicaragua has a higher tax coefficient,but a weaker economy to tax.

• Significant amounts of property were transferredin post-war Nicaragua and El Salvador, and quitesmall amounts in Guatemala. In El Salvador andGuatemala the transfers of property resulted fromnegotiated settlements in the peace processes; inNicaragua they resulted more from direct andindirect threats and political violence, from lackof clear legal title among agrarian reform benefi-ciaries, and from economic stress due significant-ly to the disappearance of agrarian loans.

• The peace processes also accorded some veteransof the war with very modest readjustmentresources in the form of training, grants, orsmall loans. Despite many difficulties, this wasbest negotiated and best organized in ElSalvador. There has been little effort to assessthe results of these efforts.

• The international actors played key roles inestablishing a framework for a Central Americanpeace accord, in mediating two of the accords,in verifying elections, and for two of the accordsin verifying compliance. These diplomaticactors made use of political openings and cre-ative diplomacy.

• Most internationally financed post-war recon-struction spending has either been on infrastruc-ture or on macroeconomic stability programs(particularly in Nicaragua), though there havebeen significant donations to health and educa-tion and institutional reform, with mixed results.

• Verification missions and international financialaid have been used with mixed success to pushfor accord implementation. This required coor-dination among the diplomats and donors,achieved through donor meetings with thenational players. Such efforts were hampered by:different donor agendas and political con-

straints, personnel turnover, national pride andresistance to international “tutoring,” localpolitical divisions, and protection of turf. Manydonors have an internal institutional need toprocess loans and fulfill annual donation goals.

• International actors have played key roles inpolice and judicial reform efforts, in propertyredistribution in El Salvador, in technical assis-tance to elections, in support of human rightsand anti-corruption groups and governmentbodies, and in participation by civil society inGuatemala. The United States has been thelargest bilateral donor in absolute terms (mea-sured in relation to the size of its economy, itsdonations are rather small, particularly whencompared to the Scandinavian countries).Though providing critical support for clean andefficient electoral processes, the U.S. has alsotaken an openly partisan stance in many elec-tions, something the Bush administrationaccused Kofi Annan of doing when he recentlystated that the U.S. invasion of Iraq violatedinternational norms. The U.S. openly opposedDaniel Ortega in every election, opposed ShafikHandal of the FMLN in El Salvador this year,and to a lesser extent expressed warnings againstconservative candidate Ríos Montt inGuatemala in 2003. In each post-war case thecandidate opposed by the U.S. has lost.

Key Factors. What accounts for the differences inpeace implementation in these three countries? Tosome extent the different strategies, resources, andactions of the players explain the differences. Butthe actors confronted constraints imposed by otheractors and, more generally, by larger historical pat-terns and structures, in particular the differentsequences and effects of the wars. To understandthe peace processes one needs to understand thewars. The following factors were key in eachnational development.

• U.S. support of the Salvadoran government andits attacks on the Nicaraguan government weredecisive in shaping the outcomes of the wars,and so was its relatively passive role inGuatemala. This is not to say the U.S. couldjust get what it wanted. It is striking that con-flicts in three tiny “banana republics” tied U.S.foreign policy in knots for over a decade.

• The military in Guatemala was stronger and moreself-reliant, and probably more brutal than its

Summary 5

counterpart in El Salvador. That led to decisivelydifferent outcomes in the war and in the peaceprocesses. In El Salvador, civilian elections arrivedbecause the U.S. needed them to get Congressionalsupport to defeat the guerrilla insurgency; inGuatemala they came because the militarythought it would improve its international image,and that it could control the winners.

• Where a multiplicity of international actors—nations and multilateral agencies—coordinatedhuman and material resources in the peaceprocesses (negotiations, implementations) sig-nificant progress was generally made. Whensuch efforts were absent or weak, generally littleprogress was made. However, multilateral inter-national resources have not been a guarantee ofprogress and have been frustrated by reluctantforces in each country, inertia, lack of experienceon all sides, and the unprecedented nature ofsome of the tasks.

• A “hurting stalemate” led to an elaborate peaceagreement in El Salvador with striking institu-tional changes. A much less acute and moreunbalanced stalemate led to an even more com-prehensive peace document in Guatemala, butwith fewer “teeth.” A “hurting stalemate” inNicaragua did not lead to a comprehensivepeace agreement, but rather to a negotiatedelection followed by a series of narrow accords.The lack of a comprehensive accord and interna-tional verification partly explains the additionalsix years of political violence in Nicaragua. Thestronger aspects of the accords in El Salvadorregarding the military, the police, the SupremeCourt, and land transfers resulted in more insti-tutional and property change than inGuatemala. Nicaragua has had considerableinstitutional change, but much of it, the mili-tary excepted, has gone in the direction ofpoliticizing institutions and leaving them preyto perpetual bargaining rather than according toa peace treaty with international verification.

• The initiation of electoral democracy in eachcountry during the war years was initially dueto the revolts of the left rebels that began in the1970s, though the 1980s rebels opposed thegovernment-staged elections. The mix of insur-gent pressures and international pressures onelections varied. And in Guatemala in the endthey were imposed by the military, which wasunder international pressure.

• The shape and pace of the peace processes anddemocratic transitions have varied with theinstitutional and political strength of the mili-taries of each country and the extent to whichrebel groups could erode that strength. InGuatemala the military initiated electoralprocesses and closely controlled peace processesbecause it had largely defeated its adversaries. InEl Salvador the military proved to be muchweaker in the endgame because its adversarieshad been much stronger.

• The outcomes of the wars, implementation ofpeace, and the political map and policies of eachcountry have been significantly affected by thecohesion of the dominant economic groups in thecountry and the extent to which they were chal-lenged and damaged by the wars. The groupswere divided and damaged in Nicaragua and hadbeen under the thumb of Somoza. They wereunited and dominant in the other two countriesbefore the wars. During the wars the oligarchywas threatened with defeat in El Salvador anddamaged in the war, but was relatively unscathedin Guatemala. For example, the threat of revolu-tion and the role of the U.S. forced the dominanteconomic groups in El Salvador to forge an elec-toral (and paramilitary) organization. The samegroups in Guatemala were not so challenged, andno cohesive party structure has emerged there.

• The varied extent of war-time damage shaped thepeace accords and peace implementation. Damagewas the worst in Nicaragua. Though about as badin highland areas of Guatemala, the Guatemalaneconomy did not collapse under the weight of thewar as did Nicaragua’s, nor was it as heavily dam-aged as was the Salvadoran economy.

• The varied ability of rebel groups to transformthemselves from war organizations to politicalparties has affected peace implementation andthe political map and policies of each country.

• The social dislocation and economic damage ofthe war sparked and fueled largescale migra-tions, mainly to the U.S. This has transformedeach country. In post war years migrationbecame the main source of dollars, a source thatarrives in highly decentralized fashion; it hasbeen a much larger factor in El Salvador than inGuatemala or Nicaragua.

• Much reconstruction aid has gone to infrastruc-ture or international debt relief programs andnot to those most damaged by the wars.


• New assembly plants have provided jobs andshifted investment directions, while ongoinglandlessness and low agricultural export process-es have left rural areas with the highest levels ofpoverty, as before the wars. As was the casebefore the wars, the new industrial jobs have notbeen sufficient to make up for rural decline. Thepost-war assembly plant (maquila) industrialjobs mainly go to women.

Evaluation and Contingencies. Assessments ofdemocratic transitions and peace processes inev-itably raise questions about how better resultsmight have been achieved but for the ill intentionsor missteps taken by one or another of the actors.Inevitable as they may be, such judgments are notthe central goal of our analysis. We take a broaderapproach than “lessons learned” for several reasons.

First, peace might have been the easiest of thegoals. Aspirations were high. Shafik Handal of theFMLN said at the signing of the Salvadoran peaceaccords, “We are embarked on the course…to shapea politically, economically, and socially pluralistcountry, as the foundation of a participatory andrepresentative democracy.” Said his counterpart, ThePresident of El Salvador, Alfredo Cristiani, “We arepledged to the integral promotion of human rights,not only political but also social and economic ones;we are….proposing…a new scheme of coexistencein El Salvador, a scheme that…reaches out pro-foundly and humanly toward flesh-and-blood peo-ple who work, who dream, and who suffer.” Suchgoals, even with the best of good will on both sides,even with the most capable and efficient teams ofactors, are not so easy to achieve. In each case, thenational parties charged with implementing thepeace compromises had just finished a decade ofshooting at each other. The best of good will usuallydid not exist. Implementation of agreements wasmainly competition by non-violent means.

Second, powerful as the actors may have been,including the most powerful nation in the world,each faced difficult constraints — constraints cre-ated by lack of resources, by lack of experience, byunanticipated consequences and conditions impos-sible to foresee, and by the other actors includingallies and adversaries. Perhaps the central illustra-tion of the inability of any one actor or group ofactors to shape a solution is that the United Stateswas bedeviled by the Central American crisis in itsforeign policy for a decade and, despite being a

central protagonist in two of the wars, could notextract what it wanted in two of the weakernations of the world.

Furthermore there were more than two sides toeach war. The multiplicity of players createdopportunities but also constraints, making it diffi-cult for any one group to foresee the future or tochoose an option that would not be negated oraltered by another. Each “side” consisted of agroup of forces in each country both more and lessunified at many points in the war and in the peaceprocess about how to confront the other side andabout what an acceptable resolution would be.And there were other organized national playersnot at the bargaining table—political parties, pri-vate sector groups, civil society organizations,Catholic Church leaders. The basic establishmentof peace—a major success—created numerousorganizational crises among the players.

“Outside” forces, the most important of whichwas the United States, deeply affected the war andthe peace processes at all points. Although most ofthem represented nations or institutions that werevery powerful relative to each of these three small,impoverished nation states, they too were often frus-trated at their inability to shape change or to movethe parties forward, despite many successes of inter-national actors in the peace processes. Outside ofCentral America unanticipated developments affect-ed the region: the end of the Cold War and therapid global spread of neoliberal economic practices.

War is the great lever of history. It set in motiondeep social, political, and economic changes thatirretrievably altered the national and internationalterrain in ways neither “side” imagined at the out-set or in the middle of the conflict. There werehuge population shifts and massive economic andhuman destruction. Groups representing a “side”in each conflict changed in large part because ofwar-induced changes in political conditions.

It is striking that almost all of the key actorswho fashioned these histories, nationals and for-eigners alike, were adlibbing their ways throughheated controversies and attempted reforms aboutwhich they had little knowledge or experience, andno scripts: making war, making revolutions, hold-ing elections, running governments, making peacetreaties, attempting land distributions, verifyingand monitoring peace agreements, building newpolice forces, reforming courts, addressing anddealing with the issues of racial discrimination,

Summary 7

building political parties, providing foreign assis-tance that would build democratic institutions,reconciliation, and healing massive wounds.

History and structures shaped the processes inways individual and group agents could not change.The actors in each arrived at the point where peacenegotiations might be possible in very different con-ditions from one country to the next. The three warshad different military ebbs and flows, differentsequences of political developments, different levelsof human and economic destruction. A reason thepeace processes were so different is that actors, ratio-nal and not so rational, fashioned different strate-gies. Another is that the peace processes weresequential, and that the actors in one learned fromthe mistakes of the earlier one. Agents and institu-tions did matter, but must be seen amidst the con-straints imposed by the historical contexts.

Paths Toward War. The three countries had in1975-1980 relatively small populations: 3, 5, and7 million people. The principal source of dollarwealth among national elites had been for over acentury coffee exporting. Bananas in Nicaraguaand Guatemala were historically controlled by U.S.capital. More than half the populations were ruraland made scant livings as workers on export cropplantations and/or as small peasant growers of cornand beans. The countries shared colonial histories,as poor Spanish outposts without precious metalsor large indigenous labor forces, except inGuatemala where there is still a very large indige-nous population that speaks 23 Mayan languages.

In the 1960s and 70s industrial productiongrew rapidly, but it was small relative to job needsand by comparison with other Latin Americancountries. Exports of cotton, sugar and beef grew,but each took land from corn and bean farmers anddid not provide sufficient jobs—particularly cattleraising. Growing landlessness was most acute in ElSalvador where there was no frontier.

The causes of the wars were grounded in inter-secting political and economic crises—worseningdictatorial regimes and increased loss of lands bypeasants with no urban or migration outlets.Civilian opposition to the dictatorships had beenineffectual, repressed, or co-opted. Increased land-lessness was worse in El Salvador and Guatemala,and indigenous groups in Guatemala suffered dou-ble discrimination. In Nicaragua the assassination ofa key opposition figure, Pedro Joachim Chamorro,

triggered revolt and in El Salvador two fraudulentelections in the 1970s moved some to armedstruggle.

In each country leftist armed groups aspired totopple long standing conservative military-landedelite dictatorships. These were wars over ideologyand class, not ethnic or religious conflicts. (On theethnic issue Guatemala is a partial exception.).

Their opponents saw the armed groups and mil-itants as part of an international communist con-spiracy. Their immediate reaction was to kill theinsurgents and people they perceived to be theirallies. This led to major bloodbaths with unarmedcivilian “suspects” the main victims: in Nicaraguafrom 1978 to 1979 and in El Salvador andGuatemala from late 1979 to 1983. Somoza evenbombed his own cities.

It could be that these bloodbaths had different,and opposite effects. In Somoza’s case a populationincreasingly enraged by the new and very publicheights of his brutality, joined the fight againsthim. He lost. In Guatemala by contrast, the mili-tary’s devastating scorched earth campaign inmany areas of the indigenous highlands torched400 villages and hamlets, wiped out the guerrillas’chief base of support, and drove reduced numbersof guerrillas into remote areas—a strategic defeat.In El Salvador, the bloodbath eliminated for yearsthe organized left in urban areas and many radicalorganizers in rural areas, but also, in a “blowbackeffect,” it drove survivors and vengeance-seekingrelatives into the ranks of the guerrillas. Withexpanded ranks the FMLN fought the govern-ment, heavily backed by the U.S., to a standstill.

Conservative sectors in the U.S. also believedthe revolts were part of the international commu-nist conspiracy and were quick to blame PresidentCarter for the “loss” of Nicaragua. Carter and someDemocratic Party members had a more conflictedview. Carter had criticized the lack of democracyand human rights abuses in a number of coun-tries—mainly those in the Soviet block, but also inthese three Central American dictatorships. Butthese same Democrats did not want leftist forces toreplace the traditional militaries or leave them-selves prone to Republican attacks.

As events moved toward full-scale war in ElSalvador and Guatemala, Carter lost the 1990 elec-tion to Ronald Reagan by a large margin, and themost conservative wing of the Republican partybecame dominant. Almost immediately Reagan


ordered the CIA to organize a military force thatcould fight against the Sandinistas and called formore aid to El Salvador and a resumption of aid toGuatemala. However, Democrats in Congress ham-pered President Reagan in his pursuit of aggressivemilitary policies against the Sandinistas and theleftist rebels in El Salvador and Guatemala. Theyraised concerns about human rights abuses, lack ofdemocracy and another Vietnam. Reagan increas-ingly got what he wanted from Congress, thoughnot on Guatemala, but the pressure also led toU.S.-sponsored civilian elections in El Salvador andlip service paid to reducing human rights abuses.

Toward Peace Accords. By the end of the 1980snone of the combatants had been able to win, evenin Guatemala, where the military had reduced theURNG to a minimal force. But the three countrieswere approaching a point of serious negotiationswith different balances of forces. This led to differ-ent peace compromises at different times.

A group of four and then eight Latin Americannations, called the Contadora group, attempted foryears to find a negotiated solution. This finallyresulted in the five-nation 1987 Central Americantreaty. This did not bring peace, but it set a nego-tiating framework that, somewhat unfairly, becamefundamental only in Nicaragua but influential inthe other two countries. The UN later played anunprecedented role in mediating negotiations in ElSalvador and Guatemala and in verifying variousor all aspects of the implementation of the peaceaccords. Other agencies of the UN, the multilater-al financial institutions, and bilateral donors haveattempted, in varying ways, to assist in the imple-mentation of the accords and to pressure for certainpolicies and for acceleration of implementation.

Nicaragua went through a complex series ofmulti-track negotiations that led to the end of thewar, but not to a comprehensive peace accord.

The national election scheduled for 1990 waspreceded by a three-track series of negotiationsbetween the Sandinistas and: Central Americanpresidents within the framework of the 1987accord, the opposition political parties, and thecontra rebels. For two years the Sandinistas shut-tled between meetings of the Central Americanpresidents, the contras, and the civilian opposition.Previously, the Sandinistas had refused to talk tothe contras, seeing them as an instrument of theU.S. and in open violation of the Central American

peace accord because they attacked from bases inHonduras and, to a lesser extent, Costa Rica.

The Sandinistas made concessions at every step ofthe way, crossing into territory they had earliersworn not to enter. The key constraints they facedwere that the Nicaraguan economy was falling apartdue to the war and their own mismanagement, andthat they were opposed by the U.S., which wasattempting to avoid provisions of the CentralAmerican peace agreement that outlawed using theterritory of one country (Honduras) to attack anoth-er. Neither the Salvadoran and Guatemalan govern-ments faced such extreme constraints.

The negotiations with the contras failed. Thenegotiations over the election succeeded but thepre-election demobilization of the contras did nothappen. And the Sandinistas, to the surprise ofmost, lost the election.

Before the inauguration of the newly electedPresident Violeta Chamorro, the widow of theelite, anti Somoza newspaper editor, Pedro JoaquínChamorro, whose assassination triggered the warthat led to Somoza’s overthrow, two key accordswere negotiated: one with the Sandinistas thatmaintained the Nicaraguan army as they had orga-nized it, though with a pledge to reduce its sizeand to sever formal ties to the FSLN; and one withthe contras. The contras or National Resistancewere now negotiating with political allies—thediverse coalition of parties (called UNO) that hadoutpolled the FSLN—and agreed to demobilize inexchange for pledges of land owned by the govern-ment and other resources, as well as a small num-ber of second and third level government offices.

It was the civilian opposition to the Sandinistas,augmented by several elite, Miami-based, non-combatant members of the contras who scooped upthe victory over the Sandinistas. The contras andtheir field commanders lacked a coherent programand political organization and toward the end ofthe war were badly divided. The contras, thoughpolitically on the winning side of the election, hadnot formally participated in it and emerged fromthe conflict with little to show.

When the former contras saw the Chamorroadministration (the more moderate elements of theUNO coalition) making legislative compromiseswith the Sandinistas and when the land grants didnot prove sufficiently beneficial, thousands of for-mer contras rearmed in a diffuse series of bands thatmade a range of local and national economic and

Summary 9

political demands. With a vastly reduced militaryand a besieged Chamorro administration unable tocope with them, this armed activity went on formore than half the decade, and was marked by aseries of ad hoc negotiations to put out local firesbetween the government and various local warlords.

El Salvador experienced a strikingly differentpeace process but with some odd parallels. Itresulted, in January 1992, in the sort of compre-hensive peace agreement the contras and the civil-ian opposition in Nicaragua were unable to obtain.The accords followed a 20-month-long series ofnegotiations directly between the government andthe FMLN that began just as the president-electChamorro was striking an accord with HumbertoOrtega, head of the formerly named SandinistaPopular Army, and then with the contras to demo-bilize.

Unlike President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua,President Cristiani did not have to go to the otherCentral American presidents to demonstrate thathe had shown sufficient flexibility with his adver-saries. His economy was badly damaged but notfalling apart. He was backed by the U.S., but hisU.S. partner was facing new constraints from theCongress about continuing to provide as much aidbecause of his military’s slaughter of the Jesuitsand the political and military damage inflicted bythe FMLN in its 1989 “Tet” offensive. But theFMLN had been badly hurt too and was affectedby the defeat of the Sandinistas.

Both parties invited the United Nations to serveas mediators during and between negotiating ses-sions. Nor did the government enter into a secondtrack of negotiations with the left civilian opposi-tion, a sector that until the end of the 1980srefused to enter the new civilian based electionsbecause of the high levels of repression. Unable towin on the battlefield, the FMLN was able to win,at various stages of the process, significant changesin governmental structure, some of which requiredchanging articles in the Constitution before the endof the negotiations. It was able to gain these con-cessions because it retained considerable militaryforce and because the government was willing tochange the military in light of growing U.S.doubts. These concessions in the negotiationsincluded eventual destruction of the three policeforces and replacement with a new one under con-ditions detailed in the accords, an independentreview of the military’s record on human rights

with possible discharge for abusers, changes inmilitary doctrine and training, changes in thestructure of the national electoral authority and inthe manner of selecting supreme court judges. Inexchange, the FMLN accepted the constitutionaland general electoral framework that had beenfashioned in the middle of the war and agreed to acease fire and to demobilization.

Again in contrast to Nicaragua and Guatemala,to help insure implementation, the FMLN’s demo-bilization was to occur in phases while various pro-visions of the accords were to be implemented.And both parties agreed to an extensive UnitedNations verification mission of all aspects of theaccords and to international participation in exam-ination of human rights abuses. (In Nicaragua,though there was extensive UN and Organizationof American States (OAS) monitoring of the 1989-1990 election period, there was, following theelection, only a tiny OAS mission to act as liaisonwith the former contras.)

However, the FMLN was not able to win any (ormany) of the economic demands it had had at theoutset of the war for redistribution of land andwealth and better health and education. It did winan accord to transfer lands in war zones it and itssupporters (and others) had occupied during thewar and, by contrast with the contras inNicaragua, significant (though inadequate) job andbusiness training programs for its troops. TheFMLN’s negotiating strategy seemed to be basedon a conclusion that it could not win both itspolitical and economic demands, so should focuson the political, particularly military reform. Thebusiness-backed government agreed to this frame-work; it protected its economic interests.

The chief loser in the accords was the Salvadoranmilitary—it lost control of the police, saw its doc-trine narrowed and training methods criticized andchanged, and saw many of its top officers eventual-ly forced into retirement and publicly charged forhuman rights abuses. A decade earlier this institu-tion had controlled the government.

Its losses form a parallel to Nicaragua. It was thearmed groups on the conservative side of the negoti-ating table in both countries– the contras and theSalvadoran military—that emerged as losers, despitethe fact that conservative civilians in both countrieshad won elections and controlled the government.However the losses were not the same. The contrasdemobilized and saw their enemies remain in con-


trol of the nation’s military, though it was a vastlyreduced organization. The Salvadoran military sawits enemies demobilize, but at considerable cost toitself, including a purge of one hundred of the topofficers and highly damaging publicity.

Guatemala’s military, by contrast, exercised exten-sive control over the government, even after itallowed civilian elections in 1985, and had anample presence in the negotiations with the URNGrebels. In macroeconomic terms the Guatemalaneconomy was not doing well. Its business and agri-cultural elites had not been nearly as hard hit by thewar as those in El Salvador and Nicaragua. TheGuatemalan military had long since stopped evenasking for aid from the U.S. The URNG was mili-tarily weak, so not in a strong negotiating position.

Though there are many parallels in content withthe comprehensive Salvadoran peace accords,including calls for change in military doctrine, for-mal loss of control over the police, reduction insize, and an accounting of human rights abuses, inevery instance the accords presented a weaker chal-lenge to the government and the military than theSalvadoran accords.

The Guatemalan accords, for example, called forrestriction of the military’s function to defendingthe sovereignty of the state. But this and other pro-visos necessitated Constitutional change that wasnot to be attempted until after the accords had beensigned, in contrast to El Salvador. The GuatemalanCongress spent two years debating the reforms andthen submitted to the electorate a confusing, com-plex package of 54 amendments. These were defeat-ed in a May 1999 referendum marked by a well-financed campaign against the amendments and byextremely low voter turnout. The URNG was sosmall it could not really demobilize in five phases.

On the other hand, the Guatemalan accordsdelved deeply into topics barely touched upon inthe Salvadoran accords and not raised at all in theNicaraguan process, such as political participationin all phases of policy-making. The accord onindigenous rights was without parallel in the othertwo countries, and the socioeconomic accord con-tained specific provisions requiring the govern-ment to increase taxes and spending on education,health, and housing by fixed percentages withinspecified times.

The Guatemala accords were also different in thatan umbrella group of organizations of civil societybecame formally involved—not directly negotiating

but drafting proposals for all of the accords. Theyalso were formally involved in a variety of commis-sions that were to oversee the implementation of theaccords. However, indigenous groups and the pri-vate sector (often by its choice) initially were notfully represented. Also, it is evident that interna-tional multilateral organizations such as theInteramerican Development Bank and the WorldBank were consulted during negotiations by bothsides and very likely had a hand in the provisionsabout increasing taxes and social spending.

However, much of the accords’ language is moregeneral than in the Salvadoran accords and thusdifficult or impossible to enforce. In manyinstances the accords set forth broad goals. Thenthe government or the two parties were to estab-lish a commission to develop proposals for the leg-islature. Thus, if the government nominated peo-ple to a commission and convened a first meeting,its formal obligations would be fulfilled. Neitherside was under any obligation to accept proposalsemanating from the commissions.

Or the language might require a large institu-tional change—reduction in the size of the mili-tary, formation of a new police force, or ending thePresidential Guard (EMP), a secretive militaryunit that had controlled civilian presidents, con-ducted espionage and committed human rightsabuses. But the government was slow to take onthese issues, and the URNG could do little. Incases of specific language, such as the tax increasespegged to a certain percent of GDP, the govern-ment was subjected to some international pressurebut to date, four years after the deadline, it has notcome close to meeting the agreed upon goal.

However, the peace treaty involved civil societyafter decades of repression; it added another steptoward shifting from military to civilian power.The indigenous accord at least rhetorically makesmore advances in recognizing the rights and thelegitimacy of the indigenous—either a majority ornear majority of Guatemala’s population—thanany document since the Conquest. The govern-ment at least recognized that its taxation rates andsocial spending rates were woefully low, comparedto virtually every other country in Latin America.

The accords were more difficult to enforce, buttheir greater breadth has had success in settingagendas for discussion and goals for the futuremore so than the counterpart compromises in ElSalvador and certainly Nicaragua.

Summary 11

Paths Toward Current Governments. Civilian-based elections preceded the peace negotiations.They were a response to the rebels’ claims that theywere trying to topple dictatorships. The rebels con-demned the elections. They said the military and/orthe U.S. were still in charge (El Salvador andGuatemala) or that the Sandinistas were a milita-rized political party. But once negotiations started,the rebels’ bargaining positions were constrained toaccept the elected government as their “negotiatingpartner.” This was an implicit, though partialacceptance of the election results and the generalconstitutional framework of the government.

In El Salvador the center right ChristianDemocrats won (with U.S. support) the firstrounds of elections (1984, 1985), and therebyinsured continued U.S. military and economic aid.They sank badly to second place in the next roundsof elections (1988, 1989, 1991) when they weredefeated by ARENA, a rightist party (and origi-nally a paramilitary group) that had formed in theearly years of the war. In the last two of these elec-tions leftist parties in exile, allied to but distinctlynot part of the FMLN, returned to participate.

Following the peace accords, the 1994 “elec-tions of the century” maintained ARENA’s domi-nance, though it never won a majority in the leg-islative branch, and moved the FMLN into secondplace, with the Christian Democrats continuing tosink. In the late 1990s, however, ARENA votetotals dropped, owing to economic stagnation, andthe FMLN won as many or more legislative seatsin three elections (1997, 2000, and 2003). Buteven with fewer seats ARENA has been able to getother votes in the Assembly and it has easily wonthe presidential elections (1999, 2004). Since 1994these two big parties have dominated elections.But three smaller parties—the left CDU, centerright PDC, and conservative PCN—have won 25-30% of the seats within a system of proportionalrepresentation and party eligibility that is favor-able to a few smaller parties.

In Nicaragua, the 1990 electoral process wasthe most important step leading to peace. Theopposition ran within the framework of the 1987Constitution. Had the Sandinistas won the elec-tion in an internationally certified fair process, theU.S. might have been pressured to cease aid to thecontras, which would have ended the war.

However, the lack of consensus among the vic-torious UNO coalition about virtually every fun-

damental issue facing a polity and the rejection onthe part of many of them of the entireConstitution, combined with the profound eco-nomic crisis and imposition of neoliberal policies,led to five years of raw confrontations over everyissue, particularly property rights. Nonetheless,the 1996 elections happened on schedule.

Alemán beat Sandinista Daniel Ortega in 1996,in an election marred by probable fraud and mis-management in two areas of the country. The exactfinal results will never be known, but it is not pos-sible that proper vote tabulation would haveresulted in an Ortega win. The election was notclose, and it is highly unlikely that a flawless elec-tion would have shifted seats in the NationalAssembly. The U.S. and the Church weighed in onAlemán’s side. The election had severe conse-quences for the electoral authority, which to thatpoint had been a model of probity and election-year efficiency in two prior elections.

Each party has been led since the mid 1990s bya political boss or caudillo figure—Ortega andAlemán. Alemán used his position as mayor ofManagua to build an urban patronage base, and hecampaigned for six years in rural areas, particularlythose in which the contras had been strong. Hehated the Sandinistas, and they saw him as a newSomoza. Despite this mutual loathing, duringAlemán’s term the two caudillos negotiated a pactwhich, though complex, had two central goals.One was to squeeze independents and people fromother parties out of positions in government insti-tutions: the electoral authority, the comptrollergeneral’s office, the Supreme Court, and the legis-latures. And the other was to guarantee some mea-sure of impunity for each of them by long termpositions in the legislature after Alemán’s term inoffice or a failed presidential bid by Ortega. (Thedetails are below.) Ortega had also tried to use thepact to give himself a chance to win a presidentialcontest in the first round. But this failed in 2001.Alemán could not succeed himself, so he pickedEnrique Bolaños, his vice president, who sharedhis deep hatred of the Sandinistas. But Bolaños,with the backing of the U.S., turned on Alemánand prosecuted him for renowned corruption. Andthe Assembly, with FSLN votes and a small num-ber who backed Bolaños, stripped Alemán of hisimmunity, and eventually he was tried by a judgeof Sandinista sympathies (though part of the Pactwith Alemán) and sent to house arrest or jail. As


detailed below, Bolaños’ term in office has featuredsecret negotiations between the Ortega andBolaños against Alemán, between Alemán andOrtega against Bolaños, and between Alemán andBolaños against Ortega. The U.S. has opposedboth Ortega and Alemán, and Bolaños has beenquite loyal to the U.S. agenda while trying to sur-vive politically with little support in theAssembly. Principle has not been the centerpieceof any of these deals, and “transitions towarddemocracy” have been, within this electoral frame-work, a touchingly naïve concept.

In Guatemala the military dictatorship usheredin civilian elections after the war was largely wonbut years before it was actually over. There wereelections for a constitutional convention in 1984,and then general elections in 1985. There havebeen elections every five years since then and twoconstitutional referenda. Though the military spon-sored this shift, it also largely controlled it, at first,and was also divided among itself. So, unlike theother two countries, there were two coup attemptsduring the first government emanating from themilitary and certain agricultural sectors (who wereopposed to a tax increase). These were thwarted byother military elements. A third attempt was a con-spiracy between military elements and the recentlyelected (1990) president Jorge Serrano. This toowas thwarted with much pressure from civil societyand the international community.

Continuity has not been the electoral pattern inGuatemala. The central disadvantage of winning anelection is that winning seems to presage thatparty’s loss of the next election and irrelevance bythe election after that. The parties that did best in1985 dropped badly in 1990 and are now virtuallyoff the map. The two parties that did best in 1990have disappeared. The winner in 1995 was muchreduced in 1999 and still more in 2003. The win-ning party in 1999 saw its presidential candidate in2003 finish a distant third and its legislative benchshrink badly, though it is still a force. Compared toprevious winners, the winner in 2003 is not oneparty, but rather a hastily put together coalition ofthree parties, all of which are quite new. In contrastwith the situation in El Salvador and Nicaragua,the URNG, the coalition of Guatemalan leftistguerrilla groups that were protagonists in the late1970s, is barely on the electoral political map.

Civil society groups have been more active play-ers in Guatemala than in the other two countries,

perhaps because the party structures have been influx. (This is not to say that there are not impor-tant civil society groups in El Salvador andNicaragua, but rather that their profile and rolehas been less prominent, perhaps due to the domi-nance of two parties in each country. And the cen-tralization of the parties in El Salvador andNicaragua makes it more difficult for a civil soci-ety group to lobby effectively a particular legisla-tor.) They are sometimes divided, sometimes unit-ed, episodically funded almost entirely by foreignsources, and involved. The executive branch andCongress have sometimes fended them off byclaiming that they are not representative, and mostof them do not have an organized political base.

Finally, in Guatemala all of the institutions andpublic players seem weak or weaker than they werebefore. This has played into the hands of the hid-den forces or parallel powers (fuerzas ocultas orpoderes paralelos) to run criminal activities, includ-ing a substantial drug trade, protected by hiddencorners of the state and immune from prosecution.Though analyses are imprecise, there is a generalconsensus that former and perhaps current militaryofficials are part of this hidden structure and evi-dence that portions of the previous administration,perhaps including the President, had links to it.Alemán’s corruption in Nicaragua, though large inscale (somewhat like the former president himself),is of the more classic party boss type of widespreadcorrupt activities. The hidden powers in Guatemalaare something different — more deeply embedded,criminal, violent, and so far acting with impunity.

International Mediation, Verification, andAssistance. The Contadora Group and the CentralAmerican presidents played a critical role in estab-lishing the Central American peace treaty. The OASand the UN played unprecedented roles in monitor-ing the Nicaraguan election, and the UN played avital role in active mediation of the peace negotia-tions for El Salvador and Guatemala and verified allaspects of the accords, including close assistance andverification of the crucial 1994 elections in ElSalvador. In Nicaragua, that role was much reduced.The peace accords were not comprehensive, and theUnited Nations’ presence was far smaller. Agenciesof the UN did play important roles in establishingdiscussions over, for example, the professionalizationof the military or in providing coordinated assis-tance to remote, war-torn communities.

Summary 13

As influential, decisive, and in some ways path-breaking the interjections of various internationalplayers were in shaping the course of the wars andin the peace processes, there is a counterpointtheme of futility. Virtually every non CentralAmerican nation state that became involved inCentral America, through bilateral or multilateralmeans, was bigger, stronger, and far richer thanany one of the three countries. And yet they couldnot, over long periods, achieve their goals. Forexample, the U.S., try as it might, could notdefeat the FMLN or FSLN—leftist politicalgroups in tiny “banana republics”— throughthree Republican administrations. The U.S. had avery difficult time getting the Salvadoran mili-tary, an ally that faced near certain destruction ifthe U.S. withdrew its support, to do what itwanted. After the war, the UN and bilateraldonors were often frustrated at efforts to imple-ment the peace accords. Powerful internationaldonors, including the World Bank and theInteramerican Development Bank, spoke of con-ditioning post-war assistance in Guatemala on

the government’s compliance with the 1996peace accords’ requirement to increase its minis-cule tax base so as to fund deficient educationand health programs. Eight years later littleprogress has been made.

Attempted verifications of and technical assis-tance to other aspects of the accords that requireinstitution-building (new police forces, reformedjudicial systems) or major political compromisesby national actors (increasing taxes) on the part ofthe UN and other international donors and agen-cies met stiff resistance or simply inertia. Still,progress has been made. There are important dif-ferences from country to country and theme totheme. For example, international assistance tofurther the building of the Salvadoran police forceseems to have been much more effective than inGuatemala, for reasons to be detailed in the report.Military reform seems to have progressed furtherthan judicial reform. The main body of the reportseeks to clarify why there have been differences.We begin by looking at the current moment andthen go back in time for explanations.

As this report comes off the presses the UnitedNations peace accords verification missionin Guatemala, MINUGUA, will be closing

its doors. In Nicaragua and El Salvador the peace process-

es have little political weight as policy issues. Thatis less true in Guatemala where the newly electedadministration of Oscar Berger initially pledged topursue the accords’ goals and various civil societygroups actively promote different policies mani-fested in the accords. The accords continue to havean agenda setting function.

But the wars’ damage is far from repaired and thesocial issues that gave rise to the wars are beingaddressed gradually. The dispersion of populationswill never be recomposed. The war continued toplay a central, perhaps demagogic role, in the recentelections of the three countries. Though relationsare more civil, memories, at the national and locallevel, about who on the other side did, or mighthave done, what will endure as will the moreennobling memories of heroic struggle and sacrifice.

GUATEMALA

President Oscar Berger won easily in the late 2003runoff against Álvaro Colom of the NationalUnion of Hope party (UNE).

Berger has his work cut out for him to governeffectively. In January 2002 Hemisphere Initiativespublished an analysis of Guatemala called WhoGoverns? Guatemala Five Years After the Peace Accords.The central argument was that all institutions wereweaker than they had been five years earlier andthat the resulting vacuum of power was working tothe advantage of hidden forces (fuerzas ocultas): cor-rupt and criminal forces, some with ties to retiredmilitary figures, some with ties to the burgeoningdrug trade. The political party structure wasvolatile with no enduring strong parties; the legis-lature was divided. The ruling party, theGuatemalan Republican Front (FRG) headed byfounder (ret.) General Efraín Ríos Montt, had twopoles of power and one of them was reputed to haveties to the occult forces. The police were inexperi-enced, ill trained and co-opted by the military;


CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT

judges and public prosecutors were under immensepressure by way of threats or bribes or both. Theeconomy was in bad shape with extensive poverty,particularly among the Mayans. There was littlelaw enforcement in rural areas leading to lynchingand the emergence of former armed groups whohad worked for the military. This is largely the pic-ture that Berger inherits.

Berger comes to office on the uncertain wings ofa coalition of three new parties taped together forthe election when Berger decided to quit the party(PAN) that had supported him for the presidencyin the last round of elections. The coalition(GANA) is made up of the Patriotic Party headedby Otto Perez, a retired, reformist high militaryofficial who has presidential ambitions, theReform Movement (Movimiento Reformador or MR)and the National Solidarity Party.

Black Thursday. Berger’s other main opponentwas Ríos Montt. He had fingered PresidentAlfonso Portillo to be the candidate who easilydefeated Berger for the presidency in the 1999elections. The General had twice before been pre-vented from running for President byConstitutional Court rulings that he was ineligi-ble, according to the 1984 Constitution, becausehe had come to power by way of a military coup in1982. In 1999 he was elected to the Congress andthen President of the Congress as the head of thelargest bench in Congress.

While in office the FRG spouted a conservativepopulism and hard rhetoric against the traditionaleconomic elite. In practice it may have been thefirst government, not counting the 1944-1954democratic period, where this elite was excludedfrom the corridors of power. But in practice theFRG had ties to newer rich sectors and its pop-ulism was not manifested in pro poor policies. Inpractice, many elements of the FRG were deeplyinvolved in corruption and some had ties to the“occult powers,”, and that latter group may haveincluded Portillo. Portillo fled the country toescape prosecution not long after Berger’s election.

But its populism was sufficient for the FRG toorganize secretly a large (5000) demonstration ofpeasants, bused into the capital on July 24th andstationed in formation around various symbolic andstrategic points: the Supreme Electoral Tribunal(TSE), The Supreme Court, the ConstitutionalCourt, a rich business center, and near two wealthy

neighborhoods. The peasants were armed withmachetes and rocks and their leaders wore masks.Some groups of them began to attack journalists,one of whom collapsed and died after running fromthem. They held people hostage in the businesscenter.

Journalists viewed the attack as a pressure tacticagainst the court system to get it to rule in favor ofthe General’s candidacy, and also a demonstrationof a capacity for organized violence. Ríos Montt’srule in Guatemala covered part of the scorchedearth campaign against the guerrillas and theirsocial bases among Mayan groups in the highlands.There are law cases against him for his role in thebloodbath.

A week before the Constitutional Court hadruled in favor of Ríos Montt’s candidacy. It argued,somewhat implausibly, that the 1984 constitution-al provision should not be applied retroactively.But this was not an example of a criminal statuteapplied ex post facto. And the drafters of the consti-tution could not only have been anticipating futurecoups because a successful future coup would elimi-nate the 1984 constitution. In any event, three dayslater the Supreme Court, which is a separate body,accepted an appeal against the ruling. Ríos Monttwarned of violence, and also appealed against theappeal to the Constitutional Court. This time helost. Then came the violent demonstration. And aweek after that the Constitutional Court met againand ruled in Ríos Montt’s favor.

A portion of the explanation for the shiftingopinions of the Constitutional Court is that differ-ent justices sat on different rulings in the case, andthat two alternates were known to be sympathizersof Ríos Montt. And part of the explanation has todo with the effect of violence. But the press outcry,including from media outlets who had givenPortillo and Ríos Montt favorable press duringtheir administration, damaged his campaign, andhe finished a distant third.

The Balance in Congress. The parties associatedwith GANA won only 53 of 158 seats in theCongress. Thirty three candidates won on theGANA slate and the remaining 20 on slates ofeach of the 3 parties in the coalition (MR won 4,Solidarity won 7, Patriotic Party won 9.) A“block” of 53 is not much. And it is hardly writtenin stone that GANA will always vote as a block oreven hold together.

Current Political Moment 15

The FRG won 39 seats, a steep decline from the63 (out of 113) it won in 1999, but nonetheless thesecond largest group in the Congress. The FRGcould emerge as the most solid, sizeable block ofvotes in the Congress. Rios Montt has been chargedin the Black Thursday case and has been under avery lenient form of house arrest. He is 77. But heseems vigorous in occasional public appearances,though he looked more than his age in several cam-paign appearances. His daughter Zury is a politi-cian. The FRG has the most experienced group inCongress. Because the parties have come and gonethe last few Congresses have begun their terms witha small number of members experienced in legisla-tion. That is true this time. Half of those with anyexperience are on the FRG bench. However, as acaudillo party, should Ríos Montt’s health falter, thecohesion of the party would be very much in doubt.

One possibility for Berger would be to ally withColom’s UNE, which won 28 seats. However,apart from the fact that Berger just defeatedColom, the fact that the government immediatelyfound suspicious financing in Colom’s campaign,does not auger well for an alliance. Nonethelesslegislative leaders in UNE and GANA, early onspoke of forming a working alliance along withPAN (the winning party in 1995). PAN slipped to11% of the vote and won 11 seats. The threetogether would make a numerical majority.

Before the Congress was a month old ten of itsmembers declared themselves independent of theparties on whose slates they had just been elected.The remaining parties have some 16 seats dividedamong 6 parties. Among them are two leftist par-ties—the ANN, which entered elections before thepeace accords, won 4 seats and one of them is heldby a former URNG commander, Pablo Monsanto,and the URNG itself, which won but two seats.The Congress is a fragmented organization thatmay fragment still more.

The Peace Accords’ Relevance. Signed sevenyears earlier, the peace accords were not the center-piece of anyone’s campaign. Berger seemed particu-larly ill informed on Mayan issues, a major themein the peace accords. As the registration systemremains highly inadequate for incorporatingindigenous peoples, this did not seem to hurt himin the election. Berger did pledge to implement theaccords, but this message might have been aimed atinternational donors and diplomats, and perhaps

some groups in civil society. The electorate seemsindifferent to the peace agreements that so far havehad little concrete impact on their lives.

Previous to the July 2003 Consultative Groupdonors’ meeting, MINUGUA had submitted areport to that did not mince words about its disap-pointment with the lack of progress and backslid-ing (particularly on human rights) on the accordsby the Portillo government during the previous 18months. (The Consultative Group is comprised ofthe largest bilateral and multilateral donors toGuatemala and meets periodically to reviewprogress.) This report followed by 18 months aMINUGUA report that complained about morethan a year of desultory progress. According toMINUGUA the human rights abuses increased inthe last years of the Portillo term and impunityincreased. Rather than the military being pushedinto a smaller institutional role, its troops wereused along with the police.

Eight months into Berger’s term the prospectsfor emphasis on the goals of the accords seemeddimmer than his initial promises, just at a pointwhere MINUGUA is about to leave. None of theparties in Congress, with the exception of the smallANN and URNG benches, focus on the accords.

The international community has been a main“lobby” group for implementation. But with “watch-dog” MINUGUA departing, the force ofConsultative Group meetings would seem destinedto diminish. The government is in the midst of aneconomic crisis, owing in part to a reduction in taxrevenues. Oddly the administration does not seemtoo concerned about getting more internationalmoney, perhaps because it has in the pipeline a verylarge amount of donations and soft loans that havenot yet been either delivered or expended. The con-siderable post war economic aid received byGuatemala from multilateral, bilateral and NGOorganizations is certain to go down from the heightsit reached after the accords were signed. This willfurther reduce international lobbying power. Finally,a particularly activist collection of Ambassadors, whohad coordinated their activities are, one by one, rotat-ing out. In another sign, the government seemedlukewarm on the idea of a UN representative forhuman rights setting up offices in Guatemala.

A promising idea for reducing the power of bur-geoning organized crime and the “hidden forces”seemed to be in the process of being shelved.Defeating these groups and ending impunity is


absolutely the most important task of further thepeace accords’ overarching goal of establishingdemocracy and the rule of law. Institutions and thestate are weak. In that context what happens afterthe elections is more important to a democratictransition than the elections themselves.

Following an analysis that argued that the newcivilian police force has, at best, a investigativecapacity thoroughly inadequate for the sophistica-tion of the organized criminal groups and clandes-tine powers and, at worst, some commanders whohad been co-opted by these same hidden groups, aproposal for an independent, expert, international-ly financed and trained investigative group hademerged from several international quarters andthe traditionally very active and courageousGuatemalan human rights groups. The initiativewas called CICIACS or (Investigación de CuerposIlegales y Aparatos Clandestinos de Seguridad). Inearly August the Constitutional Court declared theinitiative a parallel structure inconsistent with theconstitution. It is not clear what Berger will do, ifanything, to salvage the essence of the proposal.

Other Challenges. Given the extent ofGuatemala’s high levels of rural poverty—before,during and since the war—a general economic crisisis a new wound inflicted upon an already badlyinjured body. There are chronic aspects to the cri-sis—continued low coffee prices. The ConstitutionalCourt, early in the year, torpedoed a “temporary”tax that constituted a significant revenue stream forGuatemala’s already pathetic tax base. Raising taxrevenues was one of the most specific and enforce-able elements of the lengthy peace accords, but thegoals established in the accords were never metdespite considerable international pressure frommultilateral and bilateral sources. The immediateissue was not so much whether Berger could meetthe tax goals of the accords but whether the govern-ment could pay its bills or, avoid having to do so bycutting social spending. Berger was able to cobbletogether a majority in Congress (that included anunderstanding with the FRG) for a tax measure thatwould temporarily deal with the problem.

For the past several years the former local para-military forces known as the Civil Action Patrolshave been vociferously demanding payment for theservices to the military during the war. Duringand after the scorched earth campaign the militaryorganized “voluntary” patrols in rural cities and

hamlets across the country to guard against incur-sions of the (largely retreated) URNG forces.Lightly armed, the patrols came to number nearlya million men. In many regions they had a grow-ing reputation as being a local repressive force, anda local power group backed by and at the service oflocal military commanders. They were tied tomany human rights abuses. However, their historyis complex, as in many cases they were forcedagainst their will into the service and in some casestried to protect the community from the military.They were not paid. Several thousand of thembecame organized in the last few years to obtainback pay. Some claimed that Ríos Montt wasbehind the organizing. In any event, following sev-eral demonstrations, the Portillo administrationagreed in principle to a payment sum. This year,with thousands of angry demonstrators makingthreats outside Congress, it agreed as a body, toappropriate the money for the payment.

Other sorts of demands, however, have not beenlegitimized. During the past few years peasantgroups with legal claims against large landownersbased upon alleged land usurpations by thelandowners or their failure to pay legally obligatedwages have led to over one hundred land invasionsby the peasants. (The labor branch of the judicialsystem is somewhat dysfunctional.) The peasantshave received assistance from or been organized bydifferent peasant confederations, mainly CONIC.In many cases nothing further has happened.During the Portillo administration there were afew evictions of the invaders, sometimes involvingmany police. In the Berger administration the rateof evictions went up to a dozen in a few months.One of them, as detailed in the section on land,recently resulted in the killing of ten peopleincluding three police officers among the 900 sentto do the eviction on the Nueva Linda plantation.This case illustrates the larger issues of the peaceaccords of extensive rural poverty, about the worstin Latin America, particularly among indigenousgroups. Landlessness and lack of employment areat the heart of the crisis, just as they were smolder-ing issues in the late 1970s before the wars began.

Related to this, and as detailed in the section onpolice and courts, is the role of police and militaryamidst a rate of violent crime that seems to begrowing during the first year of Berger’s term evenabove the already high rates it had achieved. Bergercalled for a large increase in joint police-military


patrols last July. (The homicide rate appeared toincrease in August.) On Army Day Berger calledfor a reduction in the military down to about six-teen thousand troops, from some thirty thousand atthe end of the war, and a reduction in militaryspending which had gone up sharply during two ofthe later years of Portillo’s administration. Also,some sectors in the government and in the presshave moved aggressively to end the secrecy thatsurrounds military spending and to open the books.In mid September, four present and former militaryofficials sought a court injunction against doingthis claiming that to do so would violate norms ofnational security. The court denied the motion.

EL SALVADOR

The most recently elected government of the threecountries is the administration of Tony Saca, theARENA party’s candidate for president in ElSalvador. Elected in March, he took office in Juneafter a landslide electoral victory in the first roundover the veteran leader of the FMLN, Shafik Handal.Saca must deal with a legislature, elected in 2003, inwhich the FMLN has four more deputies (31 of 84)than ARENA. However ARENA has for years suc-cessfully persuaded members of conservative smallerparties to join with it and can usually win. Also a fewweeks after the March presidential elections it per-suaded a deputy of the Conservative PCN party tobolt and join the ARENA bench. This meansPresident Saca’s vetoes will not be overturned.

However, on some important measures, such asthe budget if it involves deficit financing (and italways does) the government needs a super majori-ty, and so it needs to deal with the FMLN. Inprotest of the election campaign fear mongeringagainst Handal, with implied threats that the U.S.would cut the flow of money sent home (remit-tances) from hundreds of thousands of Salvadoransin the U.S. or might send the Salvadorans them-selves home, Handal persuaded the FMLN to boy-cott Saca’s inauguration. A few weeks later, howev-er, Saca invited FMLN and ARENA legislators tojoin him for talks about the budget.

It has been the policy of ARENA, for someyears, to view the peace accords as past history. TheFMLN occasionally points to features of the accordsthat were never implemented, indeed hardly evenaddressed, such as a comprehensive and negotiatedreview of agrarian policy. But the public has ceased

to find current relevance in the accords, so FMLNcalls for renewed attention do not echo.

Part of ARENA’s electoral victory was due to anaggressive series of anti crime laws it passed a yearbefore the election, some of which seem to beunconstitutional, but all of which seemed to bevote getters. In polls crime has competed with eco-nomic issues such as lack of jobs as the top prob-lems of the country for a decade—and the extreme-ly dangerous criminal environment of El Salvadorhas provided the foundation for the polled opin-ions. ARENA has responded to the polls by passingtough legislation in 1998 and then again lastyear—that is in pre election years. Despite theunconstitutional aspects of the laws, polls indicatethe public, plagued by crime, likes the toughapproach. And polls and crime statistics from thepolice both indicate a general decrease in crimeover the past few years though some categories ofcrime had not decreased much (homicides) andsome have increased (rape). ARENA’s claim is thatthe decrease is due to its tough laws. This seemedto have some resonance in the March elections.

Six months later the new government was modi-fying its strategy. It considered a new round oflaws, and the president promised a super hard handin enforcing laws against delinquents. But the UNhad also commented on the extremity of an antigang law that made criminal the mere associationin a gang. The government was meeting in round-table discussions with political parties, religiousgroups and a variety of NGOs to discuss ways thatyouth might be weaned away from gangs.Administration sources were talking about meetingyoung members of gangs who wanted to get out,but could not extricate themselves. So a rehabilita-tion model was under discussion.

Another big item on his agenda will be theCentral American Free Trade agreement, an agree-ment that the FMLN, and Handal in particular, hasopposed. Even more important is the temporaryvisa status of many Salvadorans in the U.S. It isnow understood by all that remittances are themost important dollar earner in the Salvadoraneconomy; over 20% of Salvadoran families receivethem regularly. When Saca had an audience withBush he announced that his lead topic of conversa-tion would be the visa status, but in his post meet-ing press conference he did not bring up the topic.When pressed by reporters it was evident that Bushhad brushed the topic aside.


On the other hand Saca has some negotiatingleverage with Bush, surprising for such a tinycountry, but it also carries with it considerablepolitical risk for Saca. The issue is Iraq. El Salvadoris the only Latin American country with troops inIraq (just under 400). This is the more salient inthe wake of the pullout of the Philippine contin-gent following the capture of a Philippine nationaland the withdrawal of Spanish troops in the wakeof the March 11th train bombings. El Salvador hasreceived threats. Opinion remains divided in ElSalvador over this issue.

Saca, once nominated, also became head ofARENA’s central committee—COENA. ARENAhas been famous for its highly centralized structureand decision making. COENA sets policy, evenincluding how the ARENA bench will vote in theAssembly, and it has had ultimate control overselection of candidates even for local municipaloffice. It disciplines dissidents. Following electionreversals in 2000 former President Cristiani calledfor some form of primaries. In September Sacaseemed to be moving in this direction with a pro-posal for less centralized form of candidate selec-tion for municipal offices. Not really a direct elec-tion of candidates by local level party members,the proposal rather suggested that the party com-mittees in El Salvador’s 14 Departments wouldselect candidates for mayor.

The severity of Handal’s defeat, and the turmoilwithin the FMLN prior to the election, set off pub-lic calls for the political commission of the party toresign, and for the party election of officers to beadvanced from November to June, or if not June,September. Handal’s candidacy was controversialbecause polls have shown him with negative imagesand because he tends to be a polemical figure.Leading this charge was the Mayor of Nueva SanSalvador, FMLN militant Oscar Ortiz who hadcompeted with Handal for the nomination but wasthwarted in internal voting, which some FMLNmembers have called irregular. Ortiz and thosebehind him were not able to convince enough midlevel members of the party to back them. This issuewill come up again in November. MeanwhileHandal was selected to head the FMLN bench inthe Assembly. Elsewhere in the report, we noteprior FMLN infighting and the damage it hasdone. In the months following this election, in twoof seven local party assemblies fights broke outbetween the factions. The next year will be telling

for the FMLN as it attempts to recompose itself intime for the 2006 legislative and local elections.

NICARAGUA

During Arnoldo Alemán’s presidency he washemmed in by 1995 amendments to the constitu-tion that prevented two consecutive terms and thathad reduced the power of the presidency vis-à-visthe Assembly. However, in his Pact making withDaniel Ortega they had agreed, among otherthings, that former presidents would be membersof the National Assembly and, apart from theperks of office, he would enjoy immunity fromprosecution in the event there were any investiga-tions of corruption during his term.

Alemán sidelined various figures in his partywho attempted to build political bases in the partyor among an electoral constituency so they mightsucceed him as President. In the end he selectedhis Vice President, Enrique Bolaños, to be the can-didate, in part for his impeccable anti Sandinistacredentials. Alemán’s calculation was that Bolañoswould win and that Alemán would still control theparty and the Assembly and therefore the budget,and, due to the Pact with Ortega many other gov-ernment bodies. (The details of how they sliced upthe pie are below.)

Not long after the election of Bolaños, it becameapparent to Alemán that his political calculationhad been a mistake. Bolaños might have been adutiful Vice-President, but he had demonstratedthroughout the 1980s and early 1990s that he is aflinty, even irascible character. It was quite pre-dictable that the U.S. would support the election ofBolaños, or anyone else who opposed Daniel Ortega,but Alemán did not foresee, until too late, that theU.S. would attempt to use Bolaños as part of a cam-paign against corruption and money laundering.

Bolaños took office in January 2002. The follow-ing August a trial against Alemán began concerning$100 million in embezzling charges, with moneystashed in Panama. This was not the only caseagainst him and in addition charges were broughtagainst several other figures from his governmentand his extended family. One of them was ByronJerez, a long time Alemán loyalist whom PresidentAlemán had entrusted with the tax collection. Mosteveryone else accused fled the country. Toward theend of the long trial Alemán’s attorney had JudgeJuana Méndez, one of the Sandinistas who had bene-


fited from the Alemán-Ortega pact, to subpoenaforty five top officials in Alemán’s government toask them if Alemán had ever given them an improp-er order. She did so. All said no, save for Byron Jerezwho turned state’s evidence. Jerez was in jail at thetime on one of eight corruption charges.

The U.S. quickly stripped Alemán of his visaprivileges and the National Assembly voted to striphim of his immunity privileges with the Sandinistabench voting with a few dissidents from the PLCwho had decided to back Bolaños. Alemán wasplaced under house arrest in his huge house sittingon his huge hacienda outside Managua, to which hisgovernment had constructed a huge road to ease hiscommute.

Since then Alemán’s whereabouts have been akind of barometer about the state of horse tradingbetween his camp, Ortega’s and Bolaños’. If he isin comfortable house arrest, bargaining betweenhim and Ortega against Bolaños and the U.S. ispossible. If he is in jail, Ortega has tilted towardBolaños. If he is moved from jail to a hospital,Ortega is moving away from Bolaños.

Ortega’s main goal is to win the presidency in2006, and he probably can’t do that if Alemán isout of jail with freedom to be a candidate. And hemight not be able to do it if the PLC remains unit-ed behind another candidate. Ortega also wants toprotect the Sandinistas’ more or less dominantposition throughout much of the judiciary, to saynothing of the positions of power they got in vari-ous state agencies through the Pact.

Alemán wants to get out of jail. He would like aviable political career and to maintain his holdover the PLC.

Bolaños and the U.S. want to reduce to a mini-mum the power of the Sandinistas. To do that theyneed the backing of a party structure. One plan hasbeen to weaken Alemán, decrease his hold over theparty by making him appear to be not viable, andthen capture the Liberals while they back a candi-date, perhaps Eduardo Montealegre, who is inBolaños’ cabinet. Alemán loyalists regard Bolaños asa traitor, which is not to say that they won’t vote onhis side of an issue if it is in the interest of Alemán.

AA and DO against EB. From December toAugust 2003 Alemán remained under “housearrest” giving him totally free access to the loyalistsin his party. His hacienda became almost anotherbranch of the government. In June the terms of five

of the sixteen Supreme Court (CJS) justices were toexpire with another four in September. The CJSwas one of the institutions included in the Pact.Proving that the Pact was still alive (and, indeedwith plans to grow into other governmental insti-tutions) despite the arrest of Alemán and Ortega’s“betrayal” the two parties divided up the nine posi-tions. This time Ortega had the upper hand; theFSLN got five of the nine positions.

At the same time Bolaños announced that thegovernment was getting high level technical helpfrom U.S. experts in tracking the Alemán corrup-tion money, and his attorney general announcedthat, despite the fact that the statute of limitationshad run out, he would like to use the assistance toalso trace the money and property transfers duringthe Chamorro and Ortega administrations—a clearreference to the properties high level Sandinistasgrabbed just after their electoral defeat.

DO and EB against AA. In August 2003 thejudge ordered Alemán transferred to a comfortablejail, stripping him of his computer and cell phone.This placed limits on daily visitations. This movecould be seen as an effort by Ortega to weakenAlemán’s leadership over the PLC. A divided PLCserved his interests and, oddly that of Bolaños,who wants to win as many PLC votes in Congressas possible, and the U.S.

Demonstrating his control, Alemán, throughfamily visitations, staged a demonstration of theparty faithful (wearing “Arnoldo 2006” shirts!),fired several members of the party’s central com-mittee (including Montealegre), ordered a conven-tion, and had his candidates elected.

In early November Colin Powell visitedNicaragua and, in addition to pressuring fordestruction of Nicaragua’s supply of shoulder heldanti aircraft missiles, pointedly did not meet withanyone from the FSLN or any backers of AA, andpushed for unification of liberals against Alemánand isolation of Ortega.

Other Shifts. Following Powell’s visit Bolañosannounced support for a judicial careers bill whichhad as its announced goal professionalization ordepoliticization of the judiciary. The proposal con-tained elements that would deny judgeships to any-one who had belonged to a repressive organizationor who held property for which the state had had topay compensation to a former owner. These wereinterpreted to be anti Sandinista clauses, an attack


on Ortega’s main institutional power base, one thathe was using to keep Alemán in jail. Ortega pub-licly referred to Bolaños as a gringo bootlicker.

On November 26th the judge suddenly permit-ted Alemán to go back to his hacienda where hewas greeted with a huge party. She cited a host ofhealth problems (obesity, high blood pressure, etc.)A case against Bolaños for a role in PLC violationsof electoral finance rules was announced. Pressleaks from FSLN and PLC sources hinted that alarger pact was in the making that would involvethe Supreme Court, changes in the electoral law,new leadership in the Assembly and some kind offreedom for Alemán in exchange for a PLC pledgeagainst the Bolaños (and U.S.) judicial careers bill.

The U.S. announced that the judiciary was cor-rupt and international sources suggested that ifthere were any attack on Bolaños (through theelectoral law one presumed) the membership inthe club of the world’s most indebted nations thatNicaragua was on the threshold of entering afteryears of negotiations would be threatened.Membership in the “club” makes a nation eligible,under conditions, to have 80% of its internationaldebt pardoned. And Bolaños, flanked by the head ofthe army and police, announced that he would intro-duce bills about the judiciary and electoral branch-es and, if ignored, would organize a popular refer-endum on the measures.

This counter offensive and the apparent inabili-ty of the FSLN and PLC camps to work out a larg-er Pact caused Ortega to reconsider. On December7th Judge Méndez announced a guilty verdict onone of the corruption charges ($100 million) andsentenced Alemán to twenty years in jail and atwenty three year suspension of civil rights includ-ing the right to run for office. On the same dayJerez was found innocent on one charge, thoughstill had more trials to come. Alemán, however,was permitted to go back to his hacienda underhouse arrest owing to the medical problems.

In March, in another power play, he was trans-ferred back to jail. Not long after Alemán wasmoved from a remodeled office to a cell, after healleged that there was a plot to kill him. Then hecomplained of near paralysis in three fingers of his

right hand and was transferred to the MilitaryHospital for minor surgery and a two week reha-bilitation process. He remained there three monthslater, with Sandinista judges explaining that therewere more medical procedures. While there, he hashad much more access to his backers.

In April there were rumors of another negotia-tion between the PLC and the FSLN that woulduse the case against Bolaños in the misuse of elec-tion funds as a driving wedge to shorten his termof office. In the end Ortega refused to go alongwith the Alemán scheme, and soon thereafter hadanother rapprochement with Bolaños.

Though he remains in control of his party,Alemán failed in an attempt to get a local branchof the party in Managua to deny Montealegre cre-dentials to be a delegate to the PLC convention.There were signs that the PLC would seek analliance for some municipal elections on November7 with the forces of Bolaños so as to not allowFSLN victories over divided conservative forces.Meanwhile Sandinistas judges were offering signsof negotiations with the PLC: the extended hospi-tal residence of Alemán and staying several corrup-tion cases against PLC figures.

The FSLN celebrated the 25th anniversary ofthe defeat of Somoza July 19th. The party persuad-ed long time opponent Cardinal Obando y Bravoto celebrate a Mass on the 19th. He did so. Churchleaders had been excoriating the government ofBolaños over a number of charges.

Since the formation of the Pact and then theBolaños drive against corruption, which mightmore properly be seen as a drive to reduce or elimi-nate Alemán’s control of the PLC, Nicaraguanshave been treated to one secret deal after anotherand the thorough politicization of the judicial sys-tem. This is not to say that there was not sufficientevidence to convict Alemán and a good many oth-ers. There was. But the conviction is but a highstakes bargaining chip in a broader political gamein which all moves have little to do with justiceand nothing to do either with forming democraticinstitutions or improving the lives of millions ofimpoverished Nicaraguans.


The conditions the players faced in the peaceprocesses were deeply affected by the ori-gins and sequences of the wars.

Viewed from a world perspective, the fiveCentral American republics could hardly be moresimilar: proximate countries, small in size and pop-ulation with a severe lack of natural resources otherthan somewhat limited agricultural endowments,they shared similar colonial and post colonial histo-ries and (save for the large indigenous population inGuatemala) languages. They were dominated for acentury by the tiny groups that controlled agricul-tural export production first in coffee, then sugar,cotton, and beef, and by U.S. firms that controlledbananas (save in El Salvador). With the exception ofCosta Rica, the military dominated government, inalliance with the economic elite since the earlyyears of the great depression in the 1930s. Howeverin three of them war broke out between 1978-1980, and in two it did not.

There were conditions particular to these threecountries. Still each country had significant differ-ences from the other two. These differences affect-ed the onset, sequence, and impact of each of thethree wars, which in turn affected the onset andimplementation of peace and the new institutionalarrangements that came with it.

The wars in each country severely challengedand significantly altered traditional power arrange-ments, reduced in uneven fashion the politicalpower of the military institutions, changed the tra-ditional means toward wealth and inserted theeconomies into the global economy in new andvaried ways. New political players and organiza-tions are evident in the post war orders. It was notjust the wars that brought about these changes.External shocks, including a Latin American reces-sion and a debt crisis contributed as did the grow-ing international hegemony of neoliberal economicdoctrines. The end of the Cold War affected thepeace processes.

A key difference among the three was the rela-tively high political power, wealth and militaryprowess of the Guatemalan military and the rela-tive insulation of Guatemala’s coffee oligarchyfrom the effects of war and from other sources ofmodernization and globalization. Another was theopposite cold war roles the U.S. played in El

Salvador and Nicaragua, and the relative indepen-dence of Guatemala from the U.S.

ORIGINS

The nearly simultaneous break out of the threewars was no coincidence, but was a surprise to vir-tually all social actors and analysts. Realists amongthe varied of leftist armed groups in the threecountries must also have wondered in the mid1970s if their own efforts could ever be successful.Apart from their own dire circumstances, theycould look around Latin America to see that a vari-ety of guerrilla groups that had cropped up inmany Latin American countries in the wake of theCastro revolution in Cuba had long since died out.

Formed in 1965, the Sandinistas in Nicaraguahad never numbered more than two or three hun-dred cadres and could count on few sympathizersoutside of universities and scattered rural areas.Many Sandinistas were in jail. By the mid 1970sthey had divided into three wings, barely onspeaking terms, over differences in the strategicapproach to overthrow the Somoza family dynasty,over four decades old.

The Somoza dynasty had survived the assassina-tion in 1954 of the elder Somoza. It easily parriedweak and divided civilian opposition through aclever mix of soft and hard forms of repression andco-optation. It had an enthusiastic loyalty to theU.S. and many allies in Congress. The Nicaraguanarmy, the National Guard, was personally selectedand controlled by the Somozas. Though manyamong Nicaragua’s economic elite did not likeSomoza and objected to his increasing and unfairlyacquired economic power most kept their objec-tions quiet. The richest classes, in contrast to thosein El Salvador and Guatemala, had a long historyof highly fractious relations among themselves, soa unified approach against Somoza was not a likelyprospect. In 1977 Somoza’s prospects looked good.

In Guatemala, the military had ruled since theearly 1930s, save for a two elected civilian govern-ments (1944-54), the second of which was over-thrown by a CIA organized military coup. It had,with covert U.S. assistance, annihilated three quitesmall guerrilla groups (along with many civilians)during a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in the

VARIED IMPACTS OF THE WARS

late 1960s. In the early 1970s remnants of thosegroups attempted to organize clandestinely beforetrying any military efforts and to emphasize, asthey had not in the 1960s, the Mayan groups in therural highlands. These were Guatemala’s mostoppressed and repressed groups, still dominated bya variety of near-feudal forms of forced and semiforced labor (debt peonage—an organized indebt-edness that could only be paid with labor, vagrancylaws, etc.). These guerrillas were divided into threeor four rival groups led, for the most part, by nonMayan leftists. They had quietly made progress bythe second half of the decade. Union and urbangroups were organizing and so were military effortsto repress them. Despite the survival of the variousleft groups, and the centuries old resilience of theMayan groups, the possibility of regime change inGuatemala in the mid 1970s, much less revolution,did not seem great. (Black)

Three guerrilla groups formed in El Salvador inthe early to mid 1970s, largely in reaction to thegross electoral fraud in 1972 that prevented acivilian coalition ticket from winning. The fraudwas completely ignored in the U.S. In the eyes ofmany opposition groups, the fraud foreclosed thepossibility of regime change by electoral means.But they, and increasingly militant civiliangroups, faced a military government that had beenin place, again, since the early Depression. Thenthe Salvadoran military and large landowners hadjoined in a wholesale slaughter of peasants whowith university based communist backers hadattempted a revolt in western coffee growingregions of El Salvador. In the 1970s to an evengreater extent than in Guatemala and Nicaragua,the guerrilla groups were divided by intense, andsometimes bloody, rivalries over strategy and turf.By the end of 1977 these groups remained quitesmall, though urban and rural organizing wasgrowing. And so was repression by the military.

In the space of a year or so, 1978-79 in each ofthe three countries these limited and dividedefforts to overthrow the governments had bur-geoned into revolts that threatened to succeed, andby July 19, 1979 did succeed in the overthrow ofSomoza, and contributed mightily to a major for-eign policy crisis in the U.S. Two years later, theFMLN in El Salvador and the URNG inGuatemala, each a coalition of the previous guer-rilla groups, had not succeeded in overthrowingtheir opponents. What led to the rapid expansion

of the revolts and why did one defeat its enemywhile the other two could not?

After World War II, the agricultural economiesdiversified, with the growth of cotton and sugarexports and in the 1960s the export of cheap, grass-fed beef, mainly to the new national hamburgerchains in the U.S. There was rapid growth of GDPper capita in Central America from 1950-1975, butthe profits did not trickle down, in some cases noteven to many in the middle income sectors.Moreover, the increasing amounts of land devoted tonew and old export products, while providing somejobs particularly during the harvest seasons, squeezedsmall peasant landholders on to smaller and smallerplots or off the land all together, and increasinglyinto temporary farm labor jobs. This in turn createddownward pressure on wages for temporary workers.Increased cattle raising for beef exports used exten-sive grazing methods and was particularly damagingin that it took a lot of land, and in contrast to theother crops, provided very few jobs. (Williams)

Compared to larger Latin American countriesthere was only small growth in urban economies(though rapid in percentage terms), not nearly suf-ficient to absorb the increasingly landless andgrowing rural labor force.

These relatively rapid changes left peasants withsome ties to traditional ways and communities oflife but with new, unsettling insecure rural andurban means of attempting to make a living. Suchshifts toward more precarious and qualitativelydifferent economic and social conditions can sparkrevolt or revolutionary moments, particularlyamong newly “proletarianized” or “semiproletari-anized” rural (or rural to urban) groups. Analystsof revolution in Central America have found thatsome centers of revolt were found precisely inregions of the three countries where these effectshad been the greatest: Huehuetenango and Quiché


Distribution of GDP (percent)

Agriculture Industrial Services

1960 1978 1960 1978 1960 1978

El Salvador 32 29 19 21 49 50

Nicaragua 24 23 21 26 55 51

Mexico 16 11 29 37 55 52

Brazil 10 11 35 37 49 52

World Bank, World Development Report, 1980, Table 12

in Guatemala, Chalatenango and Usulatán in ElSalvador, and north central Nicaragua. (Vilas)

But the general trends sketched above obtained inHonduras and Costa Rica, where revolution was notsparked. And within any of the countries many peo-ple from similar areas ended up on the other side ofthe battle, though perhaps not always voluntarily so:The Military’s Civil Action Patrols in Guatemalawere hardly voluntary, but became centers of localpower and repression; many of the anti Sandinistacontra fighters came from north central Nicaragua(and some, according to one source, had also foughtagainst Somoza), and in El Salvador before the warand during it, the military drew upon some peasantsto form spy networks, (the most famous calledORDEN) from rural areas. There are both micro andmacro level explanations to explain the revolts, thelack of revolts and the counter revolts. (Brown, Vilas)

There were temporary safety valves—remoteunsettled lands in several areas of Nicaragua, andin the northern Petén region of Guatemala, andrural migration from El Salvador, the country withby far the greatest population density, toHonduras. However this migration was abruptlyreversed with the short, but dramatic “soccer war”between the two countries in 1969. (Durham)

In general, Honduras, and to a much greaterextent, Costa Rica had safety valves and channels.Peasant groups in Honduras, and a relatively lessrepressive military, had allowed for a small measureof agrarian reform, and then the departure of thou-sands of Salvadorans after the 1969 war, relievedland pressure. Costa Rica did not have a repressivegovernment, rather one in which civilians were reg-ularly elected. There is debate about just how muchmore (if at all) wealth, income and land were dis-tributed more equally in Costa Rica, but there is nodoubt that political channels were relatively openand that the government had, by the standards ofmost Latin American countries, provided resourcesfor health and education and did not have a mili-tary establishment as a money sinkhole.

In El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua thegoverning regimes had, by contrast, repressed oppo-sition and had set the precedent with one historymaking repressive moment which had establishedthe regimes: the slaughter of peasant rebels in ElSalvador in 1932, the assassination of Sandino andrepression of his movement in Nicaragua, and theoverthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz gov-ernment in Guatemala in 1954. In the late 1970s,

the growing economic and social crises intersectedwith more authoritarian practices and anti reformmeasures by the three authoritarian governments.They became more repressive in response to unrest,scattered guerrilla kidnappings and assassinations,and crises such as earthquakes in Nicaragua andGuatemala. Of course, to the ruling elites and mili-tary governments kidnappings and assassinationsdid not seem “scattered” but a harsh rupture withthe past when their control had most often goneunchallenged. The intersection of these two crises—political and the land and economic crises—led tosocial explosions, stepped up repression, and finallywar. This does not mean that all those who foughtwere directly motivated by these structural forces.Repression against Mayans, a desire for vengeance,family and ethnic ties and other elements of socialhistory played a role. (Dunkerley)

THE WARS BEGIN

If fundamental causes were similar, the mix ofactors and chain of events that led to war werequite different, and these initial differences affect-ed the peace processes and the implementation ofpeace accords ten and more years later.

Nicaragua. Revolt was triggered in Nicaragua bythe 1978 assassination of Pedro Joachim Chamorro,editor and owner of the most important newspaperin the country, long time vocal opponent of Somoza,and a member of one of the traditional, pre-Somoza, ruling Nicaraguan families, on theConservative side of the Nicaraguan divide. Thisassassination violated one of the unspoken rules ofthe Somoza era—unruly peasants or Sandinistaguerrillas might be shot on sight (though manySandinista were arrested), but bourgeois antiSomocistas might pay through a variety of forms ofeconomic sanctions or be arrested for a time, or inthe case of Chamorro, have the paper closed down,but they were not assassinated. The assassinationcame after the Somoza clan and the National Guardhad achieved highly visible levels of scandalous cor-ruption in the self serving channeling of interna-tional emergency aid money in the aftermath of adevastating 1972 earthquake in Managua. Somoza’sappetite, in a tiny, poor country, appeared to have nolimit. The assassination triggered unprecedentedmassive demonstrations, and then violent battles.

The Sandinistas among Somoza’s opponentswere in the best position to provide military lead-


ership, and among the Sandinistas, the wing of theparty which had pushed for broad class alliances(compared to the “proletariat” and the prolongedpopular peasant war wings) were in the best posi-tion to take advantage of new conditions. Theresulting war united the Sandinistas and brought agood deal of international support, including aflow of arms from other Latin American countries,not including Cuba. The crass and corrupt imageof Somoza, and increasing repression which fea-tured, among other grotesque acts, the aerialbombing of his own cities, and the assassination,recorded on camera, of an ABC newsman onlyadded to this support and made it impossible forconservative allies of Somoza in the U.S. to rush toSomoza’s aid. Moreover the new human rightsemphasis in President Carter’s foreign policy (seebelow) had led to sanctions against Somoza andmade it difficult to support him or elements of hisregime, however much Carter wished to avoid anoutcome with the leftist Sandinistas in control.

With Somoza’s defeat the Somoza economicempire was destroyed along with most of its mili-tary apparatus. This did not mean that the richestclass had been destroyed because some of it (andsome of its sons and daughters) had backed theSandinistas or at least the revolt. This class wasdivided, and even if it came to share an animosityagainst the Sandinistas, it never overcame historic,regional and economic sector divisions to agreeupon a common strategy for opposing the neworder, just as it had not been able to against theruling kleptocrat.

El Salvador and Guatemala. By contrast, in ElSalvador, the bourgeois coffee growers andexporters had always been united on the largeissues and they had not been beholden to, weak-ened or divided by any such kleptocratic figures asthe Somoza family. The military in El Salvador hadnot been one man’s personal army, subject to defeatwhen that one man appeared to be getting ready tobail out. Since the 1940s military rule in ElSalvador was governed by rules of succession (bygraduating class from the military academy) in, ifnot always tension free, symbiosis with the eco-nomic oligarchy, members of which recruited andco-opted some military figures. The military’s cutof the government pie was guaranteed, though itwas considerably smaller than the oligarchy’s sliceof the economic pie. (Williams & Walter, Stanley)

This was similar to Guatemala with three impor-tant differences: the military in Guatemala, as aninstitution and groups of individuals, also attemptedto develop an economic base through development ofbusinesses and financial institutions and land grabs;the Guatemalan military had rougher rules of succes-sion that sometimes resulted in coups or near coups;and the Guatemalan military had confronted a guer-rilla uprising in the 1960s and developed, with con-siderable U.S. help, a vicious counterinsurgencycapability. In both countries, the military did notchallenge the economic hegemony of the coffee (andcotton and cattle) oligarchy, but the Guatemalanmilitary was a more aggressive player vis-à-vis theoligarchy than its Salvadoran counterpart. (Schirmer)

In neither country was there the equivalent of aPedro Joachim Chamorro, a loud and vocal criticcoming from a traditional elite family. Thoughthere were a few notable exceptions, rebel leader-ship in these two countries, unlike Nicaragua, wasnot salted with rebellious sons and daughters ofbourgeois families, though the bulk of the rebelleaders also did not come from really poor back-grounds. Bourgeois families were not joining inprotests against these military governments, norproviding safe houses. Finally, the rebel groups inEl Salvador and Guatemala, because neighboringNicaragua’s revolt exploded first, did not enjoy theelement of surprise to the same extent.

There was, however, a significant element ofsurprise. Evidence that came to light years afterthe beginning of the wars indicated that both theoligarchies and the respective militaries wereunprepared for the challenge of mounting politicalunrest or the increasing and varied activities of themultiple guerrilla factions. (Schirmer, Manwaring& Prisk)

In Guatemala, less than a decade after thorough-ly defeating guerrillas the military was confrontedwith multiple signs of trouble brewing, and anincreasing awareness that they did not know justhow big this threat was, nor how to penetrate thesecrets of the highlands to find out.

In El Salvador mounting demonstrations hadbeen met with repression as had attempts by someof the guerrilla groups, successful in some cases, toraise funds by political kidnapping. As inGuatemala, leaders of protesting groups, said bythe military to be front groups, began to disappear,or were openly assassinated. This led to increasingdemonstrations with demands to account for the


disappeared. In both countries the violence escalat-ed but, with the threat of a fallen Somoza and hisarmy before them, the military soon escalated therepression against the left.

In October 1979 a group of dissident Salvadoranofficers overthrew the military government andinstalled a cabinet of progressive civilians—save forthe Ministry of Defense —, and announced a pro-gram that the officers proclaimed would includeagrarian reform, nationalization of banks andexports, each of which amounted to a cardinal sin tothe oligarchy. The guerrillas on the Salvadoran leftsaw the coup as a U.S. plot and challenged the newgovernment to bring to justice those responsible forthe increasing disappearances of their leaders, achallenge that if met would violate the long stand-ing immunity of the military and a military code of“honor” against the prosecution of fellow officers.Human rights abuses, rather than diminishing,escalated, as factions in the military backed by somelandowners moved to wipe out the radical opposi-tion. By January the cabinet resigned due to theincrease in human rights violations, and then thepolitical killing rocketed to astronomical heights.

By the end of February a second cabinetresigned in the wake of the assassination of a wellknown member of the Christian Democratic Partyafter he was called a communist during a televisionbroadcast by Roberto D’Aubuisson, a military fig-ure and rising star of the far right. The next cabi-net brought into the government NapoleonDuarte, the Christian Democrat who had beendefrauded in the 1972 presidential elections andhad been in exile. His entry into the governmentsplit the Christian Democratic Party.

The U.S. quickly backed this new Duarte versionof the civilian-military junta with military and eco-nomic aid, despite the protests of the intrepidArchbishop Oscar Romero, the most popular figurein El Salvador. The government swiftly declared anagrarian reform, nationalization of banks and exports,designed in large part by the U.S. And the far rightwith the aid of some military units, just as swiftlyfurther escalated human rights abuses. On March 21a death squad assassinated Archbishop Romero whilehe was giving a mass. D’Aubuisson was later chargedby human rights groups and after the war by theTruth Commission with being the intellectual authorof the crime. The country moved to war. (Stanley)

In Guatemala, there was no attempt to reformthe military and Duarte-like figures were also

repressed as the military moved to stamp out allopposition without any agrarian reform or nation-alization of banks, measures hated by the oli-garchies of both countries. (Jonas)

CARTER AND REAGAN: THE COLD WARAND HUMAN RIGHTS

President Carter’s foreign policy emphasis on humanrights also altered the traditional correlation offorces in the three countries. Primarily a weapon tobe used against the USSR and its allies, the Carteradministration also employed it critically, thoughquite unevenly, against some regimes that were tra-ditional allies but run by authoritarian governmentsthat abused human rights. Each of the three coun-tries had been criticized and sanctioned by Carterand, apart from the embarrassment of public diplo-macy, one sanction was more limited access to armspurchases.

Once the war broke out in Nicaragua, Carter’sdiplomats attempted to find a solution thatwould limit Somoza’s power, and when eventsovertook that option, that would ease him out,while also keeping the Sandinistas out, a ratherdifferent policy than the prolonged U.S. Marineinterventions in Nicaragua in the early 20th cen-tury. After Somoza’s fall Carter and theSandinistas delicately danced to attempt to havenormal relations, and Carter promised aid to thewar ravaged country, a promise that witheredunder fire from the Republicans and the growingU.S. policy crisis in Central America and with theUSSR. Meanwhile other countries were pouringin aid. The Cubans immediately showed up witha plane load of doctors.

By March 2000, Carter made a fundamentalshift. As mentioned, he sent military and economicaid to El Salvador despite a vast increase in humanrights abuses. Candidate Ronald Reagan was lob-bing round after round of fire into the Carter camp.Carter had, he said, allowed “another Cuba” in thehemisphere in Nicaragua, had lost the Panamacanal to a “tin horn dictator” and was about to loseEl Salvador and Guatemala. The Republicans sawthe Soviet hand behind all of this, and did so aswell in other rebellions in Mozambique, Angola,Zimbabwe, Cambodia and Afghanistan. Carter wasunder attack because of the hostage crisis in Iran.Domestically Carter faced double digit inflationand high levels of unemployment.


By contrast, the U.S. under Carter did not rushmilitary aid to Guatemala, and Reagan, once presi-dent, was unable to do so. The long standing andmuch deeper pattern of human rights abuses inGuatemala might be one reason. Another might havebeen that Guatemala’s military had not had an inter-nal coup, or reformist elements. There was no “centerright” option in Guatemala. Though conditions andprospects were far from certain in 1979-1980 to allplayers, including the U.S, the Guatemalan govern-ment did not appear as precarious to the threat of aleft overthrow as was El Salvador’s government—byMarch, 1980 the fourth government in six months.

The Reagan new team saw Central America asSoviet and Cuban aggression and rejected claimsthat poverty and lack of democracy were theseedbeds of the insurgency. It moved quickly toallege Sandinista aggression and arms flows towardrebels in El Salvador, to increase U.S. military sup-port for El Salvador, to begin again traditionalmilitary support for Guatemalan military govern-ments, and to begin, in covert fashion, to cobbletogether of a military force to oppose theSandinistas. Initially this was to be made up ofthose officers and troops of Somoza’s NationalGuard that had fled to Honduras and El Salvador.

Despite its landslide victory the Reagan adminis-tration was slowed by several forces. Carter’s humanrights policy retained allies in Congress. This pro-vided an audience for human rights groups. Reagansupporters worried about the Vietnam Syndrome, afear of committing troops to foreign battles. Amajority of Democrats in Congress, who found,indeed, that such worries had strong resonance inpublic opinion polls. Then Reagan’s covert sabotageoperations in Nicaragua became public a fewmonths after CIA mines laid in Nicaraguan harborsthat had damaged international ships. Reagan hadnot properly notified the intelligence committees inCongress and the outraged reactions, from right toleft, splashed on to the front page.

But the Reagan team bulldozed most of themoney it needed over the next several years, butwith restrictions. Military advisors in El Salvadorwere limited to 50. In Nicaragua aid to the contrasat first was restricted for use only to intercept armsgoing to El Salvador, a fig leaf restriction. By 1984the battles with Congress over El Salvador came toan end with the election of Duarte. By 1986Reagan convinced the Congress to approve a fourfold increase in aid to the contras that included

lethal military aid. Months later, however, theIran-contra scandal revealed that the Reagan teamhad repeatedly violated Congressional restrictions.(Arnson, 1993) (See below.)

THE WARS’ SEQUENCES AND IMPACTS

By the 1981 change of administration in the U.S.Guatemala and El Salvador were marked by mili-tary struggles far larger than either country hadexperienced, and massive levels of human rightsviolations. The contra war with U.S. support wasabout to begin. It soon escalated with the afore-mentioned CIA efforts, (The precise beginningpoint of U.S. support for anti Sandinista rebels ismurky, but some raids had been going on sinceearly 1980, perhaps without U.S. help.) By 1982the Salvadoran military had gone from some12,000 troops to 60,000

M i l i t a r y A s p e c t s

El Salvador and Guatemala. The wars were highlydestructive to human life, particularly to civilians inEl Salvador and Guatemala and, among them, par-ticularly to leftist civilians in El Salvador and toindigenous Mayan civilians in Guatemala. At leastfrom late 1979 through 1983 massive waves of ter-ror were a central part of military practice. Guerrillagroups in both countries committed human rightsabuses including assassination, but on a far smallerscale. In El Salvador, it could be argued that theFMLN’s capacity to target key civilians was one ofseveral factors that brought about a reduction inmilitary human rights killings; that is a kind ofstalemate was established in this grisly aspect ofthe war.

By the end of 1983 the guerrillas in Guatemalahad suffered a strategic setback from which theywould never recover. The URNG could not suc-cessfully counter the terror, much less defend thevillages that were being burned to the ground (over400 villages were razed), and so was cut off frommost of its political and recruiting base. Some50,000 villagers fled to Mexico, and many timesmore than that to scattered locations in Guatemala.Thousands of unarmed Mayans were killed, manyof them in massacres when the army entered a vil-lage. For the next ten years the URNG could onlylaunch very limited military actions.

In El Salvador the terror had devastating effects.It eliminated almost entirely, until the mid 1980s,


left political organizers in urban areas and alsowiped out leaders in the countryside. Whole civil-ian villages, suspected of sympathies with theFMLN, were vacated, with villagers fleeing pursu-ing troops for days. Some made it to refugee campsin Honduras, some to the capital city, and manywere killed. The military committed some largescale massacres, the most notorious in an easternvillage called El Mozote.

But in El Salvador the terror did not result in astrategic defeat for the FMLN. It appears to havehad some “blowback” effects. Urban political orga-nizers could go into exile, join the guerrillas, orawait their fate. Many joined the guerrillas. Manypeasants in rural areas joined the FMLN becausetheir family members had been killed by the mili-tary. There does not seem to be much evidence ofthis “blowback” effect in Guatemala.

A second difference between the two countries isthat by the early to mid 1980s the war in ElSalvador was much more “public” in the U.S. Thescorched earth campaign in Guatemala receivedvirtually no press coverage in the U.S. El Salvadorwas a contentious issue in Washington because theU.S. was giving aid, but Reagan’s failure to pry aidfrom Congress for Guatemala meant Guatemalawas largely out of the press. Until later in thedecade the Guatemalan military was not undermuch international pressure and, ironically, unlikeits counterpart in El Salvador, had gained a signifi-cant measure of independence from Washington.

Third, the Guatemalan military, perhapsthrough even higher levels of brutality, largelydefeated the URNG in 4 years with very littleU.S. aid. The Salvadoran military received hun-dreds of millions in U.S. aid. At the end of adecade it was shocked by the scale of an offensivethe FMLN was still able to launch (see below).There were many stories in the early 1980s andbeyond of frustrated U.S. military advisors whocould not get Salvadoran officers to go on nightpatrols, or who complained that with El Salvador’ssmall size, officers could come back to the capitalcity on the weekends for drinks in popular clubs.They called it a nine to five, Monday throughFriday army.

The Guatemalan military had had experienceagainst a quite small guerrilla force in the 1960s;the Salvadoran military experience was limited tothe 3 week war in 1969 against the Honduranmilitary—a totally different type of military expe-

rience. The Guatemalan military was able to forcecreation of a constabulary spy and patrol force ineach village by the latter half of the 1980s, theCivil Action Patrols (PACS. El Salvador had hadsuch a force in the 1970s, but had difficulty main-taining in the more wide spread war zones. TheFMLN posed more of a threat to participants.

Owing to El Salvador’s small size and relativelack of wooded territory, the FMLN had no real“rear guard” areas. It had to rely on a hidden baseof support, and to learn to take advantage of ElSalvador’s small size. For example, for most of thewar the guerrillas had a presence on a volcano thatborders on the capital city and, could from out-posts there, gaze down on a luxury neighborhoodbelow them. Despite continuous U.S. chargesabout large scale arms flows from Nicaragua (withvery little evidence) the FMLN seems to have beena highly self reliant military force. A U.S. militaryattaché in the early 1990s that told the author theFMLN only needed to replace about 800 assaultrifles a year.

The war in El Salvador then had several militarystages. The FMLN launched the poorly named“final offensive” in early 1981, its first nationwidecoordinated attack. The increase of helicopters andair power forced the FMLN for the next severalyears into small unit operations that would seek tosap enemy morale. Large plantations were aban-doned under FMLN pressure, and export cropswere burned after they had been harvested (and thepeasants paid). The FMLN forced many trans-portation stoppages, blew up a key bridge, andstaged hundreds of attacks on the power system.They taxed large landowners and siphoned fundsfrom local NGOs that were in turn receiving dona-tions from international NGOs.

However the FMLN also came to see that thiswar of attrition strategy was being waged againstan army that had an infinite supply line. In early1989, the FMLN changed its political strategy, andoffered to accept the constitution with modifica-tions and to recognize the 1989 elections, if fairlyconducted, in exchange for a complete restructur-ing of the military (and bringing to justice ofhuman rights abusers). But negotiations failed andin October a pro FMLN union was bombed atlunch hour. The FMLN launched an offensive inlate November that struck many points in the capi-tal city as well as several other urban and rural areasin the country. The military responded by bombing


areas of the capital (reminiscent of Somoza in1979), and then, in a sickening display, by the bru-tal assassination of six Jesuit intellectual leaders.

The offensive changed everything: the militaryhad been hard hit and its aid from the U.S. wasthreatened by a U.S. congressional investigation ofthe Jesuit case. The two sides moved, by April, 1990to serious negotiations. (Montgomery, Jonas 1991)

Nicaragua. Terror was prevalent in the contra war,but not as dominant as in the early 1980s in ElSalvador and Guatemala. Civilian vehicles and agri-cultural cooperatives were targeted by the contras.Then armed guards were placed on vehicles andcooperatives received AK-47s for defense, so thecontras declared them military targets. This terrorwas intentional, as revealed by a CIA supplied train-ing manual, but also apparently mindless in manyof the recorded cases. Even after much criticism thecontras failed to establish disciplinary measures.Sandinista troops also committed human rightsabuses. During the war the Sandinistas offered evi-dence of disciplinary actions against offenders, evi-dence one could not find in the militaries of ElSalvador and Guatemala. Since the war there hasbeen no systematic investigation of either side.

However, a key difference between Nicaragua andEl Salvador is that in the former many political fig-ures opposed to the Sandinistas remained, despiteharassment, in the country and politically active. InEl Salvador the left opposition faced not harassmentbut assassination and were forced into exile until thelate 1980s when political space opened.

The war in Nicaragua was fought almost entirelyin rural areas. (This was in contrast to the largelyurban centered war against Somoza.) It was a war ofambushes and small scale offensives and counteroffensives. It gradually escalated as the contrasranks grew and then the government ranks grew.

In many rural areas in the north there wasintense, effective pressure on peasants to join orsupport one side or the other. Peasants also facedthe Sandinistas’ military draft. Some joined thecontras due to animosity toward the Sandinistasbased either on the failure of some Sandinistas pro-grams or anti communist, pro church propagandaefforts of the contras. Many peasants objected tothe Sandinista program of forcing the sale of a por-tion of food crops to the government. For fence sit-ting peasants calculating their risks, the support ofthe U.S. for the contras helped contra recruitment.

The contras came to be better equipped than theSandinista Popular Army.

When lethal military aid from the U.S. stoppedin 1988 the bulk of the contras went back to theircamps in Honduras. At the end of the war the con-tras claimed 22, 000 troops but estimates by theU.S. up to that point were more on the order of15,000. Still 15,000 would be twice the size of theFMLN. Despite this influx of rural Nicaraguans,the military leadership of the contras remained,until very late in the war, in the hands of NationalGuard officers, particularly Enrique Bermudez, atop Somoza operative.

Nicaragua introduced Soviet helicopters; theU.S. countered in 1986 with shoulder-aimedRedeye missiles. The contras were, by comparisonwith the other rebels in Guatemala and ElSalvador, extremely well equipped with a small airforce dropping in supplies, with computers forfield commanders and with quite comfortable rearguard areas in Honduras well stocked with food.

The contras were the dominant presence in areasof the highlands, but when they could not takeeven small cities, the strategy changed to a war ofattrition, rather like the rebels in El Salvador priorto the 1989 offensive. However, unlike theSalvadoran rebels, the contras had an ample supplyline. The Iran-contra scandal, triggered by theshooting down of a U.S. contra supply plane overNicaragua and capture of an American on board,did eventually make the Congress diminish aid tothe contras, but by this time the Nicaraguan econ-omy was in a tail spin. (Brown, Dillion, Nuñez,Robinson & Norsworthy)

S o c i a l a n d E c o n o m i c I m p a c t s

These wars were extremely costly in human lives.By comparison with the United States’ losses in 13years in Vietnam, El Salvador’s losses, in proportionto its population size, were over 40 times as large.Nicaragua, with a smaller population, had lossesthat were proportionally higher if one also countsthose killed in the war against Somoza. Guatemala’slosses, if one considers its war to go back to the1960s amount to 140,000. The Truth Commissionthere concluded that 85% of the losses measuredfrom 1980 were suffered by indigenous peoples.

In the highland areas of Guatemala, and in all ofNicaragua and El Salvador literally everybody hada friend of family member who was killed. A very


large minority of the people in each country, par-ticularly peasants and the indigenous, had to fleeto other parts of the country or were ushered intosecurity zones. And a large minority migrated tothe U.S. More than a million people are estimatedto have been displaced in each of the three coun-tries. Urban areas were swollen.

This was a measure of social dislocation thatsimply can’t be compared to the impact of theVietnam War on the U.S., but is more comparableto the casualty levels in the U.S. Civil War and itseconomic impact on the South, though some of therefugees in that war were escaping slavery.

Soon some of those in flight attempted to make itto the U.S. Salvadorans led the way in terms of num-bers and continue to do so. It was somewhat moredifficult for language and cultural reasons for Mayansto do so, but they did begin migrating, andNicaraguans had more countries to cross to get there.But soon after the end of the war the leading export“product” of each of these countries became theirown citizens illegally entering the U.S. who, onceemployed, would send money home to their families.

They were also fleeing economic conditions.Early work on migration by one of the Jesuitscholars later martyred in 1989, Segundo Montes,found that a majority of migrants by 1987 werenot from displaced families or from rural areas.The very economic conditions in terms of povertyand landlessness that were a central cause of eachwar) contributed to emigration.

Guatemala. The war did less damage to exportproduction of the oligarchy and to infrastructurethan in the other two countries. Therebels were weaker and confined toremote zones, and at its most intensethe war was in the highlands, not inthe export crop zones, with someexceptions. But GDP per capita from1980-1991 was actually worse, atminus 1.3% per year than that of ElSalvador which was, of course, helpedby large amounts of U.S. aid. Thethreat of war led to capital flight. InGuatemala, there was no hint of anagrarian reform, as a counterinsur-gency tactic as was the case in ElSalvador, nor of bank nationalization.

The table gives an idea of the rel-atively mild effect on exports in

Guatemala compared to El Salvador andNicaragua. In Nicaragua that harvest would havebeen affected by the 1978-79 war against Somozaeven though it concluded in July 1979. The tablealso reflects a decline in prices.

The economic and social damage of the war toindigenous peoples was just as great if not greaterthan that suffered by Nicaragua or El Salvador,though there are regions of those two countrieswhere the war’s impact was almost as horrifying.For all of the brutality of the other two wars, nomilitary organization embarked on a full scalescorched earth campaign of “total war” that, as inGuatemala, resulted in the burning of 400 towns.This decimated highland food production for a fewyears. In 1983 the food harvest was 60% lowerthan normal. (Jonas, 1991)

El Salvador. President Duarte charged that eliteshad taken $1 billion out of ES in the early waryears. Another estimate (Funkhouser, 1992) hadcapital flight at 6.9% of GDP in 1979 and 11.4%in 1980. For most of the war the FMLN had suffi-cient presence to disrupt production and even cre-ate the conditions for land takeovers in coastal(sugar, cotton, cattle) and upland (coffee) areas ofthe Departments Usulatán, San Vicente, and SanMiguel. Its presence in western coffee growingareas was much less strong. Its continuous attackson power poles, bridges, and its transportationstoppages also took a toll. (Wood, 2000)

The threat of the leftist guerrillas (and theSandinista victory) led directly to the March 1980agrarian reform and nationalization of banks and

exporting. Theagrarian reformdecree providedfor taking medi-um sized coffeefarms as well,but this did nothappen. It alsohad a programmodeled afterthe “land to thetiller” programin Vietnam, andits strategy wasto force ownersto sell smallparcels of land to


Real Value of Exports (f.o.b.) in 1970 dollars(in millions)

ElGuatemala Salvador Nicaragua

1979 620.6 437.2 319.2

1980 672.7 321.5 202.4

1981 598.6 231.5 248.3

1982 599.0 205.7 211.0

1983 625.4 289.3 246.3

1984 618.5 286.4 200.9

Bulmer-Thomas 1987

peasant renters. The first agrarian reform tookabout 14% of arable land (and about 19% of landsdevoted to export crops) and had some 30,000beneficiary members for a family total, accordingto USAID estimates in 1987, of 188,000 people or8.5% of the rural population.

These reforms were anathema to the private sec-tors. The Reagan administration to stave off theguerrillas supported policies in El Salvador com-pletely at odds with conservative Republican ide-ology. But it also created the institutions and ini-tial conditions for a change to a neoliberal econo-my, by holding down government spending andsocial programs, and by investing heavily in ahuge, neoliberal think tank called FUSADES.

The generally negative economic conditions,and the failure to end the war, created the key con-ditions in 1988 for a major shift in Salvador elec-toral politics, away from the incumbent ChristianDemocratic Party and toward the ascendant, right-ist ARENA party. This shift proved to be perma-nent. With ARENA came a sharp change in eco-nomic models moving toward a structural adjust-ment program, and toward building upon theneoliberal foundation.

At one point U.S. aid amounted to 50% of thegovernment’s budget. This infusion of money wasnot sufficient to prevent negative growth in someyears and stagnation in others. By 1989 GDP percapita was less than it had been at the beginning ofthe decade. (Even after two years of relative growthin 1990-91, the World Bank pegged 1980-1991 percapita growth at negative -0.3% ) But the U.S. aidwas sufficient to prevent economic chaos and col-lapse, just as it was sufficient to prevent military col-lapse and to achieve a grinding military stalemate.

Nicaragua. By contrast, the Nicaraguan economydid collapse. In 1987 inflation was 1350%; in1988 it was 36,000%! Prices changed hourly. Inearly 1988 the Sandinistas adopted very sharpmonetary austerity measures, with another roundof them in June and in early 1989. They devaluedthe currency from a 70 to 1 official exchange rateto something closer to the black market rate of60,000 to 1, and slashed government spending,except for military and agricultural subsidies. Byearly 1989 thousands of government workers hadbeen laid off. The Sandinistas claimed that thisIMF style policy had more of a social welfare cush-ion in it than the typical programs imposed by the

IMF. But unlike an IMF program this was notbacked by IMF loans. It was, said economist,Javier Gorostiaga, surgery without anesthesia.(Ricciardi)

After the fall of Somoza the Nicaraguan economywent through a much more fundamental changethan that in El Salvador. The Sandinistas embarkedon what they called a mixed economy—utilizingpart socialist and part private sector principles. Themix, at least from the perspective of the private sec-tor, was decidedly state centered. Would the gov-ernment have the managerial capacity to direct thiseconomy, including hundreds of new state enter-prises and state farms? The Sandinistas had tremen-dous enthusiasm, but a distinct shortage of highlytrained people. Would the mixed economy withheavy reliance on large private agro exporters turnout to be (the large landowners asked) the first stepto full blown socialism? Both questions becamemore acute when the economy became dominatedby the costs of war.

The Sandinistas instantly expropriated all of theSomoza family holdings, and those of his collabo-rators—agrarian, banking, industrial and services.Somoza had controlled about 25% of the economy.The agrarian properties were turned into statefarms. Remaining banks were also nationalized. Intwo years, the Sandinistas began to expropriateagrarian lands and urban productive enterpriseswhich were being decapitalized by their ownerswho thought the Sandinistas were heading towardsocialism. About 21% of the arable land went intostate farms by 1983 and another 14% was in coop-eratives. By 1987 a portion of state farms wereconverted to cooperatives basically reversing thosetwo statistics. By 1988 some 47,000 families wereon these cooperatives. Some 500 urban productionproperties went into the hands of the state.

By 1987 privately owned farms of over 500mazanas had been reduced from the 1978 (Somozaera) level of 37% of arable land to 9%, and hold-ings between 200 and 500 manzanas had beenreduced much less from 16% of arable land to12%. Farms between 50 and 200 mazanasremained at 30% of arable land. (Enriquez, 1991,88-93). So there was a very substantial proportionof agrarian production that remained with mediumand large landholders, and much more in the handsof peasant small holders. However, private sectorowners were increasingly “surrounded” by the state.It owned the banks and so controlled credit, con-


trolled imports, marketed exports and so set pricesto pay farmers producing export crops. TheSandinistas fostered the growth of rural tradeunions, which forced owners to pay higher wages.

As the war and inflation worsened, the bargainingposition of private owners vis-à-vis the Sandinistasimproved as the government was desperate toincrease the supplies of everything. By 1987 thegovernment was lending money to large holders atnegative real interest rates. The Sandinistas hadlarge scale loan programs to peasants and peasantcooperatives and simply never collected the money.While attempting to pay peasants reasonable pricesfor their products, the peasants nonetheless wereangry at being forced to sell a portion of their cropto the government, and the result was to subsidize aswell consumer prices on some products. All of thiscombined with a vast increase in military expendi-tures and low tax collections led to hyperinflation.The Sandinistas could not cover domestic and inter-national debt. Real wages had been declining sincethe early 1980s with partial compensation fromexpanded social programs. By 1987 and then 1988hyperinflation created chaos and a tremendousdecline in real wages. (Enriquez, Ricciardi)

El Salvador and Nicaragua. In El Salvador GNPper capita declined an annual average of minus0.3% from 1980 through 1991 with its war stillgoing on. During the same period the Nicaraguaneconomy declined minus 4.4% annually. (Its warended in 1990.) Why the sharp difference betweenthe Salvadoran economy, damaged badly but notsinking, and the sunken Nicaraguan economy?

The Nicaraguan economy was already reelingdue to the 18 month war against Somoza. Whileall of the Central American countries wereplunged into recession at the end of the 1970s,only Nicaragua shows a decline in GDP for thewhole decade, and this is almost entirely attribut-able to the disastrous decline in GDP during 1978and 1979. A UN team measuring the damage atthe end of the war against Somoza estimated thatNicaragua would not get back to its former levelof GNP per capita, under the best of circum-stances, for another ten years. Nicaragua was not toenjoy the “best of circumstances.”

The U.S. backing of the Salvadoran governmentand attack on the Nicaraguan government meantthat the one had access to World Bank and IMFfunds and other did not, which in turn dried up

other sources of commercial credit. TheSandinistas received much international aid, per-haps on a par with that received by El Salvador.But most of this aid was not cash but in goods andservices and had debt attached to it, though atconcessionary interest rates. It emerged from thewar with a huge international debt.

While the Soviets were supplying arms, it was arelatively limited supply line compared to what theSalvadorans were getting, and its war had to befought over a much wider geographic area. Then aidfrom all sources declined sharply in 1986 and againin 1987, just when the aid to the contras ramped up.

El Salvador’s aid came almost entirely from theU.S. under a relatively coherent strategy and wasbacked by hard currency. This meant the credit wasavailable. It meant that bonds used for compensa-tion for the agrarian reform in El Salvador hadsome credibility and were tradable at a discount. Itmeant that the damage to the economy would notspiral out of control into hyper inflation.

By contrast, Nicaraguan aid came from many dif-ferent sources in many different sized packages.Many of the larger ones were long term projects thatwould take years to bear fruit. The Bulgarians start-ed a canning factory. The Cubans supplied a largesugar mill, and teachers, and doctors. Dozens ofinternational NGOs set up shop in Managua eachwith a basket of small projects. The projects fit theagenda of the donor country. There was very littlecoordination among donors and a relative lack ofcoordination among the ministries with variousSandinistas establishing their own fiefdoms. Thehundreds of projects and the context in which theywere given did not add up to a strategy for main-taining macroeconomic stability in the face of severewar pressures.

Toward the end of each war both governmentsbegan a wrenching shift away from the more statecentered models each had adopted at the beginningof the decade. The collapse forced the Sandinistasinto extreme austerity measures. El Salvador didnot collapse, but the new ARENA administrationof President Cristiani in 1989 began to privatizebanks and export product marketing.

Wa r t i m e Po l i t i c a l D e v e l o p m e n t s

In the midst of these three wars each countrylaunched elections in which none of the candi-dates were from the military. In each country, the


forces in rebellion dismissed the elections as ille-gitimate and unrepresentative. The force of therebels’ arguments varied by country. The levels ofhuman rights abuses were much higher in ElSalvador and Guatemala. The governments want-ed to delegitimize the rebels and impress interna-tional audiences with progress toward democracy.The conduct of these elections was crucial to U.S.foreign policy.

Despite these motivations, these elections repre-sented a new step away from military dominatedgovernments (Somoza’s with his personal army)and deeply fraudulent elections. When peace nego-tiations started, the fact of the elections and newconstitutions made it more difficult for the rebelforces to claim that the government was undemoc-ratic and illegitimate.

El Salvador. 1982 (Constituent Assembly), 1984(Presidential), 1985 (Legislative and Municipal.Reagan’s solution to silence Congressional criticswas to force an electoral process and a Constitution.Like the agrarian reform of 1980, the electionsbecame part of the war strategy, but agrarian reformwas an alien concept in Washington. Elections wereWashington fodder.

In 1982 the FMLN called for a boycott.However the turnout appeared to be large, but it isimpossible to tell how large because both majorparties later admitted to inflating vote totals, andthe process in terms of registration was completelyad hoc. U.S. reporters, in massive, glowing cover-age, saw long lines of voters and the danger ofguerrilla attacks. But the guerrillas seemed towant to demonstrate that they were not going tohonor the elections by calling a day-long cease-fire. The military had declared not voting to betreason, and voters had their ID cards stamped toshow they had voted.

The Christian Democrats won the largest num-ber of seats in the Constituent Assembly, but wereoutnumbered by four rightist parties, mainlyARENA and the PCN. U.S. pressure preventedthe Assembly election of D’Aubuisson as thenation’s interim president, a man who had beenlabeled by former U.S. ambassador Robert Whiteas “a pathological killer.”

The charismatic D’Aubuisson’s presidentialambitions were headed off again in 1984 when theU.S. heavily backed Duarte. Then his party won amajority in the 1985 Assembly elections. Duarte’s

popularity with the U.S. Congress solved Reagan’sproblems on that front.

Nicaragua 1984 (Constituent Assembly, Na-tional Assembly, Presidential and Municipal)Reagan used the 1982 Salvadoran election torenew his demand that the Sandinistas hold elec-tions, and then, with elections scheduled, pro-claimed that they would be a “totalitarian sham.”This made the central issue which non Sandinistagroups would participate. Six small political par-ties registered. A group of four other small partiesrefused, though negotiations over the issue wenton for weeks. The dissident groups demanded thatthe Sandinistas negotiate with the contras. Laterthe dissidents told the U.S. press that they debatedonly whether they would never register or registerand then drop out, and that some had receivedCIA funds. The parties that did participate cam-paigned vigorously with ample use of free TV timeand cheap radio time, though the main oppositionnewspaper, La Prensa, refused to run their adsbecause it supported the boycott.

Turnout was high with 75% of the 1.5 millionregistered voters; about 93% of the voting agepopulation had registered. The Sandinista won67% of the vote.

The U.S. rejected the election. It is particularlynoteworthy that the groups that would not runhad remained in Nicaragua and were outspoken intheir criticism. By contrast the equivalent nonguerrilla groups in El Salvador, but to the left ofthe political spectrum, had been driven into exiledue to the very real threat of assassination.

Guatemala 1984 (Constituent Assembly) 1985(all offices) and 1990 (all offices). In the midstof the scorched earth offensive, the military stagedanother electoral exercise in 1982 that was quicklyfollowed by a coup led by Efraín Ríos Montt, whoin turn overthrown sixteen months later byGeneral Oscar Mejía Víctores. He wanted toimprove Guatemala’s international image so hestaged elections with all civilian candidates for aConstituent Assembly in 1984 and then presiden-tial and legislative elections in 1985. TheChristian Democratic Party topped several otherparties to its right in 1985 when Vinicio Cerezowon the Presidency, with 68% in the runoff, andthe party won half the congressional seats. Cerezo’sgovernment was thoroughly controlled by the mil-itary down to the details of his daily calendar.


Nonetheless, military elements to the right ofMejía Victores attempted a coup, egged on by theoligarchy, when Cerezo proposed raising taxes.

In 1990 the Christian Democrat’s legislativevote slumped to 17%, and its presidential candi-date did not make it to the second round. But noother party filled the void. The UCN won 35% ofthe legislative seats (with but 22% of the vote).The presidential winner, Jorge Serrano, had hisown party, called MAS. He won 24% of the votein the first round and 68% in the second round,but his party won only 15% of the Deputy seats.

In 1993 Serrano attempted a coup against theCongress, but he failed to get sufficient supportfrom the military or business. When a broad arrayof groups in civil society, business sectors and theinternational community (including the U.S.)protested the coup. Serrano went into exile. Thefailure of the coup was hailed as further evidence ofa triumph of democracy. But in 8 years there hadbeen two elections with low turnout, three (failed)coup attempts and civilian governments surround-ed by the military. In 1993 Serrano’s opponent,newspaperman Jorge Carpio Nicolle, was assassi-nated. And the war went on.

Christian Democrats and the Military in ElSalvador and Guatemala. The numbers gained bythe Christian Democrats in Guatemala in 1984 and1985 are roughly parallel to what had happenedwith the Christian Democrats in El Salvador in1982 and 1984. Both parties competed against anarray of parties to their right; both had beenrepressed earlier by the military, though neitherparty had borne the brunt of the repression. But thecontrasts between the two parties and the two coun-tries are telling and affected the conditions of peace.

In both countries the party was moving towardan accommodation with their adversaries in themilitary. In the case of Duarte in 1980 the movecame amidst a sharp, incredibly dramatic crisis andthe most severe repression against elements on theleft of his party. Duarte was sponsored by the U.S.to head off a guerrilla victory. The oligarchy wastrying to mobilize its favored elements in the mili-tary against the Duarte-U.S.-military project.By1982 the country was in full scale war with theoutcome in doubt. By then, however, the rightistelements in the country had been forced to take upelectoral politics, and the U.S. had told the mili-tary that elected civilians were going to replace the

military in most government functions (thoughthe military remained the strongest institution andnot subject, practically speaking, to orders fromelected civilians). But the need for U.S. aid madethe military concede some governing power andcivilian elections. The right was vociferous in itsopposition to the 1980 economic reforms but itwas hardly in a position to tell the U.S. to dumpthe reforms much less reject U.S. military aid. By1984 and 1985 the new ARENA party had outdis-tanced the other right wing parties.

In Guatemala when Cerezo was elected thecountry was no longer in full scale war and themilitary itself brought about the elections on itsown terms. Cerezo’s sphere of action was extremelylimited. Agrarian reform and bank nationalizationwere completely off the agenda and his proposal toraise taxes threatened a coup. The landed oligarchydid not like Cerezo, but its interests remained rela-tively untouched by the war. Rightist politicalparties were scattered and did not last. By contrastARENA was backed by nearly everyone in the oli-garchy. Even though it lost in 1984 and 1985 ithad built party machinery that was more powerful,by far, than any found in Guatemala.

In Guatemala there was an extremely strong,independent, and nearly victorious military witha huge paramilitary apparatus compared to itsSalvadoran counterpart. In El Salvador anextremely strong rightist party developed insharp contrast to weak structures in Guatemala.This pattern continued for the next two decades.And in both countries, the Christian Democratsdeclined drastically.

El Salvador 1988 (legislative and municipal)and 1989 (presidential). These elections funda-mentally shifted Salvadoran politics, and returnedthe country to oligarchic ruled government. In 1985ARENA won 29% of the vote; in 1988 it won 48%.The PDC dropped from 53% to 36%. In 1989Alfredo Cristiani won 54% in the first round com-pared to the 30% won by D’Aubuisson in 1984.

The Christian Democrats in 1984 had conveyedan optimism that the war could be brought to anend. By 1989 the economy was worse than in1984. Unemployment was up, real wages weredown. And, the Christian Democrats had beensnared in several corruption scandals, and anintense battle over selection of a presidential can-didate. ARENA united behind Cristiani who had


been tapped by party demigod D’Aubuisson forhis patrician good looks, U.S. education and fluentEnglish, all selling points in Washington.

Also, before the 1989 election the FMLNoffered significant concessions and left of centerparty members cautiously returned from exile andentered the campaign under very dangerous condi-tions. Candidate Guillermo Ungo was able to winover 35,000 votes or 3.6%.

E c o n o m i c Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n .S t e p s To w a r d N e o l i b e r a l i s m

The later war years began a transformation towardneoliberal economics and the beginnings of newways of accumulating wealth in the global market.Economic crisis forced the Sandinistas to makeconcessions to the private sector and then theirdefeat reversed the Sandinistas emphasis on thestate’s role in the economy. ARENA reversedDuate’s nationlizations banks and exporting, andlater sold of other state enterprises in utilities. Thechanges were slower in Guatemala, but the statehad not played a directive role there.

The U.S.,bankrolled a huge neoliberal think tankcalled FUSADES. The war, international commodi-ty prices, and even the agrarian reform forced forcedchange. Coffee owners in war zones had to find newways of making money. Those who lost land in theagrarian reform were paid in bonds and needed newsources of investment. Capital fled El Salvador, (andNicaragua and Guatemala) in the 1980s, butCristiani attracted capital back with the privatiza-tion of the banks and exporting, the phasing out ofprice controls, and the establishment of free tradezones for textile assembly plants or “maquilas.”Cristiani’s family obtained eventual control of thelargest bank and other members of the oligarchygained control of other banks. The leading exportproduct, however, was not based on ARENA’s eco-nomic plans but soon became integral to them.That was the export of Salvadorans. The money theysent home rose astronomically in Cristiani’s termand has continued to do so.

Following the Sandinistas’ loss, the new govern-ment moved to privatize state farms and business-es; to further reduce the state sector with the layoffs of thousands, in a continuing battle with infla-tion. It was inclined toward these measures philo-sophically, and also, with an enormous internation-al debt (far in excess of those of El Salvador and

Guatemala), forced to do so by the IMF. Thesemoves and continual instability over property lawsand ownership led to a relatively rapid decline ininflation. But there was little new investment,astronomical levels of under and unemployment.

These moves in Nicaragua and El Salvador wereforced by the pressures of war, and then by ideo-logical shifts in the governments, themselves aproduct of the wars. They were also part of a glob-al trend which had been, since the debt crisis ofthe early 1980s, inducing third world govern-ments that were negotiating debt relief to reducegovernment controls and maximize the free marketand free trade.

T h e 1 9 8 9 Tu r n i n g Po i n t s

By the beginning of 1989 each of the three coun-tries had been transformed from what they had beena decade earlier. Wars fought mainly over ideologi-cal and class differences (as opposed to ethnic andreligious conflicts elsewhere) and the cold war weretransforming agents. By this time each war wasstalemated. In each country the wars had indirectlyled to civilian dominated elections with selectiveand partial participation of various factions, withthe rebels condemning the exercise. In two of thecountries the economic model had been transformedin 1980, much more radically in Nicaragua than ElSalvador. In all three, direct and indirect war dam-age (along with other global changes that negative-ly affected Latin America) had been great, thoughfar greater in El Salvador than Guatemala, andgreater in Nicaragua than in El Salvador. In thosetwo countries the traditional elites’ economic basehad been severely damaged or taken over by agrari-an reforms, again to a greater extent in Nicaraguathan in El Salvador.

By the beginning of 1989 all sides to the con-flict were hurting, but all sides could also perceivethat their rivals were also hurting.

In Guatemala the military had not been able toclose out a war in which it had dealt a cripplingblow to its enemy six years earlier. The governmentremained, despite civilian elections in 1985 undersevere international criticism for its human rightsviolations. The economy was not in good shape.But more than any other player in Central America,the Guatemalan military could afford to bide itstime, and the business sectors in Guatemala werenot faced with a crisis caused by the war.


The URNG, for its part, had severely dimin-ished ranks and absolutely no chance at a militaryvictory. It had proven that it could survive, but itsability to inflict damage was minimal. It couldafford to bide its time as well, because it had littleleft to lose.

The Sandinistas economy was a shambles, its aidfrom the Soviet block was being cut severely, andthe war had taken a heavy toll in human lives. Thedraft was very unpopular. Progress toward a diplo-matic solution based upon the July 1987 Esquipulaspeace accords had been grudging at best.

The US Congress had in 1988 cut military aidto the contras, causing large numbers of them toretreat to Honduras, though there was still consid-erable non military or non lethal aid flowing in.However the contras had to see that U.S. backingwas now weakened badly and this was made clearerto them in the early months of the new Bushadministration.

The Constitution called for an election in 1990.The terms and participation in that election becamethe main bargaining point between the FSLN andthose sectors of the opposition not in the contras (atleast formally), and those terms and conditions inturn were to be used, unsuccessfully, as a lever tostop U.S. support of the contras before the election.

In El Salvador, the Duarte government slumpedto an end. The new ARENA government inheritedthe same set of problems. The FMLN was still capa-ble of creating major economic damage and steadymilitary damage. The government still had toimpose a draft and the economy was in bad shape. Ifthere was no prospect of the FMLN winning thewar, there was little evident prospect of the govern-ment doing so. While sectors in the right called for“total war” meaning, in code, doing what theGuatemalan military had done earlier without theany restrictions on human rights violations, moreprescient sectors of the ARENA party could alreadysee that the Bush administration, with the end ofthe Cold War had a lower priority for El Salvadorthan had Reagan. These ARENA sectors were cau-tiously in favor an approach to peace.

It was hard to gauge the attitude of the FMLN.One of its of its commanders, Joachim Villalobos,published an article in the U.S. that concluded thatthe objective conditions in El Salvador made possi-ble a mass insurrection against the government. Onthe other hand, as noted, the FMLN had offeredmajor concessions in exchange for a cleansing of themilitary and a six month delay in the elections.Was this a feint? Or was Villalobos’ article a feint?

The U.S. at the outset of 1989 had lived for adecade with a crisis over three tiny countries. TheU.S. had fended off disaster in El Salvador and iso-lated and damaged the FSLN in Nicaragua. Butthere was no end in sight. The Reagan administra-tion had suffered badly damaged relations withCongress over the Iran-contra scandal, and newlyelected President Bush was a prime focus of theinvestigations.

In the next 14 months all of these positionswould change and, with the exception of the noncontra opposition in Nicaragua, change for theworse. In Guatemala these changes were in partcaused by the changes in the other two countriesand were not sufficient to impel its players to amore rapid military or negotiating pace. In ElSalvador and Nicaragua the changes were funda-mental, and led to the end of their wars and thebeginnings under difficult and different conditionsof their peace processes.

By the end of 1989, the FMLN had launched itsmajor offensive, both it and the military had suf-fered large losses, and the Jesuits had been assassi-nated. The FSLN had not been successful in gettingthe U.S. to demobilize the contras and a cease firehad broken down. The U.S. had invaded Panamaand threatened the Nicaraguan Embassy there.Violetta Chamorro had brandished a chunk of theBerlin Wall in her campaign stops. The Sandinistaswere about to go down to electoral defeat.

That victory for the U.S. narrowed its optionsvis-à-vis the contras; they now had to demobilize,leaving the military in control of the Sandinistas,and the U.S. options were also narrowed by thekilling of the Jesuits.


Contadora. Between 1983 and 1987 severalLatin American countries attempted to fash-ion an accord among the Central American

countries that would contain the conflicts, impede aU.S. invasion, and facilitate political solutions to thewars. Mexico, Venezuela, Panama and Colombia ini-tiated the process on Contadora Island, and werejoined in mid 1985 by Brazil, Argentina, Peru andUruguay. The Contadora group began with govern-ments—that is one side of the three conflicts—byraising war-related regional problems affecting allfive Central American republics: attenuated trade,refugee flows, and the use of territory in one countryby rebels to attack their home country. TheContadora group soon edged into sensitive internalissues: outside powers’ use of military bases and pro-vision of military advisors; electoral conditions; and,ultimately the extremely delicate topic of discus-sions between a government and the rebels.

The U.S. claimed to support Contadora, but itwas used to being the dominant diplomatic force. Itdid not want Contadora to legitimate Sandinistarule. Also, any international verification would easi-ly spot the large U.S. supported contra bases inHonduras, but the U.S. would have a more difficulttime providing classified electronic evidence ofSandinista or Cuban aid to the FMLN. The U.S. andits allies had intercepted almost no arms going fromNicaragua to El Salvador. The contras were highlyreliant on the U.S. the FMLN was a more self reliantorganization (and more poorly equipped). TheSandinistas supported Contadora as a counterweightto the U.S., but sometimes bridled at suggestions ofinterference in internal matters, such as elections.

Two moments illustrate the problems. A drafttreaty in late 1984 had provisions that called uponeach country to establish open democratic processes(implying international verification), to eliminateforeign military advisors (Cubans in Nicaragua,U.S. forces in El Salvador and Honduras) and to notallow countries outside the region to use the terri-tory of any C.A. country for military bases or exer-cises (The U.S. in Honduras and perhaps ElSalvador, the potential for the USSR inNicaragua.). Despite the provisions which theSandinistas saw aimed at them about elections,Nicaragua caught the U.S. and its allies by surprisewhen it announced it would sign the treaty as writ-

ten. Soon the allies of the U.S. (Honduras, ElSalvador, and Costa Rica with Guatemala playing amore or less neutral role) found fault with the lan-guage. The next year treaty language was more orless the same regarding advisors, but would havepermitted the U.S. to continue its extensive exer-cises and air strips in Honduras, and did not con-tain international verification of contra bases.Nicaragua refused to sign this version because itperceived that it was making all the concessions.

The most frustrating moment for the Contadoragroup came in early 1986 when the Reaganadministration launched the aforementioned offen-sive to get the Congress to approve lethal militaryaid to the contras. The Contadora group could notmake its voice heard in Washington.

Iran-contra Scandal. In late 1986 the Iran con-tra scandal provided an opening that led to the1987 Central American Peace Treaty.

The Reagan administration was caught cheatingon Congressional restrictions fashioned before 1986to restrict aid to the contras. In the early 1980sCongress agreed to non-lethal aid only if the con-tras were limited to blocking arms flows fromNicaragua to the FMLN in El Salvador. It becameclear finally that the contras were not interceptingarms but rather had launched attacks in Nicaragua,so the House moved to cut off all aid in mid 1983.However a compromise permitted aid ($24 mil-lion) that would run out in six months. This threatcaused the Reagan administration to launch secret,illegal efforts to raise funds for military supplies tothe contras from friendly countries (the Saudisbegan providing $1 million per month, for exam-ple) or from rich U.S. donors. In the NationalSecurity Council Colonel Oliver North conductedthe campaign.

Then the Reagan administration secretlyarranged to sell missiles to Iran, its public enemy,to shore up its war efforts against Iraq, which theU.S. had secretly backed earlier. Oliver Norththought it would be a “neat idea” to use the fundsfrom the secret missile sales to provide under thetable aid to the contras.

All this came to light in an U.S. investigationthat followed the Sandinistas’ capture of a CIAcontract whose plane had been dropping supplies

THE PEACE AGREEMENTS

to the contras. The Reagan administration wassuddenly on the defensive. (Child, Arnson, 1993)

The Costa Rica Factor. The U.S. had pressuredCosta Rica to drift away from its traditional pos-ture of neutrality. Contra groups began usingCosta Rican soil. Oscar Arias discovered during hispresidential campaign that Costa Rican voterswanted a return to neutrality despite generalantipathy to the Sandinistas. Once elected he dis-covered allies in the U.S. Congress who wanted, inthe wake of the Iran contra scandal, a politicalsolution in Central America. These allies enabledhim to negotiate on the basis of Contadora princi-ples and avoid reprisals from the U.S.

In February 1987 Arias invited all the CentralAmerican presidents save Daniel Ortega to a confer-ence to discuss a draft peace plan that containedclauses about internal democracy and negotiatingcease fires, both elements that would be difficult forNicaragua to accept as it had refused to meet withthe contras and was sensitive about interference inits internal affairs. Ortega was furious at being leftout. However, the Arias plan also contained clausesprohibiting aid to insurgent forces or giving themsanctuary or bases. In its essentials the formula wasrather similar to the 1984 proposal by Contadora.The clear implication was that the Reagan adminis-tration could no longer count on Costa Rica to votewith El Salvador and Honduras against any planthat contained prohibitions against aid to the con-tras. The balance of Central America votes had shift-ed from 3 against Nicaragua (with Guatemala neu-tral) to Costa Rica and Guatemala in favor of a planacceptable to Nicaragua. That would leave ElSalvador and Honduras in a vulnerable minority.Nicaragua entertained the plan.

Following several skirmishes, including a lastditch alternative plan floated by the U.S. the fiveCentral American leaders signed the plan inEsquipulas, Guatemala in August 1987. The plancalled for each country to set up reconciliationcommissions, with vague mandates, and it calledfor a UN and OAS commission to verify progress.

Implementation of the plan proved to be diffi-cult. El Salvador and Guatemala could allow a rec-onciliation commission but were not prepared totalk to the rebels in their countries, and the FMLNand URNG were not yet disposed to recognize thegovernments. Honduras refused to let the interna-tional verification commission inspect for the con-

tra bases. For the next two years Nicaragua wascompelled under the pressure of the plan and ofthe U.S. to make concessions in exchange forpledges by the other Central American presidentsto get the U.S. to stop supporting the contras.

But the Contadora process and then Arias eventu-ally did achieve a framework that supported a processof negotiations between the Sandinistas and variousNicaraguan factions that led to a consensus electoralprocess that led to the end of the war, though not toa global peace accord. It did initiate a process inGuatemala that, years later, bore fruit. It establishedthe idea of international mediation verification. TheUN and OAS verification of the Nicaraguan electionwas unprecedented in its scope and served as a prece-dent for much more ample UN mediation and verifi-cation in El Salvador and Guatemala.

ENDING THE WAR IN NICARAGUA

The peace process first consisted of two track nego-tiations—failed talks with the contras, and suc-cessful negotiations for an election with all opposi-tion political parties. Then there were negotiationsbetween the newly elected Chamorro administra-tion with the Sandinistas and with the contras.

Before the electoral calendar was set, theSandinistas engaged in mediated negotiations withthe contras, a step it had refused to take throughoutthe decade. Negotiations were complicated becauseof considerable factionalism within the contras. Thegovernment asked Archbishop Obando y Bravo tohead a reconciliation commission. Obando y Bravowas head of the Catholic Church and along withOrtega the most widely recognized figure inNicaragua. He was a long standing and not so sub-tle critic of the Sandinistas, but also widely respect-ed. Obando y Bravo convened indirect talks about acease fire between the government and contra com-manders. The talks deadlocked.

In a January 1988 summit of Central Americanpresidents Ortega agreed to a series of concessionsthat would liberalize political space in Nicaragua.However the meeting did not establish an interna-tional verification commission to examine the issueof the contras staging attacks from Honduras. Butthe Presidents also reiterated a call for halting aidto the contras.

Weeks later, with Congress debating more aidto the contras, Ortega agreed to direct talks withthe contras. The House defeated military aid to the


contras by a very narrow margin. In March, whenReagan insisted on military aid and liberals insist-ed on no aid, the whole bill went down to defeat.

Then Ortega himself met with the contras inNicaragua, announcing himself as the President ofNicaragua. (By contrast the Presidents of ElSalvador and Guatemala did not meet the rebels faceto face until the formal signing of peace treaties.)The talks resulted in a 60 day suspension of the war.In June the cease fire fell apart when the contraspresented, as a precondition for disarming, the res-ignation of the entire Supreme Court, the return ofall properties taken in the Agrarian Reform and thedischarge of all draftees from the army. The econo-my was reeling, and the contras were faced with thepossibility of the new administration stopping aid.

Negotiating an Election. The Central Americanpresidents asked Ortega to forego some of theadvantages of incumbency, to consider losing aSandinista majority on the Supreme ElectoralCouncil (CSE), and to permit international verifica-tion of the 1990 election. Ortega agreed to considerthese points and also to advance the date of theelections by nine months to February 1990. (Notethat weeks later in El Salvador, the FMLN askedthe government to delay elections by six months.This was refused.) In exchange the Presidentswould present in 90 days a plan to disarm and relo-cate the contras. And the five countries wouldrequest the UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellarto form a commission to patrol borders against theflow of arms.

This commenced a series of negotiations in early1989 between the Sandinistas and oppositionpolitical parties and subsequent reforms. OnAugust 3-4 a marathon, nationally televised ple-nary meeting between all of the political partiesand the government reached a political agreementthat: suspended the military draft until the elec-tion; loosened media restrictions; and put theFSLN in a minority on the CSE.

The new CSE contained two Sandinistas, twoopposition party members and an independent.Mariano Fiallos, a Sandinista, headed the CSE. TheNational Assembly voted for these members andonly three of fifteen opposition deputies votedagainst Fiallos. He was a widely respected figure.Earlier Ortega had invited the UN and OAS toform large election observation teams to be put inplace months before the election.

In exchange for these August concessions, theopposition political parties agreed to call upon theCentral American Presidents, who were to meetthe next day, to issue the much delayed plan todemobilize the contras.

The U.S. Plays its Hand. The resulting plan calledfor the demobilization of the contras by the end ofDecember 1989. However, this did not happen.

The U.S. on the one hand encouraged contrasleaders (non combatants) to participate in the elec-toral process. A few civilians, who had been on thecontra directorate, did so. The U.S. worked tounify the many opposition political parties aroundone candidate. On the other hand the Bush admin-istration maintained that the contras were theguarantee of a free and fair election—not the hugeteams of international observers. The contras’claimed that any election resulting in a Sandinistavictory could not be, by definition, a free and fairelection. The not so subtle message was that thewar would go on if the Sandinistas won. TheCongress basically supported the Bush administra-tion’s ongoing though reduced aid to the contras.

The U.S. met the challenge of unifying, more orless, thirteen of the notoriously small and fractiousopposition political parties in Nicaragua by threat-ening to withhold aid unless they agreed upon onecandidate — the single most electable candidatewithin the opposition, Violetta Chamorro thewidow of the newspaper editor whose assassinationin 1978 sparked the revolution against Somoza.(One of the concessions made by the Sandinistas wasto permit several million dollars in U.S. electoral aidto flow to opposition groups in exchange for a U.S.pledge, brokered by former President Carter, not touse any covert funds to support the opposition.)

International Observation. This election was byfar the most carefully scrutinized electoral process byan international audience ever. Most internationalelection observation had consisted of governmentsand private groups sending in small teams ofobservers for a few days around the election.International observers, mainly from the UN andOAS, observed the process for seven months withfield stations throughout the country. Virtuallyevery significant rally by either side had observersfrom the OAS and the UN, and the two groupsblanketed the registration process on four Sunday’sin October. In addition the Carter Center had a fulltime staff person in Nicaragua and President Carter

The Peace Agreements 39

headed frequent delegations. (HemisphereInitiatives had observer status that began in July.)The election observers gave the electoral process, andin particular the CSE, high grades at each step of theway. On election day the UN and OAS teamstotaled 700, along with another 1800 internationalobservers, and perhaps an equal number of reporters.

The Election. Apolitical and, at best, a tentativespeech reader, Chamorro benefited from an moth-erly image of someone who had maintained herown family even though it had activist andSandinistas and anti Sandinistas. Her son-in-lawAntonio Lacayo fashioned an anti Sandinista cam-paign for the UNO coalition around this healingimage, while suffering through bungled speechesand conflict within the coalition (including abackstage fist fight with the vice presidential can-didate Virgilio Godoy).

By contrast the Sandinistas cast Daniel Ortegain the image of a feisty bantam rooster and dressedhim in western style outfit. Throughout the cam-paign, UNO staged some large rallies and hadincreasing amounts of resources. But theSandinistas at every turn seemed to have a bigger,better organized campaign capable of turning ourlarge crowds. Most, but not all polls indicated thatthe FSLN had a comfortable lead, but some polls,including a private FSLN poll, said the lead wasnot so comfortable. The UNO campaign picked upsteam as ample U.S. money finally was deployed.

Weeks before the election, the Bush administra-tion invaded Panama and, during the invasion U.S.troops took threatening actions against theNicaraguan and Cuban embassies in Panama.Ortega responded by placing a tank in front of theU.S. Embassy in Nicaragua. Polls indicated thatthe U.S. Panama invastion was unpopular, but thisand ongoing contra attacks signaled to Nicaraguansthat if Ortega won the war would go on. Many vot-ers voted against the FSLN because of the economicdevastation, or because they did not like thedecade-long omnipresence of the Sandinistas.

Chamorro won easily. Many in UNO seemed asstunned as the FSLN. In the legislative race UNOoutpaced the FSLN 51 seats to 39 (and 2 to inde-pendents).

The Transition and the two army question.Both camps faced daunting challenges.

Many within UNO did not accept the“Sandinista” constitution and claimed that the

Popular Sandinista Army, given its name and itsleadership, was not the Nicaraguan army, but a polit-ical party army. The contras believed that Chamorroowed her victory to them, and therefore that the con-tras should become Nicaragua’s national army.

Two days before the election the governmenthad decreed a Military Reorganization Law thatremoved the Sandinista name from the Army.

A month after the election President-electChamorro negotiated with the Sandinistas andsigned a transition protocol accord in which shepromised to respect the institutional integrity and“professionalism” of the armed forces and the policeincluding ranks and commands. The militarypromised to respect the government, and agreed ingeneral terms to downsize the army, which had beeneffectively reduced by then when many draftees sim-ply walked home in the days following the election.

Two days earlier, Chamorro had signed anaccord with the contras to establish conditions fordemobilization of the contras. Details of ceasefireand demobilization were established with the helpof ONUCA, the UN verification group and a veri-fication commission of the OAS called, by itsacronym, CIAV.

UNO and contra hopes that Chamorro wouldfire Humberto Ortega (brother of Daniel), andthus perhaps merge some contra units into thenation’s military, were dashed when sheannounced, just after her April 25th nomination,that Humberto Ortega would remain head of themilitary. Had she attempted to fire Ortega ormerge contra units into the army, the war wouldhave been rekindled, not an outcome that anyone,including the U.S., wanted. However, her reten-tion of H. Ortega was the opening wedge thatsoon ended the UNO coalition, and severelystrained relations with the Bush administration,and Senator Jesse Helms, Chair of the SenateForeign Relations Committee. H. Ortega did notcontrol the budget. Chamorro proposed a 55%reduction in the military budget, though shevetoed an Assembly bill to slash still more.

The formal demobilization of 22,000 contras andwas accomplished by the end of June. They hadbeen promised discharge packages of some moneyand equipment and large swaths of land (“develop-ment poles”) in remote portions of the country.

Thus the war came to an end but withoutaccords among the opposing forces about manyissues that had divided them. Disagreements


involved the most fundamental questions a polityencounters. Who should control the means to makewar? Is the Constitution legitimate and acceptable?What is the proper scope of governmental action inthe economy, and what, in particular, should bedone about the prostrate economic condition? Howshall those most damaged by the war be helped?How shall power be shared between the branches ofgovernment, including a 4th branch of governmentin charge of elections? What are the rules of prop-erty and how shall thousands of ownership claims,created by the agrarian reforms or the appropriationby Sandinista members of many properties duringthe lame duck period of their government, beresolved? What role in decisions should foreignfinancial institutions play, particularly in a countrywith one of the highest foreign debts?

In a sense, what had been negotiated was limit-ed to election procedural rules and the institution-al area of the military, and nothing more.

Soon the contras complained that the governmenthad not provided sufficient resources to satisfy theirpost-war needs. Soon discharged members of thearmy were making similar complaints. There weretens of thousands of assault rifles in Nicaragua, andtwice as many hands who knew how to use them.

Though the war came to an end, for the next halfdozen years, Nicaragua was plagued by widespreadpolitical violence on the part of armed groups,mostly of former contras who were making politicaland economic demands (and, increasingly, engagingin banditry.) Before the end of the Chamorro admin-istration the country had been wracked by deep dis-putes over virtually every question listed above.

When those disputes were resolved, usuallytemporarily, it was through a series of negotiationsbetween multiple groups, which quieted theimmediate crisis. There never was a global accord.Nor was there much of an international mediatingpresence after the massive electoral observation andthe OAS and UN presence during the formaldemobilization. The OAS maintained for severalyears the very small CIAV team that was to serveas liaison to the demobilized contras.

This pattern—no global accord and low levelinternational verification process—stands in sharpcontrast to the peace processes in El Salvador andGuatemala. There are many things that went wrongwith those peace processes, but neither country suf-fered nearly the same degree of “post-war” armedpolitical violence or of disputes over the basic rules

of governance and property claims. It can be arguedthat the players in El Salvador learned from theNicaraguan experience, and that those in Guatemalalearned from both of the other countries. But this isnot a sufficient explanation for the contrast.

THE SALVADORAN PEACE ACCORDS

The 1989 FMLN offensive bore similarities to the1968 Tet Offensive. The U.S. and the Salvadoranmilitary claimed that it was a huge FMLN mistakethat played into the firepower advantage of themilitary and that cost the FMLN significant casual-ties. But politically and militarily it was a disasterfor the Salvadoran government. The FMLN was inthe heart of the capital; the military bombed itsown (poor) neighborhoods in full view of much ofthe city’s population; the FMLN stayed in the citymuch longer than the military predicted; and themilitary slaughtered the Jesuits. This was evident;the long congressional investigation led byCongressman Joe Moakley of Massachusettsrevealed the details. All this jeopardized U.S. aid.The damage of the offensive and the possibilityeach side faced of future negative consequences ledto serious negotiations.

Neither side was united. The FMLN was in reali-ty a confederation of five political parties each with acommand structure, each with a strong sense of itsown turf. In military terms each needed the others,though to varying degrees. Cristiani had to worrythat some of his supporters were appalled that thegovernment would even meet with the FMLN. Themilitary and the richest classes had traditionally hadan alliance, albeit one with tensions, but the tenor ofthe alliance had changed with civilian elections andthen with the victory in 1989 of the party the oli-garchy favored. The military was aware that a cen-tral demand of the FMLN was for military reform. Itwas already aware that some rich landowners beenwilling to pay the FMLN “war taxes” to avoid hav-ing their properties torched. President Cristiani,however, was careful to place one military figure onthe government’s negotiating team.

Initial Negotiations. In April 1990 the UNmediated talks that resulted in an agenda: militaryreform, strengthening the judicial system andreforming the electoral system, economic andsocial problems, and UN verification of an eventualagreement. Implicit in the agenda was that theFMLN would accept the legality and basic consti-


tutional framework of the government, though theFMLN certainly wanted to amend the constitution.

This was an enormous step forward. To gainperspective, consider the opening rounds of directtalks between the Sandinistas and the contras.There was no UN mediation and no mutual agen-da. The contras demanded the resignation of theSupreme Court (as opposed to strengthening thejudiciary) and the return of properties confiscatedby the Sandinistas—an issue of importance to noncombatant former landowners in Miami, but notto the contra foot soldiers. Had the FMLNdemanded that the Supreme Court resign and thatthe government double the size of the agrarianreform the talks would have been over.

In the next six months the parties kept approach-ing the issue of the armed forces (which includedthree police force units), and kept reaching impasse,though they did move forward to reach an accord onhuman rights, but without UN verification until acease fire accord had been reached.

In the following six months the US Congresswithheld 50% of an appropriation of $85 millionto see if the military would permit reform of itsstructures and if the FMLN would make concessions.Also, the FMLN introduced shoulder held surface toair missiles in November that, for a time, thwartedSalvadoran air power. . However, the FMLN was puton the political defensive in January1991 when theU.S. was able to persuade the Soviet Union to identi-fy a missile that had shot down a Salvadoran AirForce plane as one that the USSR had supplied toNicaragua. Already on the defensive HumbertoOrtega claimed that rogue officers had sold missilesfor profit and demanded that 18 missing missiles bereturned. Also in January FMLN troops downed aU.S. helicopter and executed two of the survivors.Though it announced it would try two officersresponsible with international observers, the govern-ment denied it had the legal authority to try anyone.

By January 1991 with both parties on the defen-sive, they agreed to abolish, in the final peace accord,the two worst police forces (the National Guard andthe Treasury Police) and to reorganize a police forceoutside the command of the Defense Ministry. Theyagreed to the idea of investigation and fact findingabout notorious human rights cases, but could notagree on a process. The FMLN produced a list of 30military officers guilty, it said, of serious human rightsabuses. Over the next several months many of thosewere retired or taken out of command positions.

Pre Peace Accord Constitutional Changes, April1991. Legislative elections were scheduled forMarch, and if the FMLN were to gain Constitu-tional changes the amendments would have to beapproved by the outgoing legislature and thenagain by the incoming one. If not, the nextmoment for Constitutional change would be threeyears later.

Both sides in April intensified military opera-tions and the U.S. made bellicose statements. Theextreme right launched a campaign opposed to anyConstitutional changes. However, the negotiatorsreached agreement to change the manner in whichthe Supreme Court and other judges were selected,to change the structure and name of the electoralauthority (to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal orTSE), and to change military doctrine. The old andthen the new legislatures agreed to the change andthe Constitution was reformed.

This is a key point of difference between ElSalvador and the other two countries. In negotiationsthe rebels had to admit the reality of the governmentand attempt to get as many of the most onerousthings about it changed. The governments wanted tomake as few changes as possible while still gettingthe guerrillas to lay down their arms. For the rebels,getting an agreement also raised the issue of how theagreement would be enforced after they have givenup their trump card (laying down their arms).

In Guatemala proposed constitutional changeswould not be attempted until after the accordswere signed and the URNG had laid down itsarms, and then the proposed changes were defeat-ed. In Nicaragua there was no global accord. Theagreement to make Constitutional changes before afinal peace agreement had been reached was thus atriumph for the FMLN and it cost PresidentCristiani political capital with the extreme right.But, for several reasons, it did not cost him much.

ARENA had been a highly centralized top downparty. Party founder and icon Roberto D’Aubuissonbacked Cristiani. Moreover, ARENA had developedinto a powerful vote getting organization and itsthree proven vote getters—D’Aubuisson, Cristianiand San Salvador Mayor Armando Calderón Sol—were all backing the positions taken in the April1991 negotiations. Cristiani had reversed some ofthe policies of the Christian Democratic govern-ments. The government was in the process of recap-italizing and privatizing the banks. There would bewinners and also-rans in these processes; so oppos-


ing Cristiani in the negotiations could have highcosts for an ambitious economic player. In short,anti peace treaty dissidents in ARENA were not ina strong position and could be punished. Moreoverthe concessions made to the FMLN were not all theFMLN wanted and many in ARENA thought thatthe judiciary needed reform anyway.

Finalizing the Accords. The parties met again inSeptember and resolved in broad outline many ofthe remaining issues. At the invitation of UNSecretary General Perez de Cuellar, PresidentCristiani and the FMLN commanders attended thenegotiations for ten days in New York, thoughonly his negotiating team met face to face with theFMLN team.

The FMLN dropped its demand that units ofthe FMLN would be incorporated into the nationalmilitary. These demands were translated by theparties into legitimate FMLN concerns for theirsecurity after they had demobilized. The partiesagreed that the new police force would includeequal portions of qualified combatants of theFMLN and former members of the NationalPolice, and a majority from neither group. Also,though the FMLN troops would assemble in areassupervised by the UN with its arms placed inlocked storage areas, final demobilization of itstroops would come in phases while other aspects ofthe accords were being implemented.

The parties agreed to formulas for the establish-ment and fact-finding authority of a TruthCommission with international members to examinea specified list of notorious human rights abuses, andan Ad Hoc Commission, comprised of Salvadorans,that would examine the human rights records of themilitary with an eye toward excising proven humanrights abusers. The UN would verify all aspects ofthe accords.

The parties did not turn their attention to eco-nomic and social issues until the end of the negoti-ations, in December 1991,and left the issues to astudy commission and a government plan forreconstruction. The parties did agree to a process todeal with the specific issue of lands that had beenoccupied by squatters (many of them family mem-bers of FMLN combatants) in conflict zones, andlands and job training for combatants. An agree-ment established a mechanism of government pur-chase and sale of such lands and prevented evictionsuntil processes and funding could be established.

THE GUATEMALAN PEACE ACCORDS

Five long years elapsed between the Salvadoranaccords and the conclusion of Guatemalan peaceaccords on December 29, 1996. Given that themost intense phase of the war had been over inGuatemala since 1983, what took so long?

Three factors differentiate Guatemala. Mostimportant, the URNG guerrillas had very littlemilitary force and thus could not create a “hurtingstalemate” to force the government to the table, or,once there, force a rapid timetable. Second, thoughGuatemala had a comparatively weak state, thegovernment and the military that ran it were notreliant on U.S. aid, as was the Salvadoran govern-ment, so it was not subject to the kinds of pressuresthe U.S. could bring to bear if it backed a politicalsolution. Third, the Guatemalan government suf-fered its own crisis in transition to civilian rulewhen President Serrano, elected in 1990, attempt-ed a 1993 military coup against the Congress. Thisfailed, but it interrupted the peace negotiations.

These negotiations happened in three long phas-es. From March 1990 (just after the defeat of theSandinistas and with Salvadoran talks about toopen) the URNG met several times with politicalparties, civil society groups and eventually the gov-ernment, with UN mediation, as well as that of theNational Commission for Reconciliation, formed inthe wake of the 1987 Central American accords andheaded by Archbishop Quezada Toruño. This endedwith a list of themes and procedures.

Thirty months elapsed. In January1994, the twoparties commenced meeting with UN mediation. Bymid year accords had been negotiated on HumanRights (with verification by the UN and immediateimplementation), on resettlement of those who hadbeen uprooted by war, and on the establishment of aHistorical Clarification Commission, to examinehuman rights abuses committed during the war.After a nine month delay a path-breaking accord onIndigenous Rights emerged. In the last seven monthsof 1996, under a new government in Guatemala, thedifficult accords over socio economic and land issues,civil power and military power, and constitutionaland electoral reform were agreed upon.

The UN mediator, Jean Arnault recognized thatthe huge imbalance in power between the principalparties (given the military weakness of the URNG)and the absence of key sectors of society from thenegotiating table could endanger popular support


for whatever agreements were reached, so he pro-posed processes through which a multiplicity ofpolitical actors would discuss, debate, propose lan-guage for the treaty and eventual legislation on thewide range of subjects covered by the negotiations.The Assembly of Civil Society (ASC), created dur-ing treaty negotiations, made persuasive proposalsduring the negotiations many of which were incor-porated into the accords. However, it was not clearhow representative of their various “sectors” thesegroups were. Private sector organizations remainedoutside until negotiations over economic issues in1995-1996. The accords established commissionsto work out detailed plans for implementing thegoals embodied in the accords.

Civil Military Power. The accord confirmed thesubordination of military to civilian authority. In thelong run, the reduction and restructuring of the elab-orate structure of internal security forces enbeddedfor decades in the Guatemalan state, and the eventualelimination of the overwhelming impunity enjoyedby those forces, would be the key to building a morejust, democratic society. The accord removed internalsecurity from the Army’s mission, leaving it todefend the nation’s sovereignty, and it established apolice force under civilian direction. It required thearmy to reduce in numbers, to demobilize and dis-arm the civil defense patrols (PACs), and to reduce itsbudget by 33% (as a proportion of GDP) from 1995levels. The accord permitted the Minister of NationalDefense to be either a military official or a civilian.

It called for a constitutional reform to providefor trials in civilian courts of military personnelaccused of crimes against civilians. Before 1997,no high-ranking Guatemalan military officer hadever been convicted of a crime in a civilian court.The accord raised the prospect of convictionsoccurring for egregious violations of human rightscommitted during the war. There had been agrowing list of high-profile investigations by civil-ian courts and the Public Ministry of military offi-cers implicated in political assassinations..

The accord authorized the president to replacethe Estado Mayor Presidencial (EMP), a secretive mil-itary unit which had controlled the actions ofPresidents, with new civilian entities, but did notestablish a process. The accord did little to strength-en weak legislative budgetary oversight or to con-test the army’s considerable economic investmentsincluding a bank and a complex of military indus-

tries. The agreement called for a new Civil NationalPolice (PNC) but did not address clearly the steps tobe taken. (By contrast, the Salvadoran counterpartset forth detailed instructions and requirements.)

Human Rights and Historical ClarificationCommission. In principle, this agreement ap-peared to pose no threat to individual officers, as itprohibited assigning criminal responsibility forspecific acts, and the use of its information in courtproceedings, nor was it to name names, unlike theSalvadoran counterpart. It had no power to sub-poena. The sheer mass of human rights violationscould not be fully investigated in the limited timeallotted to the Commission.

Indigenous Rights. If the spirit of the accord wereto be fully realized, Guatemalan nationality wouldbe refounded on a plurilingual and multiculturalbasis that would reshape relationships betweenindigenous communities and the state and reducethe ingrained racism that has poisoned relationssince the Spanish conquest.

The accord enjoined the government to takeactions designed to create a “new consciousness ofbelonging and co-existence” on the part of allGuatemalans. Other planks called for a national lawbanning all discrimination, and in particular dis-crimination against indigenous women with specificmention of their use of Mayan traje (dress). Alongwith other accords, the Indigenous Accord called forthe state to broaden participation, to decentralizepower (through a reform in the Municipal Code tobe negotiated), to respect customary indigenous law,and to promote equitable distribution of publicfinances to the municipalities and among theindigenous communities. It recognized by name all21 of Guatemala’s Mayan languages as transmittersof the Mayan culture. The government committeditself to furthering their use in education and otherlocal-level social services, in the media, and in thecourt system. These goals, however presupposed aconstitutional reform listing the Mayan languagesand making them official languages in geographicambits that were not delineated in the accord.

The accord called on the government to: fulfill itsconstitutional obligation to provide education to allGuatemalans; decentralize education in ways adapt-ed to indigenous linguistic and cultural needs; pro-tect the communal landholdings of indigenouscommunities; guarantee access to land, forest andwater resources; provide restitution or compensation


for lands usurped from the indigenous; and to pro-mote legislation for these goals to allow indigenouscommunities to manage their internal affairs.

Fulfillment of these goals faced mammoth obsta-cles rooted in a system of power in which theindigenous have been subject to brute exploitationand violence. The indigenous suffer from the high-est levels of poverty and the lowest levels of accessto education, health services and economic oppor-tunity. They bore the brunt of the worst and mostextensive cruelties of the war. The accord reflected aconsensus at the bargaining table, but was not spe-cific, and it is highly unlikely that that consensuswas shared by the bulk of non-indigenous society.And implementation for various aspects requiredeither or both constitutional reform and legislation.

Taxes and Social Spending and Land. The thrustof the Socio-Economic and Agrarian Accord is pro-gressive. Socioeconomic development requires socialjustice along with sustainable growth; citizen partic-ipation in decision-making is crucial; the state hasan obligation to help overcome social inequity. Thegovernment made a large number of commitmentsto legislate and sanction, to tax and spend, to decen-tralize and reform administrative structures, and totreat all groups in non-discriminatory fashion, withspecific mention of a guarantee to women, particu-

larly rural workers and domestics. However, few ofthe commitments involve quantitative targets, pricetags, deadlines, or specific sharing of power.

The most significant pressures for change target-ed the accord’s most specific commitments—toincrease government spending on health and educa-tion by 50% and to increase government tax rev-enues by 50% by 2000. The pressures for concretefigures came principally from international donorswho said they would condition what came to be apledge of $1.9 billion in post war reconstruction aidon government compliance with these particulartreaty commitments.

Given the balance of forces at the end of Guate-mala’s civil conflict, it is not surprising that the bar-gaining kept the door to radical economic reformtightly closed, and produced only a few specificagreements involving concrete, verifiable goals withtimetables attached. But Guatemalan administra-tions, and the more pragmatic members of the busi-ness sector were willing to make some concessions inthe treaty because they realized that peace was neces-sary in order to reduce Guatemala’s pariah image andto take advantage of the willingness of the interna-tional community to assist with postwar reconstruc-tion. Implementation, however, proved to be moredifficult.

Military Reform 45

The most profound change in CentralAmerica’s transition from war to peace andtoward democracy is the decline in govern-

ing power and influence of the militaries in each ofthe three countries. That decline has been the leastin Guatemala. In each of the countries the mili-taries have considerable institutional autonomyfrom other branches of government and relativefreedom from review by civilian authorities, whichhas led to corruption, particularly in Guatemala.But the militaries do not govern or make policy,even in Guatemala. They can block certain kindsof changes that affect their core interests, and havedone so at a decreasing rate in Guatemala, buteven in Guatemala the days when the PresidentialGuard virtually controlled the daily schedule ofPresident Cerezo (1985-1990), the first electedcivilian president in over 3 decades, are over.

In El Salvador and Guatemala the military ruledfrom the 1930s. At first this rule was headed bycaudillo figures (Martínez in El Salvador, Ubico inGuatemala). In El Salvador an institutional militarydictatorship prevailed after 1944. In Guatemala,Ubico was thrown out and elected governments tookplace from 1944-54, and the military institution(with some internal fights) ruled after that until1985 or some time in the 1990s, depending on one’sanalysis. In El Salvador elected civilians “took over”in 1982, but one could argue, as did the FMLN atthe time, that the military was prosecuting the warand it, and the U.S. embassy, was the real centers ofpower in the country at least until 1989.

In Nicaragua, the military did not rule as an insti-tution. But the first Somoza came out of the militaryand the last had military training (including at WestPoint), and they ruled the military as a personal army

MILITARY REFORM

that enforced their will. When the Sandinistas cameto power, there were civilian institutions and follow-ing 1984 an elected president and legislature. Butthe collective leadership of the Sandinistas in theNational Directorate was called the “nine comman-dantes” who most often were garbed in militaryfatigues. The army, headed by one of them,Humberto Ortega, and the police, which had combatunits headed by another, Tomás Borge, each had“Sandinista” in the titles of their organizations.

None of the military institutions emerged fromthe 1980s civil wars as victors. There were no vic-tory parades. In each case, however, the peacenegotiations eliminated their enemies (the FMLN,the URNG, and the contras) as military forces,though this conclusion clearly must be modifiedsomewhat in the case of Nicaragua where signifi-cant bands of contras making political and eco-nomic demands persisted for years.

However in each case the military institution wasplaced on the defensive, though again this was lessin Guatemala, as it was the military that had decid-ed on its own to allow civilian governments and, ineffect, to permit peace negotiations. In the cases ofEl Salvador and Guatemala the military lost formalinstitutional control over the nations’ police forces,though in Guatemala it is not clear that this loss ofcontrol is actual, and in both countries the militaryhas been called in, despite provisions of the peacetreaties, to perform policing, or internal securityfunctions. In each case the militaries formally lostcontrol over internal intelligence gathering, though,again, it is not clear if actual control was lost.

The varied processes by which these transforma-tions came about and the differences in results wereproducts of the different institutions, the advan-tages gained in the wars and the resultant force ofthe peace agreements. Obviously Somoza’s NationalGuard was defeated, but segments of its officercorps commanded the contras until the very end ofthe war. The Guatemalan military basically defeat-ed the URNG, though could not bring the war toan end. Institutionally, vis-à-vis other power hold-ers in Guatemala it was relatively stronger than itsSalvadoran counterpart. The latter, dating from justafter World War II had, from time to time,reformist elements that eventually would succumbto anti reform elements. In Guatemala, thereformist elements, allied with some middle classcivilians, pushed the military from power in 1944.When it returned, initially weak, it strengthened

its political hand and its economic weight and was,until recently, absent of any reformist elements.

DEMILITARIZATION IN EL SALVADOR

The Salvadoran military after World War II seemedto alternate between periods of reform—openingpolitical spaces for various civilian groups—fol-lowed by changes in military command or in lead-ership of the government that would lead to politi-cal repression. Civilian groups would quickly fill inspaces—trade unions for example would becomemore active. This would create a reaction from theeconomic powers that would pressure for a morehard-line policy. Hardliners among the economicelite seemed to have the loudest voices and decisivesway at moments of crisis.

At times external events fed both tendencies. TheCuban revolution led the U.S. to train theSalvadoran military in counterinsurgency tactics butalso to pressure it to provide more open spaces –notfor militant groups but for political parties. Politicalparties, particularly the Christian Democratsenjoyed success in local and Assembly elections,winning the mayorship in San Salvador and gainingdeputies in the relatively toothless legislature. Thisin turn led to calls for agrarian reform. Counterreform set in 1972 when the military, fearing loss ofpower, defrauded the civilians when they attemptedto win the presidency. Fearing a social explosion,however, the newly elected military president pro-posed a small scale agrarian reform. There was anextreme reaction from large landowners that largelydefeated his plan. In the next election in 1977, alsomarked with fraud, a hard-line military candidatewas the winner. Following the Sandinista victory,reform elements in the military effected a coup inOctober 1979, that led to reforms in March 1980and extreme reactions from civilian and militaryhardliners, vast increases in political assassination,including Archbishop Romero, and war.

By most accounts military hardliners in the early1980s were goaded, financed and or joined by civil-ians. ARENA was founded in 1981 by former mili-tary officers, including Robert D’Aubuisson,landowners and professionals, as both a paramili-tary operation and a political party that could con-test in the coming elections. The landed oligarchy,caught unprepared in 1979, had never had a polit-ical party, but had left politics to be controlled bythe military, over which it could have some control


through recruitment of cadets for the militaryacademy and financial means.

Several developments during the war con-tributed to putting the military on the defensivewhen it came to peace negotiations and to make itpossible for the government negotiators to agree toa series of concessions that greatly compromisedthe interests of the military and, in particular, thehardliners within it.

It took the U.S. government a long time to takehuman rights abuses in El Salvador seriously, andthat statement charitably assumes that the U.S. didnot approve of the wholesale wiping out the left,mainly in urban areas, in 1980-1982. U.S. policy wasalways compromised by its desire to avoid FMLNadvances. Its indifference, impotence, or incompe-tence even prevailed following the 1981 assassinationof two U.S. citizens and the head of the Salvadoranagrarian reform agency. The two were aiding imple-mentation of the agrarian reform. One of the two wasalmost certainly a CIA agent. This followed the bru-tal assassination of four U.S. nuns in late 1980. Itquickly became evident that elements in the militaryofficialdom had given the orders to the triggermen.In the agrarian reform case they selected the diningroom of a luxury hotel for the hit—the better tomake a spectacular, grisly statement.

This case illustrates the power of the Salvadoranmilitary. The two triggermen in the case finallyconfessed and named two officers who, just outsidethe hotel, had commanded them to kill and pro-vided the weapons complete with silencers. Afterconsiderable pressure from the U.S. Ambassador,and then the U.S. head of the southern commandfor all of Latin America, and even PresidentReagan, the case was dismissed and one of the offi-cers got a command position. And the Salvadoranmilitary got a recommendation from Reagan for anincrease in military aid. They knew the U.S. need-ed them, and they were not about to compromisetheir impunity from the law.

A few months before the March 1984Salvadoran elections Vice President Bush visited ElSalvador to give a stern lecture on human rights tothe high command, and he called for human rightsabusers to be exiled or discharged. This rebuke fol-lowed similar criticisms by the AmbassadorThomas Pickering and the delivery to the govern-ment a list of names the U.S. believed to be deathsquad operatives. The public line of the U.S. dur-ing this whole period had been that there were

maverick elements in the military out of control ofthe central command structures. But Bush’s visitsignaled a new posture as it was well known thatthe former Ambassador, Deane Hinton, had beenadmonished making overly harsh criticisms to themilitary about human rights abuses.

The human rights abuses did decline to a lowerlevel following Bush’s visit but continued on. Someofficers on Bush’s list were quietly transferred out ofcommand positions. But the basic military posturewas to stonewall. It believed that it was fighting theanti communist fight, at a cheap price, for the U.S.so that the U.S. would not have to send its owntroops, and that its behavior was no worse than thatof the U.S. in Vietnam. Though the details are toocomplicated to relate, throughout the 1980s theSalvadoran military resisted to the utmost all effortsto pursue and solve human rights cases. They couldnot stop all proceedings in the cases of the nuns andthe agrarian reform aids due to U.S. pressure, butthe system of impunity prevented the commandersof the crimes from being convicted.

One development that drove an opening wedgebetween the military and the economic elite wasthe development in the mid 1980s of kidnappingrings, formed by military and civilian death squadelements that captured members of the economicelite for ransom. Though an attempt was made toblame this on the FMLN, it quickly became evi-dent that it was not involved in some 11 kidnap-pings. Pressure was brought to bear that eventual-ly ended the practice. But it was evident that someof those involved had ties to high level militaryofficials some of whom were regarded by the U.S.as allies and reformist elements within the mili-tary. Key members of the kidnapping ring, whohad many stories to tell, were apprehended. Onewas riddled with bullets “while trying to escape”and another, it was claimed, hung himself.

Another development was that D’Aubuissonchanged his strategy. Following his failed attemptto become interim president in 1982 and his loss inthe election of 1984 when the U.S. supported,covertly, his opponent Duarte, he concluded thatARENA needed to shed its image as a death squadoutfit and present a more moderate face. That led tothe selection of Cristiani as presidential candidatewho expressed, at the outset of his presidency, a seri-ous intent to end the war through negotiations,backed by hard edged comments against theFMLN. At the same time in early 1989, the FMLN

Military Reform 47

had made it clear that the key element in its negoti-ating position was cleansing and reform of the mili-tary. Though these mid 1989 negotiations came tonothing, these developments could not have beengood news to the military high command. (Stanley,Williams & Walter)

The Peace Accords. The accords stipulated that anAd Hoc Commission comprised of three prominentSalvadorans would evaluate all armed forces officerswith regard to respect for human rights includingfailure to correct and sanction troops under the offi-cer’s command. A serious deficiency would begrounds for recommending to the President theofficer’s transfer from a command position or dis-charge. Any such recommendations were to be pri-vate, though the names would also be known to theUN Secretary General. The government would begiven 60 days to take the necessary administrativeactions to implement the Commission’s decisions.

The accords also called for the establishment ofa Truth Commission that would investigate andreport on a list of notorious human rights abusesthat had allegedly been carried out by the militaryor by the FMLN. The Commission would releaseits findings, including naming names, but its find-ings were not to be used as evidence in any judicialproceedings. The Truth Commission was to beheaded by three international figures with legalexpertise to be appointed by the President of ElSalvador with the approval of the UN SecretaryGeneral.

Given the years of repression in El Salvador ana-lysts thought the most consequential action wouldbe by the Truth Commission, because its interna-tional membership and tie to the UN SecretaryGeneral would protect it from reprisals, where as,it was thought, the Salvadorans on the Ad Hoccommission would be subject to all sort of pres-sures and threats.

The accords also called for the dissolution of twoof the three police units and the phase out of thethird—the Treasury Police, the National Guardand the National Police—with the latter to bereplaced by a new civilian police force.

Also stipulated was demobilization of theFMLN combatants in phases of 20% that ran par-allel to the demobilization of several governmentrapid response battalions and the reduction of themilitary to about half its size (which was a matterof some debate).

The negotiators agreed to formation of a new acad-emic council at the military academy, one that wouldrevamp the curriculum so that observation of humanrights played a key role in the cadets’ education. Andthey agreed to the possibility of appointing a civilianto be minister of Defense. In addition the militaryinternal intelligence function shifted to a civilianentity under the supervision of the President. Notmuch is known about this transition however.

Each of these provisions violated the military’ssense that civilians should not interfere in themilitary.

Implementation Drama. The implementationcalendar for the accords did not expressly link com-pletion of groups of accord provisions to each stageof the five phase demobilization of FMLN troopsculminating with destruction of their arms. Allthis was to have been done by October 31, 1992. Itwas not contemplated that the new National CivilPolice (PNC) would be fully trained, though initialdeployment of the first trainees was to have beendone. The report of the Truth Commission was notscheduled until the following March.

In the first months many items on the calendarfell behind, and so the FMLN would delay demobi-lization of, say, the first 20% (due by May 31) fortwo months until at least a few items that were sup-posed to have been finished by the scheduled date ofthat particular demobilization were completed orshowed signs that they would be completed.

The Ad-Hoc Commission began its work onschedule in mid May. It had only 90 days to reviewthe records of 2300 military officers and was depen-dent upon the recalcitrant military for basic docu-ments. The Commission received records of thou-sands of human rights abuses gathered fromSalvadoran human rights organizations that hadcourageously documented cases throughout the war,even after some of their members had been assassi-nated. This documentation contained informationabout time and place but rarely about officersdirectly in charge. Given the risks the Commissionhad many available excuses to produce a blandreport and leave the naming of names to the moreprotected international Truth Commission. Itsmembers, Eduardo Molina, Abraham Rodriguez(both with ties to the PDC) and Reynaldo GalindoPohl, took a courageous route. They determined toreview the top 10% of the officer corps, and evalu-ate this group on the basis of patterns of human


rights abuses that had happened under their com-mand, even if the abuses had been committed underofficers several links down the chain of command.

On September 23, five weeks behind schedule,the Commission sent a secret report to PresidentCristiani and UN Secretary General BoutrosBoutros Gahli that, according to later leaks, recom-mended that something over 100 officers, includingthose at the top of the command, be removed fromcommand positions, retired, or discharged. TheFMLN announced that it would not demobilize itslast contingents of troops until after implementa-tion of the Commission’s recommendations. Therewas an outcry in El Salvador’s conservative papersagainst this “left wing” effort “to damage the armedforces’ prestige,” and in response Cristiani asked theUN Secretary General to permit some officers onthe list to remain for a year and others until the endof 1993. The proposal was rejected.

The UN proposed a new calendar under whichCristiani would have to present the plan for imple-mentation (as opposed to the implementationitself) of the Commission’s recommendation byNovember 30, the FMLN would have to completean earlier deficient inventory of its arms withdestruction to begin December 1, and then demo-bilize the last 20% of its troops by December 15.The full execution of the Commission’s recommen-dations was to be on December 31. The partiesagreed to these terms. And the FMLN complied.

But in early January the Secretary General foundCristiani in violation of the treaty with respect to15 of the officers on the list including the Ministerand Vice Minister of Defense, Generals René Ponceand Orlando Zepeda.

However these two figures announced their res-ignation in March, several days before release of theTruth Commission’s report that was to describe,among other brutal cases, the roles of Ponce andZepeda in the murders of the six Jesuits.

Cristiani joined a chorus of conservative forcesthat denounced the Truth Commission. TheCommission did hold the FMLN accountable forseveral human rights cases, but its ability to probethem, and its limited mandate to explore a limitednumber of notorious cases left the military and itsdefenders feeling that was seen as the major guiltyparty in human rights abuses. According to all evi-dence, even that compiled by the U.S., the mili-tary was indeed responsible for the great bulk ofhuman rights abuses; the only difference among

sources is how great a majority. Cristiani, despitehis denouncement of the Truth Commission,announced that the remaining officers would beremoved from command by July, though the highcommand did not actually retire until the end ofthe year. In subsequent years there have been civilsuits against military figures in U.S. courts.

The Ad Hoc Commission was the first officiallysanctioned, full scale evaluation by civilians of thehuman rights records of the officer corps of a LatinAmerican military.

Demilitarization. In 1988 military expenditureswere $279 million and had declined by $90 mil-lion by 1992. However in 1992 it was still 2.2%of GDP, the equivalent of government expendi-tures on health and education. In the next year itdeclined to 1.7% of GDP (and health and educa-tion declined somewhat too, though totaled morethan military expenditures). Though U.S. militaryaid was declining rapidly there was no pressure in1991-1993 from the U.S., or the multilateral lend-ing (IMF, World Bank, IDB) institutions to reducemilitary spending more rapidly and divert themoney into health. They either thought it wasbeyond their purview, or that they should notinterfere in domestic politics, or that Cristiani hadgone about as far as he could go with the military.This was at a time when post war health and edu-cation needs were dire. The U.S. had not been somodest in Nicaragua in pressuring for reductionsin military spending. (Boyce)

In Guatemala, this reluctance of the multilater-als was to change.

From 1992 to 1998 the military budget decreasedas a proportion of the government budget from 14%to 5.5%. By 1998 had decreased to .7% of GDP,according to one source and .06% according toanother. In proportional terms there were modestdeclines after that. In the last five years of the decadetroop levels were around 16,000 in a country ofaround six million. (Vela Castañeda, PNUD 2001)

In the ensuing years Cristiani employed the mil-itary in police functions (as noted below.). Therecame to be gradual acceptance by the military ofthe new civilian presence in the military academyand a growing professionalism of military units.

Five years after the signing of the accords the mili-tary was no longer a political factor in Salvadoranpolitics. However, actual civilian supervision is limit-ed. The military budget the Assembly sees is stated

Military Reform 49

in very general terms with most details classified.Ten years ago, there was an attitude in the militarythat civilians should not have oversight. In a confer-ence on civil military relations in 1994 an officerasserted that the idea of having a civilian Minister ofDefense was equivalent to having an illiterate asMinister of Education. Since then, progress has beenmade. A new institute of strategic studies, Colegio deAltos Estudios Estratégicos, has had many morecivilians graduate from it than military personnel, sothe civilian input and expertise has been augmented.However, President Saca, following his predecessors,appointed a General as Minister of Defense.

The military has been very much in the newssince El Salvador’s contribution of nearly 400troops to the U.S. “coalition of the willing” inIraq. It is, however, the only Latin American coun-try that still has troops there.

THE MILITARY IN GUATEMALA

The 1996 peace accords in Guatemala containedno provision for an Ad Hoc Commission like ElSalvador’s. There was no similar change to the con-stitution to reduce the military’s role, as had hap-pened in El Salvador before the signing of theaccords.

Guatemala’s parallel to a Truth Commission, theHistorical Clarification Commission, proved to be apowerful instrument, aided by human rights recordscollected by Guatemalan human rights groups,including the massive project conducted by theChurch’s human rights office, The Recovery ofHistorical Memory, that interviewed thousands ofGuatemalans in areas where human rights abuses andmassacres had been the worst. The Commissionfound that 90% of political assassinations and mas-sacres had been committed by the military. However,unlike the Truth Commission, the Guatemalanaccords did not permit the naming of names.

And Bishop Gerardi, who headed the Church’sproject, was brutally assassinated on April 26,1998, two days after the release of the Church’sreport. Military figures were later convicted in thecase (and then had initial success on appeal) in ajudicial-investigative process marked by destruc-tion of evidence, intimidation and assassination ofwitnesses, and violent threats against judges andprosecutors, driving some into exile—all thisdespite high level attention paid to the case byMINUGUA and numerous ambassadors.

In short, Guatemalan military reform has beenvastly different than that in El Salvador.

Significant change has, nonetheless, taken place,but it is difficult to assess because the militaryremains a closed institution of shadowy forcesincluding among its retired and semi retired offi-cers, particularly those who previously held postsin intelligence units. One can nonetheless see thatin various junctures the military has been put onthe defensive and has lost ground.

The reformers of the late 1980s, Mejía Victoresand then, during the Cerezo administration,Colonel Hector Gramajo, were hardly liberaldemocrats. They favored ending massive repression(kill all dissidents) to selective repression. Humanrights conditions actually grew worse during theCerezo and Serrano administrations, and the inter-im presidency of Ramiro DeLeón Carpio, whobecame interim President following the Serranazo.(He had been Ombudsman for Human Rights.)

However, Gramajo and others beat back twocoup attempts against Cerezo from far right ele-ments in the military, egged on by segments of theagro export elite who thought a proposed taxincrease from 5% to 7% meant that Cerezo and hisadministration were communists. Gramajo backedprosecution of the plotters and ten year sentences(which shortly thereafter were reduced or commut-ed). Gramajo saw himself as a reformer attemptingto save the prerogatives of a military out of touchwith the modern world.

Elements of military intelligence, headed byColonel Otto Perez (now in the Berger administra-tion), were among those that thwarted theSerranazo. The Human Rights in the peace accord,negotiated during DeLeón Carpio’s term, stipulat-ed that press gang recruitment had to stop; thePresident ended the draft; and the Congress voteda partial exception to a doctrine that permitted themilitary to avoid trial in civilian courts.

A military slaughter, the Xamán massacre inOctober 1995, was prosecuted in civilian courts,and it forced the resignation of the DefenseMinister. This was unprecedented. However theXamán case against 25 soldiers took over four yearsand saw evidence destroyed by the military. It ledto a lesser verdict of manslaughter, with 5 year sen-tences commuted to a fine of approximately $1000.

Newly elected President Arzú ordered sweepingchanges in the high command, appointing officersas defense minister and chief of general staff who


had not been associated with gross human rightsviolations and consigned to inactive status a halfdozen hard line officers. The press took this as asignal and printed stories of malfeasance in thehigh command. The stories were rumored to beplanted by the new high command itself to weedout military elements engaged in organized crime.An Arzú mounted operation led to the arrest ondrug trafficking charges of Alfredo MorenoMolina, an operative with extensive military ties.This led to the removal, at least temporarily, ofnine high ranking officers, many who had servedin military intelligence, including General OrtegaMenaldo, head of the powerful presidential guard,EMP, during the Serrano period and rumored tohave been behind Serrano’s coup attempt.

However, Molina and Menaldo were neverbrought to justice and both were later implicatedin the corruption of the Portillo administration.And Arzú never set a timetable for the abolition ofthe EMP and indeed appeared to strengthen itsintelligence gathering and anti kidnapping opera-tions when he created another sweeping change ofthe high command a year after the first by replac-ing the chief of staff with the head of the EMP,Marco Tulio Espinoza, and appointing Espinoza’sbrother-in-law as head of the EMP.

Unlike the situation in Nicaragua and El Salvadorthe Peace Accords in Guatemala specifically calledfor reductions in the military budget, so that as aproportion of GDP it would be 33% lower by 1999than it had been in 1995. The savings in militaryspending was required to be redirected to health,education and public security. The military morethan met the goal the first two years, and exceededit by only a tiny amount the third year. However in2000 and 2001 its spending jumped back up to pre-vious levels. From .68% of GDP it went to .83% in2000 and .96% in 2001. The approved budget bythe Assembly was in line with the goals, butPresident Portillo, given the ample powers the exec-utive has to make adjustments in the budget duringthe course of the year, lavished extra money on themilitary. There was an outcry from civil society andfrom MINUGUA, which found the excesses in vio-lation of the spirit and the letter of the accords. Thefollowing year the Minister of Defense pledged thathe would take no funds from the President thatwould put the defense budget above .66% of GDP.

The peace accords did not deal with othermoney making economic assets controlled by the

army: a bank, the military retirement institutewith a pension fund, military industries and agri-cultural holdings. The accords did require that atelevision channel pass from the military’s hands.

Portillo also made sweeping changes in the highcommand and declared that he would abolish theEMP. Change continued through the first twoyears of his administration. Among them were therise to the post of defense minister of ÁlvaroMéndez Estrada (who was said to be a protégé ofOrtega Menaldo), and the ability of the son of RíosMontt to vault over more senior officers first witha promotion that put him in charge of the army’sfinances. The EMP was not finally abolished untilthe end of Portillo’s term.

As HI reported in January 2002, the caseagainst Moreno floundered for five years withMoreno eventually being released on bail inDecember 2001. A deposition from that caseinvolves allegations by a witness, Francisco Ortiz,that implicated high level officers in corruptionrings going back 20 years, mostly through cus-toms, and Ortiz also implicated Portillo, who pub-licly was a friend of Moreno.

Following the inauguration of Berger, Portilloleft the country abruptly and the Berger adminis-tration says it is building evidence to attempt toextradite him. In addition a case was broughtagainst Ríos Montt for his role in organizing theviolent events of Black Thursday, during whichone reporter died. He was placed under an ampleform of “house arrest” in which he is restricted tothe metropolitan area of the capital pending judi-cial processing of the case.

During the first five years after the accords themilitary was slow to change the geographic deploy-ment of its troops to positions more in keeping withnational defense and less appropriate to its traditionalcounterinsurgency strategy. Reports from MIN-UGUA demonstrate duplicitous resistance. Six yearsafter the accords were signed MINUGUA com-plained again that the deployments continued toreflect a counter insurgency strategy, and particularlymentioned two military outposts in the Ixil region ofQuiché, a former war zone. The military promised toshut them down. A year later it had not happened,and the military refused to give MINUGUA infor-mation about where any of its troops were stationed.The verification team then toured the entire countryto find out for itself, and discovered the minimalchanges had been made. Further promises were made

Military Reform 51

by the military to produce a plan and effectuate it bythe end of 2002. (MINUGUA, 2002)

In 2004 Berger made further changes. Heannounced that he was going to cut troop levels fromthe 31,000 under the accords, by either 6500, ordown to the level of 16,500. (Accounts differed, as doestimates of how many troops actually are in the mil-itary.). The military reacted quietly to the change.

In addition, a law was passed after the accords call-ing for more open information from the government.One member of congress began to press for openingthe military budget books, and reiterated this goal inearly September. If this does occur it will be interest-ing to see if the current military will allow the booksto be opened on previous years. If so, this could beanother wedge into accounting for what happened inthe military during the darkest years. There is anamnesty law in Guatemala protecting military andguerrillas alike from prosecution for deeds done dur-ing the war, but it exempts certain human rightsabuses (genocide for example) and is not nearly assweeping as the amnesty law in El Salvador.

The military then no longer appears to controlpolitical decision making by civilian government asdid from 1987-1993, and the multiple changes incommand since then have created internal turmoil.The military may be on the defensive. It may bethat there are officers among them who would liketo “clean house” and establish a more professionalcorps, one better regarded internationally. (It shouldbe noted that Guatemala recently sent a contingentof troops to Haiti under the command of theBrazilians, but did not send one to Iraq.) It couldeven be that there are officers among them whohave an interest in accounting for the past. But cur-rents within the military, as demonstrated by theGerardi case and other notorious human rightscases, retain a great deal of institutional strengthand a great willingness to maintain its impunity.Despite these losses of power and privileges it stillretains formidable quotas of power. It is able to dothis in part because civilian governments are not yetmuch stronger due to weak political parties andconstant turnover and what seems to have been analmost ad hoc pattern of events and changes in com-mand to further short term interests.

NICARAGUAN MILITARY REFORM

Violetta Chamorro announced in her inauguralspeech that Humberto Ortega would remain as

Chief of the military, but that she would appointherself as Minister of Defense. Chamorro agreed onthe condition that Ortega would have to resignfrom the FSLN and accept drastic reductions in thesize of the military and its budget. In addition, sheretained the head of the police, though replacedthe Sandinista head of the Ministry of Interior, afounder of the party, Tomás Borge.

Retention of Ortega immediately led two of hercabinet ministers to resign in disgust. The U.S.,and other elements within the dissolving UNOcoalition, pushed for the firing of Ortega, as wellas the dismissal of the head of the police. Thispressure began at once, continued for years, andbecame part of the demands by the armed ex-con-tra bands who were demanding land and benefits

The Popular Sandinista Army (EPS) had beenmore of an organ of the FSLN than the Sandinistashad admitted during the war and it had also obtainedsome trappings associated with more traditionalLatin American militaries, as well as with soviet stylemilitaries. The effective organizational structure ofthe military followed party lines with top units andsubunits being given party names. The top decisionmaking body of the military and the police, was, inessence a subcommittee of the National Directorate— the nine commandantes. Some 80% of militaryofficers were active militants of the FSLN.

Moreover, Humberto Ortega himself admittedin a speech to military officials two months afterthe Sandinistas’ electoral defeat that decisionsregarding promotions had often been based onparty criteria, not on proven military capacities.The military judicial code established in 1980made it difficult to bring military officials beforecivilian courts, a provision in seeming conflictwith the later 1987 Constitution. (Cajina)

Demilitarization. The military released from ser-vice some 41,000 troops by the end of July 1990,slightly less than half what had been in service inJanuary, though it is unclear how many of this num-ber remained a few days after the election when manydraftees simply left. In November 5400 officers andsub officers were retired with severance pay, offers forbusiness training for some 3700 of them, and, for oneyear continued health and primary education benefitsfor their families. Higher officials and those in longerservice got more severance pay. A second round ofdismissals of some 3000 officers and sub officerscame the following August. These also had severance


packages and offers of agrarian or urban land. A thirdround of retirements, in July 1992 was protested bymilitary officials on the grounds that the money payout was to be in stages and that agrarian lands hadgone, or would go, only to the top 6% of retiringofficials. Just as the government had not compliedwith the deal to the contras it had been slow to paythe severance package (with no international assis-tance) and had not delivered actual land titles.

The Nicaraguan military passed from being thelargest in Central America to the smallest in justtwo years. Its budget was reduced by the govern-ment from $177 million in 1990 to $51 million in1991. It averaged just $33 million from 1993-1995. Troop levels fell to 28,500 in 1991, 21,000in 1992, and 15,250 in 1993 (with 3200 officers).This was then half the size of the military in ElSalvador (which had been reduced from 60,000+troops), a country with a larger population but amuch smaller territory to defend. (Later in thedecade the Salvadoran level went to about 16,000.)The Salvadoran military did not have a problem ofhaving to deal with rearmed bands of guerrillasdemanding land, much less rearmed former sol-diers demanding land. Ortega was kept busy deal-ing with multiple armed actions that continueddue to the lack of compliance of the governmenttoward the demobilized contras. The small armyand the police could not adequately meet this chal-lenge. (Dye, et. al., 1995, Vela Casteñeda)

Under constant pressure to resign General Ortegadid numerous things he hoped would win over thoseopposed to him. He criticized the prior politiciza-tion of the army. He praised the new administrationand claimed he was “married” to the economic planof Antonio Lacayo. He averred that the goal ofachieving peace and obtaining international aid hadbeen advanced by the election of Chamorro morethan would have occurred had his brother beenelected. Two years after the electoral defeat he con-founded his critics and infuriated Sandinistas whenhe awarded the U.S. military attaché to Nicaraguathe military’s highest military medal, named afterhis brother, Camilo, who had fallen in the fightagainst Somoza. Some veterans handed in theirmedals in protest. Humberto Ortega was marchingthe military toward independence from the FSLN.

In July 1993, in one of the many examples ofarmed bands making political demands, dis-charged veterans of the EPS, the Sandinista armyof the 1980s, marched into the northern city of

Estelí to demand land and other benefits. Thearmy quickly and ferociously defeated them in bat-tle killing many of the insurgents in the process.By contrast, many of the other armed demandsmade by ex contras had been negotiated by thegovernment. Once again criticism from Sandinistasources rained down on Ortega.

One analysis of why the army took such a hardline in Estelí was that the new military law wouldbe coming before the Assembly, and Ortega want-ed to impress his U.S. and anti Sandinista criticsthat the military was independent of the party andloyal to the government. Ortega had reached anunderstanding that the military would draft a codethat would set terms of office for commanders,regularize promotions and set forth the lines ofauthority between the President and the military.Chamorro agreed, but then in September 1993shocked him by announcing in an Army Dayspeech that she would remove Ortega sometime in1994. This seemed to violate the agreement thathis departure would be determined by the terms ofthe as yet unfinished military code. Senator Helmshad announced that he wanted to condition aid toNicaragua on demonstration that the military wasunder the control of the government.

The code was finally passed after months ofdebate in September 1994. The margin of victorywas very narrow, similar to margins Chamorro hadreceived in other legislation. The vote was 49-37with the FSLN bench voting in favor and a varietyof hard line elements from the UNO coalition vot-ing against. The latter were supported by CardinalObando y Bravo, La Prensa and the business orga-nization COSEP, which was particularly incensedby the military’s ongoing ability to have its ownbusinesses, tax free.

The law gave the president the authority toelect or reject the head of the military from a can-didate proposed by the Military Council, a groupcomprised of some three dozen high ranking offi-cers. The term of office was for five years and theappointment of the new head would come in early1995, that is, toward the end of Chamorro’s term.Ortega resigned with pension and the new mili-tary head in February 1995 was Joaquín Cuadra.The structure of the nomination system suggestedthat the next two commanders would also be offi-cers who had served for years in the EPS. The ideawas that the President to be elected in 1996 wouldnot have the opportunity to pick a military head

Military Reform 53

until almost four years into a five year term.(Among the Constitutional amendments notedabove the presidential and Assembly terms hadbeen reduced from 6 years to 5.) (Cajina)

Alemán, when it came his turn, did try to con-trol the selection process, floating his own candi-date’s name. However the Military Council put upresistance that neutralized the candidate and madeAlemán back off. General Carrion was selectedinstead.

President Bolaños has yet to deal with the issue.His relations with the military have had their cooland warm moments. Back in 1990 Bolaños joinedPresident Arias of Costa Rica in calling for thedemilitarization of Nicaragua. For Arias this waspart of a broader campaign to demilitarize LatinAmerica on the model of Costa Rica. For Bolañosthe motivation may have been similar, but he hada well earned reputation at that point as being abiting, angry anti Sandinista. Most institutions donot want to disappear, and militaries in particulardo not favor being done in by their enemies. TheSalvadoran military was purged, not eliminated.

Bolaños was more favorably inclined to the mili-tary years later when he worked with it, as VicePresident, in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.Again, last year Bolaños praised the military as hepressed for sending a contingent of Nicaraguantroops to Iraq, despite the unpopularity of themove among the public. The previous year theU.S. had renewed military aid to Nicaragua.(Nicaragua has since withdrawn its troops fromIraq.) And in mid September 2004 the Presidentsigned an accord, along with the Minister ofDefense and General Carrion, with the UNDPoffice in Managua for a study of the democraticrelations between the military and civilians.

However in 2003 there began a series of movesthat seemed to echo Bolaños earlier call for demili-tarization when his Foreign Minister proposed the

gradual demilitarization of Central America. Thisdovetailed with post 9/11 pressure from theUnited States to destroy Nicaragua’s 1980 erainventory of Soviet made SAM anti aircraft mis-siles including the shoulder-held SAM 7s. TheU.S. is concerned that terrorists might acquirethem. The Nicaraguan military has permitted theU.S. to examine its security arrangements, but ithas refused requests to destroy the inventory, evenwhen Secretary of State Colin Powell visitedNicaragua late last year. Various sources in theU.S. place the inventory of missiles from 400 to2000. (Cajina)

The Nicaraguan military is concerned thatHonduras has, relative to its size, a large air force.It is likely that many of the planes and missiles arenot operative, and the probability of conflict withHonduras seems extremely low, but then militariesall make contingency plans.

The Nicaraguan military remains around 16,000troops, the approximate size of El Salvador’s force.However its military budget would appear to betwenty five to thirty percent of El Salvador’s at, inrecent years $35 to $30 million per year.Nicaragua’s population is two thirds that of ElSalvador. That budget amount however is a higherproportion of Nicaragua’s GDP (.8% to 1%)because Nicaragua has a much lower GDP. The ter-ritory to be defended is six times that of El Salvador.

The military has had certain businesses that arenot audited, and the private sector has complained inthe past about this. How and to what extent thesebusinesses generate funds for the military or for apension fund is not known. When Humberto Ortegaretired to live in Costa Rica he was regarded as beingquite wealthy. Cuadra, on the other hand, came froma wealthy family. The legislature, as in the case of theother countries, has not probed military expenses indetail, though in the early 1990s it was quite aggres-sive in cutting the military’s budget.


WINDOW ON THE ISSUES: VIOLENCE AT NUEVA LINDA

On August 30th at least ten people died ofgunshot wounds when the National CivilianPolice (PNC) of Guatemala attempted to

evict several hundred peasant families from a planta-

tion named Nueva Linda. The peasants had takenover the plantation sometime toward the end of lastyear, one of several score recent land invasions con-ducted by peasants who claim owners have not paidthem wages or have, perhaps decades earlier, usurpedlands. Three police and seven peasants were killed.

REFORMING JUSTICE SYSTEMS

Soon quite different versions of events were incirculation. The Human Rights Commission of theCongress was charged with investigating the eventsand reporting within thirty days. There were per-sistent reports that one or some of the peasantswere armed with AK-47 assault rifle(s), which thegovernment took as evidence that either there wereelements of organized crime or that they had sometie to the URNG. Newspapers reported that thepolice had manhandled several reporters, and thatat least two of the reporters had witnessed thepolice shooting peasants at point blank range.

President Berger blamed paramilitary and/ororganized crime elements among the peasants. TheHuman Rights ombudsman blamed the Spanishowners of the farm. The new Minister ofGovernance, who is in charge of the PNC, CarlosVielman, emphasized the legality of the policeoperation and emphasized the AK-47 presence.The Minister of Defense said that a detachment ofsoldiers had arrived at the scene only after beingrequested by the police, and that the soldiers, apartfrom taking up positions, had not been involved inthe events. The peasants and some human rightsgroups claimed that there had been no room tonegotiate the issues. Two members of Congresswished to show a video they had taken the dayafter the killings, but were turned down by partiesassociated with the government.

Guatemala has suffered through so much politi-cal violence, so many massacres, for so long that nosingle event can be emblematic of all of the lega-cies of the war, difficulties of the peace process andthe establishment of the rule of law with socialjustice. Nonetheless the confrontation at NuevaLinda in its bare outlines is illustrative of theproblems faced by Guatemala:

• Since the PNC was formed as part of the peaceaccords there have been persistent of extrajudi-cial executions, excessive use of force and, goingbeyond that, of criminal activities on the part ofthe police, up to and including homicide.

• The peace accords’ goal of forming a new policeforce emanated from criticisms that the old forcewas part of the military and had been corruptand crime ridden. But the new force is in somesenses, not really new. Almost all of its high andmid level command comes from the old securityforces or from the military, and most of its ini-tial recruits were from the old security forces.

• The fact that Minister Vielman is new is notnew. Berger has been in office since January andthis is his second Minister of Governance. Hispredecessor, President Portillo, had fourMinisters of Governance in a five year term, andnine heads of the PNC.

• Berger appointed Vielman in response to a seriesof alarming headlines and events that gave theimpression of a rapidly cresting crime wave ontop of chronically high levels of crime that hadexisted since before the peace accords in 1996.In January, for example, bus drivers in someareas of the capital had refused to drive due toconstant robberies. There had been citizendemonstrations against crime. The governmenthad already announced an offensive againstcrime that consisted of, among other things, aBerger designed depistolization program, anoffensive against gangs, joint PNC/militarypatrols in dangerous areas, a Front AgainstViolence. In each, embarrassing newspaper sto-ries followed. The PNC hadn’t heard about thedepistolization program. The daily Siglo XXItoured two dozen neighborhoods and could notdetect the new patrols.

• Berger in July announced a new series ofPNC/military joint patrols that in the capitalwould involve 4000 police and 6000 militaryalong with military intelligence in the metro-politan area. To give a sense of proportion, thePNC has in the nation just over 20,000 policeand Berger had also just announced a reductionin the military that would drop it to 16,500troops. According to police sources the evictionat Nueva Linda mobilized 900 police officersfrom several units including a special crowdcontrol force and 80 military troops.

• However, with the joint patrols apparently inoperation, the daily homicide figures printed inSiglo XXI indicated in early September that thelevel of homicides for just the month of Augustin the metropolitan area of 1.9 million was 153,a death toll 69 higher than it had been in July.By contrast Boston, a city of only 500,000, wasalarmed because of killings among gangs thatresulted the weekend after Nueva Linda in atriple homicide. Boston’s homicide toll the firstsix months of the year was 28, a significantincrease over the previous year.

• The peace accords were supposed to reduce themilitary and to remove it from police functions.

Military Reform 55

Its mission was to defend the national sover-eignty. Ratification of this aspect of the accordshad failed, along with other provisions, in acomplex constitutional referendum marked byabysmally low turnout. The use of militarytroops at Nueva Linda, and the supposed use of40% of the army in joint crime patrols in thecapital were technically not violations of theaccords, but were certainly not in the spirit ofthe accords.

• Guatemala entered the peace process in partbecause of a perception in the military that thenation was isolated because of its (muchdeserved) reputation for violent human rightsabuses. It cannot have pleased Berger that theNueva Linda death toll was sufficiently high tomerit attention on CNN’s (English) bannerheadlines, in company with the terroristtakeover of the Russian school, and the latestbeheading in Iraq. With the agrarian export sec-tor in chronic decline, Berger had announcedplans to ramp up Guatemala’s significant touristbusiness. There is no business more sensitive toheadlines of violence, crime and political distur-bances than tourism, a fact Guatemala hadlearned during the 1980s violence.

• Nueva Linda resonated with the key access toland theme in the peace accords. Landlessnesshad increased and rural poverty was by far at thehighest levels in the countryside. Guatemala hadlong had extremely high levels of inequality inlandholding. Unlike El Salvador and Nicaraguait had not had an agrarian reform in the 1980sand its post war program for land transfers, asdetailed below, was on a distinctly minor scalecompared to the other two countries .

• Nueva Linda was part of a spate of land invasionsby peasants. With repression hardly negligible,but at vastly reduced levels from what it hadbeen from 1954, when the first agrarian reform ofthe Arbenz regime was destroyed, to 1996, landinvasions had been increasing in Guatemala froma handful, to a total of 60 by 2003 and, accordingto some estimates, to over 100 by 2004. Theseinvasions were not simply an effort to get land orto reduce land inequality, goals of official agrarianreforms. Rather, in virtually every one of themthe peasants made claims that the invasion wasmotivated by illegal actions on the part oflandowners. Either the title of the landowner wasfalse, or had been acquired by usurpation (often

decades earlier) or, in most of the cases, that thelandowners had not been paying their workforceagreed upon wages. The legal system had failedto redress these problems, said the peasants, sothe invasion was to force a solution.

• The Portillo administration made a handful ofevictions, perhaps the most violent one in Quichéwhere the owner of the farm was a member ofPortillo’s party the FRG. Since Berger came topower the eviction rate increased to about a dozenin 8 months, though most of them had proceededwithout violence. That increase was a catalyst for ameeting between Berger and peasant leaders afterwhich he promised to suspend all evictions for 90days. The legal basis for this promise has not beenclarified. Evictions stem from judicial orders, andthe judiciary is to be independent of the executive.On the other hand, among many other elements ofthe Nueva Linda confrontation that remain unclearis the explanation for the lapse of time betweenthe judicial order for the eviction, said to be lastDecember and the eviction itself over eightmonths later, and, also why there was an evictionbefore the 90 day period was up.

In short the Nueva Linda expulsion and violenceraises a tangle of larger issues almost all of theminvolved with the peace accords: the conduct andcommand of the police; the crime wave; increasedmilitarization of police functions; possible spreadof organized crime and the parallel structures thatsupport it; land inequality and rural poverty;absence of rule of law in the redress of peasantwage and land title grievances; the functioning ofthe court system; the relations between the judicialand executive branches; Congressional role inreform; and Guatemala’s international image.

Post War Changes. In each of the three countriesthere have been significant efforts to reform thepolice and the courts. Those efforts have distinctparallels in El Salvador and Guatemala, where thepeace accords called for the separation of policefrom military, the elimination of old police forces,and the formation of entirely new ones, and con-siderable international involvement in police andjudicial reform. In Guatemala, in addition, theaccords sought to improve access to and use of thecourts by indigenous groups, not only providingtranslations, but by employing in some disputescustomary law and alternative dispute resolutionthat could be based on customary indigenous


remedies. Very considerable international assis-tance—financial and technical—went into further-ing this goal, with mixed results.

In Nicaragua, the police have their origins in theSandinistas, not the old Somoza government. UnderSomoza his National Guard performed both policeand military functions. Under the Sandinistas thepolice were under a separate ministry, though dur-ing war the Ministry of Interior, headed by the oneof the nine commandantes who had been present atthe founding of the Sandinistas, Tomás Borge, hadcombat units. There was no systematic plan toreform the former Sandinista police or the judiciary,and the main international involvement was U.S.pressure to eliminate Sandinistas from commandpositions. Many of the efforts to change the policethere after the war have amounted to battles for con-trol of the leadership of the police.

In Guatemala the pre war police amounted to12,500 agents –a force regarded as a junior partnerto the military. In rural areas these police weresupplemented by private guards of large landown-ers who served as the owner’s police force. In ElSalvador there were three fiefdoms of police—theTreasury Police (mostly in charge of customs), theNational Police (PN), and National Guard. Insome areas the National Guard was at the disposalof politically connected large landowners, includ-ing cases in which National Guard barracks werelocated on the plantation. During the war theArmy became mostly conscripts while these threeSalvadoran units had many career non commis-sioned officers. Each of the three had bad humanrights records, though less so the National Police.

The military had controlled the judiciary inGuatemala, and it had no jurisdiction over the mili-tary. In El Salvador, the new 1983 Constitutionauthorized the Assembly to elect the Supreme Courtto five year terms by majority vote. The SupremeCourt in turn controlled the rest of the courts—selection of judges, budget, discipline and dismissal.This meant the largest party picked the court and,in practice did so on political criteria. At the end ofthe war, the head of the court, Mauricio GutiérrezCastro, quite apart from his ARENA political ties,was a notoriously arbitrary flamboyant characterwho had a great deal of control over the entire courtsystem as well as other elements in the legal system.Gutierrez Castro, for example, had selected a head ofnational forensics whose need for tabloid journalismpublicity led to sensationalism at the expense of fair

procedures and even falsification of evidence. Thecourt system, headed by the Supreme Court coulddiscipline lawyers. In Nicaragua the Sandinistascontrolled the courts, though not entirely, as someindependent voices were heard.

Post War Crime. In all three countries the end ofthe war brought very large increases in crime.Most areas of Managua had been quite safe duringthe war even for women walking alone at night.The police did not take bribes. Soon after the warone avoided stopping at stop lights at night, andthe police were quick to take bribes. There was alarge increase in armed robbery and burglary. Butthe crime problem was far more extensive, orga-nized and violent in El Salvador and Guatemalaand, despite some recent declines in El Salvador, ithas persisted. Though crime statistics are notori-ously bad, the homicide rate in El Salvador toppedthat of Colombia for a couple of years in the late1990s. and was 15 times that of New York City. Itremains about 5 times that of NYC. It was esti-mated that there were 20,000 gang members in ElSalvador, a significant minority of them importsfrom Salvadoran gangs in Los Angeles, young menwhose families had fled El Salvador in the 1980s.

Kidnapping for profit became widespread inGuatemala and was not restricted to rich victims.In El Salvador, during the war the left did politicalkidnapping and used the victims in exchange forguerrillas and leftists held by the government.During the war there was also a kidnapping forprofit tied to elements in the military. Since thewar kidnapping has not been as widespread as inGuatemala, but it has been, until recently, a veryserious problem.

In addition to gangs there have been rings oforganized crime in all three countries withGuatemala apparently having the most extensiveproblem and the problem most difficult to solvebecause the rings there have sufficient influence—the parallel powers—to avoid prosecution, or, whenprosecuted, to escape conviction. There have beenorganized car theft rings with links to the U.S. andcars coming from the U.S. In all three countriesthere is evidence of money laundering, some of itemanating from corruption and some from thedrug trade. In Guatemala there is evidence of grow-ing and extensive drug transshipments with multi-ple air strips in remote areas of the country, partic-ularly on the eastern side and in the northern

Reforming Justice Systems 57

salient of Petén. According to comments inSeptember made to the author by a high official inthe Ministry of Governance, (the Ministry is incharge of, among other things, the PNC) there areareas of the country devoted to the drug trade thatare beyond the control of the government. InNicaragua, since 1990 there have also been signifi-cant shipments of drugs traveling up the sparselypopulated, road less Atlantic Coast, some carried onspeedy launches emanating from the not far distantColombian island of San Andres. However inGuatemala the problem goes beyond transship-ments to cultivation of both coca and poppy andsome processing of the crops. In Guatemala virtual-ly every seasoned observer believes that the drugtraffic has the involvement of current and formermilitary figures, particularly some that were incharge of intelligence. In Nicaragua, it is allegedsome that of the police on the Atlantic Coast havebeen involved in drug trafficking.

Most of the public has very little protection fromthis crime. In national polls in El Salvador, datingback over a decade, crime is consistently listed as themost serious, or 2nd most serious problem in thecountry. Extraordinarily high numbers of pollrespondents state (twenty to thirty five percent) thatsomeone in their family has been a victim of crimein the previous four months. Recent polls inGuatemala are similar. And in Guatemala, particu-larly, though not exclusively in rural areas, lynchmobs have taken justice into their own hands. Policecoverage in rural areas of Guatemala is very thin.

The rich do have protection. In each of the threecountries there has been rapid and extensivegrowth of urban private security forces almostentirely unregulated.

EL SALVADOR REFORMS

The Courts. The Salvadoran peace negotiationsled to new Constitutional provisions for selectionof the Supreme Court (CJS) eight months inadvance of the final accords. The final accords alsodetailed measures to form an entirely new policeforce while abolishing the old ones.

Under the 1983 Constitution, a majority vote inthe Legislative Assembly selected CJS magistratesto five year terms. The largest party could pick thecourt. That resulted in appointments based on partyloyalties and a compromised court. The CJS in turnappointed lower court judges, disciplined them and

controlled their budgets, and it also had authorityover the professional standing of attorneys.

The FMLN regarded the court system as supinebefore the power of the military and the rich. TheTruth Commission report in 1993 reached a similarconclusion—that the governmental institutions inEl Salvador had not been willing or capable of stop-ping the military’s human rights abuses and thatthe court system bore “tremendous responsibility”for the impunity. ARENA certainly did not sub-scribe to this position, but “modernizing” elementsin the party and President Cristiani in particular,understood that a thoroughly politicized court sys-tem was not good for attracting investment. This isnot to say, however, that the reform did away withthe predominant system of political and familybased favors in the public and private sectors.

The new court provisions, not implemented until1994, required a 2/3 majority of the Assembly toselect judges, and the selection had to be from nom-ination lists received from the National Council onthe Judiciary and the bar association. The terms ofjustices were extended from five to nine years, with1/3 of the fifteen justices replaced every 3 years.This has meant that the largest party cannot selectthe judges, as in the past, but rather there must bebargaining among the parties. If this did not entire-ly depoliticize the process—you vote for my candi-date and I’ll vote for yours, as in the Pact inNicaragua — the requirement that the justicesselected had to be from lists submitted by the barassociation and by a relatively independent NationalCouncil of the Judiciary (CNJ) added a further layerof distance from raw politics and expanded the pos-sibilities of more nominees being selected for profes-sional competence rather than political loyalties orideological affinities. The CNJ had been completelyunder the thumb of the Supreme Court, but thenew provision also required that its members wouldalso be selected by a 2/3rds majority of theAssembly and would be given the power to reviewjudges, to make recommendations and to nominatelower court judges to the CJS.

CJS President Gutiérrez Castro stalled all reforms,and the effective functioning of a judicial trainingschool, until 1994 when the new method of select-ing the CJS was first made. Then the process wasdifficult but showed a tendency of the two collegiatebodies, the bar association and the CNJ, to nominatemany based on competence and professionalism anda subsequent legislative tendency to select such can-


didates. The nomination process did not solve theentire problem. The Assembly deadlocked for over amonth, and ARENA (with 39 of 84 votes) absolute-ly refused some candidates on the list, includingAbraham Rodriguez, a rich businessman who hadbeen a key figure in the Christian Democratic Partyand, more to the point, had been one of three mem-bers of the Ad Hoc Commission that had led to thepurging of the military. But eventually a compro-mise was struck for all fifteen positions. Thoughsome justices had political ties there was a diversityof view points and a high level of professionalismamong the group. Included were the first twowomen ever named to the Supreme Court.

Access to the court system was expanded after1994 by an increase in justices of the peace whonow number nearly four hundred.

However the system remains centralized. TheTruth Commission report and then ONUSAL hadrecommended that the CJS no longer control theentire court system, and that the National Council ofthe Judiciary take over this function. (The Councilwith eleven members had some lower court judgeson it, until it was reduced to six members in the late1990s). The CNJ would appoint and remove lowercourt judges, and license and discipline attorneys.Those powers remain with the CJS, which did estab-lish an investigative unit to look into complaintsabout judges, including those of the CNJ. Howeverthe CNJ has recently complained that the CSJ hasignored its nominations for lower court judges.

Despite the reforms the reputation of the courtsystem at its lower levels remains mixed with crit-ics charging that some judges are poorly trained oropen to corruption and political influence, thoughthe presence of violent threats and intimidationdoes not seem nearly as extensive as in Guatemala.The penal courts have been also victimized by thecrime wave. Cases are slow, so judicial detentionsare long, and so the penitentiaries are clogged.Conviction rates are low. This has been in part areflection of weak investigative processes on thepart of the police and prosecutors. However theSchool for Judicial Training gradually had somepositive effects. (Popkin, 1994, 2000)

The Police. The National Civil Police (PNC) expe-rienced a difficult birth and adolescence. Thoughthe government had signed the accord to dissolvethe National Guard (GN) and Treasury Police, andto phase out the National Police (PN), it had to be

pushed at every step of the way for two years toimplement the agreement. First it attempted tosimply transfer the GN and Treasury Police to dif-ferent headquarters with different names. Cristianipublicly worried, presciently, that dissolution of theforces would contribute to the crime wave, a realis-tic admission that at least showed that he sharedsome of the FMLN belief that the old forces lackedintegrity, to put the point mildly. This ploy wasblocked, but then two months later the governmentwas allowed to transfer 3000 GN troops into thePN, increasing its force by 50%, making it difficultto detect if those moving from the PN to the PNCwere really GN. Under the accords 20% of the PNCcould come from the PN and 20% from the FMLN.Spot checks showed ex military sneaking in to theprogram. The FMLN had a difficult time filling its20% quota because many of its former combatantsdid not have the requisite educational backgroundThe initial PNC force was to be about 6000, with aplan to expand to 10,000 by 1999.

Initial PNC training and deployment ranbehind schedule and was plagued by shortages ofthe most basic resources: vehicles, arms, radios,salaries and buildings. The military gave up virtu-ally no resources to the new PNC, and in generaldid not cooperate.

The government’s two year budget for the newPolice Academy and the PNC was only 45% of thenecessary $194 million. As with other aspects of theaccord, the government hoped the international com-munity would fund the rest, but international donorswere reluctant because of past controversies in inter-national finance for police forces. The U.S., Norwayand Spain pledged another 8% of the budget (withthe U.S. being the largest donor). Construction of theAcademy was delayed and, in what seemed like anidiotic move, new cadets were told that their initialsalaries would be about 70% of what had been adver-tised. But mostly the shortfall was not covered.

Police training was largely done by experts fromSpain, Norway, Chile, and the U.S. ONUSAL dur-ing early PNC deployments provided transportationand radio communications (going well beyond itsmandate) because the PNC was bereft of resources.Despite this the Council of the new Academy forsome months did not permit ONUSAL verifiers ofthe accords to attend their meetings. (Stanley, 1993)

In short, initially the government protected mili-tary interests, perhaps because the military was beinghit hard by the Ad Hoc Commission and was, at


best, a reluctant PNC supporter. The FMLN was nota sufficient opposition watch dog. Organizationalweakness, infighting, crises, and the need to becomean electoral party made its efforts in the PNC (incontrast to its efforts on land issues) inadequate.During those initial years the efforts to keep thePNC aspects of the treaty on track were beingpushed much more by ONUSAL than by the FMLN.

The PNC lacked investigative capacity and thegovernment, with backing by the U.S., attemptedto shift into the PNC two units from the oldpolice structure—an anti drug unit, the UEA, andan investigative unit, the SIC (with a dubiousrecord of investigating human rights cases), ratherthan have the PNC develop its own investigativeunit. Eventually the FMLN agreed to the transfer,if the personnel were vetted and trained. This wasduring the December 1992 crisis over the purgingof the military and final demobilization of theFMLN troops. Vetting was not done well and evi-dence surfaced that members of the SIC had cov-ered up or been involved in cases of political assas-sination and other human rights violations.

Despite these inauspicious beginnings there weresome positive developments including the firstdeployments. New units quickly broke up tworural gangs with the help of local citizens—just thesort of citizen involved police work the architects ofthe force had in mind. A public opinion poll gavethe PNC rave reviews. The PNC maintained a gen-erally positive profile (compared to other institu-tions) over the next several years though the reputa-tion of the force became tarnished by publicizedevidence of cases of corruption, of excessive use offorce in dealing with demonstrations, and even ofextrajudicial killings. It was also clear that thecrime problem they were confronting left them lit-erally outgunned by better equipped, sophisticatedcriminal adversaries. The PNC suffered consider-able loss of life, many times that of any U.S. policeforce. Between March 1993 and November 1995the PNC suffered 90 killed and 470 injured in aforce that averaged some 7000 officers.

In a 1993 poll 34% of respondents said that theyor an immediate family member had been robbed inthe previous four months. The government respond-ed to these perceptions by using military patrols toaugment the police, a popular move though oneinconsistent with the accords. The patrols protectedthe 50 kilometer highway between the capital andthe airport and highways carrying export harvests.

Still more controversial was the appointment ofCaptain Oscar Peña Durán as top operational offi-cer. He came from the military and had been headof the controversial UEA. The FMLN wasappalled. He had directed the controversial inves-tigative unit in the aftermath of the murder of theJesuits. However the government did not have along list of qualified candidates. And Peña Duránactually arrested military officers—a strikingdeparture — and prominent members of ARENA.

However Peña Durán salted UEA and SIC mem-bers into command posts around the country usingthem to create his own personal command structure.The battles to get rid of Peña Durán and the UEAand SIC would last a year and three years respective-ly, and came to involve Rep. Joe Moakley who hadinvestigated the Jesuit murders. When the movewas eventually made to dismiss the remaining 71members of the units they threatened to burn allrecords. Eventually they stood down after beingoffered very handsome severance packages. (Costa)

The head of Public Security at that time wasHugo Barrera and the head of the PNC was RodrigoÁvila. Barrera, not a member of ARENA, was aforceful and ambitious figure who sought to makethe PNC better. But in a fashion parallel to PeñaDurán he was a personalistic leader more than thebuilder of an institution. Once the two units hadfinally been forced out—Barrera had delayed formonths—Barrera proceeded to create his own inves-tigative unit outside the chain of command carefullystructured in the peace accords and implementation.

To counter Barrera’s weight local NGOs pres-sured President Calderón Sol to create a NationalCouncil for Public Security, a high profile groupthat would plan a public security strategy. Two ofthe negotiators of the peace accords, SalvadorSamayoa (who was with the FMLN throughout the1980s but then resigned after the accords) andrespected intellectual and author David EscobarGalindo (who had negotiated on the governmentside of the table) were joined by prominent busi-ness leader Luís Cardenal.

The Council helped insure that the system ofchecks and balances designed under the peaceaccords would be operative. The Minister of PublicSecurity (Barrera) has the PNC Director report tohim, but the PNC Director and the Minister areappointed by the President, and the PNC Directorcan be dismissed by the National Assembly. TheAcademy is supposed to be independent of the


PNC with a civilian, politically pluralistic,Academic Council. The Minister appoints anInspector General, but must do so with the adviceand consent of both the Attorney General and theOmbudsman for Human Rights.

Then President Flores appointed as PNCDirector Mauricio Sandoval. He cultivated a directrelationship with President Flores. Sandoval’sappointment was opposed by the NGOs, who haddeveloped a working relationship with Ávila,because Sandoval had directed the Office of StateIntelligence, a mysterious agency created under thepeace accords to put intelligence gathering undercivilian control. Police work was supposed to beseparate from intelligence gathering (as opposed toinvestigating crimes) under the accords and theNGOs feared that Sandoval would secretly mergesome functions of the two groups. Sandoval deniedthe charges to HI in 2001. In addition Jesuits fromthe UCA noted that Sandoval had been head of theNational Secretariat for Information which tookover all radio stations during the 1989 FMLNoffensive, and that some stations had broadcastphone calls that threatened the Jesuits with death.However there was no direct evidence thatSandoval was responsible for these statements.

Sandoval was a strong manager who maintainedthe internal chain of command in the PNC. Heconcentrated police in high crime areas, took sug-gestions about using new police methods that weremore community based, was responsive to sugges-tions of the National Commission on PublicSafety, and conducted a massive purge of the PNC(see below). He resigned before the end of Flores’term, hoping, it was said, to be a presidential can-didate.

One would have thought that with crime at spec-tacular heights and with poll after poll over morethan a decade listing crime as the most serious prob-lem that the government, executive and legislativebranches, would have given more resources anddirection to creating a more effective PNC. Moreoften ARENA and the FMLN have fought in thelegislature over bills that would be hard line attackson criminals versus ones that would protect rightsof defendants. It is not a coincidence that hard linebills have been sponsored by the government short-ly before presidential elections. Too often correctivemoves of the government have come only afterinternational pressure (as in the case of Moakley’slobbying or the UN pressure for the Commission on

Public Security) or when a spectacularly negativeevent forced the government’s hand.

For example, when President Calderón Sol wasinaugurated in June 1994 President Cristiani hadstill not, after repeated delays, demobilized the PN.That month a video camera fan caught a bank rob-bery in broad daylight. The footage seemed to revealone of the robbers to be one Colonel Corea, then headof the investigative unit of the PN! The Director ofthe PN covered for Corea, claiming that he had beenin headquarters at the time, and Corea went free. Animmensely negative media and public reaction lednewly appointed Barrera to dismiss the remainingagents in the PN investigative unit (though not theirbrethren who had already transferred to the PNC)and to make the final dissolution of the PN.

Six years later amid growing stories of corrup-tion in the PNC, Sandoval admitted that he hadfound clear evidence that police officers wereinvolved in two kidnappings. That same day fourmen, one a police officer, robbed a Holiday Innnear the U.S. Embassy, and criminals wearingpolice uniforms robbed a business. The Salvadoranmedia has a tabloid like attraction to crime, andthe coverage of these events was mountainous.President Flores appointed a special commission toevaluate PNC agents and recommend dismissals.Quickly reviewing a backlog of 1200 disciplinarycases, the Commission recommended dismissal of200 officers, some of them senior officials. Some ofthe officers sued, claiming lack of due process.

Sandoval and Flores then got special legislationpassed to suspend civil service protections. TheFMLN voted for the measure. By the end of theyear Sandoval had dismissed 1500 (out of 17,000)police officers in a purge that obviously raisedquestions of procedural fairness. The PNC wentfrom one extreme to the other, from a long backlog of disciplinary cases to a process in which com-manders could simply finger people on the basis ofsuspicion and have them run out.

By most accounts, however, this depuración did goa long way toward weeding out the criminal andmost corrupt elements of the force. However, accord-ing to some analyses, it was also a method of gettingrid of “inconvenient types” and this included a dis-proportionate number of police officers whose originshad been in the FMLN, in the lower ranks, middleranks and higher levels of command. The result hasbeen that there are relatively few former FMLNmembers in the ranks. The great majority of higher


officials have their backgrounds in the old policestructures, though they are now 12 years removedfrom that experience. Few who entered the policewith neither FMLN nor old police structure back-grounds have been promoted to the higher ranks.

By the end of 2003 Samayoa reported to HI thatthere were no major crises in the PNC. Seriousproblems persist related to forming a professionalforce able to use computers and advanced inves-tigative techniques. And so do PNC misdeeds.Police were involved in a dozen homicides and adozen kidnappings in 2001-2002, and in sevenaggravated robberies, and seven rapes. Two highlevel police officials were accused of sexual abuse.The PNC has had a bizarrely high rate of suicides,some sixty-six from 1994 through 2001, thoughthe rate dropped to one in 2001.

President Flores announced a mano duro (hardhand) policy against street gangs and submittedlegislation less than a year before the March 2004election that permitted arrest of gang membersmerely for associating with gangs. This has createda clash between the executive and police on the oneside and the courts. The courts receive cases of pretrial detention that lack evidence or seem based onunconstitutional provisions. When they release theprisoners the judges felt that they were beingblamed for the crime wave. The police claimed itwas better to get gang members off the streets evenif they would be released a few weeks later.

Public reaction found a high percentage of thosepolled said they thought the law was unconstitu-tional, and a high percentage in favor of the lawnonetheless. By the March election some residentsof San Salvador talked as if the crime wave wasgreatly reduced.

There is considerable evidence that crime, or atleast some kinds of crime, has been reduced thoughthe reduction would appear to predate the mano durolaw. This might be due to more aggressive (and per-haps abusive) policing, and an earlier round of crim-inal legislation in 1998. Increases and reductions incrime, anywhere, are complex phenomena. Politicalmotivations often lead to simple explanations, suchas a new law or a better police force. But crime ratescan go up and down as a function of changes in theproportion of a society’s population of young men.

The number of people arrested by the policetripled from 1999 to 2003 (to 66,000), and theprison population went from 7000 to 11,500thousand, that is about 4500 more than the pris-

ons are designed to hold. (The Central Prison has acapacity of 800 but has 3100 prisoners.) A largeminority of these are pre trial prisoners who havebeen languishing in jail for weeks and months.

From 1999 and 2003 homicide remained around2200 per year (though the rate /100,000 fell from 36to 32, still about five times higher than New YorkCity. Robberies dropped by over 50%, burglaries bya third, and kidnapping dropped from 101 in 1999to 8 in 2003. But rapes rose from 640 to 838. Thesefigures are all from the PNC but there is a rough cor-respondence with the polling data of reported crimes.The highly respected Central American University(UCA) polling organization IUDOP shows a fall inits index of victimization from 23.4 in 1999 to 16 in2003. The correspondence in rough, because theIUDOP rate went down sharply in 2000 (to 17.3)but the police crime reports went up in most cate-gories and overall. (FESPAD)

GUATEMALA REFORMS

The New Police. Beset by problem s as it has beenthe PNC of El Salvador represented a dramatic insti-tutional break with the past. Though there wereserious efforts to maintain, for as long as possible,the three old police forces, and efforts to infiltratethe new with elements of the old the PNC began asa new force with some 20% from the old PN and20% from the FMLN, and 60% from neither.

The central institutional difference between thenew PNC in El Salvador, and the new PNC called forin the Guatemalan peace accords can be captured inone statistic: In Guatemala five years after the peaceaccords 11,000 of the 19,000 police came from theold police force that had been under the military.Virtually all of the old police, irrespective of creden-tials made it into the “new” PNC. President Arzúdeclared a three month training course would be suf-ficient to qualify the old police — as opposed to a sixmonth training course by new cadets (and by newand old recruits to the PNC in El Salvador).

A problem behind the calculations of the Arzúadministration’s calculations could have been thepost war crime wave. Despite the opinions of allinternational experts that the old force was so defi-cient and corrupt that it would be better to take theslow course of building a new force, several hundredgraduates of a new academy at a time, Arzú mighthave calculated that discharged members of the oldforce would become part of the criminal problem (as


they had in El Salvador), and that there would be aninsufficient number of police for many years. Thisalso came at a time when the Civil Action Patrols, amillion strong local militia formed by the militaryduring the war, had been disbanded. They had beenan irregular police force in a great many local areas,though one associated, in numerous villages withhuman rights abuses including assassinations (some-times ordered by the military) and with arbitraryactions in others.

The crime wave was real and continued to be so. Asurvey of crime in Latin America found thatGuatemala had the highest rate (55%) of thosepolled who declared that a member of their familyhad been a victim of crime in the previous year, withEl Salvador in second place at 46%. Its homicide ratewas the second worse in the region, behind that of ElSalvador, and Latin America had, by far, the highesthomicide rate of six regions compared. (BID, 2000)

Added to such calculations were internationalestimates that even a force of 20,000 police wasnot enough. Those estimates noted that in coun-tries with low crime rates a force for the countrythe size of Guatemala, which did not have a lowcrime rate, would have been 44,000. For examplein the Department of Huehuetenango, with one ofthe highest rates of poverty and a population ofnearly 1 million spread out over 31 municipalitiesthere were only 696 poorly equipped police, with34 women and 44 who speak indigenous lan-guages. The Department has 9 languages and is65% indigenous. Of the 44, only 17 were locatedin a zone in the Department in which their lan-guage was common. (MINUGUA, 2004)

However, the requirement that recycled policefrom the old force would require just half as muchtime in training as the new, rather than an equalamount or perhaps more to unlearn some things,seemed to legitimate, rather than critique, the oldforce. At least in the first few years little attentionwas paid to training in human rights (some two toeight hours). Nor was there an effort to vet thepolice coming in from the old force. When MIN-UGUA, which did not have broad access to oldrecords, found 14 officials to be recycled into thePNC that had records of serious human rightsabuses including accusations of homicide againstthree, the government response was to agree onlyto investigate the 14—not treat this spot check asevidence that serious vetting of everyone wasrequired. Again, the stance of the government

seemed to be that there had been no problem inthe past.

The example is also an indication that in thisambit, at least, MINUGUA was weaker thanONUSAL had been. It had weaker treaty provi-sions to verify. The URNG, without a 20% stakein the new police force, did not have the organiza-tional strength of the FMLN, which itself was rela-tively weak on the police issue. In El Salvador thetrainers at the new Academy were from a variety ofcountries. This may have increased coordinationproblems, but had the advantage of a cross fertil-ization. In Guatemala, the government awardedthe entire task to the Spanish Civil Guard, whichwas regarded by international experts as a policeforce with a highly militarized style.

By 2000, with some sixteen thousand agents inthe PNC, the government was moved to form averification unit to vet recruits. The unit was fund-ed by MINUGUA and by the U.S. police trainingagency Institute for Criminal InvestigationTraining and Assistance Program (ICITAP.) Thefunding suggests the international lobbying sourcesto establish the unit. The unit in 2001-2002 sus-pended two thousand applicants for falsification ofdocuments and other problems. However, by 2004the unit was apparently reduced to four investiga-tors who do not have sufficient time to review all ofthe applications or even to check all of the 1500cadets who to make it into the academy.

The harvest of these strategic and implementationproblems was partially revealed when Human Rightsreports found that a majority of human rights abusecomplaints were directed against members of thePNC. In Huehuetenango MINUGUA reports thatthe initial good impression of the police in 1998 hassunk to a level of general distrust, and in threemunicipalities the police were asked to leave.

Criminal investigations constitute an inadequateand corrupted feature of the justice system. As inthe case of the police there has been inadequatescreening of recruits and inadequate numbers ofinvestigators in the PNC’s Criminal InvestigationUnit (SIC, or Servicio de Investigación Criminal).By 2001 the number of investigators was half whatinternational experts thought was needed. MIN-UGUA reports and that of the respected researchorganization ASIES indicate that crime scene inves-tigations have been plagued by lack of coordinationor even hostility between SIC investigators and theinvestigators of the Public Ministry, the prosecutor’s


office. The Public Ministry investigators fail toarrive, show up late, and order the SIC investigatorsto leave. Evidence is lost or spoiled, and the forensicservices have inadequate equipment. All this con-tributes to very low rates of prosecution and convic-tion. A devastating USAID 1999 study found thatin Guatemala City the Public Ministry droppedover 2/3 of 90,000 cases after preliminary examina-tion, and only went to court in 1100, almost all ofwhich were dropped when witnesses and victimsdecided, perhaps under threat, not to testify.

However the more serious investigative problemis evidence marshaled by human rights groups suchas the Myrna Mack Foundation and the Church’sHuman Rights Office (Oficina de DerechosHumanos del Arzobispado, ODHA) of a kind ofcompetition among investigative units and allegedinfiltration of some units, including military intelli-gence gathering units, by criminal figures or bypolitically powerful forces, the occult forces, or par-allel powers referred to in the section on the mili-tary. This results in evidence being used as a com-modity to extort from the accused, to bribe orthreaten witnesses, investigators, police, prosecutorsand judges. In the murder of Bishop Gerardi thecrime scene was contaminated and crucial forensicevidence destroyed or “mislaid,” — mere technicali-ties when one considers that judges and public pros-ecutors resigned and in some cases fled into exile,that the night before the trial grenades were thrownat the home of the judge, and that nine potentialwitnesses were murdered. In efforts to prosecutehigh ranking officers in the assassination of anthro-pologist Myrna Mack, over two dozen judgesresigned or were removed from the case, deaththreats and harassment against witnesses have beenconstant, evidence was destroyed or “mislaid”. Inthis case it took over 5 years to initiative the prose-cution, and then four years of delays over proceduraland conflict of laws issues. This rank corruption ofthe justice system was carried out despite immenseinternational attention on both cases. (Sieder)

These parallel investigative forces came to lightduring the Arzú administration when families ofkidnap victims discovered hidden coordinated oper-ations between the Public Ministry and the EMP,which was supposed to have been dissolved. In thePortillo administration, the President appointedByron Barrientos in July 2000 to head the Ministryof Governance. He had been cashiered from thearmy for participation in the first coup attempt

against Vinicio Cerezo in 1989 and was reputed tohave ties to the aforementioned Ortega Menaldo(who was a former head of the military intelligenceduring the Cerezo administration). Barrientosappointed two fellow coup plotters to be deputychief of the PNC and head of the office of migra-tion, a center of corruption. Barrientos replaced thechief of the PNC as well, which made the thirdchief of police in 7 months! Barrientos was forced toresign in November 2001 over a financial scandal inthe ministry. Portillo also appointed, early in hisadministration Jacobo Salán Sanchez, who hadserved under Menaldo, as head of the EMP.

Judicial Reforms. There have been some notablereforms. Access to the judicial system has gone up,particularly for the indigenous population (for whichaccess had been extremely low and discriminatoryparticular given language barriers). Up to 2001 therehad been just over 100 new courts established.Justices of the peace, who had only been in 2/3 of thenational territory, were present in all 330 municipali-ties. By 2001 there were 35 courts with legal inter-preters. The number of cases heard by justices of thepeace tripled by 2002 from some 45,000 in 1997.There have been several programs to train courtinterpreters. All of these efforts were supported byinternational funds, from USAID, MINUGUA andUNDP. But these advances fall far short of the mark.

Though there was between 2002 and 2003 avery large increase in the number of court personnelthat spoke in indigenous language, the number ofinterpreters rose only to 43 (in the country!) andthe number of judges remained at 98, most of themjustices of the peace. The expansion was by some400 indigenous speaking staff persons includingjudicial auxiliaries. This is to be applauded, but 8years after the peace accords, 43 interpreters is notimpressive. In Hueheutenango six new judicial cen-ters and the Public Defenders have no interpreters,the Public Minister has two, and one court in amunicipality has two. (ASIES, 2003)

Similarly the idea in the accords that appropri-ate disputes could be settled using indigenousnorms ran into legal and political conflicts in theCongress. One way of dealing with this has been toestablish community courts and mediation centersthat can use alternative methods of dispute resolu-tion, if the parties agree to it. Twenty two media-tion centers took up some 5000 cases in 2003 andreached accords in 40%, though it was not clear if


the accords had legal standing. The court systemhas also tried five mobile justice of the peacecourts with mediators.

Like many Latin American countries Guatemalaadopted new procedural codes which replacedinvestigative authority of judges with the PublicMinistry and reduced the extremely high use ofdocuments in cases with increases public oral testi-mony. Implementation of these efforts over the lastdecade has been uneven. There have also beenefforts with international help to improve judicialtraining, and to enforce a judicial code of ethics,and to introduce a 1999 judicial career law thatcreated an organization to monitor standards andperformance. However positive these developmentsare, they must take into account that since the mid1980s international assistance to the Guatemalanjustice system has been frequent and ample. Nodoubt there have been improvements, and onecould argue with hope that impunity will shrinkand corruption will be on the defensive during theBerger administration. But forces of corruption andintimidation remain deeply embedded in the sys-tem as every recent report indicates. Moreover gov-ernment budgetary support of the court system hasbeen declining. A budget of about $110 milliondollars in 2001 declined by 11% in 2002 and thatapproved for 2004 was about 65% of the 2001level. In 2001 and 2002 the military budget, afterdeclining since the peace accords, rose substantially.

NICARAGUA REFORMS

Changes in the Police. In Nicaragua, consistentwith what we have seen before, the issue was notquality of policing and adjudicating but ratherwhether the Sandinistas would control the police,military, and judicial systems, and the principle focuswas on the military and police. Getting rid ofMinister of Interior Tomás Borge was relatively easyfor Chamorro because there was no doubt she couldpick her own ministers, but the Sandinistas main-tained that the command structure of two profession-al forces, the military and the police, should remainintact. Two years after Chamorro’s victory, under U.S.pressure, René Vivas, the head of the police wasforced out along with a dozen and a half other officerswho were long time Sandinistas. But the rest of thecommand structure stayed largely intact.

It was easier to get rid of Vivas, than HumbertoOrtega in the military because he had not been one

of the 9 commandantes, much less brother of thedefeated presidential candidate. Moreover, accord-ing to rumors the form of U.S. pressure had beenconditioning a large package of aid (some said$100 million) on the removal of Vivas.

It is also said that the command structure stayedintact because Vivas and Antonio Lacayo agreed,prior to the public announcement of his dismissal,to draft a presidential decree that would establishrules and regulations for the internal managementof the police including promotions and discipline.In short, the dismissal brought with it an effort toinstitutionalize practices in the police. That frame-work was elaborated as one of the changes to theConstitution effectuated in 1995. That spelled outpolice functions and was followed in 1996, beforethe elections, by a police law which defined thepolice career and command structure with subse-quent regulations on discipline. (Cajina)

During those years and beyond, the police, irre-spective of who commanded them, faced severe prob-lems. In addition to the increase in crime, there werenumerous large scale demonstrations mainly put onby unions and other groups associated with theSandinistas. However, these events were not simplyparty driven efforts to disrupt the new government;rather they were responses by the thousands who hadbeen laid off during the draconian imposition ofneoliberal reforms aimed, initially at getting infla-tion under control (as the Sandinistas had attemptedto do two years before the election). There was no par-allel to this in the other two countries. And the FSLNplayed a dual role, some would say duplicitous role,both egging on the demonstrators and then negotiat-ing compromises with the government within theframework of its policies. The Chamorro governmentcalled upon the police to control these events. Whenthey attempted to do so, the Sandinista groupscharged them with human rights abuses.

Secondly the police, along with the military, werecalled upon to quell the numerous armed groups inthe countryside demanding land. Again, there wasno parallel to this in the other countries. The lack ofmilitary (vastly reduced) and police in many ruralareas led to the former military personnel formingself defense committees, that is, more armed groups.The toll at the end of four years was some 1500 deadamong ex contras (some 600), peasants (350) many ofwhom were cooperative members, Sandinistas (175)and some 150 police and military. Not all of this waspolitical; personal feuds and liquor played their part.


During this time rather than build up the policeforce its budgets were cut and salaries of policemen and women sank in real terms. Bribing trafficpolice became common. The police would put newcadets through training; they would serve for a fewmonths, and then they would be hired away byprivate security firms that would pay more money.

However despite this the police retained some ofthe effectiveness they had displayed against crimeduring the war years. By the late 1990s, after theelection of Alemán, the U.S. ambassador was push-ing a program of U.S. cooperation with the policein intercepting drugs and privately lauded them,in contrast to other Central American police forces,for their effectiveness and willingness to do a job ifprovided with modest resources. The police estab-lished innovative offices, led by women, to dealwith gender issues ranging from family disputes,and family violence to rape.

However the police have been plagued withother problems. First, there was a struggle over theselection of the head of the police during the lastyears of Alemán’s administration. Against theadvice of the internal National Police Council,which supported someone who had come up fromthe ranks, Eduardo Cuadra, Alemán picked EdwinCordero, who immediately retired Cuadra and sev-eral of his allies. Cuadra had investigated the “nar-cojet” case that had implicated Alemán.

This past year Cordero got into trouble when hesuggested that there was police corruption on theAtlantic Coast and suggested that there had been apolicy to allow the police to use captured drugs topay off informers and police officers who had cap-tured drug dealers. Two former heads of the policerose in anger and demanded an apology and thatBolaños fire Cordero, despite his apologies.However Bolaños pointed out that the police lawgave the head of the police a 5 year term endingjust before a presidential term, and that dismissalbefore that had to be for causes specified in thelaw. Cordero had violated none of these. Despitethe press campaign against him and the consider-able lampooning of the institution, Bolaños’employment of a police law for institutional stabil-ity stands in sharp contrast to the revolving doorof police chiefs under the capricious orders ofPresident Portillo in Guatemala.

However it is said that Bolaños did not take thisstep before checking with Daniel Ortega and theU.S. Ambassador.

The police have a severe lack of resources. Policepay in Nicaragua is comparatively low and the sizeof the police force relative to the size of the popu-lation and its geographic extension is small.

Nicaragua—Court Packing. After the 1990 elec-tions considerable international efforts, mainly fromthe UNDP and Sweden, were made to upgrade thejudicial system through more training and expandaccess to it in rural areas. The 1995 Constitutionalreforms aimed for judicial independence by length-ening the terms of office of magistrates in theSupreme Judicial Court (CSJ), by making thePresident share responsibility with the Assembly forselection of judges, and by requiring that 4% of thenational budget be allocated to the judiciary. Newjudges were required to have a law degree.

Following the constitutional reforms twoSupreme Court Justices, one Liberal (GuillermoVargas, President of the CSJ) and the other FSLN(Alba Luz Ramos) attempted to effect reforms in thewhole system from 1996-1999. The two reorga-nized the CSJ so that cases were processed morerapidly. They removed over 200 judges and courtsecretaries for flagrant abuse of office mostly at thelocal level. A 1999 poll in small towns sponsored bySweden indicated that residents did not perceive thelocal court as corrupt. But this had relatively littleimpact in Managua where elements of the court sys-tem have reputations for corruption (selling sen-tences for example), incompetence or politicization.

However the Liberal/FSLN pact of 1999increased the politicization of the judicial system.First the reform team of Vargas and Ramos wasreplaced with another Liberal as Court President(Francisco Plata). Then in 2000, under the reformsemanating from the pact, the court expanded from12 to 16 with the additional justices coming fromthe PLC and FSLN. (Dye, 2000)

Other efforts to reform the system to make itmore professional and less politicized have been, atbest, mixed. One of the motivations for the Pactwas that an aggressive Comptroller General,Augustín Jarquín had brought numerous charges ofcorruption against the government. Not only was hereplaced under the pact by a collegiate body dividedbetween PLC and FSLN members, but in a subse-quent case Jarquín was jailed. International donorsvisited him in jail and complained through diplo-matic channels and an appellate court then reversedthe decision of the district court. Both appeared to


be political decisions. The Scandinavian countriessuspended their donations to the Comptroller’soffice pending a review of its new configuration, adecision that reportedly infuriated PresidentAlemán. Similarly, it took foreign pressure, from theU.S. and the IMF, to pass legislation that wouldenable a citizen to sue the government for damagesstemming from incorrect administrative rulings.The legislation passed despite considerable effortsby the Liberals to water down the bill, which didresult in delaying implementation until after theend of Alemán’s term. Legislation to establish rulesfor judicial careers was authorized in the 1995Constitutional changes. The project has beenbacked by international sources, but languished foryears. The issue has been scheduled for considera-tion this year, but, as detailed above, it is a politicalhot potato. Such a law could establish educationalstandards and training and could reduce politicalcontrol and regulate CSJ control over the lowercourts which some have charged amounts to fief-doms controlled by some CSJ justices.

For all of the criticisms and problems of theNicaragua system of justice, the problem of thepolice and courts do not approximate the severityof the problems in the Guatemalan system. Theformer Sandinista police did commit human rightsviolations but not nearly on the same scale as whatwas happening in the other two countries nor dothey have the same reputation from their critics forcorruption and incompetence now as does the newpolice force in Guatemala. There is corruption inthe judicial system and independent watchdogssuch as Jarquín can lose their jobs and be jailed fora brief time. That is, the Pact, rather than bring-ing positive reform has accelerated rot in the sys-tem. But this pales in comparison to violent actsand threats against judges, prosecutors and wit-nesses in Guatemala. However, in Guatemala thepeace accords did spawn multiple areas of reformsthat improved coverage and offer some promise ofexpanding quality. Reforms in Nicaragua save forthe brief period in the late 1990s led by two jus-tices, have really been political deals.

Post War Elections, Participation, and Parties 67

The transitions to civilian based electionscame in the context of war and post-war. Thewars shaped the elections and the elections

shaped the peace processes. This is very differentthan the many transition from authoritarian govern-ments to civilian elections in the past thirty years.The initiation of the transition was to an importantbut varying degree caused by the leftist rebellions,even though the left rebels rejected initial elections.Several of the key post war electoral parties weremilitary or paramilitary organizations and protago-nists during the war, and other military organiza-tions have not done well in the electoral context.

Elections are not the same as democracy. Thesecountries have been relatively successful in estab-lishing inclusive, non violent and procedurally fairelections. There have been problems with electoralauthorities and some registration and voting sys-tems have been disadvantageous to the rural basedpoor. The elected governments have been consider-

ably less successful in mitigating the social andeconomic problems that led to the wars or in creat-ing institutional reforms to firmly establish a ruleof law, due process and public safety. The resultingcynicism along with difficulties in registration andvoting has led to low participation, particularly inGuatemala and, until last March, in El Salvador.

The system of proportional representation usedplaces heavy emphasis on political parties and, ingeneral, provides incentives for smaller parties toenter the contest. In legislative elections voters selectparties not candidates, and those elected in theory“represent” a district with several deputies, but thedistricts have no other governing function and theelected owe more to their party than to voters. Togeneralize, parties have either been too strong or tooweak. The too strong parties win, but tend to behighly centralized, offering little incentive for citizengroups to enter or to lobby. And citizen groups lackresources (save for the wealthy). The too weak parties

POST WAR ELECTIONS,PARTICIPATION, AND PARTIES

are more open but have done less well in electionsand tend to disappear (with notable exceptions in ElSalvador) or are made to disappear by the manipula-tions of the large parties (Nicaragua).

The winners of all Presidential elections sincethe mid 1980s (a total of ten) have been conserva-tives espousing (in different fashions) neoliberaleconomic policies. Bolaños is the third presidentialcandidate of conservative bent to defeat Ortega.ARENA has easily won four presidential contestssince 1989, the last three against the FMLN. Leftpresidential candidates have not made the run offsin Guatemala. The left has done better in legisla-tive elections and municipal elections since thewar particularly in urban areas, though inGuatemala its success has been limited.

From War to “Founding Elections.” ProfessorTerry Karl has advanced the concept of “foundingelections” to describe elections in the aftermath ofauthoritarian governments in which there is openopportunity for all representative social forces toparticipate through organized groups. The war-time elections with all civilian candidates wererejected by rebel groups and some opposition par-ties, but were a marked contrast to four decades ofmilitary governments. The peace process broad-ened then expanded electoral participation.

Toward the end of the wars the rebels andabstaining civilian groups softened their oppositionto the war-time elections. The 1987 CentralAmerica peace accords, signed by the five presidentsof the republics, implicitly recognized the legalityof the elections that had selected the Presidents.That both beckoned the rebels to negotiations andnarrowed their negotiating space. By mid 1989 itwas clear that none of the guerrilla groups couldmilitarily win, but that in El Salvador andNicaragua they could still inflict considerable dam-age. And it was not clear that they could be defeat-ed. The new Bush administration began makingnoises in favor of negotiated solutions. Bush was lessinterested in Central America because the Cold Warwas winding down and the USSR had alreadybegun reducing aid to Nicaragua (and Cuba).

In El Salvador civilian groups returned in smallnumbers from exile to participate in the 1989 elec-tions. In the 1991 contest, with peace negotiationsin progress, the FMLN encouraged citizens to vote.In Guatemala the URNG announced that it wouldnot disrupt the 1990 elections. In Nicaragua

repression against the civilian opposition had beenfar more moderate under the Sandinistas than in ElSalvador and Guatemala. These groups negotiatedan election process in 1989.

The post war elections incorporated the formerrebels. The FMLN in the 1994 ran slates of candi-dates in legislative and municipal elections and wasin a presidential coalition with elements of theFDU, called the Convergencia Democrática (latercalled the CDU). This was the “founding election.”

Arguments in Nicaragua about the “foundingelection” split three ways. The Sandinistas point to1984; the moderate anti Sandinistas point to the1990 election of Chamorro, and the pro contra forcesclaim the 1996 election. The contras were still atwar during the 1990 election. Much political vio-lence followed the 1990 election, most of it perpe-trated by a minority of former contra combatants.Prompted by national political figures and perhapsby rightist elements in the U.S. government,rearmed contras called for the firing of head of theNicaraguan military—their enemy HumbertoOrtega brother of Daniel Ortega — and the firing ofAntonio Lacayo, the son-in-law of President ViolettaChamorro, and even the resignation of Chamorro,the candidate whom the contras had backed in the1990 election. Lacayo and Chamorro had acceptedthe 1987 constitution and compromised with theSandinistas over legislative bills. By 1996 they couldvote for Arnoldo Alemán, a militant anti Sandinista.

Guatemala lagged behind. There had been asubstantial hiatus in peace negotiations caused bythe failed coup attempt of President Jorge Serrano.The peace accords were not signed until a yearafter the 1996 elections, so the URNG had to waituntil the 1999 elections to participate.

Grassroots, Top-Down or International Genesisof Electoral Democracy? An excellent argumenthas been made by Elisabeth Wood that the transitionto electoral democracy in El Salvador was due to theleftist insurrection, and the conditions it spawned.The FMLN revolution forced a crisis in U.S. foreignpolicy, in the military, and among the richest familiesof El Salvador who feared losing control of the gov-ernment (and their properties) to the Marxists. TheU.S. administration was then moved to support civil-ian elections in El Salvador to stave off congressionalcriticism. (Wood, 2000)

This revolution-from-below analysis stands incontrast to mainstream analyses of the transition


from authoritarian governments in Latin Americanand elsewhere that portray a process of negotia-tions among elites—some who have backed theauthoritarian regime and some who have not—brought about by a political and economic crisis inthe regime that increases the risks of continuing toback it. The extent of the crisis and the ability ofthe authoritarians to negotiate an exit on favorableterms determined the extent to which democraticpractice extends subject or not subject to occasion-al vetoes by the military.

This top-down model has a closer fit toGuatemala. The military remained the strongestpolitical institution in Guatemala during the tran-sition and, unlike other Latin American countries;it did not negotiate the transition with elites asmuch as announce it to them following its owninternal negotiations between hardliners and mod-ernizers. The modernizers had participated in thescorched earth campaign but came to believe thatGuatemala was in crisis precisely because the vastexcesses committed during the scorched earthcampaign had made Guatemala an internationalpariah. That this was a negotiation within the mil-itary is evidenced in part by the reluctance of hard-liners in the military to accept the very limitedtransition during the Cerezo administration whenthey twice attempted a coup, each time backedand goaded by the hard right among the agroexport elite, particularly among the sugar and cot-ton growers, when Cerezo proposed raising taxes.

In each of these elections the actors were playingto various international audiences to an unusualextent, compared to say Argentina or Brazil, sothat one could argue that international pressurewas also a causative factor in the existence andshape of the elections. That was clearly true in ElSalvador in 1982 and 1984 with swarms ofreporters and the U.S. Congress looking on, and inNicaragua in 1984 and 1990 with the Sandinistastrying to gain legitimacy in the U.S. Congress andamong European countries. The Guatemalan mili-tary was looking beyond Guatemala, but was alsodetermined to maintain control in the mid term.

The U.S. could argue that it was pressure by theU.S. that forced the Salvadoran military and thelanded oligarchy to acquiesce to elections in 1982and 1984. Examination of this argument reinforcesWood’s. The U.S. was completely indifferent in1972 and 1977 when center and center-left civil-ian coalitions, mainly led by the Christian

Democrats, attempted to win presidential electionsand failed to do so because the military defraudedthem. It was only when the FMLN made a viablethreat of insurrection and after the FSLN inNicaragua had toppled Somoza that the U.S.expressed interest in electoral democracy for any ofthe three countries.

Whereas the FSLN toppled Somoza its 1984 elec-tions would seem to fit the “revolution-from-below”model. But Sandinista statements about electionswere mixed. Some spoke with contempt againstbourgeois elections or losing the country in an elec-toral “lottery,” and others looked with some favor onthe one dominant party model that had been inpower since the 1930s in Mexico. The Sandinistashad a very hierarchical, Leninist style party struc-ture, though with a collective group of nine at thetop. (Then too, this structure was not so dissimilarto ARENA’s in El Salvador.) On the other hand, theSandinistas thought that the U.S. would attempt tomanipulate elections, hardly a naïve belief. Theyalways talked about the “logic of the majority,” andconducted in 1984 and 1990 procedurally free andfair elections with mechanisms for ample campaignspace (free TV) and for broad voter participation.The latter were superior to the other countries.

These “bottom up” or “top down” processes ofgetting to elections have had some impact on theshape of post war elections. In El Salvador the polit-ical parties that dominate and that provide swingvotes are in large measure organizations that wereformed and shaped in the crucible of war. ARENAformed in 1981 by former military and business fig-ures, as a paramilitary organization and a politicalparty that would compete in civilian elections. TheFMLN was the main protagonist in the war.

In Guatemala pressure from below was muchweaker, and the military was so dominant that nostrong political party has emerged yet. TheURNG is a particularly weak political party.

In Nicaragua the picture is mixed. The party thatforced out the Somoza family remains a strong,though very different, electoral party. The U.S.organized and supported rebels that attempted tooverthrow the Sandinistas have not had an organizedelectoral presence as a party, perhaps because theywere so dependent on the U.S. and perhaps becausesome of the peasant fighters had quite local visions.All other parties save one have remained small andineffectual as they were during the Somoza era.Alemán’s PLC does not fit a pattern. It is a post-war


phenomenon, feeding off anti Sandinista sentimentthat Alemán was able to organize into one party andto be king of the party. If Alemán were to drop deadtomorrow (and his health is not good) it is not clearwhat would become of his party.

War Parties to Electoral Parties. The rebels inGuatemala, El Salvador, and the contras inNicaragua entered the electoral system at a veryconsiderable disadvantage. The leaders of the otherpolitical parties did not lose many in their leader-ship to violent death during the war, though theSandinistas did. The FMLN, URNG, and the for-mer contras (and the Sandinistas) also lost midlevel leaders to assassination after the war.

The guerrillas had to operate in remote areas orclandestinely –the opposite modus vivendi of campaign-ing politicians. While one might assume that anyorganization that could survive under arduous condi-tions of war would find peace time elections muchsimpler, such an assumption would be ill made. Theskills needed are quite different, and the rebels facedthe problem of making a living in peace time (withrather odd curriculum vitae to take to the market).

And their opponents had had the opportunity tolearn the electoral game, to build organizations inearly rounds of elections. As a seasoned ChristianDemocrat remarked to the author after noting a hostof mistakes made by the FMLN in the 1994 elec-tions, “I wouldn’t presume to tell CommandanteJoachín Villalobos (of the FMLN) how to stage anassault on a military barracks, nor can he teach meanything about the proportional representation vot-ing system.” Also, in El Salvador, public financing ofthe campaigns of political parties was mainly tied tohow many votes the party had won in the prior elec-tion. New parties got a minimal amount of money.

The FMLN and the Sandinistas have done verywell, in post-war elections compared to the URNGand the contras. The FSLN had years to build up anorganization during its decade in power. The con-tras role in the 1989-90 election was to be a mili-tary force. Then they dissolved as an organization,though networks remained and Alemán’s party haswon large majorities in former contra areas ofstrength. The contras also suffered debilitatinginternal divisions in the last year of the war.

A simple explanation for these outcomes of for-mer guerrilla groups is that the Sandinistas hadthe advantage of ten yeas in power. The FMLN wasself sufficient and strong throughout the war. The

URNG was self sufficient but weak during the lastdecade of the war. And the contras were militarilystrong but not self sufficient during the war.

Among the conservative parties, ARENA emergedas a unique force in Central America and no party(left, center or right) has been able to sustain itself inGuatemala. The explanation is not simply thatARENA is backed by all of the wealthy. The wealthyin Guatemala and Nicaragua do not have such aparty. The reasons of this contrast have something todo with an internal organizational strength andresilience of ARENA. The Nicaraguan oligarchy hadfound ways to fight among themselves for over a cen-tury. The central contrast with the Guatemalan par-ties is that ARENA formed when the survival of theoligarchy was in question. The oligarchy inGuatemala was never so threatened, though somehardliners in Guatemala perceived that even theshackled Cerezo posed a threat of international com-munism. If necessity is the mother of invention, theGuatemalan oligarchy did not need to invent a partybecause the URNG was weak and the military wasstrong and would not want political rivals.

Party Systems. Political parties and legislaturesfrequently receive low approval ratings in publicopinion polls in Latin America. But there is generalagreement that electoral democracy works betterwith a stable system of political parties. This notioncan be criticized when stable parties are corrupt andwhen the system is so stable that it prevents theentry of new parties or players and thus reducescompetition and meaningful voter choice. Both crit-icisms may be made of Nicaragua since 1999, andthe second criticism could apply to elections for theHouse of Representatives in the U.S. where incum-bents always win. But party continuity at least pro-vides voters with a symbolic choice and meaning. Astable party system does not channel demands orrepresent the public as well as ideal visions ofdemocracy would wish, but they seem to do so bet-ter than systems with a good deal of instability.

Parties are particularly important in the threeCentral American countries because under their sys-tem of proportional representation citizens vote for aparty, not for a candidate, in legislative elections, andthe parties pick the top candidates. This makes theissue of internal party democracy more importantthan more mixed systems of proportional representa-tion where, say in Brazil, voters can favor particularcandidates on a party’s slate so that the election in


essence combines the features of a primary electionand a general election and creates a good deal of inde-pendence from the party for successful candidates.

Voting is an infrequent and episodic form ofpolitical participation, and to some extent, so is par-ticipation in electoral campaigns. In the three coun-tries there is a lack of incentives and resources forother forms of political participation. This is due togenerally centralized governmental systems, central-ized control over most of the political parities, andlack of economic means (save for the rich) to formeffective, citizen based lobbying groups. Lobbyingis also difficult because individual deputies, in gen-eral, have primary loyalty to the party that nominat-ed them for a “winnable” position on the party’sslates of candidates and the districts a slate repre-sents are historic entities that serve no other govern-mental or policy making function.

Guatemala has had a weak and ever changingparty “system,” with different winners in every elec-tion and an active group of politically oriented civilsociety organizations. In five rounds of electionssince 1985, the operative rule would appear to bethat a victory predicts substantial decline in thenext election, and further substantial decline, per-haps to the point of irrelevance, in the election afterthat. It is common in countries that use proportion-al representation for small parties to win a few seatsand then decline and disappear. In Guatemala largeparties have just as quickly declined drastically.

Active civil society groups are less prominent in ElSalvador, though there have been episodic, effectiveprotest movements around specific issues some ofwhich have involved interesting alliances—left andright rural groups against a government debt law, leftand right civil society groups against governmentregulations for such groups, and an array of urbangroups in San Salvador against a proposed highwaywith international financing. And in each countrythere have been transnational civil society meetingsabout the trade agreements and rural issues.

In El Salvador two ideologically opposed partiesdominate, though they must pay heed in theAssembly to three smaller “swing vote” parties thatwin a total of 30% of the seats. Power in the rightistARENA is hierarchical, but control of the heights ofthe party has changed hands several times. Power inthe FMLN has been less centralized, but the samefigures have won several internal fights that have ledto the exodus of some of the losers. There have been“primaries” within the FMLN but also considerable

complaints of voting irregularities.In Nicaragua two parties each led by party bosses

dominate. Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega havedominated the two parties and, though arch ene-mies, found common cause in squeezing out smallerparties and dividing up public offices. Alemán builtthe PLC into a formidable party through classicforms of corruption and carrot and stick politics.Ortega has steadily sidelined rivals in the partywhile running three losing presidential campaigns.In the last Alemán’s hand picked candidate, EnriqueBolaños, after his victory, attacked Alemán for cor-ruption. The latter, as of this writing, is in jail oncorruption and embezzlement charges placed theirby a Sandinista judge that he had, under the termsof the pact with Ortega, formally appointed.Alemán and Ortega fight or ally with PresidentEnrique Bolaños as a means of thwarting the other.

ELECTIONS AND PARTIES IN EL SALVADOR

Since 1994, when Armando Calderón Sol won thepresidency, ARENA has easily won two more presi-dential elections with first round victories over theFMLN (51% to 29% in 1999, and 58% to 36% in2004). But it has lost considerable ground in theAssembly and in municipal elections. The FMLN andthe PCN have gained. However these trends have notserved to address outstanding particular issues in thepeace accords. What accounts for these trends?

Legislative and Municipal Elections. In 1994the FMLN finished a distant and respectable sec-ond, but it had very substantial weaknesses. Itsfinancial resources were miniscule; ARENA’s wereimmense. ARENA retains the sympathies of thevast majority of rich Salvadorans; it is not shy aboutasking them for money. ARENA enjoyed the ad-vantages of incumbency. The economy had shownfour years of growth, with the war winding downand capital returning, and with an increase inremittances. Bending and breaking electoral rules,ARENA launched a barrage of pre campaign adstouting the achievements of government agencies.It continues to do this. In 1994 the FMLN was sovisibly inexperienced in elections as to make voterswonder if it could govern. Because it had no obvi-ous presidential candidate within its ranks, theFMLN backed Rubén Zamora from the small CDUcoalition. The CDU, which had participated in1989 and 1991, was disorganized and small.


ARENA was so dominant that one-party hege-mony was a threat. It won the presidential runoffwith 68% of the vote and 207 of 262 municipalelections, including all of the twenty largestmunicipalities in the country. It won 39 seats inthe Assembly, four short of a majority, makingcontrol of it easy. It won far more votes in each of14 Departments than the second place party.

These results cemented a trend. ARENA hadever more soundly thrashed the center rightChristian Democrats in legislative and presidentialelections in 1988, 1989, and 1991. Amidst bitterinternal disputes, the Christian Democrat votepercentages declined from 53% in 1984 and 1985,to 36% in 1988 and 89, to 28% in 1991, to 18%in 1994. ARENA decimated the vote of the right-ist PCN, the dominant party under the military ofthe 1960s and 1970s when PCN vote totals (fraud-ulent in some cases) ranged between 43% and90% in eleven elections. Through 1997 the PCNcould manage about 10% of the vote

Then in 1997 ARENA votes declined by200,000—one third of ARENA’s 1994 total, and theFMLN added 75,000 votes, 6 deputies and 35 munic-ipalities including the largest, San Salvador. TheFMLN increased again in 2000 and more or less heldits position in 2003. A year before the 1997 election,economic growth slowed significantly. Poverty hasbeen reduced only marginally. Remittances are themain source of increased income in a significant num-ber of families. This cannot be credited to ARENAand the families know it. ARENA has twice raised theregressive value added tax. In 1997 ARENA wastarred with corruption charges. El Salvador remaineda world leader in crime, as it has been since the begin-ning of the ARENA administrations (though in theyear before the 2004 election manySalvadorans noted a decrease in crime).Finally, voting success in 1994 gave theFMLN a more ample campaign chest ofpublic financing.

In 2000 ARENA was down 160,000votes from 1994 and the FMLN was up135,000, a 295,000-vote swing out of1.2 to 1.4 million votes. ARENA hadfallen ten percentage points and theFMLN had gained 14. In 2000 ARENAdid not win any of the 15 largest munici-palities (as measured by total votes cast).The PDC won the third largest city, SanMiguel, the PCN the department capital

of Usulatán, and the FMLN took the rest. TheFMLN’s Dr. Héctor Silva was reelected mayor SanSalvador (in a coalition) over ARENA by a marginten points higher (56% to 39%) than in 1997.

In 2003, ARENA gained back 3-4 medium sizedcities of the 15 and San Miguel. The FMLN sweptthe largest municipalities in the San Salvador metro-politan area and also again took (in coalition with theCDU) the 2nd largest city Santa Ana. This suggeststhat the FMLN has done well governing larger urbanareas (though local governments have by U.S. stan-dards very little ability to raise revenue). The FMLNwas a rural guerrilla army, and is now mainly anurban electoral party. ARENA won as many munici-palities as the next two parties combined. But manyof these are small towns. (In the Departments of SanMiguel and Chalatenango, the average municipalpopulation, not counting the largest municipality inthe department, is 10,000 and 4,800 respectively.) Itis also in rural areas that the PCN draws its votes.

In a sense, the FMLN’s ability to transform itselffrom a guerrilla army into a party that could finishsecond in 1994 and then make major gains by1997 and solidify them, avoided one-party rule inEl Salvador.

The PCN has increased its vote somewhat (to13% in 2003), but its substantial gains in theAssembly are mainly due to a combination of thedecline of the PDC in rural areas, and the structureof El Salvador’s system of proportional representa-tion voting. The multimember electoral depart-ments and a national slate of 20 deputy candidatesprovide the seats to the three smaller parties. Of the14 Departments, the 8 smallest each have three seats(though on the basis of population 4 of them shouldhave only 2 seats.). The PCN has consistently fin-


Deputies Municipalities

ARENA 39 28 29 27 207 162 127 113

FMLN 21 27 31 31 13 48 67 61

FMLN coalition — — — 2 3 10 12

PCN 4 11 14 16 10 18 33 50

PDC 18 7 5 5 29 15 16 15

PDC coalition — 3 — 0 — 4 — 11

CDU (& PD’00) 1 2 3 5 0 0 4 5+6

Other 1 6 2 0 3 11 5 0

ished a distant third in all 8, just enough to win thethird seat. Stated differently in 2003 the PCN won13% of the vote, about twice as much as both thePDC and the CDU, but it won more than threetimes as many seats as each of those two parties.

These reversals have complicated ARENA’s rolein the Assembly. ARENA in 1994 needed fourvotes for a majority, since 1997 it has needed 14-16 votes. By 2000 the PCN could extract fromARENA the presidency of the Assembly (as a wayof warding off an FMLN presidency which theFMLN expected in 2000 as the party with thelargest number of seats.) The PCN could occasion-ally compromise with the FMLN on issues (ruraldebt for example) either as a way of gaining sup-port in rural areas or simply to show ARENA thatits support was not automatic.

With 31 seats, the FMLN can on its own blockmeasures that require a 56 vote qualified majority,a significant bargaining weapon. ARENA had toreach an accord with the FMLN over SupremeCourt appointments. International treaties andloans need a 56-vote majority. Passage of the bud-get usually carries with it the need for debt financ-ing. Despite ARENA losses the FMLN has notmade major inroads in ARENA’s ability to governthe country. The executive branch has much power,and ARENA presidents have been able to count ontotal loyalty from the ARENA Assembly bench

Presidential Elections and Internal PartyPolitics. ARENA’s Calderón Sol in 1994 was aproven vote getter having been elected as mayor ofSan Salvador, but ARENA’s next two presidentialcandidates, Francisco Flores and Tony Saca wererelatively unknown and uncharismatic candidates(though Tony Saca, elected this year, had been aradio and TV “personality.”). Internal divisionsmay have prevented FMLN victories in both ofthose elections. Following the 1994 election theFMLN had its first public battle, and two of thefive former guerrilla groups left the coalition andtook their 7 deputies with them. (These groupsfell off the political map in 1997.)

In 1999 Flores smashed FMLN candidateFacundo Guardado 51% to 29%. Just before theelection the FMLN suffered from a bruising, highlypublic factional fight. It took three conventionsbefore the party slumped to the nomination ofGuardado. In the first convention television viewerscould witness a din of raucous catcalling basicallyshouting down the candidacy of Héctor Silva, asso-

ciated with the renovation faction, who was theparty’s one proven individual vote getter followinghis spectacular 1997 victory in San Salvador.Historic commanders Shafik Handal (of the formerSalvadoran Communist Party), and SalvadorSánchez Cerén (from the FPL, the largest of the 5guerrilla groups.) headed the revolutionary socialistor orthodox faction. The struggle had begun over ayear earlier when the Guardado group had more orless captured the party apparatus. Following thefight the FMLN went down in the polls.

By 2004 most of the renovadores were out of theparty, including Hector Silva following disputesover internal party procedures and over the severalstrikes by doctors in the public health care system,which the government was attempting to privatizeby slices. In 2003 the FMLN won in San Salvadorwithout Silva as candidate, proving the vote get-ting power of the party flag. The control of Handaland Sánchez in the party was consolidated. (Silvaran this year in a CDU/PDC coalition.)

Handal, who headed one of the smallest groupsin the former FMLN coalition, has been able totake advantage of splits, first after 1994, and thensplits among former FPL leaders (such asGuardado and Sánchez Cerén). Handal, somewhatlike Daniel Ortega, has been the last one standingafter all of the post 1994 political fights.

So Handal gained the party’s nomination for the2004 presidential run. There was a challenge fromOscar Ortiz, the young mayor of Nueva San Salvador,the second largest municipality in the greater SanSalvador area. According to sources, there were ques-tions about the accuracy of the vote count of dele-gates at the convention, but when the top committeeof the Party backed Handal and asked Ortiz to sup-port him, he acquiesced. The nomination of Handalcame despite ten years of public opinion polls thatshowed Handal to have high negatives. An indefati-gable debater and polemicist, Handal never passes upa chance for a public argument and a lengthy state-ment. Handal did have far more name recognitionthat Ortiz, but then Saca was not well known either.Though party campaign managers tried to emphasizeHandal’s more charming and grandfatherly sides,Saca trounced him.

Had the party united behind Silva in 1999 or2004, a more mild mannered and avuncular candi-date, he might have won over the bland Flores orSaca, but apart from ideological differences, thatwould have raised the issue of control of the party—


not something Handal was willing to forego.Following the 2004 defeat there were instant calls fora restructuring of the party, quickly shouldered asideby Handal’s backers who called for unity and pointedout that Handal had gained a very large number ofvotes in the high turnout election. The issues willarise again in the FMLN’s convention this year.

Handal remains chief of the FMLN bench in theAssembly. He is not about to retire. The prospectsfor 2006 are unclear. Handal has been in politics forforty years or more. The other main leader, SánchezCerén is more an insider than a public campaigner.

By contrast, ARENA’s candidate selection andcampaign ran like a well oiled machine. ARENAhas traditionally had an extreme top down form ofparty organization. The party convention always rat-ifies by acclamation the decisions of COENA, thecentral committee, and the legislative bench followsCOENA orders. This has been modified somewhatin recent years following complaints about COENAselection of local candidates. On the other hand, thecomposition of COENA has changed several timessince 1994, sometimes following electoral set backs.ARENA has had its internal battles, but it keepsthem relatively private. Outside observers areroughly in the position of Kremlin watchers duringthe Cold War, relying on hints and rumors and avery few leaks. It may not be a particularly democ-ratic organization (though there is clearly give andtake within COENA), but no one individual hasbeen able to run the party for long since the death ofD’Aubuisson.

A central difference between the FMLN andARENA is that ARENA has been able to maintainhigh levels of unity come election time even whenthere have been internal battles, and some of itsinternal battles have followed election losses—abetter pattern than the FMLN’s tendency to dukeit out before elections.

However, it would be a mistake to attributeARENA’s presidential victories only to the unityof its organization.

Handal’s loss was also due to a fear campaignmounted by ARENA with heavy verbal contribu-tions from the U.S. ARENA is used to pinning warviolence on the FMLN. In this election ARENAshowed an armed Handal in a 20-year old phototalking to a young teenaged guerrilla, with a cap-tion saying something like this is not how we wantto educate our kids. (There are very high levels ofyouth violent crime in El Salvador. The ARENA

government went on an offensive against gangsbefore the election.) This was normal politics,ARENA style. What was different in this cam-paign, compared to 1994 and 1999, was that theU.S. weighed in by saying that a Handal victorywould raise serious questions for the U.S., questionsthat might even involve its policies towardSalvadoran immigrants and the flow of dollars fromthem back to their families. Handal is a friend ofFidel Castro, had not been sympathetic following9/11, had not been cooperative on drug war matters,and had regularly lambasted the U.S. for its freetrade policies—all in sharp contrast to ARENA.

The U.S. has limits on the amount of moneyCubans can send back to Cuba. No Cubans wouldever be sent back to Cuba, but hundreds of thou-sands of Salvadorans are in the U.S. illegally or areunder temporary visas. A reduction in remittancesand/or the deportation of significant numbers ofSalvadorans would be absolute disaster for theSalvadoran economy, and all Salvadorans know it.

The question of whether ARENA would acceptan FMLN victory in a presidential election, partic-ularly if it had also lost practical control of theAssembly, remains an open, if not frequentlyasked, question. Theorists of democratic transi-tions note the bourgeois or big business interests,during a transition from authoritarian govern-ments will accept a new electoral playing field if itis not detrimental to its fundamental interests. Inthe most recent Presidential election, statementsby high level members of ARENA about theinability of the FMLN to govern and the highlypublic warnings by the U.S. did not diminishdoubts about this question. But because theneoliberals have reduced the scope of state func-tions, a left victory might not be so threatening.

The FMLN has been a sea of unity compared to fif-teen years of internecine battles in the ChristianDemocrats. Pre-election struggles for control of theparty flag lead to declines in votes, which lead torecriminations and struggle for the reduced resources,which lead to the next cycle. Some PDC struggleshave been highly public (such as front page pictures ofa dissident group trying to tear down the metal doorsof the party headquarters) and highly damaging.

The CDU has never had much support outside ofSan Salvador, with the exception of some pockets ofstrength in the Department of Sonsonate. The menin long term leadership are energetic, committed,and widely respected; they are keen analysts.


ELECTIONS AND PARTIES IN GUATEMALA

In Guatemala election success seems to predictdecline and then irrelevance. The story ofGuatemalan party instability runs like this:

The Christian Democratic Party (DCG) won bigin 1985 in a multiparty election with 51 of 100congressional seats, more than double its closestopponent, and 70% of the presidential runoff votefor Vinicio Cerezo. In 1990 it won less than 25%of congressional seats and did not make the presi-dential runoff. In 1995 it won 3 of 80 seats (andshared two others in coalition candidacies). In1999 the party got 4% of the vote.

The DCG’s chief competitor in 1985 was theUCN (Unión del Centro Nacional); it won a quar-ter of the seats, and one third in 1990 when itspresidential candidate, Jorge Carpio Nicolle, madethe runoff, but lost in the 2nd round with 32% ofthe vote. In 1995 it won 2 seats.

Carpio Nicolle lost to Jorge Serrano of the MASparty who won 68% in the 2nd round, but hisMAS party won but 18 of 116 seats. Then theparty disappeared.

In 1990 a relatively new political party, the probusiness PAN (Partido de Avanzada Nacional) won15% of the congressional vote and the mayorship ofthe capital city. Then in 1995 it won 43 of 80 con-gressional seats, and its candidate, wealthy business-man Alvaro Arzú, won the Presidency in the 2nd

round with 51% of the vote. Analysts immediatelysaw in PAN a new Guatemalan version of ARENA, aprediction that proved to be completely unfounded.

PAN declined in 1999 winning a third of thecongressional seats (and 27% of the vote); its presi-dential candidate Oscar Berger lost in the secondround with 32% of the vote. This setback wasquickly followed by schism in its congressionalbench when 16 of its 37 members bolted. Bergerlater left the party to run for president in 2003 onanother ticket. In 2003 PAN plunged to about 9%of the presidential and legislative votes.

The party of Ríos Montt, the FRG, like the PAN,entered the electoral fray in 1990 and did about aswell as the PAN. Like the PAN it leapt ahead in1995, filling the vacuum left by the decline of theUCN, MAS and DCG winning a quarter of the con-gressional seats. Its presidential candidate AlfonsoPortillo, chosen by the General when his own candi-dacy was prohibited because he had taken control ofthe state in 1982 by way of military coup, lost to

Arzú in a 2nd round squeaker. The FRG’s ascendancypeaked in 1999, along with PAN’s first round ofdecline, when Portillo easily defeated Berger with68% of the vote, after getting nearly 48% of the votein the first round. The FRG controlled the Congresswith 56% of the seats and won 151 municipalities.

In 2003, after some manipulations, Ríos Monttwas permitted to run, but he consistently trailedin the polls. On election day he finished a distantthird, and the FRG declined to a quarter of thecongressional seats.

It should be mentioned here that the U.S. does notonly enter the electoral process by making its nega-tive feelings heard against leftist candidates who havea chance of winning, as in the cases of Handal and,over 4 elections in Nicaragua, Ortega. Though itspoke with a softer voice in Guatemala it did notfavor Ríos Montt, likely due to concerns about linksbetween the FRG and organized crime and the con-siderable drug trade that passes through Guatemala.(There is no solid evidence HI knows of about suchlinks with Ríos Montt.) Following the electionsPresident Portillo fled the country to escape corrup-tion charges and Ríos Montt was placed under housearrest due to charges stemming from his role in theviolent pre-election demonstration. Ríos Montt is thegodfather of the FRG and in his late 70s. It is notclear how well it will hold together.

Berger was elected running for the GANAcoalition of three small parties. It won, on 4 sepa-rate slates one third of the seats in Congress. Hismain opponent, Álvaro Colom, who was also a can-didate in 1999 and who also quit the party thatbacked him in 1999 to form a new party, saw hisparty win one fifth of the seats.

Is there a “Guatemalan rule” where success pre-dicts decline and then failure? Perhaps not. Ratherthere may be a series of unique explanations. TheDCG decline was part of a pattern of newly electedLatin American political parties that followedauthoritarian governments. The great majority lostin the next election because, analysts said, the expec-tations they created were dashed when economies didnot leap forward. That would certainly have been thecase in Guatemala with the DCG. The MAS disap-peared when its founder, Serrano, made a failedattempt at a military coup. The UCN declined whenits main leader Carpio Nicolle was assassinated. ThePAN declined due to internal schism and the FRGdue to rampant corruption while in office.


But it could be that there is a Guatemalan Rule.Of the parties mentioned above the MAS, UCNand FRG were dominated by one party boss orcaudillo. If the caudillo runs into trouble, or whenthere is no plan for succession, such parties candwindle. The lack of strong parties could also havecreated a dynamic that amounts to a vicious circle.In Guatemala, with a history of rapid party decline,a member of Congress might quit his or her partythinking it may not have much to offer in fouryears, and meanwhile the member of Congress canbe an independent agent with his vote, a valuablecommodity. After the 1999 election about half thePAN bench bolted to form the Unionist party, andthen some of its members bolted. Colom left hisparty and two FRG members in Congress quit theparty. There was similar, though less dramatic,shuffling in the opening weeks of the new Congressin 2004. And in the 2003 election it was not aparty but a complex coalition of parties that won.Complex coalitions like caudillo parties where thecaudillo has a heart condition are often organiza-tions that do not have a long future.

There may not be a Guatemalan Rule of rapidparty decline, but only the duration of sustainableparties would prove that there is not a rule. Thefact that Berger headed a coalition ticket and facesa mountain of difficult tasks and that Ríos Monttand the FRG are in real trouble suggests that theleading contenders in the next round of electionsmay emerge from different organizations.

This would mean that five elections after thefirst civilian election in Guatemala in 1985 thosewho vote (and turnout has been low) still have littleidea of what they are getting when they cast theirvotes. One could say that’s true in most electionsbecause candidates present one face for the electionand another during their term in office and manyvoters know little. (In 1992 polls demonstratedthat by far the best known fact about PresidentBush was that he hated broccoli!) But inGuatemala (and Central America) the legislativecandidates are mostly unknown names on a partylist. The extremely important advantage of propor-tional representation over the U.S. winner take all,single member districts, is that if a party gets 25%of the vote, it will get about 25% of the seats. Sovoting for the party means something if the partymeans something. But that proportionality is lost,as are the voters’ votes, if two weeks after the elec-tion the party with 25% of the seats discovers that

several of its deputies have just left to form anotherparty or for individual reasons. That is not what“representative” government is supposed to be.

ELECTIONS AND PARTIES IN NICARAGUA

In the three elections in Nicaragua following theSandinistas’ 1984 wartime election victory DanielOrtega has lost three times by large margins.

Perhaps there is no “Ortega loses rule” butunique explanations. In 1990 he was defeated byperhaps the only possible candidate who could, thewidow Chamorro who had kept her politicallydivided family more or less together during the war,and who could, it was hoped, heal the nation. Butshe headed a coalition of 13 parties far more frac-tious than her family. Within weeks of the electionthe UNO coalition had broken. The main group,still divided into ten or so parties, took a more hardline stance against the Sandinistas and wantedChamorro to take a more aggressive stance. A shift-ing minority occasionally sided with Chamorro. Toget legislation through Chamorro had to deal withthe Sandinistas. This was apostasy to the hardliners.

In 1996 Ortega was defeated again by perhapsthe only candidate who could, Arnoldo Alemán.Following six years of campaigning, Alemán knittogether the hardliners into the LiberalConstitutional Party and became king of the party.He defeated Ortega in a contentious election withconsiderable voting irregularities in portions oftwo large districts—Managua and Matagalpa.Ortega claimed fraud and blamed the electionauthority. But the election was not close.

Accused by the Sandinistas of being anotherSomoza, Alemán faced four conditions Somozanever dreamed of. He did not control the military.He faced a large bench of Sandinistas in the legis-lature. He came to office following constitutionalchanges that had been fashioned in the previousAssembly by maverick Sandinistas along withother independents that limited presidential powerin favor of the Assembly over such things asSupreme Court appointments. Finally, under theconstitutional changes, he could not run in 2001.

His representatives fashioned a massive pact withthe Sandinistas at the end of 1999. The pact bene-fited both leaders to the exclusion of other interests.Alemán had been plagued by an aggressive, inves-tigative Comptroller General. The pact changedthat office to a 5 person body, elected by the


Assembly, who then choose a Comptroller and vicecomptroller from among the five. The pact expand-ed the Supreme Electoral Council from five to sevenand the Supreme Court from 12 to 16. Those whofilled the expanded posts, and other posts that emp-tied when terms ran out, were carefully balancedgroups of PLC and FSLN stalwarts with the PLCholding a slim majority each institution.Independents or sympathizers of other political par-ties were forced out, though the configuration in theSupreme Court remained unclear for a few years.The pact also made it more difficult to strip a sit-ting president of immunity from prosecution andprovided a place in the Assembly (and immunity)for the former President and for the 2nd place fin-isher (Ortega) in a presidential election. This pointwas key to Ortega, who had been charged with yearsof sexual child abuse by his stepdaughterZoilamérica Narvaez, and to Alemán who could seecharges of corruption coming down the road.

The pact also changed the electoral laws to restrictparty eligibility. It was true that the laws were tooopen. Public financing, for example, provided anincentive to enter the election just to get the funds(by way of loans which tended not to be repaid), andthe method of calculating votes and drawing districtsmade it possible for small parties to get a deputy in alarge district with a tiny percentage of the vote.However the changes transformed Nicaragua as theLatin American country with the most open gates forsmall political parties, to the most restricted. Thirty-six parties participated in the 1996 elections andnine small parties won a total of 15 seats. Only threeparties were able to register for the 2001 elections.

The pact also eased rules for presidential election,calling for a run off only when none of the candi-dates got as much as 35% of the vote. For Ortega,who gained 38% and 40% of the vote in his previ-ous two losing contests, this represented a gamblethat a third party (probably the Conservative Party)would divide the anti Sandinista vote with the PLCand allow him to win in the first round (whereaswith a 50% requirement he would be defeated in a2nd round when the anti Sandinista groups, backedby the U.S. would ally against him). For Alemán,the new runoff rule represented a gamble that nostrong third party would qualify.

Alemán won that gamble, and in 2001 Ortegalost to perhaps the only candidate who could defeathim. (Chamorro decided not to run, and Alemáncould not.) Alemán anointed his Vice President,

Enrique Bolaños, as candidate. He had long stand-ing national recognition and impeccable antiSandinista credentials. Early in his term Alemán wasfond of saying that he picked Bolaños as VP becausethe Sandinistas would not dare to assassinateAlemán because they would end up with Bolaños.

So Ortega’s three loses may be a series of uniqueevents rather than an “Ortega loses” rule, but as inthe case of the alleged “Guatemalan rule” it nowmust be proven that there is no such rule. AsOrtega came close to announcing his candidacy forthe next election days after his most recent defeat,the rule will be put to the test again.

Bolaños complicated Alemán’s calculations, withcovert backing from the U.S., and prosecutedAlemán for corruption. Alemán lost his immunity,was convicted and was reduced to pleading forhouse arrest in his spacious mansion owing tosevere health problems (obesity, high blood pres-sure, etc.) When a Sandinista judge (appointedunder the pact by Alemán) reversed the housearrest some months ago dozens of police had to besent to execute the order as frantic PLC loyalistsattempted to protect their leader from going to jail.

Alemán, however, remains in firm control of hisparty. He and loyalists believe some political dealwill get him out of jail. And Bolaños is in a posi-tion rather similar to that of President Chamorro.He can count on only a few dissident PLC votes inthe Assembly. He has twice attempted to form anew party. He must bargain with either the PLC orthe Sandinistas to get legislation through. LatelyBolaños seems to be making an unusual number ofpolitical protocol trips abroad. He may have givenup on governing and, of course, cannot succeedhimself as president.

ELECTORAL SYSTEMS ANDPARTICIPATION

The Rules. Each of the three countries has presi-dential run off elections when no candidate getsmore that 50%, or in Nicaragua, 35%. Each usesproportional representation to choose deputies frommultimember electoral districts based on popula-tion, and one national district to serve in unicameralnational legislatures. The voter chooses among partyselected and ranked slates of candidates for the legis-lature on two ballots—one for the district in whichthe voter resides, the other for the “national list.”The seats for a department and the national list are


awarded according to the proportion of the votewon by the party. Thus, smaller parties can have achance to win in large departments and from the“national list.” (If a department gets 20 deputies,5% of the vote will garner one seat for a party, but itwon’t in a small rural department that gets 3 seats.)

Each department is made up of municipalities.(Despite the urban flavor of this term in English,most municipalities in the three countries are ruralareas with a small city as the administrative centerof the municipalities. Rural municipalities aremore like counties in the U.S.) Mayors and citycouncils are elected in each, with the size of thecouncil depending on the size of the municipality.

The Departments would correspond to States inthe U.S., but they are geographic areas formedwell before the 20th century, which currently havelittle or no governance function. Municipalities dohave a governing function but have a minusculeability to raise their own funds through taxes andfees, and depend upon the national government formost of their budgets. Though there has been amove in recent years (encouraged by the U.S.) toincrease local budgets, municipal budget remainquite low, as a portion of overall governmentalbudgets in the nation, by comparison with theU.S. and Brazil. Police, health and schools are allfunded from the national budget.

In El Salvador, municipal and legislative electionsare held every 3 years and presidential contests every5 years (They coincided in 1994 and will again in2009.) In Guatemala they are on the same year. TheNicaraguans had them in the same year and thenchanged municipal elections to off years.

The Electoral Authority. A national electoralauthority, (the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, TSE,or Supreme Electoral Council, CSE, in Nicaragua)supervises national and local elections, and is ruledby a group of magistrates who are elected by thenational legislatures to terms of office. Some or allmagistrates must come from the parties that gotthe most votes in the previous election, and some(depending on the country) are to be independents.The authority sets the calendar, arranges voter reg-istration and balloting and, in most cases, canadjudicate disputes within and between partiesbased upon party rules and legal norms.

The rules of establishing a party vary; so do therules for forming national and departmental andlocal coalitions. It is possible for local committees

that do not have national stature to run candidatesfor local office.

The selection of magistrates and lower level offi-cials for the electoral authorities has been a matterof contention. The composition of the authority wasan issue in the peace negotiations in El Salvador andNicaragua. The FMLN won changes in its structureprior to the signing of the peace accords, and theopposition parties in Nicaragua reduced theSandinista presence among the five magistrates froma majority to a minority (with one independent) asone of the conditions for participation in 1990.There has been a contest this year in El Salvador.The composition of the CSE in Nicaragua was acentral issue in the Alemán-Ortega pact in 1999,and it was changed before that in 1996. Accordingto some observers, the FRG in Guatemala usedpressure and sympathetic magistrates to attempt tomake Ríos Montt eligible for the ballot in last year’selection. One idea is that with party representativesall watching each other fairness will result andunfairness will be spotted. Another idea is to profes-sionalize the whole operation so as to take politicsout of it. The approaches in Central America havebeen mixed, and the formulas selected have notalways been determinate of performance.

For example, the TSE in El Salvador has beencriticized for being too political, for having toomuch patronage in the large staff which must con-duct the elections, and for having rules which allowindividual magistrates to have virtual veto power.The composition was supposed to be made lesspolitical by having two independent magistrateschosen by the Supreme Court. However, accordingto one magistrate on the TSE in 2004, it was theindependents that were the problem, not the ideo-logically diverse magistrates. They worked togethervery smoothly and professionally, he said, but oneof the independents simply didn’t understand thetechnical issues or the important role of computers.

However, the TSE also came in for substantialcriticism this year. Prior to the election a computersimulation revealed that the computers were easy topenetrate. Fortunately technical experts from theOAS were able to correct that problem. The TSE,said critics, was not sufficiently active in admonish-ing or sanctioning parties for violations of cam-paign rules or running less than civil campaigns.The campaign was so ugly that even formerARENA president Armando Calderón Sol, noshrinking violet, criticized both of the parties for


their behavior. The newsprint media is far betterthan its rabid right wing days during the war, butthere is little standard of balance in an election. Itand almost all of the TV were blatantly in favor ofARENA. There are no limits or even reporting ofcampaign finance, save for public financing of cam-paigns. Though the lack of rules makes the TSErelatively powerless, the magistrates did not usetheir high visibility to even admonish behavior.There are proposals for reform of the electoral laws.

The TSE can point to a vast increase in turnoutin this year’s election following several elections ofdesultory turnouts. As HI has pointed out in pre-vious reports part of the turnout problem was dueburdensome registration problems caused by sepa-rate voting cards and ID cards, lack of birth certifi-cates and geographically centralized registrationand voting centers. Polling data also indicated thatlack of voting was also due to cynicism about poli-tics.

However, in 2004 all observers were stunned atthe turnout of 2.3 million voters, over a millionmore than the 1999 presidential elections. Part ofthis was due to the nature of the campaign and itsantecedents. ARENA (and the U.S.) ran a veryeffective, demagogic fear campaign and high stakescampaign with implications that Salvadorans in theU.S. face limits on sending money home or losetheir temporary visa status. ARENA’s vote dou-bled. But the FMLN vote also went up dramatical-ly. The FMLN increase was very likely due to morecitizens being fed up with lack of economicprogress during the last decade of ARENA govern-ments, the same reasons ARENA has lost relativeto the FMLN in legislative elections.

Turnout also seems due to progress the TSE hasmade in voter registration even given the difficultgeographic circumstances, with another 300,000voters registered over 1999, much closer to theestimates of the entire voting age population. Mostimportant, following a decade of urging on the partof the U.S., the UN and many other governmentsEl Salvador finally legislated and implemented aUnitary Identification Document (DUI) with pho-tos. As the card is good for all sorts of transactionspeople don’t lose it, and it makes registering againif one moves much easier. It also speeds voting, asthe voter lists also have the matching photos, so thelines moved at a faster clip.

It was notable that a commission of Guatemalanlegislators wanted to consult with the TSE in El

Salvador about the advantages of the DUI, afterthey saw the spectacular turnout results of theMarch election.

In Guatemala, interview evidence suggests thatin general the method of selecting magistrates hasnot been all that important because the staff of theTSE is relatively free of patronage and has beenaround for well over a decade, longer than any ofthe magistrates. It might also be that parties havebeen so weak that, with the exception of the FRG,they have not been able to dominate the TSE. So itknows the ropes and can function, in the main,free of political pressures.

However analysts say political influence playeda large role in 2003. Ríos Montt used the FRGcontrol of the government to good advantage plac-ing two loyalists among the magistrates in theSupreme Electoral Tribunal and two on theConstitutional Court. Months in advance of theelection, on what his adversaries quickly labeled“Black Thursday” Ríos Montt covertly organized amassive and threatening demonstration in whichone person was killed that was an attempt, inessence, to force his candidacy. The TSE and thenthe Constitutional Court later found a loophole inthe constitution that permitted his candidacy.

And the law that the TSE administers makesregistration and voting difficult, particularly forthe poor in rural areas and among them Mayans,and among them, Mayan women. Turnout, as dis-cussed below, has been poor.

Nicaragua had a model governmental institu-tion in its electoral authority, the CSE, and dam-aged it severely by politicizing it twice in threeyears. Though the Sandinistas were reduced to aminority in 1990 the top magistrate of the CSEcontinued to be Mariano Fiallos, a Sandinista, sowidely respected that both in 1990 and again in1995 (with the FSLN in a minority in theAssembly) he was re-elected with little opposition.Fiallos and his top staff member, Rosa MarinaZelaya, were careful to select national and locallevel staff based on competence, not on politicalloyalties. This is not to say that the CSE was total-ly apolitical, but even the State Department in1984 could not find fault with the technical con-duct of the election, and in 1990 with the massiveinternational presence, and with Elliot Richardson,a lifelong member of the Republican Party, repre-senting the UN Secretary General, the CSE passedall tests, all of the stressful, with flying colors.


In late 1995 the Assembly changed the law tostipulate that political parties would name officials tothe department and municipal electoral councils.Fiallos resigned in protest, fearful that this politiciza-tion would destroy what had been built. Zelayareplaced him. At the time the CSE had been waitingfor several years for legislative authorization to issuepermanent photographic ID cards. In the two previ-ous elections during registration voters were given atemporary ID good for that election only TheAssembly finally authorized them and then providedthe CSE with a totally inadequate budget to imple-ment the changes, train the new local officials, andadminister the election to a much larger population.

Key to the success in 1984 and 1990 of gettingvery high voter turnouts (75%) was the CSE’s deci-sion to decentralize voter registration and voting tothe most local level. In a rural country where thevast majority does not have access to reliable orcheap public transportation, much less cars, this wasvital. But it also greatly complicates administrationof the elections. And in 1996 there was a very largein the number of voting tables, all of which had tobe staffed by trained personnel. (There were some4200 tables in 1990. When 400,000 more votersregistered in 1996 than had been anticipated bycensus projections the number of tables expanded towell over 8000. Though there were manifest prob-lems with the registration process, no one detectedfraud in this large expansion of voters.)

In 1996 the election system provided multipleincentives for new parties to enter the contest. So theTSE had to check the credentials of over 32,000 can-didates (in a nation of 4.5 million). In short, the CSEwas under a new (though veteran) leader; it had vast-ly increased responsibilities; little money and a locallevel staff that was not only politicized but complete-ly inexperienced. Many voters did not get the ID’s intime so temporary cards and a delivery system had tobe improvised. The CSE staggered into election day.

On election day and during and after the countthe system broke down in several places. Followingtwo exemplary elections, the newspapers carrieddevastating (and not representative) photos of ballotboxes thrown into ditches. Ortega, who appeared tohave lost, charged that Liberals had committedfraud and that the CSE, Zelaya in particular, hadcovered it up. Zelaya had been one of those who leftthe FSLN during the 1994 split in the party and,along with her husband, Jorge Samper, had joinedthe Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS). To

Ortega this had been treason that added fuel to thefire of his electoral fraud charges, particularly afterSamper squeaked into the Assembly by a very nar-row margin under complicated “tie breaking” rules,the only MRS candidate to make it.

After months of examination most observers(including Hemisphere Initiatives) concluded thatthere might have been fraud at some local levels, butthat the mess had primarily been caused by an over-burdened system with inexperienced staff. The bal-lot boxes in the ditch, for example, were more likelythe result of polling place staff angered by havinghad to stay up most of the night for the count andthen having to wait long hours, without food, tohand in the ballot boxes and collect their pay.

However, under withering fire, the CSE neverissued a final report on the election. It previousstellar ratings in national polls dropped.

When a few years later Alemán and Ortega madetheir pact, the CSE was transformed again. The pactincreased the number of magistrates and dividedthem among the PLC and FSLN. They took pains tofire Zelaya, probably illegally, a few months beforeher term had ended. She sued over this and over theprocedures used to amend the constitution, but lost.The new magistrates in place quickly threw outlong standing and highly meritorious staff.

What had been a model example of high qualitypublic administration in Central America hadbeen, through thoughtless and manipulative poli-tics turned into a downgraded haven for patronageand partisan politics. The theory offered by bothAlemán and Ortega was that the integrity of theCSE under the new arrangement was guaranteedbecause the two antagonists could be relied uponas being each other’s watchdogs. That in fact was ageneral rationale for the pact, and that streetprotests would be replaced by institutionalizedforms of conflict resolution.

However after municipal elections and then theAssembly and presidential contests of 2001 therewere major disputes over the count and the certifi-cation of winners and street demonstrations. In2001 the Sandinista magistrates walked out toprevent a quorum, and then claimed that the certi-fication of winners by the CSE had been illegal.They took the matter to an appeals court in whichthe three judge panel had two Sandinistas and gota stay. Eventually the situation was resolved.Counting 1996, when there were serious problemsas noted, that made three consecutive elections,


following the two waves of politicization of theCSE, after which the Sandinistas protested, eventu-ally accepted the legality of the results, but not thelegitimacy of the election.

There is evidence that the administration of theCSE may have deteriorated as well. The process ofgetting permanent photo id cards to voters begunin 1996 may not yet have been completed by theCSE. An August 2004 headline by a private newsagency that seems to have occupied the website ofthe CSE warned readers that the final deadline forcitizens to get their IDs was imminent and thatthere were interminable lines at (more centralized)registration places.

Turnout. Since the first rounds of elections in the1980s both Guatemala and, until 2004, ElSalvador had been plagued with low voter turnout,among the lowest in Latin America.

Turnout in Nicaragua has been, by far, the bestof the three countries, 73 to 78% of voting agepopulation (VAP).

In Guatemala almost 50% of VAP turned out in1985; this dropped by 10 points in 1990 anddescended to 33% in 1995 ranking it last in LatinAmerica. (In two crucial constitutional referendaturnout was far lower, well under 20 %.). Howeverthe recent vote levels suggest an upturn, perhapsbecause of voter registration drives. Registration in1999 as a percent of VAP went up ten points to81%, and total votes increased the VAP percent to44%. In 2003 the increase in total votes of overtwenty percent suggests that the trend may be up.

Turnout in El Salvador declined from nearly 50%of VAP in 1984 and 1985, to the low 40s; thenbounced back up to fifty percent for the 1994 “elec-tions of the century” and then declined to the high30s. Then there was the huge turnout this year.

These calculations are approximate because ofproblems with the census in each country caused inpart by growing out migration to the U.S., and forNicaraguans, to Costa Rica. The migration factor isthe largest in El Salvador, but in no one has anaccurate count of migrants. None of the countrieshave mechanisms in place for absentee balloting.Establishing them would be a monumental task.

Each of the three countries tend to report turnoutas a percent of registered voters, rather than a percentof the voting age population, and this can create addi-tional distortions because each of the three countrieshas had problems with its voter registration lists,

though Nicaragua would seem to have fewer prob-lems, in part because its lists are newer due to its useof ad hoc lists and voting cards in 1984 and 1990.

These lists contain names of the dead becauseelection authorities rely on under funded munici-palities to report the deceased. If a citizen movesthe process of changing registration can also becomplicated. Registered migrants cannot vote.Some who have registered have not yet picked uptheir voter cards, so cannot vote.

In El Salvador and Guatemala voters and thosewanting to register must travel to the municipalcenter. For registration this can require severaltrips—to fill out the paperwork, perhaps to returnagain if there was some problem with a birth certifi-cate, to return again at a time that can only beguessed to pick up the voting document, perhaps toreturn again if it was not ready, and then to returnagain to vote. In rural areas where the worse povertyis centered, this means taking a good deal of timeand either walking miles or paying a bus fare. Thissystem has a clear bias against the poor, and inGuatemala, a particular bias against Mayans who aremostly rural and also face language barriers.

In, an important book by Horacio Boneo andEdelberto Torres Rivas called ¿Por qué no votan losguatelmaltecos? (Why Don’t Guatemalans Vote?)(2001), the authors cite two large, (though notnationally representative) polls by two indepen-dent organizations in which 77% to 81% of non-voters said they would vote if voting centers werebrought to their community. In a 1999 nationalsurvey in Guatemala by Borge and Associates,53% of respondents said it took over 20 minutesto go from home to the polling place and 5% saidit took one to three hours. In the rural municipali-ty of Santa Cruz del Quiché 2/3 of the populationof 30,000 live in 62 tiny population centers, 38 ofwhich range from five to twenty miles (8 to 33kilometers) from the municipal center. This is notan extreme case.

In Nicaragua the decentralized system formed bythe Sandinistas in 1984 has remained. Its principalis to move the registration and voting processes towhere the voters live, so voting centers are spreadto remote rural areas. This creates administrativelogistical problems, but it minimizes the logisticalproblems of the citizenry. It’s a better system.

In all of the countries, according to survey data,individual and cultural factors affect registration andturnout as do attitudes toward the process. In general



Long standing undemocratic governmentscombined with extensive and, in rural areas,worsening poverty and increased landless-

ness were principle forces that led to the leftistrebellions and civil wars. The new Sandinista gov-ernment implemented one land reform againstSomoza and his allies by confiscation and then twoyears later another against owners who were, theSandinistas said, decapitalizing. This one was byforced sale with compensation in bonds. They alsolaunched a much heralded short run literacy cam-paign and sent teachers to rural areas. Vaccinationand decentralized health services began to improvethe dismal health conditions in rural areas. Muchof this progress was arrested in the contra war.

In El Salvador, a new government backed by theU.S. started a land reform that was of roughlycomparable scale to that in Nicaragua and wasbacked by bonds to those forced to sell of consider-ably more reliability than those in Nicaragua. Alsoseveral thousand peasants were allowed to buysmall parcels of land they had been renting.

In Guatemala virtually nothing was done toredistribute land apart from some minor land pur-chase programs.

Prewar conditions in health and education werevery bad, particularly in rural areas, and the waradded to the damage.

LAND

The Peace Accords. The highly limited peaceaccords in Nicaragua provided large tracks of landin remote areas to demobilized contra fighters. Inmost cases the land was far removed from the placesof origins of the contras. They also offered contras,their families, and some refugees small resettlementpackages: some cash, six months of food, seeds andtools, some clothes. The contras soon found that this

land was inadequate, and many drifted back tonorthern regions closer to their former homes(where 85% of them had been landless). Meanwhiletens of thousands of Sandinista troops, manydraftees, were leaving the army. These includedhundreds who had fought against Somoza and thenspent the next decade in the war against the contras.

In El Salvador the peace negotiations establisheda mechanism to provide land to FMLN combatantsand to some 15,000 former government soldiers.The plan also dealt with families in war zones,many of them relatives of rebel fighters, who hadoccupied for months and years lands that had beenabandoned by the owners. Some of these had ownedlarge coffee estates, some had owned sizeable, butless well endowed tracts of land, some had beensmall landholders. The government suspendedevictions, and then erected with nearly 100%financing from the U.S. and European Union (EU),a land bank. The land bank would buy occupiedlands if the owner was willing to sell, or otherlands, and then sell them to the former combatantsor land occupiers by offering a loan (for the amountof the price that had been paid to the formerowner). The acronym for this land transfer programwas the PTT. The Salvadoran accords basically didnot address, in more than passing vague terms,other issues of poverty, education and health.

The Guatemalan accords (and earlier negotiationssurrounding the return of refugees) did address theissue of land for returning refugees and former com-batants and used government sale and resale of landsas their main mechanism. In some cases returningrefugees reclaimed the lands they had left. Formergovernment soldiers were not involved in the landprogram and the combatants from the URNG werea few hundred, compared to some 7000 FMLN com-batants and 15,000 government soldiers or 22,000estimated former contras. On the other hand, the

the young vote less. Those with little education voteand register less. In Guatemala women and Mayanshave lower rates of registration, though Mayans, onceregistered, vote as much as non Mayans. InGuatemala, according to polls cited by Boneo andTorres Rivas, about 27% of uneducated indigenouswomen said they had registered and 62% of nonMayan men with at least primary education said they

had registered. Of registered voters the voting ratefor women with no education was 35% and for menwith at least some education it was 60%. These arehuge gaps that reflect language and gender barriers,child care responsibilities, low income and discrimi-nation. They reflect the failure of the peace processesto address the issues of social equity and that failurein turn has undermined the democratic process.

LAND AND EQUITY

Guatemalan accords did explicitly address the issueof poverty in some of the most specific language ofthe accords. The government would increase spend-ing on health and education by 50% in five yearsand would increase the tax collections, in real terms,by 50% (as measured by the percent of GDP).

El Salvador’s PTT. The government negotiators didnot like the idea of forced land sales to groups ofFMLN combatants. It sounded like another agrarianreform and a reward to the FMLN. And the FMLNwould get land in groups that sounded to the conser-vative government like socialist collective ownership.The FMLN needed a tangible benefit for its follow-ers, not a peace process which simply gave their com-batants a chance, after over a decade of fighting, toelect FMLN leaders to the National Assembly. Thecompromise was reached when the government real-ized the potential for violence if judges attempted toevict land occupiers from several thousand pieces ofland. By this point in the negotiations it had alreadybeen agreed that the FMLN would not demobilize itscombatants for some months after the accords.

Moreover the international community backedthis part of the agreement with money and witharguments that the PTT, along with job trainingand credit programs to ex-combatants wouldinsure the war’s end and forestall a turn to bandit-ry by unemployed veterans.

A compromise was reached on the collective own-ership issue so that groups of families purchasing theland could later divide it into parcels if they so chose.Also, the government did not have the means toadminister in a short time title registration to tens ofthousands of people. So the PTT employed a hybridland title. A farm was conveyed to a list of individu-als—those who had occupied it and who had regis-tered for the program. Each had an individual mort-gage not to exceed a certain limit (around $3000).The sum of the individual mortgages equaled thesum of the purchase price, which equaled the sum ofthe price the government was paying to the title-holder, which in turn was a negotiated price based onmarket prices for soil and land types of similar lands.The individual mortgage, however, did not specifywhich slice of the farm the individual “owned”, norwas it clear what would happen to the whole farm ifone individual defaulted on the mortgage. Thehybrid legal form (called pro indiviso) made it diffi-cult for any one person to sell. FMLN supporterscomplained that after years of fighting the peace had

gained them the right to buy land (something theyhad before), a high mortgage and an unclear title.

Within five years, however, the owners of a par-cel could elect to subdivide their land. As it tookover 5 years to finish the PTT conveyances (overtwice as long as the original calendar), there seemedlittle hope that this subdivision process could beaccomplished. The ARENA government suspectedthat the FMLN wanted its followers to maintaingroup ownership for ideological reasons and alsobetter to organize them for political purposes.

The government’s insistence on market principlesfor determining the purchase price was applied to amarket that was, in real world terms, quite differentfrom the model of soil types they applied. The realmarket prices were obviously less than that of physi-cally equivalent lands because of the fact of the occu-piers. Also by agreeing to stop fighting the FMLNhad increased the price of the land they eventuallybought. However, the conveyance process was sodelayed that representatives of the FMLN foundthemselves pushing the Land Bank to offer a higherprice to the title holder to speed the conveyance eventhough this meant the former FMLN combatantswould face a higher purchase price. One suspects theFMLN representatives knew that government effortsto collect on these debts would be difficult. (In factmuch of the debt was later forgiven, following gener-al rural protests over a proposed debt relief law, andsome was covered by further aid from the U.S.)

Potential beneficiaries, under the terms of theaccord, were estimated at 15,000 former governmentsoldiers, 7500 FMLN combatants and 25,000 landoccupiers, a total of 47,500. The final list of benefi-ciaries was closer to 36,000, with 8500 former gov-ernment soldiers. The government did a much lesseffective job of helping its former soldiers to gothrough the complicated steps to be in the programthan did the FMLN for its militants. The process ofverifying who was a land occupier was complex, withPTT and UN workers visiting a property severaltimes to see who was there and who wanted to claimit. Some names turned up on several properties.

Moreover, the 15,000 eligible veterans were buta fraction of all those who had been in the military.Two years after the accords some of those who werenot benefited formed organizations to lobby forbenefits, and by 1995 this took the form of mili-tant protests including the takeover of theAssembly building. But in the end the groups didnot gain much.

Land and Equity 83

Thirty-six thousand was still a substantial num-ber of beneficiaries and in the vast majority ofcases each one represented a family, so the popula-tion affected by the PTT initially was closer to200,000. The average amount of land per benefi-ciary was about 2.75 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47acres) with a mortgage of just under $3000. Thatamounted to 100,000 hectares of land from 3300properties. (118 properties were state owned andrepresented 11% of the land).

In comparison the two phases of the AgrarianReforms initiated in 1980 involved 270,000hectares and 84,000 individual beneficiaries.However 5/8 of those beneficiaries were benefitedover the decade with small parcels (average about1.2 hectares) that they had previously rented. Thebig farms went to the remainder and they averagedabout 6.5 hectares per beneficiary.

In 1997 the government, along with severalother agencies including Fundesa, an NGO directedby Antonio Álvarez who had been the FMLN’s lead-ing person in the implementation of the PTT,began to process claims of PTT owners who wantedto change the pro indiviso titles into subdividedparcels of land. In the end virtually all of the bene-ficiaries of PTT chose to hold an individual title.This process was accomplished in a little less than 3years, quite an accomplishment given the problemsof the PTT.

However, at the outset of the program analystswondered if the PTT parcels would be economical-ly viable, particularly given the mortgage thatwent with them and the ongoing need for farmersto borrow at the outset of the growing season.There was a great range of variation amount thePTT lands—coffee plantations and farms withpoor soil and lack of water. It was also noted thatof the 1980 agrarian reform coops, many wereheavily in debt and barely surviving, though somehad proven to be quite viable. In fact most of thelands have been insufficient for making a livingand families are required to find supplementaryincome. This could change with organization togrow commercial crops in addition to food staples.

Nicaragua’s Chaos. El Salvador’s difficult PTTprocess, which stretched over the better part of adecade, was a model of peaceful efficiency com-pared to what happened in Nicaragua. There sub-stantial amounts of land changed hands after theend of the war, but many did so through armed

land invasions or the threat thereof often followedby negotiations with the government.

Many of those who supported Chamorro in theelection had had their lands confiscated or expropri-ated during the two phases of the Sandinistas’ agrar-ian reforms. These confiscados did not accept thelegality of the agrarian reform. They wanted theirlands back. Contras were abandoning the “develop-ment poles” given them by Chamorro. Both groupsthought Chamorro’s victory meant they had wonthe war and that the victors would get the spoils.

In El Salvador, the U.S. backed the integrity ofthe 1980 land reform in 1992 (in part becausethere were people in the USAID office in ElSalvador who were committed to it) and the U.S.was the largest donor to the PTT. In Nicaragua,the U.S. did not back anything done under theSandinistas. Moreover the office of Senator JesseHelms, then head of the Foreign RelationsCommittee insisted that U.S. citizens whose landshad been confiscated by the Sandinista get recom-pense, or Nicaragua was not going to get any aid.

The Chamorro government said that the AgrarianReform laws (and the Constitution) passed duringthe Sandinista governments were the law, but that,under a neoliberal economic philosophy, theyplanned to privatize state properties. This included alarge number of state farms. It also agreed that someof the FMLN confiscations were illegal and mosthad given compensation that was sufficient. Inessence, the Chamorro strategy was to shift the issueto case by case considerations strung out over a longperiod of time. This would diffuse the crisis andspread out government payments over a long period.

However land invasions began immediately. Theinvaders were ex contra, or gangs organized byconfiscated former owners. Somewhat later landlesspeasants invaded agrarian reform cooperatives asdid some ex government army troops who hadbeen discharged into an economy with a rapidlyshrinking number of jobs. In some cases agrarianreform properties were invaded several times byseveral groups. In the last half of 1990 some 300farms were invaded, about half of which were stateproperties (which the government had said itwould privatize) and about half were private, nonagrarian reform lands. In 1991 invasions touchedagrarian reform cooperatives as well. By the end of1991 the total had reached around 750, withanother 260 in 1992. In many cases the invasionswere resisted. (Abu-Lughod)


Meanwhile the government established an officeto process claims. Some 9000 claims were made onurban commercial and residential properties andequipment and over 7000 more were filed on landupon which an estimated 60,000 agrarian reformfamilies lived (and involving 1.4 million Hectares).To avoid the political consequences of displacing60,000 families the government began offeringcompensation in bonds to the former owners.

By 1995 the government had issued $300 millionin bonds, but it was not clear if the government wasa good credit risk (being perhaps the most indebtedgovernment in the world). The government pledgedto back the bonds with the sale of the state ownedtelephone company. However interest rates werelower than what could be earned elsewhere.

The process was complicated because U.S. citi-zens were getting to the front of the line for those tobe compensated due to Sen. Helms’ pressures. TheEmbassy had a full time staff person working on theproblem. The majority of the U.S. citizens had notbeen U.S. citizens during the agrarian reform, buthad emigrated to the U.S. and taken citizenship.More were becoming U.S. citizens all the time, sothe “line” was not getting shorter even as claimswere being processed. (Dye, et. al., 1995)

Finally, it became evident that privatizing statefarms would be complicated, not just because ofthe invasions, but because the workers on thosefarms, organized into what had been a strongnational rural workers union (ATC) said that theyshould be the beneficiaries of privatization. By1995 500 state farms involving 253,000 hectareshad been privatized. Former workers on the farmsgot 30% of this land area. Half the farms went toformer owners. (The farms that had belonged tothe Somozas did not go to former owners). Ex con-tra and former government soldiers each got about10% of the state farm land area.

Land invasions by the ex contra worked. In thefirst five years almost a third of the lands thatreceived title had been occupied by invasions andin the war zones where the contra had been strong,such as Matagalpa and Jinotega, 84% of the landthat got titles under the Chamorro governmenthad been invaded since 1990. (Abu-Lughod)

The invasions contributed to the sale or disman-tling of many of the agrarian reform cooperatives. Sodid the fact that the Sandinistas had never properlyregistered the deeds of the cooperatives, so coopera-tive members had a shaky title in a politically hostile

environment. In some cooperatives internal conflictscontributed to some members wanting to divide off aparcel of land for their family. However within threeyears of the electoral defeat many cooperatives weredying out. In one study (Jonakin) in an area of thecountry that did not have many land invasions, sixtypercent of the (53) cooperatives studied had ceasedbeing cooperatives and had divided up their landsinto individual household parcels. In none of thesecases did the family actually have a title to the parcel.

In another area, also one in which land invasionswere not large in numbers, 13% of the cooperativetotal land area had been sold and some one third ofcooperatives had sold all of their land. The saleswere at prices well below perceived land values;the average price received was less than a third theprice of cultivatable and 3/4s the price of pasturelands. These forced sales were occurring becausethe cooperatives feared the old “owner” wouldreturn and throw them off the land. (Jonakin)

Note the contrast with El Salvador and the natureof the different land “markets.” Beneficiaries of thePTT were buying lands at premium prices, com-pared to what they could have purchased them for afew years earlier with the war going on and landvalues near zero in war zones. In Nicaragua, afterthe war, peasants are selling lands acquired throughthe agrarian reform at prices well below “market”value because political conditions (and land inva-sions) had made their particular lands less valuable.

A decade later the land problem has not goneaway. First the compensation bonds to be paid toformer owners now total around $1 billion. Thestructure of the bonds has interest payments of 3%for the first 2 years, 4.5% for the next 5 years, then5% for 4 years and then the principal is paid off inthe remaining four years. The bonds are indexed tothe dollar, so the government is vulnerable to thechange in currency valuations. The first payments onprinciple were to come due this year. Moreover, thisis not all of the claims. It is estimated that remain-ing claims would amount to $500 to $600 million.

Second, estimates are that 30% of the agrarianland area has no clear title and that the same per-centage of households have no document at all, oronly an old agrarian reform document, or a docu-ment that has not been registered. Those most vul-nerable, naturally, are those most poor. Two thirdsof small coffee growers have a title, and all largecoffee growers do, but three quarters of small cornand bean farmers do not. (Ruben & Masset)

Land and Equity 85

It is this latter group which is most subject todistress sales at low prices, prices made lowerbecause of whatever disaster caused the stress (failedcrop, illness) and by the lack of clear title. Poorpeasants will tenaciously hold on to their land, bycutting their own consumption, finding other ofincome, borrowing, selling livestock if they haveany. Borrowing however is particularly difficult.Following very easy credit to cooperatives from theSandinistas, with most loans never being paid back,production credits from banks virtually disappearedfor peasants in the 1990s. Some may have been ableto get loans from small NGO programs or fromlocal money lenders who charge very high interest.

But nonetheless some are forced to sell. Someare former agrarian reform cooperative members.Most all of the coops have been parceled off now.The initial calculation of peasants that they mightbe more secure against attacks by former owners ifthey divided into individual parcels may have beencorrect. But a decade later the individual parcelholders more vulnerable to a forced sale.Remaining cooperatives have fared better.

Guatemala. Guatemala did not have a land reformin the early 1980s. A 1979 study showed that landinequality was about what it had been 30 years earli-er—that a mere 2.5% of the farms controlled 65%of the agricultural land, while 88% of the farmsaccounted for only 16%. Four hundred thousandowners averaged only1.63 hectares of land, and164,000 families had no access to land. A USAID1982 study found that 31% of farms had less than .7hectare and a Gini index of land inequality that wasthe highest in Latin America, and Latin America isreknown for having high levels of land inequality.

There had been an agrarian reform in 1953 underthe elected President Jacobo Arbenz, the last civilianelected until 1985. That took, in exchange for bondsbased on the declared tax value of the land, 600,000hectares that were not being cultivated or grazed,half of which was from foreign estates, mainly theU.S. based United Fruit Company. The governmentalso let peasants use 280,000 hectares of large coffeeestates it had expropriated from Germans expatriateowners in World War II. A CIA organized coupoverthrew Arbenz in 1954. The agrarian reform wasreversed and former German estates were privatizedto large landowners. An estimated 100,000 familieshad briefly benefited, which was then 1/6th of thenation’s population. (Handy)

Eduardo Baumeister summarized several smallerstudies that have been done recently. These sug-gest that the proportion of rural families with noaccess to land as owners or renters has moved from22% to 33%, and that the proportion of ownersdeclined from 61% to 49% and that the size ofholdings went down. (There were significant varia-tions between regions.) A large increase in agricul-tural land (1.1 million hectares) had developed80% of which was in the northern jungle region ofPetén. This frontier represented the last largeempty space and has been used only for extensivecattle grazing (due to poor soils) with vast ecologi-cal damage. Cattle ranching employs few people.Conditions of landlessness and inequality seem tohave worsened from a bad state since 1979.

Given this background and the weakness of theURNG at the bargaining table it is not surprisingthat the peace accords did not broach the topic ofagrarian reform, or even of land inequality. Thetreaty did take up the issue of land at differentpoints, as did prior negotiations for returningrefugees. There are many conflicting claims overland, leading to insecurity. The accords called forspeedy resolution of claims. That has not happened.An agency called CONTIERRA did mediate somedisputes but did not make much headway after sev-eral years, given the magnitude of the problem. AWorld Bank financed cadastral survey has been con-troversial because peasant group fear it will lock intoplace the holdings of large owners who acquiredtheir lands through usurpations decades ago.

The accords call for use of state lands and idlelands for poor peasants. The state does not possessmuch adequate land.

A series of land purchase programs has made smalldents in the problem. Before the peace accords a gov-ernment land bank purchased a few large estates andresold them at market prices to those suffering fromland poverty. But by 1992 only 18 farms with16,000 hectares has been purchased. These went tofamilies in micro parcels averaging .65 hectares.Some returning war refugees tried to get their formerlands back. Another land fund purchased land andsold it to some of the returning families.

A post peace accord Land Fund (Fontierras) wasestablished that had a bit more muscle. It was to takeback lands illegally seized in the Petén and a poten-tially rich area called the Transverse strip, accordingto most accounts by high level military officers in thegovernment in past years. The land fund was also a


purchase and sale fund, but it has moved slowly andthe prices it pays and thus charges have been high. Inits first two years it had acquired and sold 13,400Hectares for 2500 families (about 5.41 hectares perfamily). But it had requests from 531 groups repre-senting 35,500 families. At the average rate of 100families per month, the queue would be 3 decadeslong (assuming no one else gets in line).

Budgetary constraints and lack of political willhave prevented sufficiently ample funding of theprogram. And critics assert other problems. Theprogram does not amount to an agrarian develop-ment strategy. It depends on voluntary sales, andsome have involved mediocre or bad land.Promised technical assistance has been in short sup-ply. Finally those who get the land tend to be orga-nized and from middle agrarian sectors, not fromthe poorest and most in need. Indeed, a goal of theprogram is to sell the land to people who havesome agricultural skills and an organization. Thecritics, however, found in visits to places that hadbeen purchased a range of economic viability andability to pay back the loans. (CONGCOOP, 2002)

The case of the hacienda Nueva Linda (describedin the section on police) is but one of several scoreof post war peasant land invasions in Guatemala.The invaders have argued that their legal claimsagainst the owners have not received a hearing inthe judicial system. These claims are for backwages or against actions they claim the “owners”took in past decades to usurp the lands.

Viability and Social Capital. Obtaining land is anecessary but far from sufficient step in a process ofaddressing rural poverty. One reason agrarian coop-eratives began to disappear in Nicaragua is that theycould not get annual production loans. The same istrue for small farmers such as PTT beneficiariesunless an NGO program with money can be found.

In El Salvador, the sizes of the PTT parcelsmeant that unless the land was of high quality, itwould be difficult to make a living. In 1998,agrarian debt became a highly controversial issuewhen the government offered to relieve a portionof the debt to PTT, Agrarian Reform cooperativesand some large landowners, if the remainder of thedebt would be paid off immediately. This resultedin a temporary alliance of these three groups whoall lobbied the government to increase the portionof the debt it was willing to forgive. That effortand international assistance, in part from the U.S.,

enabled most of the PTT farms to shed their mort-gage debt. Nonetheless, a study showed that aver-age incomes on the PTT farms are not sufficientfor more than survival, unless members of the fam-ily can get other sources of income. (Álvarez)

In Guatemala some of the recent land invasionshave not led to evictions. However, in one suchcase of a successful invasion by an indigenousgroup they could not get credit and were basicallybarely surviving by growing basic grains and byreceiving money from family members who hadmoved to the U.S. or who migrated seasonally toOaxaca, Mexico to harvest coffee at wages belowthe Mexican level.

In each of the three countries there are examplesin which communities of people that have beenable to use their social capital as a community tosome positive effect. Some predated the war (bymany centuries in the case of Mayan communities).Some were formed through family connectionsduring the war on agrarian reform cooperatives.Some emanated from war time experiences.

In one study of the decline, sale and parcelizationof agrarian reform cooperatives in Nicaragua theauthors find that cooperatives that stuck together,even amidst many rational incentives to divide up,have had advantages over small holders in gaininginformation, using collective forms to market theirgoods, and even in getting loans, which have beenall but impossible to get. (Ruben, Lerman and Siles)

In a searching, detailed analysis of Ixil communi-ties in Guatemala, Bettina Durocher finds repeatedevidence of the ability of various groups within thecommunity to protect themselves before, during,and after the war—despite confrontations with themilitary during the war, which regarded them ascommunists—and major conflicts with nearby largelandowners whose land belongs traditionally to theIxiles but was robbed from them during the liberalcoffee boom in the late 19th century. And the con-flicts are also between the Ixiles and the central gov-ernment which has attempted to set aside more Ixilland for a nature preserve. The author points outthat the ecological record and customs of the Ixilesover past and recent time, is considerably betterthan that of the government or the private sectorgroups that support it. In this case negotiationsbetween the local communities and their Mayors,the government’s land mediation committee (CON-TIERRA) and the government reached as high asthe offices of the President.

Land and Equity 87

In El Salvador, studies by PRISMA have demon-strated that some local communities of families whowere beneficiaries of the PTT process have workedtogether, whether they parceled their land or not, toattempt to deal with various marketing, farming andecological problems in a flood prone region. In thiscase the ties of the community and their sense of soli-darity goes back to the war years when many of thecurrent members were combatants for the FMLN(Hecht, Kandel and Gómez; Rosa, Cuéllar, y Gómez)

These are relatively successful cases of rural pover-ty where there is some social cohesion, planning, acollective use of resources and a modest amount ofhope. Far worse cases can be found, particularly inGuatemala where the combination of racism, ruralisolation and authoritarian structures are still com-mon and in some cases seem like dark scenarios thathave not improved since the 19th century.

In a current World Bank study of poverty inGuatemala data collection included qualitative datafrom ten rural communities. In a Kaqchiqel speak-ing hamlet of 200 people, located on a coffee plan-tation, the people own no land, live in terriblehouses and have no social capital. All adults areilliterate and none of the children go to school pastthe third grade. The authoritarian owner discour-ages any attempt to organize community activities.Workers who have any ties to unions are suspendedto avoid paying benefits and to discourage unionaffiliation, and women get no benefits even whenthey work the harvest. The families are permittedgarden plots, but if a spouse dies the widow has norights to use the plot or even to remain in thehouse. The ancestors of many of the families hadworked on this same plantation but the communitywas isolated from other Kaqchqel communities.

SOCIAL SPENDING

Among the causes of the wars were extensivepoverty and inequality, despite fairly rapid rates ofGDP growth in the 25 years preceding the wars,and the political systems provided no means ofcorrecting these problems. One reason for thepoverty was that governments taxed little andspent less on social programs that might improvethe well being of the population.

In the next 25 years their rates of growth were notrapid, owing in part to the “lost decade” of the1980s that afflicted most of Latin America. Thattrough combined in the 1980s a steep recession in

the U.S. which reduced commodity imports fromLatin America and a decreasing inability to payhigh international debts that had built up in thelate 1970s. In addition in the three countries understudy the wars wounded the economies throughphysical damage, capital flight, structural and pop-ulation changes. According to UNDP figures theGDP per capita growth rate from 1975-2001was.1% in El Salvador and Guatemala and -4.0% inNicaragua. Since the wars the economies have donebetter. From 1990–2001 the GDP per capitalgrowth rates averaged 2.4% in El Salvador, 1.4% inGuatemala, and -.1% in Nicaragua. (In El Salvadorthe growth rates were much higher in the first halfof the 1990s than afterwards.) But they have notdone well enough to recover. In each country in thatquarter of a century the year of highest GDP percapita value, in constant dollars, was before the war.

By contrast, Costa Rica was relatively unaffectedby the wars and its per capita growth rates were1.2% in the 26 year span and 2.8% in the 1990-2001 period.

Poverty is widespread, particularly in Nicaraguaand in rural, indigenous areas of Guatemala. Theper capita average GDP in Nicaragua was estimat-ed by the World Bank to be below $750 per year.The UNDP (Central American Survey) cited areduction in poverty between 1993 and 2001 from50.3% of the population to 45.8%

In the World Bank poverty study in Guatemala itestimated that in 2000 56% of Guatemalans lived inpoverty, and 16% in extreme poverty, and that thismight be higher than other Central American coun-tries despite the fact that Guatemala has a higherGDP per capita than some of them. Though povertyfell from 62% in 1989, the World Bank study foundevidence that it had actually increased in 2001 and2002. The Bank said the drop in poverty was lessthan would be expected given growth rates — indi-cating that growth has not been “pro poor.” And thepoverty is chronic; that is, only a small percent ofthose poor have recently become poor.

Poverty is much higher, the Bank reportsamong the rural indigenous. Eight of ten in pover-ty live in rural areas and 76% of the indigenous arepoor, compared to 41% of the non indigenous.

In El Salvador poverty is lower and showed sharperdeclines in the 1990s, but still remained very high inrural areas. The overall decline in poverty was from60% (1991-92) to 41.4% in 1999 according toUNDP data in a country study. But rural poverty


was higher and did not decline as much: from 66%to 55.4%, and half of the rural poor were in extremepoverty throughout the period. In El Salvador thedecline would have been greater but for the twoearthquakes that struck weeks apart in early 2001.

In El Salvador this decline would suggest thatthe absolute number of people in poverty hasdecreased by some four hundred thousand.However percentage poverty declines in the othertwo countries mask increases in the absolute num-ber of poor people during the decade. The numbersof poor Guatemala and Nicaragua have increased byabout 900,000 and 400,000 respectively.

The urban-rural disparities hold in virtuallyevery measure of poverty, health and education.The one exception is that the decline in poverty inNicaragua, which was modest, was somewhatgreater in rural areas than in urban. Rates ofurbanization are therefore important overall, butthey have been, by far, the slowest in Guatemalaand are projected to remain that way. Between1975 and 2001 the percent in urban areas in ElSalvador grew from 42% to 61%, on a par withCosta Rica. In Nicaragua it grew to 56.5%. But inGuatemala it grew from 36.7% to only 40% and isprojected to remain below 50% (46.7%) by 2015.

Among the five Central American republicssocial spending as a percent of GDP is by far thehighest in Costa Rica (1998-1999) according tothe PNUD 2003 report on Central America, at16.8% (counting social security, housing andwater, health and education). Discounting socialsecurity (which varies widely from country tocountry) Costa Rica’s social spending would bejust over 11%; Nicaragua’s is 12.7%, but thenNicaragua has a tiny GDP so its social spendingper capita on just education and health is just 14%that of Costa Rica. (PNUD, 2003)

One reason for the low spending is that tax ratesare low. In 1996 among 16 Latin American coun-tries, El Salvador and Guatemala had the two low-est tax revenues as a percent of GDP. Nicaraguathen was among the higher, but again its GDP is solow that it has little revenue. (World Bank, 1999).

Education. Before the wars, as in the current exam-ple above, many large landowners either saw no needfor education or saw it as a threat. In Nicaragua vir-tually all rural schools had one teacher for fourgrades. In all three countries rural schools had nobooks and were lucky to have a blackboard; that left

the students to copy lessons into notebooks, a peda-gogically passive method. Mainly the Guatemalangovernment paid no attention to education forMayans, but when it did it wanted it only inSpanish.

When the Sandinistas came to power theylaunched a massive, fast paced literacy campaign thathad dramatic results with some 80,000 volunteerteachers heading to the rural areas for several months.It was difficult to maintain these gains when the warpicked up and contras selected as targets local gov-ernment service outlets, including schools and theirteachers, whom they saw as Sandinista ideologues. Inall three countries rural areas were hit hard by thewars and education was no exception. With familiesfleeing the war to save their lives education was for-gotten for many. However in El Salvador there wasan effort during the war to repopulate towns that thearmy had attacked and to begin in them popularschools. The war also increased defense budgets atthe expense of education and health budgets.(Marques; Hammond; Miller).

In each country the post war era has seenimprovements and reforms. In both El Salvador andGuatemala decentralization of school administrationhas been a way to get parents involved but also hasbeen seen by teachers unions as a way to get aroundunion restrictions. Nonetheless these programs,EDUCO in El Salvador and PRONADE haveexpanded coverage, and there is more sensitivity tothe multicultural issue in Guatemala due to thepush for Mayan rights in many sections of the peaceaccords. Sensitivity however has not yet translatedinto many concrete gains in bilingual educationapart from a number of positive pilot projects.

Following the defeat of the Sandinistas the firsteducation reform efforts were to destroy all textbooksproduced by the Sandinistas because they were seen asideological. Foreign donations, mainly from the U.S.,provided over 7 million new text books drawn fromvarious Latin American countries. (Marques) In theo-ry, decentralized administration permitted freedomof choice among text books at the local level—notincluding however any remaining books of theSandinista era that had not been thrown into the fires.

In Nicaragua the percent of GDP spent on pub-lic education has increased from 3.4% in 1990 to5.0%, an average of 1998-2000, but GDP is so lowthat it means that Nicaragua’s teachers are theworst paid in the region (and have had severalstrikes, job actions and work slow downs in the last

Land and Equity 89

year). Twenty-five years after the literacy campaign,Nicaragua, Guatemala and Haiti have the highestrates of illiteracy in Latin America.

In El Salvador the percent of GDP, according tothe UNDP Human Development Report for 2003, hasgone from 1.9% to 2.3%, but the UNDP countrystudy of El Salvador for 2001 indicates that the per-cent was about 2.6% in 1998 and 1999 and 3% in2000. This is still well below the 4.4% that CostaRica spends, but educational coverage has spread inrural areas in El Salvador due to its decentralizedEDUCO program, profiled in a 2001 HI report andalso in the World Bank Development Report 2004. InEl Salvador 71% of kids reach grade five, comparedto 48% in Nicaragua and 100% in Costa Rica.

The net secondary enrollments for the three coun-tries are 39% for El Salvador, 36% for Nicaraguaand just 26% for Guatemala. Costa Rica is at 49%,while Chile and Argentina approach 80%.

Despite improvements urban-rural differencespersist. According to the UNDP report (2001) onEl Salvador, illiteracy rates (for those above tenyears of age) dropped two points between 1997 and1999 from 20% to 18%. They dropped 3 points inrural areas, but this still left rural areas with anilliteracy rate three times that of urban areas, and inboth urban and rural areas the rate of female illiter-acy rates was 5-7 points higher than males.

In Guatemala the illiteracy rates among men(over 15 years of age) in 1998 was 25.3% a fall ofonly 3 points since 1989. Female rates hadimproved by 8 points to 37%; but were still 12points worse than men. The best rate of improve-ment was among indigenous women who improved20 points during the decade. Nonetheless themajority (52%) of indigenous women were illiter-ate. By contrast non indigenous men had a 19%rate of illiteracy, a 33 point difference.

Health. Both Cuba and Costa Rica have been heldup by the World Bank as having exemplary healthcare systems. Cuba has 590 physicians per 100,000(on a par with or over European countries). Itdevotes 6.1$ of GDP for public health, though it

only spends $193 per capita on health (because itdoesn’t pay its doctors much in dollar terms). CostaRica has 178 physicians per 100,000, devotes 4.7%of GDP to public health and another 2.1 to privatehealth, and spends $474 per capita per year.

El Salvador’s spending on health is not too farbehind at $391 per capita, but its public health—private health spending ratio is about the reverseof Costa Rica’s at 3.8% for public health and 5%for private health care. Guatemala spends only2.3% of GDP on public health. It has only 90 doc-tors per 100,000 and the Pan American HealthOrganization estimated that 80% of physicianspractice in the metropolitan area of GuatemalaCity. Nicaragua spends only $108 per capita. Andpublic health does not necessarily mean its servicesare free. For years in El Salvador, at least, publichealth centers have charged fees, for appointmentsand operations, called “voluntary quotas,” that arein some instances waived.

In Costa Rica and Cuba virtually every birth isattended by skilled health personnel. The rates aremuch lower in El Salvador (51%), Guatemala(41%) and Nicaragua (65%). Not surprisinglyrates of infant mortality (/1000) and maternalmortality (/100,000) are much higher in thosethree countries than in Costa Rica.

Culture of Inequality. These post war patternsshow progress, but the three countries areenmeshed in cultures of inequality that precedethe war and have not been corrected by the peaceprocesses, despite spending improvements anddecentralization of some services. There are twomeasures of this that might be illustrative.

The UNDP ranks countries along a HumanDevelopment Index made up of other indexes oneducational, health and GDP. It then takes thismeasure and compares the HDI ranking with thecountry’s ranking in GDP per capita and establish-es a score by subtracting the HDI rank fromGDP/capital rank. The idea is that a positive scoremeans the country, given the size of its economy isdoing well, or really well, on improving Human


Infant and Maternal Mortality Rates

Pan American Health Organization Indicators 2000

El Salvador Nicaragua Guatemala Costa Rica Honduras

Infant /1000 35 45 49 12 36

Maternal/100,000 120 102 111 15 108

Development. That is, its human developmentefforts seem to be high relative to the size of itseconomy. A negative score is the opposite. Forexample in 2003 Norway ranked first in HDI andits GDP/capita ranking minus HDI ranking was+5. Iceland and Sweden ranked 2nd and 3rd buthad different scores: a +2 for Iceland and a +15 forSweden. So Sweden seemed to be doing better thanNorway in relation to the size of its economy.

Scores on Latin American countries cover a rangewith Uruguay at a +19 and Cuba a +38, whileHaiti is a -20 and the Dominican Republic a -26.Of the Central American countries the most recentscores are: Costa Rica = +9, Honduras = +1, Nica-ragua = +2, El Salvador = -17 and Guatemala= -22,the third worse in the region. So despite gains,Guatemala and El Salvador are doing rather badlyrelative to the size of their economies.

Another measure is the percent of income and con-sumption of the poorest 10% versus the richest 10%.Latin American has greater inequality than otherregions. In Latin America Brazil, Paraguay,Honduras and Nicaragua are the most unequal withthe richest making 69 to 87 times more than thepoorest. By contrast the ratios of Costa Rica (20:1),Bolivia (25:1) and Ecuador (15:1) and Peru (22:1) aremuch less unequal and Bolivia and Ecuador are quite

poor countries in terms of GDP per capita. Bolivia issomewhat poorer than Nicaragua, for example.

The ratings of El Salvador (33:1) and Guatemala(40:1) are quite unequal. By contrast poor India hasratio of 9.6:1, less extreme than the U.S. (16.9:1) andequal too the much richer South Korea and Sweden.Numerous European countries have ratios below 7:1.

All of these measures show a long way to go.Perhaps El Salvador has progressed faster than theother two, but its tax collection rates are low and ifhigher could support more social spending. Thenew government is talking about tax legislation,but the aim seems mainly to improve the efficiencyof collection. Government policies have helped inEl Salvador in the realm of education, but what hasprobably helped alleviate poverty more than anygovernment policy has been the massive amounts ofmoney sent home by Salvadorans in the U.S. nowmeasured at over $2 billion per year for a country of6.4 million people. In Guatemala policy has beenless effective and there is real resistance to changeon social terms. Nicaraguan politics seem to be lit-tle more than a struggle for power between twomen, with the U.S. trying to avoid both. The coun-try is so impoverished and in debt that only a uni-fied effort toward alleviating poverty would help.At least that is part of the discourse in Guatemala.

International Factors 91

Foreign nations, multilateral organizationsand dramatic international forces affected thewars and the peaces processes from the very

beginning at every step of the way. Among them,the U.S. rule was dominant. It has been historical-ly. At the end of the day, it could be argued thatthe U.S. was able to gain its basic objectives by theends of the wars and the first founding elections—leftist groups that had began the 1980s withinsurgencies no longer controlled or basicallythreatened any government.

More striking, however, is the extent to whichthe U.S. had to share the stage with other interna-tional actors and the difficulties it had achievingits goals. Those other actors played minor andmajor roles and continue to do so.

The Contadora peace process that eventuallyculminated in the Aria peace plan was fashioned

by Latin American diplomats from eight nationsacting in coordinated fashion and often contrary toU.S. desires.

The massive and unprecedented monitoring ofthe 1989-1990 Nicaraguan elections by largeteams from the UN and the OAS posed the threatof certifying a free and fair election if theSandinistas won against the predisposition of theU.S. (and the contras) to see any Sandinista victoryas tantamount to an unfair election.

The UN successfully mediated the two compre-hensive peace accords, with some cooperation fromthe U.S. Its two mediators, Álavaro de Soto for ElSalvador and Jean Arnault for Guatemala, were force-ful creative mediators, not simply diplomats who cre-ated a civil atmosphere for the parties. Indeed in theGuatemalan case some anecdotes emerging from thepeace negotiations suggest that more than finding a

INTERNATIONAL FACTORS

concept or language acceptable to both sides the UNand experts it brought in crafted parts of the accordsincluding much of the indigenous accords and theframework of the most specific parts of the socioeco-nomic accord regarding taxation and social spending.

The U.S. had a very large embassy staff in ElSalvador during the war. Following the war theUN verification mission, ONUSAL, was muchlarger than the dwindling embassy staff andprominently spread throughout the country exam-ining in considerable detail every aspect of thepeace accords. It stayed on for years.

This UN verification role has been repeated inmore widespread fashion in Guatemala by MIN-UGUA—more widespread because the subjectmatter of the accords is more widespread.

European nations provided considerable aid tothese countries, some of it by NGOs, during thewars and more so after the wars. They played aninitial diplomatic role in Guatemalan peace negoti-ations. The sum of post war aid to Guatemala com-ing from the European Union and its memberstates far exceeds the sum from the U.S. At pointsin post war Nicaragua, the sum of bilateral aidfrom Scandinavian countries has exceeded that ofthe U.S. This in turn has created openings foractive diplomacy around accord implementation bydiplomats from various European embassies and inGuatemala, by Japan as well.

In El Salvador the multilateral financial institu-tions provided post war reconstruction help butstood back from the peace processes. Influential arti-cles critiqued this stance indicating that the lack ofcoordination often meant that international agenciesengaged in implementing the accords were at crosspurposes with the financial institutions. There was aneffort to engage these institutions in the fashioningof the Guatemalan peace accords and the resultingfinancial aspects of their implementation. (Boyce)

Verification. These have not been purely diplo-matic efforts confined to diplomatic spaces—themissions spread throughout the countries. Theintroduction of the first human rights missionsmultiplied the national resources for documentinghuman rights abuses.

In each country the government accused the UNverification mission of being biased in favor of theguerrillas and of exceeding its mandate. In eachthere were small and large moments (such as therelease of the Truth Commission report in El

Salvador) where rightist anti ONUSAL-UN tem-pers exploded.

On the other hand, both verification missions fre-quently came under criticism from groups thatclaimed that the missions were under performingtheir mandate, were not being sufficiently aggressive,were not drawing upon local expertise built up overmany years under dangerous repressive conditions,and were not sufficiently responsive, or not respon-sive at all, to criticisms and suggestions from suchgroups. ONUSAL and MINUGUA were faulted fora lack of transparency or, worse, for actively coveringup evidence that should have been revealed.

Indeed on several occasions the criticisms fromone side or the other reached a level of severity as tosuggest that the process would be better off withoutthe verification mission. On the final departure of amuch reduced ONUSAL mission (by then calledMINUSAL) the conservative Diario del Hoy pub-lished a sarcastic, biting critique against a biasedmission that was more than welcome to leave.

Framing the issue so as to portray organizations—MINUGUA and ONUSAL—with noble missionscaught between left and right critics is not meantconvey a notion that the very fact of arrows flying atthe beleaguered organizations from two and moresides with opposite criticisms is really evidence thatthe organizations must have been doing a good job.Many criticisms were quite justified and indeedthose that have been published rely heavily on evi-dence gathered from interviews with staff membersof the two organizations. Both organizations seemedmarked by extremely sharp and continuous criti-cisms from inside the organization about all mannerof things that emanated not just from disgruntledemployees but from dedicated staffers who passion-ately wanted higher performance from each organi-zation. (Or from both. As a general approximation Iwould say that staffers who had served in bothONUSAL and MINUGUA were more critical ofMINUGUA and found it less able than ONUSAL.)It is useful to see the general constraints faced byeach organization. It should be mentioned that thesmall OAS mission in Nicaragua—CIAV- was gen-erally perceived by the Sandinista side of the divideas a pro contra organization.

These were novel experiments for the UN,though MINUGUA was obviously less novel thanONUSAL. While the UN had considerable experi-ence in peace keeping—largely military missionsthat would attempt to keep both sides apart—


these missions were of a new order—multidiscipli-nary efforts aimed at verifying all aspects of broadranging accords that take up many questions ofinstitutional reform. New and similar efforts werehappening in Somalia, Angola and Mozambique.One of the critical documents about ONUSALcaptures this; it is entitled Improvising History.There were no precise recipes to follow.

The accords themselves, even though they weremutually agreed upon contracts, had a built in biasthat would be likely to result in criticism of theverifiers. To simplify, the negotiators on the gov-ernment side wanted one thing—the demobiliza-tion of the guerrillas. The FMLN and URNGarrived at the negotiating table knowing that theirinitial goals in the insurgency were not going to berealized, that is the replacement of the governmentby the guerrilla groups so that they could revampand revise the government along revolutionarylines. So in the negotiations each of the two insur-gent groups wanted to get as many changes in thegovernment’s way of doing things as they could.To get the guerrillas to quit fighting each govern-ment made a long list of concessions.

The role of the verifiers was then lopsided. Itcould verify that the guerrilla groups did onething—demobilize. As we have seen this was com-plex and had its moments of crisis in El Salvadordue to the phased demobilization and lack of rapidcompliance on the government’s side. It was quiteeasy in Guatemala because the URNG had fewtroops to demobilize. But the verifiers then had tobe sure that the government was complying with along list of tasks and sub tasks, all of which thegovernment would have preferred not to do but forthe agreements. The governments got testybecause they constantly had UN verifying “mos-quitoes” around their heads buzzing more loudlyas things were not getting done. And the critics ofthe governments were bound to be displeasedbecause the UN verifiers were not able to get com-plete compliance about a long list of things.

Third, each organization was ad hoc, with anuncertain future. The UN did not make up theseverifying missions by shifting large numbers ofpermanent staff from headquarters. Rather it rapid-ly hired a large number of people to short termcontracts. Of course it attempted to get peoplewith expertise in relevant fields—human rights,police work, land, indigenous issues—but, by defi-nition, virtually none of them had expertise in the

precise mission being undertaken. The missions’mandates were continually extended, but it wasnever clear at any one moment how much longer itwould go on. This meant that there was consider-able staff turbulence with people always comingand going. This happens a good deal in the diplo-matic world, but diplomats and employees of bilat-eral aid agencies, move within a permanent organi-zational structure with some institutional memory.ONUSAL and MINUGUA were beginning newand large organizations—much larger in staff termsthan any of the bilateral or multilateral donors—that would have short lives, but nonetheless weresupposed to have well worked out procedures downto the most mundane, but vital things, organiza-tions do. Not surprisingly they did not.

When new organizations have to rapidly hiregroups of experts to take on novel tasks there is notan organized labor market with pools of people,particularly because experts often have permanentpositions and what was being offered is short termwork—though at quite handsome rates of pay.Both organizations were criticized for hiring not onthe basis of competence, but on the basis of friend-ships and social/professional circles within nationalgroups. There were joking references about the“Peruvian mafia” in ONUSAL and there were jokesamong Central Americans about stereotypes ofArgentineans. It seems clear that “network” hiringhappened. It is not clear that it could have beenotherwise, nor does it prove a low level of compe-tence. Indeed it was easy to run into highly intelli-gent and committed people in both missions. Someof them complained about free riders on the staff.

Hiring by friendship did raise a more generalissue of “double standards.” A key goal of institu-tional reform and democratization was to put inplace meritocratic, transparent, and fair practices inthe new police institutions, in the judicial systems,etc. But if the verifying mission itself is not doingthis charges of hypocrisy will be made. If the UNmission in Guatemala is pushing for increased taxrevenues and the Guatemalan elite perceives thatmany MINUGUA personnel are able to escape pay-ing taxes, silent charges of hypocrisy will be made.If in El Salvador one of the contingents in the UNmission dealing with the new police is from Mexicoand thousands of Salvadoran families have storiesabout relatives being shaken down by Mexicanpolice while heading north to the U.S. charges ofhypocrisy, fairly or unfairly, will be made.


Large UN missions do things expensively. Thehotel wing in which ONUSAL was headquarteredhad a parking lot filled with dozens of ONUSALvehicles and they were ubiquitous in San Salvadorand in rural areas. To some extent this was justifi-able. The missions wanted to be ubiquitous, want-ed the public and the negotiating parties to per-ceive that UN eyes and ears were everywhere. Weresalaries too high? ONUSAL drove up the price ofluxury housing in San Salvador, and created a crisisin that market when they departed. UN peoplewere making salaries far higher than nationals withsimilar training and education. These jobs were indemand and a privilege. But there were hardshipsdue to the lack of permanence of the job and beinguprooted for a relatively short space of time—withno particular chance of another UN job later. MIN-UGUA tried to cut costs for some kinds of jobs bypaying “volunteer” salaries of about $25,000.

Over a an eight year period (through 2002)MINUGUA spent $187 million with a peak of$36 million in 1998 and had a staff that beganat about 400, increased to 531, and declined in2002 to 282 (and declined rapidly after that). Inaddition it had a $16 million trust fund it usedfor some projects. (Pásara, capítulo 7).

Aid. A great deal of the monetary aid thatarrived was in the form of building infrastruc-ture (primarily in El Salvador and Guatemala)and attempting to reduce national indebtednessin Nicaragua. The idea was that the economywould function better with good roads or lowerdebt service payments, or that the educational sys-tem would function better with new schools.

Other aid was geared more toward implement-ing the reforms called for in the accords. Hundredsof projects from dozens of sources had institutionalreform, or increasing the effectiveness of institu-tions through better trained personnel as their cen-tral aim. These came from bilateral, multilateral orprivate NGO sources. Some bilateral aid wentthrough and was coordinated by multilateral agen-cies, mainly the UNDP. It is clearly beyond thescope of this project to evaluate this array of pro-jects. Indeed, it may be impossible to evaluatebecause of the diversity of projects and sources, theconfidentiality of many evaluative reports, theinstitutional politics of the donors and recipients,and the short or disorganized institutional memo-ries of many of the organizations involved.

In all three countries a considerable amount ofaid was pledged and arrived. The aid to Nicaraguawas, and has remained, at much higher levels thanin the other two countries. This is explainable notso much by the worse physical destruction of thewar in Nicaragua as by its comparatively extreme-ly high levels of international debt and then, fol-lowing 1998, by post Hurricane Mitch aid.

Hurricane Mitch affected all of Central America,but the damage was by far the worst in Hondurasand Nicaragua. In Central America material dam-age amounted to 13% of regional GDP. InHonduras it was about 80% of GDP and 49% inNicaragua. Consequently there were large increasesin disaster aid to those two countries. In Nicaragua1990 External debt stood at $10.7 billion. In 1998it was at $6 billion, or 262% of GNP or about$1200 per person. In 2000 the figure had risen to$7 billion. By contrast in 1998 external debt in ElSalvador was 27% of GNP and in Guatemala 23%.

According to one source, Nicaragua has re-ceived about $8 billion in aid since the end of itswar in 1990. (O/Neil) In the first four years afterits war El Salvador received just under $1.48 bil-lion, or $370 million per year. (PNUD, 1994)The figure for 1998 and 2000 would be about$180 million per year. For Guatemala the fundspromised at the Consultative Group meeting in1997 were $1.7 billion over several years. Arecent study in by a researcher in one NGO,based on embassy and other sources, calculatedthat in the five years since than about $1.5 billionhad been expended or at least put in the pipeline.(Pásara, Morales López)

In El Salvador about 40% of the aid during thefirst four years was bilateral and 83% of that camefrom the U.S, and almost all of that was channeledthrough a government reconstruction agency. Ofthe $847 million in multilateral aid $558 millionwas from the BID and $100 million from theWorld Bank.


The aid per capita figures in 1998 and 2000

1998 1998 2000per capita % GNP per capita

Nicaragua $117 28.1% $111

El Salvador $30 1.5% $29

Guatemala $22 1.2% $23

Wor

ld D

evel

opm

ent

Rep

ort

2003

The structure of aid to Guatemala is rather differ-ent. Of the aid pledged about half is bilateral and31% of that is from the U.S. Bilateral aid fromEuropean countries was 58%, almost twice that ofthe U.S. with four countries pledging the bulk ofthat (Spain, Norway, Sweden and Germany). In addi-tion the European Union contributed $260 millionin multilateral aid (about the same amount as theU.S. bilateral aid). Again BID and the World Bankwere 75% of the multilateral aid. (Pásara, 252)

Several observations are possible about the inter-national aid in accord implementation and institu-tional reform, with primary reference to ElSalvador and Guatemala.

This aid can be seen as help to implement theaccords and also as a source of pressure for imple-mentation. In the second function it, in theory,complimented MINUGUA and in fact MIN-UGUA was careful to draw up a general assessmentof implementation process to submit to donors ateach Consultative Group meeting. This aid went tostate institutions, particular to the judiciary andvarious related agencies and to the PNC.

It is not really all that much money either as asource of solving institutional problems or providingbetter (and more bilingual) education and health,and still less for alleviating poverty. To take onecountry for one year, $23 dollars per person (assum-ing it actually reached a poor person, a very largeassumption indeed) would not be inconsiderable,but would not solve more than short term problems.

Worldwide the U.S. aid programs “give” at aboutthe rate of $39 per U.S. citizen per year. Germanyand France are about twice that in the mid $70s,Sweden and Holland are about $200 per capita andNorway and Denmark are about $300 per capita.Aid is not keeping pace with economic growth inthe richest countries, nor is it sufficient to begin toclose the gap between them and the rest. Twentyyears ago the wealthiest countries contributed .48%of GDP while today it averages .22% (and in theU.S. about .13%). Twenty five years ago the incomedifferences between Europe and relatively well to docountries in Latin America (Chile, Argentina,Uruguay) was 10 to 1; now it is 57 to 1. (O’Neil)

Would more aid have have solved the problem?One can hear numerous instances in which thereceiving agency did not have the institutionalcapacity to expend the money it had received.(One suspects Arnoldo Alemán was able to sur-mount this sort of problem.)

This relative decline in aid is an indication of thelevel of political popularity foreign aid has in some ofthe richer countries and in turn suggests that the aidagencies of those countries have budgetary andaccountability problems back home. USAID, forexample, has been cut. Disaster aid is more “saleable”“back home” than aid to reform a judicial institution,and infrastructure aid, once the project is completed,can present a tangible, photogenic product “backhome” in a way that reforming a judicial institutioncannot. Donor recipients will find few objections to anew building or to several dozen computers for thebuilding. But donors may find the recipients moreresistant, perhaps quietly so, to pressures for reformthat accompany institutional change funding.

Thomas Carothers in his influential book AidingDemocracy Abroad begins a chapter on promotingdemocratic reform in state institutions with anexplanation about his project that he gave to ajudge in a labor court.

After some time he pressed me about thepurpose of my visit, listened carefully to myexplanation, then repeated my answer carefullyin his own words. ‘So you are here,’ he said, ‘tofind out how the American government canmake our courts work properly?’ I noddedbrightly, pleased that I was getting through.He looked at me wide-eyed for a moment, thenburst out laughing, tipping back his head inunrestrained hilarity, laughing until the tearsran down his cheeks. (157)

That man had a sense of humor about an improb-able prospect, and at least was blunt. In the variousreports about institutional reform that have emergedfrom national think tanks and UN agencies andscholars the responses in local institutions seem torange from eager reformers to those who object toforeign influence and prying over their sphere ofinfluence, but the interchanges seem much moremasked than that of the labor court judge.

Resistance may be because they have a stake indoing things as they have traditionally been done.They may find that the foreigners are importing amodel that might work “back home” but that isnot appropriate here. They may see reform as along term prospect whereas their particular inter-ests are short and medium term.

Aid as pressure might work in the Nicaraguansense where the macroeconomic problems are somassive that the multilaterals can impose onestructural adjustment program after another, and


one spending and borrowing limit after anotherwith the Nicaraguans in various governments nothaving a great deal of bargaining leverage. Butthat is not the same proposition as reforming apolice and judicial institution.

Aid as pressure has been weak because in somecases the proposed change for the donee can createmore resistance among stakeholders than support.

Aid as pressure has been weak because the doneeknows that the wealthy donors have pressures. Forexample, could a donor cut aid following defeat ofthe Constitutional reforms in the referendum with-out appearing to be opposed to democratic proce-dures? When the tax revenues repeatedly failed toincrease sufficiently in Guatemala the UN expend-ed an enormous amount of political capital puttingtogether a very long series of dialogues that finallyresulted in a pact — that was not carried out. Thedonors worried about this issue for years andwarned of conditioning aid on it. They could haveredirected some aid away from the governmenttoward NGOs. But they took no decisive action.

But the donors are divided and each has a differ-ent agenda. In some cases they competed over pro-

jects, which of course does not provide an incen-tive for the donee to complete the project if anoth-er donor is waiting in the wings. In some casesthere is pressure on the outpost of the donoragency to get this fiscal year’s money spent, or nextyear’s appropriation will go down.

Given that the donors have such pressures,potential recipients, such as the labor court judge,need not laugh; they need merely be respectful andin most cases sincere even if the chances of realreform are low and even if lack of progress threat-ens to cut off the aid. Small local NGOs might bemore vulnerable to pressure, unless they are inhigh “demand” among donors, because the exis-tence of the NGO might depend on a particulardonation, but then the international NGOs orbilateral donors are usually not in a position toclosely monitor a large number of small projects.

However, in the end, if there is resistance toreform or even passivity about it, it could resultfrom the relatively small amounts of money fromdonors and a probable lifetime that would fallshort of the time necessary to complete thereforms.


In a recent poll of Latin Americans the answer toone question received a good deal of internationalattention. Asked if they would prefer a dictatorial

government to a democratic one if the dictatorshipcould solve the economic problems nearly 50% saidthey would prefer the dictatorship. This follows near-ly a quarter century of transitions toward electoraldemocracy in most all of the Latin American coun-tries. It also follows a period nearly that long of thetransition in many of these countries from economiesin which the state had played a major role—a plan-ning and investment role. In most of the countriesthe economic lot of the lower 75% has not gottenbetter and in many cases has gotten worse. As in thecase of Guatemala and Nicaragua, the rate of povertyhas gone down, but the number of people in povertyhas gone up, in the last decade or so.

While there is evidence that the fastest growingeconomies in the last thirty years, beginning withthe four tigers and then including China and othersoutheast Asian countries have been under authori-

tarian or semi authoritarian governments, there isno general evidence that such governments do bet-ter economically. Indeed the authoritarian govern-ments in Latin America that were ushered out losttheir place largely because of economic crises. Andthe economies that did grow rapidly, by and largecontinued to do so after modifying their politicalregimes in the direction of democracy.

It has been common for some time in polls inLatin America for the more political institutions torate lower in the polls. In El Salvador, for example,the police and military always rate higher than thelegislature and political parties. Despite the factthat neoliberalism, including that practiced in thethree countries, reduces the scope of influence ofthe state in the economy, the politicians who runthose governments are blamed by the citizens formany things, including bad economic times. Thatis in part because they are the only people elected,so voting is one of the only means a citizen has ofregistering a complaint.

CONCLUSION

One reason for lack of popularity is that theseinstitutions don’t seem to be dealing with or haveimpact upon the problems that most bother thecitizens—low wages, high crime, economic insecu-rity, health, education, that is, many of the thingsin the basket of social and political deficits thatgave rise to the insurgencies in the first place.

The evidence from El Salvador and Guatemala,noted above, is that landlessness is perhaps worsenow than it was in the late 1970s. Crime is worse.Health care and education are somewhat better.

Early in the peace process in Guatemala, directorof MINUGUA Jean Arnault argued that the socialprograms of the peace accords had to move fullspeed ahead to develop a constituency that wouldsupport the accords and force political institutionsto move faster toward the goals of the accords.Implementation of the accords could never movethat fast. Even if the health and education spendingparts of the accords, which were not formally partof the peace process in the other two countries, hadbeen fulfilled and maintained—a 50% increase infive years — the base of spending had been so lowthat the amount of dollars that would be added wasvery tiny, and not likely to make significantchanges in the lives of the broad target population.And that assumes that the money would be spentefficiently and for the poor. In many third worldcountries public monies subsidize the middle andeven upper classes more than the poor, and in thesesame countries taxes are generally regressive.

The peace processes have dealt best with reduc-ing the power of the militaries and establishingmore inclusive elections. They have had onlysome success with establishing new state institu-

tions (the police), or reforming old ones (thecourts).

Despite declines in the rate of poverty there arenow more poor people in Nicaragua andGuatemala than there were in 1990. El Salvadorshows a modest decline. El Salvador has not hadmore “pro-poor” policies (though the EDUCOprogram has definitely had some success), but itseconomic rates of growth have been higher thanthe other two countries, though distinctlymediocre at the end of the 1990s.

What has saved its economy from catastrophe,and greatly mitigated the damage in the two weak-er economies, is migration to the U.S. and remit-tances sent home. For El Salvador, the most denselypopulated country, it was the reversal of migrationinto Honduras in 1969 that was one of the causesthat led to the war a decade later. Remittances arealso a great aid to Guatemala and Nicaragua. Butmigration is a product of the war— of human rightsabuses, killing, and a plunge in economic perfor-mance. It is a product of globalization. It is not aproduct of the peace processes. (Robinson)

This does not mean that the peace processes andinternational assistance to them have been a void.The wars are definitively over. Human rights abus-es are very much reduced. There are some hopefulsigns in two of the police forces. There are somehopeful signs and changes in two of the judicialsystems. Progress has been made by two of theelectoral authorities and there is at least a heritageof professionalism in the third. There has beensome reduction in poverty and some peasants haveland that they did not have before 1980 or beforethe ends of the three wars.

Bibliography 97

WARS AND PEACE ACCORDS

Anderson, Thomas P., Matanza: El Salvador’s CommunistRevolt of 1932, University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

Arnson, Cynthia, Crossroads: Congress, the President, andCentral America, Penn State Press, 1993.

Arnson, Cynthia J., ed., Comparative Peace Processes in LatinAmerica,Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999.

Binford, Leigh, The El Mozote Massacre,Arizona UniversityPress, 1996.

Black, George, Garrison Guatemala, Monthly ReviewPress, 1984.

Brody,Reed,Contra Terror in Nicaragua,South End Press,1985.

Brown, Timothy C., The Real Contra War: HighlanderPeasant Resistance in Nicaragua, University of OklahomaPress, 2001

Browning, David, El Salvador: Landscape and Society, Oxford,1971.

Bulmer-Thomas,Victor, The Political Economy of CentralAmerica Since 1920, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Carlsen, Robert S., The War for the Heart and Soul of aHighland Maya Town, University of Texas Press, 1997.

BIBLIOGRAPHY


Castillo Guerrero, Ernesto, Algo más que un recuerdo, CentroNicaragüense de Escritores, 1997.

Child, Jack, The Central American Peace Process1983-1991:Sheathing Swords, Building Confidence, L. Rienner, 1992.

Cockburn, Leslie, Out of Control: The Story of the ReaganAdministration’s Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal ArmsPipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection, Atlantic MonthlyPress, 1987.

Colindres, Eduardo, Fundamentos económicos de la burguesíasalvadoreña, UCA Editores, 1977.

Dickey, Christopher, With the Contras, Simon and Schuster,1985.

Dillon, Sam, The CIA and Nicaragua’s Contra Rebels, HenryHolt, 1991.

Dunkerley, James, Power in the Isthmus,Verso, 1988, Ch 1-4.Durham,William H., Scarcity and Survival in Central America,

Stanford, 1979Falla, Ricardo, Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala,

1975-1982,Westview, 1994.FLACSO, De la experiencia salvadoreña a la esperanza guatemal-

teca:Acuerdos de Paz en El Salvador y Guatemala, 1997.Funkhauser, Edward, “Mass Emigration, Remittances, and

Economic Adjustment: The Case of El Salvador in the1980s,” in G.J. Borjas and R.B. Freemand, eds.,Immigration in the Workforce: Economic Consequences for theUnited States and Source Areas, University of Chicago Press.

Jonas, Susanne, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, DeathSquads, and U.S. Power,Westview Press, 1991.

Jonas, Susanne, Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala’s PeaceProcess,Westview Press, 2000.

Handy, Jim, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict andAgrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954, University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1994.

Kincaid, Douglas, “Peasants into Rebels: Community andClass in Rural El Salvador,” Society for the ComparativeStudy of Society and History, 1987, 466-94.

Manwaring, Mas G., and Court Prisk, El Salvador at War:AnOral History, National Defense University Press, 1988.

McClintock, Michael, El Salvador:The American Connection,and Guatemala:The American Connection Zed, 1985.

Mena Sandoval, Francisco, Del Ejército Nacional al EjércitoGuerrillero, Ediciones Arcoiris (San Salvador), 1995.

Miranda, Roger, The Civil War in Nicaragua: Inside theSandinistas, Transaction Publishers, 1991.

Montes, Segundo, Salvadoreños regugiados en los EstadosUnidos, UCA Editores, 1987.

Montgomery,Tommie Sue, Revolution in El Salvador,WestviewPress, 1995.

Nuñez, Orlando, et. al., La Guerra en Nicaragua, CIPRES(Managua), 1991.

Paige, Jeffery M., Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise ofDemocracy in Central America, Harvard University Press,1997.

Procurador de los Derechos Humanos, Los Comités deDefensa Civil en Guatemala, 1994.

Ricciardi, Joseph, “ Economic Policy,” in Revolution andCounterrevolution in Nicaragua, Thomas W. Walker, ed.,Westview Press, 1991.

Robinson, William I. and Kent Norsworthy, David andGoliath:The U.S.War Against Nicaragua, Monthly ReviewPress, 1987.

Stoll, David, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns ofGuatemala, Columbia University Press, 1993.

Vilas, Carlos M. Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes, Market,State, and the Revolutions in Central America, MonthlyReview Press, 1995.

Williams, Robert G., Export Agriculture and the Crisis inCentral America, University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Wood, Elisabeth J., Forging Democracy from Below: InsurgentTransitions in South Africa and El Salvador, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000.

_______ , Insurgent Collective Action and Civil Wars in ElSalvador, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

MILITARY

Benítez Manaut, Raúl, La teoría militar y la guerra civil en ElSalvador, UCA editores, 1989

Cajina, Roberto, Transición política y reconversión militar enNicaragua, 1990-1995, CRIES, 1996.

Editorial, “El incierto futuro de las fuerzas armadas,”Estudios Centroamericanos, No. 588, octubre 1997. No. 564,octubre 1995.

Grigsby Vado, William, “Sorry, Uncle Sam, the Sams AreOurs,” envío, vol. 22, No 268, November 2003.

Isacson, Adam, Altered States: Security and Demilitarization inCentral America, Center for International Policy, 1997.

MINUGUA, Situación de los Compromisos Relativos al Ejércitoen los Acuerdos de Paz, Mayo 2002.

Rojas Aravena, Francisco, Bernardo Arévalo de León, yCarlos Sojo, eds., La Nueva Agenda de Seguridad enCentroamérica, FLACSO-Guatemala, 1998.

Schirmer, Jennifer, The Guatemalan Military Project:A ViolenceCalled Democracy, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Stanley, William, The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics,Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador, TempleUniversity Press, 1996.

Vela Castañeda, Manolo Estuardo, Relaciones cívico militares enCentroamérica: dilemas del control democrático, FLACSO-Guatemala, julio 2004.

Williams, Phillip and Knut Walter, Militarization andDemilitarization in El Salvador’s Transition to Democracy,University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

JUSTICE SYSTEMS

Asociación de Investigación y Estudios Sociales (ASIES),Proceso de reforma, modernización y fortalecimiento del sistemade justicia en Guatemala durante el año 2001

ASIES, Proceso de reforma, modernización y fortalecimiento delsistema de justicia en Guatemala durante el año 2003.

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), Desarrollo: Másallá de la economía: Progreso económico y social en AméricaLatina: Informe 2000.

Costa, Gino, La Policía Nacional de El Salvador (1990-1997),UCA editores, 1999.

Cruz, José Miguel y Luis Armando González, “Magnitudde la violencia en El Salvador,” Estudios Centroamericanos,No. 588, octubre 1997.

Cruz, José Miguel y Nelson Portillo Peña, Solidaridad y vio-lencia en las pandillas del gran San Salvador: Más allá de lavida local, UCA, 1998.

Escobar, Francisco Andrés, “Por mi madre vivo y por mibarrio muero: Una aproximación al fenómeno de lasmaras,” Estudios Centroamericanos, No. 564, octubre 1995.

Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho(FESPAD), Estado de la seguridad pública y la justicia penal enEl Salvador: Julio 2002 – Diciembre 2003, 2004.

Garst, Rachel, The New Guatemalan Nacional Civilian Police:A Problematic Beginning, Washington Office on LatinAmerica, November 1997.

Irigoyen, Raquel y Victor Ferrigno, Resumen ejecutivo delestudio Acceso a las Justicias, ASDI, 2002.

MINUGUA, Fourteenth Report on Human Rights,November 2003.

MINUGUA, Informe de Cierre: Sub Oficina Regional deHuehuetenango, 17 de septiembre de 2004.

Popkin, Margaret, Justice Delayed: The Slow Pace of JudicialReform in El Salvador, Hemisphere Initiatives, December1994.

Popkin, Margaret, Peace without Justice: Obstacles to Buildingthe Rule of Law in El Salvador, Penn State Press, 2000.

Rico, Maite y Bertrand de la Grange, ¿Quién Mató alObispo? Autopsia de un crimen político, Editorial PlanetaMexicana, 2003.

Romano, Luis Ernesto, “Los costos de la violencia en ElSalvador,”Estudios Centroamericanos,No.588,octubre 1997.

Sieder, Rachel, “Reforming the Judicial System,” in WhoGoverns? Guatemala Five Years after the Peace Accords,Hemisphere Initiatives, January 2002.

Stanley, William, Protectors or Perpetrators? The InstitutionalCrisis of the Salvadoran Civilian Police, WOLA andHemisphere Initiatives, January 1996.

Stanley,William, Risking Failure:The Problems and Promise ofthe New Civilian Police in El Salvador, HemisphereInitiatives, September 1993

Washington Office on Latin America, Demilitarizing PublicOrder, 1995.

ELECTIONS, PARTIES, PARTICIPATION

ASIES, La Cultura Democrática de los Guatemaltecos, 2000.Boneo, Horacio y Edelberto Torres Rivas ¿Por qué no votan

los guatemaltecos?, FLACSO-Guatemala, febrero 2001.Briones, Carlos y Carlos Ramos, Gobernabilidad en

Centroamérica: Gobernabilidad, economía y democracia en ElSalvador, FLACSO-El Salvador, 1995.

Butler, Judy, David R. Dye, Jack Spence and GeorgeVickers, Democracy and Its Discontents: Nicaragua Before theElection, Hemisphere Initiatives, October 1996.

Dye, David R., Patchwork Democracy: Nicaraguan Politics TenYears after the Fall, Hemisphere Initiatives, December2000.

FLACSO-El Salvador, El Proceso Electoral 1994, 1995.Gálves Borrell,Víctor, La gobernabilidad en Centroamérica:

Sectores populares y gobernabilidad precaria en Guatemala,FLACSO, 1995.

IDEA, Democracia en Guatemala: La misión de un puebloentero, Estocolmo, 1998.

Mainwaring, Scott and Timothy R. Scully, eds, BuildingDemocratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America,Stanford University Press, 1995.

Ramos, Carlos y Carlos Briones, Las elites: Percepciones yactitudes sobre los procesos de cambio político y de transformacióninstitucional en El Salvador, FLACSO-El Salvador, 1999.

Robinson,William I., A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention inthe Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in thePost-Cold War Era,Westview, 1992.

Seligson, Mitchell A. and Joel M. Judcowitz, GuatemalanValues and the Prospects for Democratic Development,Development Associated Inc., March, 1994.

Seligson, Mitchell A. and John A. Booth, eds., Elections andDemocracy in Central America, Revisited, University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1995.

Sieder, Rachel, Megan Thomas, George Vickers, JackSpence, Who Governs? Guatemala Five Years after the PeaceAccords, Hemisphere Initiatives, January 2002.

Spence, Jack, David Dye, and George Vickers, El Salvador’sElections of the Century: Results, Recommendations, Analysis,Hemisphere Initiatives, July 1994.

Spence, Jack, Democracy Weakened: A Report on the October20, 1996 Nicaraguan Elections,Washington Office on LatinAmerica and Hemisphere Initiatives, November 1997.

Spence, Jack, Mike Lanchin and Geoff Thale, From Electionsto Earthquakes: Reform and Participation in Post-War ElSalvador, Hemisphere Initiatives,April 2001.

Zamora R., Rubén, El Salvador: Heridas que no cierran: Lospartidos políticos en la post-guerra, FLACSO-El Salvador,1998.

Zamora R., Rubén, La izquierda partidaria salvadoreña: entrela identidad y el poder, FLACSO-El Salvador, 2003.

LAND AND EQUITY ANDINTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Abu-Lughod, Deena, “Failed Buyout: Land Rights forContra Veterans in Postwar Nicaragua,” Latin AmericanPerspectives, v. 27, No. 3, May 2000.

Álvarez,Antonio y Joaquín Mauricio Chávez, Tierra, conflic-to y paz, CEPAZ, 2001.

Baumeister, Eduardo, “Formas de acceso a la tierra y alagua en Guatemala,” Cuadernos de Desarrollo Humano,Sistema de Naciones Unidas en Guatemala, 2001.

Boyce, James, ed., Economic Policy for Building Peace: TheLessons of El Salvador, Lynne Rienner, 1996.

Bibliography 99

Brockett, Charles D., Land Power and Poverty: AgrarianTransformation and Political Conflict in Central America,Westview, 1991.

Carothers, Thomas, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The LearningCurve, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,1999.

Collier, Paul, et. al., Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War andDevelopment Policy, World Bank Policy Research Report,Oxford University Press, 2003.

Coordinación de ONG y Cooperativas (CONGCOOP),Fontierras: El modelo de mercado y el acceso a la tierra enGuatemala. Balance y perspectivas, 2002.

Deininger, Klaus, and Juan Sebastian Chamorro, InvestmentIncome Effects on Land Regularization:The Case of Nicaragua,World Bank, January 2002.

Durocher, Bettina, Los derechos de la tierra: La cuestión agrariaen el país Ixil, FLACSO-Guatemala, 2002.

Dye, David R., Judy Butler, Deena Abu-Lughod, JackSpence and George Vickers, Contesting Everything,WinningNothing:The Search for Consensus in Nicaragua, 1990-1995,Hemisphere Initiatives, November 1995.

Enriquez, Laura J., Agrarian Reform and Class Consciousness inNicaragua, University Press of Florida, 1997.

Enriquez, Laura J., Harvesting Change: Labor and AgrarianReform in Nicaragua: 1979-1990, University of NorthCarolina Press, 1991.

Evans, Trevor, Liberalización financiera y capital bancario enAmérica Central, CRIES, 1998.

Foley, Michael, Land, Peace, and Participation:The Developmentof Post-War Agriculture Policy in El Salvador and the Role ofthe World Bank, Washington Office on Latin America,1997.

Hammond, John L., Fighting to Learn: Popular Education andGuerrilla War in El Salvador, Rutgers University Press,1998.

Hecht, Susana, Susan Kandel and Ileana Gómez, Forms ofDecentralization, Governance and the Politics of NaturalResources in El Salvador, PRISMA 2002.

Institut de Recherches et d’Applications des Méthodes deDéveloppement (IRAM), Estudios sobre la tenencia de la tier-ra, septiembre 2000.

Jonakin, Jon, “The Impact of Structural Adjustment andProperty Rights Conflicts on Nicaraguan AgrarianReform Beneficiaries,” World Development, v. 24, no. 7,1996.

Murray, Kevin et. al., Rescuing Reconstruction,The Debate onPost War Economic Recovery in El Salvador, HemisphereInitiatives, June 1994.

Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Improvising History:A Critical Evaluation of the United Nations Observer Missionin El Salvador, New York, 1995.

Marques, José and Ian Bannon, Central America: EducationReform in a Post-Conflict Setting, Opportunities andChallenges,World Bank,April 2003.

Miller,Valerie Lee, Between Struggle and Hope:The NicaraguanLiteracy Crusade,Westview Press, 1985.

MINUGUA, La problemática de la tierra en Guatemala, 1995.

Morales López, Henry, La cooperación al desarrollo enGuatemala 1996-2001 (Desde la perspectiva de la sociedadcivil), Foro de Coordinaciones de ONG de Guatemala,junio de 2002.

Núñez S., Orlando, La economía popular: asociativa y autoges-tionaria, CIPRES, 1995.

O’Neill, Sally, “The Ever-Changing Face of Nongov-ernmental Cooperation,” Envío, No. 276, July 2004.

Palma Murga, Gustavo, et. al., Procesos agrarios desde el sigloXVI a los Acuerdos de Paz, FLACSO-GUATEMALA,MINUGUA, CONTIERRA, 2002.

Pásara, Luis, Paz, ilusión y cambio en Guatemala: El proceso depaz, sus actores, logros y límites, Instituto de InvestigacionesJurídicas, 2003.

PNUD, Guatemala, la fuerza incluyente del desarrollo humano,2000.

PNUD, Informe sobre desarrollo humano: El Salvador 2001,2001.

PNUD, Segundo informe sobre desarrollo humano enCentroamérica y Panamá, 2003.

Rivera Campos, Roberto, La economía salvadoreña al final delsiglo: Desafíos para el futuro, FLACSO-El Salvador, 2000.

Robinson,William I., Transnational Conflicts: Central America,Social Change and Globalization,Verso, 2003.

Rosa, Herman, AID y las transformaciones globales en ElSalvador, CRIES, 1993.

Rosa, Herman, Nelson Cuéllar e Iliana Gómez, Dimensionesambientales de la vulnerabilidad en El Salvador: El caso del BajoLempa, PRISMA, 2002.

Ruben, Ruerd, & Edoardo Masset, “Land Markets: Riskand Distress Sales in Nicaragua: The Impact of IncomeShocks on Rural Differentiation,” Journal of AgrarianChange, v. 3, No. 4, October 2003.Ruben, Ruerd, Zvi Lerman, and Gustavo Siles, Continuityand change of rural organization in Nicaragua: from co-operativecontracts to social capital, The Netherlands-IsraelDevelopment Research Programme (NIRP), 2002.

Segovia, Alexander, Transformación estructural y reformaeconómica en El Salvador, F&G Editores, Guatemala, 2002.

Sieder, Rachel, Megan Thomas, George Vickers & JackSpence, Who Governs? Guatemala Five Years after the PeaceAccords, Hemisphere Initiatives, January 2002.

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United Nations Development Programme , HumanDevelopment Report 2003, 2003.

Valdez, J. Fernando y Mayra Palencia Prado, Los dominios delpoder: La encrucijada tributaria, FLACSO-Guatemala, 1998.

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2003.


Hemisphere Initiatives has published the following reports. Please send requests to Hemisphere Initiatives c/o JackSpence, [email protected] or [email protected].

Establishing the Ground Rules: A Report on the Nicaraguan Electoral Process, Jack Spence, George Vickers, Ralph Fine andDavid Krusé,August, 1989.

Nicaragua’s Elections:A Step Towards Democracy? Ralph Fine, Jack Spence, George Vickers and David Krusé, January 1990.

*Endgame:A Progress Report on Implementation of the Salvadoran Peace Accords, George Vickers and Jack Spence with DavidHoliday, Margaret Popkin and Philip Williams, December 3, 1992, 16,500 words.

Justice Impugned:The Salvadoran Peace Accords and the Problem of Impunity, Margaret Popkin with Vickers and Spence, June1993, 11,000 words (co-produced with WOLA).

*The Voter Registration Tangle, Madalene O’Donnell with Vickers and Spence, July 1993, 11,000 words.

Risking Failure:The Problems and Promise of the New Civilian Police in El Salvador, Bill Stanley with Vickers and Spence,September 1993, 15,000 words (co-produced with WOLA).

*Voter Registration and the Tasks Ahead, Madalene O’Donnell with Vickers and Spence, November 1993, 11,000 words.

*Toward a Level Playing Field?:A Report on the Post-War Salvadoran Electoral Process, Jack Spence and George Vickers, January1994, 15,000 words.

*A Negotiated Revolution? A Two Year Progress Report on the Salvadoran Peace Accords, Jack Spence and George Vickers withMargaret Popkin, Philip Williams and Kevin Murray, March 1994, 24,000 words.

*Rescuing Reconstruction:The Debate on Post-War Economic Recovery in El Salvador, Kevin Murray, with Ellen Coletti, andJack Spence, and Cynthia Curtis, Garth David Cheff, René Ramos, José Chacón, Mary Thompson, May 1994, 35,000words.

*El Salvador’s Elections of the Century: Results, Recommendations,Analysis, Jack Spence, David Dye, and George Vickers withGarth David Cheff, Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis and Ken Ward, July 1994, 25,000 words.

Justice Delayed:The Slow Pace of Judicial Reform in El Salvador, Margaret Popkin with Jack Spence and George Vickers,December 1994, 12,000 words (co-produced with WOLA).

The Salvadoran Peace Accords and Democratization: A Three Year Progress Report and Recommendations, Jack Spence, GeorgeVickers and David Dye, March 1995, 25,000 words.

*Contesting Everything,Winning Nothing:The Search for Consensus in Nicaragua, 1990–1995, David R. Dye. Judy Butler,Deena Abu-Lughod, Jack Spence, with George Vickers, November 1995, 24,000 words.

*Chapúltepec Five Years Later: El Salvador’s Political Reality and Uncertain Future, Jack Spence, David R. Dye, MikeLanchin, and Geoff Thale, with George Vickers, January 1997, 28,000 words.

Democracy and Its Discontents:Nicaraguans Face the Election, Judy Butler,David R.Dye,and Jack Spence with George Vickers,October 1996,24,000 words.

*Democracy Weakened:A Report on the October 20, 1996 Nicaraguan Elections, Jack Spence, November 1997, 15,000 words(co-produced with WOLA).

*Promise and Reality: Implementation of the Guatemalan Peace Accords, Jack Spence, David R. Dye, Paula Worby, CarmenRosa de Leon-Escribano, George Vickers, and Mike Lanchin, August 1998, 37,000 words.

Patchwork Democracy: Nicaraguan Politics Ten Years After the Fall, David R. Dye with Jack Spence and George Vickers,December 2000, 28,000 words.

*From Elections to Earthquakes: Reform and Participation in Post-War El Salvador, Jack Spence, Mike Lanchin and Geoff Thale.April 2001, 30,000 words.

*Who Governs?: Guatemala Five Years After the Peace Accords, Rachel Sieder, Megan Thomas, George Vickers and JackSpence, January 2002, 32,000 words.

*Deciphering Honduras: Four Views of Post-Mitch Political Reality, Manuel Torres Calderón,Thelma Mejia, Dan Alder andPaul Jeffrey with Jack Spence. September 2002, 33,000 words.

* available in Spanish

EL SALVADOR

GU

AT

EMA

LA

ME

XIC

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SantaAna

San Salvador

GuatemalaCity

Quetzaltenango

San Miguel

Léon

Managua

Granada

LakeNicaragua

San José

Puntarenas

San Isidro

Limón

Liberia

David

Estelí

Matagalpa

Jinotega

Juigalpa Bluefields

Puerto Cabezas

Tela La Ceiba

Nacaome

Ahuachapán

Huehuetenango

Esquintla

Chiquimula

Puerto Barrios

Retalhuleo

Wampú

Rivas

Jinotepe

Chinandega

PA

CI F I C

O C E A N

C a r i b b e a n S e a

Choluteca

NICARA

GU

A

COSTARICA

HONDURAS

San Pedro Sula

Santa Rosade Copán

Comayagua

Tegucigalpa

Belize City

Puerto Cortés

Documents

war and peace - UT LANIClanic.utexas.edu/project/hemisphereinitiatives/warpeace.pdfthe Chamorro government that defeated the Sandinistas in the election, and the various forces that