[112] Lawrence A. Pezzullo (U.S. The human rights situation remained dire in 1982. Cuba’s subsequent misguided attempts to foment revolution in other Latin American nations provided the U.S. with an opportunity to expand its connections with military and police forces in the region. Falkland Islands War, also called Falklands War, Malvinas War, or South Atlantic War, a brief undeclared war fought between Argentina and Great Britain in 1982 over control of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and associated island dependencies. The Contras nonetheless continued to receive funding due to Lt. Col. Oliver North’s illegal operations out of the basement of the White House. [106] Pierre Hurel, “Ortega ne red pas les armes” (interview with Daniel Ortega), Paris Match, March 22, 1990, quoted in Thomas Walker, ed., Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 10. By 1965, there were 34 U.S. military advisers in Guatemala. And I believe that the CIA already has been badly hurt by its involvement with the Contras, and will be hurt more if we continue. The Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington worked with activist groups to set up speaking engagements in different cities. The guiding ethos centered on dissolving enemy images through personal contact and cultural understanding. Through its Cold War words and actions, the United States sent clear signals to Latin American authorities what they had to do to defeat communism and protect the United States. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order.”[57]  His assassination that day demonstrated that the military would kill anyone. Forensic anthropology teams determined, hat 57% of the identified victims were children under the age of 18, including, 136 children and adolescents killed inside. Following the overthrow, Johnson sent a congratulatory telegram to the new military leaders expressing his “warmest good wishes.”  This was followed by generous U.S. aid amounting to $1.5 billion between 1964 and 1968, even as the Brazilian dictatorship arrested and tortured thousands of its citizens.[28]. The Contras were hailed as democratic reformers, “freedom fighters,” heroes, and “our brothers.”  President Reagan told the American people at various times that it was “our moral responsibility” to aid the Contras; that the U.S. had the “moral authority” to do so; that subduing the Sandinistas constituted “a great moral challenge for the entire free world”; and that the Contras were the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers.”  The overall theme for propagation was summarized in an S/LPD “Public Diplomacy Action Plan” dated March 12, 1985:  “The Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters are fighters for freedom in the American tradition; FSLN are evil.”[146]. The military and economic oligarchy consolidated their power in 1948 by establishing the military-dominated political party, Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification (PRUD), which was replaced in 1960 by the National Conciliation Party (PCN). Congress engaged in numerous heated debates on the issue of Contra aid during the 1980s. According to Cynthia Arnson and Philip Brenner, “The most numerous and effective groups arrayed against the president’s policies in Central America were religious . It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order.”, In Washington, Romero’s plea fell on deaf ears. The CIA “assassination manual,” authorized by CIA supervisor Duane Clarridge, provided illustrated instructions in Spanish on how to make a bomb and blow up a local police station. In August 1985, following years of pressure by the Reagan administration, Congress lifted the seven-year-old ban on military aid to the Guatemalan government, subject to administration certification that human rights were improving. If they weren’t engaged in this game of dominoes, there wouldn’t be any hotspots in the World.”  As president, Reagan embarked on an aggressive rollback strategy that involved covert support for guerrillas in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, and Cambodia, countries either led by Marxist governments or embroiled in civil wars. “The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on. The 1980s were a time of very active American military intervention around the world. CUSCLIN named their new meetinghouse Casa Ben Linder. The entourage met with activists, opinion makers, politicians, and Hollywood celebrities. The Reagan administration had ample opportunity to resolve its security concerns through negotiation, but peaceful co-existence with Sandinista Nicaragua was not its goal. The many atrocities committed by U.S. patrons, for example, were managed in something like the following sequence:  ignore, deny, minimize, rationalize, attack the messenger, and declare that reforms were underway. I hope that your religious sentiments and your feelings for the defense of human rights will move you to accept my petition, thus avoiding greater bloodshed in this suffering country. [149] Philip Taubman, “The Speaker and His Sources on Latin America,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1984, B10. In April 1982, he announced via radio that he was at war with the Sandinistas. The second graphic is a snapshot of terrorism in Latin America in 2013. [18] Office of the Historian, “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Guatemala” (Introduction), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54Guat/intro; and Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 335. [175] Father Alvaro Argüello, in person interview with Roger Peace, Managua, June 26, 2006; Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia, in person interview with Roger Peace, Managua, June 26, 2006; and Inter-religious Task Force on Central America (IRTFCA), Peacemaking II: U.S. The pledge was also activated in response to Congressional votes related to funding for the Contras and the Salvadoran government. According to D’Haeseleer, “when verbal persuasion failed, it [ORDEN] resorted to other means, including kidnapping, torturing, and killing supposedly subversive. O’Neill attributed his views to his connection with the Maryknoll Catholic order. Government security forces and allied death squads murdered, imprisoned, and tortured their own citizens, including political leftists, priests, nuns, intellectuals, teachers, labor union leaders, and human rights advocates. Its costs were substantial:  approximately 31,000 Nicaraguans killed, thousands more maimed and wounded, 350,000 internally displaced, and approximately $9 billion in economic damages. President Jimmy Carter initially accepted the new Sandinista government, even inviting its leaders to the White House for a visit, but the Reagan administration was intent on overthrowing the government and undermining its socialist economic experiment. This included, ironically, a land reform program similar to that rejected in Guatemala. The elections were observed by some 1,000 foreign journalists and 450 official observers from thirty-five countries. Ríos Montt was considered part of the modern, technically proficient sector of the army, trained in special warfare at the U.S. School of the Americas. Less than a decade after U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, the United States became deeply involved in Central America. Missing in her argument was the fact that the U.S. had engaged in or encouraged the destabilization and overthrow of democratic governments in Guatemala, British Guiana, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Chile, and after 1984, Sandinista Nicaragua – a leftist revolutionary regime that instituted democratic procedures, contrary to Kirkpatrick’s theory. ... the feared race war did not materialize. Between 1981 and 1990, an estimated one million refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala fled repression and violence in their homelands and entered the United States. But they have not managed to put a stop to this very personal way of showing international support for Nicaragua.[181]. Some of these poor farmers joined for pay, generously provided by the U.S. government; some, because of religious fears of Marxism; and some, in response to the FSLN government’s economic policies, which established price and market controls. Duarte’s moderate PDC party won the largest share with 40% of the vote. Hundreds of peace groups took up Central America issues around this time. [53] Ibid., 45; and Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: United States Policy toward Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 266, note 7. From 1987 to 1990, Congress appropriated only “nonlethal” aid to the Contras, which nonetheless kept them in the field. Their presence in local communities compelled people to ask, “What were the conditions from which refugees were fleeing? Two groups, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization and Veterans for Peace, organized truck caravans to Nicaragua, driving 4,000 miles to deliver tons of aid as well as the trucks. Notwithstanding the administration’s call to arms, there were practical limits as to what the administration could do to carry out its “crusade for renewal,” particularly in Central America. If it was proven beyond a doubt that Washington’s patrons had committed the atrocities, officials then attempted to minimize the number killed, avoid mention of torture, rape, and mutilation, and place the blame on a few “bad apples” at the lower echelon. CUSCLIN’s vigils were intended in part to “generate energy for ongoing organizing and consciousness-raising among visitors who will return to the U.S. and work in solidarity.”. Bishop Romero, formerly a conservative critic of liberation theology, had become a champion of the poor and the oppressed after witnessing the death of so many innocent people. I haven’t found any of these missionaries who aren’t absolutely opposed to this policy. Several human rights groups denounced continuing army and police targeting of labor activists, union members, students, religious workers, political party leaders, and human rights advocates. In 1985, the FMLN abducted 25 mayors and government officials and exchanged them for wounded FMLN guerrillas who were required to leave the country. Quainton commented, “Incidents such as this in which unarmed civilians, including women and children, are victims provide invaluable grist for the Sandinista propaganda mill. Salvador Policy Foes: Big FBI Probe of Protest Groups,” San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 28, 1988, A1; Ross Gelbspan, “Suit Seeks FBI’s Files on Dissidents,” Boston Globe, Nov. 30, 1988, 8; and Michael Wines, “Panel Criticizes F.B.I. Their presence also may have deterred Contra attacks. A conservative wing of the human rights movement also arose. See also, William Michael Schmidli, The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere:  Human Rights and U.S. [213] Charles Babington, “Clinton:  Support for Guatemala Was Wrong,” Washington Post, March 11, 1999, A1. “Let us not delude ourselves,” said Ronald Reagan while on the campaign trail in June 1980. [57] “Archbishop Oscar Romero: The Last Sermon,” in Robert Leiken and Barry Rubin, eds., The Central American Crisis Reader: The Essential Guide to the Most Controversial Foreign Policy Issue Today (New York: Summit Books, 1987), 377. Following the overthrow, Johnson sent a congratulatory telegram to the new military leaders expressing his “warmest good wishes.”  This was followed by generous U.S. aid amounting to $1.5 billion between 1964 and 1968, even as the Brazilian dictatorship arrested and tortured thousands of its citizens. “How can one prevent a peasant from another Central American country from hearing, from finding out, from realizing that in Nicaragua land is given to other poor and barefoot peasants like him? . Although the left (FDR) was excluded and two independent newspapers had been shut down by death threats, the military government nonetheless found it necessary to inflate vote totals by 25% so as to secure a better showing for the two parties on the right, the traditional military party, PCN, and the far right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which together won 38% of the vote (19% and 29%, respectively). The historian Walter LaFeber responded with an op-ed article in the, The Reagan administration’s interventionist policy in Central America rested on an integrated set of ideological, institutional, rhetorical, and policy elements. Congress as a whole went along with the strategy, authorizing $9 million for the ostensible purpose of supporting democratic institutions in Nicaragua. Between 1950 and 1972, more than 1,000 Salvadoran soldiers and officers received training at the School of the Americas in Panama. The goal was to unite all opposition political parties against the FSLN in the upcoming democratic elections set for February 25, 1990. It was during the Salvadoran government’s counteroffensive that members of the Atlacatl Battalion murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter at the Universidad Centroamericana. [13] As of 2020[update], violence still reigns over Central America. For example, Seal only met with Medellín cartel bosses after he had become a DEA informant and was originally arrested in Florida for smuggling Quaaludes. See also more document revelations at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB483/. Roberto d’Aubuisson, 1984 presidential election campaign. Rep. Edward Boland, Democrat of Massachusetts and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, subsequently offered an amendment barring U.S. covert actions “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.”  The amendment was approved and signed into law by President Reagan. Thomas Quigley, head of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Office of International Justice and Peace noted that “people who disapprove strongly of U.S. efforts to overthrow the [Nicaraguan] government and fund the Contras can still be quite critical of the Sandinistas.”. The Contras nonetheless continued to receive funding due to Lt. Col. Oliver North’s illegal operations out of the basement of the White House. Relations between the two countries took a downturn in mid-January 1981 when the Carter administration received reports of arms transfers to Salvadoran guerrillas. [115] Gerry E. Studds, “Central America, 1981: Report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives,” quoted in Robert E. Surbrug Jr., “’Thinking Globally’: Political Movements on the Left in Massachusetts, 1974-1990” (PhD diss., Univ. In May 1950, President Harry Truman signed National Security Council (NSC) 56/2, authorizing military aid to Latin American governments for the ostensible purpose of combating “communism.”  In 1951, Congress authorized $38 million in direct military assistance; and in 1952, $90 million. Government security forces also targeted labor union officials, campesino leaders, and human rights activists. 4 (2018): 613-39. [114] Rep. Jim Wright, Worth It All:  My War for Peace (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1993). Covers US foreign policy in Latin America during 1988, discussing (1) Nicaragua (2) Panama and the Noriega problem (3) drug trafficking (4) the progress towards democracy (5) the debt crisis. The murders were calculated and systematic, with men and women ordered into buildings before being shot. [80]  Although the Commission believed that justice demanded punishment for the perpetrators of violence and reparations for some of the victims, it lacked the authority to carry out both, and in 1993 the government passed the Amnesty Law which protected perpetrators and the high ranking military personnel who ordered them to act from facing charges and imprisonment for human rights violations. These military-led parties protected the coffee elite and attempted to usher in modernization projects with the help of the U.S. economic aid and the Central American Common Market. Americans were led to believe that their nation was the leading force for freedom, democracy, progress, and peace, presumably justifying U.S. military interventions and wars. “We have a right to decide what to do with it.”[77]  Congress passed an amendment in 1990 cutting U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government in half, but the measure contained a mile-wide loophole. “The drive to wage this war has led the administration to bypass our system of checks and balances, to ignore the Constitution of the United States, and to subvert the law of the land,” he told his colleagues. The structural elements reinforced notions of U.S. protection and benevolence, noted above. [156] LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 361; and Smith, Talons of the Eagle, 212. [30] Peter Kornbluh, “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, National Security Archive Briefing Book Number 110,” February 3, 2004, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110. Then in May 1984, Congress barred lethal military aid after CIA agents, acting in the name of the Contras, seeded Nicaraguan harbors with mines in violation of international law. In September 1984, a breakthrough occurred when five Central American presidents agreed to a draft treaty that required the cessation of all outside support cease for “irregular forces and armed bands” and banned foreign military bases, schools, and exercises in the region. [143] Philip Taubman, “The Nicaraguan Vote; Results Will Probably Heighten Tensions Between Washington and the Sandinistas,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 1984, A12. In the political arena, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), formed in 1960, became the vehicle for many Salvadorans seeking moderate reform. Between 75,000 and 90,000 people were killed during the war. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was released on Nov. 30, 1982, and has sold 33 million copies since. This combination of carrots and sticks was known as the “beans and bullets” approach. [3] Rather than solely relying on agricultural exportation, this new system promoted internal development and relied on regional common markets, banking capital, interest rates, taxes, and growing capital at the expense of labor and the peasant class. This proved to be an error, as the Carter administration cut off new aid to Nicaragua in the 1979 budget and blocked pending arms deliveries. Guatemalan counter-revolutionaries at a CIA training camp in Honduras, President Eisenhower nevertheless perceived communist participation in the Árbenz government as a threat to U.S. hegemony in the region. Among the prominent Congressional opponents of administration policies were Speaker of the House Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill of Massachusetts and Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, chair of the House Task Force on Nicaragua. This research paper, declassified in 2011, notes, “While liberation theology has served to promote US interests by assisting popular efforts to bring democratic reform to authoritarian states, it has also posed a major threat to US interests by providing a fertile ground for Communist exploitation” (p. vi). Following a tour of Latin America, he wrote that “harsh government measures of repression may be the only answer; that these measures may have to proceed from regimes whose origins and methods would not stand the test of American concepts of democratic procedure; and that such regimes and such methods may be preferable … to further communist successes.”[20]  Kennan’s recommendations were in accord with the Cold War views of President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who also committed the U.S. to supporting the French reconquest of Vietnam as an antidote to Asian communism. In April 1985, former CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner testified before a Congressional committee that the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan guerrillas, known as Contras, had engaged in numerous acts of “terrorism.”. [128] Joel Brinkley, “Democrats Assail C.I.A. In his commencement address at the University of Notre Dame on May 22, 1977, he declared that Americans “are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear.”  Carter nonetheless embraced the dictatorial Shah of Iran (placed into power with the help of the CIA in 1953) when visiting the country. Press, 2004), 132-33. To the consternation of Reagan administration officials, public opinion tended toward the side of critics. [193] See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 2003). In March 1996, a cease-fire was declared between the URNG (. Eugene Hasenfus, an air cargo handler, survived the downing of his plane on Oct. 5, 1986. As part of the deal, the U.S. agreed to provide secret battlefield intelligence for Iran’s war against Iraq when the CIA had already provided Iraq with intelligence. Internal displacement figures are cited in Thomas Walker, ed., Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 52. [27], President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ Library, photo by Yoichi Okamoto), U.S. support for despotic military regimes only increased under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo won the presidency and his Christian Democratic Party won the majority of congressional seats. The Iran-Contra deals were secretly brokered through Israeli and CIA middlemen like Richard Secord, former director of the Air Wing of the Pentagon-CIA Special Operations Group at Udorn Air Force base in Thailand which helped command the secret war in Laos, General John Singlaub, the head of the World Anticommunist League, and Richard Gadd, who had set up a private air transport service for clandestine government operations. And why was the U.S. government supporting Central American governments and military forces that were perpetuating these conditions?”. U.S. actions in Guatemala signaled to reactionary forces across Latin America that they could count on the U.S. to support them in suppressing leftist reform without regard to constitutional law, democratic procedures, political freedoms, and human rights. Ortega said that a firm decision had been taken by the FSLN Directorate to “not permit use of our territory for the transit of arms to El Salvador” and that orders had been given to all units to interdict any such arms traffic. 1901-Cuba Becomes United States Protectorate: 1902-Britain and Germany Threaten Venezuela In contrast to the Carter administration, Reagan administration officials appeared confident and certain of their mission. Notwithstanding U.S. propaganda, the Sandinista government developed an electoral system modeled on European multiparty systems and held national elections on November 4, 1984. Faith networks also had clout in Washington. [133] President Ronald Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a White House Luncheon for Regional Editors and Broadcasters,” June 13, 1986, Reagan Public Papers. They were the main “war” strategy. Renewed negotiations began in July 1985, when Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Peru formed the Contadora Support Group. The Alliance for Progress withered on the vine. [85] Smith, Talons of the Eagle (1996), 137-38. for Scrutiny of U.S. Group,” New York Times, July 17, 1989. The U.S. also supplied an average of 12% of the Guatemalan military budget in the 1960s and 1970s. See Dennis Gilbert, Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 42. Among the worst incidents was the massacre of an estimated 100 demonstrators who had gathered at the Plaza Libertad in San Salvador on February 28, 1977, to protest the fraudulent presidential election of General Carlos Humberto Romero. Although Congress had banned U.S. aid to the Guatemalan government based on human rights abuses, the Reagan administration aided this government’s counterinsurgency war as well. [148] Gill, The School of the Americas, 83. Congress as a whole went along with the strategy, authorizing $9 million for the ostensible purpose of supporting democratic institutions in Nicaragua. “The fact that we were arming and financing the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua was very, very disturbing to me,” said Bonior in an interview. [197] National Security Planning Group (NSPG) Meeting, “Subject: Review of US Policy in Central America, January 10, 1986, Secret,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB483; Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988), 326. In early 1989, U.S. officials expressed confidence that government forces would soon win, reporting that the rebels had lost between 15 and 19 percent of their forces. The series raises particular outrage in the African American community, which was devastated by crack. Other reports of international observers include:  Thom Kerstiens and Piet Nelissen (official Dutch government observers), “Report on the Elections in Nicaragua, 4 November 1984”; Irish Inter-Party Parliamentary Delegation, The Elections in Nicaragua, November, 1984 (Dublin: Irish Parliament, 1984); Parliamentary Human Rights Group, “Report of a British Parliamentary Delegation to Nicaragua to Observe the Presidential and National Assembly Elections, 4 November 1984”; and Willy Brandt and Thorvald Stoltenberg, “Statement [on Nicaraguan Elections on behalf of the Socialist International],” Bonn, Nov. 7, 1984. [35] See Margaret E. Keck and Kathyrn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), Chapter 3; and Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America (New York: Century Foundation, 2004). In 2006, sixteen years after the FSLN was voted out of power, Daniel Ortega and the FSLN were voted back in. It was all of these. On December 11, 1981, the Salvadoran army’s most elite unit, the Atlacatl Battalion, whose officers had been trained by U.S. Special Forces, massacred close to 1,000 villagers in El Mozote and surrounding hamlets (located north of San Miguel). This limit coupled with national elections held in 1982 and 1984 enabled the administration to win Congressional approval for most of the aid it sought for the Salvadoran government through the decade. President Reagan himself delivered three nationally televised addresses on Central America or Nicaragua (April 27, 1983, May 9, 1984, and March 16, 1986) and twenty-two radio addresses with a major focus on Nicaragua. [176] “Policy and Guidelines for Thursday Vigils, CUSCLIN,” Managua, no date. On July 17, Somoza left the country. It was reported that Seal died with George H. W Bush’s personal card in his pocket, though retired FBI agent Del Hahn, said it was merely the South Florida Drug Task Force’s card, which Bush headed. He had traveled widely in the region and was fully aware of its tragic history (he was also a history major). Imagining that socialist-oriented economic reforms constituted a threat to U.S. national security, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all supported repressive right-wing regimes and undermined democratic reform. This peaceful approach would have been far more honorable. In 1950, Assistant Secretary of State Edward Miller warned “the basic situation in the hemisphere is this. Televised Iran-Contra hearings in Congress took place from May 5 to August 6, 1987. A new round of talks nevertheless began in the fall. Even though Honduras did not possess a major guerrilla insurgency, military hard-liners targeted students, unionists, and peasants, as well as anyone who belonged to political parties or groups considered leftist. First, it gave people a human face to the reality in Central America, to this foreign policy debate that was going on in Washington. Led by Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment in. The War on Drugs began in June 1971 when U.S. Pres. In June, 1954, the CIA-backed “National Liberation Army” invaded Guatemala from Honduras while unmarked U.S. World War II fighter planes flew over Guatemala City, firing into the air. The U.S. also supplied an average of 12% of the Guatemalan military budget in the 1960s and 1970s. Religious organizations and institutions were instrumental in the Central America movement, providing leadership, volunteers, a respectable public image, an organizational base, institutional support, and transnational connections. Reports of such activities revive memories of the brutality of Somoza’s National Guard.”[126]. The situation of these two groups in flight from civil war, primarily state-sponsored violence, gave rise to the U.S. sanctuary movement of the 1980s. [69] Arnson, Crossroads, 151; and LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 188. “Could there be any greater tragedy than for us to sit back and permit this cancer to spread, leaving my successor to face far more agonizing decisions in the years ahead?”[137]  The purpose of such rhetoric was to delegitimize the Sandinista government in order to justify its overthrow. Press, 1981), 75.